Bush prejudiced against Irish.

[Partha]

Still, it's stinky. This McCartney thing was, essentially, a bar brawl gone wrong. We get thirty of those in the Twin Cities every year. It's being politically exploited. And since the UDP is just as bad, if not worse, to snub one and not the other smacks of selective labeling of terrorists for the purposes of pandering to the British government.

Perhaps you didn't hear the news: No one is testifying against the IRA members who did it - it's a Kitty Genovese redux.

[SicTimMitchell]

To get things straight, UDP is to the UDA as Sinn Fein is to the IRA. Both are legal political groups, not terrorists in and of themselves -- but they both to some extent support their paramilitary ideological allies.

And Partha, I agree with your last point. I remember when the IRA became infamous for its "kneecappings" of heroin users and petty thieves, having devolved into ordinary street thugs. The McCartney thing is just about the nadir. Your Crips analogy is dead on.

But it's the same with the UDA/UFF. Part of the reason the IRA was kneecapping heroin users was because the UDA was moving drugs. They're the Bloods.

[Relbeek Einre]

Yeah, that's the part that makes it stinky: witness intimidation.

[Tholiak Eladamri]

"looks for me somewhere"