The Psychology of a culture is revealed and perpetuated in how they relate to and treat their children and in how they relate to and treat the most vulnerable people within their society. Heal that and we can heal everything.
The Undemining of Peace, by a pro-War activist Lawyer (the persecutor of Julian Assange)
To Gareth Thomas, MP
Following the clearly adversarial approach of Labour and Conservatives this Wednesday last, in the UK Parliament in Westminster, London, an approach that disabled the SNP Opposition Day Motion calling for an 'immediate ceasefire in Gaza', and the 'ending of the collective punishment of the Palestinian people by the Israeli State', a reasonable motion by all standards, and then replaced it with a watered down, conditional motion that sought to avoid a 'rebellion' within the Labour Party back benches, a move that does not serve the interests of Peace, but instead protects the interests of Israeli Military State, and Keir Starmer’s clearly undemocratic leadership of the Labour Party, I write to you to, respectfully, to demand that the Labour Co-operative MPs who are genuinely active in seeking Peace and Justice step away from the Labour Party.
The same Labour Party that has repeatedly refused to hold Tony Blair et al to account for their War crimes, even when we had the evidence before us.
The country re-elected him in 2005. The country failed in it’s basic duty of care.
Since then both Labour and Conservatives have launched or supported a series of amoral Wars in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere and have ordered Military action beyond our borders, in contravention of the Laws of War.
This means, in real terms, that the Parties and Parliament are de facto War Criminal Entities that remain unindicted.
This failure has led directly to the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, in that Russia used false claims similar to the way Blair et al have done, with the real politick understanding that in practice International Law does not apply to the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council.
The obvious hypocrisy of the different stances the UK Government has taken in relation to that War and all the other wars mentioned above is now clear, and presents a constant threat to world peace and co-operation.
It is worth noting that in a world that permits and enables warfare, the co-operation required to meet the challenges of Climate Disruption is not possible.
You must understand, as a member of a co-operative, that mutual aid is an essential component of developing healthy policy and that the adversarial dynamics of the current Govt. vs Opposition run counter to the meaning of healthy governance.
With that in mind, I am calling on you to uphold Humanitarian Law and International Law and the Laws prohibiting War.
Jeremy Corbyn in 2015 indicated that he would, if he gained the position of Prime Minister, order that War Crimes Investigations be initiated.
That was the primary (unspoken) reason for the Establishments vicious slanderous attack upon him, and upon the pro-peace policies he supported.
That was driving emotional reaction behind the internal Blairite Campaign within Labour to undermine his leadership.
That Campaign succeeded, because Labour MPs and Members refused to stand up for International Law.
Blair walks free, on a healthy state pension. He is amassing a large fortune as a direct result of all of this.
That failure is unacceptable, intolerable and utterly repugnant.
Please confirm that you will move to uphold International Law, distance yourself and your Party from these abject War criminals and stand with the peaceful people of Earth in your role as a politician, as a community leader and as an official whose wages we pay.
I advise you that my future, your future and all our children’s futures would be better served were you to align with the Green Party and all other genuine progressives and work to hold the war criminals to account, be they British, Russian, Syrian, Ukrainian or Israeli, or any other.
Failure to respond positively to this request will place you in a position that history will deem adverse the the interests of the people, and of peace.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
Thank you for reading this blog.
"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."
This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.
I may be poor, I may be traumatised, suffering from cPTSD from life long trauma, I may be depressed and at times profoundly distressed, and fearful. I may be worried, and I may be obsessed with politics, power, community and permaculture.
I am not insane, and I am not a psychopath. I have had enough of the bully cult. Enough! What about you?
The entire industrial militarised competing powers dynamic is psychopathy institutionalised.
That’s got to be the first call in any discussion on these matters.
These wars are all abusive, psychopathy.
Russian invasion of Ukraine is amoral, illegal and blatantly wrong on every level.
That said, so too has been every war ever fought - and just as much so, in spite of the cant and propaganda we have been exposed to since 1945, when the victors of that horror claimed 'victory' and declared, falsely, that 'Peace had broken out' and the wars never ceased, as Adam Curtis lays out in his documentary series "The Mayfair Set'.
When one takes sides, any sides, among the bullies, it shows one does not understand the problem. Militarism for profit, for market dominance, for resource access, for ego, for dick swinging, for whatever is the problem.
The only way to stop war is to stop all militarism. There is no other way.
It's not an easy ask. It is the only way to achieve peace, globally. We seriously need to do this, not least to be in a position to be able to adapt safely to climate change (we cannot fight it, that's stupid language), to clean up pollution and to abolish poverty. All are possible. We have work to do.
If our political, economic and religious leaders and organisations will not do this, then we must select and empower new leaders and organisations who will.
We must reject all those who refuse this task.
Are you too busy?
Today, the Johnson Government sells state subsidised weapons to Israel, an Apartheid Crime Against Humanity State and to Saudi Arabia, a Religious Cult Misogyny State and a War Crime State.
Lots of countries have well developed weapons manufacturing industries, and the trade is booming, if you'll excuse the pun. Militarism defines this 'civilisation'. I call it a bully cult.
Am I wrong?
What would you call it?
Today Blair and G W Bush still walk free having murdered between 600,000 and 2 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq, having displaced more than 12 million people and destroyed civil infrastructure, again and again and again.
Assad, Putin, Cameron, May and the leaders of Qatar and Saudi Arabia all walk free having destroyed Syria and murdered circa 250,000 Syrians between them, aided by a host of violent militia whom they funded, armed and supported as 'Freedom Fighters'. None of those who have blood on their hands are innocent of war crimes.
This is all insanity, dangerous, lethal craziness. It's entirely irrational and inhumane bullshit.
The second call is how do we de-escalate towards peace?
The answer is rather obvious: remove oligarchy - the wealth extractor class - from all civil and legal governance systems and put workers and parents in charge instead.
War is a business model, as Andrew Cockburn describes in his book.
The Spoils of War : Power, Profit and the American War Machine
The Global war machine can only be understood in terms of the private passions and interests of those who control it—principally a passionate interest in money.
If you really want peace, this is the work you will have to engage in. Make it more important than your mortgage, or your yearly vacations, or your pension. Make all our children's children's lives more important than any other consideration. Stop being so damn selfish and submissive.
Is that too much to ask?
Does that make you squirm? Are you uncomfortable with that thought, never mind the action it would require to make it happen?
Why?
Wars are a business model, they are 100% avoidable. They are chosen by evil people and good decent people get harmed by them.
No-one in NATO has a genuine interest in peace or detente.
It is a war alliance. It’s always been a warring states alliance. It’s been aimed at Russia since it’s formation.
It has been involved in numerous combat operations, wars since it's inception. Blood and guts, destruction.
The USUK are not peaceful states run by peace loving oligarchies. Neither is Russia, nor is India, Pakistan is not a peaceful State and neither is Myanmar. Saudi Arabia is not a peaceful state, and neither is Israel.
The entire industrialised militarised competing powers dynamic is psychopathy institutionalised.
That’s the bit everyone ignores, the truth that no one dares to mention : because it is the most honest assessment it is the least popular.
Why?
Because it confronts everyone.
Because it seems too big to resolve?
Well no. As soon as a population accepts the truth of that assessment of institutionalised psychopathy, the next steps are obvious.
Back in 2020, United Nations General Assembly demanded a global ceasefire.
It was proposed by the GA and supported in the Security Council by China and Russia, in the context of dealing with a global pandemic (not as a general future trending strategic policy).
USUK rejected that call tool. Both continued to support the Saudi war on Yemen.
And at the same time USUK refused to waive Vaccine Intellectual Property Rights as both encouraged spread of the virus in their respective countries 'to protect civil liberties' and 'the economy' - result 1.2 million fatalities, 3 million cases of long Covid, economic damage to small businesses and self employed, increased poverty for unemployed.
All war is wrong, and all war makers are wrong.
When we pick a side in war, we become part of the wrongness.
War is a culture and a business model - no war has ever been fought for justice, peace, freedom or kindness towards vulnerable people. Wars are fought for booty, political dominance, access to treasure, population control.
Violence wrapped in Flags is populist patriotic poison.
All wars are wars of the Wealth Extraction Class and they are always wars against the interests of working people, parents and children alike.
Why have we, the workers of the world, failed completely to stop our oligarchs from waging wars?
Are we ready yet to answer that question honestly enough to be able to drive a change in our psychological, political and economic behaviour, a change that would prevent further war making?
Because unless we do that, climate adaptation is not going to happen.
That’s a fact.
In each country, we must remove the military industrial complex and the wealth extraction oligarchy placemen and women from all positions of power.
That’s the task. Refuse to elect them, then regulate them out of existence. It's called healthy politics. No need for violence, and there is a great need for clarity, evidence based political organisation, demonstrable honesty, verified integrity and a robust determination to leave a nurturant and peaceful society for our children and their children in perpetuity. We can gift this to the future if we so choose.
I think of Healthy Governance as being focused on the practical realities of administering a communities shared resources for the equal benefit of all members of that community.
Healthy governance sets the context of governance as operating within as a shared responsibility of duty of care for one another. In that regards healthy governance has to be evidence led at all times. Opinion and belief are insufficient to meet the responsibility of duty of care.
Healthy governance sets the global context of governance as nurturing, caring for and stewarding of the habitat within which the community lives and from which that community draws living materials and other resources.
In the case of States, and in relation to healthy Governance we can apply this metric of care to taxation, which is collected from all, in one way or another, by the State, and is therefore a primary community shared resource. Healthy governance will determine that that resource is deployed with wisdom and equity to nurture the whole population.
Taxation is a resource which does not belong to the Government, as a possession, but is rather a resource held in trust, to be dutifully and carefully deployed on behalf of the whole of society, and the population the Government governs for.
Part of what stops us is our fear of honesty.
Stop it. Acknowledge that the Oligarchy and the War Makers are engaged in evil behaviour. They don't have to be evil bogie men, with horns and red eyes raging with cruelty. Their behaviour, their actions and their willingness to ignore or evade the meaning of the harms caused - that's where the evil lives.
Get over it and get on with it. Be honest. Live honestly, die honestly. Speak as honestly as you can. Free Speech is a responsibility to be really truthful.
"You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe!"
Greta Thunberg September 2019
All the industrial militarised competing powers dynamic is psychopathy institutionalised.
There are no good guys. Believe it, because it is true.
WWII was not a war for workers freedom from oppression: it was a competing empires war.
At that time none of the so-called democratic states were anywhere near genuine grass roots democracy or healthy governance. If WWII was about freedom, then why did US and UK and others destabilise so many African and South American states seeking non aligned independence and a fair price for their resources, fair wages for their workers?
Exactly. Psychopathy and Wealth Extraction.
Why did USUK declare Russia and China as enemies within a year of the end of WWII, when both Russia and China took massive casualties and deaths in fighting Nazi Germany invasion and Imperial Japanese invasion?
Why did they declare these war time allies as enemies, having dropped two atomic bombs on civilian cities?
Why then did Russia and China seek to gain Nuclear Weapons? Why did they reject the work of Peace?
Here's a clue: they were all profoundly traumatised due to the wars they had been waging since turn of the century. They were ruled by militarised Governments.
World War 2 was another Imperial War, flowing effortlessly from World War I, which itself flowed from the Scramble for Africa.
And so it goes, has gone, is still going.
All Wars are Imperial Wars.
No war is an isolated event.
These wars are part of a culture of States run by Wealth Extraction (pretending to be democratic, or socialist, or communist) competing for dominance, and in every war, the working people are the ones who pay the price.
Taking sides, especially when we, as workers, live in a Warring State, take sides is falling into the trap of participating in, and becoming complicit, whilst thinking we too are 'struggling for freedom'. That's insanity.
These wars are all part of the oppression culture. The Bully Cult.
As long as we workers take sides we are embroiled and entrapped.
If we don't call it out, we perpetuate it.
The militarised industrial competing powers thing is psychopathy institutionalised.
Trying to see with sides 'point of view' obscures that acknowledgement.
Taking either side of two bullies is co-dependent insanity. Trying to see both sides of view has, in some case some merit, yet ultimately, with regards to USUK/Russia it's missing the truth of the shituation we are faced with. The two powers are part of a bully cult. The bully cult is the problem we need to address in order to get to where we can prevent the powers from causing so much harm.
Without that acknowledgement up front, we are trapped within a malign co-dependency.
I've been getting ever more irritated with centrist, leftist and rightist cant on radio, in the press, on TV etc about Putin, NATO, this side, that side etc for a few weeks now... and it's this nugget that is the key to my frustration - no one in the media is saying it's all psychopathic insanity.
That point of view is completely blotted out.
That frustrates me hugely.
I've had enough. What about you?
Here's my baseline...
I know I am fully evolved to be a caring, loving, creative, intelligent, warm, empathic, capable and robust humane being ready and willing to co-operate to nurture my community and be nurtured in turn. I know I do not need to evolve to resolve the problems we face.
Humanity does not need to evolve.
What we need is to resolve the problem of the Dominator Culture, the bully cult as I like to call it.
A problem fully understood is half way towards resolution - a problem incompletely understood is insoluble.
I hope this article in some small way adds to the work of many, many superb, creative, thoughtful, studious, warm hearted and intelligent people developing the clarity and understanding that leads to a resolution - a resolution is much better than a revolution, revolutions tend to be rotations on a fixed point, thus far they have merely replaced on set of bullies with another.
We need to move on.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
Thank you for reading this blog.
"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."
This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.
First off this 7 minute video by Joe Glenton on the realities of war is essential viewing. I'd go as far as saying watch this video, then there's no need to read my polemic or listen to my songs about war.
~
I still cannot get my head and heart around the idea that USUK and other NATO armies have Christian chaplains and other religious pastoral officers embedded in their ranks. For me critical thinking is grounded in empathy. But that is one dynamic my empathy cannot reach. A spirituality that blesses organised violence makes no sense to me. Other than it presents the psychology of dominator cults as rather cruel, callous and manipulative. The concept of God as an absolute hierarch is a mirror image, a projection of the bully culture.
So yeah, I can understand that and I can also really feel for everyone affected and afflicted by the horrific Twin Towers violent mass murder terror horror. I really do. Utter horror, an atrocity beyond belief. Deliberate cruelty.
I was never one to say "America got blowback, got a bit of what it dished out, fair enough!" That's just the most venal, unthinking, heartless and debased way of framing that event. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
I know a little about trauma, and how it afflicts one after the events, how it can linger and contaminate one's life ever after. For some the impact is worse than for others, because we are all different. Comparisons are less than useful unless they are attended to with great empathy.
I can kind of imagine the pain, terror, grief, hatred, confusion, despair, loss, of anyone in the many situations that morning, in offices, stairwells, clambering for safety, having to walk over dead bodies, fleeing for safety without really knowing what was going on... by thinking of all the times I felt terror, trauma, fear of death, horror, disgust and grief and multiply all that, and make it head spinningly fast, turn my world upside down so I don't know what hit me until it's well over and the dust has settled feeling, the first quietness, that stillness when the grief really strikes.
I can kind of imagine being on the streets seeing this happening, not knowing, making decisions to flee, or be rooted to the spot, to experience terror and horror and fear and outrage as a witness a mile away, two miles way, 100, 10,000 miles way, as it was then broadcast as a happening event.
Luck, accident of birth
I realise I am a very lucky human being to have been born where I was away from all that - it is a matter of luck and luck alone to be have been born in London, Paris, Rome, Moscow, Bejing, New York, or Baghdad, Gaza, Hanoi, Seoul, or born in Algeria, Libya, Yemen, Myanmar, or to find oneself as an indigenous peasant in South America being attacked by militarised police waging war against drugs, or to be civilian in any one of any number of wars, or a bystander or a target in any number of mass shootings, or caught up in riots and crackdowns.
I have missed so much trouble by luck more than by effort on my part. A little humility goes a long way towards a more realistic view of our culture.
I have my story, it's a minor tragedy in comparison. You have yours. Mine seems big to me, impacts me daily, and yet I see that it is only that big because I am close to my own trauma, and obviously it seems so impactful.
So many people are made to suffer through no fault of their own, by this dominator cult we call 'civilisation' - hierarchies of wealth, power and violence.
Propaganda, lies and The War Against Terror.
"Everybody’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s a really easy way; stop participating in it." Noam Chomsky
So when the propaganda vomits over the air waves and the light tubes this weekend, as they deny the War Crimes of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and so many others from Vietnam to Troy, from Agincourt to Trafalgar, from Pearl Harbour to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, from Gaza to Aleppo, from Sudan to Mali, I resist by reminding myself that war is the result of the behaviour of the leading bullies of the bully cult, Such behaviour is not an innate or inherent part of being human, it is a dirty, ugly, sick, depraved way of dominating for the sake of dominating..
I reject all fatalism about war's inevitability.
I have written anti-war, pro-peace, love songs for a nurturant culture for all of my working musicial life, and will continue to do so until I pass on or the wars stop - it's more likely the former, than the latter, yet my hope springs from the unfinished nature of life itself.
War is not inevitable. Dominator Cult is not inevitable.
Two score songs and more.
I have a reverbnation account that allows me to present MP3 files of my songs, for listening and for downloading, all for free and there's more than 50 there. The first six are arranged as my proPeace songs written in response/reaction to 9/11.
Below are descriptions of each song, why I wrote it, what the context was for each. Folk music is story telling.
Play them at least once this weekend, for me, for you, for your friends, for your children and for all their friends. Play them for the Afghani women and children, play them for the Yemeni people, the Libyans, The Iraqis, the New Yorkers, the people of Idlib, the people in Nablus and Hebron, play them the desperate people, the families with small children, trekking across strange lands, to get into in small dangerous boats to cross wide choppy waters just to find degrees of safety from wars our governments and oligarchy and businesses export for profit.
Play them to make sounds that are pro-peace, that are less anti-war than they are for peace.
I will be doing a few live stream shows this weekend, from my Facebook Page and I will record them and put them up on youtube.
The theme will be this : Peace is more than the absence of war. Why can't we have Governments that avoid avoidable harms to human beings, to our shared environment, to the species that live with us? Is peace too much to ask for?
1. TOWERS: September 2001
This song was written the week after the awful 9/11 terror attacks in USA. This recording was taken at a Virtually Acoustic Club night, in Angel, London, first week in October, with additional layers added later on that month. I had been writing letters, sending emails and even spoke on LBC Radio phone in to John Gaunt, all to articulate my desire for honesty, healing, maturity and to urge the US and UK refrain from further violence, warning that it would only make matters worse globally.
I understood the pain, the trauma, the anger - on all sides.
This song was my way of bringing that compassion to life in a song. It's not that I was 'right'. I was and remains that warfare is an abomination, is an irrational, reckless chaotic way to do foreign policy. Hierarchies of violence are toxic.
2. WE ARE GOING TO WAR : November 2002
A youtuber account known as Edensounds, a purveyor of fine music, of selected tunes and mixes, well known in certain communities associated with electronic music dance events in London, (a stalwart of the DJ craft long before the acronym EDM was ever coined), made a video of the song, listing English/British Combat Deployments since 1900, noting that there was only 1 year where British troops did not engage in combat, in the 110 years between 1900 and 2010 when he made the video.
Professional violence at the behest of the English parliamentarians has a long tradition, indeed. Ever since the New Model Army, and before. None of it is honourable. The two world wars erupted because the prevailing culture was a culture of violent Empire. Every war since then has emerged from the same dynamic. In that context no-one fights for ordinary people's freedoms - wars are fought to preserve violent hierarchies. That is why they fight.
This song was written in November 2002, while I was living in an art collective squat in North West London, Kensal Rise.
What was this new war for? Was the outcome assured? Had we not already seen failure of War policy in Afghanistan? The Helmandi had not forgotten. Blair blatantly did not take heed of history.
3. WAR TAX : December 2003
This song was written in late 2003, and produced in 2004, in response to the battle of Fallujah that March, This track was the first I produced in my first real home of my own, in London, after 6 years of homelessness after my flat was destroyed in a fire in 1997.
The tax bill to pay for war means all that cash and effort is not being directed into nurturing healthy communities, abolishing poverty, making life better for ordinary people.
Witnessing the appalling invasion of Iraq, in which it was already clear that it had brought, at great expense, chaos, blood, gore and horror to the people of Iraq and vast profits to Corporate America, I was really furious, and also terribly sad. I also safe in a new rented social housing home of my own after a long time of homelessness, and I was imagining the unfortunate, innocent people of Iraq, so many displaced, surviving in camps, homeless due to the violence of USUK.
How lucky am I to live here, and not there, I would tell myself every morning, as I ate breakfast and took in the news.
4. DARK DESERT HIGHWAY. September 2003
A rewrite of Hotel California inspired, if that's the right word, by the images of US Military convoys on darkened desert roads heading towards Baghdad.
5. DEPLETED URANIUM BABIES May 2001
Inspired by Brian Haw's protest outside the Houses of Parliament in London. There were an inordinate or excessive degree of birth deformities post Gulf War I, across areas of Iraq exposed to aerial bombing with DU munitions.
Depleted Uranium munitions have been in use since the 1990s, in Iraq, The Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq II, Libya, Syria and elsewhere by US and NATO forces.. Arguments rage about the health impacts to troops and civilian populations exposed to DU. Typically exposure occurs within a war, where there exist multiple potential contaminants and stressors and not enough research has been diligently pursued to give definitive answers. The precautionary principle ought at the very least led to an examination of toxic effects before such munitions were ever deployed. No such examination was undertaken.
6. THUNDER RUN July 2003
Written after I read reports about an armoured 'charge' of US Military Battle group into Baghdad, The Thunder Run, which apparently involved competition between battlefield commanders for the glory of being the first to 'conquer' Baghdad. As the column was travelling through urban areas, they shot the shit out anything that moved or appeared in front, to the sides.... thousands of innocent civilians and their homes were raked with live rounds..
Then a year later it was being discusse in heroic, glowing terms as a suitable subject for a Hollywood movie.
7. ALL WAR IS CHILD ABUSE December 2018
My response to the odious 'celebrations' of the 'Victory' claimed by British Empire in November 1918. Nobody wins in war, apart from the war supplies industries. I wrote this song that summer, and blogged it in November 2019, with a more detailed piece exploring all the ways in which warfare is related to child abuse, from training young boys to become killers, to towns and cities destroyed, from comics and propaganda to toy soldiers and war movies.
I understood long, long ago that vast quantities of money that could have been used for social benefit was being wasted, and grifted into the bank accounts of already obscenely rich oligarchs.
We had known that environmental degradation, air pollution, climate change and poverty were becoming immense problems that really needed to be addressed. But no.
"We are going to war, so PAY your taxes to guarantee our borrowings for this war!"
Afghanistan 2021 - USUK end the 20 year war, but deny it's harms.
In truth, nobody ever wins war. Everyone exposed to it loses, apart from the weapons suppliers and other material production logistics essential to the prosecution of any war.
Now, in August 2021, as the disastrous, pointless USUK and NATO war in Afghanistan is supposedly coming to an end and we witness yet again the reckless nature of the Governments involved. As it happens White Christian English Europeans have been importing war into Afghanistan for close on 200 years.
Given the most recent utter folly exposed in the awful, bungled, stupefyingly callous mismanagement of the 'withdrawal' of USUK/NATO Military forces (even as they still hold the threat of air warfare over the incoming Taliban as a future 'bargaining chip)' it should be blatantly obvious that the entire premise of imposing Democracy at the point of a gun is just a banal evil.
Biden, Trump, Obama, Bush, Johnson, May, Cameron, Brown and Blair and their Cabinets are all War Mongering Hierarchs to the core. Watching the English Parliament discuss Afghanistan last week was sickening. Repeated claims that the mission was honourable defy all notions of honesty. These people are utter hypocrites. They do not represent ordinary, decent people and their dishonesty is repugnant, makes a mockery of the very idea of a healthy and honest democracy.
Refusing to acknowledge that their war mongering allows evil behaviour to prevail, collecting a wage from the tax payers.
Clive Lewis
Here's an honest interview with MP Clive Lewis, who was in the Territorials, a Reserve of the British Army, and who is a combat veteran of Afghanistan, where he did one three month tour of duty.
One three month tour of duty, among men who had to do, who were ordered to do many, many more. I feel for the terrible burden those troops have to bear, to know they were placed where they had to kill or be killed, to endure loss, pain, woundings and grief and rage, and it turns out to have been a failure, because it was wholly illegitimate, even as they fought in good faith.
He speaks openly and honestly, informed by that experience and a wider understanding of the issues evolved since then. The theme was Afghanistan and his exclusion from being asked to speak in the House of Commons.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
Thank you for reading this blog.
"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."
This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.
“How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political power to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century.” ~ Aneurin Bevan
One way of understanding history is to seek out the stories of those most harmed by the attitudes, behaviour and actions of those who hold and exercise the most social material power. The lives of the most vulnerable are historically more meaningful in that they reveal so much about the attitudes of the powerful. It is often the case that those who exercise power in abusive ways seek to obscure, bury or otherwise silence the stories of those most harmed by that exercise.
Judith Herman faced that in her work as a Trauma specialist, meeting men and women exposed to extreme violence in the 1960s onwards, ranging from domestic abuse to political terrorism.
"I argued then that the study of psychological trauma
is an inherently political enterprise because it calls attention to the experience of
oppressed people.
I predicted that our field would continue to be beset by controversy,
no matter how solid its empirical foundation, because the same historical forces that in
the past have consigned major discoveries to oblivion continue to operate in the world.
I argued, finally, that only an ongoing connection with a global political movement for
human rights could ultimately sustain our ability to speak about unspeakable things." ~ Judith Herman in Trauma and Recovery
The narrative of historical celebrity is by definition and intent a serial hagiography.
Undue reverence to those who officiate the violent hierarchies rides roughshod over compassion, empathy and genuine concern for the lived experience - the lives of those who endure the worst outcomes of the decisions of the powerful who benefit most from the hierarchy systems are more footnote than headline.
I want to make it very, very clear that I do not hold either of these Queens personally liable, culpable or responsible for any of the harms caused by the English Establishment during their tenures as Queen -as the Crown in person - they are persons trapped by birth and circumstance more than anything else. The accident of birth is as it is. This is in part about the Monarchy as a device exploited by the Establishment which dates back to The Restoration.
Who are the culpable parties?
The Establishment are the Oligarchy. The descendants and inheritors of the Barons, The Merchants, the Colonists and the Industrialists. The Holders of the Assets of the Empire.
Since 1948, and the end of WWII, and the emergence of the Social Welfare State, the English Government has participated in a range of actions that have caused immense harm to entire populations, actions that were entirely avoidable and yet deliberately chosen.
The Queen ascended to the Throne in the midst of all of this, on February 6th 1952.
Aden was abandoned in 1967. One could go back earlier in the historical record and include the Colonial abuses across Africa, India and elsewhere in the 19th Century. Apartheid in South Africa from 1948 onwards was wholly supported by the English Establishment. The brutal suppression of Mau Mau political activism in Kenya in the 1950s.
"Historian Mark Curtis, who estimates that the number of deaths in the post-war world for which Britain bears ‘significant responsibility’ is at around ten million (erring on the side of caution, as he stresses).
Taking into account such atrocities as the wars in Malaya (1948-1960) and Kenya (1952-1960),Indonesian atrocities (both during the 1965 coup and in East Timor from 1975), the Shah in Iran (1953-1979), the Falklands War (1982), support for US aggression in Central America (1980s),Apartheid in South Africa, other proxy wars in Africa, Military action in Sierra Leone, the bombing of Yugoslavia (1999) and Afghanistan (2001), and the invasion of Iraq (2003) not to mention the support for the Israeli conquest and occupation of Palestinian lands.
Of these ten million deaths, Britain has ‘direct responsibility’ for between four and six million:‘ Often, the policies responsible are unknown to the public and remain unresearched by journalists and academics’ (the friendly historian Dominic Sandbrook can still claim with a straight face in 2010 that ‘Britain’s empire stands out as a beacon of tolerance, decency and the rule of law … Nor did Britain countenance anything like the dreadful tortures committed in French Algeria’).
Curtis adds in Unpeople that ‘humanitarian concerns do not figure at all in the rationale behind British foreign policy,’ and are occasionally evoked purely for ‘public-relations purposes.’"
Northern Ireland, 1968, where the oppression of civil rights marches degenerated into a faux Civil War in which the English State colluded with violent militia, that lasted for 30 years.
The destruction of the Trade Union movement, during the 1970s, and the offshoring of the bulk of English manufacturing jobs to gouge greater profits through production with cheap labour, which devastated communities in Wales, the midlands and the North, deliberately impoverishing millions of British citizens. Deprivation visited upon millions of English citizens by the English Establishment.
The Thatcher Government provided ample support to Iraq in the Iraq-Iran War, 1980 - 1988. That support certainly prolonged that war. That support is implicated in the death toll of that war.
The Gulf War, in 1991 to repel the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait (itself a miscalculation by the US Ally, Hussein) and the decade of bombing with Depleted Uranium munitions, in order to maintain a 'no fly zone', which when combined with the destruction of civil infrastructure and the embargo of foods and medicines imposed by the US and UK let to the early deaths of 500,000 children.
The Invasion of Afghanistan, in 2002 and all that ensued - 157,000 violent deaths, more maimings, displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, more trauma and poverty.
The Invasion of Iraq, 2003 and all that followed as a consequence - 600,000 deaths, more maimings, displacement of millions of people, more trauma and poverty. This also increased terrorism across the Middle East, North Africa, the EU and USA.
2006 was the year that the Labour Government introduced the Work Capability Assessment, presented as a way to 'help disabled people into work'. The assessment regime was imported from USA, where it had been designed by a Health Insurance Corporation to downgrade claims for Disability, in order to make more profits. Disabled claimants subjected to that Corporation's regime had been awarded hundreds of millions of dollars by courts. Nonetheless, Labour proceeded to implement this atrocious system.
"The former DWP Chief Medical Officer, Mansel Aylward, moved from the DWP in 2005 to the then named UnumProvident Centre for Psychosocial and Disability Research at Cardiff University, with funding by the American corporate giant who sponsored the new research centre with £1.6 million.
Together with Gordon Waddell, Aylward produced discredited ‘policy based’ research4in the 2005 DWP commissioned report:The Scientific and Conceptual Basis of Incapacity Benefits5which supported the DWP’s planned course of action to demolish the welfare state.
DWP Ministers insisted that they were helping chronically sick and disabled people to take responsibility for their own financial future by searching for employment. In reality, various reforms to social welfare policies allowed preventable harm by the State to creep into disabled people’s lives.
The flawed Waddell and Aylward biopsychosocial (BPS) model of assessment1 was used by the DWP to justify the use of the WCA, and the excessive use of sanctions against ESA claimants are known to cause identified preventable harm, including starvation, for those least able to protest."
Estimated excess deaths in the population of disabled people during 2010 - 2020 run to 150,000. During 2020/21 60% of all COVID related deaths were deaths of disabled people. The continuing harm of this policy is a stain upon the English democratic system of Government and is a holocaust of death, distress, fear and exploitation. still under way. The English Government shows no sign of changing course. The English population appear unwilling or unable to push against this, even as disability campaigners work over time. This is tragic.
Is it that the Queen, who we are told worked every day, right up to to her passing, is the example the Establishment sets out to mask this?
Support for illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine, where we know that 263,000 Palestinian people have been displaced has been a constant, in that support for the Israeli Government by the UK Government in social material terms and in the UN remains firm, and opposes almost every politician who draws attention to these criminal actions.
Support for Israeli War actions against Gaza, causing at least 6,000 deaths of civilians, men, women and children, where due to embargos and bombing of civil infrastructure, 1 million are forced to live abject poverty, a situation that the UN deems an act of collective punishment.
Austerity, 2010 which followed on from bailing out fraudulent mortgage selling and insurance practices which caused crashes in investment banking, for which no bankers were indicted. Austerity built on lies, which led to increased poverty across England, and the excess deaths of 150,000 disabled, vulnerable and low income people. The rich were given socialism, the poor were punished.
The destruction of Libya, 2011 - 2014, a functioning Civil state, reduced to rubble, which led to it being split and controlled by competing violent militia, where the rule of Law vanished and the rule of the wat lord still thrives.
The funding of violent militia in a proxy war against the Syrian State, 2011 - 2021 which has displaced millions, destroyed cities, towns and villages, caused immense trauma and poverty, where now food shortages exacerbated by trade sanctions are creating the possibility of famine, in the midst of a global pandemic.
The military and political support for the Saudi war against Yemen, 2015 - 2021, where 5 million people are facing famine, on top of all the associated harms of war. UK sells warplanes and munitions, and the ancillary staff to operate a fleet of aircraft to bomb peasants.
And in the last year: COVID19
The deliberate mismanagement of the covid19 epidemic locally, 200,000 deaths, 1,300,000 long covid cases, massive economic damage to working folks livelihoods, massive damage to small and medium businesses, tourism, live entertainment industries.
The policy that has exacerbated the pandemic globally, via the spread of variants that emerged within the UK and were spread due to keeping borders open, airports active, for non-essential travel and the rejection of early action by a prime minister, Boris Johnson, who styled himself as the Superman, the champion on Free Trade, in a speech given in Greenwich on February 3rd 2020.
These are all actions of the English Government that have caused millions of deaths, millions of people have been forced to flee, to be 'displaced', millions of people have been traumatised and these actions by the English Government have increased poverty and inequity across all nations afflicted.
At the same time, the English Establishment has increased it's global wealth and increased it's own power.
Late Elizabethan Holocausts.
I didn't mention Brexit, because, as of this moment it is not clear that it will cause death and mayhem at anything like the scale all these other actions have caused. But there is no doubt that it will. Brexit is, among other things, a move against collective effort and evidence based climate disruption policy to protect populations, build in resilience, shift from fossil fuel usage
People cry that the Conservatives are most foul.
That is only partially true.. It's not just the Conservative and Unionist Party, the rot is much, much wider than that. Even within Labour there is a faction that opposes taking any meaningful action on the issues laid out above. Because they are culpable. Their war against Jeremy Corbyn laid bare the realities, and even still there are a sizable group of Labour voters who bought the lies, and are still, even as the Forde Report was released, holding firm to opposition to corrective action.
The English speaking global Oligarchy Establishment is dominant in all political parties in England, America, Australia and Canada - and they are a venal, brutish clan short on humanity, long on greed and focused always on fulfilling their desire for more power, and more wealth extraction and accumulation.
Brexit was their operation to 'take back control' from a humanist Europe that is starting to regulate extractive industries, off shore banking, tax evasion, air and water pollution, environmental degradation and other abusive industrial practices that are the source of the wealth of the Global English speaking Establishment.
That is a large part of why Scotland is seeking independence.
Boris Johnson's veil slipped when he claimed yesterday that “The reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism, because of greed my friends.”
He is of course, totally wrong. The Vaccine success is entirely down to public funding, open and transparent sharing of information by research and academia, across borders, supported internationally as a medical necessity.
This resonates with his speech in Greenwich, February 3rd 2020 which I detail in a recent blog posting.
He posed himself as 'Superman' - he who will not flinch or panic, who will not undertake 'action that goes beyond what is medically rational' like others do, who will preserve open borders to facilitate trade. Except that was a deceit. Goods do not carry the virus, passenger travel carries the virus. He deliberately kept open borders without quarantine and therefore guaranteed spread of variants to and from the UK, even though experts warned of the dangers in this. He lied.
Crony Capitalism
The gaming of the epidemic as an exercise in profit gouging - £37 billion budget for a process to suppress transmission of the virus that is designed to fail at every turn, whilst pretending to help. £57 billion wasted on contracts for PPE and other healthcare equipment, which ignored existing suppliers within the UK and handed contracts to small companies with no prior experience - creating hundreds of newly minted millionaires who raked off commissions at average 10%. The filler accounting of the abuses of power are greater than the scope of this article.
This is Capitalism as a bullying dynamic, where the powerful exploit emerging vulnerabilities across a population and cause harm to that population whilst gaslighting that population through public briefing, news media co-ordination and online political conspiracy theory grooming dominance.
Taking Back Control
The English people need to seek independence from this Establishment, to save further lives and prevent further harms - indeed, the English people needed to do that back in 2003, when it was obvious that a War of Aggression was being initiated and prosecuted using tax payers funds. When the English grass roots failed to indict Tony Blair, a proven liar and War criminal, they opened the flood gates to where we are today.
Queen Elizabeth is on the Throne, binding the nation. She is a person trapped by birth circumstances. None of this is her fault. Her position is exploited by the English Establishment. Flags are waved, and people die.
Late Elizabethan Holocausts.
Now you know why.
God Save the Queen from this odious Establishment of NeoLiberal Robber Barons!
Arrest them all for malfeasance and corporate manslaughter.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."
Thank you for reading this blog.
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Why when people are bullying in a racist way, we call them racists, rather than bullies, and then spend hours arguing about race and not talking any sense about bullying, let alone doing anything effective to reduce either?
Why when people are bullying in a sexist way, we call them misgynists, rather than bullies, and then spend hours arguing about misogyny and not talking any sense about bullying, let alone doing anything effective to reduce either?
Why when people are bullying in a Statist way, we call them Leaders and Dictators, rather than bullies, and then spend hours arguing about State vs The Rest, and not talking any sense about bullying, let alone doing anything effective to reduce either?
The obvious is being avoided.
This is of course understandable, almost natural in that deliberate social conditioning is a working strategic arm of those who seek to rule over others. People must be 'tamed', must be taught what to think and dissent is permnissable only so far as it does not threaten the status quo.
When people discuss the current Tommy Robinson story, they take sides, and talk about those sides, yet miss the opportunity to talk about child abuse and abuse of power as elements of a same social psychological and structural dynamic.
Going nowhere fast, in terms of protection, prevention and policing. Games we play.
What games do we have that reflect healthy egalitarian bio-social behaviours? The way nature and biology works.
What games do we have the reflect hierarchical competing powers, and the values of such a system?
Bullying and The State.
Irelands youth have delcared their wisdom. They have repealed an ammendment of the Irish Constitution made in 1983 that criminalised Abortion. Whilst it was well known that child abuse within institutional care settiungs was widespread, common and harmful.
A wider view of the issues drew this as a reflection :
"If a) we lived in a truly egalitarian society where b) education on sexuality, relationships, parenting and power was evidence based, where sexuality was centered on pleasure, autonomy, intimacy, connection, equality and soul-meeting, be it casual or life long, and where b) religious or ideological indoctrination was banned because it's a psyche invasive process, then we'd be having a different conversation.
But we're not.
Because we are living in an immature, stressed, selfish, competitive society. A society built on Patriarchy and Violence. Sanctified by Religion run by cold, cynical men of power.
Conquest and Sexuality are mutually exclusive.
Put that in pipe, smoke it.
And yeah, it's the woman's choice. Hers alone.
Shared if she has community and family who understand, who will not judge her, who will care for her, whatever.
Catholics can assume the ban on Abortion themselves, as a personal spiritual committment.
They cannot assume any right to legislate to impose that belief on others, they can choose that it's something they'd apply to themselves - if a Catholic woman falls pregnant, then she must follow her belief, but she cannot impose that on any ohter woman.
The right to abortion does not impose abortion on anyone.
And the Christians should still stand as Jesus would have, to support the woman, to nurture her.
Because that's what Jesus would have done. They call themselves Christians but ignore His words in favour of the old testament, which is closer to a manual on counter-insurgency that a spiritual text.
Basic common sense.
Religion has no claim to civil legislation, policy or governance because it is not evidence based.
Good for you, the Irish youth and progressive adults. Good for you.
The 21st Century will be yours to nurture."
The value of life, and it's meaning...
The value of each life is in the persons experience of a life of love, respect and nurture as a social species human person, and in how they nurture the world they inhabit.
What has no genuine value are instutionalised toxic mimes of 'growth', 'spirit' or 'community' co-opted to concentrate wealth and power. Zionism claims a spiritual, biblical root.
Zionism is purely a political device, void of any genuine spirituality, let alone being of any use, to anyone.
That said, Fact: Israeli Government is carrying out war crimes, and deliberately harming a vulnerable, trapped population of people it has displaced.
Fact: Hamas has waged guerilla terrorism against Israeli citizens and Israeli military. Hamas was funded by the Israeli State to rule Gaza and force a split between them and Fatah andf the PLO. Better gangsters and thugs Govern Gaza than ordinary folk on a civil and human rights tip.
Fact: The British State committed a War Crime, waging an invasion and occupation of Iraq.. Libya was a war crime, outsourced.
Fact: many states and militia are guilty. They all have their reasons. All their reasons are excuses.
People are being harmed, deliberately.
Who cares what the harmers justifications?
They must stop harming people.
That's it.
It is that simple.
All the debates I observe across society do, is push that painful truth away.... the reasons for harm causation cited by various actors are complicated only because they are untruthful, they do not admit all the evidence.
Before peace, stop violence. Before talks, stop violence.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
"Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe"
Thank you for reading this blog. All we need to do is be really honest, responsive to the evidence we find,and ready to reassess when new evidence emerges. The rest is easy.
