croydonclasswar: June 2011

The prison does NOT prevent anti-social acts from taking place. It increases their numbers. It does not improve those who enter its walls. However it is reformed it will always remain a place of restraint, an artificial environment, like a monastery, which will make the prisoner less and less fit for life in the community.

It does NOT achieve its end. It DEGRADES society. It must disappear. It is a survival of barbarism mixed with Jesuitical philanthropy.

In prisons as in monasteries, everything is done to kill a person's will.

He generally has no choice between one of two acts. The rare occasions on which he can exercise his will are very brief. His whole life is regulated and ordered in advance. He has only to swim with the current, to obey under pain of severe punishment.

(the 6 restraining positions)

Under these conditions all the will power that he may have had on entering disappears.

And where will he find the strength with which to resist the temptations which will arise before him, as if by magic, when he is free-of the prison walls? Where will he find the strength to resist the first impulse to a passionate outbreak, if during several years everything was done to kill this inner strength, to make him a docile tool in the hands of those who control him?

This fact is, according to my mind, the most terrible condemnation of the whole penal system based on the deprivation of individual liberty.

Anti-social acts need NOT be feared in a society of equals.....

.....in the midst of a FREE people, all of whom have acquired a healthy education and the habit of mutually aiding one another. The greater number of these acts will no longer have any raison d’être. The others will be nipped in the bud.

As for those individuals with evil tendencies whom existing society will pass on to us after the revolution, it will be our task to prevent their exercising these tendencies. This is already accomplished quite efficiently by the solidarity of all the members of the community against such aggressors. If we do not succeed in all cases, the only practical corrective still will be fraternal treatment and MORAL SUPPORT.

This is not Utopia. It is already done by isolated individuals and it will become the general practice. And such means will be far more powerful to protect society from anti-social acts than the existing system of punishment which is an ever fertile source of new crimes.

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The first duty of the revolution will be to ABOLISH prisons — those monuments of human hypocrisy and COWARDICE !!!

(Artwork produced by a young offender in Feltham)

So, Channel 4 is one of the only TV stations prepared to confront the genocidal madness that gripped Sri Lanka during their much-hyped 'war on terror' in 2008.

This 'WAR', of course, was nothing of the sort.

This 'WAR' was in reality a brutal and systematic 'cleansing' of the northern Tamil population of this embittered, abused and consistantly IGNORED island.

Wholesale murder and bloodshed on a scale we can't even conceive of in the West.

We all knew this was going on of course.

Didnt we?

Us... in the West?

We knew what was going on?

Blair's government knew. David Milliband knew. The UN knew. The World media knew.

And yet it was suppressed. Not only did the powers that be look away, they effectively put their fingers to their lips and said 'ssshhh'.

The BBC ran triumphant headlines hailing the end of the Sri Lankan government's war against the terrorist Tamil Tigers. A glorious victory ! The BBC ran the stock footage that Rajapaksa's fascist government released in the immediate aftermath showing the triumphant flag-waving army symbolically celebrating on the northern beaches of Kilinochi.
But this was a lie.

And the BBC knew this.

They knew that genocide and ethnic cleansing was taking place just behind those beaches. They knew that internment camps were being set up... and that makeshift hospitals were being indescriminately bombed.

The BBC and 'OUR' Government sat by and let this atrocity happen. David Milliband (by doing nothing) allowed this to happen. The blood is on his hands...along with many others in the west.

Channel 4's documentary The Killing Fields Of Sri Lanka broadcast on Tuesday 14th provides unequivocal proof of the atrocity. A clinical assessment of footage showing the massacre of prisoners by government forces.

Some 40,000 civilians were killed. The camps are still holding prisoners. The check-points are still operating. The fascist oppression continues. Tamils and independant journalists alike have disappeared off the face of the Earth.

