Wednesday, July 11, 2007


Günter Grass

War Crimes, USUK Hypocrisy & Collective Responsibility

On BBC Radio 4, I have been listening to an abridged version of Peeling the Onion, an autobiography by the German writer, Günter Grass.

Grass, famous for his satirical writings on Nazi Germany, will be remembered for his major works, The Tin Drum and Dog Years. When Peeling the Onion was published last year in Germany there was a lot of kerfuffle among literary circles about Grass having served, as a teenager, in the Waffen SS which was later condemned collectively for war crimes.

In his books, Grass spends a lot of time examining the case for the German population's joint responsibility for war crimes as well as his own. He also reminds us how the newly-formed German Federal Republic was prepared to accept the Allies' decision to reinstate many Nazis to positions of power and, in an index in Dog Years, lists companies like I.G.Farben which played an active role in the Nazi economy.

The Germans have anguished for over half a century over their collective responsibility for giving Hitler power. Even today it remains a sensitive issue.

But, in the light of more recent war crimes committed by the USA and Britain in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan I am forced to the conclusion that it is inevitably the victors in war who not only write the history books but who make and execute judicial judgements. As witness they did, through their Iraqi puppets, with Saddam Hussein.

If Germany had won the war it would have been the likes of Churchill who would have been deemed war criminals and led to the hangman's noose. It lost and paid the price. So did Iraq, though the comparison between a massively strong Third Reich and a weak, defenceless Iraq facing the combined imperial might of the USUK must end there.

We can now see the farce in how war crimes are judged. It was right and proper for Nazi war criminals to have faced trial. But the whole exercise deteriorated into a cosmetic when later we discovered just how many Nazi war criminals were, because it was convenient, reinstated by the Allies. And if that shameful business didn't underscore the manifest dishonesty of the judging of war criminality then Iraq most certainly has.

Apart from a few, unreported independent hearings, such as the Istanbul and Brussels Tribunals, no one in the Western establishment has dared to point to the war criminals who lied to and dragged their countries into war against a defenceless Iraq. Although there are plenty of them around, not one journalist has had the courage to admit to his or her collective responsibility in that war crime.

Aware of the blood on its hands, the BBC has done everything it can to hush-up its own responsibility and to not report on these embarrassing independent tribunals.

In for a penny, in for a pound, says the BBC, not only ignoring its criminality but going the whole way, steeping itself in even more guilt by enthusiastically joining in the fake "War on Terror", the hollow rationale of mediocre politicians like Bush and Blair which enshrouds the USUK's responsibility for more than a million unnecessary deaths in the Middle East.

By doing so, the war criminal politicians and their servile media have pushed themselves into a corner with no way out. All the war criminals like gutter journalists Melanie Phillips, Richard Littlejohn and Christopher Hitchens can do now is to bang the war drums even harder every chance they get, hoping that the noise will distract us from their murderous nature.

And then there is the collective responsibility that each of us in the USUK must bear. Yes, right from the start, some of us marched against our criminal rulers and proclaimed, "Not in Our Name!" We were dragged into this war crime. Well, those of us who protested were. But what about the much greater majority who stayed silent and who, with us all, have allowed the war criminals to stay in power?

Ah, but you can't compare us to the Germans who didn't stop Hitler!

Didn't they, can't we?

What about all the German socialists and democrats who literally fought in the streets against Hitler's Brownshirts before being finally rounded up, murdered or committed to a slow death in concentration camps? And the German anti-war groups, however small, who continued to ridicule and condemn Hitler long after their fate was sealed?

Neither the USA or Britain ever experienced the horrors of a poverty-stricken, plague ridden Weimar Germany, bled to death by the vengeful allies of WWI, prior to the ascendancy of a strongman dictator.

No. Singularly preoccupied at the trough with its ongoing consumer binge, both the populations of the USA and Britain simply turned their backs on an unpleasant reality and allowed their war criminals the freedom to do whatever the hell they liked. Selfishness and greed came first and our collective responsibility for genocide was conveniently swept under the carpet.

Yet, the ultimate crime has been committed! And just as we judged post-war Germany guilty, we in the USUK are, in the eyes of truth and by our own erstwhile standards, collective war criminals now!

