Out now, my book: Fifty Problems for Atheists. It is timeto think about the Creator or Atheism, the Genesis one issue. Really, it is the biggest issue there is.
Fifty Problems for Atheists.
Category Archives: General
WE CHRISTIANS WORLDWIDE AGREE – WE MAKE PEACE ON EARTH
Sometimes the Christian faith is obscured by wider events, opinions and quarrels and the maelstrom of the secular media. So it is with war and militarism. We are in the middle of two intense wars in which both sides are right, but really wrong, causing devastation and untold deaths. Worse, there are other trillions of weapons, wars, 120m war refugees, half the world’s population under military dictators, perhaps 1bn with trauma, big military budgets, 28m armed troops and war and militarism spews massive CO2. The way we are going is broad and leads to destruction and we all need to stop, think again and turn to another road.
We have long had a range of Christian truths and principles shaping the different way. We have allowed them to be sidelined, but surely now we reaffirm them as the way the world should go, and seek to have them acknowledged by everyone. Here, roughly, are the key ones.
ALL HUMAN LIFE IS SACRED. It is God’s command that nobody should be killed and all lives require equal respect. Jesus says we should not even set out on the journey to killing with anger, quarrelling and enemies.
ARMING TO KILL IS WRONG AND EVIL. Arms aim to kill and destroy however they are dressed up. They are not neutral “defence”. Jesus says that if we go for arms against others, they will kill us too.
IN HUMAN AFFAIRS MIGHT IS A FALSE GOD. Might, in the form of the Superpowers, dominates much of the planet, but it is a false way. God will bring down the mighty from their thrones and the Lamb will govern our affairs.
WE CAN LIVE WITHOUT ENEMIES. We can love enemies and renounce the view that drives towards fear, threats, hatred and harm.
WAR IS JUDGEMENT AND PEACE IS BLESSING. Sometimes states go for war, but it finishes judging and destroying them. All lose in war. Living in peace is the way to go for the whole world.
THERE CAN BE JUSTICE AMONG NATIONS. As opposed to nationalistic self-righteousness, each claiming the other is wrong, there can be justice among nations, fair solutions without war. It requires acknowledgement of sins, facing injustice, restitution, fairness and becoming friends.
WE HAVE TO MAKE PEACE. Peace does not just happen. As Jesus taught, we have to make peace. We spread it round the world as good news. Peacemaking costs nothing and blesses us.
THE ROUTE IS SWORDS INTO PLOUGHSHARES. Mass arming has been the wrong direction. Disarmament makes us good neighbours without war. World-wide, arms are a big problem and need a big solution – Full World Disarmament. Anything less would be silly. It is practical, do-able and safe. As we are mainly disarmed within states and have few wars, so we disarm and police between states. The process is laid out below.
FAITH CAN MOVE MOUNTAINS. Christians act by faith and faith can move mountains. The Church can move mountains. A fraction of 2bn Christians could see this adopted at the UN if we acted together and affirmed these principles as the way to go. We move from passivity to living our faith.
JESUS LIFE and TEACHING GUIDES US. Jesus gave us this way of peace through to the Roman cross and the resurrection. It has local and world-wide consequences as we recognise the way of the Lamb on the throne and the blessings of peace on earth and the healing of the nations.
We each and all need to stand for and share this peace with those we know around the world until the way of peace opens up, as it nearly did in 1932. Signing and sharing this petition is a good way of building the momentum. We need to be practical, contacting others to get them to sign up, spend some time and work convincing others, organising churches and making it clear that we all will win world disarmed peace this decade.
APPEASEMENT – THE WORLD’S BIGGEST LIE
A. Hitler and Appeasement.
Even now around the world, “appeasement” is seen as the argument againstdisarmament and world peace. People vaguely see disarmament as the cause of War. The world now understands militarism through the supposed lesson of how World War Two started which is spelt out as follows:- You will always get people like Hitler. If you try to appease them by not arming, they will take advantage of you and rule the world. So, always be strong and arm against the next Hitler. The lesson of the 1930s is do not disarm. Stay strong, or another Hitler will get you. Being soft and disarming is not an option. The problem is clear. The arms companies are the good guys. They prevent war rather than cause it. They are always on our side. Be strong and arm and then we will all be safe.
This chapter is pure intense anger because the appeasement lie has become the “truth” and disarmament has been rubbished all our lifetimes. Here we look again at militarism between the wars and see that, as weapons caused WW1, so they caused WW2. More than that, real historical “Appeasement” is the opposite of the lesson above. It was the militarists acting together to arm and it brought on WW2.
B. WW1 Militarism carries on.
As we have seen, WW1 was caused by the build-up of arms and four arms races. It involved four years of horrific fighting, but war does not end with Armistice. It has consequences for decades. Marching soldiers carried on, traumatized, poor, looking for an income and believing myths. In Italy Mussolini formed Fascist Blackshirts, the Squadristi, who warred against Communists and anyone they did not like. There were some 200,000 of them. In October 1922 about 30,000 led the coup that made Mussolini the first Fascist dictator and later Hitler’s ally. In Russia the defeat and cruel occupation by Germany led to the Bolshevik Revolution and a long internal Civil War between White and Red forces. Churchill as British Minister for War contributed support to it. It lasted until 1923 and Poland also continued warring against the new USSR. Thus, Russia faced nine years of raw, devastating war, followed by famine. No-one can understand Russia who does not take that in. In Germany Hitler’s Brownshirts, the Sturmabteilung, were largely ex-soldiers recruited into a thug army. Other traumatized military units carried on war against Socialists in Germany, murdering Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg the socialist leaders. Hitler and his thugs tried the Munich Putsch in 1923, which failed and landed Hitler in prison. Later, as we know, Hitler and his militias dominated Germany and directly caused WW2. In France the Croix de Feu and Action Française mobilised ex-military personnel and the same Fascist style into demonstrations of more than 50,000. There were a million injured soldiers in France, life spoiled by war, looking for redress. Others states copied military Fascism. In Britain Oswald Moseley marched his blackshirts around the East End spouting antisemitism with wide support. In Japan the World War One militarists moved into permanent dominance through to World War Two. Spain and Portugal had Fascist revolutions through to 1939. So, World War One and its militarism carried through to World War Two in many parts of the world. As so often, War causes War and only peace can heal it.
