Perhaps you can explain then how Lyra McKee (who worked for TechMeme) was murdered in plain view on a public street in Derry by the “New IRA” or why police say the murder weapon was used in four other paramilitary attacks. She was not an “insular” person (she had many contacts in Sillicon Valley) and is hardly an isolated case, nor was she “depraved,” or from a depraved estate, or someone who is not cared about. She was perfectly lovely. RIP

I presume you are aware of how she actually died right? She’s a good friend of a good friend of mine so while I won’t claim to have known her personally I do think about how her on a semi regular basis and how unnecessary and pointless her death was.

But she wasn’t just straight up murdered like you claimed. She wasn’t even targeted, it was just a wrong place, wrong time situation.

I don’t say it to excuse what happened but the way you seem to be telling that story is just not what happened.

If you intentionally kill the wrong person, is that not still murder?

Sure, but it drastically weakens the case for "Northern Ireland would devolve into sectarian murders".

If a person has taken the side of a terrorist group, they've decided any victims deserved what they got, so providing evidence that such belief is clearly nonsense is going to be ignored in favor of whatever twisted worldview they've taken up.

Where do you get the idea I am on the side of a terrorist group? I mentioned loyalist terrorists because although I don't consider myself as belonging to either side, my grandmother was staunchly British and therefore I know more about the loyalist terrorists. I don't know what the republican terrorists are up to because I've never lived near one of their areas.

I believe violence is only ever justified defensively and even then only as a last resort. The sooner that generation of parasitic drug barons either kill each other or die naturally the better for everyone.

Not to support terrorism in any way, but I'm not convinced they have to have decided that the victims deserve it. There's plenty of other justifications, such as it being a necessary but unfortunate evil on the way to a greater good.

> The Alliance party, the non-aligned neo-liberal party here, had a massive jump in votes in the recent election.

I think this is more a splintering of the unionist community as the DUP has taken a hardline and self-harming pro-Brexit, anti-protocol, no compromise approach. For the US readers, the DUP's social views would make many of the US republicans look liberal. Their last leader was ousted for merely abstaining on, rather than opposing, a ban on gay conversion therapy. Now the DUP is holding the entire NI political system to ransom unless they get their way.

There are many unionists who are done with that shit but are still pro-UK, and this is the group that flocked to alliance in large numbers last election.