Showing posts with label afghanistan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label afghanistan. Show all posts

Eurovision : "Non-political, strictly neutral, doesn't matter if you're good or brutal."

Eurovision Theme Song 2025 : 
"Non-political, strictly neutral, doesn't matter if you're good or brutal."

Right. In this line, the indeed acknowledge that some of the States being represented in the contest are indeed brutal. And that that does not matter. 

The writers outed the competition, thinking they were protecting the conception. 

We all know who they are referring to as brutal, States represented in the completion, and certain States banned from the competition. The whiff of hypocrisy is pungent. Every state engaged in warfare ought to be excluded from such a peace bringing song contest. 

War does not bring peace.

War does not bring peace, we know this : not in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Congo, Sudan, Kashmir or Palestine. The end of World War II did not bring peace to Congo, Vietnam, Korea, it did not bring peace to South Africa, Cuba, South America. War never brings peace. Peace is so much more than mere ceasefires. Peace is the dismantling of militarism, the redirection of our efforts towards healthy relationships at all levels of society, the adoption of the duty of care to avoid all known avoidable harms as the core of a healthy society.

Supporting one side in a war, arming one side or both in a war does not bring peace. Paying for those arms trades through Swiss bank accounts does not bring peace. 

I do not know who wrote the lyrics or the music. Their video does not list any credits.

If I was either, the lyricist or the music writer/arranger I would not want anyone to know I had any part in it. And I would not want a single cent of the royalties. Blood money. I am a song writer and producer. Largely unknown and unremarkable. I do know my craft, and its purpose as a folk roots musician.

Here is the song, 'Made in Switzerland', written with a Latin American beat.. (cultural appropriation?)
The majority of comments on the video are familiar to those who know the bot farm linguistic turn of phrase.

Hazel Brugger and Sandra Studer sung this song, and presented the competition.


Youtube video of the song 'Made in Switzerland'



the Lyrics:

Made in Switzerland
on television every year
in Switzerland
And now you finally understand 

that like the Swiss, Eurovision 

is unpolitical - 

strictly neutral!

Doesn't matter if you're
good or brutal!
Welcome but with decency! 
and so sparks of fire
and crazy lightning make
the staging far more frightening!


The song goes on to claim Switzerland invented Democracy and other wildly self aggrandising claims.


How frightening is the crazy bombing of Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank?


It doesn't matter, because good or brutal, Eurovision welcomes you! Here's a tiktok I made on this, juxtaposing the song and a recent Palestine Solidarity March in Cork, Ireland.

@egalitarianlovesongs ‘It doesn’t matter if you’re good or brutal?’ It does. It really matters. It matters when they refuse to stand up to brutality to take a fat wage… that makes them mercenaries. This may be the most abysmal cultural appropriation ever, to take a global south riddem and abuse it to give cover for Israeli Genocide and claim their are peace makers. complicit #enabling #eurovision #cork #fyp #irishtiktok #foryoupage❤️❤️ ♬ original sound - ❤️Corneilius Crowley Musician


Lead Commercial Sponsor of Eurovision


Lead commercial sponsorship for the Eurovision is an Israeli luxury hair and beauty product manufacturer, by the name of Moroccan Oil


Moroccan Oil is made from the nut of the Argan Tree, which previously was only grown in Morocco, where for centuries it has been tended, harvested and processed by women's collectives. 


There is a mythical story which tells us that the nut was traditionally fed to goats, and the post goat nut was then processed, using a complex process, to create the Argan Oil. It is a myth, a fabrication.


One manifestation of the world’s increased interest in argan oil is the development of a kind of mythology surrounding goats climbing into argan trees to harvest the fruit.


You’ve probably seen photos of this elsewhere, and there is some truth to the matter.


Goats are fans of argan fruit—and the leaves and any other food they can find. Left to their own devices, they’ll eat whatever is on the ground. When that’s gone, they’ll happily climb into the trees to find more, bounding out onto branches that bend under their weight.


The popular myth has it that oil producers rely on the goats to “process” the fruit through their digestive tracts and that nuts collected from goat manure are easier to open.


While it’s true that gathered nuts are indeed used in production, most argan oil is produced from fruit that matures and falls from the tree on its own.


In fact, goat herders and orchard guards work hard at keeping the goats away from trees with unripened fruit to ensure they don’t consume future harvests before they’re ready.


Unfortunately, this myth has led to the practice of forcing goats into trees along major roads for the benefit of passing tourists, with the worst offenders even chaining goats to branches for days. (If you visit, steer clear.) source : Curious Story


Morocco, long proud of this unique Beauty Oil, had a ban on exporting the tree, to protect their indigenous production. An understandable precaution. 


Some years ago, in 2003 we are told, some clever Israeli's took cuttings, tress and nuts from Morocco, breaking Moroccan Law, and they created hybrids which are now grown on stolen Palestinian land, processed there and sold as Moroccan Oil. Colonial beauty. 


I made a short TikTok about this.