C. Reviving the Arms Trade.
The Arms Trade is quite precarious, and the most difficult time is after a war. Weapons have been produced on a vast scale to win, or lose, the War and then the War ends with no further conflict in sight and demand for arms drops to zero. This happened in 1918. Because everybody had fought in the World War, war ended for everybody. Actually, conflict did carry on in Russia and elsewhere, but that was with the vast surplus of weapons after 1918. The common-sense understanding was that no war or substantial armaments sales were thinkable for a decade. And die the arms trade did. Of course, they had vast, stored profits from the War. In Germany the end of arms production was required of Krupp and the others. In France and Britain demand dived and the industry suffered. Armstrong-Whitworth and Vickers merged with Government help. Schneider linked with Skoda in Czechoslovakia in a deal to keep going. In the States Du Pont, Singer, Remington and others were very rich, but suddenly without demand. Of course, they could buy up other companies (as Du Pont did General Motors), diversify or recreate a demand for arms. Groups of shareholders, politicians and militarists tried the latter, but with difficulty. Throughout the 1920s the arms trade was low.
But the arms companies found their ways. One was bribery. Another was through scares. Another was through pressure on governments either from inside or though agents. One agent, employed to scupper the 1927 Geneva Naval Conference for $25,000, was William Shearer. He was largely successful and then tried to get $250,000 from his Naval Employers and went to court, so everyone then knew what was going on. Another was through exploiting tensions; even in 1919 the French were arming the Turks fighting the Greeks armed by the British. Lloyd George and Sir Basil Zacharoff helped set that one up. Another was through patriotic groups and pressure from the press, often part owned by military interests.
However, the real bonanza came with Japan. It was both into the business of equipping the Chinese warlords and then invading China through the Manchuria Incident. From about 1929 it was taking all the arms it could from British and French yards. Ships went almost daily from Hamburg, poorly disguised with weapons and ammunition. Exports from Britain, France, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium and Norway went to Japan. British arms exports were £12m officially between 1929-1931 but really more. Given these big sales, neither the French or British Governments were really going to sanction Japan for its invasion. Already before the Geneva Disarmament Conference the arms industry was off its leash and the arms trade was booming.[i]
D. Why? Money of Course.
We have already looked at the way the Disarmament Conference was defeated in 1932 just as the arms trade took off again. If you read the speeches and literature of the period, these were statesmen who on the whole came down in one overall political position, although they often disagreed and dithered. So, for example, in the Oxford Union debate of 9/2/1933 where it voted 64% for the motion: “This House would not in any circumstances fight for king and country.” They were not being unpatriotic, but were angry that the Government had made such a mess of Disarmament. By that stage they had let Hitler in and a lot of them would die in WW2. There was disagreement and mixed motives. Simon tried, not very hard, to stop the weapons supply to Japan and China and they agonized over peace, but the militarists and arms traders were really in charge.
Shortly we see a lot of them in Britain seeing some kind of link both with Germany and the Nazis. It included a lot of the British Establishment – the Dukes of Westminster, Buccleuch, Hamilton, Lord Rothermere, the Mitfords, John Amery, Archibald Ramsey, Lord Londonderry, Viscount Halifax, the Editor of the Times, Neville Chamberlain, Quentin Hogg and many more of the rich and landed. Often people focus on this as though it were some kind of wicked conspiracy, which occasionally it became with Sir Oswald Mosley, Lord Haw Haw and even Edward VIII, but usually it was merely a broader political position which we need to understand. The Conservative Right in Britain and elsewhere were rich with land, estates, town houses in London, servants, businesses, factories, banks and trade and a rich lifestyle which they considered necessary and normal. But it began to be threatened. The Communist Revolution had occurred in Russia in 1918 with the shock killing and fleeing of the royal family and aristocracy. Presumably it could happen elsewhere. In Britain the vote had been extended in 1918 to all men over 21 without a property qualification and all women over 30 where either they or their husband met a property qualification (two thirds of them). Suddenly the old governing class were outnumbered by the workers. Then in 1928 all men and women over 21 got the vote. The change was enormous. Previously property had ruled. Now it was universal suffrage. Even in 1923 the Labour Party was the strongest party. The fake Zinoviev Telegram, a wicked electoral fix, kept Labour out of power in the late 20s and the National Government of 1931 gave the Tories a massive majority of MPs and effective Government when they should have been in a minority. They were in power, but really Socialist reform was threatening much of their wealth and property.
