Avoiding avoidable harm. Is it really so much to ask?

“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

Deaths per million, August2021:  does not include cases of long covid or the many other avoidable harms caused by deliberate mismanagement, which is a political choice taking precedence over public health best practice. source

Where we are right now, in the UK.. just the raw truth! Watch this, then read on.


China's population is twice that of  US and EU.

Why are so few people of the Press/News media and government in USUK not taking into account the experience and lessons learned by China, New Zealand, South Korea and the other countries operating Elimination of Community Transmission strategy, and reporting on the successes, and the problems they encounter, and how they resolve those problems?   

When they do comment, why do they appear to deliberately portray these strategies inaccurately and describe them as meaning eradication or Zero Covid, and thus dismiss what is already being done, what is proven to prevent the harms associated with mitigation and 'living with the virus' as 'impossible' or a 'fantasy'?

New Zealand is looking like it's suppressing and eliminating Delta - they are cautiously optimistic. They reveal the efficacy of a caring government, a caring population working together to stop community transmission even as Morrison of Australia, the Murdoch press beloved, tries to denigrate their efforts.

Reports and political commentators often describe those countries as living in isolation', as if they are cut off from the rest of the world. This is clearly not the case. A quarantined border is still allowing human traffic through, even if it limits tourism - consumer goods continue to be shipped across borders. Tourism is a luxury business, it is not a necessity. Indeed internal tourism has increased in pretty much every country, circulating money within economies. For a short term set back, Tourism could be supported to help eliminate community transmission and prevent immense avoidable harms. Instead the tourism industry has become a primary vector of the virus.

As Elimination Strategy functions to leap into action whenever a cluster emerges, usually due to an imported variant, invariably a variant that emerged in the reckless countries, the pundits of USUK et al are quick to crow about how ineffective elimination strategy is, falling silent when the clusters are controlled, and the community transmission is stopped.

The denial and the dismissive attitudes seem to me to be about protecting USUK and other reckless Governments from public scrutiny and close attention, to shield them from an open critical analysis of their deliberate, repeated mismanagement and the huge economic costs of avoidable harms they have deliberately not avoided.

1.8 billion people, c.23% of global population being protected by elimination of community transmission strategies across such a wide variety of economies and cultures is a huge evidence base. 

The USUK mismanagement teams dare not speak of it, honestly.

Freedom and being realistic

Even the 'Freedom!' crew who are highly critical of USUK Government are denying the evidence of China, New Zealand and the other countries, who have experience far less restrictions on their lives citizens of mitigation strategy countries, let alone the adverse health and mortality impacts. Death by Covid is not freedom. 10% of positive cases enduring long Covid is not freedom. So much for freedom. 

Seems to me to be that they are one the same side as the super spreader governments they proclaim against. The spreaders of misinformation are also spreaders of the virus.

Fatalism is understandable

Dr. John Campbell, a youtuber medic who does a decent job of reporting on the evidence from around the Earth, avoids political observations like the plague. So he dare not mention elimination, which he did early on, suggesting UK was insane to not learn from China and East Asia. Now he has abandoned all mention of elimination strategy, and is reliant on vaccine efficacy to get us through to a better situation.

I imagine he’s being ‘realistic’ accepting there’s no way to dislodge this English Government and just getting on with it. 

I get it. He has no option but to get on with his job, which is providing the best information he can find, from the perspective of a medic, a nurse.. Nothing will change, people need best info in order to make better decisions for themselves. Crack on.

But I see that as a form of fatalism, and I simply cannot accept that - and just as I still want to see Blair and the others indicted for war crimes, and even though I know I can’t do that myself, I refuse to let go of the need to see justice done correctly, in full, not so much as punishment but as a preventative - and so I still hold that elimination strategy is feasible, supported by vaccines, and the best way to reduce the avoidable harms that 'living with the virus' mythology leads to.

Stop causing avoidable harm. Is it really so much to ask?

IndependentSAGE is also on youtube, they broadcast a live briefing every Friday afternoon looking at the data, trends and issues, with a Q&A session for press and the public. They are a team of eminent and respected scientists in all the various fields that are affected by Covid, and they are firmly for elimination strategy, rather than 'living with the virus' or 'herd immunity'. 

IndependentSAGE have produced an informative timeline comparison which lays out the Scientific, Epidemiological and Public Health advice offered to English Government and compares it to the actual policy carried out by the English Government.

