Free Speech.

            I have just started reading "Free Speech and the Suppression of Dissent during World War1, by Eric T, Chester. This is a meticulously detailed book backed up by extensive research. It highlights the extent the state will use its apparatus, police, judiciary and military to stifle dissent, and how it will raise its level of suppression in times of war. Among other events, t he book draws attention the savage brutality used against IWW and peace campaigners during WW1. One interesting fact that I was unaware of was how the American state looked to the UK for methods of suppression, as they considered the UK to be a master at the devious art of suppression of dissent. This book is well worth reading, though it refers mainly to WW1, similar methods are still being used today with the added benefit to the state of modern surveillance technology. To understand their methods is a step to being able to counter them and defend what freedom of speech we have and perhaps one day bring about complete freedom of speech unfettered by state legislation.
        It is available from the usual online outlets and W. H. Smiths, prices vary according to where you make you purchase, so it pays to shop around.

Book Details:
Free Speech and the Suppression of Dissent during World War 1
Publisher: Monthly Review Press.
ISBN paper: 978-1-58367-868-8
ISBN cloth: 978-1-58367-869-5 

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Price Of Conscience.

 

 

     There were those who through WW1 and WW2 were reviled, insulted, beaten up, imprisoned, and treated to a whole host of other brutal and degrading treatments. There crime, they were conscientious objectors and refused to kill other human beings on the dictate of the state. The state takes a very strong dislike to those who will not kill on its orders. The state always demands obedience, submission and subservience, it must always have control over the population. it is estimated that there were approximately 60,000 men registered as conscientious objectors during the first world war.
     Conscientious objectors are humans with a conscience, something that will not be tolerated by the state in times of its wars of plunder and power grabbing, which takes in almost all wars.
     Anarchists feature strongly in that band of conscientious objectors, as did Quakers. These people were usually labelled cowards, though the courage they showed in the presence hatred and abuse demanded much more courage than to submit and become a subservient order taker.
     Some did take their place in the military, but usually only as medics and ambulance drivers. Which ever road the took, it required courage, determination and perseverance. Their history is seldom, if ever, written in that frame.

      A brief sample of their history can be found here and also found HERE:

     As one small glimpse of those labelled cowards who opted for non-combatant roles and went as medics etc. this extract gives a tiny insight into the falseness of that label. others of course faced brutality  in prisons up and down the country.  

The burial detail, which had come for the corpses in the pigpen, was surprised. The “dead” were getting up and speaking English. Qu’est-ce que c’est? Ah, they were an ambulance crew. British volunteers, in the trenches with the French Army on the Western Front. In the ruins and wreckage near the front lines, they’d found nowhere else to sleep.

The medical corpsmen were all pacifists, serving humanity even as they refused to serve in any military. Still, they lived like the troops. They bunked in rat-infested dugouts, on the floors of shelled buildings, in hay-filled barns. They dove for cover when incoming shells moaned and screamed, and struggled with their masks when the enemy fired gas canisters. At any moment, they could be called to go to the front lines, gather wounded men, and drive—lights off on roads cratered by shells, packed with trucks and troops, with every jostle making the blood-soaked soldiers in the back cry out in pain—to a hospital.

      Today it is more obvious than ever that all wars are fought to enhance the wealth and power of the privileged, to protect or increase the resources to be exploited for those same privileged, to increase their power over competitors. However they are never fought by those privileged, there aren't enough of them to protect their wealthy and privileged position, hence their demand that we the ordinary people do the fighting for them. We are tasked with killing ordinary people from over there, so that our pampered, privileged lords and masters can maintain their powerful and wealthy position.  Still so many still fall for this preposterous policy, the reality being that the only war that the ordinary people should fight is the class war.

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Imperial History.

The British state, Fighters of fascism???

