Mount Street Bridge, Dublin last night .
Conor writes:
One mans freedom fighter is another mans terrorist.
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Everything. As It Happens.
Mount Street Bridge, Dublin last night .
Conor writes:
One mans freedom fighter is another mans terrorist.
Murdered! Jaysus. Must be from West Cork.
Hang on—isn’t this person referring to the British soldiers? Why West Cork? I’m confused.
Yeah I think Starina has got it the wrong way round.
It was a crack about the amount of people in West Cork who have English-sounding accents, mostly for my own amusement. Didn’t get it confused.
Is that what the poppy money gets spent on?
Slowly slowly slowly they’re almost gone. Pretty soon we will – thankfully – forget.
The only murderer that day was Gen. Lowe who sent wave after wave at inexperienced young troops into a killing field. he ordered the bridge be taken at all costs.
You’re bang on there, they were murdered by their own government – sent into a war they had no interests in and nothing to gain from by the wealthy and powerful who had everything to gain and nothing to lose.
Spent some time reading a bit of Wilfred Owen yesterday as a means to get over the poppy mania occurring around me (I live in the UK at the moment). Dulce et decorum est sums it all up so well.
I doubt that’s what the person who left the wreath was on about but lets hope so eh…
There was a British Army veteran on the news the other day talking about the Poppy. He said the Poppy is a symbol to remember every soldier that died protecting democracy and our freedom. And I thought, empire aside, WW1, WW2 – fair enough, otherwise we’d all be speaking German but then he went on “just like what every British soldier in every conflict is doing today today, defending democracy”. Nah mate, nah!
Great documentary on Sky Arts last night on Owen and Sassoon; ‘The Pity of War’. Worth a look of you can find a replay.
” Spent some time reading a bit of Wilfred Owen yesterday as a means to get over the poppy mania occurring around me (I live in the UK at the moment). ”
” … at the moment. ”
Needs must.
Isn’t that always the way. The commissioned officers from wealthy backgrounds whose wealth paid their way out of the trenches, leading from the back, sending poor men out to die for King and Country.
No fan of empire, but British commissioned officers (generally from the wealthiest echelons of British society) suffered a higher casualty rate then the enlisted.
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-25776836
“Some 12% of the British army’s ordinary soldiers were killed during the war, compared with 17% of its officers. Eton alone lost more than 1,000 former pupils – 20% of those who served.”
War is hell.
The poppy is a symbol representing and glorifying British armed forces and their actions around the globe – not to remember the needlessly slaughtered young people protecting empires in 1914-18 for whatever reasons.
What lives under bridges? – A poppy troll.
To put the Poppy in perspective: it is the source of the crude drug opium.
During late 19th century and early 20th the British exchequer got more than 13% of their revenue from opium trafficking. In 2010 (9th Nov) the British PM, David Cameron and his delegation visited Beijing wearing a poppy.
The Chinese official asked them to remove the poppy because of the opium wars by the British (1839-42 & 1857-60) that caused millions of Chinese deaths. They refused to remove them. Even though many of the perpetrators of these horrendous wars were Irish, including Sir Hugh Gough from Limerick, Ireland ultimately benefited from this diplomatic insult because when Xi Jinping visited Europe in 2012 he visited Ireland but not UK. China is now one of our biggest costumers agri products.
Does BREXIT come to mind?