Nationally, Tories looked to fight it, for example, in the General Strike of 1926 with the police, army and volunteer constables, sergeants, inspectors and commanders, or, later with Mosley’s Blackshirts. The Great Depression, caused by Wall Street Crash of 1929 and especially hitting the poor made the rich even more jumpy. Throughout Europe and the world the army and Fascist militias were seen as the answer for the rich to militant labour marchers and strikers. Hitler was funded from the beginning by a lot of rich people, like the mega industrialist Thyssen. They wanted property protecting. Thus, worldwide the link between the aristocracies and the industrial rich and Fascism and the Nazis was not conspiratorial at first but the mere business of protecting their money. Of course, it was dangerous, because Hitler the Servant become Hitler the Master, and the rich were very slow spotting that. In addition, the arms industry became in the Great War one of the chief ways of making money so it had its own momentum, but mainly the rich were worried about their money. Always money was there. The Apostle Paul said the love of money is the root of all evil. It is exactly correct in relation to militarism. In the 18th and 19th centuries European militarism centred around making money through world-wide colonialism. In the 20th century Fascist and Nazi militarism arose to defend money against socialism. Always the love of money lurked behind militarism and War.
E. The United States Fascist Coup Attempt.
The rich across the world with Fascist and Nazi militarism to protect wealth. Spain, Portugal, France, Poland, Greece and other European states had similar movements. We can see it in Japan, where the rich Zaibatsu companies destroyed democracy and set that great state on the warpath. In China the warlords were similarly rich and buying weapons. Fascism was present in Brazil, Argentina and throughout most of the world in Fascist parties and movements, but perhaps the most neglected is the United States, becoming now the dominant world economy.
In January 1933 Roosevelt became US President to address the Great Depression caused by the Wall Street Crash. In his inaugural address Roosevelt made reference to Jesus chasing the money-changers from the Temple. He was seen as a dangerous Socialist, especially by war-rich industrialists like the Du Ponts and J.P.Morgan. They therefore tried to arrange a Fascist Coup attempt. It involved marshalling half a million war veterans. They had earlier been on strike outside the White House in July 1932. There would be a march on Washington, taking over the White House using the veterans of the American Legion. It was modelled on Mussolini. Roosevelt would be declared too ill to govern and a dictator appointed to run the economy their way. Unfortunately, they chose General Smedley Butler to lead this and he turned out to be a principled democrat and blew the whistle to a Congressional Committee. Because many of the Wall Street backers controlled the Press, the news was downplayed but the Committee was convinced it was true. The Du Ponts then tried a different tack to bring down Roosevelt with the Liberty League. So Fascism, involving a military coup attempt, was also strong in the United States linking big money to marching veterans.
F. US Arms sales to the USSR and Nazi Germany.
The United States was also linked with a massive pattern of arms sales both to the USSR and Germany in the 1930s. Notice that this was not strongly ideological, otherwise US companies would not sell to the USSR. Chase Manhattan, the Caterpillar Tractor Company, Ford, Gulf and Western, Honeywell, Martin, Douglas, Pratt and Whitney, Du Pont and other US companies provided the USSR with the most up to date weapons factories on the planet, fortunately, because they were to defeat the Nazis. The USSR could pay in gold and the arms factories and equipment were sold and began production in the late 1930s.
Even stronger were the links to the Nazis in selling weapons. Again, given the false meaning of “appeasement”, you can hardly believe how this is ignored. The arms and manufacturing industry in the United States funded and armed Hitler. Listen to this. It is the US Ambassador, William Dodd, in Berlin writing to Roosevelt in October 1936.
But what can you do? At the present moment more than a hundred American corporations have subsidiaries here or co-operative understandings. The Du Ponts have three allies in Germany which are aiding in the armament business. Their chief ally is the I. G. Farben Company, a part of the Government which gives 200,000 marks a year to one propaganda organisation operating on American opinion. Standard Oil Company (New York sub company) sent $2,000,000 here in December 1933 and has made $500,000 a year helping Germans make Ersatz gas for war purposes; but Standard Oil cannot take any of its earnings out of the country except in goods…The International Harvester Company president told me their business here rose 33% a year (arms manufacture, I believe), but they could take nothing out. Even our airplanes people have secret arrangement with Krupps. General Motor Company and Ford do enourmous businesses [sic] here through their subsidiaries and take no profits out. I mention these facts because they complicate things and add to war dangers.[ii]
In other words big investment funds were going to Germany (through the Harriman Bank especially and Prescott Bush), to fund US arms firms producing for the Nazis and the money had to stay in Germany. The US was helping bankroll and arm the Nazis big time through to and even after the start of the World War. Ironically, both the USSR and Nazi Germany were using the weapons which had come from the United States’ sales of arms factories in the Spanish Civil War from July 1936 to April 1939. By this stage the arms companies throughout Europe were doing whatever they wanted and expanding like crazy, which of course, all wars were. Militarisation had taken over and was unchecked.
G. Munich and Peace in our Time.
As this commitment to the arms industry and to world-wide militarisation gathered in the 1930s once again the calculations like those before World War One emerged. Stalin knew his danger from Hitler and tried to ally with Britain and France, but the Tories were not going to line up with the Soviets. Although the USSR, France and Britain together could have stopped the Nazis, the Tory leaders, the ones who had destroyed the Geneva Disarmament Conference in 1932, now backed Hitler as their best ally. Appeasement was Right Wing militarist Tories in the UK lining up with the Nazis in a supposed alliance. They hoped for, as Neville Chamberlain stated when returning from Munich, “Peace in our Time.” Hitler of course ignored peace, and occupied Czechoslovakia. It gave him the kit for War. As he pointed out in a speech, Germany gained 2,175 field guns and cannons, 469 tanks, 500 anti-aircraft artillery pieces, 43,000 machine guns, 1,090,000 military rifles, 114,000 pistols, about a billion rounds of small-arms ammunition, and 3 million rounds of anti-aircraft ammunition.[iii] It armed about half the Wehrmacht. He also gained the giant Skoda works, the biggest arms factory complex in Europe. Munich merely completed the Nazi capacity to wage World War. Appeasement was the militarists miscalculating on one of their own kind.