       I am somewhat shocked to hear voices from the “left” refer to WW2 as our fight to defeat fascism. Surely they have some grasp of the history of this country. We didn’t go to war with Germany to defeat fascism, we went to war with that country to stop it being a rival or a threat to the resources of the British Empire, as was WW1.
     WW1 had nothing to do with the shooting of a pompous Duke, it was all about the German Empire planning to build the Berlin to Baghdad railway. This would have give Germany tremendous influence in Iraq and other countries in that region, allowing it to move resources and troops in and out of that area much quicker than the British Empire, and Iraq was an oil rich country that the British claimed as theirs. So we super-doper imperialist would have to teach the nasty German Empire a lesson. Of course we all know it didn’t turn out quite like that, the conflict turned Europe into a bloody altar where the youth of nations soaked the soil of Europe in blood. The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War1, was around 40 million. There were 20 million deaths and 21 million wounded. The total number of deaths includes 9.7 million military personnel and about 10 million civilians.

 
       This film is on Spirit of Revolt audio/video section.

     The German Empire was decimated and that suited the British Empire, allowing it to lord it over a vast section of the world, pillaging and plunder land after land. Fast forward and along comes a guy whose intention is rebuild the German Empire, this posed a threat to the arrogant imperialist that control the British Empire. So once again our lords and masters decided to teach that nasty Germany Empire a lesson, and as they say, the rest is history, or it should be, not a truth lost in an illusion of imperialists propaganda. World War 2 was the deadliest military conflict in history. An estimated total of 70–85 million people perished, which was about 3% of the 1940 world population (est. 2.3 billion).
     By now we should all know that the British state never goes to war to defeat fascism, it trades with them as long as it is beneficial to them, it goes to war to protect or enlarge its resources, power and wealth, and the people can go to hell in a hand cart.
      It’s the the weekend, have some music.

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Kate Sharpley.

      I regularly receive emails from the Kate Sharpley Library, with their latest publications, all very interesting and informative. I consider the Kate Sharpley Library to be one of all too few archives of the anarchist movement, that are a necessary part of our history, and a wonderful resource to aid us in our struggles. In there you will find inspiration, knowledge and often hidden historical events. We at Spirit of Revolt do what we can to add to that rich history and resource.

    Who was Kate Sharpley? The following extract will give you a little insight to this remarkable woman:

Albert Meltzer
       One of our frequently asked questions is 'who was Kate Sharpley?' Many of our readers will know of her as 'One of the countless "unknown" members of our movement ignored by the official historians of anarchism.' We hope this tribute, written by Albert Meltzer in 1978 will help to fill that statement out a little. There are more details in Albert's autobiography I Couldn't Paint Golden Angels.
     Kate's Tinwear
    Sixty-five years ago Queen Mary was handing out medals in Greenwich, most of them for fallen heroes being presented to their womenfolk. One 22-year old girl, said by the local press to be under the influence of anarchist propaganda, having collected medals for her dead father, brother and boyfriend, then threw them in the Queen's face, saying, 'If you think so much of them, you can keep them.' The Queen's face was scratched and so was that of one of her attendant ladies. The police, not a little under the influence of patriotic propaganda, then grabbed the girl and beat her up. When she was released from the police station a few days later, no charges being brought, she was scarcely recognisable.
     The girl was Kate Sharpley, who had been active in the Woolwich anarchist group and helped keep it going through the difficult years of World War 1. After her clash with the police she was sacked from her job 'on suspicion of dishonesty' (there was nothing missing but a policeman had called checking up on her…) and, selling libertarian pamphlets in the street, she was recognised by the police and warned that if she appeared there again she would be charged with 'soliciting as a prostitute' (which in those days would have been a calamity, and even today a disaster, if once convicted). Isolated from her family, and with the group broken up, she moved out of activity, away from the neighbourhood, and married.
    I met her, by chance, last year in Lewisham. Twice widowed, she remembered the anarchist movement with nostalgia, and gave me a fascinating account of the local group in the years before World War 1. Unfortunately, she was already very ill, and a few weeks ago, she died, I was told by one of her neighbours.
     I had, though, asked her for a message to the Anarchist movement today. Her answer: 'Tell the kids they're doing all right, they don't need any advice from me.' Especially she praised the young women of today: 'I wouldn't have had to take cover like I did if women of my day had any guts' she said. But she did have guts. A few only in 1917 dared take any action in bereaved England.

       The following is the latest I received from The Kate Sharpley Library:

Welcome!

