Iraqis have something to look forward to in 30 years time!

Bloody Sunday Report Released

So 38 years later and 37 too late with tens of millions spent and several lawyers made multi-millionaires from the process the British Government has establish that elite soldiers firing into an unarmed crowd is ya know, kinda bad. This is a disgusting farce for a number of reasons. At the heart of it is same thing at the heart of the link Amber posted yesterday: Here the assertion from those in power, from those who benefited in some way from a past evil that it was wholly in the past and also, and most importantly, a mistake and not a commonly practiced act that they happened to get caught doing.

This decades late report allows David Cameron (just as it would've allowed Gordon Brown if Labour had won the last election) to assert he is giving closure to the families of the bereaved, to draw a line under it and move on. It also allows him not to push for any examination or reform of military practices or the nature of British military and political actions in Northern Ireland or elsewhere. 38 years is long enough ago to assert things have changed without having to change anything at all. One can pretend it was a mistake, just as various crimes Britain will be revealed to have committed in Afghanistan and Iraq will be labelled and keep on doing that evil that benefits you.

Another depressing occurrence is that already the right wing press is starting to spin the report as an evil thing. That it will inflame tensions between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. It may well do that but perhaps one should blame the actions of the Paratroopers 38 years ago for that? Or the inaction, lies and apathy on the part of Britain and its' colonial rump state of Northern Ireland. That the Catholics of NI might take some revenge on the protestant majority whose intolerance was the catalyst for the troubles all those years could almost be seen as justice but an eye for an eye sadly makes us all blind. Hopefully the signs of a growing popular resistance to a return to the bad old days will hold through this event but even if it doesn't one cannot buy the rightist's line. A report on a bad thing may upset people but that doesn't mean one should stop investigating and reporting, it means that we should stop doing bad things. The the right wing are trying to claim even this far too late report is too much is just sickening.

The murder of innocent civilians is the bread and butter of empire. This report is too late and being spun negatively but it is at least useful for showing the true nature of the west.