Klandernacht

In the world of the blogs Paul Wells kicked it off Christmas day, revealing a High Powered Liberal insiders racist blog attacking other party candidates of colour. By the end of the weekend it resulted in the shutting down of his blog and his resignation for offensive racist comments and pictures of both an NDP candidate and a Conservative who were NOT white folks. Mike Klander resigned according to the Globe and Mail butLiberal spokesman Stephen Heckbert said: Mr. Klander, who could not be reached for comment, has a strong record of inclusiveness, he said. Yep he included people of colour in his attacks and only people of colour.

His intention was to have a humorous site with some biting humour that he and some fellow Liberals could [read]. He recognized there's a couple of things that crossed the line."

Well his blog was PUBLIC, he had not made it private, dummy, and even if he had made it as an inside party joke well its still racist and offensive. For a cross section of responses from the right and left in the blogosphere check here.

The Globe and Mail header is also misleading; Liberal resigns over vulgar blog

Vulgar denotes common, or bad taste, which is make light of what Mr. Klander really did. His blog was Racist, in the extreme. And aimed so. Against others. Comparing Olivia Chow with a Chinese Chow dog, with pictures is not vulgar, it is obscene and racist. If any thing wit was certainly not an off colour joke, but a joke at the expense of people of colour running in this election. But then what do you expect from the Globe and Mail with their connections to the Liberal campaign.

What was vulgar was Scott Reids remarks about Beer and Popcorn. Mr. Klander went even further over the edge. And got caught. So far the blogs in this election have had quite an impact contrary to comments made by Warren Kinsella.

The word vulgar now brings to mind off-color jokes and offensive epithets, but it once had more neutral meanings. Vulgar is an example of pejoration, the process by which a word develops negative meanings over time. The ancestor of vulgar, the Latin word vulgāris (from vulgus, “the common people”), meant “of or belonging to the common people, everyday,” as well as “belonging to or associated with the lower orders.” Vulgāris also meant “ordinary,” “common (of vocabulary, for example),” and “shared by all.” An extension of this meaning was “sexually promiscuous,” a sense that could have led to the English sense of “indecent.” Our word, first recorded in a work composed in 1391, entered English during the Middle English period, and in Middle English and later English we find not only the senses of the Latin word mentioned above but also related senses. What is common may be seen as debased, and in the 17th century we begin to find instances of vulgar that make explicit what had been implicit. Vulgar then came to mean “deficient in taste, delicacy, or refinement.” From such uses vulgar has continued to go downhill, and at present “crudely indecent” is among the commonest senses of the word.


Tags
Canada
Federal Election
Globe & Mail
Conservative
Liberal
NDP
blogs
klander

Primate Man

A tip o the blog to Larry Gambone for
pointing out this interesting article from Foreign Affairs.

Robert M. SapolskyFrom Foreign Affairs, January/February 2006

More discomfiting is the continuum that has been demonstrated in the realm of cognition. We now know, for example, that other species invent tools and use them with dexterity and local cultural variation. Other primates display "semanticity" (the use of symbols to refer to objects and actions) in their communication in ways that would impress any linguist. And experiments have shown other primates to possess a "theory of mind," that is, the ability to recognize that different individuals can have different thoughts and knowledge.

Since tool making is part of the evolution of man as Engels correctly observed, then tool making in other species shows a movement towards social evolution as well. Unfortunately this knowledge that other species make toosl will also give the right wing another excuse to blame someone else for climate change.

Our purported uniqueness has been challenged most, however, with regard to our social life. Like the occasional human hermit, there are a few primates that are typically asocial (such as the orangutan).

So I guess that makes the orangutang an Objectivist. See my Ayn Rand 100

Apart from those, however, it turns out that one cannot understand a primate in isolation from its social group. Across the 150 or so species of primates, the larger the average social group, the larger the cortex relative to the rest of the brain. The fanciest part of the primate brain, in other words, seems to have been sculpted by evolution to enable us to gossip and groom, cooperate and cheat, and obsess about who is mating with whom. Humans, in short, are yet another primate with an intense and rich social life -- a fact that raises the question of whether primatology can teach us something about a rather important part of human sociality, war and peace.

