The extraordinary story and pictures of the Christmas truce of 1914, wherein "enemy" German and English troops discovered their common humanity for a brief surreal shining moment. Set to John McCutcheon's stirring song.
But the war profiteers can't have this sort of thing - - they need to keep people fighting amongst themselves so they won't join in common cause.
When officers threatened to kill those who didn't resume shooting at the other, it's the officers threatening the men who should have been the targets.
Kind of like during the Vietnam war when infantry who thought their officers were incompetent and leading them into certain death managed to disappear those officers so the men could stay alive.
Of course, deliberately avoiding the "enemy" (local people defending their homeland) and lying in the bullrushes smoking pot helped many stay alive.
Posted by Ronin
Dec 24 2011 - 8:06pm
No, and the lesson that militaries took from this atrocious breakout of spontaneous peace was to increase bombing campaigns over holidays.
Posted by shakespear1
Dec 25 2011 - 5:58am
"But the war profiteers can't have this sort of thing" = Dem/Rep Election Campaign Groups
Posted by gnken1
Dec 25 2011 - 10:01pm
The higher ups in the military did not like what took place in Christmas of that year.
Posted by ceti
Dec 24 2011 - 1:49pm
This was relatively early in the war between more or less equally matched opponents who could gaze upon each other for long periods of time before restarting hostilities. Also the current of anti-imperialism was still strong despite the betrayal of the Second International. The Christmas 1914 has always been inspiring, perhaps the last time soldiering at the infantry level had a personal feel. However that quickly changed with weapons of mass destruction (machine guns and gas in this case), propaganda, profiteering, and the brute force of strong over the weak (most every war since) came into play.
Posted by locust
Dec 24 2011 - 2:03pm
If they didn't have uniforms, you couldn't tell them apart. We are all One.
This clip is from the movie Joyeux Noel.
http://videosift.com/video/Christmas-truce-of-December-1914
“In the Somme valley, the back of language broke. It could no longer carry its former meanings. World War I changed the life of words and images in art, radically and forever. It brought our culture into the age of mass-produced, industrialized death. This, at first, was indescribable.”
― Robert Hughes
Posted by shakespear1
Dec 26 2011 - 5:37am
This movie clearly shows who is reposonsible for the dividing lines between people, and it is not the people in the trenches.
Posted by Ghandighost
Dec 24 2011 - 2:09pm
Investigate 9/11.
Posted by gardenernorcal
Dec 24 2011 - 2:21pm
Never going to happen anymore than the JFK assasination was investigated by independent sources independently. It's not in the interests of whatever today is seen as national security. Money made it happen and money will cover it up. Money is security and all else is expendable and the very small cost of doing business.
Posted by wc652
Dec 24 2011 - 4:31pm
Good comments, Gandhighost and gardenernorcal.
Unfortunately, they are "investigating" 9/11, in a fraudulent manner.
Earlier this week, New York federal judge George Daniels blamed Iran, along with traditional boogeymen Taliban and alQaida, for the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Preparing the masses for the neocons' dream war with Iran.
While I wish The Onion had originated this story as a hoax, it was sent, I believe, via AP to our local newspaper. It's easily Googled as Judge blames Iran for 9/11.
And most Americans will buy this neocons bs. It keeps our military heroes in the Mideast, where they fight them there so that we don't have to fight them here. Or something. Like our new Marines base in Australia, "to contain China. Or something." (thanks to Ted Rall)
Bill in Dubuque
Posted by shadre
Dec 25 2011 - 1:45pm
How many wars can be started in how many countries for the same crime, of which none were responsible?
Guess we're no doubt going to find out.
Posted by AD
Dec 26 2011 - 12:17am
OK. The English are the British, and the Prussians are the Germans. Let's go for it.
But if you go to Glasgow which is in the UK and British, don't tell those people they're English. They're British, but north of the border they don't go for all this the English are the British and England is the UK which is just fine in London or Manchester and the rest of the below the border towns and countryside.
Posted by AD
Dec 26 2011 - 12:13am
How about less of this false moral equivalence between the British not English and Germans? Also if some are going to insist on falsely referrring to the British as English even though the English have always been dominant among the British, then let's start referring to the Germans as Prussians with the same reasoning and the acknowledgement which is even then an understatement that the Prussians and Prussia were dominant among the Germans and Germany likewise? By those who are English referrring to things British, they are at least acknowledging openly their imperialist past whereas the Germans often seek to hide from theirs. They're modest in the Churchillian phrase and they have a lot to be modest about. Let's give the Irish a rest and go after these Neanderthals of Europe who for 150 years were the worst war mongering imperialists even for Europe. Yes, their educational system and their media brainwashed them into their German exceptionsalism but the same is true in the USA. Does that make it OK? Not in the least. Let's deal with the fact that these Jerries needed a booty whipping and the Anglo/French/US types handed it to them. I'm not one bit shy about saying so. Add to that Germany wasn't even nation state until 1871. Prussia was way back before even the 19th Century, and that's where their real history is locked up as an imperialist power starting as far back as Frederick the Great.
Germany has been allowed to play on Western sympathy for way too long. They damn well don't deserve it. They are much like the Israelis, many of whom really are Prussians too. They have that they're "better than all others" mentality and all others are simply here to be their servants. That's what got them where they are today. Why is it that Germany is constantly defending Israel more France which has a Jewish president? They really see themselves in the Israelis. That's the real deal.
