From: Brian Manning Delaney (b-delaney@uchicago.edu)
Date: Thu May 04 2000 - 13:49:51 MDT
GBurch1@aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 4/26/00 9:34:07 AM Central Daylight Time,
> charlie@antipope.org writes:
>> There seems to be a cultural assumption
>> ingrained in a lot of Americans that in any
>> conflict, there must be a bunch of goodies and a
>> bunch of baddies, and all that is necessary is
>> to identify the good guys and side with them.
>> This is one struggle where the bad guys are
>> distributed evenly on all sides -- if you want
>> to root for someone, root for the peace process
>> and the politicians sitting around the
>> negotiating table and _talking_ to each other
>> about how to get _all_ the guns and bombs off
>> the street.
> Poking my nose in quickly . . . but I think
> Charlie's dead right. I've spent a lot of time
> in the UK (but none in Ireland) and am a pretty
> energetic proponent of the "anglosphere" concept
> as proposed by Jim Bennett of Foresight in his
> upcoming book "The Network Commonwealth". I see
> Ireland and England as both part of a common
> cultural sphere with more in common with each
> other than they have with most other cultures.
[....]
Hi Greg. I think you're absolutely right about the cultural
similarities between England and Ireland (and also between the
UK as a whole, and Ireland).
But the relevance of this to any contemporary political,
economic, or cultural questions is difficult to assess. This is
because the similarity was brought about by an extermination of
most of Irish culture. Republicans want to bring much of that
culture back. Singing the praises of its absence might not be a
sound political strategy (not that that was your intention).
Still, as things stand now, there's no question that Ireland and
the UK have much to gain by working together on as many fronts
as possible. Let's hope they do so.
<> A few random points re the Northern Ireland thread.
Someone wrote:
> A lot of people seem to be under the
> misapprehension that the IRA are freedom
> fighters struggling against the evil oppression
> of the British (English) Empire. They are not.
There are several IRA groups. Each is different, each has
changed greatly over the last several decades. They've been
noble, they've been ignoble.
> They (and the UVF) are just drug runners and
> pimps with an extremely brutal streak that use
> the politics/religion as an excuse to play
> gangsters.
Not "just." Plenty of them, though, yes. Armies that aren't
sponsored officially by a government almost always end up
resorting to sleaze to fund themselves. "The end justifies the
means," they no doubt tell themselves.
"Michael S. Lorrey" <mike@datamann.com>
> Drug running is a typical fund raising schema
> for marxists [....]
Actually, for ALL non-state-sponsored armies. I'm with you on
the anti-Marxism, but let's not be ideological: the facts alone
suffice, here.
Brian.
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