Gulp

I admit it. Bono from U2 has in the past got right up my nose. So reading this today came as a bit of a surprise. I always felt so hacked off at the whole 'Troubles' business to feel anything other than a deep rooted hatred for the terrorists who spent so much of their time wiping people out - that the idea of any 'noble cause' was utterly lost on me as a kid.

I freely admit that I didnt know he had said this, no matter how 'infamous' it apparently is. I ignored much of anything spoken about the lot. I once ventured to mention the word Irish and IRA to an American Irish woman standing outside the catholic church i attended as a kid. She brushed me off quite hastily with 'dont you start talking to me about the IRA, I support them'. I was 14 and remained baffled about that comment ever since - we were discussing abortion at the time. 'Hate abortion' but support indiscriminate killing of civilians ...was what i took away from that encounter.

I have in the past year met some Irish Americans via various blogs who dont think that way about the IRA at all, of course. So there you go. The whole blogging business is a learning experience.

This is Bono's infamous, anti-IRA ‘fuck the revolution’ speech, coming as it did a day after the Enniskillen atrocity:

“Let me tell you somethin'. I've had enough of Irish Americans who haven't been back to their country in twenty or thirty years come up to me and talk about the resistance, the revolution back home…and the glory of the revolution…and the glory of dying for the revolution. Fuck the revolution! They don't talk about the glory of killing for the revolution. What's the glory in taking a man from his bed and gunning him down in front of his wife and his children? Where's the glory in that? Where's the glory in bombing a Remembrance Day parade of old age pensioners, their medals taken out and polished up for the day. Where's the glory in that? To leave them dying or crippled for life or dead under the rubble of the revolution, that the majority of the people in my country don't want. Sing no more!"

c/o Harrys Place who comment 'A pretty brave thing for an Irish icon to say at any time; even more so in the middle of US stadium concert in the late-80s. So brave, in fact, it earned him a temporary spot on the IRA's hitlist (allegedly). (That's a paramilitary organisation's hitlist, not the musical variety.)'

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Meanwhile, in Afghanistan this week a teacher was yanked from his bed, from his wife his family, disembowlled, attached to motor bikes and torn limb from limb- for teaching girls.

F*ck the islamic revolution.