From: glhurst@onr.com (Gerald L. Hurst)
Newsgroups: alt.nuke.the.USA,alt.nuke.europe,soc.culture.british,
	soc.culture.irish,alt.society.resistance,alt.org.food-not-bombs,
	alt.engr.explosives,uk.mi
Subject: Re: IRA Heros (was Re: America & Ireland- None of your bussness)
Date: 21 Feb 1996 02:54:17 GMT

In article <824841392snz@altairiv.demon.co.uk>, Andrew/ <andrew@altairiv.demon.co.uk> says:

>You "IRA = scum" people are all hypocrites, if it had been an SAS man that
>had died fighting starving Arabs you'd have been happy to pay taxes towards
>his state funeral.
>
>As far as I'm concerned anyone who is prepared to die fighting rather than
>be oppressed by a regime alien to him deserves the title of hero. If he dies
>fighting me, or my country then I have to ask myself "Why does he risk it?"
>The answer to this can be summed up in two words "Conservative Politics". My
>heart goes out to the family of this brave Libertarian. May his death not be
>in vain. 

Your hero died because he was too stupid to know how to handle
explosives. This means that he was also too stupid to remotely
understand the "cause" for which he died. 

Most Americans do not think that IRA members are scum, but most
of us do consider ALL terrorist bombers as lower than vermin.
Planting a bomb is not the act of a fighter but the act of a 
malicious coward - regardless of his political motives. Your
bomber's death was not in vain - he made the world a little
worse on his way out.

And you, Andrew, are a fellow traveler. Terrorists the world over
rely on the moral support of the thousands of lock-step sieg-heilers
who believe their particular brand of chauvinism justifies their
thuggery against "them."

From the typical American standpoint you'd need an illustrated
guidebook to tell the difference between an Irish Catholic
and an Irish Protestant. Gulliver wasn't far amiss whith his
Lilliputian war over how to break an egg.

Sooner or later many of us expect that Northern Ireland will
gravitate back to the Irish and Britain can breath a sigh of
relief and thank God and the IRA for the removing the
gawdawful responsibility of keeping the those indistinguishable
factions from each others throats.

What will the bombers do for en encore then? The thugs will 
still be thugs and they will still be looking for "justified"
targets. I said "bombers," not "IRA members."

Jerry

From: dingbat@codesmth.demon.co.uk (Andy Dingley)
Newsgroups: rec.pyrotechnics
Subject: Re: wanted! - explosives detectors
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 1996 13:17:58 GMT

trimm@netcom.com (Gary M. Watson) wrote:

>Just the other day, some IRA weenie blew himself up on a 
>London bus.  

I think "weenie" might be an appropriate term. Latest reports are that
he blow himself up at 10:30pm, having just set his bomb for 10:30 the
next morning. Any guesses as to his mistake ?

>Don't you figure that the IRA has access to
>some of the better bombmakers in the terror biz?  

Certainly, but they're not using their experienced people at present.
Surveillance is heavy at the moment, so a mission is more likely to
succeed if a less experienced (and previously unknown) volunteer does
the emplacement, even if this increases the risk of operator error.

> Then why did their guy go kaplooie?

Urban legends persist in Belfast that during the height of the '70s
bombing campaigns, at least one of the smaller terrorist groups wired
their bomb so that it _would_ kill the person arming it. The rationale
was that, being a small splinter group, they needed their own martyr
more than Belfast needed just yet another bomb.