And genetically we are closer to chimps than chumps contrary to the Creationist who believe swe were lumps of clay until god breathed life into us, 4,400 years ago. We are social beings as, anarchists have attested to all along, Kropotkin observed our societies thrive when they are based on mutual aid rather than mutually assured destruction.

More Thaw

First it was the Arctic Ice cap thawing now it's the permafrost. But is anyone listening to the sound of the ice melting? Permafrost-thawing concern deepens

It is puzzling that conservatives are so thick headed about the environment while claiming the mantel of Teddy Roosevelt or even Edmund Burke. Denying global warming and climate change is not real conservatism, which is anti-monopoly, anti-big business as much as it is anti-big government, rather they are apologists for corporate capitalism, they are ne-cons which is not a traditional conservative position at all.

In a WSJ opinion piece on Burke, Jeffery Hart quotes Burke on Beauty, that is nature...

Among the needs of civilization is what Burke called the "unbought grace of
life." The word "unbought" should be pondered. Beauty has been clamorously
present in the American Conservative Mind through its almost total absence. The
tradition of regard for woodland and wildlife was present from the beginnings of
the nation and continued through conservative exemplars such as the Republican
Theodore Roosevelt, who established the National Parks. Embarrassingly for
conservatives (at least one hopes it is embarrassing), stewardship of the
environment is now left mostly to liberal Democrats.
Not all ideas and initiatives by liberals are bad ones. Burke's unbought beauties are part of
civilized life, and therefore ought to occupy much of the Conservative Mind. The
absence of this consideration remains a mark of yahooism and is prominent in
Republicanism today. As if by an intrinsic law, when the free market becomes a
kind of utopianism it maximizes ordinary human imperfection--here, greed, short
views and the resulting barbarism.

Oh dear what does that say about the so called conservatives that want to drill for about six months worth of oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Forever destroying the open range of the declining caribou herds. What would Burke and Roosevelt say?

Arctic Power regroups after another ANWR defeat
Associated Press
According to the Associated Press, the lobbying group Arctic Power says it
will consult with Alaska Senator Ted Stevens before deciding its next move.
Arctic Power is the nonprofit group that lobbies for the opening of the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to petroleum drilling. The U.S. Senate last week
refused to include the drilling measure in a defense spending bill. Jerry Hood
says the group is not ready to give up. He says be believes a measure can pass
Congress.
Opponent David van den Berg is director of the Northern Alaska
Environmental Center. He says that with a billion-dollar surplus, the
Legislature is likely to continue to support Arctic Power. The Legislature gave
Arctic Power more than a million dollars this year.
State Senator Gary
Wilken says he thinks of money for Arctic Power as an investment to help the
next generation of Alaskans. The Fairbanks Republican says if the Legislature
continues to see Arctic Power as an investment, it will find money for the group

A tip o' the blog to Northwestern Winds for the Burke lead

Also See:
Arctic
Melt Down

Weather
Report

Arctic
on the Rocks

Global
Warming:

Tags
environment
science
climate
change
science
arctic

A Revised Second Amendment

ITS BEAR HUNTING SEASON IN ALBERTA

My Blog articles on Bears:
Alberta Sacrifices Wildlife for Profit
Save Our Grizzly Bears

Grizzly Slaughter

Rail Accident Kills Grizzly Mom

Bear Baiting

Grin and Bear it

Liberal MLA Bill Bonko on Alberta Grizzly Hunt

The Right to Arm Bears

I Support The Right To Arm Bears!

The Right to Arm Bears Sample chapters

(Paperback)by Gordon R. Dickson

Charlton Heston would just be an old, washed up actor. A bear would run the NRA as according to 2nd amendment...only bears can have guns.

"Bears are not companions of men, but children of God, and His charity is broad enough for both... We seek to establish a narrow line between ourselves and the feathery zeros we dare to call angels, but ask a partition barrier of infinite width to show the rest of creation its proper place. Yet bears are made of the same dust as we, and breathe the same winds and drink of the same waters. A bears days are warmed by the same sun, his dwellings are overdomed by the same blue sky, and his life turns and ebbs with heart-pulsings like ours and was poured from the same fountain....." John Muir

