Remembrance Sunday; with my two Whippets I set out on our daily constitutional. Making our way up the High Street I could see the road ahead was closed off, just before the Anglican Church where a few dozen or so people had gathered on the pavement outside. I walked quietly through the midst of them giving the occasional grin and nod – my Whippets followed suit. Heard a mumbled, ’Show some respect’. Well! Red-rag-to-a-bull for me though I kept my cool and did not respond. But it stirred in me again the fury I try to contain when I see people being used in their ignorance to promulgate government propaganda that war is somehow worthwhile and that we are a benevolent force intending to defend ourselves by fostering democracy in countries where there is none.
World War 1(WW1) and World War 11(WW11) were, maybe, a necessary evil. And even if the motive was greed and not justice and freedom from a fascist regime, at least most Brits believed our ‘boys’ were fighting to keep Great Britain safe from Nazi Germany. Little though was publicised as to the loss of life incurred on all sides. Figures show that the total number of people killed during WW1 was sixteen and a half million, of whom twelve million were civilians (1). Having learnt nothing it seems we entered into WWII where we and our enemies managed to annihilate up to seventy two million, an estimated fifty million of whom, were civilians(2).
And this culture of war continues...oh except that now everyone's a terrorist and we call it the 'war-on-terror'.
There was little support in the UK for the war in Iraq. Thousands protested nationwide. Bush and his gang started talking about Al-Qaeda and along with British Prime Minister Tony Blair's misleading statement that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction which could be released within forty five minutes, set the scene for what is now known to have been an illegal war.
David Kelly, in 2003 was a British weapons inspector in Iraq. He was deliberately named in relation to the famous ‘sexed-up dossier’ implying that the British government knew that the forty five minute claim was false.
David Kelly died – suddenly – a suicide.
Depending on which survey one refers to it seems likely that in the first two years of the Anglo-American instigated invasion of Iraq, over one million people were killed and several hundred thousand maimed and injured – the majority being women and children caught in the path of cluster-bombs.
British MP Robin Cook, in 2005 helpfully informed us that the term 'Al-Qaeda' simply meant 'computer data-base' and was the product of Western intelligence, set up by the CIA in 1980; to keep a record of the Mujaheddin whom they funded to purchase weapons and trained to fight the Russians.
Robin Cook died - a month or so later – suddenly – a heart attack.
War is big business. There has been much murmured about the UK’s involvement in supplying weapons, in particular cluster-bombs, for dubious causes. Prime Minister David Cameron was suspected of killing two birds with one stone on that account when he apparently took advantage of the Libyan eruption to negotiate the sale of weapons.
Years previously in 1997 it was the land-mine and cluster bomb issue that Princess Diana was campaigning against, particularly in Angola. Oh what a tangled web that was. The Angolan conflict, represented in the media as a civil war between opposing political groups, I am informed was in fact perpetrated by both Anglo-American and Russian interests – in order to gain control of Angolan raw mineral reserves including oil and diamonds. Whilst three quarters of the Angolan people lived in poverty on less than a dollar a day the British government turned a blind-eye in favour of a good deal on cheap Angolan oil. Five hundred thousand Angolans were killed and thousands more maimed. Princess Diana eventually persuaded President Clinton to agree to join her campaign against land-mines.
Princess Diana died - a month or so later – suddenly - a car crash and Clinton changed his mind.
The numbers of deaths and mutilations continue to rise due to the twenty million land-mines which still lay buried in Angolan soil.
According to author, Jon King,
’ …since the early 1970’s, MI6 acting on behalf of the Royal Establishment and its Neo-Colonial cartel of Africa-based corporations and NGO’s has been secretly financing and equipping teams of mercenaries to carry out its dirty work in Angola………….at least in part to ensure the Royal Family’s vested financial interests there.’
I
observe our world-scene. Two thirds if its inhabitants starving when
there is more than enough for all. I feel impotent when faced with
images of bony, pot-bellied, bog-eyed babies infested with insects
and ask myself, ‘Why doesn’t the ‘democratic’ West go and
‘invade’ and ‘rescue’ them from their tyrannical and selfish
leaders? And I am saddened, embarrassed and disgusted at my own
reply,
‘Cos
there’s nothing in it for us!
- King, Beveridge (2010) Princess Diana, The Evidence, SPI
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