Anniversary of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre in Punjab – April 13, 1919

Commemorations at Jallianwala Bagh, April 13, 2019, honouring the 100th anniversary of those martyred by the British colonialists.

At the festival of Baisaki, the Sikh New Year, on April 13, 1919, the British opened fire on men, women and children in Amritsar, Punjab, at a park known as Jallianwala Bagh, massacring more than 1,000 and injuring many more. The Jallianwala Bagh Massacre has gone down in history as one of the most heinous crimes of British rule. Today the site commemorates all those who were murdered there under British orders.

105th anniversary of Battle of Vimy Ridge April 9-12, 1917: Canada must never again provide cannon fodder for imperial interests

Canadian soldiers in the trenches at Vimy Ridge, 1917.

On April 2, 1917, the Canadian Corps, deployed as part of the British Army on Vimy Ridge in France in the First World War, initiated the largest artillery barrage in history up to that point. They shelled the German trenches for a week, using more than one million shells. The German artillery pieces were hidden behind the ridge, but by observing the sound and light from their firing, the Canadians were able to locate and destroy about 83 per cent of the German guns.

Germany: An enduring enemy of the Palestinian struggle

Germany’s contribution to the colonisation of Palestine over the years has been ideological, financial, physical and military | JOSEPH MASSAD*

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier meets Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in Jerusalem on July 1, 2021 | AFP

(July 16) – German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier visited Israel two weeks ago and met Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, whose American parents came from San Francisco to colonise Palestine in July 1967. Bennett has boasted: “I’ve killed lots of Arabs in my life and there’s no problem with that.”  

Anniversary of the Communist Manifesto, February 22, 1848

February 22 marks the anniversary of the publication of the first edition of the Communist Manifesto, written in 1848 by Karl Marx and his life-long friend and follower Frederick Engels. The Communist Manifesto became the most read and sought after pamphlet in the world. To this day, the attitude towards this pamphlet distinguishes those who are revolutionary because they use Marxism as a guide to action, from those who are hidebound and dogmatic and have another aim.

Dr Clement Ligoure: Hidden hero of the Halifax Explosion

Ground Zero: Richmond Street in the North End of Halifax.

1. The decontextualization of history

The Sixth of December is the 103rd anniversary of the horrific Halifax Explosion of 1917 – the largest explosion in history before the barbaric devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by U.S. atomic bombs in 1945. Some 1,963 innocent men, women and children or more were massacred, another 9,000 injured and 199 blinded, according to understated official figures. Despite scores of books, exhibits, radio and TV programs, and memorial meetings much is unknown, covered up or falsified while those responsible – the Royal Navy, the United States and the Borden government in the first place – were given impunity for a war crime.

We are reposting a recent article by journalist Susanne Rent from the Halifax Examiner to bring to the attention of a wider audience the poignant story of Dr Clement Ligoure and his selfless humanitarianism. Reporting on the research of well-known playwright David Woods, Ms Rent asks, “I’m sure many of us know about the heroics of Vince Coleman, the train dispatcher who sent a message stopping a train that was heading to the city, and then died in the explosion. But how many of us have heard the name Dr. Clement Ligoure and stories of his heroics?”

The day the Armistice was signed to end World War I

Demonstration against conscription in Victoria Square, Montreal, May 17, 1917. Working people in Quebec could find no convincing reason to sacrifice their lives for the glory of the British Empire. The Canadian government imposed conscription in August 1917.

By Nick Lin

On November 11, 1918, the Armistice which brought World War I to an end was signed, marking the end of the war. A slaughterhouse of unprecedented proportions, World War I was referred to as the “war to end all wars.” Despite this, it is well known that the subsequent peace treaty signed in Versailles, was a factor in laying the grounds for the growth of fascism and World War II.

Remembrance in education

Education is a Right Podcast 

Episode 68 of Education is a Right Podcast, released on the occasion of Remembrance Day 2020, is introduced as follows:

“This year Remembrance Day takes place in the 75th anniversary year of the end of World War II. It will take place in schools in the conditions of a pandemic where assembly or other large gatherings are not permitted. This means educators will play a bigger role in commemorating Remembrance Day with their students than they might in other years. In this episode we discuss the importance of contributing to peace through remembrance for educators and students.”

Listen to the complete episode here.