H. Appeasement is the world’s biggest lie.
The idea that appeasement is not arming and caused the Greatest War is thus complete fiction. It is worse than fiction. It is like having a complex murder whodunit on stage with multiple conspirators who contribute to the foul crime, and then right at the end the murdered corpse stands up and says, “I done it.” The ancient prophets realised thousands of years back that politicians can say “Peace, peace” when there is no peace, but they did not see that politicians could blame peace for war. When people disappeared into the vortex that was World War Two for a decade or so of horrors, there were sufficient militarists around at the end to assert that appeasement caused war and to suggest we needed a Cold War. That is why it is the world’s biggest lie. It has shaped our lives for fear, destruction and war for another eight decades. It has destroyed and wasted quadrillions of dollars.
The cause of both World Wars was the same – the expansion of armaments. The appeasement “lesson” is pure moonshine. The Second World War happened because the arms companies, the Merchants of Death, were once again let off the leash and the killing industry was dominant. Now we all do the sensible thing and close it down.
[i] H.C.Englebrecht and F.C. Hanighen The Merchants of Death (NY:Dodd,Mead and Company, 1934) 228-234
[ii] Edgar B. Nixon, ed., Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs, Vol. III: September 1935-January 1937 (Cambridge:Belknap Press, 1969) p 456 quoted in Anthony Sutton Wall Street and the Rise of the Nazis Introduction
[iii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Agreement#German_invasion_of_rump_Czechoslovakia
MILITARISM MESSES UP AFRICA
Small Arms Militarism.
We need to see how militarism corrupts a Continent. Africa contains no superpowers. It a vast continent of smallish and some bigger states with a more rural economy that others on the planet. It was largely colonially controlled through to about 1960. Aside North Africa it was largely outside the two World Wars and involved in none of the big armaments confrontations of nuclear weapons, bombers, missiles, warships and tank warfare. Yet still militarism has dominated Africa. In the last sixty or so years governments have been marked by a high degree of military interaction and we need to ask why. First we undertake a quick survey of the evidence that militarism is tangled in African governance. Countries are presented in alphabetical order.
It corrupts most African Governments.
In Algeria General Gaid Salah is in charge of the government. He ousted the President. In Angola a long civil war fuelled by US-Soviet military input left 4m people, a third of the population, displaced. Some kind of stable politics is emerging though with flawed elections. Burkina Faso has a military junta in power and has had ten coups since independence. In Burundi a 2015 coup attempt has de-stabilised the system. The Central African Republic has armed groups and mercenaries in control of areas. General Mahamet Déby now controls Chad. The Republic of the Congo has had a recent civil war, army control and a ceasefire in December, 2017.The Democratic Republic of the Congo had military rule by Mobutu and a civil war in which 5m died. Kaliba became leader with military power vested in his office and since 2008 a major war has raged in Kivu Province. Its rich resources lead western multinational companies and militias to run much of the country in their own interests. In Ivory Coast a civil war in 2011 led to President Quattara backed by the military. In Egypt in 2013 President Morsi was removed from power in a coup d’ état. El Sisi now governs through military control. Ethiopia is a one-party state with no opposition MPs in Parliament, a Civil war in Tigray Province and is fighting in Eritrea, another totally destabilised state. Ghana is now a democracy with a strong regional military force. Earlier, Nkrumah was evicted from power in a coup, possibly with US involvement. There were a series of coups through the 60s to 80s. The Guinea National Assembly did not meet for five years 2008-13 through army control. More recently, there were doubtful elections and a 2021 military coup. Liberia has had two civil wars involving the notorious military figures James Doe and Charles Taylor and now has the former warlord Joshua Blahyi running the state. Libya was run by Colonel Gaddafi after a military coup in 1969 through to the Civil War in 2011. He was heavily armed after an agreement with Blair and Berlusconi, lost the Arab Spring conflict through western involvement and the state has been in military chaos since. Madagascar has had two decades of disturbance and a military uprising. In Mali there was a military coup in 2012 and two in the 2020s with the military in charge now. In Mauritania a military coup in 2008 rumbles on. Niger has had many military regimes, but more recently, sound elections, despite a coup attempt in 2021. Nigeria had military dictators from 1966 to 1999 and has moved over to more stable democratic governments, though subject to Islamic-Christian tension. In the north Boko Haram have run a terrorist campaign for more than a decade, killing, kidnapping, displacing and destroying. They are now linked to ISIS. Ruanda had a Civil War involving genocidal murders.. It now has elections but has effectively become a one party state under Kigame. Its army has operated in the DRC in relation to expensive western mineral extractions and has destabilised the area. Sierra Leone had an eleven year Civil War. In 1998-9 a coup led to UN peacekeeping forces trying to stabilize government. Somalia has had a long insurgency, torrid relationships with the Ethiopian military and a substantial breakdown and fragmentation of civil government. Sudan had a long Civil War between the North and the South involving deep disruption of the South until it became independent. Half a million people lost their lives. When the South became independent, it too had a Civil War killing a further 300-400,000 people. There have been coups in 2021 in the North and instability in the South. Togo has been governed by a Father-Son monopoly backed by the military in a total package of control. Uganda has been a military dictatorship more or less since independence under Idi Amin and Yowere Musevene. Parliament is highly paid and docile. The LRA in the North creates additional problems. Zimbabwe had white colonial military control and then the military dictatorship of Mugabe and a strong military presence since he was ousted.
