Great programme on Jimmy Porter’s tapes of army and police conversations made during the shooting on Bloody Sunday in Derry in 1972… Most astonishing is the confrontation with Lord Widgery who warns him he has made powerful enemies and that he should destroy the tapes… He got them out across the border and kept until they appeared at the Saville Inquiry… It’s just finishing on Radio Ulster now, and should be online shortly…
A silly media row about racism just had to figure in the riots’ post mortem. Was the Tudor history expert David Starkey racist on Newsnight when he said: The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic, gangster culture has become the fashion. And black and white, boy and girl, operate in [...] read our review »
Not according to metallurgists Tim Foecke and Jennifer Hooper McCarty whose research has suggested that dodgy Harland and Wolff rivets were at fault for allowing the Titanic’s hull to be ripped apart by the pressure of the iceberg impact. With six of the hull’s chambers exposed to the Atlantic waters, the “unsinkable” ship lasted less [...] read our review »
Extract from Greg McLaughlin and Stephen Baker: The Propaganda of Peace: The Role of Media and Culture in the Northern Ireland Peace Process. Bristol: Intellect Books. 2010. Political opponents Ian Paisley and Martin McGuiness were confirmed as First Minister and Deputy First Minister of a new executive in May 2007, closing yet another chapter in [...] read our review »
ps ‘Living In The Past’ is a good album, possibly Jethro Tull’s best.
Posted by Driftwood on Jan 18, 2010 @ 08:21 PM
It is relevent when people like yourself try to take the high moral ground and use it as excuses to hinder progress.
Driftwood,
I’m glad you have accepted defeat, I think the hole you dug yourself into is almost in Sydney.
I will be looking out for you and your ill informed knowledge. Remember, before you post get your facts right because DisgustedinDERRY will be waiting to pounce. Make sure your mammy tucks you in before the squaddies call over later, wouldn’t want those bad men corrupting your wee innocence and non conditioned mind.
DisgustedinDerry: Are you suggesting that the para’s shot all the nailbombers before they could throw the devices. As I said above no devices, exploded or not, were presented to the Saville inquiry, can you suggest why this is? No you can’t, you are also an idiot!
I haven’t claimed there were nail bombs – so why should I have to prove there were any? At this point you are primarily arguing with the voices in your head.
Now – about that officer – what has he done wrong?
Reader,
An officer gives soldiers their orders.
The soldiers who murdered on the 30th January 1972 were given orders by their officers.
They shot dead UNARMED, INNOCENT CIVILIANS.
The officers therefore should be jailed for ordering their soldiers to shoot dead UNARMED, INNOCENT CIVILIANS.
Reader
A person with a nail bomb may or may not be guilty of attempted murder, depending on how lethal the bomb is, the distance of the attacker, whether they are chucking it at the soldier or vehicles, and quite a few other variables. Of course, in the case that it is attempted murder, the correct place to discern that and dish out punishment is the courts. Rather than summary execution. Course, they are edge cases whether someone acts in pure self defense. That wasn’t what happened on Bloody Sunday.
And actually remarks do matter. Governments have been taken down by them, revolutions incited over them.
Any other indefensible actions you’d care to defend?
Driftwood
I suppose to a paratrooper, a guy with a mask about to throw a nail bomb at you, and a panzergrenadier with a stick grenade, share the common trait of trying to kill you.
If professional soldiers can’t determine the rules of the theatre in which they are serving, then they are either poorly trained, ill disciplined, or both.
Reader,
Like Driftwood, must have admitted that he has no clue about the real truth of British governments involvement in murdering, directly or indirectly, the people whom they are charged with protecting. It’s a pity the said government has not the courage to admit this role – we cannot look to the future without first addressing the past.
The loyalist organisations should now stick two fingers up to them and print all the instances they know of collusion and state murder. After all the British government did to loyalism what the US did to Bin Laden’s lot, abandoned them when they accepted they were in a no win situation.
Now that would be both courageous and intelligent!!
Kensei, the role of the regiment involved is thus:
http://www.army.mod.uk/infantry/regiments/3471.aspx
To a hammer everything looks like a nail.
They were told that they would be faced by armed insurgents. Which is , at least partly ,true.
Then, between rioters and police/army there was a ‘Larne vs Newry’ moment when things got out of hand.
What is it you think paratroopers are trained to do? Give out chocolate?
It was a mistake to send them. no conspiracy.
DiD, yes, whatever.
Pathetic.
Secret Squirrel
I disagree, but let’s look at the reviews:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Living-Past-Jethro-Tull/dp/B00002668Z/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1263858307&sr=1-1
Not quite Zep 4 or Fairport Convention, but surely ranks along with Skynnrd?
Let’s not converse in hyperlinks. You’re attempting to portray the murderous british army as squeaky clean.
You’re failing horribly, in my opinion.
