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The anniversary of World War I has been in the news as of late. Solemn words have been said, and in Canada, the funny idea that somehow it forged our nation from a quaint backwater into a respected player on the world stage. Sending people to die horrible deaths should not be the price of entry into world politics. WWI laid the foundation for WWII and both featured the notion that somehow civilian casualties were OK and even necessary to the war effort. Here we are in the 21st century and have the ultimate ‘soft target’ weapons available to us and they are not in anyway guaranteeing our safety, but rather our destruction – ain’t progress grand?
One can trace the insanity from WWI all the way to the present – let’s let John Oliver comment on the present state of affairs and the nuclear deterrent that keeps us ‘safe’.
Did you think Canada was all about the fun? Nope, nope, nope! Learning first, then fireworks and beer. :)
“The enactment of the British North America Act, 1867 (today called the Constitution Act, 1867), which confederated Canada, was celebrated on July 1, 1867, with the ringing of the bells at the Cathedral Church of St. James in Toronto and “bonfires, fireworks and illuminations, excursions, military displays and musical and other entertainments”, as described in contemporary accounts.[35] On June 20 of the following year, Governor General the Viscount Monck issued a royal proclamation asking for Canadians to celebrate the anniversary of Confederation,[36] However, the holiday was not established statutorily until May 15, 1879,[37] when it was designated as Dominion Day, in reference to the designation of the country as a Dominion in the British North America Act.[38] The holiday was initially not dominant in the national calendar; any celebrations were mounted by local communities and the governor general hosted a party at Rideau Hall.[35] No official celebrations were therefore held until 1917 and then none again for a further decade—the golden and diamond anniversaries of Confederation, respectively.[22]
In 1946, Philéas Côté, a Quebec member of the House of Commons, introduced a private member’s bill to rename Dominion Day as Canada Day.[39] His bill was passed quickly by the House of Commons but was stalled by the Senate, which returned the bill to the Commons with the recommendation that the holiday be renamed The National Holiday of Canada, an amendment that effectively killed the bill.[40]
Beginning in 1958, the Canadian government began to orchestrate Dominion Day celebrations. That year, then Prime Minister John Diefenbaker requested that Secretary of State Ellen Fairclough put together appropriate events, with a budget of $14,000. Parliament was traditionally in session on July 1, but Fairclough persuaded Diefenbaker and the rest of the federal Cabinet to attend.[35] Official celebrations thereafter consisted usually of Trooping the Colour ceremonies on Parliament Hill in the afternoon and evening, followed by a mass band concert and fireworks display, though Fairclough, who became Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, later expanded the bills to include performing folk and ethnic groups and the day became more casual and family oriented.[35] Canada’s centennial in 1967 is often seen as an important milestone in the history of Canadian patriotism and in Canada’s maturing as a distinct, independent country, after which Dominion Day became more popular with average Canadians. Into the late 1960s, nationally televised, multi-cultural concerts held in Ottawa were added and the fête became known as Festival Canada. After 1980, the Canadian government began to promote celebrating Dominion Day beyond the national capital, giving grants and aid to cities across the country to help fund local activities.
Some Canadians were, by the early 1980s, informally referring to the holiday as Canada Day.[n 4] However, this practice did cause some controversy:[46] Numerous politicians, journalists, and authors, such as Robertson Davies,[47] decried the change at the time and some continue to maintain that it was illegitimate and an unnecessary break with tradition.[41] Proponents argued that the name Dominion Day was a holdover from the colonial era, an argument given some impetus by the patriation of the Canadian Constitution in 1982, and others asserted that an alternative was needed as the term does not translate well into French.[41] Conversely, these arguments were disputed by those who claimed Dominion was widely misunderstood and conservatively inclined commenters saw the change as part of a much larger attempt by Liberals to “re-brand” or re-define Canadian history.[41][47][48] Columnist Andrew Cohen called Canada Day a term of “crushing banality” and criticized it as “a renunciation of the past [and] a misreading of history, laden with political correctness and historical ignorance”.[49]
The holiday was officially renamed as a result of a private member’s bill that, on July 9, 1982, two years after receiving first reading in the House of Commons,[35] there received third reading when only twelve Members of Parliament were present. (This was actually eight members less than a quorum, but, according to parliamentary rules, the quorum is enforceable only at the start of a sitting or when a member calls attention to it.[50]) The bill was passed by the House in five minutes, without debate,[46] which inspired “grumblings about the underhandedness of the process”.[35] It met with stronger resistance in the Senate—some Senators objected to the change of name; Ernest Manning, who argued that the rationale for the change was based on a misperception of the name, and George McIlraith, who did not agree with the manner in which the bill had been passed and urged the government to proceed in a more “dignified way”—but finally passed.[41] With the granting of Royal Assent, the name was officially changed to Canada Day on October 27, 1982.
