The Next Big “Sorry”

Jun 10, 2013 | Australian Values, Border Security, Citizenship, Corruption, Cultural Values, Democracy, Immigration, Legal, OzPol Values, Racism, Terrorism, USPol, Values, War

The Next Big “Sorry”

Sorry Bastards

  Want a long-range heads-up? The question we should be asking Abbott and Gillard and all of their various immigration spokespeople right now is this:  

How do you feel about the inevitability that — possibly in your lifetime — a future Prime Minister of Australia will stand up in Parliament to make a heartfelt apology on behalf of the Australian people 

— an apology for you, for what you did, for who you were and for what you stood for?

Possibly in your lifetime. Certainly in the lifetimes of your children and grandchildren, your nieces and nephews and their children, so that they can share your shame, and hate you for the shame you spill on them?

Many others, and their children and grandchildren, will share the stain of complicity, or of not speaking up against you and your hideous policies.

74 years ago another terrible, vile event occurred. A boat full of refugees left the country they grew up in, fleeing from the persecution and horrors of their homeland and seeking refuge in a safe and welcoming country. They were Jews – 937 of them – escaping from Germany. The ship was the MS St. Louis. The year was 1939. They tried to land in Cuba, Canada and the United States. Each of these countries refused them entry by various means including creating retroactive laws, tightening existing ones, or bureaucratically reinterpreting existing ones, requiring unpayable financial bonds, or invalidating valid entry permits and denying the right to seek political asylum. All of this might have a familiar stench to you. The United States Coast Guard, the ship’s non-Jewish German Captain Gustav Schröder said, forced him to turn the ship back when he tried to land in Florida. Perhaps this rings a bell for you. Hypocrisy runs deep in all societies but no deeper than the United States in this case. Inside the Statue of Liberty since 1903 there has been a bronze plaque, a poem written by Emma Lazarus in 1883.
“ From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome” it says. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Of course there was much breast-beating  and public displays of sympathy on the part of all the countries, who met to find a solution that could see the 937 refugees settled safely. Just not in the USA, Canada or Cuba thank you. But anywhere else. Eventually the ship was forced to return to Europe. Many were accepted by the UK, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. As you know, Europe was at war and only the UK was not overrun and occupied by the Germans. It is estimated that 254 of the 937 were slain, mostly in Auschwitz and Sobibór and that of the 620 refugees who returned to the Continent only 365 survived the war. So apart from the human legacy what is the political legacy of this “harsh, pragmatic, no advantage”, hypocritical, boat-discouraging immigration policy 74 years ago towards desperate people fleeing the horrors of their home countries? After the war, Captain Gustav Schröder was awarded the Order of Merit by the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1993, Schröder was posthumously named as one of the Righteous among the Nations at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel. A display at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum tells the story of the voyage of the MS St. Louis. In 2009, a special exhibit at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, Nova Scotia explored the Canadian connection to the tragic voyage. The display is now a traveling exhibit in Canada.   In 2011, a memorial monument called the Wheel of Conscience, was unveiled at Pier 21, Canada’s national immigration museum in Halifax. It was designed by Daniel Libeskind. The memorial is of a polished stainless steel wheel. Symbolizing the policies that turned away more than 900 Jewish refugees, the wheel incorporates four inter-meshing gears each bearing a word: antisemitism, xenophobia, racism and hatred. The back of the memorial is inscribed with the names of the 937 passengers. On 24 September last year US Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns made a speech.
