Lest We Forget---!!.

      Perhaps a wee bit late for "Rembrance Day", but still worth mentioning. Just what were we remembering and what were we forgetting? We here in this country may have "peace", but it is a blood stained peace.

      An article I wrote some years ago, it is obvious that nothing much has changed except perhaps that the weapons are more destructive.

       All the self centred, pompous heads of state who shuffled for their moment on the podium, attempting to glorify the imperial blood bath of 1914/18, keep referring to how war brought peace to Europe and how we all live in harmony now. The so called peace that followed that dreadful avoidable slaughter, lasted a mere 21 years, before they were at it again, spreading the blood of youth  across the globe. They wax lyrically about how Europe has known peace since their last blood letting of 1939/45. That of course is a lie. There may have been peace in most countries in Europe, but we were busy doing our blood thing across the globe. The list of wars, battles, interventions, and attempts to thwart independence movements across the empire, is a long unending catalogue of bloodshed.

       This is by no means a complete and definitive list, but it does give some idea of what they mean by peace.

After the 1914/18 blight on humanity, we have had:
1918/20, Intervention in Russia civil war.
1919/23, Turkish war of independence.
1919/19, Third Anglo-Afghan war.   
1919/21, Irish war of independence.
1920/20, Somalialand campaign.
1920/20, Great Iraqi revolution.
1936/39, Great Arab revolt in Palestine.
1938/48, British Zionist conflict.
1939/45, Second World War.
1945/49, Indonesian National revolution.
1945/46, Vietnam, Operation Masterdom.
1946/47, Greek civil war.
1948/60, Malayan emergency.
1950/53, Korean war.
1951/54, Suez Canal zone emergency.
1952/60, Mau Mau uprising.
1955/60, Cyprus.
1956/57, Suez Crisis.
1962/66, Indonesia - Malaysia.
1962/75, Dhofar rebellion.
1963/67, Aden emergency.
1982/82, Falklands war.
1982/84, Lebanon.
1991/91, Gulf War.
1992/96, Bosnia.
1998/98, Desert Fox Iraq.
1998/99, Kosovo.
2000/02, Siera Leone civil war.
2001/----, Afghanistan, 4th Anglo-Afghan war.
2003/09, Iraq war.
2011/11, Libyan Intervention. 2011,
2011, Syria

     Most of these conflicts were against people trying to free themselves from the British Imperialists. While we were merrily sending our youth to foreign shores to repress and kill, we were proudly proclaiming how we were living in peaceful Europe. As we done our imperial killing across the globe, other European countries were doing likewise, but our efforts were dwarfed by the new mighty imperial nation, US of A.

     This is the pattern of capitalist peace, slaughter for wealth and power, death for resources and profit. Nothing will change until we change the system, and consign this exploitative system of capitalism to the dustbin of history.

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Remembrance Day, Who And What To Remember?

 

      Remembrance Day is here, and as usual it will be filled with so much pomp and ceremony, so much false narratives, and distorted history, that the truth will lie buried with those millions of ordinary people who died in some of the most horrifying circumstances imaginable. From the Somme to Hiroshima, the deaths will never be remembered as battles for supremacy between opposing power mongers, each seeking to bolster their own particular hold on power. It will always be honoured as noble, just, and necessary, in an attempt to make war "clean", "moral" and "righteous", so that it can be used again and again, as the various power mongers defend and bolster their own particular power block for the benefit of the rich and powerful. Through the fog of lies we should be more selective in who and what we remember.

      On this Remembrance day perhaps we should reflect on the words uttered by a German soldier, from the novel "All Quiet on the Western front",

       “But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony – forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?”

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The Sacrificed, On War's Red Altar Lie.

      To mark Remembrance Day, with an abhorrence of war, and all those who plan, engineer and profit from its vile destructive power, two short passages from the recently re-discovered Political Essay by the young Percy Bysshe Shelley. One the first passage, the second is the last passage from the poem. 