The situation in England is now that there are close to 25k new PCR confirmed cases daily, going by Government statistics.  ZOE records c. 55k new cases. Current estimates suggest that around 10% of positive cases are likely to contract Long Covid. We don't know how many asymptomatic cases that have not been tested are out and about in the community, people who are probably unaware of their status as potential vectors of infection. The existing test and trace systems are inadequate to the task assigned them.

Daily hospitalisations are currently running at around 750 in England. 

Death by Covid is Horrific

There were 207 Covid deaths in England's hospitals yesterday. How do people die from Covid? Breathlessness, breathing pain, oxygen depletion, headaches, inflammation, secondary infections, organ failure, sepsis: a parade of pain and increasing disability.

This is the thing few people are willing to look at but health workers are forced to see. Death by Covid is very painful indeed, the process is disgustingly awful. There’s no dignity, no peace only suffering often in utter isolation.

The person knows long before they die that they are in deep trauma, unlikely to survive, and that is it's own unique terror - the medical staff spend their days watching frightened people die awful deaths. 

Clap, clap, clap for heroes and no preventative action by government or citizens.

Is there a substantive pay rise in recognition of the extra burden NHS staff are bearing? Is there funding for extra staff to ease the work load of burned out medical staffers? No way. Not with this English government populated by those wealthy enough to take £40,000 holidays, add swimming pools to luxury homes during the summer break, spend hundreds of thousands refurbishing the prime ministers flat as they withdraw £20 'uplift pandemic support' per week from people receiving Universal Credit, which supports as many low paid workers as unemployed people, a benefit employers take profitable delight in.

The situation is similar to a war, with the braided generals at home, sitting in comfort and their combat troops in the trenches, engaged in the reality of combat, who see what it is really like, and then the patriotic civilians who just do not know and cannot therefore understand what war really is at all but who are encouraged to speak about ‘our boys and girls’ and ‘bravery and sacrifice'. 

War is always avoidable.

Every death by Covid is pretty much avoidable.  Stopping the uncontrolled spread of the virus in the community is feasible, and it does not need lockdowns, other than when the strategy fails - and we know why strategy fails.  Each and every death is a horror movie that goes on for days and days and days. Witnessed by medical staff who are powerless to do much more than manage death, and whose insight, wisdom and knowledge is given almost no hearing in offices where Government policy is decided.

Those poor souls. 

English Government cost benefit analysis is accepting one thousand ten days torture ending in death every week.

Can you imagine that as a war price?

Would you accept that?

And what of  our Schools, as they reopen this Friday, and are predicted to become super spreader events, with our children exploited as vectors of spread to attain herd immunity, intentionally so?

Must we accept that future for them?

As a culture, Climate Change, Environmental Degradation, War, Poverty are all Externalised Costs which our children must bear the brunt of, they will pay the price.

This then is the question of our era, in a dark metaphor.

"Have we spent our lives filling our children's shoes with shit, before telling them to go for a long walk?"





Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

Suppression vs Mitigation, Acceptable Horror, Externalised Costs - problem solving for whom?


"We need to address the societal well-being of our nation, not just the economic well-being: our people are telling us that politics are not delivering and meeting their expectations. This is not woolly, it’s critical.”  Jacinda Ardern

Amrit Lohia tweeted the following:

Giving everyone "access to water and food" requires socialism. Eradicating SARS-CoV-2 also requires a shift to a socialist model where we recognise our responsibility to protect each other. Tagging in @coreluminous who can probably explain this better than I can.

I replied:  I think you have distilled it into its purest form.

"where we recognise our responsibility to protect each other." 

That is the essence of the situation with regards to COVID, Climate Change, pollution, poverty, environmental degradation, Racism, Misogyny etc.

Then I wrote some more.

I would call it a pro-social model rather than ideological Socialism.


Management of the shared commons implies duty of care to all who share the commons. This demands that decisions on policy and practical implementation are grounded in equity and mutual aid and are based on evidence rather than upon ideological belief or the opinion of any one group.

Externalised Costs
.

Costs incurred by producers or consumers any other actors acting within the shared commons, that are not resolved, that are passed on to others who bear the burden are anti-social, profoundly so.

This is where I part with existing ideological Socialism which seeks equitable pay and conditions for all, whilst still allowing externalised costs to be accrued. Externalised costs is  the root of all the problems we face, globally. 

Resolution will be of that issue will be complex, that's well understood. 

That said it is attachments to power and status which make it more complicated than it needs to be.

Thus a reckoning with power and status lies ahead, it cannot be avoided.

Does this reckoning have to descend into a power struggle?

Only if those who hold asymmetric power choose to make it so.

