This last week El País published letters written by Spanish refugees from Gen. Franco’s Spain to the Mexican government asking for asylum. In Spanish the pain the writers were experiencing was overwhelming. The following is from El País english which succinctly gives their story and excerpts from those letters. Four your consideration:

http://elpais.com/elpais/2012/11/23/inenglish/1353688568_121578.html

You make it sound like the terrorists (and you shouldn’t exclude Loyalists from that description) switched en masse to straight crime. The ex-IRA (and ex-Loyalists) who switched to crime are a small minority. If you have more recent evidence that organized crime is a bigger problem in NI than the rest of UK or Europe, I’d like to see it.

In the meantime, NI crime statistics and murder rates are in line with the rest of UK.

http://aje.me/10EKYPs

From Al Jazeera:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/11/201211238226924973.html

with collective silence, if you can, assassins!

Apparently you haven’t kept up on recent events. The IRA didn’t just go away, it embraced what it had always done so well; robbing and pillaging to finance its paramilitary operations. When the paramilitary part was significantly neutralized, it focused on the robbing part and became a mafia. Damaged.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/17/world/europe/17iht-irish.html?_r=0

The IRA has a long history of using criminal activity as a funding source. But investigators and analysts say this robbery illustrates how one of the most sophisticated, disciplined, and heavily financed paramilitary organizations in the world has, in the decade since declaring a cease-fire in its fight against British rule in Ulster, transformed into an organized crime syndicate.

If it is committed to its stated intention to end military operations, then why is it still planning and pulling off robberies, especially of such magnitude? Crime specialists say the question underscores the need for the PSNI to alter its approach to the IRA and other paramilitary organizations involved in the 30-year sectarian conflict. In this view, the police need to confront the IRA less as a terrorist organization and more as a Mafia family.

One of us hasn’t kept up with recent events. What on Earth does that mean? That there are still a handful of loonies supporting violence?

This has been my observation. The Nazis did evil to the Jews, and now the Jews do evil to the Palestinians in particular, and the Arabs in general. Those who are the recipients of evil are henceforth damaged, just as those who inflicted the evil are in some way damaged, and so, damage spreads like a disease. The same holds true for the IRA. Evil was done to the Irish by Britain, and as a result, the Irish were damaged. The IRA is a manifestation of that damage, and to this day, it continues to spread the damage, thus ensuring that evil continues on in perpetuity.

You have stated the case as to why Israel will attack Iran. Don’t think the increasingly desperate measures by Israel don’t indicate that its leaders know what you have just stated but with one catch. They believe they can overcome it, and in order to accomplish the predicament, they must up the ante and go for broke, or fold with their tail between their legs, utterly demoralized before the world. Considering that, it will be the former, and unless we forget, they have over a hundred nukes. It will be nasty, and the unfortunate thing is, as rightful critics ratchet up the focus and scrutiny, the likelihood of Israel going for broke correlates positively., meaning the more pressure applied, the more likely it will be that Israel does something absurdly drastic.