Here's a link to NOT the bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library, No.2 June 2020
Contents:
New pieces on the Kate Sharpley Library website
Three articles by Albert Meltzer
Elsewhere (AK Press; Audio; Naples 1884; Bristol 2020)
Still going (Research on The 1945 split in British anarchism)
You can read the PDF at https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/8933bb
  Image at the top of the page comes from Crimethinc’s ‘The Anarchists versus the Plague: Malatesta and the Cholera Epidemic of 1884’

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Rebellious Working Class Ended WW1.

        When it comes to WW1, most people in UK think it ended in victory for the "allies", the word "armistice" doesn't seem to register. What really brought an end to that particular imperialist bloodbath, was the collapse of discipline. Mutiny and rebellion were breaking out everywhere, troops had had enough, orders were ignored, officers were ridiculed, and the various states were anxious as to their survival. It was a class thing that finally put a nail in that particular psychopathic imperialist endeavour. 

       The following is an excellent article on libcom, posted by Jared, well worth reading in full, as we head into the hypocritical pomp and ceremony of establishment's charade of caring, that will be on display in the next few days. That babbling brook of bullshit, our mainstream media, will wallpaper our lives with banal, patriotic jingoism and empty rhetoric, which we are supposed to swallow. Those who engineer and benefit from wars, will take the stand with bowed heads, who knows, perhaps thinking of the next great plunder and how they can get away with it all.

       I make no excuse for posting this in full, it should be writ large in the minds of this generation, as we stand looking at bloody war after bloody war, with the high possibility of even more devastating conflicts looming.

Some images of WW1 mutinies.

From libcom:

