pry.net=dead?

[Takitothemacs]

[quote="Banana"]sounds nasty to grow up in a place like that
guess i just cant understand why people would attack their own people - innocent bystanders - to make a point really

oh and that you was a general you ]
fortunately I only saw it when with uncles/aunts and grandparents which was frequently but was lucky enough to live in the south of Ireland (Waterford and Limerick) so when I say I gew up with it... that is true... i didnt have to grow up in it... that is fortunate!

[Sharkith]

I still disagree Takits the first ceasefire by the IRA happened long before any troops were removed for political reasons indigenous to the Northern Ireland problem. The IRA also maintained a very long ceasefire before any troops were even off the streets. Saying that they didn't is down playing just how important they were in the process.

If it wasn't for the Sinn Fein leadership I doubt very much things would have changed. Lets face it the Unionists could not even conceive of a society that was any different without weeing themselves.

[Xest]

I'm not entirely sure that that is the case. The Internet is the biggest rumour-mill in the world. Anyone can create a web page about anything. It hardly costs anything to do. There are no checks on such material, making it more likely that people can upload a whole load of lies without blinking an eyelid. If the amount of untruthful information exceeds that which is true, then there is a danger that the untruthful stuff might be believed as being THE truth, because there is more of it.

I'm not convinced either way, but I tend to err on the side of pessimism with things like this.

In other words you have no idea how large portions of the internet works? or how to carry out proper research involving comparison of multiple resources?

How do we find things on the internet? Nearly always by a search engine like Google, these search engines don't rank results randomly, they rank search results based on factors such as the popularity of the page and the amount of links from other sites. If a site is full of lies it wont be linked to as much and likewise wont be visited as much unless it has some other quality. A lot of the more popular discussion sites on the net are full of very intelligent people (i.e. Slashdot, Digg) and so forth so whilst they have their fair share of idiots sources of unreliable information are easily uncovered. There are more factors than visits and links taken into account by the likes of Google, listing on the Open Directory project (http://dmoz.org/) increases the ranking of pages and pages in this directory are vetted somewhat before being added.

Onto my second point, if you are concerned about the validity of information then find an alternative source, perhaps with a different political agenda or whatever if that's relevant to ensure you're getting a point of view from sources with different interests.

You're right someone could just make a page talking crap, but getting a page full of crap widely distributed is an extremely difficult task meaning the internet isn't as full of crap as you seem to think. Getting legitimate material up is much easier and hence tends to dwarf the amount of crap found from searching. Once more, combine this with multiple sources and it's actually quite hard to receive an incorrect picture about many subjects.

[Cromcruaich]

I still disagree Takits the first ceasefire by the IRA happened long before any troops were removed for political reasons indigenous to the Northern Ireland problem. The IRA also maintained a very long ceasefire before any troops were even off the streets. Saying that they didn't is down playing just how important they were in the process.

If it wasn't for the Sinn Fein leadership I doubt very much things would have changed. Lets face it the Unionists could not even conceive of a society that was any different without weeing themselves.

Didnt army policy change, from the shoot to kill and counter terrorist terrorist supporting stance of that Conservervative government, particularly under Thatcher, to a more sympathetic (not the right word, but hope you know what im getting at) policing at the time of Labours first term?

If the occupiers are kicking the shit out of you on a daily basis, alongside supporting paramilitary groups, it doesnt do a lot to promote even the possibility of a peace process.

Anyway thats from memory, not looked it up, and will be people who were there who can give an exact first hand account.

[Takitothemacs]

Didnt army policy change, from the shoot to kill and counter terrorist terrorist supporting stance of that Conservervative government, particularly under Thatcher, to a more sympathetic (not the right word, but hope you know what im getting at) policing at the time of Labours first term?

If the occupiers are kicking the shit out of you on a daily basis, alongside supporting paramilitary groups, it doesnt do a lot to promote even the possibility of a peace process.

Anyway thats from memory, not looked it up, and will be people who were there who can give an exact first hand account.

Bloody Sunday certainly went a way to changing british policy iirc... it didnt change immediately.. but that was also what made the people of the land just a little bit more than peeved.