On any reading of the situation this is a deep pattern of destructive interference in the life and politics of Africa, and it needs explaining, addressing, and eradicating. Nothing less is acceptable. The cost is enormous. Perhaps five million children in Africa under the age of five died as a result of armed conflict between 1995 and 2015.[i] Many states have been paralysed.
African Military Establishments.
How are they formed? There are probably several contributions.
- Colonial Military Training.
The colonial powers, Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, Portugal and Italy trained “native” soldiers and militias to run their colonies for a century or more. They were trained, well paid and used to being in charge. When independence came some of them became Prime Minister or President, either through leading independence movements or as transitional figures. Links were retained with the colonial militaries and suppliers of arms, and the militaries became close to a central establishment which was well off, could exploit business deals and the wealth at the centre. They were the natural focus of continued colonial-independent contact and used to imposing military acquiescence on populations.
Western Military Equipment after Independence.
The European powers were keen to continue training the military after independence and to supply them with arms, sometimes in competition with the USSR. Arms deal were often accompanied by bribes as were commercial deals with multi-national corporations, and this solidified a class intent on staying on power, very well off and using their soldiers to impose no change politics.
- Corruption through multi-national Corporations.
Africa has a lot of natural resources, especially in states like DRC and Angola. Western companies which want to extract these are keen to do deals, either with governments or with militaries which control an area. Obviously the commodity, geography and kind of deal varies, but often the military can be close these deals and they money made from them.
- The Proliferation of Small Arms. Mainly the big arms have been absent from Africa, and it has concentrated therefore mainly on soldiers, rifles and small arms. These move in unregulated transfers both from Russia and the West, and also though more production in Africa’s main industrial centres. They are low cost, threaten people in large numbers and are very destructive of life and national cohesion as in Nigeria, DRC, Sudan, Ethiopia and many other states.
- Islamic Militarism. The Islamic- western confrontation in the middle east has been transposed by terrorist groups into north and Central Africa again causing disruption, death, refugees and military responses.
Africa can fully demilitarize.
The effects of all these processes has been to produce this widespread endemic small scale militarism affecting most states and shaping their political formation. All the attempts to address it have been piecemeal, mainly because the Russian and Western powers, multinationals and arms people do not want reform upsetting their profits, neither do most of the entrenched African politicians or militaries. It mirrors the issue we address later, namely that the established powers are militarist and will not bring about change through reform while they are dominant. Any sane person who thinks will agree that Africa should be fully demilitarised. So let us do it, removing weapons and the destructive power of weapons for all Africa’s people. It can transform the continent for great good immediately. It requires a mass popular movement which will insist on bringing it about. It is of course, a totally popular policy, perhaps the most popular on the planet, and the challenge in Africa, as in the rest of the world, is to make people aware it can be done. It can. We discuss it later. A great continent, crippled by militarism and military establishments, waits for reform….
[i] Zachary Wagner et al. “Armed conflict and child mortality in Africa: A geospatial Analysis” Lancet 30/8/2018
THE PEOPLE WHO DECIDE ON WAR
The people who decide on war
keep well away from the front door.
They sit and talk and laugh and sigh
While all the pawns charge and then die.
Wars come and go. The other side
is all to blame, and those who died
will be sent off by the top brass,
a lot of crosses in the grass.
For we are statesmen, know that arms
Are more important than our farms.
The destiny of all us great
Is to decide the nation’s fate.
Without these wars the state becomes
a welfare state for loads of bums.
We give the nation victory
so you can drink your cups of tea.
They’re wrong. We’re right. So, we must win
And throw the loser in the bin.
We must be safe to use our might
Because we know our truth is right.
You must be led by us, for we
Always will have an enemy.
They war, like us, we know not why,
Prepared to let their people die.
The mighty talk they know not what.
They, not our soldiers, should be shot,
Or rather, all their bloody plot
Of fighting needs to be forgot.
Arms made to kill must be closed down
As they have been in Bungay town.
“You don’t shoot me”, said Fred to Tom
“And I know you don’t have a bomb.”
Yew wastin’ words, say Tom to Fred.
Why buy to kill your neighbour dead?
Let’s think aboot a bit a fud.
Them sossidge rolls taste hoolly good.
THE TORY LEADERSHIP ELECTION AND THE JUDGEMENT OF GOD.
Christ on his knees washing hot feet – his teaching moves fast – the king/ruler of Israel and the world – going to the centre of political rule to teach us. Rule is service, doing the common good, for the poor first and everyone before God, accountable, the servants in Westminster who die to selves and do only the politics of truth and bringing it all into the light. Law is submission to what is right and good. It is for all and the elimination of favourites, elites, riches and the worship of rulers. Herod, throwing his weight around and looking for adulation, was eaten by worms and died. Christ’s servant politics – the only hope for the whole world – insists we all die to Selves (the lifeblood of Leviathan). He walked to the conqueror’s cross, where all sin including the viciousness of empire and autocracy is held by God and forgiven. Christ holds human self-worshipping power to ridicule with the resurrection and gently turns the world upside down, or really the right way up, as some two billion people have realized one way or another. This is politics.
“Ah”, says Thatcher, “The real point about the good Samaritan was that he had the wealth to pay the innkeeper.” Do you really hear that twist? And there is “Wealth Creation” when only God creates and we receive blessings. “Wealth creation” was sacking workers and telling the others to work harder. “Wealth creation” was taking about a trillion of public assets and selling them cheap to your friends. Wealth creation was cheap labour in China and from immigrants and rewarding the south east. So, year after year the nation was brainwashed into believing in wealth. It was not just local, but worldwide as Reagan-Thatcher bestrode the world as figureheads under which the rich could grow richer. Bankers, who merely rearrange money in drawers, got massive rich. Everyone started talking about ladders, without asking what piss stupid people swaying at the top of ladders could do. Mammon had arrived as the “new” great god, and everybody was required to worship it, despite Paul’s warning that it is the root of all evil.