The untold history of armistice 

and the end of World War I
         ‘The best antidote to ideology is detail,’ writes Paul Mason. And the detail that’s missing this Armistice Day is that working people, when they take power into their own hands, can end whatever catastrophe is imposed on them.
        In 1918, after four years of slaughter, deprivation and hardship, the Central Powers of Austro-Hungary and Germany were rocked by strikes and mutinies. In February, a naval mutiny broke out at Kotor and sailors shot their officers; by October, the Austro-Hungarian army had collapsed from mass desertions and political upheaval. Soon afterwards a mutiny by German sailors at Kiel merged with other uprisings and quickly escalated into a full-scale rebellion against the imperial state, sparking the abdication of the German Kaiser and the proclamation of a workers’ republic on 9 November 1918.
       Preferring peace to full-scale revolution, an armistice with the Allied powers was signed two days later, on 11 November 1918. Working-class revolt had helped to end the First World War.
      Not that you’d know this from New Zealand’s centennial commemoration of armistice Day, Armistice 100. People across the country will take part in a number of sanitised official events, from joining the ‘roaring chorus’ to texting the Armistice Beacon. They’re unlikely to learn much about the strikes, mutinies and resistance from below that toppled both generals and governments.
      I’ve searched the program resources in vain for any reference to how and why armistice came about. Among messages of peace and the standard script of sacrifice and loss, there is a notable silence when it comes to the masses of working men and women who contributed to the war’s end. Instead, peace seems to fall upon the war like a happy sun-shower. The surrenders of the various Central Powers seem to just … happen.
       Why is there such a gap in the historical narrative? Surely it is not for lack of time or information. We’ve had four years of commemoration and some big spends to go with them (although not as much as Australia, whose $1.1bn dwarfs the $31m spent in New Zealand). It’s not as if the date crept up on us.
      Perhaps I’m being far too critical of the Armistice 100 program and the small pool of public historians working on WW100-related events. After all, I’ve been one of them, although if I’m honest, the feature on censorship and its marginal references to dissent during the First World War was possibly too little, too late.
      It would be wrong to see this glaring omission as some devilish scheme designed to serve the interests of capital and the state. There’s no conspiracy at play here. Instead, official historians are often hamstrung by codes of conduct and the mythical stance of neutrality, or by what is or isn’t palatable to their managers and their manager’s managers. Histories of social revolution, radical ideas, and the agency of everyday, working-class people are hardly the thing of monthly reports or ministerial press releases. And despite the big-ticket items of commemoration, the long, hard slog of quality, in-depth research is like the work of any modern workplace – of trying to do more with less.
       Perhaps, too, there’s something in the turn away from class as a framework of analysis – that is, if class was ever a frame of analysis in the first place (we have, after all, had numerous historians tell us that New Zealand was a classless society, free of a bourgeoisie and proletariat). As Paul Mason notes, ‘the termination of war by working-class action fits uneasily at a deeper level: for most of history the existence of a workforce with its own consciousness and organisations is an afterthought, or an anomaly.’ Instead of exploring the final months of the war through the experience of class or capitalist social relations, we have instead been fed a discourse that historian Charlotte Macdonald believes ‘has come to be strongly characterised by rather too neatly drawn themes of consensual patriotism, duty and sacrifice.’
      Yet if we centre class, and class conflict, in our reading of armistice, the history it reveals is somewhat different to the official account on offer.
       A few examples will suffice. On 16 October 1918, 14 men of the 1 New Zealand (Divisional) Employment Company were charged with mutiny after ‘combining together not to work in the NZ DIV laundry when it was their duty to do so.’ The men, most of whom were labourers, were all sentenced to six months imprisonment with hard labour for their collective work-refusal. That their sentences were later remitted does not negate their struggle.
       Three days after armistice, on 14 November 1918, a riotous throng of men from the New Zealand Division gathered in the town square of Beauvois, France. Monty Ingram, a bank clerk from Whakatāne, recorded the event in his diary. ‘A great gathering of troops were harangued by a chap in the Dinks, who, standing on a box in true labour agitator style’ called on the military authorities to send them home. After a Padre was physically prevented from speaking and a staff officer was howled into silence, the men, now in their thousands, marched on Division Headquarters ‘and swarmed over the place like bees around a honeycomb.’ When Major General Andrew Russell finally appeared in the doorway, he was ‘badly heckled by all sorts of interjections thrown at him and by being called all the b-b-b’s under the sun.’ Russell’s speech fell on deaf ears. Instead, the crowd ordered their general to get in touch with the War Office and cancel any orders sending them to Germany. According to Christopher Pugsley, appeals to the honour of the Division and the threat of dire punishment prevented further action. Still, Russell recorded in his diary: ‘must watch for Bolshevism.’
      This temporary levelling of rank was triggered by frustrations about demobilisation, but class was ever present. As Dave Lamb notes, the widespread mutinies across the Allied forces broke out too soon after armistice for delay in demobilisation to be the sole cause. ‘Antagonism towards officers, hatred of arbitrary discipline, and a revolt against bad conditions and uncertainty about the prospect of being sent to Russia all combined with the delay, confusion and uncertainty about demobilisation.’
        Observed William Wilson, a farmer: ‘Codford [Camp] the last few weeks has been unbearable, discipline has gone to the pack and the troops don’t care a damn for officers and NCOs.’ Strikes by British dockers and seamen caused further delays, and further examples of direct action. There was conflict in Bulford and Sling camps, where New Zealand troops were charged with ‘endeavouring to persuade persons to mutiny’ and sentenced to hard labour. And on the transport ships home, unpopular officers found themselves victim to collective justice. In these moments, when the soldiers took power into their own hands, the generals were powerless to act.
       Back in New Zealand, the sudden end to the war, coupled with the influenza pandemic, also tested the home front military command and their ability to enforce discipline. Two weeks after armistice, the Chief of General Staff, Colonel Charles Gibbon, found himself rushing to Featherston Military Camp, where the troops were mutinous. 5000 men had staged a ‘violent’ demonstration in front of camp headquarters and presented a list of demands to the commandant. Gibbon and Defence Minister James Allen endured a stormy confrontation with the men’s delegates. In the face of mass protest, Gibbon and Allen gave in to some of the soldiers’ demands around demobilisation. By December, the recruits were marching out of Featherston at the rapid rate of 500 a day.
      The militant self-activity of working people – whether they were soldiers, industrial workers, or both – was a deeply entrenched concern for the New Zealand government. The upheavals of 1918, home and abroad, fed into a developing ‘red scare’. By 1919, red scare rhetoric came to dominate the public sphere. Prime Minister William Massey urged his Reform Party faithful to ‘secure good men to stem the tide of Anarchy and Bolshevism’. Allen believed ‘there was so much lawlessness in the country that the only thing that could save [it] from going to damnation was the drill sergeant.’
      Wartime regulations were extended into peacetime. The power to deport undesirables was legislated in 1919. Distributing revolutionary books or pamphlets remained seditious. And now that soldiers trained in killing had returned to their jobs and their pay disputes, firearm acts were passed allowing the state to clamp down on whole working-class neighbourhoods.
     Fear of working-class resistance strengthened the apparatus of state surveillance. Meetings of radicals were secretly attended by police and fortnightly reports were sent to Police Headquarters. Detectives in each district systemised this work by compiling an index of individuals who had ‘extreme revolutionary socialistic or IWW ideas’. This signaled the formation of New Zealand’s first ‘Special’ Branch and laid the groundwork for all future spy agencies in New Zealand. The unrest unleashed in the final months of the war directly influenced the monitoring of dissent in New Zealand for years to come.
       This is a small taste of the untold history of armistice and the end of the First World War. Instead of learning about it, the turbulent events leading up to and after armistice are turned into joyous celebration. Cloaked in the language of peace, Armistice Day becomes an official exercise in justifying the insane loss of life.
      We might even be tempted to see Armistice 100 as an example of what Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and scholar Viet Thanh Nguyen calls the ‘industrialisation of memory’. In his book Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, Nguyen also examines the ‘memory industry’ – the museums we take our children to visit, the sculptured grounds of Pukeahu National War Memorial, the Armistice Day parades at sunset. For Nguyen, at the root of this industry is the industrialisation of memory.
Quote:
      Industrialising memory proceeds in parallel with how warfare is industrialised as part and parcel of capitalist society, where the actual firepower exercised in a war is matched by the firepower of memory that defines and refines that war’s identity.
        In other words, memory and the memory industry are weaponised. And while the memory industry produces kitsch, sentimentality, and spectacle, the industrialisation of memory ‘exploits memory as a strategic resource’.
        It is how bodies are produced for current and future wars.

