Because We Can We Must
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.
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?
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.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/power_inquiry_3310jsp/
Because we can, we must....
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.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/power_inquiry_3310jsp/
"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..."
Because we can, we must....
Kindest regards
Corneilius
"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."
