Fight Club? Militarism is a pox upon the Earth.

Mairead Corrigan did more for freedom from oppression in 25 years than the IRA did in it's entire history.

Taking on the Bully Cult is profoundly challenging:

it’s really scary for anyone to look and see what is there, without blinkers, on a number of levels:

- the horror (full realisation)

- the grief (loss of innocence)

- the fear (personally at risk)

- the impact of knowing means one must take action (response ability)

- loneliness (because we are so atomised culturally)

- the selfish rage (why me?)

- the despair (this is hopeless)

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. 

‘Glory to Ukraine’: Civilians take up weapons in the battle for Kyiv screams the Daily Telegraph in England
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. 

Reporters from a wide range of international News Services, wearing helmets and flak jackets, talking to Ukrainians, sticking microphones into their faces, asking them if they will pick up weapons and fight gives me the chills.

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?"
And what is the result of untrained citizens taking up weapons?
How much more bloodshed is caused?
Who pours money and weapons and logistics into wars to extend them?

Who profiteers?
We are going to war, pay your taxes!

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.
Source material: http://www.britains-smallwars.com

Who loses, and what do they lose?
Nobody wins a war, people survive, mostly due to luck.

And what is life like for the survivors?
And why is militarism still a thing in the 21st Century?
And is it so amongst ordinary citizens who really ought to know better partly because war movies are carefully presented as entertaining, beguiling lies that glorify 'good' violence, that mix extreme violence with sex and love and patriotism, and manipulative emotional hook lines, but leave out the stench of death, the smells of piss, shit, puke, blood, decaying gore, gunpowder and old burned out buildings?

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.
What do we all lose, in every war?
What have we ever gained?
Russia is not Putin, and Putin is not working on his own. Neither is England Blair, and Blair was not working on his own. Neither is Assad Syria, nor was he working on his own. America is not George Bush and Dick Cheny, and they were not working on their own.
From the safety of these islands, the British Empire wrought war, harm and vengeance across this beautiful Earth in pursuit of Wealth Extraction.
Are we not sick of this?
I am. I am appalled. 
Russian warfare against Ukraine must be stopped. 
All warfare must be stopped.
Otherwise it's going to continue. 

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. 

Ira uncovers the threat to human survival posed by nuclear weapons and what we can do to eliminate this threat. Dangers of nuclear war exist as an existential threat to humanity. There's circa 15,000 Nuclear Nuclear War Heads owned by nine States.





Kindest regards

Corneilius

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