Remembrance Sunday Is Not A Photo Opportunity

Introduction

It is Remembrance Sunday in the UK on the 10th of November and this is a Seven Days In Post from ten years ago focussing on how governments and corporations send brave men to their deaths and worse, in the name of power and money.

I suppose that my Seven Days In posts have influenced a lot of my Vocal writing.

The only thing is there was very little fiction and poetry, and no challenges for me then, but it pleases me when interesting pieces resurface in my most-read list.

I am sure that one day I will have excavated all the stories from my blog and shared them on Vocal, but for now, they will keep being mined.

Thanks to Rebecca Cother for the poignant beautiful cover for this story.

Remembrance Sunday Is Not A Photo Opportunity

It's Remembrance Sunday, and I really want to be positive on this blog, but this day should be a solemn remembrance of people who gave their lives to defend their homeland. However, all I see is cynical manipulation and photo opportunities by politicians celebrities and corporations who would happily send decent men and women to their deaths, to swell their bank balances.

It makes me sick of the idiots in the current government who glorify war while making sure that they are in no danger and ensuring that their war bonds and arms shares are paying handsome dividends.

It makes me angry every time I see a Help For Heroes plea for donations, not that I have anything against Help For Heroes, they are a selfless caring organisation dealing with the fallout from a government and their corporate cronies who sent men to defend their selfish interests then washed their hands of them leaving Help For Heroes to pick up the pieces. Click through on the Help For Heroes link and provide some help, also write to your local MP and ask why THEY aren't looking after war heroes and casualties.

The problem is that since 1914 nothing has changed, the government and corporations still see us as expendable cannon fodder. Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory is still a brilliant damning indictment of the system endemic in almost all modern society. We really do have a long way to go before this changes.

They even have a song The Green Fields Of France (No Man's Land) by Joss Stone and Jeff Beck which you can buy here and raise money to help the returned war injured, but it's better to listen to the uncensored version which is truly anti-war written and performed by Eric Bogle (who also wrote "The Band Played Waltzing Mathilda").

Anyway, sorry if this post has been a bit of a downer, just remember how horrific war is, most of us don't have a clue, like the people who actually cause wars. Remember in silence and don't glamourise war and do what you can to support those who return, and do all you can to make sure we don't have to fight over oil and money.

Conclusion

Thank you so much for reading. There is a saying:

"They used to make weapons to fight wars, now they make wars to sell weapons"

That is so true today and this mem illustrates it perfectly:

All the things that build our society positively are starved of investment while there is always money for war. I will leave you with this Bill Hicks slice of wisdom on the first Iraq War which was still pertinent ten years later for the second one.