You fellas have to understand something. As far as some Americans are concerned, (though not all, I realise that), the IRA are freedom fighters, bravely battling the evil British to remove them from their beloved homeland. As far as I, and most other British people are concerned, the IRA and their political wing, Sinn Fein, are simply a group of people who have lost the political argument in the North of Ireland concerning the partitioning of it from the South and were willing to bomb and kill anyone, (including civilians, including women and children, even including sometimes their own supporters in the crossfire), to achieve it. Wikipedia says of the IRA... 'The Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) is a paramilitary group which aimed through the use of violence to achieve three goals, (i) British withdrawal from Northern Ireland, (ii) the political unification of Ireland through the forced overthrow and then the merger of the Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland states, and (iii) and the creation of a "All Ireland socialist republic". ' Of the Provisional IRA's political wing, Sinn Fein, it says... 'Unlike other Irish nationalist parties it has until the 1990s campaigned using what was called the Armalite and the ballot box strategy of political agitation and the use or threat of violence, a term first used to describe Sinn Féin's strategy by Danny Morrison, one of the party's leading activists in the 1980s. It has strong links with the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and is sometimes referred to as its political wing.' Of Hezbollah it says... 'Hezbollah (Arabic حزب الله, meaning Party of God) is a militant Shia political party in Lebanon. Hezbollah began as a guerrilla group fighting against the Israeli occupation in southern Lebanon. It maintains an active militia, known as the Islamic Resistance. Since the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, the Islamic Resistance has skirmished with the Israel Defense Forces around Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms (which Hezbollah considers Lebanese territory, a claimed found baseless by the UN). In addition to its military wing, Hezbollah maintains a civilian arm, which runs hospitals, schools, orphanages, a television station and holds 12 seats in the Lebanese Parliament. Hezbollah is primarily active in the Bekaa Valley, the southern suburbs of Beirut, and southern Lebanon. The group is headed by Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.' Both have military AND political wings - 'the armalite and the ballot box'. How different are they.
What???? Look, it's quite simple. Livingstone is part of the British political system. This bloke Stone is part of the American religious system which, by the looks of things, seems to amount to pretty much the same thing. Sinn Fein is the political wing of the IRA who are a terrorist organisation and Hezbollah are, as I've shown above' pretty similar. Frankly, religion in the UK is a bit of a joke to most people so analogies concerning it don't really work but, trust me, the analogy is quite good. Oh, BTW, you fellas might be interested in this little article from The Observer. Pay particular attention to the person welcoming Al-Qaradawi to London. You may remember him... http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1258539,00.html