PNP you may not like the IRA but they only fit a definition of terrorists as defined by, in this case Britain. It was the English who invaded Ireland in the 15th century and very violently occupied the country the IRA fought for Irish independence and won nearly all of Ireland back but as Britain often does it hung on to a piece of it's ill gotten gains by keeping N.I. The modern trouble started because the UK denied the largely catholic population a right to vote. Britain is not ineterested in listening to reasoned argument it had hung in Ireland and still hangs on for 600 years and only responded to violence. The IRA should be refereed to as The Irish Republicans because the real terrorists in this case is the UK. It is the The Scottish National Party not the Nationalist party. The term Nationalist is used in a derogatory manner and equates them to the BNP and Nazis. Once again it is the UK state that behaves in a nationalist manner with it's attitude to Europe and in it's 300 year occupation of Scotland. Don't start PNP
The IRA were terrorists, just as the various loyalist groups were, too. It's really not a controversial label or something that the BBC should take any flak for saying. I don't disagree with their political position, in many cases, but that's what they were. The SNP are explicitly nationalist. That doesn't mean that they have anything else in common with the BNP or Nazis. A party can be conservative and still have relatively little in common with the Conservatives, who are also conservative. You can be Liberal and strongly disagree with the Lib Dems on various issues. Objecting to other comparisons doesn't make that single word wrong.
You're spot on about Ireland. The UK's treatment of the Irish has been shameful. Stealing their land, standing idly by when they were starving and they still taunt them today with William III's victory over Catholic James II 327 years ago!! If any other country rebelled against a tyrannical occupying force, they wouldn't be seen as "terrorists". But Britain conveniently forgets its tyrannical past. Prince William and Kate were "moved" this week by visiting the site of a Nazi concentration camp in Poland. They should visit the ones the British had in South Africa during the Boer War and be moved by this experience too. They also caused many deaths through starvation, disease and ill treatment. What? The British had concentration camps just like the Nazis? Never knew that. Not so newsworthy is it? EDIT: I should add that I don't support the IRA in any way at all, but the point is about how things are reported/portrayed. Righteous British government v evil nasty terrorists is a skewed perspective and ignores the historical context.
It appears that Japan's First Lady has taken a leaf from the Pochettino handbook... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/shortcuts/2017/jul/21/japan-trump-akie-abie-english
Your argument depends on words and their meanings being set in stone ..... they are not. Consider a word like Communist and how that is perceived in the USA or Socialist or even a word like Thatcherism all these words are political and their meaning depends on who is hearing/reading them. Nationalism is such a word. National is not political in the same way and this is the chosen name of the SNP those who call them The Scottish Nationalist Party are doing so deliberately for political reasons.
The way that America views the word socialist doesn't make that perception correct, though. I don't think that anybody would equate the SNP with the BNP, either. They're still nationalist parties. The BBC didn't refer to them as the Scottish Nationalist Party, as far as I know, so I'm not sure why that's relevant.
The British Government's actions don't make terrorist attacks against it's people any less terrorist, though. Going after political or military targets is one thing. Blowing up a pub is something else entirely. If they'd have just stuck to trying to blow up Thatcher, then they'd have probably been quite popular!
Those are back-to-back tweets from Trump today. Gerald Ford was, rather ironically, the man who took over from Nixon and subsequently pardoned him. You'd have thought that even that dumbass would've noticed that.
Your whole argument is based on it, the fact that you can't see it shows how deeply ingrained the propaganda is.
It's not based on it in the least. It's a dictionary definition. You're attacking the BBC for calling a group exactly what they are. By what you've said, there simply aren't any terrorists. Al-Qaeda and ISIS could claim that they were omitted, using similar arguments about Western government oppression. Nobody here is making an argument in favour of the actions of the British government or royalty, seeing as the history goes back that far. Intentionally attacking civilian targets to provoke fear and intimidation for political means is still terrorism, though. The IRA did that, so they're terrorists. It's that simple.
In that case PNP why do we not call the British Army terrorists when they attack civilian targets in fact when they occupy a whole country by force. The point is allowing the BBC and anybody else to define who are terrorists and who are not is political in the extreme which is the whole point of having words like terrorists or taking control of words like communism and socialism and turning them into caricatures. In the end in order to solve the problem of fighting in Ireland the British Government had to accept that the IRA were the other side in the argument, stop calling them names and address the issues that both sides had. It's always the case in conflict first dehumanise the other side by calling them something like terrorists and then you can kill them.
The IRA are and were terrorists. This "historical perspective" can only work so far. We were violently invaded by the Normans who killed our king. The Catholics and Protestants spent a lot of time executing each other in this country. If Catholics start murdering Protestants in the mainland because Henry VIII changed the state religion and Catholics were persecuted are those Catholics terrorists? All historical facts and the only reason the British history in Ireland works for an argument is that it has been more recent. So where do you draw the line? If you don't draw the line then everyone and nobody is terrorists. And as PNP said, just about any modern group can draw "legitimacy" from being oppressed by someone or other. But if their response matches the definition of terrorism then they are terrorists. And that doesn't make previous British policy right, and that doesn't make current connections between the Tories and the Unionists right... but it also doesn't make it right to remove the label of terrorists.
That is why you have the phrase : One mans' terrorist is another mans' freedom fighter. That aside, terrorist activity in the modern age is all about small groups of individuals inflicting atrocities on a civilian target.
I agree, but the point was about issues are portrayed in the media and how an organisation like the BBC report events in a way which preserves the status quo. At the heart of that is British righteousness, especially when our role in political and military events is concerned. Most people's perception of events is formed by how the media report these events. Britain good; terrorists bad. We should never forget events like the evil Nazi concentration camps - and news reporting ensures those horrors are revisited regularly so we don't forget. But 50 years earlier, Britain had very similar death camps in South Africa in the Boer War. Those events are forgotten. Britain isn't portrayed in the same way. People should understand why Britain was a target for IRA terrorism. History is important to understanding the present day. Similarly, people should understand why Britain remains a target for hatred and terrorism from many parts of the world because of its actions in almost every part of the globe in the past . Britain has been as cruel and brutal as any regime or organisation the media chooses to condemn now. It doesn't make terrorism any more acceptable or justifiable, but it may help people to understand why there is still a great deal of antagonism towards Britain and why our outlook should be more conciliatory. In the present day, siding with US foreign policy doesn't help either.
British soldiers indiscrimately opened fire on Northern Irish civilians in 1972, killing fourteen. This isn't the acts of long dead monarchs, this is as historically close to us as Orgreave or Hillsborough. If you see the world from the point of view of the people on the other side of those guns, you can understand why the IRA held so much popularity for so long. Terrorist==Freedom Fighter as the old saying goes. That being said, its a much better world now that the IRA have disarmed and British soldiers are off the streets of Derry, but paramilitiary vilonce isn't over. It's being quietly flairing recently, only today the RTE (have seen nothing on BBC yet) reported a man up north being kneecapped in a paramilitary style attack, and this isn't even the first such incident this year. I'm seriously concerned we might be on the cusp of another descent into madness.