Mammon required Militarism, because concentrations of Wealth need defending. Enemy thinking makes money and arms companies profit round the world by selling weapons. Especially after Reagan-Thatcher, all the world was armed, so that, even after the collapse of the USSR under the weight of its militarism, when it too was handed over to rich oligarchs, the world was full of wars and rumours of wars, hollow in a culture of saying, Peace, Peace, while pursuing the opposite. The hypocrisy of militarism, from winning the Falklands War to the US posturing on the unnecessary Cold War inhabited our minds and language and dragging the world towards destructive wars in the 21st century.
The Biblical Judgement of God is often superficially understood. It is not God acting against us, but is largely being left to our own devices. I did it my way. The UK, potentially wise, was dragged into Tory greed. Blair turned out to be merely another version, more generous to the NHS, but prepared with Bush to back a war in Iraq against a disarmed foe on the basis of lies against the UN and international law which would render much of the Middle East in destructive turmoil. Then Blair was gone and our own devices were running the show.
What were our own devices? One was self-promotion and leadership. The New Testament shows us Peter’s training through failures, the slow routes to wisdom, but suddenly “iconic” Conservative leaders appeared. Cameron appears in the arctic promising the Greenest Government Ever while the great bonfire of the rich carries on. Suddenly, Eton supplies our leaders from the born rich brigade again. Now the truth, hollowed out by the Cold War and the lust for “power”, becomes mere presentation, spin and the rhetoric of Now. Truth is, Say anything and do nothing”, ready for Boris. Now the only Tory principle is keeping wealth in power and one other – Nationalism, selfish Nationalism, self-adulatory Nationalism – “We will lead the world.”
Now we are through Boris – the lying about the EU, the side of a bus, the corrupt Desmond-Jenrick deal followed by dozens more, the gravy train where the rich throw crumbs to their political puppets, the politics of Prime Minister’s Performance Time, the rubbishing and assassination of Corbyn, the purging of the older some-principles Tories, the lies, holidays, bluster, emptiness, “our nation”, never allow taxing the rich to be discussed, hollow, “we will fight them on the beaches”, Boris era, full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Throughout the Boris rule, which has also marginalized Parliament further, compromised the rule of law, hidden truth, promised emptily, undermined the UN, championed militaristic nationalism and falsely presented most policy issues, we have been doing Brexit, effectively saying goodbye to Friends. Brexit does nothing.
The current leadership election by Tory MP’s and members (if it gets that far) is about their and our own devices, rhetorics constructed to win. A deep truthful examination of taxation would yield a very different discussion from the ones we have had. It is an election devoid of Christian content, principles, priorities and concern for peace and stewardship. The way of Christ is replaced by a rich spat with arguments driven by winning the next election for the rich. Naming it’s hollow content is the first step to addressing the depths of our failures.
1. NO PORKIES POST – The UK Current Account Problem.
Boris’s rhetoric of economic success is dangerous. When the UK overall trade weakness is exposed, millions will ask, how could things have got so bad so quickly? It has got bad slowly, been ignored and the problem has accumulated. It could have been corrected with a bit of humility, wisdom and a lower £, not a jolt.
The Current Account is the main measure of our overall trading position in relation to other countries – an important indicator. We are weak in manufacturing, import much food and many other goods, and have a surplus in financial services. A quarter of our non-financial business is owned overseas in a long buy-up process since Thatcher. So our international trading position is not strong.
It shows throughout this century a long decline in paying our way. Now the Current Account Deficit – roughly earnings abroad minus spending – is (minus) 7%, and it has declined with bumps since 2000. Crudely, we are not paying our way by say £1,000 a year per household and we will be held to account sooner or later. There is about £1 trillion of our debt which holders overseas could offload.
Good commentators see this is a real problem now. There is no understanding of when this weakness will be exposed, otherwise the markets would be already moving, but later or sooner, it will happen. The £ will fall, the cost of living increase, markets falter and our economic weakness will be exposed.
POSSIBLY THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE ON THE PLANET
Elaine and I have just had a discursive chat which may be important, though it was not full of laughs. We were discussing the scale and scope of trauma in the lives of people we have known, studied and read about. Obviously, our experience began after WW2 and included Jewish and other fighting horrors. It continued through the second and later generations. We discussed Wittgenstein whom we both studied. He went through a hellish WW1 and was violent towards kids he was teaching and weird, as the normal portrait shows. But then there were millions of others when we were growing up, at university, in each generation, through multiple causes and different wars. We think of “normal” people, but the scale of suffering that has resulted from sin and evil is vast and the tragedies are clear – suicide, drink, aggression, taking it out on others, insensitivity, murder and more. Many soaps and films reflect trauma and it plays a part in life, national politics, social care. States can do collective trauma. Art is full of it – Blaue Reiter, the Scream or Otto Dix.
Of course, trauma has many causes. Personal abuse, violence, hate, oppression, poverty, pain, isolation, exclusion and military attack – shooting, explosions, destruction, killing, injury, refugee status, famine, rabid fear. Those of us who have had an easy life rarely understand the suffering involved, the triggers, the depression and the weight of memories. Jesus understood it. The need for a full Christian understanding of it now is great.