Support the Right to Arm Bears

By BONNIE ERBE

Nov 1, 2005,

Last week's local section of The Washington Post celebrated -- yes, celebrated -- the killing of a black bear by an 8-year-old girl. The compassionate among us mourned not just the cruel and completely unnecessary killing of one of nature's most fabulous creatures, but the love of violence and destruction instilled in this child by her family.
That certain Americans sadly find valor in killing is beyond doubt. But in many ways, it's also beyond belief. That they would take pleasure in a wantonly destructive act and train this into an 8-year-old female heart is beyond forgiveness.
We've heard it all before. Hunters love nature. Hunters work to preserve wildlife. Hunters are great stewards of the environment. Hunters eat what they kill. What was the justification here? That enough bears exist in Maryland to kill them off without destroying the species, as mankind once almost did. Only cowards could find solace, justification and pride in that.
There's no sport in taking down a large, lumbering animal with a .243 caliber rifle, the kind used by the young girl portrayed in worshipful prose by the Post. That's the same caliber weapon NATO uses in its assault weapons. There's more technology than sport in today's high-powered, scoped weapons. (The Post did not report whether the rifle she used was scoped or not.)

Tags

Alberta

Canada

wilderness

Big Game Hunting

Grizzly

endangeredspecies

environment

hunting

Harper is Bush Lite

Well golly gee wilikers, after wanting to expand our military into the North now the Harper wants the Military on every street corner in Canada. Yep the Party of Law and Order is begining to sound a bit fascist, sorta like George Dubya Bush, who wants civil emergencies in the U.S. handled by the military. Can you say Martial Law?

Cities should have regular army presence: Harper
"A large number of our cities have no military presence," he said after announcing plans to beef up the military's capabilities in the West.

Tags
Canada
Federal Election
Conservative
politics
military
Stephen Harper

Death by Taser

As I have blogged before ( see links below) Tasers should be outlawed, period. Here is another case in point, Christmas Eve in Edmonton and the Police used a taser and killed an unarmed man who had gone looney tunes on the street.

What they don't have enought 'deadly force' weapons in their arsenals, billy clubs, mace/pepper spray, guns, they need killer tasers too. There have been more deaths at the hands of police in Canada using tasers than using guns. And some will say they were only trying to subdue him, well he's dead now.

Since capital punishment is banned in Canada I didn't know going nutz was a capital offense. If that was the case then a good number of the Blogging Torys would be on death row.

Witnesses said police tried to calm him. For a few seconds he complied, placing his hands on the hood of a parked police car.He then stepped back and began pacing. Some witnesses said the man yelled out that he was being attacked by insects. Within a few seconds, still in a highly agitated state, he began approaching a police officer who had drawn his Taser .The officer raised his Taser and fired its twin darts, Wylie said.

And in a realted incident in South Carolina a man died after languishing in hospital after being shot twice with a Taser. A Florence man who died after being arrested was shot twice with a Taser, including once after deputies had him in custody, according to an incident report. Howard Starr, 32, died at a hospital Dec. 17 after a car chase in Florence.

Taser cop 'distraught' And well he should be. He killed someone. At least the Edmonton cops didn't shoot their guy while he was in custody. Thats murder, or manslaughter at least. But its actually business as usual with Tasers and cops.

The man joins a growing list of people who died after being jolted by a 50,000-volt surge of electricity from a Taser stun gun. Earlier this year, Amnesty International said the death toll has now surpassed 100 and called for a ban on the devices.

Make that 102. Tasers are too unpredictble despite the companies protestations to the contrary.

The company began selling Tasers to law enforcement in 1998, and more than 8,000 U.S. law-enforcement agencies have since armed their officers with them. Taser has consistently denied its products solely are responsible in the deaths, arguing that none have been directly linked to Tasers. The company also contends Tasers have saved thousands of lives, giving police an option short of deadly force when confronted by combative suspects.

Yep short of deadly force tell that to the families of the men killed in Edmonton and Florence.


See:
The Market Fazers Taser
Cops Clear Killer Tasers
Killer Taser Strikes Again
Killer Taser

Tags
Taser / police

Chavez Puts Christ in Christmas

Hugo Chavez does it again, thumping the pulpit against the self righteous rightwhing Christian fundamentalist Republicans with his Christmas day speech.

— Venezuela: President Hugo Chavez praised Jesus Christ as a revolutionary hero during a Christmas Eve visit to a homeless shelter. "For me, Christmas is Christ. The rebel Christ, the revolutionary Christ, the socialist Christ," he said during a televised speech from the shelter.