Possibly I am out shark... but at the end of the day there has been give and take on both sides... which is why the situation has gotten a lot better

[Cromcruaich]

I'm not entirely sure that that is the case. The Internet is the biggest rumour-mill in the world. Anyone can create a web page about anything. It hardly costs anything to do. There are no checks on such material, making it more likely that people can upload a whole load of lies without blinking an eyelid. If the amount of untruthful information exceeds that which is true, then there is a danger that the untruthful stuff might be believed as being THE truth, because there is more of it.

I'm not convinced either way, but I tend to err on the side of pessimism with things like this.

Reports of Iraqi dead over the duration of the war are between 250k and 1million. Depending on where the sources sympathies lie. I hope this is illustrates to you why people can come to the same conclusions no matter what source they take their news from.

[Takitothemacs]

timeline of the disarmamment of northern Ireland:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/north ... eline.html

this gives a fairly accurate timeline of what actually happened... well accruate from my recollection anyway

edit: and another more long term account:

http://www.historyonthenet.com/Chronolo ... reland.htm

[Sharkith]

Didnt army policy change, from the shoot to kill and counter terrorist terrorist supporting stance of that Conservervative government, particularly under Thatcher, to a more sympathetic (not the right word, but hope you know what im getting at) policing at the time of Labours first term?

If the occupiers are kicking the shit out of you on a daily basis, alongside supporting paramilitary groups, it doesnt do a lot to promote even the possibility of a peace process.

'Shoot to kill' is a controversial term and part of Republican propaganda. There have been several inquiries into this and nothing concrete has been determined. One side says one thing and another side says another. I am also aware of stories circulating on both sides about certain situations where people did get shot by the security services that show that both Nationalist and Unionist accept this probably did happen. Whether it was reality I am not sure. It certainly was not policy.

The other thing Crom is that your missing that the Anglo Irish Agreement was signed by Thatcher - which essentially handed a lot of young people from my generation to Loyalist terrorists. The evidence is now certain that the British Government were in touch with the IRA long before the Labour government got into power. Labour certainly made it more likely because the hamstring of a Conservative government in Ireland has always been a softness to the Unionists. It turns out that the hamstring of Labour was not to take radical Unionists seriously. This is sad because there is currently no middle ground - Trimble for example has backed away from public life and he was after all essential to the agreement.

The original point the Irish context was brought up was in relation to the Iraq war and there the situation is very different. In fact I can see no way out of it other than a civil war. The removal of the occupying force is merely going to allow the various ethnic groups a chance to get at each other. Already blood has started to flow and once that starts it is hard to stop.

It is so sad to see that someone (Blair) would promote peace in one country (Ireland) and at the same time create a new conflict in another. It makes you wonder if he actually ever knew what he was doing in either situation?

[Cromcruaich]

'Shoot to kill' is a controversial term and part of Republican propaganda. There have been several inquiries into this and nothing concrete has been determined. One side says one thing and another side says another. I am also aware of stories circulating on both sides about certain situations where people did get shot by the security services that show that both Nationalist and Unionist accept this probably did happen. Whether it was reality I am not sure. It certainly was not policy.

The other thing Crom is that your missing that the Anglo Irish Agreement was signed by Thatcher - which essentially handed a lot of young people from my generation to Loyalist terrorists. The evidence is now certain that the British Government were in touch with the IRA long before the Labour government got into power. Labour certainly made it more likely because the hamstring of a Conservative government in Ireland has always been a softness to the Unionists. It turns out that the hamstring of Labour was not to take radical Unionists seriously. This is sad because there is currently no middle ground - Trimble for example has backed away from public life and he was after all essential to the agreement.

The original point the Irish context was brought up was in relation to the Iraq war and there the situation is very different. In fact I can see no way out of it other than a civil war. The removal of the occupying force is merely going to allow the various ethnic groups a chance to get at each other. Already blood has started to flow and once that starts it is hard to stop.

It is so sad to see that someone (Blair) would promote peace in one country (Ireland) and at the same time create a new conflict in another. It makes you wonder if he actually ever knew what he was doing in either situation?

Thanks for that Shark.

On the iraq thing, was personally happy to see the discussion change course as it just depresses me.

[Cromcruaich]

timeline of the disarmamment of northern Ireland:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/north ... eline.html

this gives a fairly accurate timeline of what actually happened... well accruate from my recollection anyway

edit: and another more long term account:

http://www.historyonthenet.com/Chronolo ... reland.htm

Thanks for that as well. It makes me feel old though. Did the peace process start so long ago.