As the anniversary of Confederation, Dominion Day, and later Canada Day, was the date set for a number of important events, such as the first national radio network hookup by the Canadian National Railway (1927); the inauguration of the CBC’s cross-country television broadcast, with Governor General Vincent Massey’s Dominion Day speech from Parliament Hill (1958);[35] the flooding of the Saint Lawrence Seaway (1958); the first colour television transmission in Canada (1966); the inauguration of the Order of Canada (1967); and the establishment of “O Canada” as the country’s national anthem (1980). Other events fell on the same day coincidentally, such as the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916—shortly after which Newfoundland recognized July 1 as Memorial Day to commemorate the Newfoundland Regiment’s heavy losses during the battle[51][52]—and the enactment of the Chinese Immigration Act in 1923—leading Chinese-Canadians to refer to July 1 as Humiliation Day and boycott Dominion Day celebrations until the act was repealed in 1947.[53]”
[Source:Wikipedia]
Winston Churchill about the Palestinians, in 1937:
“I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.”
Source: Page 9, Samar Attar (2010) Debunking the Myths of Colonization: The Arabs and Europe, University Press of America. Page 156, Makovsky Michael (2007) Churchill’s Promised Land: Zionism and Statecraft, Yale University Press.
We’re the good guys right? Right?? Just keep telling yourselves that.
If you have not picked up or borrowed Blood Lands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder yet, I suggest you do so. It is a shockingly candid dissertation on what happened to the people on the Eastern Front between Stalin and Hitler. I quote from that text:
“Partisan operations, effective as they sometimes were, brought inevitable destruction to the Belarusian civilian population, Jewish and gentile alike. When the Soviet partisans prevented peasant from giving food to the Germans, they all but guaranteed that the Germans would kill the peasants. A Soviet gun threatened a peasant, and then a German gun killed him. Once the Germans believed that they had lost control of a given village to the partisans, they would simply torch the houses and the fields. If they could not reliably get grain, the could keep it from the Soviets by seeing that it was never harvested. When Soviet partisans sabotaged
trains, they were in effect ensuring that the population near the site would be exterminated. When Soviet partisans laid mines, they knew that some would detonate under the bodies of Soviet Citizens. The Germans swept mines by forcing locals, Belarusians and Jews, to walk hand in hand over minefields. In general, such loss of human life was of little concern to the Soviet leadership. The people who died had been under German occupation, and were therefore suspect and perhaps even more expendable than the average Soviet citizen. German reprisals also ensured that the ranks of the partisans swelled, as survivors often had no home, no livelihood, and no family to which to return.
The Soviet leadership was not especially concerned with the plight of Jews. After November 1941 Stalin never singled out the Jews as victims of Hitler. Some partisan commanders did try to protect the Jews. But the Soviets, like the Americans or the British, seem not to have seriously contemplated direct military action to rescue Jews. The logic of the Soviet system was always to resist independent initiatives and to value life very cheaply. Jews in ghettos were aiding the German war effort as forced laborers, so their death over pits was of little concern to the authorities in Moscow. Jews who were not aiding but hindering the Germans were showing signs of a dangerous capacity for initiative, and might later resist the reimposition of Soviet rule. By Stalinist logic, Jews were suspect either way: if they remained in the ghetto and worked for the Germans, of if they left the ghetto and showed a capacity for independent action. The previous hesitation of local Minsk communists turned out to be justified: their resistance organization was treated as a front of the Gestapo by the Central Staff of the Partisan Movement in Moscow. The people who rescued Minsk Jews and supplied Soviet partisans were labeled a tool of Hitler.”