Posted by AD
Dec 26 2011 - 12:34am
In three or four years in the last third of the 19th Century Prussia as a state took Schleswig Holstein from Denmark, a good body of land from Sweden. They nor the
Germans ever returned it and still have it to this day. The Alsace Lorrain which France got back after the First World War still allows those people to use German as their language. Does Germany do that in any area that Germans or Prussians took by force? Please--no multi culturalism here. Scandinavia and the rest of Western Europe are different from Germany-- more tolerant and democratic oreinted easily. Even the Briitsh are easily more democratic oreinted than Germans and less whiny about this and that slight. Germany can't get over that it caused most of its problems and that others as well. They are brainwashed as much as the USA-- likely the reason for such US affinity for them. Yes they need better media. Hey, the British and others in Europe are developing alternate media. Why don't the Germans try to do the same? What's holding them up?
Posted by Reverend_Boomerang
Dec 25 2011 - 9:30pm
Well, you should be aware of who else is fueling the fire on Iran:
Muslims don't celebrate Xmas do they. Works well for the war effort. Doesn't matter that their god is the same one Christians and Jews worship as well. They look different and our leaders tell us they are the target. I am sure the bulldozer operator was told Rachel Corrie was a threat to national security.
Posted by vdb
Dec 24 2011 - 3:09pm
Amazing that they put their "differences aside"?
No, what's really amazing is that
these men went back to being soldiers
and killing each other.
onbegrijpelijk.
Posted by avanti popolo
Dec 24 2011 - 4:11pm
My thoughts exactly. Is military brainwashing so powerful that it can make you kill someone you've shared food, laughter, songs and games with the day before? If so, how merry a christmas was that then? The insanity of it is just mind-boggling.
If that's the spirit of christmas, geef mijn portie dan maar aan Fik.
Posted by SteppingRazor
Dec 24 2011 - 4:30pm
Military Brainwashing????
You best read the historical record closely.
The British and German High Command were distressed at this interlude. They had to threaten the troops and indeed shoot some to get them to fight again and this event was forgotten as the battles started up in earnest.
Posted by avanti popolo
Dec 24 2011 - 4:58pm
"They had to threaten the troops and indeed shoot some to get them to fight again.." Well, that answers my question affirmatively. Thanks.
Posted by vdb
Dec 24 2011 - 5:19pm
helaas, Fik ken ik niet.
Posted by avanti popolo
Dec 24 2011 - 5:43pm
Fido?
Posted by vdb
Dec 24 2011 - 6:31pm
als hij de hond van Pavlov is - then it rings a bell.
Posted by avanti popolo
Dec 24 2011 - 7:00pm
Haha, as in: I hear Pavlov's bells ring-a-ding, ding-ding-ding-a-ding, ding?
Posted by Sean Donahue
Dec 24 2011 - 9:04pm
I recall reading somewhere that many were discharged because they were no longer "effective" soldiers.
And by many accounts the majority of soldiers in WW I shot to miss
Posted by dionski
Dec 24 2011 - 3:08pm
It was a brief time out in the game. War is essentially a sport in many male psyches. They play off the same tribal instincts.
Posted by Nietzsche
Dec 24 2011 - 11:24pm
Far fewer soldiers think of war as being an exciting adventure once they have been relieved of a limb or two or had their homes destroyed, or had family members killed, or merely spent the rest of their lives being terrified of loud noises.
Posted by Erroll
Dec 25 2011 - 8:30pm
Nietzsche
If only that were true. The brainwashed soldiers who come back from Afghanistan missing an arm or a leg rarely, it seems, have second thoughts about having been in the military. Contrast this servile attitude to the scene in the searing documentary Sir! No Sir! when the male nurse noted that of all the patients in his care who were unable to lift a spoon to their mouths or were unable to go to the bathroom by themselves because of the horrific injuries that they had received in Vietnam, that not one of them said that what they had gone through over there was worth it.
To risk a generalization, it does appear that the current generation appears to be much less likely to question authority than the one that grew up during the 1960s and ended up, like I did, in that place called Vietnam.
Posted by Reverend_Boomerang
Dec 25 2011 - 9:01pm
Erroll, there's also a difference between having to go to war under the barrel of your own government's riffle and volunteering. I think that's the key here.
Posted by Erroll
Dec 26 2011 - 12:01am
Rev. B.
I am not quite sure what your point is. In either case that you mention the soldiers who end up fighting in those wars should, as the documentary Sir! No Sir! made rather clear, be speaking out and refusing to fight in their country's illegal wars. It should also be pointed out, as David Cortright does in his classic work Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War, that the majority of those soldiers who took part in the GI movement during the Vietnam conflict were not draftees but, instead, enlistees.
My point is that if soldiers could say NO during the Vietnam conflict then certainly many more can be saying NO to American imperialism in the Middle East as compared to the relatively few who now comprise the IVAW [Iraq Veterans Against the War].
Posted by Reverend_Boomerang
Dec 26 2011 - 8:41pm
Well, if you can't understand my point (and you claim to be a Viet Nam vet who I'm assuming didn't volunteer), there's not much I can do to make you understand the obvious. To me, it makes all a difference but judging by your confusion it's not. As someone who was forced to carry a torch, chant slogans and cheer for a self-appointed sanguine dictator for half of his life at the barrel of a gun, volunteering versus being forced makes all the difference. But again that's just me.