Those who hold positions of power and status could choose to share that power, and they could manage it slowly enough to empower the corrective changes required that would protect us all as we move through this phase.

That choice is real.

To recap:

Elimination of community transmission is possible.

It's really simple. Virus needs to date a new human host, or it dies out. It is a complex operation to support a population to do EoCT.  Professor Gabriel Scally is a highly respected, deeply experienced public health professional and scholar. He is in no doubt whatsoever that elimination of community transmission is the best possible strategy under the current circumstances, where in the UK we are still at less than 20% population infected, and globally much less than that. There is an immense amount of harm to prevent, to avoid and it makes no sense to push the global population into harms way.



What complicates it are matters of power, wealth and status. That much is clear.

1. there's a world of difference between eradication and elimination of community transmission.


2. New Zealand is not in complete isolation from the rest of the world. Tourism is not an essential human activity. Quarantine can manage necessary travel.

3. Proof of concept is 1.8 billion people who were not faced with multiple national level lockdowns, health care and economic harms over extended periods. 

4. Proof of concept is variants from areas that rejected elimination strategy arriving and breaking through quarantine systems.

5. Australia’s official COVID-19 strategy, suppression, doesn’t have an epidemiological definition. 

“Suppression isn’t a known technical term,” says epidemiologist Raina MacIntyre, head of the Biosecurity Program at the Kirby Institute and Professor of Global Biosecurity.

6. “It’s either elimination or disease control.”

‘Disease control’ means reducing the number of cases to a locally acceptable level, but community transmission may still occur. 

7. In England that successful disease control is defined by Johnson as being 1000 deaths by Covid19 per week. No mention of the acceptable number of cases of chronic disease, Long Covid.


8. So, if I was one of those 'acceptable deaths' would I agree with Johnson?

If you or your beloved, or your son or daughter was one of those 'acceptable deaths' would you agree with Johnson?

9.  And the other more harsh reality of each death by covid is this:

These are truly awful, horrific deaths. Really, really grim.

https://vox.com/2021/2/20/22280817/covid-19-deaths-us-nursing-home-icu-ventilator

Oxygen depletion, organ failure, death. Terror, despair and horror over the course of ten days or so. One thousand times every week. Thousands of families. Hundreds of ICU teams

Who decides these deaths are acceptable? On what metric?

10. In another context, how many terrorist bombings would be considered an acceptable level?

Is it the case that the 241,000 Afghani deaths of the past 20 years are acceptable to UK citizens, but the 404 combat deaths of troops are not? 

11. Who makes these calls about policy and public health strategy, which have such immense impact the shared commons, and on what basis? 

12. Is there a need now for urgent collective decision making and collective action to prevent further avoidable harm, when we are in a situation that affects us all?

Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

The best leverage we have is collective solidarity.

The best leverage we have is collective solidarity. 
Acting together, we have each others back.

Because the Government do not have our backs.
They are exposing us, and our children, to avoidable harm.

stopping the spread is spreading the love

https://twitter.com/SafeEdForAll_UK

The best tool for change we have is, and has always been, social solidarity, collective conjoined action, similar to a general strike. 

Possibilities include some kind of mass grass roots action such as a rent/mortgage/school strike or boycott, or early morning demonstration gatherings of parents, students and teachers outside Government buildings, or outside Churches, Broadcasters, News Paper offices or even local schools which we refuse to enter into under such unsafe conditions.

These could be justified by citing two legal frameworks for our action - the UN Convention on the Rights of The Child, and The Right to Health, to protect our children and citing Duty of Care, Malfeasance and Misconduct in Public Office to bring this English Government, that is causing so much avoidable harm, to heel. We could also cite safe workplace legislation.

To prevent a greater harm, a small harmless action is justified under duty of care legal principles.

To assert our civic responsibility as mature citizens, to uphold our shared duty of care to our children, and to confront this Governments failures to meet their duty of care to all of us.

No more appeals. We must direct Government. The issue must be forced through.


This is unbridled, optimistic wishful thinking on my part, because to be honest, I really do not know how we resolve this. 

I understand that this Government, this English Government has an 80 seat majority. I understand that  this English Government has no moral standing, that it is utterly unwilling to acknowledge any of it's errors, mistakes or its deliberately bad policy decisions and is behaving as if it is above the Law, beyond reproach, immune to any accountability. This English Government is the perfect expression of an elective dictatorship.

If there are any decent Conservative MPs, they remain silent and cowed. Starmer supports this Government, no ifs or buts.  His focus is not on the welfare of our children but on a purge of the Labour Party,

I am at a loss on how to prevent the next wave of death and disease that this English Government is about to inflict upon the English population via our children.