-Timothy Snyder. Bloodlands, Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. p 238-239.
That is a small sliver of what war is. The systematic destruction of empathetic thoughts in pursuit of ideology and conformity.
The first step – always the first step – is to identify another human being as the ‘other’. Once that othering has been established there is no evil, no heinous action, that is out of reach. (Funny how religious belief is all about othering, but I’m sure it’s a completely different situation.)
—–
This book is best read in small doses, as it is chock full of humanity doing horrible things to itself. Consider yourself warned.
I’m glad I’ll be dead when humanity’s collective shit hits the fan. I used to get all wrapped up in debates about Capitalism and the slow motion Seppuku we’re committing. I was genuinely flummoxed when my arguments were characterized as hopelessly naive and that my positions were unfounded vis-a-vis economic reality (a.k.a the dominant capitalist consumption paradigm).
Bollocks to that noise.
I’m out of fucks to give about important economic arguments and how super-fucking-awesome capitalism is. I will not be around when glitz comes off of our over-consumption and enough of humanity realizes how hard they’ve been screwed over by our benevolent job creating, all-boats-raising, [insert mendacious free-market dogmatic sentiment here], elite whose only goal is to keep their particular party going on the backs of every else. I, if consciousness exists after corporeal death, will be bathing in tears of the elite, relishing every savoury nanosecond of schadenfreude, as their hard “earned” lifestyle and material wealth crumbles to ash in a fiery pyre with the rest humanity.
Our human tendency to stratify our societies is our downfall. The inequalities that capitalism creates blinds those with power and privilege to the destruction of the very means of survival. Ronald Wright wrote this about the importance of the biosphere and the resources it supplies. To0 tree-huggy for you? Tough darts friend, the historical record is littered with the wrecks of societies that did not learn this fundamental lesson.
The lesson I read in the past is this: that the health of land and water – and of woods, which are the keepers of water – can be the only lasting basis for any civilization’s survival and success.
—A Short History of Progress, p 105
Don’t believe me? Well fuckmesideways bro, you don’t have too, it might be easier if you don’t see this one coming. The good scientists over at NASA have published a neat study on the merry death-spiral we happen to be inhabiting, The Guardian has an article summarizing said paper, thus we’ll peruse the highlights here.
This paragraph’s prescience is chilling:
“Noting that warnings of ‘collapse’ are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study attempts to make sense of compelling historical data showing that “the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history.” Cases of severe civilisational disruption due to “precipitous collapse – often lasting centuries – have been quite common.”
Useful thought experiment time. Imagine when you were a teenager. Remember how thoroughly self absorbed, shallow, and brain-dead you were? That same myopic narcissism is reflected in intellectual, political and social stands that typify the attitudes of the elite. This NASA study is a smackdown of all of what our cherished elites hold dear.
Will a peer reviewed article suddenly change minds and ingrained attitudes? Considerthe prevalence and persistence of religious belief despite the wealth of knowledge that contradicts said venerated mythology. The sheer number of people that haplessly cling to religious delusion is a testament to the doggerel stupidity our species is infected with. The peoples minds we need to change have the influence and the inclination not to listen to reason. So let’s not get all lathered up about the ramifications of this report, even if does purportedly deal in fact.
“It finds that according to the historical record even advanced, complex civilisations are susceptible to collapse, raising questions about the sustainability of modern civilisation:
“The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and impermanent.
Mmm. Sounds nothing at all like our society. But let’s not learn from the past because the ignoble fate suffered by those societies couldn’t possibly happen today.
Because hubris.
(I could have stopped the post here, but sadly, my sanguine nature runs both wide and deep, thus we continue, hoping a difference might be made)
But what are the causes of the downfall of human civilizations?