Posted by AD
Dec 26 2011 - 8:58pm
The "people want peace so bad that some day the politicians are going to have to get out of the way and let them have it" as Dwight D Eisenhower put it so well. But let's reemember that "maintaining a peace is like keeping a good garden in good order. You have to work at it day in and day out. . ." as Henry Wallce so aptly explained as vice president.
"Here's hoping we both live to see us find a better way."
"Heaven's not beyond the clouds it's just beyond the fear."
Posted by Dogface
Dec 25 2011 - 12:04am
Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War - Barbara Ehrenreich
http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Rites-Origins-History-Passions/dp/0805057870
War is not what one thinks it once was. It was so different for the average foot soldier.
Posted by Tatty Bogle
Dec 25 2011 - 11:33am
The Landlords fall out so the Tenants cut each others throats. It has been said that WW2 came about because they couldn't agree on how to carve up the slaves.
Posted by jocko
Dec 25 2011 - 8:15pm
Very touching video.
Posted by Reverend_Boomerang
Dec 25 2011 - 8:58pm
Dialogue from All Quiet On The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque which summarizes the whole business of war:
Tjaden: Well, how do they start a war?
Soldier #1: Well, one country offends another.
Tjaden: How could one country offend another? You mean there's a mountain over in Germany gets mad at a field over in France?
Soldier #1: Well, stupid. One people offends another.
Tjaden: Oh, that's it. I shouldn't be here at all. I don't feel offended.
Katczinsky: It don't apply to tramps like you.
Tjaden: Good. Then I can be going home right away...The Kaiser and me...Me and the Kaiser felt just alike about this war. We didn't neither of us want any war, so I'm going home. He's there already.
Soldier #1: Somebody must have wanted it. Maybe it was the English. No, I don't want to shoot any Englishman. I never saw one 'til I came up here. And I suppose most of them never saw a German 'til they came up here. No, I'm sure they weren't asked about it.
Soldier #2: Well, it must be doing somebody some good.
Tjaden: Not me and the Kaiser.
Soldier #1: I think maybe the Kaiser wanted a war.
Tjaden: You leave us out of this.
Katczinsky: I don't see that. The Kaiser's got everything he needs.
Soldier #1: Well, he never had a war before. Every full-grown Emperor needs one war to make him famous. Why, that's history.
Paul: Yeah, Generals too. They need war.
Soldier #3: And manufacturers. They get rich.
Soldier #1: Nobody wants it in particular. And then all at once, here it is. We didn't want it. The English didn't want it. And here we are fighting.
Katczinsky: I'll tell ya how it should all be done. Whenever there's a big war comin' on, you should rope off a big field.
Soldier #1: And sell tickets.
Katczinsky: Yeah, and, and, on the big day, you should take all the kings and their cabinets and their generals, put them in the center dressed in their underpants and let 'em fight it out with clubs. The best country wins.
Posted by DocM
Dec 25 2011 - 10:06pm
In the 1950 version of King Solomon's Mines, if I remember correctly, there's a scene where two native tribes are involved in a war. The two chiefs get in the center of a ring of tribesmen and fight hand to hand (I forget if they had weapons or not). The one who wins wins the war. I always thought they were more civilized than we are. Woulda been interesting to see GWB and Saddam Hussein in the ring together.
Posted by Reverend_Boomerang
Dec 26 2011 - 8:54pm
Totally agree. I often refer to this passage and Remarque's proposition of how wars should be fought. I often have the same visions you do. Picture Obomber and Ahmadinejad together in the rink for that matter. Ha!
There's also an episode of the original Star Trek that deals with the issue of humane war. The crew lands on a distant planet which is at war but you can't tell because people are living normal, peaceful lives. They approach it by gathering representatives of both sides in a war room and play a chess-like game. Whichever side loses gathers a mutually agreed number of volunteers from its side and humanely euthanizes them so that the rest of society can be spared the horrors and the destruction of war. I, however, like Remarque's proposition better as I'm certain that having our warmongering and cowardly politicos hash it out and feel the pain in their own flesh would put an end to all the violence the inflict on others and to their rampant warmongering and imperialism.
Posted by jpadm
Dec 26 2011 - 1:42am
On 24 dec 1914,when the Great war in it's fith month of horrors ,the guns were silent then a voice started singing this song then it was sung in 10 different languages. The men declared a 24 hr truce and left their trenches to fraternise. The officers disagreed.The truce lasted 24 hr. It never happened again during that war or others.But remembering that sacred moment immortalised in the movie "Noel 1914" and by our own John mc Dermott in song, we can think in Noelof pastr Bieber in Swiss Alps who had no music for the service and composed "Stille Nacht" and is one ofthe most loved pieces of music because we all desire peace. may God give it to us for we don't seem to be good at making Peace.To you and your family to friends and to those you think of as enemies,PEACE Sent to all 22 dec 2011
Posted by vdb
Dec 26 2011 - 6:26am
and this war would have been over by xmas...
