Saorsa
15th September 2008, 23:27
http://eirigi.org/latest/latest150908_1.html
The Old Lie 15/09/08
An organisation that represents parole officers in Britain has revealed that at least 8,500 former British army personnel are now imprisoned in their own government’s jails.
A report by Napo found that former British soldiers represent a staggering 10 per cent of the British prison population. Other experts in the penal industry estimate that these figures may be conservative, considering that, in England’s Dartmoor Prison, 17 per cent of prisoners are from a military background.
http://eirigi.org/images/dead_afghan.jpg
Most of those imprisoned played a part in the recent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The crimes against humanity that these soldiers perpetrated in the service of their government drove many to drink, drugs and, eventually, violent crime on their return to civilian life.
At a time when violent forms of crime are a major issue in British society, the British army is creating or fostering large numbers of violent criminals and subsequently unleashing them on an unsuspecting public.
Napo representative Harry Fletcher outlined the facts of the findings:
“'It is of real concern that thousands of (British) soldiers are in prison and many more are on parole or community service orders... In virtually every incidence, the former soldier served in either the Gulf or Afghanistan, became involved in excess alcohol or drug-taking, and was subsequently convicted of an offence of violence.”
Despite the soldiers being the blunt end of British war policy, and not having the moral courage to refrain from such career paths, the blame for this state of affairs ultimately lies with the British government.
It was the British government who seduced, recruited, trained, directed and subsequently abandoned the cannon fodder who have served their warmongering.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons why recruitment into Britain’s armed forces is at chronically low levels and why those that do join are held in such low regard by their compatriots.
Earlier this month, a soldier home on leave from Afghanistan, Corporal Tomas Stringer, was refused admittance to a hotel in the Surrey area of England because the hotel chain in question did not accept custom from British military personnel. In other parts of England, soldiers are unable to wear their uniforms in public for fear of abuse, while universities are disaffiliating themselves from military regiments and openly challenging recruitment attempts on campuses.
http://eirigi.org/images/Lee_Clegg.jpgFor recruits, any illusions they had about army life are soon shattered. The brutal training regimes begin and are characterised by bullying, harassment and degradation, ending, in some cases, with recruits taking their own lives.
Once the boot camp hurdle is overcome, one’s personality must be irreversibly changed. If not, then the brutality of playing a part in an army that kills, maims, and destroys everything and everyone that gets in its way would be enough to send any human being over the edge.
Finally, once you’ve served your part, beaten detainees, shot a child and blown a family out of existence in the name of queen and country, all in the space of less than two years, you return home a completely and utterly changed person. As soon as they are off the plane, the majority are thrown back on the scrap heap from whence they came and, by now mentally fractured, turn to drug and alcohol abuse to drown out the screams of their victims.
This is not the image portrayed by the British army recruitment posters erected all over Britain and the occupied Six Counties at present. It is not the image which will be portrayed in the shambolic ‘homecoming’ parade which will go through Irish streets in November, but it is the harsh, brutal, inhumane reality of what has always been the British war machine. No one is exempt from being ground into meat in the process of executing the orders of the British ruling class.
So, whilst the unionist hypocrites in Stormont and Belfast City Council become giddy at the sight of “their boys in uniform”, would it be too much to ask them to reflect on the reality of the British uniform today and throughout history both for “their boys’ and girls” who wear it, and those men, women and children they annihilate?
Wilfred Owen, a British combatant in World War One turned anti-war poet, saw the reality of imperialist wars, as he witnessed thousands upon thousands of young men carved up on European battlefields to protect the interests of the British aristocracy. He summed up the absurdity sold to young men and women and called it “the old lie”:
“Dulce Et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori – It is a sweet and noble thing to die for one’s country”.
Owen, himself, was killed a week before the war ended.
To die for one’s country may be noble in defence of one’s freedom, but to kill, die or end up in prison for rich men’s wars is ignoble in the extreme. In the case of Britain it wasn’t noble then, it isn’t now and no amount of pomp and posture can clean the blood from the uniform of conquest, nor forgive the tragedy of those who now languish in ‘Her Majesty’s’ prisons, or, more importantly, the destruction they were used to wreak.