DESTRUCTION marks thee! o’er the blood-stain’d heath
Is faintly borne the stifled wail of death;
Millions to fight compell’d, to fight or die
In mangled heaps on War's red altar lie.
The sternly wise, the mildly good, have sped
To the unfruitful mansions of the dead

Oppressive law no more shall power retain,
Peace, love, and concord, once shall rule again,
And heal the anguish of a suffering world;
Then, then shall things, which now confusedly hurled,
Seem Chaos, be resolved to order’s sway,
And errors night be turned to virtue’s day.

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Fight To The Finish.

       Remembrance Day, when the pomp of imperialism walks the streets in all its glittering finery, when the heads of state, the purveyors of war, bow their heads as if the cared, while planning their next battle field. When will we learn, that war is their tool, their weapon of dominance. Their corridors of power are steeped in the blood of the ordinary people, sacrificed for some grand plan that only benefits the power mongers. There is no war to end wars, war breed wars. 

    As our own Prime minister stands there solemn and head bowed, what thoughts of Syria are going through his head. How many can he risk to get his moment of glory, to play the imperial  game with the big boys.
     We have been sending our young men and women to die across the globe continuously since that war to end wars, 1914/18, the blood of ordinary people has flowed in its gallons, and it will continue to do so, until we destroy this system of power that creates wealth for the few by devastating  humanity.

Fight To The Finish.

The boys came back. Bands played and flags were flying,

And Yellow-Pressmen thronged the sunlit street

To cheer the soldiers who'd refrained from dying,

and hear the music of returning feet.

'Of all the thrills and adrours War has brought,

This moment is the finest,' (So they thought.)

Snapping their bayonets on to charge the mob,

Grim Fusiliers broke ranks with glint of steel,

At last the boys had found a cushy job,

.    .    .    .    .    .    .    .

I heard the Yellow-Pressmen grunt and squeal;

And with my trusty bomber turned and went

To clear those Junkers out of Parliament.

Siegfried Sassoon.

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UK's Continuous Wars.

    The powers that be in the UK talk of peace, while fighting continuous wars. Our continuous wars read like a geography lesson as country after country feels they force of the British imperial machine. Remembrance Day may have past, but this is worth remembering.

This from Stop The War:

Lyrics

On Remembrance Day
When the army prays
And the flags go up
To remind us that they do it for us
On Remembrance Day
By the flower display
Where the church explains
How the heroes keep the villians away
There I’ll tell it to the careless wind
I’ll tell you when the good guys win
On Remembrance Day
I should stay away
From the BBC
Where they tell you how a real man should be
And the children watch
As the vicar walks around with a cross
'Cause to love is fine
If you do it at a sensible time
Yeah, I’ll tell it to the careless wind
I’ll tell you when the good guys win
Yeah, I’ll save it for the next of kin
On Remembrance Day
On Remembrance Day
On Remembrance Day

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Remembrance Day, What Are We Forgetting?

      We are approaching "Remembrance Day", when we will be treated to  a cacophony hypocritical speeches by the solemn faces of those who sent us to war, expensive suits with the obligatory red poppy, who see war as a necessary way of protecting their wealth and power. We will hear the false voices of those who believe it is acceptable to shed the blood of others, while they reap the plunder and the spoils.

 

       What will be missing from this militaristic spectacle will be the voices of those who speak the truth of what war is, and why we still have wars. No one will be allowed to point the finger, no one will be held to account for the pointless slaughter of countless millions of young men and women, 99% of which come from that group that never see the "spoils of war", the ordinary people. To the victor and the vanquished, the result is the same, the ordinary people of both sides, pay with blood, and the ruling class lift the gold and the glory. They have always spoken of the war to end all wars, well, that has still to be fought, and it is called The Class War.

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A DAY TO REMEMBER.

      November 11 a day for remembering those who gave so much, a day to recall November 11 1887 the day the American state murdered five comrades now known world wide as the Haymarket Martyrs. Let's keep their names alive and the ideas that brought the state to kill them.

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