IRA BloggingCasting about for a new topic now that the humongous Jeff Gannon experience appears to have run its course, given my family history, I thought I'd put up some posts on the Irish Republican Army, news of which seems to be heating up lately.
Here's an article on the IRA as
a criminal gang engaging in bank robbery.
The IRA is no longer made up of volunteers dedicated to the "armed struggle" for a united Ireland but by criminals with their own specialties.
Alan McQuillan, head of the ARA, said the republicans' criminal talents were much more sophisticated than those of loyalist gangs.
"The loyalists are generally very much at the hard end -- drugs, extortion, local armed robberies, prostitution," he said. "Republicans have moved much more towards excise and revenue-type activities and a few big robberies." Here's a story on three sisters
who defied the IRA when their brother was murdered in a pub brawl.
And check out this
courageous (and tart) comment by the Irish Deputy Prime Minister Mary Harney, when asked to acknowledge that Sinn Fein (the political wing of the IRA) rejected criminal activity:
Harney replied: "I am certainly not going to engage in convenient fiction."
She said many members of Sinn Fein did not believe it was a crime to murder an Irish policeman or a mother;
"Yours is the only party in this house that can take away the guns, because nobody else has guns. It's in your hands. It's your decision."