Posted by jimmyjazz
Dec 26 2011 - 3:28pm
Something that could only happen in a citizen army. Similar stuff happened in Vietnam when they used the draft to build the military. Today's all-volunteer force (a mercenary army for all practical purposes) is immune to such brief flashes of conscience and retained humanity, because every soldier voluntarily signed up to kill and to risk death. Mercenaries make very obedient soldiers as long as they get paid on time.
Posted by AD
Dec 26 2011 - 8:18pm
All do have a Happy New Year and push and occupy. As to what I've said it can easily be verified I'd think at your local library, but maybe I've spoke too soon given the neo cons need to defund such and keep such inconvenient facts from the masses. Also when Martin Luther King Jr gives that beyond Vietnam speech why does he in that talk
that's live specify what the Germans did if it was nothing other than typical of all European tribes? Oh, it's not in the book I know, as I have it at home. But the talk that is on Norman Solomon's documentary, "War Made Easy" it is. Now that's just a fact. Just watch it on the documentary. It's right in there with the praise for Wayne Morse as senator at the time from Oregon.
Posted by AD
Dec 26 2011 - 8:22pm
The USA was the aggressor in Vietnam, and in this case and for 150 years the Prussians were the agressors since the time of Frederick the Great. Due to Prussian agression and imperialism Poland ceased to exists as an independent country back in the Napoleonic Wars when the monarchies defeated the French republic which had liberated Poland from the monarchies and specificallly from the Prussian mad dogs.
Other countries have ceased to exists in Europe due to the Prussians not the Russians, and they include Silesia back in the time of Frederick the Great, the self hating closet gay whose father killed his gay lover which led to him going stark raving power crazy and a war mongering psychopathic Neanderthal.
Poland wouldn't again become an independent country until Moscow's "terrible Communists" gave it its independence in 1918 or 1919. Yet Winston Churchil would say "kiss the Hun (German), kill the Bolshie" (Communist) at the time. Now can we take a look at that as well as the fact that the British prime minster finally tired of Churchill's grand crusade against the "terrible Communists"?
Posted by AD
Dec 26 2011 - 8:35pm
Inadvertent repeat deleted.
Posted by AD
Dec 26 2011 - 8:37pm
Oh, and I'm not'saying that "Germans are any worse or better than Englishmen, Americans, Swedes, Poles or Russians" as Henry Wallce put it as vice president. But as Wallace put it in perspective the educational system and media had so thoroughly brainwashed the Germans for 150 years. Even the Scandinavian educator, Grudvteg would take note of the fact of the German educational system being "schools of death" in 1838 with their propaganda about Germans being better than others with others only fit to be their servants and be dominated by them.
Posted by minitrue
Dec 26 2011 - 9:25pm
Glory of War
by
Steve Osborn
What is this Glory of War?
The politicians loudly prate of destiny, of right,
Then return to their bunkers to hide themselves away
As the bands play and the soldiers march off in all their panoply.
People cheer them as they ride off to meet their fate.
Rockets fly and bombs fall, napalm smoke fills the air.
Gaunt young-old men with haunted eyes, shooting, shooting,
At others who look the same, but for the uniform, shooting back.
Cities fall, women run screaming, babies burn and starve,
Large eyes staring, uncomprehending.
Sad eyed children line the streets,
Picking over garbage and begging for food.
What of the young soldiers, on either side, who marched off to Glory?
Those charred, stinking corpses littering the sand?
Uniforms burned off, they all look alike to the flies that lay their eggs.
Their dreams, their hopes, their loves, mean nothing anymore.
“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,”
Wrote the Roman poet Horace in the time of Christ.
“It is sweet and honourable to die for one’s country.”
How much sweeter to live for it, and build a world of peace.
19 Feb 2003
Posted by AD
Dec 27 2011 - 1:40pm
Peace is a good thing, no two ways about it. But why aren't people near as worked up about war except when it involves European white savages who invented war and even tribal warfare? Where is the concern for people of color so often victimized by the West either by economic or military imperialism and war. Actually people of color and the native peoples of this hemisphere, of Asia, the Pacific, and the rest of the Third World have been the chief victims of the West and its war mongering and war. Before exposure to European colonization, they tended to be a peaceful and peace loving people with a real sense of community acting like real human being not Neanderthals.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson "A foolish consistency is the silly hobgoblin of small minds." This is so dogmatic and untrue about the First World War and especially about false moral equivalency. What is going on today is much worse by a country mile with many more civilian deaths. Then this doesn't even consider the endless German navy fanatical sinking of US unarmed ships, the sacking of a Catholic santuary in Belgium by the "wonderful Prussians." They did want that war, and their Kaiser wanted it. Then they got it and lost-- gee how terrible. The Brits, Yanks, and Freachies weren't like the Frenchies back in 1871 or Denmark or Sweden at about the same time for the Prussians. They just wanted peace, a piece of this country, a piece of that country-- all they "wanted was peace." Damn I'm glad somebody was around to keep the Prussians from forcing us to learn German.
Peace is a good thing, but it means "common sense cooperation between nations" not one nation trying to dominate other nations as Prussia did and then whining about getting its booty beat. Oh, and fighting Irish 69th Regiment was among those handing them a booty whipping.
