"The Nineteenth century saw a great Springtime of Nations as the revolutions of 1848 saw new countries created the length and breadth of Europe. In our world today we are now seeing our own Spring Awakening with people and cultures that have long been dormant and subdued asserting their right to exist, their right to dream." Adam Price MP
Thursday 15 November 2007
Independence Cymru Condemns Militarization
As this issue is to be discussed very shortly, Independence Cymru takes a stand against the militarization of Wales by the British military establishment and the founding of a Military Academy at Sain Tathan, which is to be a training institute for ever more sophisticated forms of warfare with links to American military technology and companies such as Raytheon, the producer of 'cluster bombs'. In fact, we say that Wales, which has formerly played a major role in the British military machine, should now eschew all forms of warfare and merely maintain a defence force on the Swiss model for the security of its citizens. Along with Scotland we oppose the Trident missile system. Wales as an independent and non-aligned nation state would not require an aggressive fighting force or to be a member of NATO, but would maintain its neutrality as Sweden has done for generations. We would call upon Scotland and Ireland to support this stance and show that this nation of Wales is a peace-loving nation and condemns the use of military force to interfere in the internal affairs of other sovereign nations.
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9 comments:
So Sweden, Switzerland and Ireland who did nothing to oppose Hitlerism are to be applauded and those who defeated that evil are to be condemned .... have I got that right?
The English are warmongers and always have been, and we should have no part of it.
All of the good job's(highly paid) already exist elsewhere in the UK, the only new jobs available to Welsh people will be the low paid cleaning and cook work.
9% of the British is made up of welsh Men and Women only because we have such high unemployment. When we and Scotland leave the union who will fight then The young Men and women from the S.E, i think not.
j.evans150@ntlworld.com
Anon #1, the main reason that "Hitlerism" came about is that the British Empire (i.e. English Empire) had honed mass murder and genocide against native populations in India, Australia/NZ, Ireland, Boer S. Africa and Iraq for many generations before. Plus other gems such as the Opium Wars. The English had the dubious honor of killing off the most people in a colony-- a conservative estimate of perhaps 45 million people killed in India since the East India Company took control of Bengal in the late 1700's, as the English seized Indian farms and crops en masse and burned them down, to raise opium and cotton instead. Meanwhile, Indian native industries were shut down and the people taxed to death to pay for English wars elsewhere-- including wars against the Afghans, who repeatedly defeated the English.
Hitler was merely following the example of the so-called "British Empire," i.e. the English Empire, and I as someone of Welsh descent find nothing to be proud of in that history. Hitler was a beast of our own making, i.e. of England's making, a creature who sprang up out of the mess of WWI (which itself was an imperial war that the English desperately and stupidly fought in some forlorn hope of trying to maintain the imperial status quo ante-- which failed, since the Irish prevailed against England and won their independence).
In fact, the Nazis were rank amateurs in the mass murder department compared to the "Brits," i.e. English in the late 18th, and 19th centuries.
Read John Newsinger's book, or the one by Caroline Elkins or Mark Curtis if you have any doubts.
Considering that Wales and Scotland were among England's earliest colonies, we should be very much inclined to stay out of England's wars, and to regain our independence so that he have the teeth of international law to back up our intentions.
Now THIS is the real history!
Let it be taught in all the schools of Wales. And let the blindfold be removed from the eyes of the people of Britain so that the facts may be revealed for all to see.
John Newsinger? Sorry mate I don't bother with Trots .... may as well read David Icke.
Keep it up! You're getting there...
19th-century, anon my friend, not as much 18th century. It was the Victorians who were most brutal against the peoples of India in particular.
And as for the 20th century, no I don't at all fault the Irish for staying neutral in the World Wars, nor do I fault people like Bose for fighting the British during WWII. It's the lame, arrogant, false and misleading British imperial narrative that casts people such as the Irish, the Finns and Bose as "Nazis" during WWII-- when in fact, these people merely recognized that the British Empire was at least as bad and (historically) a good deal worse and more genocidal than the Nazis were. Britain even perpetrated another policy-induced famine in Bengal in 1942, Churchill's doing, by refusing even basic shipments of rice to starving Bengalis-- which they themselves had been sending to their own markets!
IOW, the Irish and others simply saw two genocidal regimes taking each other out in WWII-- except that the British Empire had done much more damage over a much longer time, and thus were all the more richly deserving of a takedown.
And actually, that's about what happened.
Of course, it wasn't the only factor. Peoples such as the Egyptians, Cypriots, the peoples in Palestine and the fighters in Yemen still had to fight bloody, bitter wars to take down the British Empire after WWII, but they defeated the British just as the Irish won their struggle in 1921 after WWI. (Egypt admittedly not having been a colonised country overall, but their Canal and resources targeted by the English.)
It's a shame that Wales and Scotland still have not enjoyed what the Irish, Cypriots and Yemenis had to fight so intensely for before. We are still colonised, but hopefully the day for our own existence as independent countries, speaking our own languages and celebrating our own cultures, is not too far off.
BTW, let's not forget that when Nasser effectively destroyed the British Empire (or what was left of it) after Suez in 1956, he had both the Russians and Americans on his side, and the pound collapsed in the process. A bitter irony that the Welsh were caught up in this.
The pound should not be our currency anymore. We are an independent nation among the nations of Europe, and we should move to adopt the Euro as an independent country at our first opportunity. Scotland is already moving in this direction, and whether or not Plaid Cymru fully adopts this as part of their plank, we as independence-leaning Welsh should be thinking ahead.
Owen .. glad to see you're reading a bit of history ... half a million Finns were exiled from Karelia during the Second World War ... you know what, they don't still live in camps and blow themselves up in restaurants ... thought you might like to think about that one.
The thing is you are either in favour of democracy or you're not. The war against Hitler was a just war and those who stood on the sidelines were wrong .. and yes of course there were those who history put in a dreadful position, like the Finns.
If you support democracy you had to support the stand against the Soviets and the present stand against Islamofascism. The British Empire has nothing to do with any of this. I hope an independent Wales will be part of NATO and on the side of democracy .... I somehow think that maybe democracy, freedom, the enlightenment, aren't that important to you.
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