rememberance day

Celebration of “killing in the name of” day.

November 11, 2019 Incoherent ramblings , , ,

November 11th, known as “Remembrance Day” in Canada, is pretty much intolerable on social media.  We are inundated with flags and blind patriotism, pictures of veterans posing in the formations of their original invasion pictures, inane comments like “he died so I could live”, “the price for freedom” and other similar obfuscated war propaganda.

This is the day for the inhuman celebration of the killing of the unnamed enemy, forgetting that that enemy had a face.  This is a day for forgetting that the enemy was also coerced into fighting in the name of their worthless governments or country, just as the veterans of North America were.  This is a day for forgetting to do causal analysis for why the wars were fought.  This is a day for forgetting that war is actively sought for profit, and how evil political puppets of war profiteers lie their way into wars on behalf of their countries again and again, regardless of what side they are nominally on.

We’ve all been touched by the wars of the 20th centuries in many ways.  My VanaEma (grandmother) and my dad effectively lost most of their family, their homes and their heritage, and were refugees in Finland and Sweden.   Having lost his real father, my dad ended up abused and damaged by his first step father, a drunken beast who thankfully died in a fishing accident.  If there had been no world war, he would have had a home, his real father, his country and family.  Dad lived a lot of his life seeming displaced, and not fitting in.  VanaEma’s final husband was stuck mentally in his WWII experience, and talked of nothing else, reliving that trauma again and again by inflicting it on anybody around.  I think that is why my VanaEma ended up needing a hearing aid — so she could shut off her husband.  I don’t celebrate the war that led to all this trauma and displacement.

I don’t think that I personally know any North American veterans of the war, but know of three in my family circle that were made to fight on the German side of the war, all damaged mentally.  Two of those men went on to damage their family as they lived out their PTSD, initiating a cycle of abuse that still has an impact today.  The thing that we should remember is not the valor and the glory of war, but the evil of war.  This should not be a day of triumph and celebration of victory over the enemy, or flag waving, or the mindless propagation of the fable of the “Good war”.  We should remember that we had two times in the last century where millions of people fell for the propaganda and coercive conscription imposed by their governments that had them fight and die for wars that should never have been fought at all.

There is no good side in the mass mobilization of men for war, only death.

 

It is already time for remembrance day propaganda

September 24, 2014 Incoherent ramblings , , , ,

 

The propaganda for celebration of war, destruction, killing, and rape is already starting.  I was greeted today on facebook by the serene and smiling image of a world war II vet, along with his seemingly innocent request for “likes”

10685554_10152729206678582_3200916120344147288_n

This is probably supposed to make people feel patriotism, the worship of an artificial boundary on a map and its associated label system.  Patriotism and national pride worship are designed to ensure that no rational thought opposes the psychopathic figureheads that run our modern “democracies”.

When we see vet worship propaganda like this, you have to think about the interests that encouraged the war in the first place.  These are power brokers like the Carnegies that requested that Wilson not end the war (WWI) too soon (and who had concluded in their minutes before that there was no better institution for profits than the business of war).  These are the armaments and munitions  manufacturers.  These are the companies that built the tanks and the planes that bombed uncounted civilians in Germany and the UK.  These are the makers of weapons that use white phosphorus and depleted uranium, and the makers of cluster bombs that shred children into hamburger meat before and after they are deployed.

I would describe us as being in world war III now.  This is the series of undeclared and covert wars that the USA and NATO have waged since world war II.  This is a war that happens with our tacit approval.  This approval that is assumed because there is no widespread disapproval.  Unfortunately, so much of this modern and current war happens without our even knowing about it, that nobody thinks to object.  This war is disconnected from our immediate attention, and most of the time we don’t even realize that we are funding it.  As always, I don’t want my tax dollars, money stolen from me at the point of a gun, to be used to fund the slaughter of people in Yugoslavia or Libya or <enter your favorite target in some little known corner of the world>, but I can’t control this.  It happens again and again, and is truly disgusting.

I am happy to see that this poor fellow survived.  However, if he had fought a real war, it would have been the war against the propaganda and brainwashing that involved him in the combat that got most of his compatriots killed, and against the same combat that killed uncountable numbers of civilians and “enemies”, and against the combat that encouraged these “enemies” to do the same.

I will not be liking this picture.