They came to be at the peace table because there was a complimentary buffet laid on and a free bar
They came to be at the peace table because there was a complimentary buffet laid on and a free bar
"If there is a sin against life, it consists not so much in despairing as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this one."
Albert Camus "Noces"
I thought that another factor was that post 9/11 Americans found out that terrorism isn't fun, and stopped helping those nice Irish people who came to collect money, as perhaps providing funds to bomb an ally wasn't a good idea.
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An enemy that wishes to die for their country is the best sort to face - you both have the same aim in mind.
Science flies you to the moon, religion flies you into buildings.
"If you can't trust the local kleptocrat whom you installed by force and prop up with billions of annual dollars, who can you trust?" Lemur
If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.
The best argument against democracy is a five minute talk with the average voter. Winston Churchill
The change in attitudes certainly helped undermine reactionary elements of the Army Council and strengthened the hands of those trying to finalise the decommissioning of arms, but the substantive progress had already happened. The Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998, remember.
President Clinton's involvement had already holed US tolerance for the romantics well below the waterline.
"If there is a sin against life, it consists not so much in despairing as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this one."
Albert Camus "Noces"
I think that the nature of British nationalism in general changed. This change effected it's attitudes toward the Catholic Irish and Irish terrorists realized that they wouldn't get sympathy by attacking a benign Britain.
I credit Blair with the change, not Clinton. Blair and his new Britain are the source of the reasonable treatment of Irish Catholics. We had more problems over the last 10 years from Orangement who didn't like the way that London humanized the Irish. This put London and the Irish Catholics in the same boat and the loyalists (who still had power) on the outskirts of talks.
Last edited by ICantSpellDawg; 08-12-2008 at 15:19.
"That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there."
-Eric "George Orwell" Blair
"If the policy of the government, upon vital questions affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court...the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned the government into the hands of that eminent tribunal."
(Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, 1861).
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Actually it was John Major that opened the way. Blair just followed in his footsteps.
There are times I wish they’d just ban everything- baccy and beer, burgers and bangers, and all the rest- once and for all. Instead, they creep forward one apparently tiny step at a time. It’s like being executed with a bacon slicer.
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.”
To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticise.
"The purpose of a university education for Left / Liberals is to attain all the politically correct attitudes towards minorties, and the financial means to live as far away from them as possible."
Ok - so it was a number of people.
"That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there."
-Eric "George Orwell" Blair
"If the policy of the government, upon vital questions affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court...the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned the government into the hands of that eminent tribunal."
(Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, 1861).
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ
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