I am hesitant to send this post, to say what I think about this thing in the present climate, when the PM can stand there and say wearing the poppy is not political. This 'present climate' has been produced, to my mind, mainly by the media over the past 5 years - not just the tabloids either, for example television, particularly in its news programmes, has been instrumental in resurrecting a fawning and uncritical sentimental view of the military. Under what pressures from the top, from the establishment, we can only guess at, but there has also been pressure from below.

I am not a pacifist, at least I don't think I am, but I haven't worn a poppy since I was a child. Having a mother who was a strong Irish nationalist and growing up in a time when those wearing a poppy were a minority of churchgoers and ex servicemen, then being part of that flowering of anti-war idealism that was our generation's response to Vietnam, I find the whole thing horrific and hypocritical. In WW1 those poor buggers were not heroes sacrificing their lives for their country, they were mostly the helpless victims of powers way beyond their control.

On 11 Nov 2011, at 17:05, Tomás Ó Cárthaigh wrote:

Too many Irish lost their lives in wars in the past centruy, and many of the diaspora are in armies right across the world fighting for varius nations.

Let us remeber them, and the forcefully forgotton - those who faught for armies for whom it is taboo to remeber - the UK army in WWII and also the axis armies in the same period.

http://writingsinrhyme.com/War_Poems.php

11/11/11 - Lest we Forget

Irishmen at War are commemmorated in the War Poems section, just launched online where the names of the unknown are recorded, those whose sacrifices made history, but whose names never reached the history books, until now.

"a person with a good book is never alone... a writer until they've written one is never at peace"

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