27 July 2009: the UK government declares the first part of its delicately and ‘democratically titled’ Operation Panther’s Claw (the British bit of the US army ‘surge’ in Afghanistan) to have been a success. The BBC today said that the Foreign Secretary “has been setting out Britain’s diplomatic strategy” as if Foreign Secretary David Milliband’s strategy to divide the Taliban originated with him……BUT in November 2008 in a speech at Chatham House (Royal Institute of International Affairs) Zbigniew Brzezinski said that the NATO strategy should be to split the “Talibans” (he emphasised the plural form) and to draw so-called moderate Afghans onto the USUK side, in other words, the old Roman and British imperial tactic of divide et impera (divide and rule). This was the first time a major USUK figure had raised this topic as a tactical aim.

General Patrick Cordingley declares on BBC Radio (27.7.09) that UK “forces will be there for a very long time” but may need to be withdrawn for a while, maybe 5 years, and then go back in again later on.

In a week and a month which have seen the worst British casualties of the 8 year long conflict – 20 dead since the beginning of July – General Sir Richard Dannatt, C-in-C of the British Army, a plain speaking man said in a BBC interview wirh Sarah Montagu in Afghanistan essentially the same thing he had said in interview with The Independent newspaper in early June: ‘we must have more troops because if we don’t, we shall lose credibility with the Americans.’ At the top of his ‘shopping list’ (his phrase) was the need for credibility with the Americans. Not democracy, not elections, not stability, not women’s education or the removal of burqas or any of other items of flannel with which the government and the Media seek to bamboozle the British people. No, just credibility with our fellow New World Order allies, our Big Brother.

    “WAR IS ORGANISED MURDER!”

and :

“No war is worth the loss of a couple of lives let alone thousands.

T’isn’t worth it … the First World War, if you boil it down, what was it? Nothing but a family row.

That’s what caused it.”

Harry said more about what he thought the war on the Western Front between Britain and Germany was in 1914-18:

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/…/last_tommy_gallery_03.shtml

“You daren’t show above, otherwise a sniper would have you. You used to look between the fire and apertures and all you could see was a couple of stray dogs out there, fighting over a biscuit that they’d found. They were fighting for their lives. And the thought came to me – well, there they are, two animals out there fighting over a dog biscuit, the same as we get to live. They were fighting for their lives. I said, ‘We are two civilised nations – British and German – and what were we doing? We were in a lousy, dirty trench fighting for our lives? For what? For eighteen pence a flipping day.’”

By contrast, what has the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said this week following the death of Harry Patch?: “The noblest of all the generations has left us, but they will never be forgotten….I think it’s right that we as a nation have a national memorial service to remember the sacrifice and all the work that was done by those people who served our country during World War One and to remember what we owe to that generation – our freedom, our liberties, the fact that we are a democracy in the world.”

Just as in 1917, while politicians spout meaningless empty dross, the men who actually experienced the reality speak their truth of what it was about.

In 1920, just 7 months after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, Rudolf Steiner welcomed to Dornach Switzerland a group of British visitors and gave a series of lectures for them which dealt especially with the question of imperialism, which he said, had evolved from ancient times through three phases: theocratic (e.g. Egypt), military (e.g. Rome) to economic (e.g. Britain). One of the key characteristics of the modern economic imperialism was, he said, a culture of empty words. Politicians know that their citizens and soldiers will not want to kill and die for oil, copper and improved economic statistics, so instead, they give them fine-sounding but empty words. Husks of vacuous idealism. This is how Gordon Brown has responded to the death of Harry Patch.

Steiner: “Those who live amid empty words believe they are thinking when they merely take words that stand for ancient concepts and roll them around in their brain. We can only find our way back to real thinking by filling our inner soul life with substance and this substance can only come from knowledge of the spiritual world. Only by filling themelves with spiritual life can people become fully human once again, after having been bladders filled with hot air and perfectly satisfied with the empty shells of words. Out of the feeling of shame…the call for the spirit will arise.” (22.2.1920)

An episode from Harry Patch’s wartime experience is often quoted when he described how a soldier torn apart by shrapnel asked his fellows to shoot him but died before they could, with the one word “Mother” on his lips. But Harry’s following words after that are always omitted in our materialistic British media. Harry, like so many in the war, said that he’d lost his faith in the Church, but he went on to say [5 years ago] that after the death of that soldier:

“And when that fellah died, he just said one word: ‘Mother.’ It wasn’t a cry of despair. It was a cry of surprise and joy. I think – although I wasn’t allowed to see her – I am sure his mother was in the next world to welcome him. And he knew it. I was just allowed to see that much and no more. And from that day until today – and now I’m nearly 106 years old – I shall always remember that cry and I shall always remember that death is not the end. You’ve got a memory. You’ve got a brain about the size of a tea cup. I’ve got a memory that goes back for 80 or 90 years and I think that memory goes on with you when you die. And that’s my opinion. Death is not the end.”

“We can only find our way back to real thinking by filling our inner soul life with substance and this substance can only come from knowledge of the spiritual world.” (Steiner) Everyone remarked that Harry Patch sat straight up and was alert and clear thinking until the very end of his 111 years.

And today? How many times have we heard of the shoddy treatment of British soldiers by the Establishment that is sending them to die in Helmand? The poor, insufficient equipment. The substandard condition of accommodation for soldiers and their families. The fact that private soldiers earn less than traffic wardens. British army private on active service: £18,547 p.a.  Traffic warden: £20,526  Prison Officer £23,324 (2007)http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jun/06/military.pay

Meanwhile, in addition to the usual British imperial tactic of seeking to bribe and divide the enemy, the Establishment has reacted to the death of Harry Patch by announcing  a grand state memorial for the generation that fought the Great War, a great empty jamboree of the kind of solemn pomp the British love so much