        ‘The best antidote to ideology is detail,’ writes Paul Mason. And the detail that’s missing this Armistice Day is that working people, when they take power into their own hands, can end whatever catastrophe is imposed on them.
        First published by Overland Literary Journal. Jared Davidson is a labour historian and archivist based in Wellington, New Zealand. His forthcoming book, Dead Letters: Censorship and subversion in New Zealand 1914–1920 is out March 2019

Posted By Jared
Nov 10 2018 04:20

 

Lest We Forget.

      We must keep hammering home the real reasons behind the First World War, the blood that was shed for empire, markets and resources, and oil was one of those resources that the British empire wanted, and was prepared to let hundreds of thousands die in unbelievable horror, to attain that wealth. To the imperialists, people were expendable, and to the modern imperialist, they still are.

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Aftermath.

         Of all the war poets, my favourite is Siegfried Sassoon, Born, 8 September, 1886, died 1 September, 1967.

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A War Painted In Pastel Shades Of Lies.

 

       The babbling brook of bullshit, mainstream media, backs the establishment in painting WW1 in glorious pastel shades of lies, here is an extract from an excellent article stating some of the truths of WW1 From Stop The War:

     Dominic Alexander debunks ten myths being used by politicians and historians to rebrand World War I in the centenary of its outbreak.

---

1. The war was fought in defence of democracy
         This is contradicted by the basic facts. Germany had universal manhood suffrage while in Britain, including Ireland, some 40% of men still did not qualify for the vote. In Germany also, there were attempts to justify the war on the grounds that it was being fought to defend civilised values against a repressive, militaristic state, in the form of Russian autocracy.
2. Britain went to war due to a treaty obligation to defend the neutrality of Belgium
        There was no clear and accepted obligation on Britain to do this, and, in fact, before the Belgian issue appeared, the war party in the cabinet was already pushing for British intervention on the entirely different ground that there were naval obligations to France. These obligations had been developed in secret arrangements between the military of both countries, and were never subject to any kind of democratic accountability. The Germans even offered guarantees over Belgian integrity, which the British government refused to consider at all.
3. German aggression was the driving force for war
        However aggressive the German leadership may have been in 1914, the British establishment was at least as determined to

Read the full article HERE:

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Lest WE Forget.