Also the side killing the children was the German side including the genocide by their Turk allies against the Armenians. That was a holocaust which some are still denying. I've met one of those who lost relatives in that holocaust. Is one holocaust OK just because no war crimes trials came out of that war. Please. Give this a rest except for those who are true pacifists. For them, I say fine.
Why don't we have something about the Korean War and all the Cold War being a complete damn fraud and the scheme of power crazy, Neanderthal hardened Prussian Nazis who took control of the US intelligence apparatus while the fighting was still going on thanks to the treason of right wing US military jack asses at high levels and against the advice of our best allies even in the West. After double crossing the Russians and backing the Prussians we sure fouled things up royally-- "thanks Harry Truman" for kissing that Prussian booty. Also keep in mind the "wonderful peace loving German Hannover dynasty" on the British throne when the 13 colonies rose up in rebellion. Now why didn't they "just give peace a chance?"
Posted by Hobgobline
Dec 28 2011 - 10:22am
"Before exposure to European colonization, they tended to be a peaceful and peace loving people with a real sense of community acting like real human being not Neanderthals."
Not true, why do you think the Great Wall of China was built? Pity you never got to meet Ghenghiz Khan. No, human's the world over are violent and warlike and have been throughout their bloody history in every corner of the globe, and not just to each other, they even survive, uneccesarily, by murdering and feasting on other sentient beings they share this planet with, even though their original dietry ancestors were vegetarian.
Posted by CategoricalImpe...
Jan 1 2012 - 12:37pm
The blame for the outbreak of the First World War cannot be placed on any one nation. It was a senseless slaughter that only benefitted and enriched international bankers. No more brother wars. For mutual understanding amongst nations: reasonradionetwork dot com
50 Comments so far
Show AllBut the war profiteers can't have this sort of thing - - they need to keep people fighting amongst themselves so they won't join in common cause.
When officers threatened to kill those who didn't resume shooting at the other, it's the officers threatening the men who should have been the targets.
Kind of like during the Vietnam war when infantry who thought their officers were incompetent and leading them into certain death managed to disappear those officers so the men could stay alive.
Of course, deliberately avoiding the "enemy" (local people defending their homeland) and lying in the bullrushes smoking pot helped many stay alive.
No, and the lesson that militaries took from this atrocious breakout of spontaneous peace was to increase bombing campaigns over holidays.
"But the war profiteers can't have this sort of thing" = Dem/Rep Election Campaign Groups
The higher ups in the military did not like what took place in Christmas of that year.
This was relatively early in the war between more or less equally matched opponents who could gaze upon each other for long periods of time before restarting hostilities. Also the current of anti-imperialism was still strong despite the betrayal of the Second International. The Christmas 1914 has always been inspiring, perhaps the last time soldiering at the infantry level had a personal feel. However that quickly changed with weapons of mass destruction (machine guns and gas in this case), propaganda, profiteering, and the brute force of strong over the weak (most every war since) came into play.
If they didn't have uniforms, you couldn't tell them apart. We are all One.
This clip is from the movie Joyeux Noel.
http://videosift.com/video/Christmas-truce-of-December-1914
“In the Somme valley, the back of language broke. It could no longer carry its former meanings. World War I changed the life of words and images in art, radically and forever. It brought our culture into the age of mass-produced, industrialized death. This, at first, was indescribable.”
― Robert Hughes
This movie clearly shows who is reposonsible for the dividing lines between people, and it is not the people in the trenches.
Investigate 9/11.
Never going to happen anymore than the JFK assasination was investigated by independent sources independently. It's not in the interests of whatever today is seen as national security. Money made it happen and money will cover it up. Money is security and all else is expendable and the very small cost of doing business.
Good comments, Gandhighost and gardenernorcal.
Unfortunately, they are "investigating" 9/11, in a fraudulent manner.
Earlier this week, New York federal judge George Daniels blamed Iran, along with traditional boogeymen Taliban and alQaida, for the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Preparing the masses for the neocons' dream war with Iran.
While I wish The Onion had originated this story as a hoax, it was sent, I believe, via AP to our local newspaper. It's easily Googled as Judge blames Iran for 9/11.
And most Americans will buy this neocons bs. It keeps our military heroes in the Mideast, where they fight them there so that we don't have to fight them here. Or something. Like our new Marines base in Australia, "to contain China. Or something." (thanks to Ted Rall)
Bill in Dubuque
How many wars can be started in how many countries for the same crime, of which none were responsible?
Guess we're no doubt going to find out.
OK. The English are the British, and the Prussians are the Germans. Let's go for it.
But if you go to Glasgow which is in the UK and British, don't tell those people they're English. They're British, but north of the border they don't go for all this the English are the British and England is the UK which is just fine in London or Manchester and the rest of the below the border towns and countryside.
How about less of this false moral equivalence between the British not English and Germans? Also if some are going to insist on falsely referrring to the British as English even though the English have always been dominant among the British, then let's start referring to the Germans as Prussians with the same reasoning and the acknowledgement which is even then an understatement that the Prussians and Prussia were dominant among the Germans and Germany likewise? By those who are English referrring to things British, they are at least acknowledging openly their imperialist past whereas the Germans often seek to hide from theirs. They're modest in the Churchillian phrase and they have a lot to be modest about. Let's give the Irish a rest and go after these Neanderthals of Europe who for 150 years were the worst war mongering imperialists even for Europe. Yes, their educational system and their media brainwashed them into their German exceptionsalism but the same is true in the USA. Does that make it OK? Not in the least. Let's deal with the fact that these Jerries needed a booty whipping and the Anglo/French/US types handed it to them. I'm not one bit shy about saying so. Add to that Germany wasn't even nation state until 1871. Prussia was way back before even the 19th Century, and that's where their real history is locked up as an imperialist power starting as far back as Frederick the Great.