“ We who did not live it can never understand the experience of those 937 Jews who boarded the M.S. Saint Louis in the spring of 1939. Behind them, shattered windows and lives, loved ones in danger, crimes already underway and those crimes to come. Ahead, the hope of a new life in this country. We all know how this journey ends. The ship was turned away. Its passengers returned to a Europe that fell, country by country, to the cruelty they set sail to escape. Having made it so close to the safety of our shores, nearly one-third of the men, women and children of the M.S. Saint Louis perished, half a world away, in Auschwitz and other camps. … [T]he dangers were visible to those clear-eyed enough to see them. The warnings were already clear for those who cared to listen … And yet the United States did not welcome these tired, poor and huddled passengers as we had so many before and would so many since. Our government did not live up to its ideals. We were wrong. And so we made a commitment that the next time the world confronts us with another M.S. Saint Louis — whether the warning signs are refugees in flight or ancient hatreds resurfacing — we will have learned the lessons of the M.S. Saint Louis and be ready to rise to the occasion. … [A]nti-Semitism, genocide and mass displacement are – sadly – all-too-alive in 2012 … there are other M.S. Saint Louises setting sail right now … there is always more we can and must do.
Or in other words, “Sorry”. So Sir Roger offers the following notes for the future Prime Minister who will — inevitably — say “Sorry” to all those who have sought to come to Australia seeking asylum in boats – legally – as refugees and discovered that the story that we were a warm and welcoming people was a cruel hoax.
“ Many years ago our country was called upon to stand for the values we cherished as Australians.   When people who had lost everything, their homes, their livelihoods, their hopes and their futures came to us;   ~ when people full of terror who had seen, and often experienced, unimaginable horrors, or torture, came to us;   ~ when people who were so desperate that they risked death in leaky boats and violent seas came to asking for our help;   we were called upon as never before to show that we were indeed, and in our deeds, truly the people our story told about us;   a people of humanity, hospitality and generosity,   an understanding and tolerant people immensely proud of our multicultural triumph.     We failed. We proved that the story was a lie.   Our leaders failed us. Our institutions failed us. Our hearts failed us.   Instead, when we saw fellow human beings who so sincerely and transparently needed our help, people who had fled for their lives from wars, religious and tribal violence, and brutal tyrannical regimes, we told ourselves that those people were in fact queue-jumping, disease-ridden, child murdering terrorists and criminals who wanted to rape our women and steal the mineral wealth beneath our feet and the coins from our purse.   So to all those refugees we heartlessly turned away, or who we inhumanely imprisoned to the point where many of you went mad – and to those who never reached our shores but perished in the attempt – we say:   Sorry.   What we did as a people was based on greed, fear, narrow-mindedness, xenophobia, racism, hatred and ignorance. As a people we say:   Sorry.   What our leaders did was not based on any of these things.   It was based on the desire for power, on the desire to defeat an internal opponent in our own country.   You were merely the tool that they used. To achieve their narrow partisan goals they broke international laws and our own laws. They ignored international conventions and treaties.   What those leaders did, along with those in our bureaucracies and agencies who conspired with them and abetted them, was unforgivable, unconscionable and inhumane and it disgraced and dishonoured our country.   Their punishment is that their names and their reputations will be stained forever in the history of our country.   As we allowed them the opportunity to do what they did we say:   Sorry.   As you know, today’s Australia is not that Australia.   We have learnt from that dark time.   Our laws now ensure that it cannot happen again.   Our country truly is today — and thanks to so many of you — a people of humanity, hospitality and generosity, an understanding and tolerant people immensely proud of our multicultural triumph. We are once again true to our story and our values.   Thank you again.   I am so proud to be the Prime Minister of such a country, especially in the knowledge that we will never see such malignant, repugnant people assume leadership again.            

