Flags As Shrink Wraps
This article is pending translation.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of theSprout.
I once heard an author describe a flag as a shrink wrap. A flag acts as a shrink wrap on the brain, and then when you die, the shrink wrap automatically doubles up as a funeral shroud for your coffin. It was by an author named Arundhati Roy, an author famed for her political essays and Booker Prize-winning novel The God Of Small Things.
The flag is used to drum up an identity that really doesn't exist any more. The English Defence League march against 'the islamification' of Europe and use their flag to justify their views. When the paedophilia cases emerged from Rochdale, it was a 'Muslim' problem of "south Asians" that was found in 'their' religion. Funnily enough, when there was a paedophilia case (a similar size, if I do remember) in Kidwelly, nobody called it a "white" problem. It wasn't a "Christian" problem, it was something different.
The military use the same flag to drum up support for their causes, too. The government can't lie about the way they targeted the students. The military definitely recruited on my school campus. Any government that uses and trains people under the age of eighteen is seen in the eyes of the UN as using child soldiers. That aside, any military parade we see, the same flag will still be waved. To drum up an identity and to get people to support the troops. Now, I have no issue supporting troops; but I have an issue with the idea that all soldiers are heroes. They're people doing their job, but by putting the military on a pedestal we therefore see the work they do as highly important for us. To protect us from terrorism, but what is terrorism? Violent acts.
The information that the government decided to invade Iraq on was false information and this was known in the government. I think that a bunch of bombs that were made by EDO or BAE systems being dropped by a government like the UK on another country in a pre-emptive strike is definitely an act of terrorism. That's Iraq, then. Over a million died in Iraq, but when we hear that people were killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, it's always troops. They never mention the civilians they killed.
The Taliban is run on drug money because a large proportion of the world's heroin is grown in Afghanistan. This leads to not enough wheat being grown and poverty then arises. If the UK legalised heroin, in a hypothetical situation, it would cut the Taliban off at the knees. But we don't want to talk about that. We went into Afghanistan to get the Taliban and people in Al Qaeda, but it turns out most of them weren't there. Sorry civilians we murdered with our tax money, we got it wrong. Sorry. We apologise.
But the same forces at work in Afghanistan are the same forces that are at work in the UK. We'll fight over crumbs and pick on immigrants and poor people on benefits to fight over crumbs, but it's a lot harder to fight the one that makes guns. It's poor kids that go into the military, not the sons and daughters of the politicians.
The Olympics? Fifty thousand armed personnel on the streets of East London, the home of the Olympics. Parts of East London are some of the poorest in London. Many parts of East London rioted last year. The reasons are hazy, but the general consensus is that if you sell a reality that a people can't survive, enforce a brutally racist and violent police force (re: Smiley Culture, and more recently, Ian Tomlinson) in an area that engineers crime to support a prison industrial complex, it's not going to work out well.
The cuts have had more time to kick their heels into the communities; so of course making East London look like a military occupation is a provocation. Enough money to pay for an Olympics but not enough money to feed the four million children that we have living in poverty. The Olympics cost money that we can't afford, but that's alright, we'll just pick on benefit cheats when companies like Vodafone get away not paying their six billion pounds tax bill. But it's OK. We'll wave a flag and act like everything's dandy. The Metropolitan Police didn't get away with killing innocent people yesterday. Our colleges and schools aren't getting cut. It's not our fees that are being hiked. It's not our government that's a joke. After all, we're British. We regularly violently enforce remnants of the Empire that brutally murdered people of colour, enslaved them and it's their blood that's on our money. None of that matters, we have a Queen, and an Olympics, street parties for all! Jubilolympics!
I'm not going to fall for it, but it's OK, I'll get back in line, and I'll follow my orders and replace my shrink wrap.
Info Sport & Leisure International Competitions Olympics
Info World, Europe, UK & Wales Visitors to Wales and Immigrants
Related Article: Reverse Riots
IMAGE: id-iom
1 Comment – Post a comment
769
Commented 46 months ago - 1st August 2012 - 10:36am
this article has made me want to listen to Anti Flag's tune - 'Die for your Government'....