Remembrance Day: Affirm our aspirations for peace and a world without interference, threats, war and aggression!

January 25, 2020. Demonstration in Montreal opposing U.S. aggression against Iran.

By Christine Dandenault

The workers of Canada and Quebec do not want Canada to contribute to world conflicts or wars of aggression against friendly peoples. The 2003 march of more than 200,000 people in the streets of Montreal in minus 20 degree Celsius weather against the invasion of Iraq, along with various actions organized against the presence of NATO warships in the Port of Montreal and elsewhere against the promotion of war amongst the youth clearly attest to this.

How did World War I actually end?

English journalist PAUL MASON* poses the question, as it is being totally ignored amidst the often revisionist and pro-war centenary commemorations, part of the all-round falsification of history.

– On the occasion of Remembrance Day, we are featuring a series of articles on the war and related matters of concern. This article was originally published on this blog on November 14, 2014 and republished in November 6, 2018 on the occasion of the centenary of the end of World War I –

Quiz question: why did the first world war end? We are witnessing commemorations in which the human preference for restraint and dignity will be under pressure from the televisual tendency for wittering on without knowledge or feeling.

So one crucial piece of knowledge should be, for schoolchildren and for TV presenters alike: how and why did it actually end?

The role of Anglo-American financiers in preparing World War II

The Merchants of Death – lithograph by Mabel Dwight

By Valentin Katasonov 

This article was originally published in 2015 by Strategic Culture Foundation and also reproduced by TML Weekly at that time. We are republishing it today to enlighten readers on the role played by international financiers in World War II and debunk the Anglo-American falsification which blames the Soviet Union for that tragedy so as to exonerate themselves.

The article also clearly examines the origins of the international financial institutions at a time the Trudeau government and provincial governments are once against indebting the country to private interests to unprecedented levels based on the fraudulent claim that this is how to achieve economic recovery. Not only that, the Trudeau government likes to claim that Canada’s adherence to these international financial institutions makes it democratic and provides proof of its multilateralism. The material in this article provides ample information which shows that there are obviously various kinds of multilateralism with various kinds of aims and not all of them serve Canada. This the Trudeau and other governments in Canada do not want discussed.

Coronavirus and the sun: a lesson from the 1918 influenza pandemic

Fresh air, sunlight and improvised face masks seemed to work a century ago; and they might help us now.

Influenza patients getting sunlight at the Camp Brooks emergency open-air hospital in Boston. Medical staff were not supposed to remove their masks | National Archives

By Richard Hobday*

(March 10) – When new, virulent diseases emerge, such SARS and Covid-19, the race begins to find new vaccines and treatments for those affected. As the current crisis unfolds, governments are enforcing quarantine and isolation, and public gatherings are being discouraged. Health officials took the same approach 100 years ago, when influenza was spreading around the world. The results were mixed. But records from the 1918 pandemic suggest one technique for dealing with influenza — little-known today — was effective. Some hard-won experience from the greatest pandemic in recorded history could help us in the weeks and months ahead.

102nd Anniversary of the Halifax Explosion

Infamy of the massacre of the Canadian people in Halifax

Painting of the Halifax Explosion

By TONY SEED

December 6th is the 102nd anniversary of the horrific Halifax Explosion of 1917 – the largest explosion in history before the infamous devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by U.S. atomic bombs in 1945.[1] Some 1,963 innocent men, women and children were massacred, another 9,000 injured and 199 blinded, comprising more than one fifth of the total population, resulting from a massive explosion due to the collision in the inner harbour of the merchant ship Imo and the ammunition ship Mont Blanc loaded with 3,00 tons of chemical explosives. One square mile of the working class quarter of the North End facing the Halifax Narrows was totally destroyed. Six thousand people lost their homes altogether and between 20,000 and 25,000 Haligonians were left homeless and destitute, including ten thousand children. More than 1,600 buildings were destroyed, and 12,000 more were damaged.[2]

This Day. 100th Anniversary of the Winnipeg General Strike

Canadian workers’ proud history of organized resistance and defence of rights

Rally June 4, 1919, outside the building which housed the citizen’s committee.