On War: Notes For My Son

May 27, 2012 | Arts, Australian Values, Capital Punishment, Corruption, Democracy, OzPol Values, Values, War

On War: Notes For My Son

 

…and for yours, and for all of us.

 

Sir Roger is currently in the land of the poppy (the other one) but not near Flanders fields. Yet there are poppies here in the South of France and the whiff of war and bloody conflict is inescapably, faintly, background to all.

And so it was a cold and brassy wind which blew through Sir Roger’s eye sockets and resonated in his skull and rattled the bones of his skeleton when Les recited this poem, perhaps the angriest, truest, most biting and chilling verse of war Sir Roger has ever heard.

  

Notes for My Son

~  Alex Comfort

Remember when you hear them beginning to say Freedom
Look carefully – see who it is that they want you to butcher.

Remember, when you say that the old trick would not have
fooled you for a moment
That every time it is the trick which seems new.

Remember that you will have to put in irons
Your better nature, if it will desert to them.

Remember, remember their faces–watch them carefully:
For every step you take is on somebody’s body.

And every cherry you plant for them is a gibbet
And every furrow you turn for them is a grave

Remember, the smell of burning will not sicken you
If they persuade you that it will thaw the world

Beware. The blood of a child does not smell so bitter
If you have shed it with a high moral purpose.

So that because the woodcutter disobeyed
they will not burn her today or any day

So that for lack of a joiner’s obedience
The crucifixion will not now take place

So that when they come to sell you their bloody corruption
You will gather the spit of your chest
And plant it in their faces.

  

Afghanistan Photos

Apr 19, 2012 | Australian Values, Corruption, Cultural Values, Democracy, Media Values, OzPol Values, USPol, Values, War

Afghanistan Photos

Bad Apples?

or Bad Apple Tree?

 

When will they get it? Or do they get it and try to hide the truth about the Afghanistan photos before anyone notices they’ve got it?
First the disclaimer: To gloatingly photograph yourself with a slain enemy (whether self-slaughtered or not) is obscene.

But then, if the entire situation is obscene . . .  ?

The American political-military establishment — not to mention the Australian and the European/NATO war departments — once again insists that “this is not us”, “this behavior does not reflect our values.”

“This is not who we are,” says Leon Panetta.

“[The Afghanistan photos] don’t in anyway represent the principles and values that are the basis for our mission in Afghanistan,” says Anders Fogh Rasmussen who also said this was “an isolated event.”

Yes, it’s the case of the ‘bad apples.’

The question is, how did these apples pop fully formed – armed and in uniform – into existence? Was it by a miracle of birth, more miraculous than immaculate conception — because apparently they had neither father nor mother nor even country or past?

Of course not. These “bad apples” carry the social DNA of their apple tree: their country, their nation, their society, the situation they have been shoe-horned into by a military establishment that is more concerned with the politics of the game and the public perception of the state of the game than with the human realities of the way war inflicts itself on cannon-fodder.

And the Generals and diplomats¹ think they can sweep the results of their ugly game under the carpet by disclaiming all knowledge and responsibility – while, of course, those who carry the most obscenity and culpability, those who have most truly lost their moral compass, are the ones who initiate, or who endorse, or who neatly fold up their moral sensibility in a shroud and place it carefully out of sight and hearing, in a hole in a dark and hidden corner of their mind.

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL.

What a difference in attitude by the American military/political conglomerate compared to its response to Julian Assange!

With Assange and Bradley Manning the biggest beef was that they had put Americans “in harm’s way”. But we know that they scrupulously had not. As far as we know not a single hair on an American head has been put out of place as a result of the Wikileaks release.

In contrast, the release of the photos by the LA Times is almost certain to cause yet more aggression against Americans and their allies, not just by the Taliban but by others worldwide.

Not that the LA Times should not have shared what it knew — that is in a way its sacred duty.

But that no-one in political/military circles in the US has sworn by hook or by crook to get LA Times staff for publishing the Afghanistan photos, offered their opinion that someone should kill them by contract or “accident”, which numerous high-profile Americans (and a Canadian…oh, and the Alaskan) did about Assange, well, the difference is stark and striking and, frankly, rank hypocrisy and jingoism.

Is Sir Roger the only one to notice this?

 

 

¹So plain the advantages of machination
It constitutes a moral obligation,
And honest wolves who think upon’t with loathing
Feel bound to don the sheep’s deceptive clothing.
So prospers still the diplomatic art,
And Satan bows, with hand upon his heart.
– R.S.K.

Diplomacy: The patriotic art of lying for one’s country.
~  The Devil’s Dictionary

 

If Thy News of the World Offend Thee…

Jul 9, 2011 | Australian Values, Corruption, Cultural Values, Democracy, Economic Values, Legal, Media Values, Values

If Thy News of the World Offend Thee…

…Pluck it out, and cast it from thee.

– Mark 9, 47

News of the World

You know … everyone knows … Rupert Murdoch is an evil genius. And this latest move is certainly worthy of his deep-seated amorality. If Murdoch believes in anything he believes in two things: nothing and money.

His latest move is pure evil genius at his best, perfectly amoral and perfectly greedy.

