I personally relate the IRA in many respects to Hizb’allah and Hamas: a bunch of thugs who use coercive intimidation and commit crime because they can’t do policy in a democratic society. Here’s an article on the debate between Labour and the Tories. And while Blair is obviously on the winning side, I believe he is on the wrong side when it comes to dealing with the IRA.

Luckily, Sinn Fein is recently getting the cold shoulder from Washington.

ÄWorld NewsÅ: WASHINGTON, March 14 : The U.S. government told Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams to avoid fundraising during his U.S. visit this week, a senior State Department official said Monday.

“We made clear that it was a good thing if they decide to do that (not raise funds) at this juncture,” said the official, who was speaking on condition of anonymity.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters the decision not to raise funds during Adams’ visit was made by Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army.Adams has traditionally used his annual visit during the week of St.Patrick’s Day to generate millions of dollars in donations.

A further blow was the announcement by Sen.Edward Kennedy, D-Mass, he will not meet with Adams during the trip, Britain’s Independent newspaper reported.

The ostracism is linked to the accusation from the head of the Northern Ireland Police Service the IRA was responsible for a $50 million bank robbery and the stabbing death of Robert McCartney in a Belfast bar.

While I disagree with Ted Kennedy on just about everything, he at least makes a good statement in the name of the Boston Irish community that they aren’t going to collaborate with a bunch of criminals.

President Bush will also be hearing the story of murder Robert McCartney, straight from his sisters.

The five sisters and fiancee of Robert McCartney, a Belfast Catholic killed by a gang believed to include Irish Republican Army (IRA) members, plan to give Bush a dossier on the murder.

The six women arrived in the United States on Tuesday and are due to go to the White House for St. Patrick’s Day on Thursday.

McCartney was killed outside a bar on January 30 and his death has sparked widespread criticism and calls from both sides of the Atlantic for the IRA to disband.

Before they left Ireland, the sisters shrugged off a warning by Sinn Fein deputy leader Martin McGuinness to stay out of party politics in Northern Ireland.

The sisters’ campaign to bring their brother’s killers to justice has focused attention on the outlawed IRA’s continued grip on hard-line Catholic parts of Belfast, where informing police about their activities can mean a death sentence.

In Sinn Fein’s first publicly critical comments of the family, McGuinness told The Associated Press: “The McCartneys need to be very careful. To step over that line, which is a very important line, into the world of party-political politics can do a huge disservice to their campaign.”

He said if they continued to make direct challenges to Sinn Fein, which is the largest Catholic-backed party in Northern Ireland, they would “dismay and disillusion an awful lot of people, tens of thousands of people who support them in their just demands.”

On Tuesday, the McCartney sisters shrugged off the suggestion their campaign was being manipulated for political ends.

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams will not be invited to the St. Patrick’s Day functions at the White House, replaced instead by the sisters and fiance. Good.

GOO IDEA: Nosemonkey over at Europhobia says the U.S. needs to practice what it preaches, and label Sinn Fein as a terrorist organization as it has called Europe to do with Hizb’allah.

But isn’t it a tad rich considering that it’s taken until now for the US to start giving Sinn Fein the cold shoulder? Considering that one of it’s most prominent leaders is a convicted terrorist who still appears to be making threats to the bereaved family of an IRA victim, might it not be about bloody time the US added the IRA to their list of terrorist organisations and finally cut off US funding to Sinn Fein?

You know what, I think he’s absolutely right. Good critique.