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.
All the militarists are culpable for all the war : Enough, already!
Among them there are no good guys.
We adults, every last one of us, no exception, have a first duty of care to all the children, to all of them, everywhere, in every condition. This duty of care is more important than any flag, than who rules or who governs and ought to the central foundation of good governance.
This is a collective, species level responsibility.
It is blatantly clear to me that all the militarists are culpable for all the war that has unfolded and is unfolding right in front of us. It is clear to me that taking sides within the militarists domain is foolish, and only feeds the fires of violence which consumes children, their parents, their communities, turning their lives and lands and work to ash.
Cameron, touting himself as 'tough enough', took £10 million Greensill Fraud cash.
Corbyn had, and always has had, and always will have our children's best interests in mind. Corbyn is not a militarist.
The others never have, and never will.
Militarists hate all our children. They must do.
Russia is invading Ukraine, Saudi Arabia is bombing Yemen, USA is bombing Somalia, USA embargos Cuba, USA and UK wage war in a number of places, the global weapons industry is worth trillions of dollars. Millions of people are fleeing and have fled their homes, their warm beds, their gardens, their shops and businesses.
There are people who have accused me of being a Putin propagandist, an Assad apologist, and a supporter of The Taliban, because I oppose US and UK Militarism.
There are people who have accused me of being a coward because I say enrolling civilians in organised violence aka 'resistance' does not improve matters and will not make them more free. Have they looked at any city where street by street warfare has taken place? Can they say that destruction brought freedom or peace?
It was women in Northern Ireland who brought peace and more freedom from oppression, not men with guns. In the midst of violence. Even as it was happening all around them. Men with guns make everything worse, every time.
So those who are egging on the heroics of Ukrainian men, they are all causing more violence, not less.
They are operating on belief and hubris, they are not in touch with reality at all, and they dare not call out the militarism for what it is - cruelty institutionalised for profit and power.
Neutral Ireland?
Even in my own home country, neutral Ireland, the political leadership is talking of increasing their military budget, investing in jet fights and modern war ships!
These feckers are idiots. Morons! What possible use of more military in Ireland is going to improve life for Irish people! How will more Military expenditure help with climate change adaptation, dealing with pollution, poverty, the housing crisis or any other serious human social or environmental problem we face?
Every Minister of Defence that enables taxes to be spent on military training, hardware and facilities is culpable.
Every Government that does not have an active and effective Ministry of Peace which operates as a Ministry of Prevention of Violence, Conflict Resolution and de-Escalation is failing in it's duty of care.
The competing militarised powers system is culpable, fully, for every war that ever occurs.
The competing militarised powers system is a choice, there is nothing innate, inevitable about it. It is entirely avoidable.
The competing militarised powers system is psychopathy institutionalised.
We adults have a first duty of care to all our children, even before our countries.
Not just our own children, but to all children, everywhere.
There are 6.5 million children under the age of 15 living in Ukraine, 15% of the population. In Iraq 2003-2006 1/3rd of all violent deaths were of children under the age of 15.
We adults, every last one of us, no exception, have a first duty of care to all the children, all of them, everywhere. This is a collective, species level responsibility.
I think that any adult who fails to see this is in my view, psychologically dysfunctional, and biologically immature. I think this bully cult does everything it possibly can to ensure most of us are biologically immature, at a level that poses a threat to us as a species.
There, I've said it.
Do you get me?
There's a significant sector of the adult world that is failing all our children. The War Makers and Wealth Extractors and their operatives are the most powerful among that significant cohort of the human population. Their choices impact the lives of billions of people, out of all proportion to their value, or worth.
A cooperating industrialised peoples system has always been possible.
Clean industry has always been possible. It's a matter of choice that it remains toxic.
Abolishing poverty has always been possible. It's a matter of choice that poverty persists, a choice made by the Wealth Extractor class.
