Boom!

An Australian is visiting Northern Ireland and he’s heard from some mates back home that he has to be careful which religion he claims to be while he is there. He walks into a bar one night and is not quite sure if it’s a Catholic or Protestant place so he plays it quietly and sits at the end of the bar minding his own business.

After a few pints he needs to take a piss so he slinks off to the toilet, making sure not to make eye contact with any of the regulars. As he is doing his business he hears someone behind him and then suddenly a sharp knife is pressing against his ribs.

“Are you Protestant or Catholic” says the unknown man.

“Neither,” says the quick thinking Aussie, “I’m Jewish”

“Wow,” says the unknown man, “If I’m not the luckiest Arab in Belfast”


You ever been in a situation where everyone is telling jokes about a certain topic and you have one ready then just as the conversation lulls some fucker changes the subject and you don’t get the chance to tell it? I had that the other day, but I have a fucking blog so I’m going to tell it anyways. Take that front bar of the Velizy Holiday Inn. Samboy has the last word.

The joke topic was Northern Ireland but the preceding serious topic was IRA terrorism. Being an Australian almost completely ignorant of ‘the troubles’ there I pretty much sat back in listened. To do an injustice to the intelligent people I was speaking with I will bastardly sum up the discussion with the paraphrase “We had our 9/11 back in 1980.”

Now I was speaking to a bunch of Poms here, and they were specifically speaking about London living under the threat of terrorist bombings by the IRA. I must say that the atrocities on both sides were amply covered, but for the purposes of this discussion I’m only talking about the bombings in London. As I said I know next to nothing about the specifics of the situation but it was interesting to contrast the lack of hysteria they showed when they then talked about the actual September 11 attacks. I’m sure more knowledgeable people can correct me but London was under the constant threat of terrorist bombings for much of the 1980s.

I then happened upon a BBC World Service documentary series that was examining The Troubles and the massive contrast between the situation of thirty years ago and the situation now. They were interviewing folks on both sides of the arena and comparing their attitudes back then to what they are saying now.

The message stressed the most by the representatives on both sides who were interviewed was that dialog was the key to the whole Northern Ireland solution. Without dialog, without bringing the two sides together to talk there would still be a massive renegade army in Northern Ireland.

As you can probably guess I’m about to draw parallels with today’s terrorism situation. But why the hell wouldn’t you? Every bunch of bastards out there fighting a war is doing it for some cause they believe in, but I’m sure ninety percent of them would rather be working for the Post Office and going home to their families with all their limbs. A negotiated cease fire is a better for everyone.

This much is obvious, but the problem lies with blanket statements like “We will not negotiate with terrorists” and “you’re with us or against us” being spewed by the world’s seemingly number-one terrorist negotiator, the USA.

Israel negotiates with Hamas, the Sir Lankan government negotiates with the Tamils, the British negotiated with the IRA and the US better fucking negotiate with the loose collection that is called the ‘Iraqi Insurgency’.

The silly thing is that it is almost certain that this negotiation is going on between the US forces and the Iraqi Humvee bombers, but it cannot be talked about publicly because the US does not negotiate with terrorists. The sooner this backroom peacemaking can be brought to the headlines the better in my opinion.

The phrase “One man’s Terrorist is another man’s Freedom Fighter” is not new but I think it should be in the back of everyone’s minds when we think about the wars currently being fought around the globe. I’ll throw out a request to my Histbusting friend Tom to highlight the various historical terrorist groups that we hold in good favour.

What I’m trying to say in too many words is that the discussion of the resolution in Northern Ireland where a terrorist army, fighting against a government, laid down their guns and found an amicable solution has given me hope that finding peace in Iraq is possible. Rather than the thousand ‘lessons learn’ examples out there we have a ‘best practice’ example, and I think the yanks should run with it.