A new National Union?

I would urge the formation of a new national Union of Students, Parents and Teachers, as learners, as evidence gatherers, as people concerned with an accurate, clear and workable pathway towards an education that prepares for the work to confront Climate Change, Air Pollution, Plastic Pollution, Chronic Stress caused disease, Poverty, Environmental Damage and of course, right now, immediately best public health policy on COVID. Sick people do not make an economy stronger.

Elimination of Community Transmission is cited by the worlds foremost epidemiologists, virologists, public health professionals, economists and social scientists as the most effective set of strategies in dealing with this pandemic. 

Let's start in all our schools, let's harness the love, passion, care and concern of 11 million British Children, their parents, their teachers and push hard for what must be done.

Some concepts for parents, students and teachers to look at.

Here are some elements of Laws about protecting our children's rights, their health and safety, asserting the duty of care that all schools (and Governments) must uphold,  that I think every parent ought to become more familiar with


2. https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n1794/rr-1 : defining what elimination of community transmission means

3. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00978-8/fulltext : evidence that elimination of community transmission strategy prevents the harms associated with 'slow spread' mitigation policy aka 'living with the virus' ideology.

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_of_care_in_English_law : Duty of Care English Tort Law.

5. https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/defences-duress-and-necessity : What rights, duties or protections do we have, under law, to prevent a greater harm or a greater crime?

6. https://www.lawtonslaw.co.uk/resources/misfeasance-in-public-office : Malfeasance in Public Office

7. https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/misconduct-public-office : Misconduct in Public Office

We must build a solidarity like none ever seen in English history. 

A general strike : it is not wishful thinking that we English citizens would really do what it takes to protect our children from harm.

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.

https://patreon.com/corneilius

https://www.reverbnation.com/corneilius

https://www.corneilius.net

https://www.soundcloud.com/coreluminous

A general strike : wishful thinking that we English would do what it takes to protect our children from harm.

This English Government failed to protect the the elders across the country who were living within care homes. There were over 530,000 tests carried out in the UK by 20 April 2020, yet this Government couldn’t test 25,000 people discharged from hospitals into care homes, after they had seen it spread rapidly through care homes in Italy, France and America.

“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

This was deliberate action taken, in spite of ample well evidenced warnings and advice. 

Now as we arrive at the end of summer, 2021, it's about all our children. 

School starts in a few days. This English Government has failed to make our primary and secondary schools Covid safe. Scotland's children are already in school, and Delta Variant Covid cases are rising rapidly. The same is guaranteed to happen here. Delta Variant is having a significant impact on children in America and in Israel, and elsewhere. Many parents are at their wits ends, really distressed by the current situation.


What will it take to get the adults of England to step up and protect the children of England from being forced into harms way?

Since February 2020 this English Government has refused to place effective quarantine restrictions on our borders, and knowingly allowed the virus to be seeded into and across the country on multiple occasions, citing 'free trade' rather than 'free movement' as the basis of their decision.

"Free trade is being choked and that is no fault of the people, that’s no fault of individual consumers, I am afraid it is the politicians who are failing to lead.

And in that context, we are starting to hear some bizarre autarkic rhetoric, when barriers are going up, and when there is a risk that new diseases such as coronavirus will trigger a panic and a desire for market segregation that go beyond what is medically rational to the point of doing real and unnecessary economic damage, then at that moment humanity needs some government somewhere that is willing at least to make the case powerfully for freedom of exchange, some country ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth and emerge with its cloak flowing as the supercharged champion, of the right of the populations of the earth to buy and sell freely among each other.

And here in Greenwich in the first week of February 2020, I can tell you in all humility that the UK is ready for that role."

There it is. We do not need, in this internet age, to travel during a pandemic. Tourism is lethal luxury. Business meetings can be conducted online, screen to screen. We can still buy and sell freely within and across tightly quarantined borders - goods can flow in spite of the global pandemic. Goods are not a vector of transmission - human beings are.

As it happens the primary block on the flow of goods within England is Brexit. Irony upon irony, as tourists carrying the virus travel freely and workers who could move goods are impeded.

This English Government refused to make resources available to enable find, test, trace, support and isolate as a local government and local Health Authority run system, designed to stop community transmission of the virus locally across England.