The images that were broadcast show Nazi's reeking havoc on this island. We saw them in Kosovo, we saw them in Darfur and we saw them in Germany. Nazi's are relatively easy to spot, whether they are baiting bulls in Pamplona or raping girls in the Congo, one thing always gives them away...they turn and smile to the cameras. Their bloodlust always betrays them. And its not something inherent in man...its not some biological or genetic coding that compels man to such horrific acts of brutality.... it is something methodically and intentionally INSTILLED in man BY THE RULING ELITE. Men like Rajapaksa.

Rajapaksa is a Nazi and a war criminal. This is an unarguable fact.

So where is the debate following Channel 4's revelations?

More to the point where is the Left wing voice in the hours after this documentary?

Where is the pledge from the Communist and socialist parties?

Answer: NOWHERE

Its an old sorry story.....

Was there any support for the UK-based Tamil occupation of Parliament Square in 2008 as the bombs were dropping?

NO....THERE WASNT.

I myself spotted one Workers Power newspaper seller. No SWP. No CPGB. Infact I was often the only white face in the whole crowd. One weekend the Sri Lankan conflict clashed with a mass Palestine demo in Trafalgar Square.....and did any socialist groups organize and come to Parliament Square to show solidarity in numbers?

NO....THEY DIDNT !

Did anyone from the left wing organizations join in the London demonstrations outside The Dorchester Hotel last year when that fascist President Rajapaksa dined with Liam Fox. Or outside the Embassy...or at the airport?

NO....THEY DIDNT !

Had it been a Palestine rally there would have been a sea of SWP and other left wing banners. See if you can spot any......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImdyVdGlp30

NO.... NOT ONE

As always the poor Tamil community is left ISOLATED and completely ON THEIR OWN !

Why is this?

Why does it appear that the heralded 'International Community' is persistantly BLIND and DEAF to the desperate struggle of one the poorest and most oppressed communities on the planet?

IT DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE

We can expect the mainstream media to suppress this info (thats their job) ...but what about the left wingers?

Lets have a quick look at the home pages of their websites and see if we can find a recent article on Sri Lanka ?

Workers Power?

Nothing.

Lets have a look at the SWP...anything???

Nope.

CPGB?

MUTE

We contacted a prominent and vocal member of Workers Power and enquired whether anyone in Trot Towers might be stirred up enough by recent revelations to start some debate. ''Dont worry we'll talk to the comrades'' was the reply.

The League for the Fifth International's homepage offers a link to the Sri Lanka topic that hasn't been updated since November 2010!!?

'but what about the anarchists?' I hear you ask.

Well, our favourite blogger Phil Dickens (truth reason and liberty) is also GUILTY OF SILENCE.

Last time I looked at Ian Bone's website he was busy praising Sally Bercow for her sterling efforts during Slutwalk!!?

Numerous peace groups on Facebook focus almost exclusively on Palestine. Some we contacted have not once (even with polite encouragement) shown any willingness to even seek and share info about Sri Lanka.

Croydon Class War is fed up of hearing people reply 'oh i never knew anything about Sri Lanka'.

BULLSHIT !

There are unsettling and nasty reasons why the media draws a veil over Sri Lanka, and why white people in the imperialist and bloated patriarchal west fail to even register their suffering....there are equally unsettling reasons why a link is rarely made between the Tamil cause and other more high profile causes. And most of them centre around rascism and class bigotry...yes even in the Palestine movement. But lets not lower the mood.

Surely only a deeply cynical person would suggest that the likes of Workers Power and the SWP are selective in their battles? It would be wrong to suggest that these parties shamelessly court the students and throw most of their weight behind the relatively luxurious and trendy Palestinian cause? It would be madness to suggest these things?
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Faced with video footage of a bunch of government funded Nazi soldiers on a poor island in the Indian ocean raping women, shooting entire families through the head, dumping their dead bodies like rotting chattel into the back of lorries and then turning round to laugh at the cameras...if we are unwilling or unable to stop them with all the power and influence we hold in the international community....we will NEVER be able to stop the smiling Nazis in American-backed Israel !!