The Old Lie 15/09/08
An organisation that represents parole officers in Britain has revealed that at least 8,500 former British army personnel are now imprisoned in their own government’s jails.
A report by Napo found that former British soldiers represent a staggering 10 per cent of the British prison population. Other experts in the penal industry estimate that these figures may be conservative, considering that, in England’s Dartmoor Prison, 17 per cent of prisoners are from a military background.
http://eirigi.org/images/dead_afghan.jpg
Most of those imprisoned played a part in the recent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The crimes against humanity that these soldiers perpetrated in the service of their government drove many to drink, drugs and, eventually, violent crime on their return to civilian life.
At a time when violent forms of crime are a major issue in British society, the British army is creating or fostering large numbers of violent criminals and subsequently unleashing them on an unsuspecting public.
Napo representative Harry Fletcher outlined the facts of the findings:
“'It is of real concern that thousands of (British) soldiers are in prison and many more are on parole or community service orders... In virtually every incidence, the former soldier served in either the Gulf or Afghanistan, became involved in excess alcohol or drug-taking, and was subsequently convicted of an offence of violence.”
Despite the soldiers being the blunt end of British war policy, and not having the moral courage to refrain from such career paths, the blame for this state of affairs ultimately lies with the British government.
It was the British government who seduced, recruited, trained, directed and subsequently abandoned the cannon fodder who have served their warmongering.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons why recruitment into Britain’s armed forces is at chronically low levels and why those that do join are held in such low regard by their compatriots.
Earlier this month, a soldier home on leave from Afghanistan, Corporal Tomas Stringer, was refused admittance to a hotel in the Surrey area of England because the hotel chain in question did not accept custom from British military personnel. In other parts of England, soldiers are unable to wear their uniforms in public for fear of abuse, while universities are disaffiliating themselves from military regiments and openly challenging recruitment attempts on campuses.
http://eirigi.org/images/Lee_Clegg.jpgFor recruits, any illusions they had about army life are soon shattered. The brutal training regimes begin and are characterised by bullying, harassment and degradation, ending, in some cases, with recruits taking their own lives.
Once the boot camp hurdle is overcome, one’s personality must be irreversibly changed. If not, then the brutality of playing a part in an army that kills, maims, and destroys everything and everyone that gets in its way would be enough to send any human being over the edge.
Finally, once you’ve served your part, beaten detainees, shot a child and blown a family out of existence in the name of queen and country, all in the space of less than two years, you return home a completely and utterly changed person. As soon as they are off the plane, the majority are thrown back on the scrap heap from whence they came and, by now mentally fractured, turn to drug and alcohol abuse to drown out the screams of their victims.
This is not the image portrayed by the British army recruitment posters erected all over Britain and the occupied Six Counties at present. It is not the image which will be portrayed in the shambolic ‘homecoming’ parade which will go through Irish streets in November, but it is the harsh, brutal, inhumane reality of what has always been the British war machine. No one is exempt from being ground into meat in the process of executing the orders of the British ruling class.
So, whilst the unionist hypocrites in Stormont and Belfast City Council become giddy at the sight of “their boys in uniform”, would it be too much to ask them to reflect on the reality of the British uniform today and throughout history both for “their boys’ and girls” who wear it, and those men, women and children they annihilate?
Wilfred Owen, a British combatant in World War One turned anti-war poet, saw the reality of imperialist wars, as he witnessed thousands upon thousands of young men carved up on European battlefields to protect the interests of the British aristocracy. He summed up the absurdity sold to young men and women and called it “the old lie”:
“Dulce Et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori – It is a sweet and noble thing to die for one’s country”.
Owen, himself, was killed a week before the war ended.
To die for one’s country may be noble in defence of one’s freedom, but to kill, die or end up in prison for rich men’s wars is ignoble in the extreme. In the case of Britain it wasn’t noble then, it isn’t now and no amount of pomp and posture can clean the blood from the uniform of conquest, nor forgive the tragedy of those who now languish in ‘Her Majesty’s’ prisons, or, more importantly, the destruction they were used to wreak.