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Doug, As long as the Protestant Orangemen are permitted to have their annual parade right thru predominently Catholic neighborhoods, celebrating the fact that the Protestant Scots were brought in and permitted to take over the Irish Catholic country, then the resentment and anger will continue as it has for 500 years. It will take goodwill on both sides to resolve this problem and so far the huge Orangemens group haven't been willing to give up dishing out a yearly dose of humiliation to the Irish. It is silly and destructive on the part of the Protestants to continue this practice in the name of "tradition". Traditionally these parades weren't parades at all but progroms against the Irish and now they are a reminder of past acts of violence for their beliefs. Just simply move the parade to another part of town. This alone would be a place to start the healing. I deplore the torture and murder, but the reasons for it aren't all one sided as is being made out. He was seen by his fellow Irishmen as a trailtor with good cause.

Brenda, I agree with you completely about the nasty character of the Orange parades through Catholic neighborhoods commemorating past victories. I've written before it would be like having Northern civil war re-enactors march through Atlanta on the anniversary of the day Sherman burned the city.

Nevertheless, that can't excuse murder and terrorism. I don't know what kind of spying Denis Donaldson did for the Brits. If he was keeping them apprised of Sinn Fein's political strategies, shame on him. If he aimed to warn them of IRA terrorist plans, then he was serving a good cause.

In either event, it's time for the killing to stop and for the Irish people to settle their differences peacefully through a fair political process with everyone agreeing to live with the outcome.

Things that happened in the past can't be change. Much of the troubles stemmed from the English settlement of Scots Presbyterians in Ulster, displacing native Catholics and creating a favored class of Irish. Certainly it was an injustice, but it occurred for the most part in the 1600s. You can no more fix that history than we could give America back to the Indians.