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From: reid@dciem.UUCP (David Brake c/o Reid Ellis)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.legal,net.nlang.celts
Subject: Re: Peace Initiatives in Ireland: A Reply to Adrian Kent
Message-ID: <1733@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 23-Nov-85 02:49:18 EST
Article-I.D.: dciem.1733
Posted: Sat Nov 23 02:49:18 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 23-Nov-85 05:33:18 EST
References: <620@sftig.UUCP> <599@osiris.UUCP>
Reply-To: reid@dciem.UUCP (David Brake c/o Reid Ellis)
Distribution: net
Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada
Lines: 30


I was just reading through net.politics, looking for cheap laughs (at Don
Black's expense) when I suddenly came across something that shocked me even
more. It astonishes me that the supporters of Sinn Fein (sp?), and, by
extension (don't fool yourselves) the I.R.A. would dredge up the gross
details of atrocities committed by the English in Ireland just to whip 
themselves into a frenzy of hatred. The comparisons of the Maze Prisons
to Auschwitz are so totally ridiculous and hateful that they hardly
bear discussion.
I'm afraid that terrorism can breed in ordinarily decent people occaisionally
brutality. This does not mean that the British are "butchers". The past
treatment of the Irish may have been harsh, but the cycle of violence MUST
end.
What offended me most was an incident in a peace march here. I was standing
around, minding my own business, when a woman came up to me with a leaflet.
I read it, and it was talking about donations to help prevent brutalities
in prisons. I assumed that these were in a banana republic somewhere- imagine
my shock when these were purported to be prisons in Ireland, and the money
was to be given to an Irish group with a rather suspicious title. It horrified
me that some of these marchers for peace would give money to these people, and
that I felt sure that at least some of this money would be used to build
bombs to kill women and children.
Sorry, but clutching your hatred close to you is not a solution. The sooner
one side or the other stops, the better, and since the British are essentially
reacting to the violence they find all around them, it had better be the I.R.A.
-- 
--
Reid Ellis	"Roads?  Where we're going, who needs _roads_?"
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