Germany has been allowed to play on Western sympathy for way too long. They damn well don't deserve it. They are much like the Israelis, many of whom really are Prussians too. They have that they're "better than all others" mentality and all others are simply here to be their servants. That's what got them where they are today. Why is it that Germany is constantly defending Israel more France which has a Jewish president? They really see themselves in the Israelis. That's the real deal.
In three or four years in the last third of the 19th Century Prussia as a state took Schleswig Holstein from Denmark, a good body of land from Sweden. They nor the
Germans ever returned it and still have it to this day. The Alsace Lorrain which France got back after the First World War still allows those people to use German as their language. Does Germany do that in any area that Germans or Prussians took by force? Please--no multi culturalism here. Scandinavia and the rest of Western Europe are different from Germany-- more tolerant and democratic oreinted easily. Even the Briitsh are easily more democratic oreinted than Germans and less whiny about this and that slight. Germany can't get over that it caused most of its problems and that others as well. They are brainwashed as much as the USA-- likely the reason for such US affinity for them. Yes they need better media. Hey, the British and others in Europe are developing alternate media. Why don't the Germans try to do the same? What's holding them up?
Well, you should be aware of who else is fueling the fire on Iran:
http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/iran-rejects-u-s-allegations-on-al-qaida-operative-1.403487
Muslims don't celebrate Xmas do they. Works well for the war effort. Doesn't matter that their god is the same one Christians and Jews worship as well. They look different and our leaders tell us they are the target. I am sure the bulldozer operator was told Rachel Corrie was a threat to national security.
Amazing that they put their "differences aside"?
No, what's really amazing is that
these men went back to being soldiers
and killing each other.
onbegrijpelijk.
My thoughts exactly. Is military brainwashing so powerful that it can make you kill someone you've shared food, laughter, songs and games with the day before? If so, how merry a christmas was that then? The insanity of it is just mind-boggling.
If that's the spirit of christmas, geef mijn portie dan maar aan Fik.
Military Brainwashing????
You best read the historical record closely.
The British and German High Command were distressed at this interlude. They had to threaten the troops and indeed shoot some to get them to fight again and this event was forgotten as the battles started up in earnest.
"They had to threaten the troops and indeed shoot some to get them to fight again.." Well, that answers my question affirmatively. Thanks.
helaas, Fik ken ik niet.
Fido?
als hij de hond van Pavlov is - then it rings a bell.
Haha, as in: I hear Pavlov's bells ring-a-ding, ding-ding-ding-a-ding, ding?
I recall reading somewhere that many were discharged because they were no longer "effective" soldiers.
And by many accounts the majority of soldiers in WW I shot to miss
It was a brief time out in the game. War is essentially a sport in many male psyches. They play off the same tribal instincts.
Far fewer soldiers think of war as being an exciting adventure once they have been relieved of a limb or two or had their homes destroyed, or had family members killed, or merely spent the rest of their lives being terrified of loud noises.
Nietzsche
If only that were true. The brainwashed soldiers who come back from Afghanistan missing an arm or a leg rarely, it seems, have second thoughts about having been in the military. Contrast this servile attitude to the scene in the searing documentary Sir! No Sir! when the male nurse noted that of all the patients in his care who were unable to lift a spoon to their mouths or were unable to go to the bathroom by themselves because of the horrific injuries that they had received in Vietnam, that not one of them said that what they had gone through over there was worth it.
To risk a generalization, it does appear that the current generation appears to be much less likely to question authority than the one that grew up during the 1960s and ended up, like I did, in that place called Vietnam.
Erroll, there's also a difference between having to go to war under the barrel of your own government's riffle and volunteering. I think that's the key here.
Rev. B.
I am not quite sure what your point is. In either case that you mention the soldiers who end up fighting in those wars should, as the documentary Sir! No Sir! made rather clear, be speaking out and refusing to fight in their country's illegal wars. It should also be pointed out, as David Cortright does in his classic work Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War, that the majority of those soldiers who took part in the GI movement during the Vietnam conflict were not draftees but, instead, enlistees.
My point is that if soldiers could say NO during the Vietnam conflict then certainly many more can be saying NO to American imperialism in the Middle East as compared to the relatively few who now comprise the IVAW [Iraq Veterans Against the War].
Well, if you can't understand my point (and you claim to be a Viet Nam vet who I'm assuming didn't volunteer), there's not much I can do to make you understand the obvious. To me, it makes all a difference but judging by your confusion it's not. As someone who was forced to carry a torch, chant slogans and cheer for a self-appointed sanguine dictator for half of his life at the barrel of a gun, volunteering versus being forced makes all the difference. But again that's just me.
The "people want peace so bad that some day the politicians are going to have to get out of the way and let them have it" as Dwight D Eisenhower put it so well. But let's reemember that "maintaining a peace is like keeping a good garden in good order. You have to work at it day in and day out. . ." as Henry Wallce so aptly explained as vice president.