This year marks the 100th Anniversary of the Winnipeg General Strike. On May First 1919, discouraged by post-war inflation and unemployment, Winnipeg’s metal and building workers went on strike, demanding higher wages. Winnipeg’s building trade workers walked out to gain better wages and hours. They were joined by iron workers who were fighting for company recognition of their union, the Metal Trades Council. On May 15, with the overwhelming support of its 12,000 members, the Winnipeg Labour Council called a general strike. Thirty thousand union and non-union people walked off the job. Among the first out were the city’s telephone workers. Winnipeg had no phone service for a week. 

100th Anniversary of the Battle of George Square

Battle of George Square, Glasgow

The “Battle of George Square” was a confrontation in Glasgow, in which the Glasgow City Police sought to violently suppress striking Glasgow workers, centred around George Square. The confrontation, also known as “Bloody Friday”, took place on Friday, January 31, 1919, 82 days after the end of the First World War.

Poems on the Occasion of the Centenary of the End of World War I – Moments of Quiet Reflection

Monument to those interned at the Castle Mountain camp in Alberta.

Monuments in Saskatchewan (left) and Alberta to the people unjustly interned by the Canadian government during World War One, reminders of the repression at home that accompanies imperialist war abroad. 

Today we will hear a lot about Remembrance Day and what to remember on Remembrance Day. For instance, we are told that Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, will be in Paris, France for a special 100th anniversary Armistice Day service followed by a “Peace Forum.” British Prime Minister Teresa May, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, U.S. President Donald Trump and “more than 70 other world leaders” are also invited. The “Peace Forum” will discuss “issues of international security.”

Contributions and Slaughter of Colonial Peoples in World War I

On the occasion of the centenary of the end of World War I, TML Weekly has been producing an excellent series of informative Supplements on the war and related matters of concern. This is the fourth in the series. Click for No. 1 (How the First World War Out); No. 2 (Canada and the First World War); No. 3 (British Movement of Conscientious Objectors); No. 4 (Contributions and Slaughter of Colonial Peoples in World War I);  No. 5 (Steadfast Opposition to the Betrayal of the Workers’ Movement); No. 6 (Poems on the Occasion of the Centenary of the End of World War I – Moments of Quiet Reflection.

Members of Chinese Labour Corps at William Head, outside Victoria, BC, awaiting transport by train across Canada and then by ship to Europe.

• Colonial Peoples’ Resistance in World War One
• Massive Conscription of Indians by the British
• Chinese Labour Corps and Other Non-Combatant Workers from the Colonies

Centenary of the End of World War I: British Movement of Conscientious Objectors

On the occasion of the centenary of the end of World War I, TML Weekly has been producing an excellent series of informative Supplements on the war and related matters of concern. This is the third in the series. Click for No. 1 (How the First World War Out); No. 2 (Canada and the First World War); No. 3 (British Movement of Conscientious Objectors); No. 4 (Contributions and Slaughter of Colonial Peoples in World War I);  No. 5 (Steadfast Opposition to the Betrayal of the Workers’ Movement); No. 6 (Poems on the Occasion of the Centenary of the End of World War I – Moments of Quiet Reflection.

Dyce Work Camp was set up in August 1916 at quarries north-west of Aberdeen, Scotland. Conscientious Objectors had been released from prison on condition that they performed “work of national importance” – breaking up granite rock for road building.

• The Men Who Said No
• Opposition in Britain to the War and Criminalization of Conscience
• Organizing to Oppose Conscription and Defend Conscientious Objectors
• Civil Service and Non-Combat Roles in the Military for Objectors
• Imprisonment

Canada and the First World War

On the occasion of the centenary of the end of World War I, TML Weekly has been producing an excellent series of informative Supplements on the war and related matters of concern. This is the second in the series. Click for No. 1 (How the First World War Out); No. 2 (Canada and the First World War); No. 3 (British Movement of Conscientious Objectors); No. 4 (Contributions and Slaughter of Colonial Peoples in World War I);  No. 5 (Steadfast Opposition to the Betrayal of the Workers’ Movement); No. 6 (Poems on the Occasion of the Centenary of the End of World War I – Moments of Quiet Reflection.

