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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer

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Not so Tweaks

You should go back to calling her 'Tweakable'. I liked that.

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ORIGINAL: mnottertail

Yeah, I was thinking if he had said, "You know; here in the US, West Virginia, and Virginia are two different states...' I could brooke him saying that to an Englishman, but to tell an Englishman that Northern Ireland and Ireland are different..........well, it is beyond impudent. Never mind that his premises are complete foolishness.

Sean Connory <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<(Note the Irish name...)

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ORIGINAL: BamaD

Not that this is at all relevant but Parton is from Tenn and Lewis is from Louisiana.
I understand about the difference between Northern and Southern Ireland, you should explain this to the IRA. Still this has nothing to do with Gaza and there is no parallel.

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ORIGINAL: Politesub53

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ORIGINAL: BamaD

Not that this is at all relevant but Parton is from Tenn and Lewis is from Louisiana.
I understand about the difference between Northern and Southern Ireland, you should explain this to the IRA. Still this has nothing to do with Gaza and there is no parallel.

The IRA understand Irish history more than you ever will. Like I said, Catholic/Protestant is more akin to Sunni/Shia than anything else.

NG, you are correct about Wolfe Tone, many of the original Irish freedom fighters were indeed protestant. The United Irishmen were more like the French or American revolutionaries. Although there were splits later along sectarian lines.

Kudos for mentioning the Border Warriors (Border Reivers) They were a prime example of what happens when main government loses interest in one area of the country. Nether the Scots or English had much of a care to worry about the border area so powerful family clans such as the Armstrongs filled the vacuum. The same happens today with ISIS, the family clans in Gaza, Boco Harum and Somalia, along with many parts of Africa, Afghanistan etc.

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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer

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And my main point stands. Ireland and Scotland have been British for hundreds of years, the British considered the IRA to be domestic terrorists and thus comparing the British IRA conflict with the Israeli Hamas one is still apples to gravel.

The problem is that Gaza is neither truly part of Israel nor a separate country, with all the rights and privileges that we generally associate with a separate country. The standard ways in which people look at the world don't apply. Normally, when a nation fights 'terrorists', it fights just those terrorists and not the country that they happen to be in. The British did indeed consider the IRA to be domestic terrorists - but, of course, members of the IRA, as Irish Republicans, did not.

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ORIGINAL: NorthernGent

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ORIGINAL: DomKen

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ORIGINAL: NorthernGent

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ORIGINAL: DomKen

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ORIGINAL: thishereboi
West Virginia was almost heaven to John Denver and if you had ever driven through the Blue Ridge Mountains you would know why.

Only if you were lost. West Virginia is Appalachia but not part of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Those run to the east. Usually when people are talking about the Blue Ridges they mean TN, NC and VA. Specifically the area around Great Smoky Mountains Park between Gatlinburg TN and Cherokee NC. But they do run in a narrow strip up to  Shenandoah along the Appalachian trail and the Blue ridge Parkway.

I'm from a little farther west but my heart will always belong to those mountains.

Is TN Tennessee, Ken? Went down to Sun Studios and spent a bit of time in Nashville. Went to a civil war site round there, too, can't remember the name but it is was round Nashville somewhere - some Gentleman's home who were largely Unionists and didn't join the war. I had no comprehension as to how many people fought so asked the guide and he said there were no records but he'd guessed 1 in 50 of males between 15 and 50. Thought it was an interesting tour and went to Shiloh later on. Brought a couple of books back which I have with me and one of them calculated that 85% of Virginia males between 15 and 50 fought at one point or another. So, I was left scratching my head thinking how could the number be so high in Virginia and so low around Nashville?

Yes TN is the abbreviation for Tennessee. Every state has a standard two letter abbreviation.

At the time of the war Virginia was long settled and as urban and wealthy as any part of the Confederacy, Richmond was the capitol for a period of time. Virginia was a significant slave holding state as well. Tennessee, being so mountainous, never really had a big population nor a lot of slave holders. So Nashville might not have been a good spot for recruiting. Nashville being so far north might have had significant abolitionist leanings as well, Kentucky which is just a stones throw north did not secede at all.

Also a lot of the fighting occurred in Virginia which probably resulted in the locals getting involved more just out of self defense.

Nashville not mountainous though? and quite prosperous compared with the rest of the South? Seems that way today when I visited (admittedly limited places).

From the books I brought back I'm left with the impression that there wasn't necessarily a correlation between the number of slaves in a state and the number of men who enlisted, and Unionist families in the South could be and were quite easily slaving holding families.

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ORIGINAL: NorthernGent

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ORIGINAL: BamaD

I understand about the difference between Northern and Southern Ireland, you should explain this to the IRA. Still this has nothing to do with Gaza and there is no parallel.

Maybe that's a matter of opinion. The IRA have trained the Palestinians and provided weapons to them in the past. Clearly, they see some sort of shared cause.

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Even when they brag about engaging in terrorist activities terrorists never see themselves as such. Evil people virtually never consider themselves to be evil.

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If anything the IRA did indeed receive some training from the PLO in the early 70s.

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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer

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If anything the IRA did indeed receive some training from the PLO in the early 70s.

That seems a lot more plausible than the other way around. I would have thought that the PLO would have had a great deal more experience than the IRA.

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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer

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Even when they brag about engaging in terrorist activities terrorists never see themselves as such. Evil people virtually never consider themselves to be evil.

Terrorists don't see themselves as such, no. But it's all too easy for one group to portray its enemies as 'terrorists' and themselves as ordinary upright people who are 'just defending themselves against terrorists'. Assad continues to pump that story about all those millions who are against his regime even today.

