{"id":223740,"date":"2022-11-14T12:00:02","date_gmt":"2022-11-14T12:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=223740"},"modified":"2022-11-13T04:14:14","modified_gmt":"2022-11-13T04:14:14","slug":"who-knew-were-here-because-were-here-because-were-here-because-were-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/11\/who-knew-were-here-because-were-here-because-were-here-because-were-here\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Knew: We\u2019re Here Because We\u2019re Here Because We\u2019re Here Because We\u2019re Here"},"content":{"rendered":"

10 Nov 2022 – <\/em>My title comes from a song sung by soldiers<\/a> as they marched to hell in the trenches of World War I and the same song my sisters and I sang in the car as our parents drove us to our summer vacation in paradise at Edgewater Farm.<\/p>\n

I think of this as we march to WW III.<\/p>\n

The soldiers, who would be slaughtered by the millions as pawns in the great game, sardonically sung it<\/a> to the tune of Old Lang Syne to express their bewilderment at why they were fighting in the so-called \u201cWar to End All Wars\u201d or \u201cthe Great War.\u201d<\/p>\n

We children sang it because we had heard the words but had no idea where they came from, yet they seemed playful and weird and easy to remember and we were celebrating our good fortune in leaving the city and arriving at the farm for a week\u2019s country idyll.<\/p>\n

War and peace absurdly juxtaposed.\u00a0 Because?\u00a0 Because everyone needs to be somewhere even if they don\u2019t know why.<\/p>\n

Yet today so many people feel lost in a world gone mad, a nowhere land, far further from somewhere than when John Lennon penned the words to \u201cNowhere Man\u201d<\/a> in 1965.\u00a0 It is no wonder he was assassinated in 1980, for he was a man growing into a profound anti-war consciousness.<\/p>\n

Now we\u2019re again celebrating Armistice\/Remembrance\/Veteran\u2019s Day on November 11 in a world forever at war and with nuclear annihilation staring us in the face.\u00a0 Always the bitter Old Lie told by the depraved political and economic elites to suck the masses into death.\u00a0 Wilfred Owen, killed in action on November 4, 1918 one week before the Armistice, murmurs to us from his French grave:<\/p>\n

Dulce et Decorum Est<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
\nKnock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
\nTill on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
\nAnd towards our distant rest began to trudge.
\nMen marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
\nBut limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
\nDrunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
\nOf gas-shells dropping softly behind.<\/p>\n

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!\u2014An ecstasy of fumbling
\nFitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
\nBut someone still was yelling out and stumbling
\nAnd flound\u2019ring like a man in fire or lime.\u2014
\nDim through the misty panes and thick green light,
\nAs under a green sea, I saw him drowning.<\/p>\n

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
\nHe plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.<\/p>\n

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
\nBehind the wagon that we flung him in,
\nAnd watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
\nHis hanging face, like a devil\u2019s sick of sin;
\nIf you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
\nCome gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
\nObscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
\nOf vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,\u2014
\nMy friend, you would not tell with such high zest
\nTo children ardent for some desperate glory,
\nThe old Lie: Dulce et decorum est<\/em>
\n Pro patria mori.<\/em><\/p>\n

But what do dead poets know?\u00a0 Only everything important.<\/p>\n

What child would want such gory glory as dulce et decorum est pro patria mori<\/em> unless it was pounded into its head by men in love with death?<\/p>\n

Do they think the dead can hear the cheers?<\/p>\n

Can we hear the songs of the poets who link us back to contemplate the atrocities of the battles of The Somme, Passchendaele, Marne, Gallipoli, Verdun, etc. with all the official lies told by the political jackals responsible for these slaughters?<\/p>\n

At the farm, my many sisters and I, despite not knowing what we had sung, did know why we were where we were; our \u201cbecause\u201d had a clear answer.\u00a0 We were there to choose life, not death, to enjoy living, which we knew was a precious gift from parents who could barely afford the expense.\u00a0 We walked barefoot down the sandy dirt road between the green pasture where the cows lolled dreamily and the still waters of the limpid creek to the swimming hole where we would float for hours with the fish as turtles eyed us from their log perches in the sun.<\/p>\n

What child would want to wallow in blood and gore for a posthumous medal?<\/p>\n

What parent would want their child to march to war to die, rather than swim in the waters of life and love?<\/p>\n

We\u2019re here because we\u2019re here because nihilism is celebrated as patriotism and the love of death masquerades as love of life.\u00a0 The nations that celebrate these war days do not do so to foster peace but to remind people that it is indeed sweet to die for one\u2019s country.\u00a0 And God too, of course.\u00a0 Because?\u00a0 The poet Dylan sings the truth.\u00a0 Just listen: \u201cWith God on Our Side\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 or hear Phil Ochs\u2019 \u201cIs There Anybody Here.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

But all of this was once upon a time in the 1960s when many people were realizing that war was a racket<\/a>, as Marine General Smedley Butler told us<\/a> long ago.\u00a0 Today sleep has descended on most people while the disease of war is injected into the public\u2019s bloodstream in a manner learned well from the massive propaganda campaign of WW I.\u00a0 In the USA then, it was the Committee on Public Information, led by George Creel, Edward Bernays, Walter Lippmann, et al. who \u201cmanufactured the consent\u201d of the public to hate the \u201cHuns,\u201d keep their mouths shut, and spy on their neighbors, all in the service of a jolly-good war \u201cover there.\u201d\u00a0 Today the spying<\/a> and propaganda apparatus dwarfs those efforts exponentially with its electronic, digital technology.<\/p>\n

But poets don\u2019t text the truth.\u00a0 They sing it and think it and tell it, even when nobody\u2019s listening.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re all lucky to still be here.\u00a0 If we continue to celebrate past wars and the soldiers who fought them in a sly homage to the greatness of war, we are doomed.\u00a0 We won\u2019t be here because\u2026.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s Liam Clancy singing Eric Bogle\u2019s 1971 song about one man\u2019s story of war\u2019s greatness:<\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=PFCekeoSTwg<\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> <\/em>Edward Curtin is a widely published author and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>. His new book is <\/em>Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies<\/a> \u2013 His website: Behind the Curtain<\/a> – email: edcurtinjr@gmail.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 edwardcurtin.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

10 Nov 2022 – My title comes from a song sung by soldiers as they marched to hell in the trenches of World War I. We\u2019re all lucky to still be here. If we continue to celebrate past wars and the soldiers who fought them in a sly homage to the greatness of war, we are doomed. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":89352,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[867,417,244,1268,91,1301,112,278,2200,70,1594,481,757,2534],"class_list":["post-223740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-anglo-america","tag-bullying","tag-china","tag-european-union","tag-nato","tag-nuclear-war","tag-pentagon","tag-russia","tag-us-empire","tag-usa","tag-war-economy","tag-warfare","tag-wwi","tag-wwiii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}