Epilogue, Interrupted

In Today's Episode... "Mane-of-Night And The Hunter's Game" concludes, but the story is far from over. The Grey Man pays someone else a surprise visit... and in Paris, thirty-nine years ago, another story begins...

Release Notes... Okay, I hear you... but only thirty minutes late. Aw, c'mon...

Development News... That's three Chapters done for TDD-606 The Ragged Edge - shouldn't take too long to "put this one to bed". At least, that's the plan.

The Past Disinterred AGAIN...

Might as well do this now, given the 230 meg Ultima Online patch currently underway. Over an hour, and not even halfway...

The big news today - guess we're needing something to fill in the gaps between soccer matches - is the publication of the twelve-year, multi-million pound enquiry into the "Bloody Sunday Massacre". I'm just not going to comment on it - unless some "Never Satisfied IRA" nutjob uses it as an excuse to blow up a bunch of inncoent people in this country.

Anyone crying for blood, and a 60-year old Para in the dock, should remember all the terrorist murderers let off and released by New Liebour so Bliar could have his "shining moment of triumph" by bringing "peace" to Northern Ireland - a peace so pure and perfect that the shootings and punishment beatings on the streets of Belfast are All In Your Imagination Nothing To See Here Move Along...

Ah, bugger it.

Was it right to shoot clearly injured and incapacitated civilians a second time when they were down? Clearly not. War crimes tribunal, anyone...?

Was it right for participants in a supposedly peaceful civil rights march to throw stones at the armed forces? Obviously not. A conscious attempt to provoke trouble? Be careful what you wish for...

Were any of those shot dead or injured a threat to life and limb? Now there's the crux of the matter - how can we ever know? Just as we can't categorically put any given lethal bullet into any given weapon, and that weapon into the hands of any given soldier, we can't say for certain that Protestor A, B, C or whatever did or didn't have a nail-bomb, or was or wasn't under orders from one terrorist organisation or another to stir up trouble...

Why didn't the army show more restraint? Soldiers aren't bloody emotionless cyborgs, no matter what anyone says. Did the soldiers at Rorke's Drift hold fire, just because the enemy only had spears? Don't forget that the "troubles" in Northern Ireland had already been going on for three years, the soldiers being treated like invaders and filth on British streets, and being expected to maintain the good old "stiff upper lip" no matter what. The soldiers were only human; things boiled over, and the results were hardly difficult to predict...

Had this never happened, would the Ireland situation have been different? Maybe. Without this incident, the terrorists wouldn't have had such a strong recruiting tool - and maybe, there wouldn't have been a bomb set off at Harrods one of the first times I went to London...

The past is the past. Learn from it, don't keep trying to relive it, and definitely don't waste any energy trying to change it...