     November 11, Remembrance Day, lest we forget, I can say no more than I have already said, so will just repeat something I posted back in July 2014.

       That babbling brook of bullshit,the mainstream media, always gets it wrong. At the moment it is pouring out lots of hate rhetoric against Russia, but precious little against the murderous onslaught by the Israeli state against the people of Gaza.

     Also on the WW1 "celebrations", they throw their weight behind the establishment view, of it being a heroic and glorious battle for democracy, which we, being the democratic half of the contest, won of course. I wonder what the German people think about that?

      What we should never forget is that the blood letting that goes by the name of WW1 wasn't won, it was an armistice. It was stopped because the imperialist psychopaths were faced with mutinies, rebellion and spontaneous out breaks of truces between the ordinary soldiers on the front line, some of these young men paid with their lives in front of a firing squad for the act of humanity. At home, the imperialists were faced with another battle, strikes and civil unrest across the continent of Europe. Another factor that brought the war warmongering nut-cases to call a halt, to the greed driven slaughter, was the fact that the death toll continued to soar and the maimed continued to be carried home, they were simply running out of canon-fodder. WW1 was an unimaginable spilling of mainly young blood, to further the aims of greed driven imperialist ambitions, in other words, greed and nothing more.

   Up to the start of that unnecessary blood letting of WW1, Europe had no democracy to defend. After the bloody event, Europe had no democracy anywhere. 100 years after that imperialist blood letting, we the ordinary people are still fighting for democracy in Europe.

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Workers Know Your History.

        Despite all the pomp and ceremony marking the start of the blood letting of the imperialist land grab, that goes by the name of WW1, and the lies that they pump out, we should keep repeating, "It was the working class that stopped the slaughter", not the stupid, arrogant generals, not the so called "military strategists", it was the ordinary people in countries across the globe. It was their revulsion at the slaughter, and their desire for peace across borders, that silenced the guns, and saw the blood stop flowing. All contrary to the aims of the ruling classes and the capitalist system. 

       The struggles that brought the imperialist bloodshed to an end, are not over, the workers may have lost the first real battle, but we will win the final one, and eventually over throw this system of capitalism, which is a blot on the history of humanity.

       As I keep repeating, "Workers Know Your history."

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A Blood Stained Peace.

       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.

     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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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.

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The Start Of WW1.

      For those interested in the start of WW1, the should look no further than the excellent film by Robert Newman, "The History Of Oil". As any informed person knows, we can all say, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, my arse. He also touches on the Iraq invasion and why.

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Still No Democracy.

 
         Still down south sipping coffee and reading papers, among other things. It was while doing the coffee, paper thing that I came across an article in The Times of July 28th.. which I had to spout my view on. They had a photograph and a full page article on the Bullingon Club, mentioning that a high percentage of those in the photograph had died in the first world war. The article seemed to convey the notion that the war had claimed the lives of all classes. This may be true, but without a shaddow of doubt, it was the ordinary people who paid the highest price by a very large margin.
        There is also another difference. Since this war was nothing other than an imperialist scramble for wealth, power, resources and markets, for thos imperialists and their parasite friends, and the Bullingdon Club was stuffed full Princes and other friends and members of that imperialist class, they are the ones who should have done all the fighting. It was their war, they stood to gain or lose imperial wealth and power. On the other hand, the ordinary people, who died in their millions, came from poverty, and after the greed driven avoidable blood-bath, those who returned, returned to unemployment and poverty.
        I personally, have no sympathy, nor will I shed any tears, for those of the imperialist parasite class, who died fighting an imperialist greed fest, which they engineered. They were defending theur own position of wealth and power, or trying to gain more. They ordinary people, on the other hand, were hoodwinked and bullied into believing they were defending something they never had, and still do not have, namely, "dwmocracy"
      The article is just another plug at the establishment propaganda line, "we're all in this together", pure unadulterated bullshit.

 

The Establishment's Weaving Of Lies.

