Soil Soaked in Blood, All For The Power Of Empire.

        The battle of The Somme anniversary is coming up, July 1st. 1916, no doubt the privileged parasites that hold the reins of power, will want to show this as a battle of glory and honour, but there is no glory in war. As for the Somme. it was a slaughtering field where the blood of youth was poured into the soil to gratify a bunch of psychopathic pompous idiots, who saw war as some sort of board game.The Somme, Wikipedia:

 The Battle of the Somme (French: Bataille de la Somme, German: Schlacht an der Somme), also known as the Somme Offensive, was a battle of the First World War fought by the armies of the British and French empires against the German Empire. It took place between 1 July and 18 November 1916 on both sides of upper reaches of the River Somme in France. It was the largest battle of World War I on the Western Front; more than one million men were wounded or killed, making it one of the bloodiest battles in human history.

ONE MILLION DEAD OR WOUNDED, for what? For empire, wealth and power for the privileged parasites that lord it over us. This description of The Lonsdales, one of the units involved in this carnage for power, is just a glimpse of what was repeated and repeated.

         Few units in the British army can have fared worse on 1 July 1916 than the Lonsdales. Formed of volunteers from north-west England swept up in the outpouring of patriotic fervour at the start of the First World War, the 850-strong battalion joined the walking-pace advance on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. 
       Within hours, they had lost more than 500 men. Not only the commanding officer – shot in the head as he leapt from a trench – but the second-in-command, the adjutant and every one of the company commanders had been either wounded or killed.
        The survivors, next put to work digging up the remains of their friends, lived in a miasma of decomposing bodies and faced continuous shelling without sleep. A week after the massacre, they were ordered to go over the top again. This time they refused. Command was apoplectic. At the troops’ request, Lieutenant George Kirkwood, the battalion’s medical officer, was despatched to see them. He saw at once that the men were at their nerves’ end, and testified in a written report that most of them were suffering from the mysterious new ailment known as “shell shock”.

          DANDELIONS written and sung by STEVE O'DONOGHUE. Steve will be one of the performers at HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN YET? THE TRUTH ABOUT THE SOMME, Sunday 19 June, Heath Street Baptist Church, London NW3 1DN, remembering one of Britain's most disastrous conflicts through words and music. Co-hosted by No Glory in War and Stop the War Coalition. BOOK HERE: http://www.noglory.org

 

Dandelions, The Lyrics:

Now Arthur was only a young cub
A brave lion and merely fifteen
But with the rest of his pack
He was sent to attack
To a war that was cruel and obscene
But those lions fought hard and fought bravely
While the donkeys just grazed in a field
They had no sense of shame for their barbarous game
And the thousands of lions they killed

And when he saw them marching up Whitehall
I remember what old Arthur said
He said the donkeys are all wearing poppies
So I shall wear dandelions instead

Now every remembrance sunday
Well I pause at eleven o'clock
And I remember those dandy young lions
And those donkeys and their poppycock
Cos they've taken those beautiful poppies
And they use them to glorify war
Well I remember those dandy young lions
And I don't wear a poppy no more

And when he saw them marching up Whitehall
I remember what old Arthur said
He said the donkeys are all wearing poppies
So I shall wear dandelions instead

Now if you take an old dandelion
And just blow it quite gently he'd say
You can see all the dreams of those soldiers
In the seeds as they just float away
But then the wind takes hold of those seeds
And they rise and quickly they soar
Like the spirit of all those old soldiers
Who believed that their war would end war

And when he saw them marching up Whitehall
I remember what old Arthur said
He said the donkeys are all wearing poppies
So I shall wear dandelions instead

Cos those lions were dandy young workers
Who those donkeys so cruelly misled
And if the Donkeys are gonna wear poppies
I shall wear dandelions instead.

And when he saw them marching up Whitehall
I remember what old Arthur said
He said the donkeys are all wearing poppies
So I shall wear dandelions instead

Source: No Glory in War

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Churchill's Bloody Disaster, Gallipoli.

 

        Tomorrow April 25th. our imperialist state will bring out all its regalia, pomp and ceremony, in an attempt to turn one of its most brutal blunders into a show of glory, and claim another victory for democracy. The event that  they will "celebrate"  will be the centenary of the battle of Gallipoli, a stupid, needless, blood bath of young men, dreamed up by the racist, fascist, Winston Churchill. At the time it was such a blundering disaster that Churchill lost his position in the government. The pomp and parades will be an attempt to airbrush the disaster aspect of the blunder out of our consciousness, and have it photo-shopped as all glory and honour.

      Our imperialist state will always glorify war, it needs war to protect its power and privileges, and ever opportunity will be taken to show war with pride and glory. There is no glory in war, it is a tactic whereby states protect and enhance their power, at the expense of the ordinary people. 