The “red-top” News of the World was a lightning rod for all that is awful about Murdoch’s evil empire, his willingness not simply to condone – even apparently (at least to Sir Roger) to encourage – unethical journalism (as long as there is money in it) and unethical business practice (if there is money in it), but also to ignore the certainty of the toxic and socially destructive effects his work brings to the world. If there is money in it (see, for example, Fox News and Roger Ailes).

Is Murdoch personally responsible for the harm and hurt he brings to the world? After all, he’s just a businessman and not personally involved in the day to day journalistic decisions of his staff.

If there is one thing Sir Roger has learned in his long years it is this: the nature of an organisation, the culture, the ethical sense, the attitudes, the mood, that pervade and really influence and direct the behaviour of all the people who work within it, spring from just one source and that is its leader.

Everything in an organisation is a reflection of who – and what – the leader is. In a school, that’s the Principal. In a company, it’s the boss. And the News of the World with all its foulness, dishonesty, greed, inhumanity and deceit is a direct reflection of Murdoch. It’s inescapable because who he is as a man influences every part of what and whom he leads.

News of the World had become a huge and easy target for attacking the Murdoch empire generally. So what Murdoch has done is to remove the target. Now there is nothing to shoot at. News of the World had become a floodlit monument to all the real reasons why Murdoch and his megacorp would not be fit and proper controllers of a huge and influential satellite television company.

“What do you mean? What newspaper? I don’t see any so-called ‘News of the World‘.

No NoW, no NoW staff. Do they keep the documents? Or shred them (you know, for commercial-in-confidence reasons)? Can they be sued? For example, by Milly Dowler’s parents or any number of celebrities and politicians?

Murdoch has sacked hundreds (presumably) of staff at NoW. Not too much sympathy there for people who were willing to sell their souls for a shiny penny and the privilege of shitting into the same sewer as the Great Hero.

But he hasn’t sacked the one person he ought to have: the ex-Editor – in the big seat when much of the worst phone-tapping was going on – who is now Chief Executive of News International, Rebekah Brooks.

He can’t fire her, of course, or release her to the wolves (unless there’s money in it) because she is, like the now arrested and out-on-bail Coulson, another magnificent product of the Murdoch School of Business and Journalistic Ethics, the arsepaper-previously-known-as-News-of-the-World.

Murdoch has done all this not out of ethics or integrity or even shame, or even to protect the “good name” of his companies. It is to try to protect his attempt to obtain control of BSkyB and if people get hurt? Too bad.

As we know, but just to remind ourselves, the row over the News of the World was re-ignited this week when it was revealed that it had paid people to hack into the voicemail of 13-year-old Milly Dowler, who was murdered in 2002.

How must Louise Casey, Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses, feel?

Last Sunday, 3 July, under a bellowing, finger-wagging News of the World article [IN DEFENCE OF DIGNITY – opposite a picture of a sexy girl showing not quite so much dignity as breast] moralistically slamming “ruthless lawyers” for berating murder victims’ families “in the wake of the Milly Dowler trial”, “the nightmare ordeal faced by thousands of witnesses and innocent victims of crime” and “the shameful treatment of Bob and Sally Dowler”, she wrote in NoW:

“ Many of us felt such compassion for the brave family of Milly Dowler and anger at the way they were treated in court.
Sadly for me, although I was shocked and appalled, I wasn’t surprised.
When I started working for the rights of victims I thought I was unshockable. But what I have found over the last year has made my jaw drop.
Like most people I assumed that families who, like the Dowlers, have had their lives ripped apart by criminals, would get all the help they need….
What I discovered is they are often not given the support, care or consideration they deserve. Many are still treated as if they are an “inconvenience”, and this can make their grief worse…..
…They deserve to be treated with humanity, dignity and most of all a bit of respect.
So when my report comes out about the treatment of families like these, I ask that you be shocked too…

The next day, 4 July, the story broke in the Guardian that Scotland Yard had discovered Milly Dowler’s voicemail had been hacked by journalists and private investigators of the newspaper Louise Casey had so helpfully and passionately contributed to. They had deleted messages – potential evidence – to free up space for more juicy messages. The deletions misled family and friends into thinking that Milly was still alive.

We bet Louise Casey’s jaw really did drop when she saw that. They probably had to give her smelling salts to bring her round. And a bucket for her shame.