Take that Bush, O'Riley and Robertson.
You gotta love Hugo. He tells it like it is.

Jesus
A Revolutionary Biography




And I get to print the lyrics to this great song again.

The Rebel Jesus Jackson Browne

Original recording from the chieftain’s album the bells of dublin All the streets are filled with laughter and light And the music of the season And the merchants’ windows are all bright With the faces of the children And the families hurrying to their homes As the sky darkens and freezes They’ll be gathering around the hearths and tales Giving thanks for all god’s graces And the birth of the rebel jesus Well they call him by the prince of peace And they call him by the savior And they pray to him upon the seas And in every bold endeavor As they fill his churches with their pride and gold And their faith in him increases But they’ve turned the nature that I worshipped in From a temple to a robber’s den In the words of the rebel jesus We guard our world with locks and guns And we guard our fine possessions And once a year when christmas comes We give to our relations And perhaps we give a little to the poor If the generosity should seize us But if any one of us should interfere In the business of why they are poor They get the same as the rebel jesus But please forgive me if I seem To take the tone of judgement For I’ve no wish to come between This day and your enjoyment In this life of hardship and of earthly toil We have need for anything that frees us So I bid you pleasure And I bid you cheer From a heathen and a pagan On the side of the rebel jesus.

Tags
socialism
Hugo Chavez
Jesus
Christmas

Antinominalist Anarchism

I came across this site of a Christian Anarchist, now I know some people think being a Libertarian Communist is a contradiction or oxymoron, well how's about being a Christian Anarchist.

Actually there is a long tradition of just such radical ideas, it is called antinominalism, and it infected many of the rebels and adventurers that set about leaving England in search of the new world. It literally means to only obey the laws of God as you interpret them to be.

So I would say my namesake below is actually a practising antinominalist.

I'm Gene and I call myself the Christian Anarchist. I started in the 60's as a liberal hippie type and later became a Republican after I started to pay taxes. I became unhappy with the republicans and their talk of small government while they were increasing every program they could so I became a libertairan. Some time later I decided that I was not a libertairian either so I tried to determine exactly what I could label myself. I didn't fit into any party that I knew of. My strong belief in Christianity put me out of most groups who deny God's presence. I did not acknowledge any authority with eminated from man as I believe strongly that "all men are created equal". If we are all equal with equal rights, I could not see how anyone gets "extra" rights to rule others. My only conclusion was that no one has the right to rule over me. This is the definition of an anarchist so I started calling myself a "Christian Anarchist". I believed that I had invented the phrase, but after punching it into Google, I found several great links that express exactly what I feel, that no earthly authority is over man, only God is over man.

Other forms of Christian anarchism would be Tolstoy and the Catholic Workers movement of Dorothy Day. And the current activists in the Christian Peacekeeper Teams. Though these latter 'Christian' Anarchists are really the school of pacifism, rather than antinominalism. Anarchism is the ultimate big tent movement.

The Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy advocated what has come to be known as anarcho-pacifism or Christian anarchism. He argued that Christians were obligated to be pacifists, and that pacifists, in turn, were obligated to be anarchists — since government is based on the use of force. Tolstoy was influenced by Henry David Thoreaus writings on civil disobedience. Tolstoys own writings on pacifism and non-resistance converted Gandhi to pacifism. In the modern era, theologians such as Mennonite John Howard Yoder and United Methodist Stanley Hauerwas have been strong advocates for Christian pacifism. Both have strengthened the pacifist argument with sophisticated philosophical underpinnings, grounded in the Bible and the life, words, and person of Jesus Christ. All words on Pacifism

Antinominalism can be called spiritual anarchy, and was considered by early church fathers as an essential element in some Gnostic Heresy's (hence the term used for the study of heretical ideas and the history/herstory of heresy is heresiology) .

Scholars refer to the ethical systems of the Carpocratian kind as antinominalism, that is, the belief that you needn’t observe either laws or the Ten Commandments because you’ve been made free of them by the grace of God. As long as the Savior has redeemed your sins, and the grace of God is in operation, then you are at liberty to have your own way. [Pocket Encyclopaedia of Mysteries]

As I wrote in reply to yet another religious anarchist, who asked the question can you be a Muslim Anarchist? And he was.These same heretical ideas appear within Islam as Sufism, coming as it did from Perisa (Iran) and the earlier religious theology of Zarathustra, or Zoraster .