       That babbling brook of bullshit,the mainstream media, always gets it wrong. At the moment it is pouring out lots of hate rhetoric against Russia, but precious little against the murderous onslaught by the Israeli state against the people of Gaza.

     Also on the WW1 "celebrations", they throw their weight behind the establishment view, of it being a heroic and glorious battle for democracy, which we, being the democratic half of the contest, won of course. I wonder what the German people think about that?

      What we should never forget is that the blood letting that goes by the name of WW1 wasn't won, it was an armistice. It was stopped because the imperialist psychopaths were faced with mutinies, rebellion and spontaneous out breaks of truces between the ordinary soldiers on the front line, some of these young men paid with their lives in front of a firing squad for the act of humanity. At home, the imperialists were faced with another battle, strikes and civil unrest across the continent of Europe. Another factor that brought the war warmongering nut-cases to call a halt, to the greed driven slaughter, was the fact that the death toll continued to soar and the maimed continued to be carried home, they were simply running out of canon-fodder. WW1 was an unimaginable spilling of mainly young blood, to further the aims of greed driven imperialist ambitions, in other words, greed and nothing more.

    Up to the start of that unnecessary blood letting of WW1, Europe had no democracy to defend. After the bloody event, Europe had no democracy anywhere. 100 years after that imperialist blood letting, we the ordinary people are still fighting for democracy in Europe.

Part of an email I recently received: 

         As the UK commences four years of commemorations of the centenary of World War 1, the Northumbria and Newcastle Universities Martin Luther King Peace Committee has released a set of resources to help schoolteachers mark the December 1914 Christmas Truces as part of their World War 1 teaching. They are designed as a corrective to the government-sponsored commemorations of the slaughter in the trenches as a heroic and necessary war.

        The December 1914 Christmas Truces, when British, French and German soldiers stopped fighting to celebrate Christmas, exchange gifts, sing carols, and even play football, are one of the most extraordinary episodes in modern military history. These were not isolated incidents. Following weeks of spasmodic fraternisation by men unconvinced by war propaganda, the Christmas Truces occurred right down the front from the North Sea to Switzerland. Made possible by shared traditions of Christian celebration, they were a hopeful moment of recognition of common humanity and a (brief) rejection of the terrible violence of industrialised war pursued by rulers in a deadly game of global imperial competition for territories and resources. They were quashed by orders backed by threats, and by replacing troops with men 'untainted' by the Truces.

         The truces are worth teaching about because they are simply so remarkable and evocative in themselves. Ordinary men recognising their common humanity infuriated high commands by temporarily stopping the industrialised slaughter of the trenches. However at a time when revisionist historians and politicians are offering retro-chic defences of the First World War as somehow necessary or even heroic, the truces can also teach an important message that may otherwise be overlooked in the centennial commemorations.

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King And Country.

       As we approach August, 2014, and the establishment prepares to attempt to showcase that Bloody imperialist land grab, known as WW1, as some sort of heroic defence of a none existent democracy, we have to do all we can to tell the truth about the biggest unnecessary blood letting in modern history. This imperialist squabble has no glory, was no vision of a better world, it was nothing more than a greed driven fight between empires, all in the name of power and wealth for the few. 

     The film, King and Country, based on a novel by James Lansdale Hodson. tells the story of one young man, the last man left of his entire company. He decides to walk away, but is caught, and to set an example to others, he is shot at dawn for desertion.

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Mutiny And Strikes Stopped WW1.

          When we discuss that imperialist lead blood letting for power, known as WW1, we should make it quite clear that it wasn't started by ordinary people, but by a bunch of power hungry generals, politicians and royalty. However we should also make it quite clear that it didn't end in any type of victory, but an armistice. Neither side of the pompous blundering generals, politicians nor aristocratic idiots, could claim outright victory. That unnecessary bloody conflict which cost millions of lives of ordinary people, was stopped by those ordinary people. It was striking workers and mutinying soldiers, plus the running out of bodies to sacrifice, that brought the imperial greed fest to an end. By 1918, strikes and unrest were widespread across the whole of Europe, German forces were refusing to fight, earlier there had been similar mutinies among French and Russian troops and mutinies were also occurring among the British troops, including the Australian Imperial Force, Under these circumstances, it was obvious, even to the bunch of blundering idiots in charge at that time, that the blood letting power grab couldn't continue.