A modern retelling in song by Garth Brooks.
Belleau Wood - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ7cXGcqdAI
"Here's hoping we both live to see us find a better way."
"Heaven's not beyond the clouds it's just beyond the fear."
Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War - Barbara Ehrenreich
http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Rites-Origins-History-Passions/dp/0805057870
War is not what one thinks it once was. It was so different for the average foot soldier.
The Landlords fall out so the Tenants cut each others throats. It has been said that WW2 came about because they couldn't agree on how to carve up the slaves.
Very touching video.
Dialogue from All Quiet On The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque which summarizes the whole business of war:
Tjaden: Well, how do they start a war?
Soldier #1: Well, one country offends another.
Tjaden: How could one country offend another? You mean there's a mountain over in Germany gets mad at a field over in France?
Soldier #1: Well, stupid. One people offends another.
Tjaden: Oh, that's it. I shouldn't be here at all. I don't feel offended.
Katczinsky: It don't apply to tramps like you.
Tjaden: Good. Then I can be going home right away...The Kaiser and me...Me and the Kaiser felt just alike about this war. We didn't neither of us want any war, so I'm going home. He's there already.
Soldier #1: Somebody must have wanted it. Maybe it was the English. No, I don't want to shoot any Englishman. I never saw one 'til I came up here. And I suppose most of them never saw a German 'til they came up here. No, I'm sure they weren't asked about it.
Soldier #2: Well, it must be doing somebody some good.
Tjaden: Not me and the Kaiser.
Soldier #1: I think maybe the Kaiser wanted a war.
Tjaden: You leave us out of this.
Katczinsky: I don't see that. The Kaiser's got everything he needs.
Soldier #1: Well, he never had a war before. Every full-grown Emperor needs one war to make him famous. Why, that's history.
Paul: Yeah, Generals too. They need war.
Soldier #3: And manufacturers. They get rich.
Soldier #1: Nobody wants it in particular. And then all at once, here it is. We didn't want it. The English didn't want it. And here we are fighting.
Katczinsky: I'll tell ya how it should all be done. Whenever there's a big war comin' on, you should rope off a big field.
Soldier #1: And sell tickets.
Katczinsky: Yeah, and, and, on the big day, you should take all the kings and their cabinets and their generals, put them in the center dressed in their underpants and let 'em fight it out with clubs. The best country wins.
In the 1950 version of King Solomon's Mines, if I remember correctly, there's a scene where two native tribes are involved in a war. The two chiefs get in the center of a ring of tribesmen and fight hand to hand (I forget if they had weapons or not). The one who wins wins the war. I always thought they were more civilized than we are. Woulda been interesting to see GWB and Saddam Hussein in the ring together.
Totally agree. I often refer to this passage and Remarque's proposition of how wars should be fought. I often have the same visions you do. Picture Obomber and Ahmadinejad together in the rink for that matter. Ha!
There's also an episode of the original Star Trek that deals with the issue of humane war. The crew lands on a distant planet which is at war but you can't tell because people are living normal, peaceful lives. They approach it by gathering representatives of both sides in a war room and play a chess-like game. Whichever side loses gathers a mutually agreed number of volunteers from its side and humanely euthanizes them so that the rest of society can be spared the horrors and the destruction of war. I, however, like Remarque's proposition better as I'm certain that having our warmongering and cowardly politicos hash it out and feel the pain in their own flesh would put an end to all the violence the inflict on others and to their rampant warmongering and imperialism.
On 24 dec 1914,when the Great war in it's fith month of horrors ,the guns were silent then a voice started singing this song then it was sung in 10 different languages. The men declared a 24 hr truce and left their trenches to fraternise. The officers disagreed.The truce lasted 24 hr. It never happened again during that war or others.But remembering that sacred moment immortalised in the movie "Noel 1914" and by our own John mc Dermott in song, we can think in Noelof pastr Bieber in Swiss Alps who had no music for the service and composed "Stille Nacht" and is one ofthe most loved pieces of music because we all desire peace. may God give it to us for we don't seem to be good at making Peace.To you and your family to friends and to those you think of as enemies,PEACE Sent to all 22 dec 2011
and this war would have been over by xmas...
Something that could only happen in a citizen army. Similar stuff happened in Vietnam when they used the draft to build the military. Today's all-volunteer force (a mercenary army for all practical purposes) is immune to such brief flashes of conscience and retained humanity, because every soldier voluntarily signed up to kill and to risk death. Mercenaries make very obedient soldiers as long as they get paid on time.
All do have a Happy New Year and push and occupy. As to what I've said it can easily be verified I'd think at your local library, but maybe I've spoke too soon given the neo cons need to defund such and keep such inconvenient facts from the masses. Also when Martin Luther King Jr gives that beyond Vietnam speech why does he in that talk
that's live specify what the Germans did if it was nothing other than typical of all European tribes? Oh, it's not in the book I know, as I have it at home. But the talk that is on Norman Solomon's documentary, "War Made Easy" it is. Now that's just a fact. Just watch it on the documentary. It's right in there with the praise for Wayne Morse as senator at the time from Oregon.