And as part of the late 19th Century 'New Life' movement in England, which embraced lifestyle anarchism, socialism, homosexuality and feminism (Edward Carpenter being one of the better known proponents of this movement) moving to small villages, living a cooperative communal life, there was an embracing not only of an immanent Christianty and imminent revoultion, but a deep moral and sspiritual socialism as well. The New Life movement was influenced by Emerson's Transendentalism, as well as by mystical christianity and the socialist ideal of the brotherhood of man.

A basic history of the CROYDON BROTHERHOOD CHURCH

Back in the 1890's, there was an "Anarchist Church" that believed and practiced the following:

In only eating food that was co-operatively grown and ran its own shop and horse drawn distribution network,

They were vegetarians,

Ran a hostel for the homeless in your local pub,

Operated a cooperative tailors and Dressmaking,

Also a cooperative laundry, in a poor part of the town.

Believed in Free union without marriage,

Some wore "rational Dress" and others went on to become pioneer nudists.

Listened to lectures on:

Dangers of vaccination

vivisection

LETS schemes and the abolition of money

Pacifism,

Living in community, and the history of Utopian communities

Utopian Science fiction

Some would not use the railways as they were destroying the countryside; they cycled or walked distances of 100 miles or more.

Henry George and Land reform,

Communism, Anarchism, Unions, Guilds.

Kropotkin himself adovacted on behalf of persecuted Anabaptists, especially the Russian Doukhobors whom he advised to go to Canada and the U.S. to escape Tzarist persecution for their pacificsm. Anabaptists arose from the early peasant wars in Germany, as a Protest Sect, protestantism, against both Luthers principality of Princes of the Church and against the Papacy. And some Anabaptist sects are antinominalists, believing not in a church, or a divine law but rather a direct communication with God, that neither Church Law nor Man's law will bind them. Such is the case with the Doukhobors.

All those who hold the idea of a free church and freedom of religion (sometimes called separation of church and state) are greatly indebted to the Anabaptists. When it was introduced by the Anabaptists in the 15th and 16th centuries, religious freedom independent of the state was a radical idea, and unthinkable to both clerical and governmental leaders. Religious liberty was equated with anarchy and Peter Kropotkin traces the birth of anarchist thought in Europe to these early Anabaptist communities. ("Anarchism" from The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1910 By Peter Kropotkin)

So yes Virgina there is such a thing as a Christian Anarchist.

Tags
libertarianism / anarchism /socialism/ Politics / anti-war / religion / pacifism / Doukhobor / antinominalism / Gnostic / Christian Anarchism / Tolstoy /Kropotkin

Problem Fixed

I fixed the coding problem here and now it appears that my blog works well in both Firefox and IE. Will miracles never cease. If you still have problems getting this page to load, please let me know. A tip o the blog to those of you who brought the width problem to my attention, and to DazzilinDino who helped out with useful suggestions. See we can all get along if we remember the old dictum, we agree to disagree...but help each other despite that. Of course then there are those who are just plain disagreeable.....but I am too full of holiday cheer to pay much attention to them.

Christmas in the Trenches

I have posted here before about the amazing tale of the Christmas Truce of 1914.

And this Christmas day I thought it would be good to remind us all of that sentiment, as our own Troops occupy Afghanistan and Haiti.

Something grand of the solidarity and brotherhood of man despite being forced to aim the bosses guns at each other.

I just heard John McCutcheon's wonderful song Christmas in the Trenches , from his Winter Solstice Album, on the radio so it inspired me to add this reminder of that amazing event. The link above for the album gives a short sample of the song.

It is one of two of my favorite anti-war songs, the other being And the Band Played Waltzing Matilida.

The Christmas truce of 1914 was early in the war, when everyone thought it would be over soon. Had the solidiers mutinied as their officers, on all sides, feared, the war would have been over. Unfortunately it lasted another four years. And was the source of the greatest Revolution of the 20th Century, when the Russian troops left the front and stormed the Winter Palace.