From No Glory In War:

Anzac Day 25 April 2015: Gallipoli 100 years on
25 April 2015 marks the hundredth anniversary of the start of the British-led military invasion of Gallipoli on Turkey’s Dardanelle Peninsula, which resulted in over 200,000 dead and wounded in an eight-month period.

Gallipoli was a military disaster. Yet, a century on, politicians seeking to glorify the First World War, are calling the huge loss of life at Gallipoli "a price worth paying."

As the Australian government spends $300 million commemorating the WWI centenary, and using it to promote militarism and nationalist myths, veterans' groups have condemned the "nationalist circus" that Anzac Day has become.

The UK government, which is spending £60 million on its own nationalist circus commemorating WW1, has a number of Anzac Day events, including in London and Turkey. There will of course be little mention of Winston Churchill's role as prime mover of the Gallipoli catastrophe, which lead to his dismissal from the British government a hundred years ago.

Rather than celebrating the rewriting of history to promote new wars being waged on this 100th anniversary, it is important to remember what really happened at Gallipoli.

The No Glory website aims to capture the reality of what took place, with a dedicated page, Anzac Day 2015 - the Gallipoli disaster 100 years on, that has links to articles, videos, songs etc.

Among the features are two conflicting views of The Water Diviner, Russell Crowe's film about Gallipoli, which was Australia's highest grossing film in 2014. One reviewer says the film is anti-war, the other says the opposite.

And from that "revered" Western capitalist mouthpiece, The Wall Street Journal:

      The British government gave much consideration to the eventual division of the Ottoman lands once the straits were captured but very little to how the operation might ­actually be executed. The ­amateurish preparation and the resulting fiasco are ­recounted with sharp, taut precision in “Gallipoli: The End of the Myth,” Robin Prior’s near-definitive analysis of the campaign.
      The assumption that Britain would simply sweep to victory over second-rate Turkey was just the first of many errors of judgment. At each stumble, when a logical examination of the campaign would have had only one possible conclusion—withdrawal—Britain’s leaders doubled down, eventually committing a half-million troops to the Gallipoli ­Peninsula in a sequence of bloody landings and operations.

Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

No Glory In War, No Celebration Of War.

       Monday marks the 100th anniversary of the start of the clash of empires that resulted in over 37 million, military and civilian, casualties, comprising of more than 16 million killed, and over 20 million wounded, all in just a matter of four years. Approximately 7 million of those killed were civilians, a fact not often mentioned. This 4 year blood bath called WW1, was nothing more than empires trying to grab as much of the world's resources and markets, all in the name of power and wealth for the few. There can be no glory in war, there should be no "celebration" of war. Wars are power mongers method of cementing their power, never for democracy. The war for democracy will not be fought on foreign shores, it will be fought here in each of our own territories.
       This Monday there will be gatherings across the country, against the pomp and glory of the establishments attempt to turn the slaughter of WW1 into some sort glorious part of our history, when in fact it is an indictment against the established order we live under, a blot on the history of humanity.
      Glasgow Monday 4th. August, by the Scottish Peace Network:

     If you can possibly make it, come and stand in solidarity for world peace.

In London by, No Glory In War and others:

No Glory - No More War

No Glory - No More War
Monday 4 August  6.30pm - 8.30pm
Parliament Square London

       Monday 4 August is the 100th anniversary of Britain's entry into World War One. Britain's recent record of foreign wars, its commitment to NATO expansion and its support for Israeli aggression make it essential that there is a strong anti-war message on the day.
       There are anti-war events taking place around the country to counter David Cameron's campaign to make the WW1 centenary an occasion for "celebration" and "glorification".
       In London the No Glory in War campaign will stage an event in Parliament Square at 6.30pm, just before the official commemoration, evoking the real horror of World War One, demanding that nothing like it happens again. We will be celebrating resistance to war at the time and today.
Speakers and performers at the No Glory - No More War event include actors Samuel West and Kika Markham. Jeremy Corbyn MP will read Kier Hardie's anti-war speech of 1914. Writer AL Kennedy will read Carol Ann Duffy's Last Post in honour of Harry Patch, the last surviving soldier from the First World War trenches, who said until the day he died in 2009 that war was 'legalised mass murder'.
       Also speaking are World War II Normandy veteran Jim Radford, historian Neil Faulkner and Kate Hudson from CND. Music will be performed by Sean Taylor and Gunes Cerit.
       Stop the War is asking all our supporters who are able to attend, to bring white poppies and other anti -war symbols to make sure this anniversary is marked in the only way appropriate - with a loud call for an end to foreign wars.
If you are are a Twitter user, please use the hashtag #NoMoreWar throughout the day.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk