Most people alive today are decent people, not prone to violence, warfare or exploitation.
Those that are, like very much to associate those characteristics as essential innate traits of our species. This is a lie, and no matter how oft repeated it remains a lie.
Militarism is a Pox upon Humanity. No question.
IF we were indeed all like that, then the current bullies would have been extinguished in an orgy of violence long ago, and an even more vicious bully cult would have emerged, and we'd all be quite delighted with it.
Nobody yet has shown any evolutionary adaptation to organised violence - PTSD is the evidence of this, and we see, repeatedly the majority of combat survivors suffer from PTSD.
One of the elements of psychological dominance is to ensure we remain exhausted and divided, insecure and incapable of building the kinds of solidarity that would enable the vast majority to hold the few bullies to account, impede them, restrain them and dismantle their systems and infrastructures of leverage violence.
In this hope is useless, determination is what really matters.
In the day to day life of the Palestinians, the Aboriginals, and so many other colonised peoples whose existence is their first resistance, we see what real determination is.
We have so much to learn and not much time to get on it.
Russian military action in Ukraine is a war crime. Blatantly. Set aside the history, the many dynamics that lead up to this shituation. The Act of Aggression is the supreme war crime, in that it includes all other possible crimes of war, for they are derived from that one act.
At the same time, as I sit here, in total safety, in London watching news reports of Western Media as reporters breathlessly, excitedly chatting shit, broadcasting 'live' from the scene, not from the battle field itself, but at a safe distance, viewing those reports gives me the chills.
Guns handed out from the back of rubbish lorries as grassroots resistance to the war started by Russia's Vladimir Putin begins.
18,000 rifles and magazines, for a city of 2,962,180 souls.
How long will those magazines last, how many of those men and women will survive their first encounter with a professional army trained in city fighting? Who thought this a good idea?
It's not glory, it is gore.
Russian forces should not be in Ukraine, they are illegal, amoral and wrong on every level. No question.
When the war arrives to that city, those reporters will quickly leave. When the long fight, the attrition continues, they will be long gone.
Reading that Ukrainian border guards are stopping all fighting age men from leaving, pulling them out of cars and groups fleeing west, towards Europe, as refugees and thinking what of their partners, their children, their grandparents, their freedom, their human rights? I think they have every right to flee, to not get involved in violence they did nothing to instigate, other than be born there. I am appalled.
Ukraine and Russia both have large contingents of conscripts already. That is a most fundamental breach of Human Rights. Israel has a similar mandatory service policy. Conscription is inhumane, and a pox upon the people.
A question?
I ask myself - would this breathless reporting and questioning, this encouragement of citizens to take up arms in news reports have been happening in Afghanistan, in 2002, or in Iraq, 2003, or in Yemen, 2011, or in Libya, 2019 or in Syria, 2012 where sovereign states were being attacked by foreign militia, foreign mechanised military and foreign air forces? Would the worlds media have been so excitedly egging those citizens on?
Imagine a BBC reporter asking an Iraqi citizen in March 2003 - "Hamed, habibi, will you and your sons be taking up weapons to defend your country?"
Since 1900, there has only been a single year without a British operational military casualty. This is a chronology of Britain's military interventions since 1945. Know your enemy. They may be closer than you think.
Who loses, and what do they lose?
And what is life like for the survivors?
My first rule of 'Fight Club' is everyone in Fight Club is stupid - that's why they don't want to talk about it, honestly. They do like to brag about it, amongst themselves.
Militarism is a pox, a blight, an inhumane machine, a gross psychopathy institutionalised. Funded by our taxes. The very origin of income tax was to fund a war.
And of course there's the ever present threat of Nuclear War.
Ira Helfand, MD is co-President of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, recipient of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. As co-Founder and Past President of Physicians for Social Responsibility, IPPNW’s US affiliate, he knows terrible truths about nuclear war.
Corneilius
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