Beneath that, there's the good old story of one side is evil, the other is good. The story itself is evil, in my view, because nothing ever gets resolved as a result of the constant retelling of it. Or at least it hasn't in the case of Israel and Palestine, anyway.

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ORIGINAL: NorthernGent

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ORIGINAL: BamaD

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ORIGINAL: NorthernGent

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ORIGINAL: BamaD

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ORIGINAL: NorthernGent

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ORIGINAL: DomKen

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ORIGINAL: NorthernGent
No it wasn't. Islam was borne in say the 8th century? The British people who moved to Ireland were largely Lowland Scots and Northern English from the very North of England. These people were known as 'Border Warriors' who fought one another constantly, and they were also the people who migrated to the South of the USA in droves. I was in a museum in Nashville last year and was amazed to see that they think their ancestors were 'Scots-Irish': there is no such thing. They were Ulster-Scots (and some Northern English) and they and their descendants would break your knee-caps for suggesting they were Irish. Either way, the migration from Lowland Scotland and Northern England, the border region, happened later than the 8th century.

A lot of us mean we have both Scots and Irish ancestry. My father's side traces back to a highland scot who was transported after Culloden. My mother's side is more muddled but includes a bunch of Irish who came over at various times up to the famine..

Maybe so, Ken, couldn't say about your ancestors. But, I can say the Lowland Scots are fiercely proud to be British and Protestant. In many ways, it is the Lowland Scots and their descendants the Ulster Scots who live in Northern Ireland who cling doggedly to the notion of Britain. After all, the Scots had a true reformation like the Germans and are a Protestant nation whereas the English had a mere falling out with the Pope rather than a reformation and retained many catholic practices in the English church. We're a halfway house between Protestantism and Catholicism whereas the Scots are undoubtedly and doggedly protestant.

Here are the Glasgow Scots singing their Protestant and anti-Catholic songs. This sort of thing happens regularly in Scotland and Northern Ireland but never in England. The great irony is that when the Americans refer to 'the Brits' they mean the English and believe the Scots and Northern Irish are Celts and anti-British, when the reality is that the Scots and Northern Irish cling doggedly to being British and the English wouldn't be seen dead marching around like these idiots.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDQpShLlTKM

No we don't.
And my main point stands. Ireland and Scotland have been British for hundreds of years, the British considered the IRA to be domestic terrorists and thus comparing the British IRA conflict with the Israeli Hamas one is still apples to gravel. I don't recall any time when the IRA claimed it was their duty as Catholics (and I don't think they represented the Catholic church) to exterminate all Englishmen.

My limited understand of the Northern Ireland situation, after all Englishmen think they're all lunatics and don't care and don't want to know, is that Wolfe Tone was a Protestant. But, whatever way you shape it, people from another land had set up shop in their country and they acted accordingly. I know that if someone came to England and tried to impose foreign rule and culture we'd be more than slightly disappointed and would act accordingly. Whatever it takes in these situations and you can't expect the host nation to play by your rules when you have a much bigger arsenal.

Are you aware that England had decades before released Ireland (not to be confused with Northern Ireland) which was mostly Catholic from Great Britain in the hopes that by making the predominately Catholic portion of the island separate they could end the violence? As you are British I have to assume you know this.

I'm not British; I'm an Englishman.

They didn't 'release' Ireland to 'end the violence'; there had been decades of campaigning for Irish Home Rule by English liberals which ultimately led to the goal of self-determination.

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BamaD
When a group such as Hamas is dedicated to the destruction, not just the overthrow of the government, of a nation they don't even live in and the extermination of everyone living there it's easy, there is no way to describe them but terrorists.

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle

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BamaD
When a group such as Hamas is dedicated to the destruction, not just the overthrow of the government, of a nation they don't even live in and the extermination of everyone living there it's easy, there is no way to describe them but terrorists.

When a group such as the IDF is dedicated to the destruction, not just the overthrow of the government, of a nation they don't even live in and the extermination of everyone living there it's easy, there is no way to describe them but terrorists.

We can continue such bickering for as long as we choose, or we can agree that both sides are up to their eyeballs in the blood of innocents, that both sides commit war crimes as a matter of course, that both sides use human shields and target civilians. No one holds the high moral ground in this conflict. It was vacated decades ago.

However one side has a State of their own, one side is armed to the teeth with the latest military hi-tech while the other has pathetic small arms and home made rockets that couldn't hit a barn door, one side is slaughtering the other at a rate of c 25:1, one side is implacably opposed to the other getting the State of its own it so badly needs one side is ethnically cleansing the other off lands it has held for countless generations .....

Hamas is Israel's creation. While I abhor its tactics, war crimes and theocratic/fascist ideology, I recognise that Hamas is a response to over half a century of dispossession, exile, ethnic cleansing and atrocities. The way to stop Hamas is to deal with the issues that created it, not slaughter the population of Gaza.

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I thought Michael Collins had a little bit to do with that decision

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BamaD
Israel is not dedicated to the extermination of the Arabs so the rest of your post would be a waste of time. If Israel wanted to exterminate them they could napalm all of Gaza get back when your are in touch with reality

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle

Another important similarity is this:For 25 years the British Govt refused to negotiate with the IRA as it claimed the IRA were "terrorists". So there was 25 years of war. Within a year or two of the British Govt opening negotiations with the IRA, there was peace and a power sharing agreement that brought the IRA into the democratic process. The IRA eventually and voluntarily disarmed itself. There is an obvious lesson here for the parties to the Palestine-Zionist conflict.