screams of the wounded men,
writhing in pain.
Details work day and night
burying the slain..
all their murders done
in Christ’s Holy Name,
Jesus looks down, and He weeps…
Jesus looks down
and He weeps.
Ok, so that story bugs me every year, they tell it ad nauseum, about the British and Germans taking a couple of hours break from slaughtering each other, in the name of God, at the battle of the Somme. From the German trenches comes the melody “Stillich Nacht, Heilig nacht” Then some Tommies in their trenches start singing it in English, more Germans and more Englischers join in…
An impromptu Christmas party just congeals in the middle of No Man’s Land. They sing songs, exchange gifts, show pictures of their families to one another…
And then go right back to slaughtering each other.
As you may have guessed, it’s time for my annual Christmas on War uncelebration. I go to fetch my e-mail, there’s a flash animation of a black Jeep SUK involved in a battle, a dual advertisement because they’re also hawking a video “game” called Call of Duty – BlackOps. where the mission apparently is to go in and assassinate as many locals as possible and kidnap their leaders to take them to a CIA dungeon for torture. It’s made into a Triple Offense because they’re hawking the SUV and the game, As Christmas Presents
Happy birthday to the Prince of Peace.
Other war toys and Murder Fantasy movies and video games dominate the Must-have list for the Red-suit Elf and his flying reindeer to bring to your kids.
The money changers have bought out the Temple and have reduced Christ to just another sales gimmick. What next, have that lizard from the car insurance commercial lying in a manger?
and the DumFox Noose Nutwerx is still piling on their bullshit about a “War on Christmas”. While following the marketing trend of having soldiers, in foreign countries to kill the citizens of those lands and take the resources of those lands, send “home” video Christmas greetings from Outer VietRaquiStan, as part of the heartwarming Christmas commercials showing people engaged in Traditional Christmas activities like unwrapping the Monster-Huge Screen TeeVee and other gifts too expensive for the regular American to buy.
Merry freakin’ Cashmas Christless Crassness
Seems like here is as good a place as any to park the link to this commentary about ‘patriotism’ versus mere more military cheerleading…
‘…militarism grows out of the military, the two are different in character. While the military is a means to meet certain ends such as maintaining national security, militarism represents a bureaucratized permanent military establishment as an end in itself. It is “a phenomenon,” as the late Chalmers Johnson put it, “by which a nation’s armed services come to put their institutional preservation ahead of achieving national security or even a commitment to the integrity of the governmental structure of which they are a part” (The Sorrows of Empire, Metropolitan Books, 2004, pp. 423-24).
This explains the cancerous growth and parasitic nature of US militarism—cancerous because it is steadily expanding throughout many parts of the world, and parasitic because not only does it drain other nations resources, it also sucks US national resources out of the public purse into the coffers of the wicked interests that are vested in the military-industrial-security complex.’
whole article from today’s Counterpunch…
http://www.counterpunch.com/zadeh12172010.html
Even without the moral aspects, Empire can’t possibly survive because the pillage economics that maintain it, would only work in an unlimited expansion. But it costs so much more to take the money (meaning any resource of value to the Empire) than the actual amount of money taken. Spending a hundred dollars to take back $99 would eventually break any enterprise. More so, the gap widens, 90-10, 79-21…. and the collapse gains momentum.
Then throw the Moral issue back in, the principle of goes around, comes around.
And people who would question paradox,like selling War in the name of Peace.
They would have to be suppressed, at the cost of not having any of the more intelligent members of the society running the business of Pillage.
Also police state tactics, to have the limited success they start out showing, are as expensive as foreign militarist adventures.
Again, running the business at a loss.
Then comes Pascal’s wager.
The one about “if there is a God”
It doesn’t put forth absolute proof but the sheer fact of the mortality of empire, any empire, shows enough evidence to at least consider the possibilities of divine retribution.
Especially if the most aggressive imperialists at least pretend that they’re followers or believers of God.
If moral considerations nor logical economic consequences would sway them, perhaps a little nagging bit of Naked Fear could gently push the Imperialists back into measurably better behavior.
Like not killing people or making money off killing people.