Christmas in the Trenches
by John McCutcheon
My name is Francis Tolliver, I come from Liverpool.
Two years ago the war was waiting for me after school.
To Belgium and to Flanders, to Germany to here
I fought for King and country I love dear.
'Twas Christmas in the trenches, where the frost so bitter hung,
The frozen fields of France were still, no Christmas song was sung
Our families back in England were toasting us that day
Their brave and glorious lads so far away.

I was lying with my messmate on the cold and rocky ground
When across the lines of battle came a most peculiar sound
Says I, "Now listen up, me boys!" each soldier strained to hear
As one young German voice sang out so clear.
"He's singing bloody well, you know!" my partner says to me
Soon, one by one, each German voice joined in harmony
The cannons rested silent, the gas clouds rolled no more
As Christmas brought us respite from the war
As soon as they were finished and a reverent pause was spent
"God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" struck up some lads from Kent
The next they sang was "Stille Nacht." "Tis 'Silent Night'," says I
And in two tongues one song filled up that sky
"There's someone coming toward us!" the front line sentry cried
All sights were fixed on one long figure trudging from their side
His truce flag, like a Christmas star, shown on that plain so bright
As he, bravely, strode unarmed into the night
Soon one by one on either side walked into No Man's Land
With neither gun nor bayonet we met there hand to hand
We shared some secret brandy and we wished each other well
And in a flare-lit soccer game we gave 'em hell
We traded chocolates, cigarettes, and photographs from home
These sons and fathers far away from families of their own
Young Sanders played his squeezebox and they had a violin
This curious and unlikely band of men

Soon daylight stole upon us and France was France once more
With sad farewells we each prepared to settle back to war
But the question haunted every heart that lived that wonderous night
"Whose family have I fixed within my sights?"
'Twas Christmas in the trenches where the frost, so bitter hung
The frozen fields of France were warmed as songs of peace were sung
For the walls they'd kept between us to exact the work of war
Had been crumbled and were gone forevermore

My name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I dwell
Each Christmas come since World War I, I've learned its lessons well
That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we're the same

Last survivor of 'Christmas truce' tells of his sorrow

The First World War's horrors still move us but one man recalls his moment of peace amid the bloodshed

The words drifted across the frozen battlefield: 'Stille Nacht. Heilige Nacht. Alles Schlaft, einsam wacht'. To the ears of the British troops peering over their trench, the lyrics may have been unfamiliar but the haunting tune was unmistakable. After the last note a lone German infantryman appeared holding a small tree glowing with light. 'Merry Christmas. We not shoot, you not shoot.'

It was just after dawn on a bitingly cold Christmas Day in 1914, 90 years ago on Saturday, and one of the most extraordinary incidents of the Great War was about to unfold.

Weary men climbed hesitantly at first out of trenches and stumbled into no man's land. They shook hands, sang carols, lit each other's cigarettes, swapped tunic buttons and addresses and, most famously, played football, kicking around empty bully-beef cans and using their caps or steel helmets as goalposts. The unauthorised Christmas truce spread across much of the 500-mile Western Front where more than a million men were encamped.

Christmas Truce in the Trenches

By 1915 the war had expanded from the German French front to the Russian Turkish front. While Canadian and British troops fought in the trenches in France, Russians, Brits and Australians assaulted the Turks at Gallipoli.

It is this assault that inspired the movie, and inspired the song And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda by Eric Bogle.

His website includes a his song and his explanation for writing it including an excellent audio recording of the whole song. He also wrote No Mans Land (THE GREEN FIELDS OF FRANCE), the version here is bilingual English and German, again in memory of the great Christmas Truce., and the recording is excellent.

Like Canada, Australia came of age in WWI. For the first time ever both colonial countries had our own officers. Unfortunately both of our countries also suffered the indignity of being colonial troops, canon fodder for the English ruling class officers. For Canadians it was Ypres and Vimy Ridge. For the Australians it was the murderous assault on Gallopoli.

Thus Bogles song of how the Austrlian Johnny, got his gun.

And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda

Now when I was a young man I carried me pack
And I lived the free life of the rover.
From the Murray's green basin to the dusty outback,
Well, I waltzed my Matilda all over.
Then in 1915, my country said, "Son,
It's time you stop ramblin', there's work to be done."
So they gave me a tin hat, and they gave me a gun,
And they marched me away to the war.

And the band played "Waltzing Matilda,"
As the ship pulled away from the quay,
And amidst all the cheers, the flag waving, and tears,
We sailed off for Gallipoli.