Instead this English Government deliberately outsourced the essential epidemic utilities of PPE supply, of testing and of contact tracing through private business contracts which were handed to crony's - to inexperienced people previously associated with the government, thus wasting precious time, wasting borrowed money and leading directly to avoidable fatalities, avoidable chronic disease and avoidable economic hardships as those losses of PPE impacted health care, the lack of test and trace lost track of viral transmission and as infected people continued to go to work, rather than isolate because there was no financial salary protection incentive in place for them to do so. All 100% predictable and avoidable. Deliberate action.

This English Government Failed to protect the UK Population. Deliberate action in spite of ample evidenced warnings and advice.

This English Government Failed to protect UK School Children. Deliberate action in spite of ample evidenced warnings and advice.

This English Government Failed to protect Afghani citizens who helped with the occupation and the utterly corrupt attempt at imposing Democratic Government upon Afghanistan. Deliberate action in spite of ample evidenced warnings and advice.

Defence minister Ben Wallace ignored a letter written three months ago by 45 retired senior officers requesting that urgent action be taken immediately to evacuate those Afghani who worked with the British Military and other staff over the past 20 years, before drawing down troop numbers.

Former Chief of the General Staff Lord Dannatt speaking on evacuation of Afghan interpreters: 

“Many of us have been pleading with the government in the last two or three years and more vociferously in the last month or two to get this aspect of it right, because our reputation will be trashed, our moral position compromised and in future conflicts people will be very wary about potentially coming to work with us.

When 45 senior military retired officers including many ex chief of defence staff write an open letter to the PM, Foreign Secretary, Home Sec, Defence Sec- [on interpreters] and it’s not really taken seriously then I think there’s a gap in who’s listening to whom in govt atm."

All deliberate actions - not incompetence, at least not the kind where they tried, honestly, and failed. And then took considered corrected action to address the failures. Nothing of the sort. Instead we are treated to gaslighting, scapegoating, blame avoidance, denial of responsibility - all deliberate action.

Keir Starmer has supported this Government all the way through. No ifs, no buts.
This English Government, the enfeebled Parliament, the supine opposition: the enemy within.

This English Government: the most consistent threat to the health and safety of the English people. Inaction on Climate Change, Environmental degradation, Air Pollution, Plastics, Processed Foods, COVID, Austerity and amongst all this, they are exporting weaponry for warfare in Yemen and elsewhere - all in pursuit of profits, as English billionaires increase their wealth and power and more and more English citizens come to rely upon 'uplifting' food banks. 

Treasury head Rishi Sunak installs luxuries in one of his homes during Parliament summer holidays, whilst planning to remove £20 'uplift' from Universal Credit payments to people in poverty. Foreign Secretary Raab on a £40,000 beach lounger as Afghanistan is allowed to fall into chaos. 

This English Government: a toxic, predatory network of institutionalised bullies, their institutions, their working class mercenaries and their middle class enablers.

Until we, the English people admit this, and for as long as we, the English people, deny this, it will continue. Nationalistic cant and flag waving in the face of this much harm causation is deeply, deeply anti-patriotic!

Rioting, appealing for change is all futile. Neither tactic has ever delivered the results the English people needed. Not once.

The best leverage we have is collective solidarity. 

The best tool we have is a general strike, specifically a rent/mortgage/school strike, citing two frameworks - the UN Convention on the Rights of The Child, and The Right to Health, to protect our children and citing Duty of Care, Malfeasance and Misconduct in Public Office to bring this English Government that is causing so much harm to heel.

This is unbridled, optimistic wishful thinking on my part, because to be honest, I really do not know how we resolve this.

I am at a loss on how to prevent the next wave of death and disease that this English Government is about to inflict upon the English population via our children.

Here are some elements of Laws about protecting our children's rights, their health and safety, asserting the duty of care that all schools (and Governments) must uphold,  that I think every parent ought to become more familiar with


2. https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n1794/rr-1 : defining what elimination of community transmission means

3. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00978-8/fulltext : evidence that elimination of community transmission strategy prevents the harms associated with 'slow spread' mitigation policy aka 'living with the virus' ideology.


5. https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/defences-duress-and-necessity : What rights, duties or protections do we have, under law, to prevent a greater harm or a greater crime?

6. https://www.lawtonslaw.co.uk/resources/misfeasance-in-public-office : Malfeasance in Public Office

7. https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/misconduct-public-office : Misconduct in Public Office

We must build a solidarity like none ever seen in English history. 

A general strike : wishful thinking that we English would really do what it takes to protect our children from harm.


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.

https://patreon.com/corneilius

https://www.reverbnation.com/corneilius

https://www.corneilius.net

https://www.soundcloud.com/coreluminous

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

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