“[…]lead to collapse when they converge to generate two crucial social features: “the stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity”; and “the economic stratification of society into Elites [rich] and Masses (or “Commoners”) [poor]” These social phenomena have played “a central role in the character or in the process of the collapse,” in all such cases over “the last five thousand years.”
Wow. You mean the rich worry only about getting richer and fucking everyone else over is an actual historical(now supported with SCIENCE!!!)fact? Thank you brave scientists heads for nailing that conclusion that has been obvious to anyone who studies history and has more than two fucking neurons to rub together. So one could say that a system that creates stratification – CAPITALISM – isn’t a really a good system to blindly, balls-to-the-wall-style, endorse. Who would have figured that shit out (hint: rhymes with ‘parks’).
“Currently, high levels of economic stratification are linked directly to overconsumption of resources, with “Elites” based largely in industrialised countries responsible for both:
“… accumulated surplus is not evenly distributed throughout society, but rather has been controlled by an elite. The mass of the population, while producing the wealth, is only allocated a small portion of it by elites, usually at or just above subsistence levels.”
Are you enjoying your peon status? I know I certainly am. But hey, you could make it rich someday too and live just like the fat cats – not that the elites would propagate popular myths (thank you corporate media) to keep the drones in line. But why listen to bitter ole Arbourist? Ronald Wright has done the dirty work and comes to a similar (paraphrased)conclusion:
“Wright sees needed reforms being blocked by vested interests who reject multi-lateral organisations, and support laissez-faire economics and transfers of power to corporations as leading to the social and environmental degradations that led to the collapse of previous civilisations. Necessary reforms are, in Wright’s view, being blocked by vested interests who are hostile to change, including American market extremists. Wright concludes that “our present behaviour is typical of failed societies at the zenith of their greed and arrogance” and calls for a shift towards long-term thinking:”
Yep, and the Elites and their libertarian teenager mentality are going to resolutely deny this until they are standing in the warm rich glow of their freshly razed gated communities and mansions. Only then does this sort of message sink in.
“Modelling a range of different scenarios, Motesharri and his colleagues conclude that under conditions “closely reflecting the reality of the world today… we find that collapse is difficult to avoid.” In the first of these scenarios, civilisation:
“…. appears to be on a sustainable path for quite a long time, but even using an optimal depletion rate and starting with a very small number of Elites, the Elites eventually consume too much, resulting in a famine among Commoners that eventually causes the collapse of society. It is important to note that this Type-L collapse is due to an inequality-induced famine that causes a loss of workers, rather than a collapse of Nature.”
So many options, how about option #2?
“Another scenario focuses on the role of continued resource exploitation, finding that “with a larger depletion rate, the decline of the Commoners occurs faster, while the Elites are still thriving, but eventually the Commoners collapse completely, followed by the Elites.”
Oh this sounds all gloomy and pretty shitty overall, do we have some sciency facts on this? Of course we do…
“In both scenarios, Elite wealth monopolies mean that they are buffered from the most “detrimental effects of the environmental collapse until much later than the Commoners”, allowing them to “continue ‘business as usual’ despite the impending catastrophe.” The same mechanism, they argue, could explain how “historical collapses were allowed to occur by elites who appear to be oblivious to the catastrophic trajectory (most clearly apparent in the Roman and Mayan cases).”
Pretty good argument for a more egalitarian society no? Because the status quo means most of us die and the remainder to to live life Hobbsian style: “Nasty, Brutish 
and short.” Did statement that just send up a dog whistle for our dear friends of capitalism?? Sharing wealth, income redistribution.. the soon to be named spectre of unfuckingwashed Socialism?
Damn straight, son.
Oh were you contemplating bringing some apologia for capitalism to the comments section to set me straight on how fucking wonderful it is and how really if we just keep innovating it will be a panacea for all? (Tell that to third world parents whose kids(21 a minute if you have statistical fetish) are still dying of preventable diseases). Change this shitty system now or get used to the happy-funtime reality that Hobbes and Malthus intimately describe.
