A Flag!

 

       A poem can often say in a few verses what a book takes several chapters to say. So with all the recent fawning at the feet of that symbol of British brutal imperialism, I thought the following lyrics from a song by The Wolfe Tones. The lyrics of The Butcher's Apron originate from a poem written by Henry Dupre LaBouchere.

 

The Butcher's Apron

Where is the flag of England? Go North, South, East or West. Wherever there's wealth to

plunder or land to be possessed. Wherever there's feeble races to frighten, coerce or scare.

You'll find the butcher's apron, the English flag is there!

It waits upon blazing hovels where African victims died, to be shot the explosive bullets or

wretchedly starve and die, and where the pirate hammers the isles of southern seas, at the

peak of the hellish vessel the English flag is free!

The Maori often cursed it with his bitterness dying breath, and the Arab hath hissed his hatred

as he spat at its folds in death, and the helpless Hindu feared it, and the Kenyan did the

same, and the Irish blood hath stained it, with a deep indelible stain.

Where is the flag of England? Go North, South, East or West. Wherever there's wealth to

plunder or land to be possessed. Wherever there's feeble races to frighten, coerce or scare.

You'll find the butcher's apron, the English flag is there!

It is floated on scenes of pillage, it is flaunted on deeds of shame. It has waved o'er fell

marauders, as they ravished with sword and flame, it has looked upon on ruthless slaughter,

and massacred dire and grim, and has heard the shrieks of victims drowning the jingo hymn.

Where is the flag of England? Seek lands where the natives rot. Where decay, and assured

extinction must soon be a people's lot. Go search for once glad islands where death and

disease are rife, and the greed of colossal commerce now fattens on human life.

Where is the flag of England? Go North, South, East or West. Wherever there's wealth to

plunder or land to be possessed. Wherever there's feeble races to frighten, coerce or scare.

You'll find the butcher's apron, the English flag is there!

Where is the flag of England? Go sail where rich boats come. With shoddy and loaded

cottons, and beer and Bibles and guns. Go where brute forces triumphed, and hypocrisy

makes its lair. In your question you'll find the answer, it was and still is there!

Where is the flag of England? Go North, South, East or West. Wherever there's wealth to

plunder or land to be possessed. Wherever there's feeble races to frighten, coerce or scare.

You'll find the butcher's apron, the English flag is there

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info     

History.

        

Just a reminder that when the British arrived in 1700s, India had 27% of global GDP. But after 200 years of theft and millions starved to death, by 1947 India had 3% of global GDP, 90% living below the poverty line, a literacy rate of 17% and life expectancy of 27. Ashok Kumar.

          Over the last week or more we have had a wall to wall master class in propaganda drumming up support for the symbol of brutal imperialism.  The media failed to give a dissenting voice a space. I thought, there must be dissenting voices against this cavalcade of pomp privilege and power, against this adoration of the symbol of imperial brutality. So with that in mind I publish in full this article from  

                                                Image couresy of Slavery Images.