I have been aware of it in relation to my war and militarism studies and realized how big it is involving one or two billion people last century. There is the collective Jewish trauma from the great evil. Poland, Russia (twice) and all occupied countries have been through it. We see the problem across generations when we realize that Hitler and Stalin had it. World War Two occurred when traumatized and vicious Nazis were old enough to be close to power. Military trauma repeats itself endlessly.
The military hide it. In the US for years after the Iraq war twenty veterans a day were committing suicide. Our western armed forces are full of it and it plays out in military families. Killing and facing death takes its toll. But, of course, for every military trauma, serious though it is, there are ten or more who are traumatized by militarism. There are perhaps 200,000 Russian soldiers who are traumatized now but twenty million or more Ukrainians whose lives are blighted, including children who will live into the 22nd century. We cannot hide it any more, because we can see it. It is also happening in Iraq, Afghanistan, Congo, Sudan, Libya, Palestine, China, Syria, Eritrea and in other places of repression involving untold millions. It is the central world fact, caused by pursuing weapons and militarism. Of course, militarism unaddressed could destroy the planet anyway, but perhaps you will stand against this blot on humanity, the system that does not work, this commitment to destroying good human lives.
Surely, he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.
Hitch-Hiking Round Europe with Colin Wills 1961 and 1962
(Incomplete)
For two summers Colin Wills and I hitch-hiked around Europe, the first one to the Adriatic Coast via Germany and Austria, and the second down through Italy to Greece from Brindisi and back through Yugoslavia, Venice, Switzerland, Luxembourg and home. The years were 1961 and 1962 when we were entering the Upper Sixth and after A levels at the CNS in Norwich. We both stayed for a third year at the CNS before Cambridge, Colin to do Science and me to do Economics
Colin had a good cultural nose musically and artistically and we used guides to find art galleries, other sites, the normal tourist stuff and the history of the area. Usually we visited free, low price or student price places weighing what we could afford. We hitched, or walked, with a rucksack, medium size, using Youth Hostels for accommodation. Youth Hostels in Europe had a good reputation. You got an international Youth Hostel Card, and they were great places to stay. Our Mums had made cotton sleeping bags which we slept in and there were clothes, washing stuff, maps, passport, water holder, cup, plate and cutlery. Money was in a belt Mum made, safe away and really we travelled quite light.
The trips lasted five and then six weeks. I think I/we took about £35 for the first one and a bit more for the second one. We rationed ourselves effectively and did not have any financial crises. On the second trip we booked a train to Köln and a night in the hostel to get underway fast and travel further south.
The politics of Europe was quite settled before the Berlin Wall. Kennedy was President and Macmillan Prime Minister. There was some gratitude for Britain’s role in WW2 and so hitching with a union jack was supposed to be easier, except in France which had the reputation of being slow for hitch-hikers, so we went SE rather than into France and Spain.
We got on well together, discussed what to do and decided, always had a lot to think about and absorb, the hitch-hiking was reasonably successful and easy and they were both good, heathy, relaxing holidays where we learned a lot. We had some French and German from School and muddled through in language terms, partly relying, sadly, on those who spoke English and trying to pick up the basics in Italy and elsewhere.
THE FIRST TRIP.
We set out from Lowther Road, waving goodbye to Mum and Dad, walked down to the Ipswich Road and hitched to Harwich. Our parents let us go and did not dump their worry on us. We went towards Germany. I’d already hitch-hiked in the Netherlands earlier and we were aiming to get down into Germany. We’d had a school trip to Goslar earlier, and so it was not completely new. One constraint was that you could not hitch on autobahns, and so other routes might be less direct.
We headed for the Rhein, and really missed a lot travelling through with glimpses of Heidelberg and its university up on the hill, and the first place we really stopped was Stuttgart. We were learning the process. The YH was good. We went to the old and new gallery. In the old one I remember the Durer looking at you and in the new one seeing the early 20th century German ones for the first time. I remember Kurt Schwitters for some reason. Stuttgart looked modern, newly built and a different style to back home. I’m not sure whether we worked out that it was because we had bombed it. From Stuttgart we went on the Ulm and for some reason were committed to climbing the Cathedral Tower to get a magnificent view of the place and we were at home in Germany, but moving fast. Colin on the whole took the lead and was keen on Salzburg and Vienna probably for musical reasons. We hitched along the main Augsburg, Munich road, round Munich, aware of what we were missing, and on towards Salzburg. I think we stopped off at Rosenheim, with the final walk to the Youth Hostel. The YHs were friendly, clean, you could always get information, knowledge, link up with folks. It was a great system of international friendship and we enjoyed it from the start.
The move over the border into Austria to Salzburg was easy and we booked in the YH for two nights with a day’s sightseeing. Colin did obeisance at Mozart’s birthplace, but I don’t think we could afford to go in and we wandered around the old city soaking it in. It was where we began to get a feeling of travelling back in time as well as down through Europe. Was this eighteenth century or what? Working out what cities were then. Then we moved on again to Vienna, aware we were approaching something big. Through Linz, aware we were picking up the Danube. Vienna you could get a grasp of through the ring and where everything was in relation to it. We looked at trams, coffee houses, the great imperial housing, information on Viennese figures. We had time. I think three days sightseeing and now knew what we must see. The Domkirche, total medieval Gothic vertical praise. We had to go to the Albertina, Belvedere, where I think we just walked up to and looked through the doors and windows. Lots of places you could get in free or reduced with a YH Card, but not there. Colin focussed on Mozart and Beethoven while I majored on Durer, especially the glory of God small clump, Rembrandt, the Blauer Reiter and others beginning to emerge. We got a feel for the Austrian Empire, saw Freud and other figures and home and a lot of important people in stone riding horses. One evening we decided that we should go out to the Ferris Wheel in the Harry Lime movie over by the Canal. It was a slog to get there and back before closing time at the YH and when we got there it was just a big wheel across the Canal largely in the dark.