I have always admired Günter Grass for being prepared to
examine both his and Germany's collective soul for the truth. So it is a small return that I perform here to emulate his example. It is time, now, for the Günter Grass' of the USA and Britain to begin to speak the truth about our own collective criminality.

An Archive created to catalogue the War Crimes committed by various parties in the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq.

Read it Here

7 comments:

  1. I disagree with you about us in the UK having collective responsibility.

    We are all subjects of the Monarch; the government, the armed forces, and all the powers that be, work for her.

    She is responsible, not us, her subjects, who have always been forced into wars, whether we like it, or not. And I would remind you that she is a German, not an English, monarch. We have not had an English monarch since 1066. We are, in effect, an occupied country, much the same as Iraq. It makes no difference how we vote, they all promise to serve the Monarch, upon entering Parliament.

    On the other hand, in "the Land of the Free", they are collectively responsible. They, like Germany, are a republic.

    So don't let anybody lay the Christian Monarch's guilt-trip on us.

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  2. I know of very few Brits who *would* own up to their collective responsibility for war crimes. In this case, Maitreya, I think you're taking the German monarch thing too far.

    Britain has been committing war crimes all over the world for centuries and getting away with it. She has been far more aggressive than Germany but has convinced herself and many others in her myth of fair play and justice.

    But ask an Irishman what he thinks about British 'fair play and justice'! It's all self-fabricated bollocks, of course.

    I know we are supposedly still subjects etc. But we have it within ourselves to overturn the Establishment if we so wished. The truth of it is that most Brits don't give a toss what their 'government' does so long as they're allowed to continue with their consumer binge.

    Pigs at a trough being fattened-up for the slaughter! ;-)

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  3. Hey, I woke up when I was 12 years old, and wanting to be a nuclear physicist. Hey, great job, you can make bombs for her sodding Majesty's government, or work in nuclear power, so I gave it up for music and a rock and roll band.

    I went off to get away from Her sodding Majesty's government, back in 1974. Hey, lets try South Africa, after all, those Afrikaaners had a war of Independence against Her Majesty's government. It was about that time that Peter Hain started wetting his knickers about South Africa being an apartheid regime. Hey, it's funny how that c*** never says anything about Israel being an apartheid regime, and let's avoid mentioning that the British set up that apartheid regime, or that they starved Afrikaaner women and children to death in prison camps. Hey, Her Majesty's government taught them so well, about running an aparthied regime eh? If the Irish were still awake, Peter Hain would be swinging at the end of a rope. Oh, but those loyalists, of course, they aren't Irish are they? They're just relocated Scotsmen.

    Hey, before we go any further, I know about the Irish, because my grandfather was Irish, and hey, my real name is a Scottish name, and hey, I could tell you some real good Grandad stories, with regard to the Spencer family, but I digress.

    So you get so South Africa and you get a job with good old ICI, yaknow, the Chemical giant. So there is Peter Hain wetting his knickers about apartheid, but companies like ICI reaping a huge profit out of the "Independent Apartheid" regime. Except for the iron, and steel industries; South Africa had those nationalised, and we are talking about enough coal to run things for 300 years. Her Majesty's government can't allow all that coal to be mined without reaping some profits, eh? Hey, so now we get a nice compliant black government and they're so free, and all so equal; honest.

    The only people who have fought Her Majesty's sodding government for 700 years are the Irish. Ireland is the land of the free; not bloody America. Hey, let's not even mention the Welsh. "Oh, we'll give you a prince who speaks no English." "Yes please sire" "Yes please Sire"

    And hell, Culloden sure put the Scots off any more revolts, didn't it? You get all these dimwits talking about "come the day" but Her Majesty will just buy them off with a gong, like Sir Bono, or Sir Bob Geldoff. Let's face it, they're so working class, they're programmed to toff their caps to their Lords and Masters, the way that Blair did. Oh he's so "middle-class"; is he f***?; he's a peasant, who thinks like a peasant, and acts like a peasant. Our only hope is "King Arthur", but that's just another fairy story.

    The people of Britain are not going to wake up, because they are all peasants. The smart ones left years ago; but the really smart go to Ireland. The really dumb go to America.

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  4. I agree with you about the Irish, Maitreya. Only they seem to have a real fighting spirit. The Scots and the Welsh are useless. No accident that there's a term, "the Scottish cringe."