And how well I remember that terrible day,
How our blood stained the sand and the water;
And of how in that hell that they call Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter.
Johnny Turk, he was waitin', he primed himself well;
He showered us with bullets, and he rained us with shell --
And in five minutes flat, he'd blown us all to hell,
Nearly blew us right back to Australia.

But the band played "Waltzing Matilda,"
When we stopped to bury our slain,
Well, we buried ours, and the Turks buried theirs,
Then we started all over again.

And those that were left, well, we tried to survive
In that mad world of blood, death and fire.
And for ten weary weeks I kept myself alive
Though around me the corpses piled higher.
Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over head,
And when I woke up in me hospital bed
And saw what it had done, well, I wished I was dead --
Never knew there was worse things than dying.

For I'll go no more "Waltzing Matilda,"
All around the green bush far and free --
To hump tents and pegs, a man needs both legs,
No more "Waltzing Matilda" for me.

So they gathered the crippled, the wounded, the maimed,
And they shipped us back home to Australia.
The armless, the legless, the blind, the insane,
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla.
And as our ship sailed into Circular Quay,
I looked at the place where me legs used to be,
And thanked Christ there was nobody waiting for me,
To grieve, to mourn and to pity.

But the band played "Waltzing Matilda,"
As they carried us down the gangway,
But nobody cheered, they just stood and stared,
Then they turned all their faces away.

And so now every April, I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me.
And I see my old comrades, how proudly they march,
Reviving old dreams of past glory,
And the old men march slowly, all bones stiff and sore,
They're tired old heroes from a forgotten war
And the young people ask "What are they marching for?"
And I ask meself the same question.

But the band plays "Waltzing Matilda,"
And the old men still answer the call,
But as year follows year, more old men disappear
Someday, no one will march there at all.

Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda.
Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?
And their ghosts may be heard as they march by the billabong,
Who'll come a-Waltzing Matilda with me?

The great Wobbly poet and song writer Joe Hill wrote this poignant Anti War song in 1915, as the IWW denounced the War and were thrown in jail for sedition.

As the War Amps say; Never Again.

They are one of the few Veterans associations that is Anti-War. And one of the few to recgonize the unsung heros of the Spanish Civil War, the Canadian Veterans of the International Brigades. They have sponsored an album of Anti-War Songs including these above sung by the great Canadian tenor John McDermot.

The Green Fields of France

(Performed by John McDermott)

Well how do you do, young Willie McBride, do you
mind if I sit here down by your graveside. And rest for a
while 'neath the warm summer sun. I've been walking all day and
I'm nearly done. I see by your gravestone you were
only nineteen when you joined the great fallen in nineteen-sixteen.
I hope you died well and I hope you died
clean. Or young Willie McBride, was it slow and unseen.

Chorus:
Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly,
did they sound the dead-march as they lowered you down.
Did the band play the Last post and chorus.
Did the pipes play the 'Flowers of the forest'.

Did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined
Although you died back in nineteen sixteen
In that faithful heart are you forever nineteen
Or are you a stranger without even a name
Enclosed then forever behind the glass frame
In a old photograph, torn, battered and stained
And fade to yellow in a brown leather frame.

Chorus:
Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly,
did they sound the dead-march as they lowered you down.
Did the band play the Last post and chorus.
Did the pipes play the 'Flowers of the forest'.

The sun now it shines on the green fields of France
There's a warm summer breeze. it makes the red poppies dance
And look how the sun shines from under the clouds
There's no gas, no barbed wire, there's no guns firing now
But here in this graveyard it's still no-man's-land
The countless white crosses stand mute in the sand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man
To a whole generation that were butchered and damned.

Chorus:
Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly,
did they sound the dead-march as they lowered you down.
Did the band play the Last post and chorus.
Did the pipes play the 'Flowers of the forest'.

I am Willie McBride I can't help but wonder why
Did all those who lie here know why did they die
And did they believe when they answered the call
Did they really believe that this war would end war
For the sorrows, the suffering, the glory. the pain
The killing and dying was all done in vain
For young Willie McBride it all happened again
And again, and again, and again, and again.

Merry Christmas!

Make War No More!

Tags anti-war / war /Christmas Truce /WWI /songs/ veterans