Ending Racism and Misogyny has always been possible. It's a matter of choice that our schools, news media and entertainment industry fail to explain the historical origins of both of these corrosive bigotries.
The existence of all of these to the degree we see before us is a matter of choice.
The choice made by those who hold the most power is the most important choice of all as the power disparity built into hierarchy systems means that the choice of a few people has immense impact on the lives of tens, hundreds and thousands of millions of people.
Bullies in power can bully millions of people. Putin, Bush, Cameron, Johnson. Our bullies are good bullies.
This is a bully cult.
This has to be the first call in discussing Ukraine, Yemen, COVID, Climate Change, Pollution, Poverty.
Name the situation as it really is.
Call it out.
"There is no point talking about the problem, unless you talk about the solution." Betty Williams - Betty Williams was a Northern Irish Peace Activist whose work helped bring the violence there to an end. Violence is not a solution, it is always a reactionary stance. Revenge is not a solution.
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.
We adults have a first duty of care to all our children, even before our countries.
Not just our own children, but to all children, everywhere.
There are 6.5 million children under the age of 15 living in Ukraine, 15% of the population. In Iraq 2003-2006 1/3rd of all violent deaths were of children under the age of 15.
We adults, every last one of us, no exception, have a first duty of care to all the children, all of them, everywhere. This is a collective, species level responsibility.
I think that any adult who fails to see this is perhaps a little immature. There, I've said it. Do you get me? There's a significant sector of the adult world that is failing all our children. The War Makers and Wealth Extractors and their operatives.
Now is even more important a time to talk about what it will take to achieve peace, rather than escalating a war.
Which is what the Ukrainian and the Russian Governments, the EU and the News Media all appear to be doing right now. Talking up escalation. Send in more weapons, send in more fighters. No-fly zones and Nuclear Options. War, war, war! More war! Viaggro?
Insanity Reigns.
I am really, really upset. I am angry, sad, disgusted and pissed off, I detest the war makers. I know the Laws that prohibit war, I familiarised myself with them after the invasion of Iraq, in 2003, and the Russian invasion is clearly a War Crime, and therefore Russia must be opposed, no question. Russia has no case. It's a dreadful thing, that the Russians continue to advance into Ukraine. I do not know what can be do to impede that advance, and of course Ukraine has the right to defend herself, under the same legal domain that prohibits wars of aggression.
What appals me is that there are no serious level headed discussions on how to achieve Peace outside Ukraine. The talk of more war seems to me to be adding fuel to the fire.
No discussions on calling for Peace can be heard on on our News Channels, I do not hear them in our Legislatures, nor are there prayers for Peace in our Churches and Temples, or if there are such discussions and prayers then I am not aware of them.
If there are such calls, they are not getting the air time they deserve, they are not being heard on an equal footing, for 'balance'.
I know they should be happening, I wish to contribute to them. That is why I write this blog and perform my music. I want a world living without warfare, living in peace and living in a humane mutually nurturant dynamic.
However, this past week I mostly hear breathless, excited discussions about how to win wars, be it civilians with Molotov Cocktails, the numbers and types of weapons to be supplied to defend Ukraine, or the sanctions necessary to cripple the Russian aggressors economy, or the aspirations of budding foreign fighters rushing to the so called International Brigade.
What about the children?
I understand those discussions about more war, self defence, defending a smaller country, defending democracy - I get it all. And whilst I support the sanctions, of course, I know that probably the majority of Russian civilians do not support the war, and that sanctions may well have an adverse impact upon their welfare, as the sanctions are aimed at those people, to nudge them to do something about their ruling class, and so I try to keep that in mind too.
When the warmakers reduce the thing to leaders, Assad, Putin, Blair, Mao, Stalin it obscures the reality of ordinary people trapped by circumstance of birth.
Ordinary people, on all sides, always pay the price. Dresden and Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Fallujah, Homs, Allepo, Gaza.
How can we avoid or prevent that dynamic?
