The Rest of Your Life (v3.0)

Listening To: Symbols : KMFDM

Current Horn Factor :

Quote of The Day
andyg721 i think it was on CNN
andyg721 Condoleeza Rice went to Asia
andyg721 the headline was RICE IN ASIA

From Wikipedia - “White Rose (German: die Weiße Rose) was a World War II non-violent resistance group in Germany famous for a leaflet campaign in which they called for active opposition to the Nazi regime.” It initially consisted of five Munich University students in their early twenties - Sophie and Hans Scholl, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell and Willi Graf. As a result of writing and distributing a series of political pamphlets between June 1942 and February 1943 which called for an end to the Nazi atrocities of that conflict and the active resistance of the German people, they along with Professor Kurt Haber (a later member that helped in the drafting of the final two pamphlets) were arrested and tried by the Gestapo, and ultimately executed by the Third Reich. 

“So what does all this have to do with the price of tea in China”, I hear you ask ?

In February 2005, a movie about Sophie Scholl’s last days, Sophie Scholl – Die letzten Tage (Sophie Scholl: The Final Days), featuring actress Julia Jentsch as Sophie, was released. Drawing on interviews with survivors and transcripts that had remained hidden in East German archives until 1990, it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in January 2006. Two other previously released films have also dealt with the tragic story of this remarkable group of young people.

The story of the Scholls, and the White Rose movement as a whole, serves as an important and poignant inspiration in our contemporary context. This group of idealistic young people spoke out, in spite of the war their country was embroiled in. We’re talking the real blood and guts conflict of WWII, not the so-called ‘War on Terror’ that Bush et al. see fit to define as a war when it suits them, and as a ‘police action’ when it doesn’t. They elected to follow their consciences, despite the prevailing ‘popular opinion’ in Germany at the time, which either held with the abhorrant policies & ideology of the Nazi regime outright, or simply refused to acknowledge the more barbaric implications of said policies for the selfish sake of economic prosperity.

The White Rose spoke out against the war, and their nations involvement in it despite the obvious danger to themselves of this action. Indeed in the end this courageous group paid the ultimate price for daring to believe in concepts such as “Human Rights”, and for speaking out against the actions their government was involved in, and which we - the rest of world - ultimately (rightly) judged as war-crimes.

Hearing the neverending stream of bad news from Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and other ‘hot zones’ in the so-called ‘War On Terror’ (it’s telling, isn’t it, that this Neo-Con catchphrase can be abbreviated to WOT ? ), you can’t help but wonder what the members of The White Rose would have to say about it all. My bet is they wouldn’t be huge fans of America’s, Australia’s or the UK’s current administrations, and their aggressive foreign policies. It’s also a dead-cert they would also be strongly opposed to the ongoing suppression of debate that many sections of the international media establishment, the United States military, and all the governments involved continue to try and exert with regards to human rights abuses in the context of the WOT?.

The majority of ‘regular’ people have only a vague understanding of the Geneva Protocols on Human Rights (and ancillery treaties + protocols) established as a direct result of World War Two and the so-called ‘Nuremberg Trials‘. It’s important to note however, that the United States of America and the United Kingdom were two of the major players actually involved in the suggestion and drafting of these principals of human and State conduct at the time. They drafted these resolutions in the hope that the kinds of atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis during WWII could never again be repeated.

It’s ironic then that as a human being living in a 21st Century Western society, you can’t help but worry about the direction that the USA, UK and our very own Australian governments seem to be taking us in their pursuit of the perceived ‘terrorist threat’. I read a particularly disturbing report online yesterday by Karen Parker, president of the Association of Humanitarian Lawyers, based in San Francisco. 

Full text of the document can be found here. With the rather unedifying title of “War Crimes Committed by the United States in Iraq and Mechanisms for Accountability”, it nonetheless makes sobering reading - regardless of your views on the justification for going to war in Iraq in the first place.