Celtic Fans Against the N11 "Bloodstained Poppy"

international | anti-war / imperialism | other press

Tuesday November 09, 2010 06:16

by 9-0

PHOTO (last Saturday Nov 6th 2010)
Celtic Fans Against the "Bloodstained Poppy" (Nov 11th)
-Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan
http://willievass.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/061110...7Iink

(the bhoys hammered Aberdeen 9-0 on the day!)

Poppy Day is the opium of the people

Posted by Laurie Penny - 07 November 2010 09:31

A million cardboard flowers will never be enough to mop up the carnage of war.

On a rainy Thursday in Cheshire, at a base belonging to Europe's largest arms dealer, veterans lay down paper poppies in memory of fallen soldiers. This was no protest, however: BAE systems, a prominent supporter of the Royal British Legion's annual Poppy Appeal, cheerfully hosted the solemn ceremony to mark the beginning of the Appeal at its Radway Green facility.

Officials from the arms and munitions company, which rakes in billions from international wars and is subsidised by the British government, watched as servicemen and schoolchildren planted crosses in front of the base. The awkwardness of their presence passed unnoticed in a country that seems to have fundamentally misunderstood the nature of remembrance.

It might seem a little disrespectful to describe Remembrance Sunday and the rash of poppies that precedes it as "just show business", but that is precisely how Harry Patch, the final survivor of the 1914-1918 war, characterised the ceremonies in his memoir The Last Fighting Tommy. Patch died last year at the age of 111; there is now nobody left living who truly remembers the futility of the war that sustains our patriotic imagination. Remembrance day has been expanded to commemorate all fallen British servicemen and women, but in practice the events of the day focus on the two world wars- and no wonder.
Article continued.........
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/laurie-penny/2010/11/...rnage