For that reason I oppose escalating the war, I do not want to see thousands upon thousands of civilians murdered in war, I do not want to see cities and towns destroyed and left empty save for fighters and soldiers, tanks and artillery and rotting corpses.
We adults have a first duty of care to all our children, even before our countries.
An Irishman recites a poem 'The Box' by Abercrombie Lascalles, an English Poet. Stop for a moment, and listen to this and feel the need for peace. Then read on.
My perspective, where my heart lives.
Even as war is underway, it is more important than ever to look to how we can achieve peace. Nobody 'wins' in war, some people survive, that's all that really happens, especially when we have a culture where warfare is accepted as a tool of foreign policy of 'great powers', and is also a business model.
Scilla Esleworthy is someone who understands this need, having worked in conflict zones for many decades, helping to de-escalate conflict, helping people to find routes towards achievable peace. This is a Ted Talk that Scilla presented that is absolutely on point and entirely pertinent right now.
The propaganda for more war.
During WWI, before conscription, English women were groomed to hand out White Feathers to those who openly objected to fighting in the Oligarchs war. Those objectors were the among the most honest, courageous citizens of all. Also the most sensible. Refugees who flee before the bombs destroy their homes and villages are being wise, and often it is those who can afford to flee who do. The poor tend to wait until they have no other choice. Another layer of inequity, one that is rarely discussed.
True civilian courage
The most brave thing I have seen yet is villagers out in front of a Russian Military Convoy, blocking the road, talking to the troops, urging them to turn around, to go home.
— PrayForUkraine.live | Donate Now In Crypto (@PrayforukraineC) March 1, 2022
That right there is true humane courage, a community united and at peace even in the face of an immense threat, and that is part of the start, on the ground, of working for peace, human to human. I hope they are successful, and that the convoy turns around, and leaves. I wish Levenskyy had the same grit and determination. He appears to be urging a fight without making the effort to sue for peace. Did he speak to the children of Ukraine, and is he speaking for them?
Workers on strike?
The Russian soldiers ought to go on strike, knowing their leaders have forced them into committing a war crime, and their legal duty is to resist that, to object and refuse to follow the order to commit that crime. They should be given that option.
The refusal of our political class to discuss how to achieve Peace, especially at a time of war, is venal avarice and cowardice. The apparent rejection by our news media to float a serious discussion on how to achieve Peace is cowardice.
Because they are not willing to challenge the Military Industrial Complex, the war profiteering Oligarchy, and they are not willing to confront the Fossil Fuel Industry and they are not willing to blow open the world of Epstein and sex trafficking for the Powerful. Cowards.
Obviously, the Russian invasion is a War Crime.
Invasion is An act of Aggression, which is the supreme war crime, in that it contains all other war crimes. All war crimes flow from that act of aggression.
There are a number of laws prohibiting war fare, international treaties and national legislation. The existence of these Laws is not routinely a matter of concern in out Schools and news media.
Applying the Law, equitably to achieve and sustain Peace.
Putting Putin, Blair, Bush, Cameron, Assad, the Saudi King, the Myanmar Leaders and all War Profiteers and others in the dock at The Hague is the only way to prevent further war mongering. We must hold those who initiate and prosecute war to account.
We must understand that even those defending their country will inevitably commit war crimes. Indeed, in this instance War Crimes have been committed in and around the Donbas region for the past 8 years by Ukrainians on both 'sides' of that war, as well as by Russian forces.
Are we, the working people, seriously for Peace, or are we for allowing more War?
We are all of us in this together and everything is connected. That is the nature of living on a finite planet, sharing a common biosphere.
Watching young English men react to the dominant News narrative, and seeing videos of breathless packing and viral tiktoks of their journeys to rush off to fight for Ukraine, without the skills or training, when Ukraine has a standing army of 240k, trained reserves of 220k, the 4th largest weapons export industry in Europe, and I see the impact of propaganda on all sides.
