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You can't get an 'is' from an 'ought': Bert Ward, Dec.1998
A small pond in our back garden inhabited by frogs and newts froze over in this icy weather. The gardening book gave advice. When a pond freezes over the gas from rotting vegetation has to escape. Do not break the ice as the noise could be fatal for the creatures living there. Instead, stand a pan of boiling water on the ice to melt a hole through it. Following the instructions, I carefully placed a pan containing boiling water on the ice and waited. The water in the pan turned cold. Fond pond owners should know this. Our acts do not always have the consequences that we had reason to anticipate.
From the Daily Telegraph 5 December. "Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein President, has lost an attempt to pay tax in the Republic rather than Northern Ireland on earnings from his autobiography. 'Before the Dawn' is thought to have earned more than £100,000 in royalties. Dublin Revenue Commissioners rejected his claim for exemption under a 1969 clause that encouraged writers to live in the Republic. They ruled that his book was political, rather than artistic." There's justice for you. There are of course different kinds of justice. Distributive justice, is one; absence of arbitrary power another. Provo justice is another. For an example of that look at what the Provos did to Mrs McConville. 'Before the Dawn'. What an evocative title.
Anybody who thinks that appealing to the IRA/Sinn Fein's sense of fairness, or that reminding them of the concessions that have been made to them, will lead them to handing in their weaponry, has lost the plot. That was laid out in the "Armalite and ballot paper" keynote speech by Danny Morrison, and later in TUAS (tactical use of armed struggle). The scene now on stage is the one where Sinn Fein complain to the world that despite all the concessions made by Sinn Fein in the "Peace Process", unionists are playing their usual game of obstruction. A sub-heading in a leader in An Phoblacht 3 December 1998 reads: "The message is that Irish republicans and nationalists have to concede ground, compromise and endure endless stalling on even the smallest step forward". The heading of the article: "Now let's move to the Executive".
The world as conveyed in IRA/Sinn Fein propaganda is one in which they have given concession after concession, in return for which they received nothing? True they have declared an "unequivocal" cease-fire, which is what the British Government demanded of them. But what does "unequivocal" mean? Well, one thing for sure, it does not mean 'permanent'. The British Government can make the 'working assumption' (remember that one?) that it does, but the Provos can play ring o' ring o' roses with the English language till the cows come home. An observable fact is that they have not ended their violence against individuals, or ended their intimidation
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