Our diet, established quite early was YH breakfast, a litre of milk each and a fried egg on bread which a lot of places did. Then we shared a loaf of bread and bag of fruit during the day with sometimes something else in the evening. It has basic, but healthy. No restaurants.
The plan was Vienna and Venice, but we were not sure about the rest. From Vienna we travelled south, knowing that hitching was more or less impossible in Tito’s Yugoslavia and we would have to catch a train. So, we hitched slowly to the border and eventually walked over it into Yugoslavia. I’ve tried to establish on a map where it was, but know there was a lot of wondering about what route would work. We walked across the border and eventually found a railway terminus where we could get a train. It was hot, midday. We were probably a Graz for a night. The railway terminus was a dead end ending in a complex network of sidings and some of Tito’s soldiers were there with less than nothing to do and they had this elaborate game where they were shunting trucks, moving points at the last minute, and changing places. It felt like the most relaxed place on the planet. Eventually we got a train, I think, straight down to Rijeka on the Adriatic. This was to be holiday and the turn around. We knew we could not go further on time and budget. On the train we were both dozing and tired and at one of the stations I vaguely saw a guy passing with rucksack and a union jack on it. I said to Colin, “Hey he’s English.” to which Colin’s response was, “Hey that’s my rucksack.” At the next station the police were on the train and the miscreant disappeared. At Rijeka we had a short kind of Adriatic holiday. The highlight of luxury was being at the sea’s edge where a cold freshwater spring bubbled up into the sea where we put a bunch of grapes we had bought, so that we had chilled grapes while sunbathing and swimming.
Then we largely hitch-hiked round through Trieste to Venice. The Youth Hostel was on the island, looking across to San Marco. We used the vaporettos and gondolas were out of the question. We did the churches and were beginning to know what we wanted to see. We walked and vaporettoed everywhere. I think we tried to go to the Bienniale but it was too expensive, but we went to the Accademia, got a good dose of Canaletto and others and were exposed for the first time, outside the National Gallery to Italian art. Of course Venice feels 15th and 16th century, and so it was another layer of history. Of course, Venice is always marvellous and being just across the water from the main square was awesome. Eventually we headed out west on the way home, a good look at Verona, passing by the great Italian lakes and the foothills of the mountains, and one dreadful night when we decided to miss out a Youth Hostel and kip down in the trees quite high up. After all it was warm in Italy. Except it was bitter cold and by morning we were gibbering. Through Basel, where we saw Rodin’s great Gates of Hell with the Thinker out in the open and then up through Luxembourg back to the Ferry over to Harwich, a lift up to the Ipswich Road and walking home. It was a deep experience of Europe and its riches for both of us. Hi, Mum. There was the kindness of those who gave us lifts and the easy getting along together that was part of the L stream ethos. Colin was a great companion, culturally aware, thinking things through, learning and teaching, and low-key fun. It was a good trip lasting five weeks on under £35. Next year, we agreed, we’d push it a bit further. This was really just the first course.
WE CAN DISARM THE WORLD EXHIBITION. 2. TOLSTOY WRITING RESURRECTION
The Peace Movements throughout the 19th century were strong and critical. They understood that weapons created conflict and were pushed by capitalists wanting profits from wars. The Napoleonic Wars had been horrific, but then in the 1830s and 1840s industrial iron and steel weapons got underway. The age of horses and swords was coming to an end, as the Charge of the Light Brigade showed. Tolstoy was, of course, the great chronicler of the Crimean War. War and Peace, often seen as the world’s greatest novel, is set in it. But Tolstoy also wrote directly of it. The correspondent’s direct reporting of war is devastating. He opens up the vanity of soldiering against the reality of what happened – men lying around dying. He described a soldier facing cannon who looked down at his leg, and suddenly it was not, taken off by a cannon ball. The failure of the Crimean War was written on all sides. Florence Nightingale tended the sick, often dying of gangrene and injuries, a basic fight against inhumanity. Into the Valley of Death. War was unheroic.
Tolstoy personally was converted to Christ. He understood Christ’s teaching and turned his life around. He quit elite Moscow society where he was the lauded, and went to live with the peasants. He became a pacifist, realising what the others were saying. He lampooned the military arrogance of the Kaiser. He rejected the world’s greatest novels – War and Peace and Anna Karenina – as belonging to immaturity, and he saw in depth Christ’s message of peace. “Those who take the sword perish by the sword.” There is this vast, self-defeating system. Murder is the most serious crime, but we teach our soldiers mass murder and say it is their highest calling. The Tsar is under pressure to call the 1899 Hague Peace Conference. Tolstoy, the follower of Christ, backs the Doukobors, a pacifist group which when called up into the Tsar’s army had a party and made a bonfire of their rifles. They were imprisoned in Siberia, but Tolstoy fought for their freedom and that they were right. Eventually, old and with TB, he wrote perhaps his greatest novel, Resurrection, and the royalties went to help the Doukobors migrate to Canada. This painting is of Tolstoy writing Resurrection. He held militarism to deep account in “How should We then Live?” and other writings and was part of 19th century pacifism. This was not just a withdrawal from fighting, but saw the whole system as a waste, immoral, destructive, impractical and a false religion of power. We have partly lost that clear, obvious conclusion, because the militarists have scared us. Tolstoy is for all of us, before World War One made the point even more obvious.
