Saturday 8 November 2008

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.

33 comments:

Alex Robinson said...

Marvellous Ben
I'm so glad you wrote this & I thought your comment on 'murder victims' was exactly spot on - it really hit home.

I remember you telling me about that 'blood' ceremony - really gross.

kerstin said...

A very interesting article Ben. Very thought provoking.
But I'm afraid I do not entirely agree. In a modern world where so few men are brave, so few men are men, I believe that true bravery should be saluted whatever the political complications of how that bravery came about.
Soldiers are some of the rare men that I actually respect. Much as I love peace, war is sometimes neccessary. You have to fight for what you believe in. No hippy, peace n love New age bollocks will achieve that.
I also respect conscientious objectors. This is a different kind of bravery but equally respectable.
I long for an age where men will stop being so narcissistic, self-indulgent, cowardly and superficial and are made to go to war.That'll knock some sense into them. I've never met a man braver than myself. The day I do I'll marry him!
I realise that what I'm saying is controversial, sexist and unfashionable.
Real men are represented by the Sun( the leader), Mars (the warrior) and Saturn (the father).

My daughter's middle name is Poppy. I love the flower and the blood red symbolism of it. Plus there is the connection with Afghanistan, a very special country.

Ben Emlyn-Jones said...

Hi WW.
Thanks. I thought it was a good thing to write after reading your own articles.

Ben Emlyn-Jones said...

ML, I agree that true bravery should be saluted and of course some soldiers are very brave, dashing into a minefield, to rescue their mate etc. But they're not brave BECAUSE they're soldiers. A person's job doesn't determine their guts.

War may well be necessary sometimes. I've said this before in my thread "The Military- Do We Need It" on the David Icke forum. Here's what I wrote in the opening post:

"First let me say that I do truly do believe that humanity is going through a magnificent rise in consciousness and that completely peaceful world is perfectly possible. War is not a product of the natural human state; it is an aberration. But after 2012 (or whenever) and the Illuminati are gone, we won’t all wake up suddenly one morning as priests of High Atlantis. World peace will not happen straight away, nor will it be easy to achieve. There will be a transitional period during which violence might still occur. In that situation it will be necessary to form armed organizations to defend our communities.

As we’ve discussed on several other threads, the War on Terror is not one of these necessities; on the contrary, it’s a symptom of the very social pathology generated by the Illuminati. Despite my opposition to it, and all other manipulated wars, does this mean that all the armed forces exist for fighting such manipulated wars per se? Is there a legitimate role for armed forces in the transitional period? I think yes, for the reasons I state above. Some people suggest that the solution to manipulated wars is to abolish the entire war machine everywhere. But to simply disband the entire global military in one fell swoop means that the skills, experience and technological infrastructure of it will be lost. David often says: “If you’re in the military, get out now while you still can”, but to prevent manipulated wars, war crimes, the killing of women and children etc, it is not necessary to quit the military; all that is necessary is simply to not do those things. In 1989 when the Chinese army was sent into Beijing to wipe out the student demonstrations, the first unit mutinied. There is that famous film of one man stopping a column of tanks by standing in front of them; then the driver sticks his head out and they have a conversation. The sanctity of the chain-of-command is something specially-designed by the Illuminati to break through a soldier’s personal conscience in the hope that they will commit atrocities. But it’s not just the military; the virtue of the “do as you’re told” ethos can be found in almost any job; it’s just more subtle in other professions. It will have to go if we’re to be free.

But I’m convinced that the transitional period will be followed by a truly peaceful world. There’s no reason at all why it should not. We live in a world where there are enough resources for everyone; the many wars caused by the engineered illusion that there’s not enough to go round, so we have to scramble for what’s left, will no longer happen when that illusion is blown apart. We’re coming to understand that at a higher level we share the same soul and to hurt another is to hurt yourself. When this happens we will indeed to throw away all our weapons, but we need to wait until that time is here."

But believing government propaganda and going off to kill people and get killed because some Illuminati hack has been manipulated into power and set up as the villain is not a "necessary" war.

Also bear in mind what I said in my article "Our Brave Boys?" The military is not the ONLY dangeorus job in the world. Sure, it has its dangers and difficulties, but there are other jobs where these dangers are worse: fishermen, demoliton operative, some kinds of mining. Where's their headline in The Sun? There's an enginered psychological romantic attachment linking the military to courage that is somewhat fake. Facing enemy bombs and bullets may sound frightening, and it is I'm sure; but I have to face SOCIAL bombs and SOCIAL bullets every single day, and that's worse. I heard it from the horse mouth: a solider said to me: "I'd rather die than be Robby Jackson".(A CAP from Eastenders) The military's hardships are countered by its advantages: social status and glorification.

Leila said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Leila said...

When I see the poppy for sale each grey November I feel - think - of blood-curdling screams on the cold pavement, amputations, death...a telegram to spouse/parents. End of. All for something manipulated. Manipulated to bring liberation - no, further centralisation of power. And then, glorified. And the dishonoured? - the ones who say: if no-one turns up to fight there'd be no war.

Ed said...

Thank you for your well written and thought provoking post.

Ben Emlyn-Jones said...

Thanks, Ed.

Ben Emlyn-Jones said...

Good point, Ustane, and very poetically written.

Those injured and disabled in war are often left destitute after the wear ends. After Vietnam a lot of the veterans fell into unemployment and homelessness. It was even worse after WWI where Berlin's streets were overwhelmed by a whole underclass of maimed tramps, alcholic, starving and forgotten.

Despite what I wrote in the article I respect the Royal British Legion because it does some good work to prevent that.

As for those who "don't turn up"? They're the bravest men in the war and ironically they're called "cowards"!


Matt Delooze's site is back up and he's written his own article on Remembrance: http://www.matthewdelooze.co.uk/readarticle.php?article_id=26

Leila said...

The starving and maimed tramps forgotten on the streets of Berlin is a very sad remnant

Ben Emlyn-Jones said...

Human debris in the aftermath is a common feature of wars, expecially if the veterans are on the losing side. The Vietnam vets in America were treated with shame and rejection, seen as culprits in the nations "failure" to "win" the war. The truth is, nobody wins a war. To go to war in the first place is a defeat.

Some Guy said...

A pleasure to read. Something so simple and so "in our face." The Queen dancing. What a sick image!

Jonathan said...

This won't have effect in reality, that's exactly what I think.
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