Remembrance Poppies

Tomorrow is Remembrance Sunday and people all over the country will attend memorials and church services to remember the British and British Commonwealth servicemen who died in wars. This will be followed by 2 minutes silence at the exact moment of Armistice, at the 11th minute of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. This year it will be a special one because it was exactly 90 years ago. When this tradition began it was just for the First World War, but since then many more wars have been fought by British servicemen, none of them quite as bad but still horrific nonetheless (Even worse wars may be in the planning stages for the future!). The poppy became a symbol of Remembrance after the publication of In Flanders Field by the Canadian war poet John McCrae:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved, and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

All across Britain and the Commonwealth people are wearing poppy badges to state their commitment to remembering the soldiers who died. I used to wear one every year, but for the last three years I haven’t.

Why not? There are a number of reasons. Firstly symbols usually have two meanings. In the case of the poppy there’s the publicly-acknowledged meaning which I outline above, and a hidden meaning. Poppies are not only famous for growing on the battlefields of the Western Front, they’re also the source of heroin and all the opiate drugs. In the 19th Century British forces were used to compel the Chinese to accept the opium trade in their country, the exact opposite of what they’re supposedly used for today in the “War on Drugs”. The poppy could therefore be used as a symbol for anyone who wants to commemorate the Opium Wars. Remembrance is also very politically biased; in fact it’s become almost nationalistic. The poppies revere British forces who’ve died in battle, but only British ones, not their erstwhile enemy troops (Many of whom become allies in other conflicts). Poppy-culture also rejects any mention of the innocent foreign bystanders who’ve died at the hands of British forces, who outnumber their own dead by severalfold! Also the attitude of Remembrance is very geared towards the myth that war may be horrible but it is a necessary evil. Soldiers have given their lives for a noble cause, sacrificing themselves for their country and our freedom. This is not true.

(Background: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/07/our-brave-boys.html)
I'm all in favour of remembering people killed fighting wars, but it has to be done in the right way: Dead soldiers are victims of a massive con-trick. They should be commemorated as such. Not as "brave warriors" who "died for our freedom", but as murder victims; murdered not by the "enemy" troops, but by the governments of both "sides" who lured them into their engineered conflicts; conflicts based on greed and the struggle for power, not the freedom of the people. There’s so much in the history of the world wars that we never hear in mainstream education and the media. The people who fought in those wars were mostly very well-meaning, endured terrible sacrifices for what they believed in; and did what they truly thought was right. But it was all a scam. And, for me, speaking out about the scam is the only way I can show real respect for their memories. There's nothing glorious about dying in war! I know because I've seen the bodies when they fly them back from Iraq and Afghanistan and process them at my hospital. They're ordinary men and women who've died in a terrible manner for a scam and I see no intention on the part of the Poppy Cult to expose that scam. Its proponents even get upset and angry when I try to expose it and do not address what another war poet, Wilfred Owen, called "The old lie".

To conclude: I find there's something very wrong with the way our country, and many others, deals with the tragedy or war. It's portrayed as something magnificent and glorious; in fact the words The Glorious Dead are carved on the Cenotaph. Imagine if somebody carved that on the memorial to the Hilsborough Disaster, or the people who died in a motorway pile-up! There'd be uproar! But for me war is exactly the same as those other tragedies. I don't see any reason to glamourize and exhault in the mass sacrifice of millions of young men.

Some memorial organizations share some of my views on Remembrance and have issued a new type of badge, the White Poppy: (http://www.ppu.org.uk/poppy/index.html)

What finally convinced me to stop wearing a poppy was the July 2005 celebration in London commemorating the 60th anniversary of D-Day. It took place just days after the carnage of the 7/7 bombings and Londoners were still in shock. The highlight of the ceremony was the fly-past of an original Lancaster Bomber, a weapons platform designed to kill millions of innocent people in the cities of Germany, over the Mall outside Buckingham Palace. It dropped 1 million poppy petals onto the crowd below, including the Royal Family on the balcony of the palace. The petals symbolized the million British and Commonwealth troops who’d died in World War II. As the petals rained down it hit me that I was watching a blood sacrifice in effigy! This was the secret symbolism behind the event. As the TV camera homed in on the Queen I was disgusted to see her dancing and laughing as the poppies fell around her like snow! The Royal Family and aristocracy are seriously into the occult and black magic, but the tour guides in London won’t tell you that!

I hope that everyone who reads this will commemorate the victims of war in whatever way they feel is right; I will too. Hopefully one day soon war will be just that alone: a memory.