    They had the shit beaten out of them at Culloden and afterwards. I live in Scotland and for four years I was a Regional Councillor in the Highlands.

    I was born in an ex-British colony, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and as a colonial knew how to fight the British. And of the 52 councillors in the Highlands I was the only one that did.

    First their attitude was just racist against me, an incomer they called a wog. But in 1991, I organised and ambushed a UKAEA nuclear convoy going to Dounreay at the Kessock Bridge near Inverness.

    I believe, to this day, it's the only time a nuclear convoy has been physically halted by anti-nuclear demonstrators in Britain.

    I'm proud of that, naturally, and have no fear of the British government. Alex Salmond is my MP and I occasionally send him unsolicited advice about how to stand up to the English.

    Being nothing more than a banker, he resents me for that!

    BTW, remember it was the British who invented concentration camps in South Africa! Then they have the hypocrisy to blame it all on the Germans.

    And not all Germans are so bad. Until Bismarck, Germany only existed as a group of nation states. It was only after they joined together that the troble started.

    Same with Britain. It was only after the infamous union of 1707 that Britain became a real bully. Until then it was the poor Irish who they used to pick on.

    Good old Mother Ireland. Sad that the young Irish don't seem to have the same spunk in them as did their ancestors.

    My old man said to me when I was six years old, "Never trust the English, they're two faced." Sadly, he was right.

    I have English blood inherited from my colonial forefathers so I know my own kind well enough not to tolerate their bullshit.

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  5. Maitreya, why don't you send me some of your grandad stories? I could publish them.

    Yeah, those Irish 'loyalists' are really a bunch of traitors to Ireland, relocated (dislocated) Scots presbyterians.

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  6. What? About his drinking exploits with the Duke of Marlborough and "that awful Bertie" as Nan called him? LOL

    90 mph in a Rolls Royce, reg no 3 AX 49, pissed as parrots, along the A40 back to Woodstock, from London?

    People think I am bull-shitting them when I tell them Grandad stories ;-) Hey, "that awful Bertie", the Nazi, who had to be got out of the way, and Lizzie the Lizard, put in his place? Having a real Nazi on the throne is just so bad for the image.

    Let's get back to Physics. When you decide not to make nuclear weapons for her Majesty, you just kinda move on into the field of geo-physics. Now they keep telling me "global warming", but what I see is a Permian-Triassic Extinction Level Event. Hey, I wonder why they are all grabbing as much as they can, in the time they have left? You can't take it with you. Now Moi, I sold up and invested in a 1200cc Suzuki Bandit. Hey baby, that's really free, and there ain't a cop on the road who can catch you. And sod the bills; keep them waiting for as long as possible; preferably until you get some of those bully-boys come round, when you can indulge in mind-games with them. "You're just (You must use the just to show your utter contempt for them) fascist bully-boys for the fascist government." The thing is to bait them into breaking the law, and then you whine about them to the nanny state, and then they get the sack. LOL A camera phone is good to take pictures to use against them.

    Of course, this goes back to Grandad teaching me how to play Chess. Hey, you've just got to know how to play chess, or you don't truly understand politics. Of course, stupid Yanks prefer shoot-em-up Cowboy games, so they don't see what is coming their way. Hey, they want a sun-god? Kim Jong-il is coming their way and he sure is intent on vengeance. Sun-gods are ten a penny.

    We're all gonna die. I nearly did around ten years ago. You just have to look on every morning that you wake up as a bonus. Hell, so today we die; it's as good as any other day to die. Now Yankee Christians, who live in such fear of some bogeyman in a cave; do I think they have found the truth, the light, and the way? Hardly. And that also goes for greedy bastards who are intent on lining their pockets. Oh yes, on that subject, why is it that so many people go to America? Hey, the "Billy No-Mates" of this world, and when the shit does hit the fan, who else can you rely on but your friends and family?

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  7. Maitreya, sounds like you might be a relative of that lovely woman, Lady Diana, another blood sacrifice made by the reptilian royals.

    Apart from being stunningly attractive, she was the only royal who had any humanity about her. No wonder the rest couldn't stand her.

    If there is an afterlife, I wish her a happier place there than she had here married into that miserable family.

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