The arseholes who glory in war.

        Despite this, the Oxbridge millionaire cabal, running our country on behalf of the financial Mafia, have set aside £55 million to mark the blood letting as a wonderful victory and a defence of democracy. 1914 Europe had no democracy to defend, and when the troops came home, it wasn't to a democratic land fit for heroes, it was to unemployment, poverty and deprivation. Here we are, 100 years on in 2014, and we, the ordinary people, are still struggling to create that “democracy” here in the UK and across Europe. 

 The democracy they were defending.

         It was the ordinary people who suffered during that imperialist land grab, it was the ordinary people that brought it to a close, it is the ordinary people that should make sure that the present day power mongers don't turn it in to some sort of extravaganza to display their power and wealth, a circus of flag waving imperial symbolism. The ordinary people across Europe and further afield, suffered horribly during that unnecessary monumental blood letting, we can't let the perpetrators, by smoke and mirrors, take centre stage and wallow in undeserved glory.

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

When The Price Of Greed Was Blood.

      Anybody with a grain of common sense knows that WW1 was an imperialist and aristocratic land grab, paid for by the blood of millions of ordinary innocent people. We also so know that for the ordinary people,there were no benefits. The fruits from that blood letting went to the privileged parasite classes, the misery and suffering to the common people.
      Despite this truth, the powers that be to this day, try to portray this totally unnecessary blood bath as some sort of heroic fight to defend democracy, in reality a democracy that never existed, and still to this day, doesn't exist.
      As we approach the anniversary of that tragic event, we will be seeing all the trappings of power, militarism and patriotism being displayed in an attempt to convince us, that it was all worth while, something of which to be proud. There will be bugle blowing and recruitment campaigns for the next generation to be sacrificed at the alter of the new imperialism, corporate imperialism.

 

      That's why events as this listed below are of such importance, we must counter the insane claims of the imperialists, and continue to show the First World War for what it was, a bloody greed fest, a battle between power crazy empires for land, resources and markets.

JOINT BOOK LAUNCH

‘Writings against the First World War’

with Bruce Kent and A.W. Zurbrugg

Wednesday 18th June, 7pm

Entry £3, redeemable against any purchase

Housmans Bookshop 5 Caledonian Road King's Cross , London N1 9DX,

click here for map

       Our guests present the works of those who opposed the First World War and who wrote and published in order to convince others of its horrors, with particular reference to newly published books ‘Not Our War: Writings against the First World War’ and Ernst Friedrich’s shocking photobook ‘War against War!'.

       Bruce Kent will introduce Ernst Friedrich’s photobook ‘War against War!’ (Spokesman, 2014), which conveys the brutality and human cost of WWI through a series of graphic images. Originally published in 1924, Friedrich’s work begins with an impassioned plea, addressed ‘To Human Beings in all lands’, to understand the causes of war and to take steps to prevent it.

      The photos that follow are accompanied by annotations, sometimes understated, sometimes bitterly ironic, and contrast nationalist propaganda with the appalling reality of the conflict. Friedrich’s work is a condemnation of war which remains shocking and relevant to this day.

      Anthony Zurbrugg, editor of ‘Not Our War: Writings against the First World War’ (Merlin Press, 2014), will introduce his new book. This anthology presents the diverse voices of men and women who questioned and opposed the war: liberals, radicals and pacifists, anarchists and socialists, soldiers and non-combatants.

       They asked critical questions: Was this a war for civilization? What were the forces behind the war? How might it have been prevented? The work features the writings of James Connolly, Eugene Debs, Emma Goldman, Keir Hardie, Jean Jaurès, Louis Lecoin, V I Lenin, John Maclean, Errico Malatesta, Sylvia Pankhurst, Siegfried Sassoon and many others.

Housmans Bookshop

5 Caledonian Road

King's Cross ,

London N1 9DX,

UK

click here for map

Tel 020 7837 4473

Fax 0870 706 6035

shop@housmans.com

THE MERLIN PRESS Ltd.

www.merlinpress.co.uk

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