Driftwood,
If it was not pre planned why send in such a well (ill) trained regiment like the paras to sort out a civil problem. As I have already written, an English man, on his way to work on that morning, as he testified at the inquiry, was warned to tell his two sons to stay away as trouble was imminent. It was pre planned murder at the highest level of government.
I hope your mammy’s moans didn’t wake you son, I bet she has a squaddie up every cavity. Don’t you worry now mammy isn’t crying, I bet she is smiling.
Just you go back to sleep, those squaddies will turn off the rigged electric fire on the way out. You might have to make mammy toast in the morning she might be sore.
Don’t start something you cannot finish, leave them tactics to the British government/army!!!
http://www.bloody-sunday-inquiry.org.uk/index2.asp?p=6
Statement made by Len Green to the Saville Inquiry, note the second in command of the British army in the North on the day addressing the officers, in other words giving them their orders, which in turn they gave to the soldiers!!
His statement is HG51, fourth from top.
Note this man is a former serving member of the British crown forces!!!
http://www.bloody-sunday-inquiry.org.uk/index2.asp?p=6
His statement is AG51, fourth from top.
DisgustedinDerry: The officers therefore should be jailed for ordering their soldiers to shoot dead UNARMED, INNOCENT CIVILIANS.
Only if you can show that’s what the officers did. You haven’t come near that.
Kensei: Any other indefensible actions you’d care to defend?
By all means challenge what I have *actually* said. But throughout, I have been specific – I am not your straw man.
As for nail bombers – hypothetical or otherwise – If someone threw a nailbomb at you I don’t think you would accept any restrictions on your right to defend yourself and your fellows in the least risky and most effective manner possible. Soldiers are still citizens, you know. And no-one else on the planet thinks that nailbombers throw their bombs at vehicles when there are Brits on foot to throw the bombs at instead.
DisgustedinDerry: as he testified at the inquiry, was warned to tell his two sons to stay away as trouble was imminent.
Trouble *was* imminent. There was trouble *before* the paras fired the first shots. Anyone who knew that that protest was going to be blocked knew that there would be trouble.
Reader
In your #8 post you write: “If someone was throwing nail bombs at you, wouldn’t you regard it as attempted murder”
So you say you never suggested that nail bombers were present – I’m confused??
You also write: “Only if you can show that’s what the officers did. You haven’t come near that”
Are you suggesting that the terrorist (para) regiment were acting on their own initiative and that they were allowed to shoot freely without being given orders by their officers. Soldiers are trained to do only as the rank above them tell them to do, they do not act on their own without orders.
So what you are now telling us is that the British army makes its decisions from the bottom up, don’t be silly, your arguments don’t have substance. Soldiers murdered unarmed citizens at the request of their officers as can be clearly heard in the recordings, you might have the manners to listen to the programme before voicing your idiotic opinion.
So we see yet again, support for state murder and state terrorism is alive and well. Or at least pathetic attempts to defend it are.
Aqualung rules.
Pathetic indeed, that is the state of unionism in general. English, Scots, Welsh and Irish unionism that is.
RS
Shit happens
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_Massacre
But the people of Manchester do not go on and on and on about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings
Soldiers sometimes overreact.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sport/football/local/newry-v-larne-debacle-shames-local-football-14639066.html
And males fight.
Aqualung had only a decent title song,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_Old_to_Rock_And_Roll,_Too_Young_to_Die
Better
Driftwood
Did those noisy squaddies wake you up again son?
Go to bed you know nothing, as many of us who posted on this tread have shown. Your arguments have been turned on their heads every time.
By the way, wikipedia would not stand up in court as any Tom Dick or Harry can add to it without fact or evidence. Furthermore, if you gave your teacher an essay with a reference from it you would get a big F for FAIL, just as Operation Banner did!!!
This won’t matter much to you though as primary school pupils aren’t expected to compile academic essays.
DisgustedinDerry: So you say you never suggested that nail bombers were present – I’m confused??
You complained about the officers’s answer to a question. I have said there was nothing wrong with his answer. His answer would have been valid on any day in history since the invention of nail bombs. At least Kensei nearly managed to take issue with what I actually said, not what he imagined I said.
DisgustedinDerry: Soldiers are trained to do only as the rank above them tell them to do, they do not act on their own without orders.
Soldiers are also given conditional orders, called ‘Rules of Engagement’. They can act on those rules too – correctly or incorrectly. I don’t think a single soldier who fired any shots claimed to have been acting on a direct order to open fire – they all claimed to be acting under the rules of engagement.
But let’s have your thoughts on the matter – in your view, how many of the hundreds of soldiers on the streets that day were given a direct order to shoot at someone?
Reader
Don’t try win an argument you lost long ago, the issue is whether or not an officer ordered his understudy robot to murder an unarmed civilian, something he clearly did.
British government/army=murder/lies
Don’t apologise as they already have, fool!!!