@egalitarianlovesongs https://innerbeautymag.com/en/2018/11/23/carmen-tal-happiness-is-a-choice/ Moroccanoil has been the Official Sponsor of Eurovision for the past 3 years, cementing both the brand's reputation as an authority in hair trends, as well as bringing a real link between fashion, music and hairdressing Mortocan Oil is an Israeli haircare brand owned by Israeli, Carmen Tal. Moroccan Oil obscures its manufacturing and origins. It poses as a moroccan brand, however its products are all manufactured in Isreal. #relatable #humanity #share ♬ original sound - Trader Barry fx

I have to admit I have long disliked the Eurovision Song Contest, on artistic grounds, as a folk musician also rooted in electronic dance music and underground arts over a 35 year 'career'. I am wholly opposed to music being used and weaponised as a political propaganda tool and a wealth extraction practice. 


Music, folk music in particular, must serve the needs of the people, must tell our stories, our trails and tribulations, our struggles, our loves, our kindnesses and our shared humanity. 


Music can and is used for many purposes: weddings, funerals, community celebrations, for joy and for grief, and importantly, folk music  has a rile to play in building humane solidarity so as to inspire and fire up the natural urge to make peace through challenging oppression, confronting the violent, dismantling their status. 


It cannot do so when harnessed to political warfaring states and their objectives.

~

'Get off your Land' (see below) is a song of mine, about the Palestinian struggle, citing the long history of Zionism as a weapon of the British Empire that replicates the Plantation of Northern Ireland by the British in the 1600s, with the same patterns emerging of a population which holds an internalised religious identity that also includes a sense of entitlement to colonised lands, an identity passed from one generation to the next, exploited by the colonial overlords, weaponising people, parents and children, with rabid justifications for extremes of violence, for centuries.  In the song I note the deployment of British Government irregular combat units, known as The Black and Tans, tasked with the oppression of civilians in reprisal for resistance to the colonial domination, from Ireland to Palestine, in 1922.


Geopolitical long term strategy.


Being Irish, and well read, I have a different understanding of this aspect of history than most British people I have met, in my 45v years of living in London, the majority of whom appear to be timidly yet proudly unwilling to admit the horrors of their own ruling class, let alone be energised to hold the English Ruling Class accountable. 


Tony Blair walks free, a very wealthy man, one who ought to be in a cell at The Hague, for his War Crimes. We have the evidence.


I wrote this song 'Get Off Your Land' in 2020, produced this version in 2021, and am appalled to see its predictions so horrendously fulfilled. I am disgusted at the British and American and German State Governments enabling of a genocide, standing as staunch duplicitous allies in the international domain, arming Israel for commercial gain. I am similarly nauseated by their deliberate fuelling of war in Ukraine. Russia's invasion is odious, illegal and amoral, that is clear. And yet the slaughter on the fields of South Eastern Ukraine is not entirely the responsibility of the Russians. World War One demonstrated the odious practice of throwing fresh troops to a well defended frontline, to murder and ben murdered in their hundreds of thousands. I fail to see the benefits to Ukrainian civil society in such wholesale slaughter. 


Here is Mitch McConnell extolling the many virtues of exacerbating the Ukraine-Russian war, in less than two minutes.

 


Mitch McConnell's honesty regards the benefits of the Ukraine War is instructive.


The Civil War that plagued the Donbas for 8 years prior was egged on by outsiders, as a means of 'weakening Russia'. Some spoke of making this 'Russia's second Afghnaistan'. Rather than de-escalate, the USUK have exacerbated that shituation, leading to today, where estimates suggest a million have murdered each other, most gruesomely, egged on by US, UK and Germany, whose arms industry dividends are bloated with tax payers cash.


So here's my song about Palestine. 'Get Off Your Lands'


All in all, the competing warring states dynamic and its patriarchy, who curate racism, misogyny, xenophobia and many other forms of bigotry in order to weaponise ordinary people against each other, is a pox upon humanity. It does matter of you are good or brutal. It matters very much.


Our children's futures are on the line.  It does matter of you're good or brutal. Genuine neutrality is a stance of non-violent resistance to violence, a direct confrontation with the bullies, with the intent to hold the bullies accountable, as part of the process of making a genuine long term peace that leads to entire populations being nurtured rather than exploited.


We must build solidarity strong enough to hold the war makers accountable, all of them, no matter which state they represent.



Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

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Peace is more than the Absence of War - Songs from 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2018

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.

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Late Elizabethan Holocausts


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.


Late Victorian Holocausts (follow the link)


Late Elizabethan Holocausts. (see below)


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.’"


source: https://www.academia.edu/11416901/Mau_Mau_The_Epic_Calm_of_State_Violence_in_Occupied_Kenya

Mark Curtis - Unpeople at the Authors website.

The Elizabethan Era - for whom the bells tolled.

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’ research4 in the 2005 DWP commissioned report: The Scientific and Conceptual Basis of Incapacity Benefits5 which 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."

This shift has caused untold harms ever since it was introduced. The UN made a series of reports that used UK data on how disabled people were being treated by UK Government, and called it a 'crime against humanity'.

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."

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