The USA was the aggressor in Vietnam, and in this case and for 150 years the Prussians were the agressors since the time of Frederick the Great. Due to Prussian agression and imperialism Poland ceased to exists as an independent country back in the Napoleonic Wars when the monarchies defeated the French republic which had liberated Poland from the monarchies and specificallly from the Prussian mad dogs.
Other countries have ceased to exists in Europe due to the Prussians not the Russians, and they include Silesia back in the time of Frederick the Great, the self hating closet gay whose father killed his gay lover which led to him going stark raving power crazy and a war mongering psychopathic Neanderthal.
Poland wouldn't again become an independent country until Moscow's "terrible Communists" gave it its independence in 1918 or 1919. Yet Winston Churchil would say "kiss the Hun (German), kill the Bolshie" (Communist) at the time. Now can we take a look at that as well as the fact that the British prime minster finally tired of Churchill's grand crusade against the "terrible Communists"?
Inadvertent repeat deleted.
Oh, and I'm not'saying that "Germans are any worse or better than Englishmen, Americans, Swedes, Poles or Russians" as Henry Wallce put it as vice president. But as Wallace put it in perspective the educational system and media had so thoroughly brainwashed the Germans for 150 years. Even the Scandinavian educator, Grudvteg would take note of the fact of the German educational system being "schools of death" in 1838 with their propaganda about Germans being better than others with others only fit to be their servants and be dominated by them.
Glory of War
by
Steve Osborn
What is this Glory of War?
The politicians loudly prate of destiny, of right,
Then return to their bunkers to hide themselves away
As the bands play and the soldiers march off in all their panoply.
People cheer them as they ride off to meet their fate.
Rockets fly and bombs fall, napalm smoke fills the air.
Gaunt young-old men with haunted eyes, shooting, shooting,
At others who look the same, but for the uniform, shooting back.
Cities fall, women run screaming, babies burn and starve,
Large eyes staring, uncomprehending.
Sad eyed children line the streets,
Picking over garbage and begging for food.
What of the young soldiers, on either side, who marched off to Glory?
Those charred, stinking corpses littering the sand?
Uniforms burned off, they all look alike to the flies that lay their eggs.
Their dreams, their hopes, their loves, mean nothing anymore.
“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,”
Wrote the Roman poet Horace in the time of Christ.
“It is sweet and honourable to die for one’s country.”
How much sweeter to live for it, and build a world of peace.
19 Feb 2003
Peace is a good thing, no two ways about it. But why aren't people near as worked up about war except when it involves European white savages who invented war and even tribal warfare? Where is the concern for people of color so often victimized by the West either by economic or military imperialism and war. Actually people of color and the native peoples of this hemisphere, of Asia, the Pacific, and the rest of the Third World have been the chief victims of the West and its war mongering and war. Before exposure to European colonization, they tended to be a peaceful and peace loving people with a real sense of community acting like real human being not Neanderthals.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson "A foolish consistency is the silly hobgoblin of small minds." This is so dogmatic and untrue about the First World War and especially about false moral equivalency. What is going on today is much worse by a country mile with many more civilian deaths. Then this doesn't even consider the endless German navy fanatical sinking of US unarmed ships, the sacking of a Catholic santuary in Belgium by the "wonderful Prussians." They did want that war, and their Kaiser wanted it. Then they got it and lost-- gee how terrible. The Brits, Yanks, and Freachies weren't like the Frenchies back in 1871 or Denmark or Sweden at about the same time for the Prussians. They just wanted peace, a piece of this country, a piece of that country-- all they "wanted was peace." Damn I'm glad somebody was around to keep the Prussians from forcing us to learn German.
Peace is a good thing, but it means "common sense cooperation between nations" not one nation trying to dominate other nations as Prussia did and then whining about getting its booty beat. Oh, and fighting Irish 69th Regiment was among those handing them a booty whipping.
Also the side killing the children was the German side including the genocide by their Turk allies against the Armenians. That was a holocaust which some are still denying. I've met one of those who lost relatives in that holocaust. Is one holocaust OK just because no war crimes trials came out of that war. Please. Give this a rest except for those who are true pacifists. For them, I say fine.
Why don't we have something about the Korean War and all the Cold War being a complete damn fraud and the scheme of power crazy, Neanderthal hardened Prussian Nazis who took control of the US intelligence apparatus while the fighting was still going on thanks to the treason of right wing US military jack asses at high levels and against the advice of our best allies even in the West. After double crossing the Russians and backing the Prussians we sure fouled things up royally-- "thanks Harry Truman" for kissing that Prussian booty. Also keep in mind the "wonderful peace loving German Hannover dynasty" on the British throne when the 13 colonies rose up in rebellion. Now why didn't they "just give peace a chance?"
"Before exposure to European colonization, they tended to be a peaceful and peace loving people with a real sense of community acting like real human being not Neanderthals."
Not true, why do you think the Great Wall of China was built? Pity you never got to meet Ghenghiz Khan. No, human's the world over are violent and warlike and have been throughout their bloody history in every corner of the globe, and not just to each other, they even survive, uneccesarily, by murdering and feasting on other sentient beings they share this planet with, even though their original dietry ancestors were vegetarian.
The blame for the outbreak of the First World War cannot be placed on any one nation. It was a senseless slaughter that only benefitted and enriched international bankers. No more brother wars. For mutual understanding amongst nations: reasonradionetwork dot com