Those boys will be getting in the way of Ukrainians trying to defend their country in war fare, and they will be undermining those in Ukraine who are seeking to stop the war making, because it's quite clear they want to go to war.
No Peace. Just more grooming.
Russian invasion IS a War Crime - no question.
Ukraine has the right of self defence under current international Law - no question.
Hypocrisy undermines Peace.
That right, of self defence, is not afforded equally to everyone, is it?
That hypocrisy is part of the problem, and the hypocrisy blocks progress towards peace everywhere.
Toxic Bully Cult
The competing industrialised militarised powers dynamic is an anti-worker, anti-family, anti-children, anti-social anti-egalitarian bully cult.
The entire competing militarised industrialised powers dynamic is cruelty and psychopathy institutionalised, and it is workers taxes that fund war, and it is workers who die fighting and it is workers and their families who are obliterated as 'collateral damage'.
It is cowardice, avarice, stupidity and myopia that enrols people, pundits and writers in our News Media services, social online platforms and in our legislatures into supporting warfare - it is not bravery, it is not honour, it is most certainly not humane decency.
The weak dare not confront the Bully Culture.
It is too frightening a proposition for them, it is more comfortable to go along with the Bully Cult, take the war mongers silver, keep one's head down or take the war mongers gold and promote the war mongers vile propaganda.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
The only way for the English people, the adults in the country, to start to repair the damage of the past 20 years (and more) of war mongering by the English Establishment, the Ruling Class who direct these wars, is to indict Blair and to indict all those who prosecuted the War of Aggression against Iraq.
The lies about WMD and the grooming promise of Democracy vs the solemn oath that British Combat Troops make, which was exploited at their expense.
“How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the 20th century.” Aneurin Bevan
We need to be ruthlessly politically ethical and honest about all that flowed from that.
Ordinary people, people like you and I, and especially the low income workers, who make most of the real wealth in this world, through daily toil: every hour of our lives is equally precious. And yet the largest proportion of the wealth we generate is extracted and accumulated and used as a tool to dominate us. The poor are a permanent externalised cost of that extraction process. I think of that as a fundamental and abominable insult to the very gift of life itself.
And yes, I know. I know. That's not going to happen any time soon. The Establishment will oppose and resist that, of course they will. Criminals do not voluntarily walk into the dock. That does not change the facts - the resolution of the problem remains the same. Indict our own war criminals if we want to encourage world peace. Lead by example.
If we want Peace, then we must at least prevent war. Chucking a few war criminals into jail would be a good move in that direction. 'Just saying!'
Look at him: he is guilty, he is culpable and responsible for so much avoidable harm and he knows it. We all know it. He's not the only one. They all need to be held to account, and we all need to understand how we let this happen, collectively. How do we become so politically weak that we cannot impede our government when they are about to commit the worst possible crimes a state can commit? What does this say about the health of our polity?
"Sitting in the dock at The Hague"?
Some day, it must happen.
Peace is more than the absence of war.
How better to help the people of Afghanistan than to indict Blair, to own up to the awful crime that the English State perpetrated upon the Afghani people and to make appropriate reparations to the Afghani people for the damage our political class have inflicted upon them?
It is also, given the days we are living in, absolutely critical to understand that there is no way to generate the international co-operation necessary to meet the challenges of Climate, Environment, Racism, Misogyny and Poverty without confronting war making and bringing it to an end. That means we must account for the harms caused and make it very, very clear that we will prevent further abuses of that nature into the future. It means we must demonstrate the ability to wage justice as a co-operative action.
This task will not be taken up by the Ruling Class who see war as a political utility and a cash cow - it must be us, you and I, and our neighbours, our brothers and sisters across the Earth.
Peace is more than the absence of war
It must be us, the people who are always caught in the crossfire, who always pay the price who extract the price of accountability from the abusers.
It must be us, the people working together as a humane polity, who unite in solidarity for our children, for their children and for all their futures as much as we would do it for our own present.