The worst that can happen to Murdoch is probably much too little and now almost too late, for the wrinkled old caricature of (or perhaps inspiration for) Emperor Palpatine, as retribution for the global damage he has done to civil society, let alone the personal grief he has caused during his foul, oh-so-long (and, to an Australian, deeply embarrassing) career. It would be easy to wish there really were a hell for him to be consigned to, “into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched”. Wikipedia says he’s Catholic, but he probably thinks god works for him.

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
Oh, I dunno, about $US8 Billion?

Late Breaking:

The Guardian newspaper is now also reporting an executive from News International – News Corp’s UK wing – has deleted four or five years worth of emails between staff and their bosses. Might that be illegal? Given the police investigation? Perverting the course of justice (well, British law, anyway, which increasingly is an ass)?

And Brooks told angry staff on Friday, “Yes, we’re in a very bad moment but we will continue to invest in journalism.”

Her logical error is that to “continue” to do something you must already have been doing it.

 

STOP PRESS:

Alison Frankel on the Reuters website says,

“ …Rupert Murdoch’s soon-to-be shuttered tabloid may not be obliged to retain documents that could be relevant to civil and criminal claims against the newspaper — even in cases that are already underway. That could mean that dozens of sports, media, and political celebrities who claim News of the World hacked into their telephone accounts won’t be able to find out exactly what the tabloid knew and how it got the information.

If News of the World is to be liquidated, [British media law star Mark] Stephens told Reuters, it

“ is a stroke of genius — perhaps evil genius.”

Ah, validation is so satisfying…

 

Communities Thank Pokie Addicts

Apr 28, 2011 | Australian Values, Corruption, Cultural Values, Economic Values, Legal, Lifestyle & Life, OzPol Values, USPol, Values

Communities Thank Pokie Addicts

You look comfortable under your newspaper . . .

Right around Australia – which is, you know, NSW and a couple of other fairly unimportant (albeit it occasionally charmingly old-fashioned) bits – Community Leaders are in panic over the impending loss of all essential local services due to proposed restrictions on the spending behaviour of poker machine addicts. Particularly in rural areas. The most panic-stricken are the Managers of rural drinking festivals – “pubs”, “RSLs”, “Bowlos” and “Leagues clubs” in the local dialect.

These managers claim that the sky will fall and the earth be swallowed up as earthquakes of doom and the tsunami of proposed poker machine gambling legislation simultaneously devour, desertify and drown their villages.

The playing fields will turn to dust, the cultural centres to rubble, and the cows will stop producing milk.

Country music will no longer be heard. Women will no longer know that they ought to stand by their man. Men will not know when their dog has died.

This is why these beacons of social cohesion, these massifs of Aussie common sense and basic good old Australian values, have gathered together with one voice and with one purpose.

This week they have been seen around the “rule’n’rege’nel” towns of Australia, in its dusty back streets and forlorn parks.

Hundreds of good old Aussie boys in RSL badges and footy jumpers have been talking to down-and-outers throughout the land.

One by one they have approached the homeless pokie addicts who for so many years have taken their life savings, their pension money, newstart allowance, their wife’s money and the money they have embezzled from local businesses, and poured it into the poker machines of the happy-to-oblige no-questions-asked local RSLs, footie clubs and pubs.

“No, don’t bother to get up,” they say to their depressed, broken, often drunken, and emaciated fellow-citizens. 

“You look too comfortable down there under your newspaper in your shit, piss and vomit. 

“We just want to say thank you! Thank you, thank you, thank you! It is only because of you that we are able to maintain the wonderful community services that our establishments provide with a small percentage of the huge profits that we make; thanks to you. 

“We’re sorry to hear about your wife and kids and how they’ve left you. We’re sorry to hear you lost your house and your job.

“But make no mistake, you are the real pillars of our community. Without your addiction to our bright, shiny and excitingly noisy machines our towns would be nothing.

“Without you, how would our townsfolk ever hear mediocre, has-been talent scraping the last few dollars off their careers singing Slim Dusty covers? Where would they learn to do line dancing? How would the old folk spend their last days if your gambling addiction wasn’t funding the perfect manicures of their bowling greens?