“Applying this lesson to our contemporary predicament, the study warns that:
“While some members of society might raise the alarm that the system is moving towards an impending collapse and therefore advocate structural changes to society in order to avoid it, Elites and their supporters, who opposed making these changes, could point to the long sustainable trajectory ‘so far’ in support of doing nothing.”
It won’t change, not by our hand. I get that – keep the orgy going kids; I expect nothing less.
But as I said earlier I won’t be around to stew when things go sideways (well maybe as a wizened old soul on a rocking chair with a shotgun and cats), so enjoy your mess assholes. I’m frackking done with this.
Let’s close with a non swear word laden summary from Ronald Wright of many of my thoughts on humanities majestic progress and the challenges we face:
“Things are moving so fast that inaction itself is one of the biggest mistakes. The 10,000-year experiment of the settled life will stand or fall by what we
do, and don’t do, now. The reform that is needed is not anti-capitalist, anti-American, or even deep environmentalist; it is simply the transition from short-term to long-term thinking. From recklessness and excess to moderation and the precautionary principle.
The great advantage we have, our best chance for avoiding the fate of past societies, is that we know about those past societies. We can see how and why they went wrong. Homo sapiens has the information to know itself for what it is: an Ice Age hunter only half-evolved towards intelligence; clever but seldom wise.
We are now at the stage when the Easter Islanders could still have halted the senseless cutting and carving, could have gathered the last trees’ seeds to plant out of reach of the rats. We have the tools and the means to share resources, clean up pollution, dispense basic health care and birth control, set economic limits in line with natural ones. If we don’t do these things now, while we prosper, we will never be able to do them when times get hard. Our fate will twist out of our hands.”
—A Short History of Progress, p 131–2
Short History of Progress Wikipedia.
Short History of Progress Review on Quill and Quire
Surviving Progress: Documentary Film featuring Ronald Wright.
The Massey Lecture Series: A Short History of Progress produced by the CBC on youtube-
“Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.”
— Assata Shakur
Remembrance Day is a conflicted day for me, I have had the absolute luxury of never having to fight in an armed conflict and for that I am grateful.
Conversely, the application of military power is always the sign of the failure of the human spirit when we must resort to destroying nations and people for what is purported to be what is “right”. We must remember all of those who gave their lives and have had their lives taken from them. John Pilgers quote speaks to the merciless nature of war.
During World War One, 10% of all casualties were civilians.
During World War Two, the number of civilian deaths rose to 50%.
During the Vietnam War, 70% of all casualties were civilians.
In the war in Iraq, civilians account for up to 90% of all deaths.
Sobering figures to say the least.
Speaking of participating in Remembrance Day activities, I had a concert yesterday and my choir, called Soldiers Cry. It was special as Roland Majeau came to sing his song with us, he brought his guitar and accompanied us while he sang the solo line. The song is rhythmically very challenging. As you’re sitting there listening, clap your hands softly to find the pulse of the music. Notice that all the lyrics start when your hands are apart. This piece of music has syncopation in spades, making it just a bear to learn.
The second challenge for me is not to think of the damn video while singing, because becoming emotional/getting misty does bad things to your vocal instrument. :/
I’ll apologize now for the disjointed nature of this post. Days like today do much to stir the emotional pot as they raise many conflicting feelings about how we treat the past, and which parts we choose to focus on. Our history contains a staggering amount of violence , every day could be like November 11th for all the people who have unjustly lost their lives during conflict.
I hope that on days like today people understand, even for just a short while. the importance of history and how the past makes our future. Understanding what we have done, and why, is vital in constructing a coherent view of the world.
I’m not sure how many people really get the horror of war and the terrible price we all pay being party to it, but if Remembrance Day awakens a twinge of empathy, a stirring of consideration, even a feeling of “I don’t want that”, then days like this should be considered to valuable and worth continuing.
Update: The concert went very well, we played to a full house and managed to get an encore out of the proceedings. :)
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