It must be us who take the democratic legislatures and our judiciaries back from the oligarchy and it must be us who set those institutions and the various arms of the State to serve our people's needs - to build peace, to establish stability, to start the repair of the damage done and to alter our systems of production and consumption systems so that they facilitate the prevention of further harm, be it preventing war or adapting to climate change, cleaning up pollution, repairing degraded environments, enriching our soils, cleaning our rivers, abolishing poverty and destitution and caring for all our vulnerable people as their needs dictate.
Peace is more than the absence of war
The prevailing profit system is built on deceit and externalised costs. WMD lies, and the costs born by the civilians whose cities, towns and villages have been made into combat zones. They did not invite the war, it came to them, unbidden. They paid the price. The cost in horrific deaths, disgusting maimings, devastating displacement, mass trauma and deep psychological distress is beyond all measure - the externalised costs associated with the profits of war supply logistic industrial production and consumption.
The War Against Terror shovelled vast wealth into the hands of a minority, who dominate our polities, and who continue to accrue wealth and power at our expense. Obviously they do not want us to hold them to account.
Peace is more than the absence of war
Enough already!
We all understand the grasp the oligarchy and the powerful have on the news media, on the current economic settings, on our democracies, our institutions and our public spaces. They mean business, and their business is mean, the inhumane desire to grasp power and exclude us from sharing it to improve all our lives. At times their ubiquity, size and aggressive resistance to healthy change suggests a fatalistic appraisal - they are too big to challenge, they have been around for too long, we cannot change them. All of this is true.
We cannot change them. They will not volunteer to change. We can, however, disempower them. That we certainly can do when we work together, and they know this - that is why they devote so much energy to division within our grass roots population. The future is always unfinished. Fatalism about the future is an error of judgement, and a logical fallacy.
And that is precisely why we must work ahead, and work together, from an evidence base. We must take up the work of confronting this situation in spite of their degree of control and influence, we must press ahead without their co-operation.
I think that to do that we must better understand the dark arts of political grooming, economic sabotage, political corruption and manipulation as they present at every level, from the personal to the institutional.
Neoliberals, bullies, authoritarians and dictatorships rely upon fatalism and logical fallacy narratives as psychological weapons that dissuade an oppressed and exhausted yet potentially active population from taking the necessary steps to build social and political solidarity.
Peace is more than the absence of war
We must erase that fatalism with the awareness that our unfinished futures are indeed opportunities, that we can change the situation by our collective efforts precisely because the future is unfinished. Nothing is set in stone, other than stone itself and even stone is weathered to become sand and soil.
The power of the oligarchy, their normalisation of war, their ubiquitous wealth and their interference in our democracies are not inevitable, immutable, immovable. That power is not carved from the rock. That power is not mountains high nor is it oceans deep. That power is human artifice. That power is temporary. That power is not eternal. The power structures do not define the human species and they do not illustrate the human condition, even though they do mark out this cult that claims to be a culture.
Peace is more than the absence of war
We can set them aside. We must. That is our vocation as humane beings, as parents to the next generation, this is our true vocation as neighbours, as friends and family and as a species. To craft a peaceful civilisation worthy of the gift of life.
The future for all our children is way, way, way bigger than the ruling class and the old, sordid bully cult.
It is for the citizens of each and every state to do this work within their own polities, as the first step.
Clean our houses, put them in order. We started to discuss this within England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, with diligence, hope and seriousness back in 2006, within The Power Inquiry.
"After eighteen months of investigation, the final report of The Power Inquiry is a devastating critique of the state of formal democracy in Britain. Many of us actively support campaigns such as Greenpeace or the Countryside Alliance. And millions more take part in charity or community work. But political parties and elections have been a growing turn-off for years.
The cause is not apathy. The problem is that we don't feel we have real influence over the decisions made in our name. The need for a solution is urgent. And that solution is radical. Nothing less than a major programme of reform to give power back to the people of Britain..."
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.
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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.