“We honour your sacrifice (again, sorry about the wife, kids, house and job).

“In fact at our next board meeting the Committee will discuss naming our poker machines after all the pokie addicts who have given our town so much. So much money.

“You are more than welcome at our clubs and pubs on pension day (or if, you know, one of your estranged kids comes across a little money and forgets to hide it from you) to keep up your important work for the community (but please have a bit of a wash first, okay?)”

And as they return to their comfortable houses on the hill, they smile contentedly over a thoughtful job well done, slide into their leather recliners with a Johnny Blue, scowl at that bastard Wilkie on the news, put on the Céline Dion CD, ponder the pros and cons of a future career in politics . . .

. . . and thank god for the pokie addicts.

 

Anzac Day 2011

Apr 25, 2011 | Arts, Australian Values, Corruption, Cultural Values, Democracy, OzPol Values, Values, War

Anzac Day 2011

 

Carnage incomparable, and human squander

  

On this Anzac Day:

If there is one thing that can be said of war it is that it is a massive betrayal of Humanity. 
It is a monstrous failure of human imagination, vision, ingenuity and intelligence.

It is an unconscionably, and intentionally, blind refusal to allow any other possibility.

It is a willingness of the old and corrupt to inflict permanent damage on the young and innocent for the sake of what?

Impermanent, pathological and ugly ideology.

Whatever justifications and rationalisations may be made, war is the coward’s way.

War is the easy choice of the cheat, the sneak, the corrupt and the fake.

Or the delectable first choice of the bloodthirsty and the brutally mad.

All this can be said of the political “leaders” who lead their regiments from behind, who conduct their precious wars safely from behind a desk (under which they are probably fondling a small but hopeful erection) in a place far away from flying bullets.

It cannot be said of those whom we honour on this Anzac Day. For whatever other reasons they went to fight, they have also gone to fight to protect us and we are grateful. And we are sorry for the pain, the damage and the horror that they became because they could not forget. As we should not.

Peter Cundall has a new CD out and it’s not about gardening.

An iconic Australian unleashes the raw emotion of the world’s greatest war poetry. Australia’s beloved gardener shows a very different side as he reads anti-war poetry. With orchestral music accompanying the readings, this is a rare insight into ex-Gunner Peter Cundall’s life in war.

Here’s a taste. You can buy the CD anywhere, including ABC Shops. [Update: availability uncertain]

 

 

And here is the full Sassoon poem:

 

Aftermath – Siegfried Sassoon

 

 

 

Have you forgotten yet?…

For the world’s events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked a while at the crossing of city ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heavens of life; and you’re a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the same,—and War’s a bloody game….
Have you forgotten yet?…
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you’ll never forget.

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz,—
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench,—
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, “Is it all going to happen again?”

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack,—
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads, those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

Have you forgotten yet?…
Look up, and swear by the green of the Spring that you’ll never forget.

 

 

Here is Dylan Thomas reading of one of our favourite anti-war poems (if there could be such a thing):

Naming of Parts

 

Naming of Parts – Henry Reed

To-day we have naming of parts. Yesterday,

We had daily cleaning. And to-morrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,
To-day we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens,
And to-day we have naming of parts.

This is the lower sling swivel. And this
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
Which in our case we have not got.

This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see
Any of them using their finger.

And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
They call it easing the Spring.

They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
For to-day we have naming of parts.

 

 

And this is perhaps the great Wilfred Owen’s most harrowing poem:

 

Mental Cases

 

 

Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?
Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
 Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,
Baring teeth that leer like skulls’ tongues wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain, – but what slow panic,
Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and through their hand palms
Misery swelters. Surely we have perished
Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?

– These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
Memory fingers in their hair of murders,
Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.
Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.
Always they must see these things and hear them,
Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,
Carnage incomparable, and human squander
Rucked too thick for these men’s extrication.

Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented
Back into their brains, because on their sense
Sunlight seems a bloodsmear; night comes blood-black;
Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh.
– Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous,
Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.
– Thus their hands are plucking at each other;
Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging;
Snatching after us who smote them, brother,
Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.

 

  

 Lest we forget fail to get the lessons of the pointlessness, the tragedy and the inhumanity of war.

 

Especially on Anzac Day.