Information Clearing House,

            As millions of Britons and admirers the world over mourned Queen Elizabeth II’s death Thursday, others — especially in nations formerly colonized by the British Empire — voiced reminders of the “horrendous cruelties” perpetrated against them during the monarch’s reign.
          “We do not mourn the death of Elizabeth, because to us her death is a reminder of a very tragic period in this country and Africa’s history,” declared Julius Malema, head of the left-wing Economic Freedom Fighters party in South Africa.
          “Elizabeth ascended to the throne in 1952, reigning for 70 years as a head of an institution built up, sustained, and living off a brutal legacy of dehumanization of millions of people across the world,” he continued.
          “During her 70-year reign as queen, she never once acknowledged the atrocities that her family inflicted on native people that Britain invaded across the world,” Malema noted. “She willingly benefited from the wealth that was attained from the exploitation and murder of millions of people across the world.”“The British royal family stands on the shoulders of millions of slaves who were shipped away from the continent to serve the interests of racist white capital accumulation, at the center of which lies the British royal family,” Malema added.
         Larry Madowo, a CNN International correspondent from Kenya, said during a Thursday broadcast that “the fairytale is that Queen Elizabeth went up the treetops here in Kenya a princess and came down a queen because it’s when she was here in Kenya that she learned that her dad had died and she was to be the queen.”
        “But that also was the start of the eight years after that, that the … British colonial government cracked down brutally on the Mau Mau rebellion against the colonial administration,” he continued. “They herded more than a million people into concentration camps, where they were tortured and dehumanized.”
        In addition to rampant torture — including the systemic castration of suspected rebels and sympathizers, often with pliers — British forces and their local allies massacred unarmed civilians, disappeared their children, sadistically raped women and clubbed prisoners to death.
        “And so,” added Madowo, “across the African continent, there have been people who are saying, ‘I will not mourn for Queen Elizabeth, because my ancestors suffered great atrocities under her people that she never fully acknowledged that.”
         Indeed, instead of apologizing for its crimes and compensating its victims, the British government launched Operation Legacy, a massive effort to erase evidence of colonial crimes during the period of rapid decolonization in the 1950s-’70s.
        “If the queen had apologized for slavery, colonialism, and neocolonialism and urged the Crown to offer reparations for the millions of lives taken in her/their names, then perhaps I would do the human thing and feel bad,” tweeted Cornell University professor Mukoma wa Ngugi. “As a Kenyan, I feel nothing. This theater is absurd.”
         Aldani Marki, an activist with the Organization of Solidarity with the Yemeni Struggle, asserted that “Queen Elizabeth is a colonizer and has blood on her hands.”
        “In 1963 the Yemeni people rebelled against British colonialism. In turn the Queen ordered her troops to violently suppress any and all dissent as fiercely as possible,” he tweeted. “The main punitive measure of Queen Elizabeth’s Aden colony was forced deportations of native Yemenis into Yemen’s desert heartland.”
         “This is Queen Elizabeth’s legacy,” Marki continued. “A legacy of colonial violence and plunder. A legacy of racial segregation and institutionalized racism.”
         “The queen’s England is today waging another war against Yemen together with the U.S., Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E.,” he added.
          Melissa Murray, a Jamaican-American professor at New York University School of Law, said that the queen’s death “will accelerate debates about colonialism, reparations, and the future of the Commonwealth” as “the residue of colonialism shadows day-to-day life in Jamaica and other parts of the Caribbean.”
           Numerous observers noted how the British Empire plundered around $45 trillion from India over two centuries of colonialism that resulted in millions of deaths, and how the Kohinoor — one of the largest cut diamonds in the world, with an estimated value of $200 million — was stolen from India to be set in the queen mother’s crown.
           “Why are Indians mourning the death of Queen Elizabeth II?” asked Indian economist Manisha Kadyan on Twitter. “Her legacy is colonialism, slavery, racism, loot, and plundering. Despite having chances, she never apologized for [the] bloody history of her family. She reduced everything to a ‘difficult past episode’ on her visit to India. Evil.”
           An Indian historian tweeted, “there are only 22 countries that Britain never invaded throughout history.”
          “British ships transported a total of three million Africans to the New World as slaves,” he wrote. “An empire that brought misery and famine to Asia and Africa. No tears for the queen. No tears for the British monarchy.”
          Negative reaction to the queen’s passing was not limited to the Global South. Despite the historic reconciliation between Ireland and Britain this century, there were celebrations in Dublin — as a crowd singing “Lizzie’s in a Box” at a Celtic FC football match attests — and among the Irish diaspora.
           “I’m Irish,” tweeted MSNBC contributor Katelyn Burns, “hating the queen is a family matter.”
            Welsh leftists got in on the action too. The Welsh Underground Network tweeted a litany of reasons why “we will not mourn.”
             “We will not mourn for royals who oversaw the protection of known child molesters in the family,” the group said.
              “We will not mourn for royals who oversaw the active destruction of the Welsh language, and the Welsh culture,” the separatists added.
             Summing up the sentiments of many denizens of the Global South and decolonization defenders worldwide, Assal Rad, research director at the National Iranian American Council, tweeted, “If you have more sympathy for colonizers and oppressors than the people they oppress, you may need to evaluate your priorities.”

Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info    

World War III.

       What do you call a war where every major power in the world is involved? I suppose it should be called World War III. The difference with this world war is that they are not fighting each other over a large expanse of the planet’s surface. Instead, they are fighting each other on one plot of land for control of the Middle East. Of course you’ll be fed the usual bullshit that all the major powers in the world are spending billions of pounds/dollars/roubles to help the Syrian people. One section are helping the Syrian people by trying to remove a nasty leader, the other section are helping the Syrian people by trying to maintain a wonderful leader of the people. 

     Meanwhile, the people of Syria are being slaughtered in their tens thousands, their towns and cities are being pulverised, and we have to believe it is all for the benefit of the people of that area. It is the only way to help them, we in the West are so altruistic. Our lords and masters only have the well-being of the people of Syria at heart. If you believe that crap, your brain has melted by watching too much TV. 

    No matter how they dress it up, we are in the midst of World War III, the power mongers have managed to localise their slaughter, and that mode of warfare will continue until one or the other can take control of the Middle East area and it vast resources, no major power will allow any other major power to control it all, hence the bloodshed. If they can’t resolve their blood fest with a clear winner, then in all probability, it could spread over a wider area, they will have no hesitation in doing so, remember 1914, then 1939, well nothing has changed, the power mongers are still empire builders.

     To end this insanity based on greed and power, we have to destroy the root, the state. The states of this world are the biggest terror organisations on the planet. They have the greatest fire-power, they do the greatest damage, and they kill the greatest number of innocent people. Until we resolve that problem, the death and destruction will continue.

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