Conscription
• Opposition to Conscription in Canada and Quebec
• The Case of Ginger Goodwin
• Recruitment of Indigenous Peoples
• Black Construction Battalion

Internment
• The War Measures Act and Internment of Canadians

Independent Labour Politics
• Registration, Conscription, and Independent Labour Politics, 1916-1917 – Martin Robin

How the First World War broke out

– On the occasion of the centenary of the end of World War I, we are featuring a series of articles on the war and related matters of concern. This article is from the book Thus Wars Are Made by Albert Norden  –

World War I: The resistance to conscription in Winnipeg

– On the occasion of the centenary of the end of World War I, we are featuring a series of articles on the war and related matters of concern. This article was originally published on this blog inn 2014. –

By JIM BLANCHARD*

It is well known that the adoption of conscription in Canada during the First World War was very unpopular in Quebec. Although many Quebecois volunteered to serve in the army in the first years of the war, large numbers of French Canadians disagreed with sending troops overseas when the country did not seem to be threatened.

What is less known is the fact that Canadians in the rest of the country also opposed conscription.  Winnipeg was no exception and there was a good deal of resistance in the city.

100th anniversary of the First World War and Canada’s ‘Coming of Age’

On the important questions of war and peace

A sovereignty based on empire building

By KEVIN HUNTER

In Europe’s reeking slaughter-pen
They mince the flesh of murdered men,
While swinish merchants, snout in trough,
Drink all the bloody profits off!
– In Wartime, Stephan G. Stephansson, 1916

(Originally published on this blog on July 28, 2014.)

July 28 marks the centenary of the start of the First World War. One hundred years ago, on this day, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Russia followed in declaring war on Austria-Hungary, and within six days, Britain, France and Germany were officially at war. Canada as a self-governing dominion of the British Empire was automatically at war when Britain declared it.

On the 100th anniversary of World War I

On the Important Questions of War and Peace

– On the occasion of the centenary of the end of World War I, we are featuring a series of articles on the war and related matters of concern. This article is from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). It was originally posted on this blog on July 28, 2014 –

World War I (1914–18)

[was] an imperialist war between two coalitions of capitalist powers for a redivision of the already divided world (a repartition of colonies, spheres of influence, and spheres for the investment of capital) and for the enslavement of other peoples. At first, the war involved eight European states: Germany and Austria-Hungary against Great Britain, France, Russia, Belgium, Serbia, and Montenegro. Later, most of the countries in the world entered the war. A total of four states fought on the side of the Austro-German bloc; 34 states, including four British dominions and the colony of India, all of which signed the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, took part on the side of the Entente. On both sides, the war was aggressive and unjust. Only in Belgium, Serbia, and Montenegro did it include elements of a war of national liberation.

World War I remembrance initiatives: Appeal to wear the White Poppy in memory of all victims of war

The white poppy symbolizes all casualties of war. All over the world appeals are being issued to wear the white poppy on Remembrance Day, November 11. For at least 80 years, white poppies have been distributed to represent three elements: remembrance of all victims of war, a commitment to peace and a challenge to attempts to glamourize or celebrate war.

Never Again – Theme of Windsor commemorations

The Windsor Peace Coalition convened a meeting on September 27 of all those interested in ensuring that the anti-war conscience of the working people of Windsor-Essex is affirmed in commemorations of the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. Attending the meeting were long-time activists from the Peace Coalition, Women in Black and the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada, veterans of the Canadian and U.S. Armed Forces, a local member of the Royal Canadian Legion, a number of active and retired teachers, artists and others.

On the centenary of end of World War I

By ENVER VILLAMIZIR

November 11, 2018 at 11:00 am will mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. How this event should be remembered is of importance.

Centenary of end of WW I: The need to make commemorations significant

In Europe’s reeking slaughter-pen
They mince the flesh of murdered men,
While swinish merchants, snout in trough,
Drink all the bloody profits off! 
– In Wartime, Stephan G. Stephansson, 1916

By PAULINE EASTON

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of this year, one hundred years will have passed since the fighting in World War I ended following the signing of an armistice between the Allies and Germany.

Centenary of the Halifax Explosion: Time to disturb the sleep of the unjust

Act of God, the harbour pilot, the navy?

The Halifax Explosion and the Royal Canadian Navy: Inquiry and Intrigue

John Griffith Armstrong
(Vancouver: UBC Press, 2002)
Hardcover, 256 pp, 6 x 9 inches, 16 b/w photos, maps
Index, Bibliography and Chapter end-notes
ISBN 0-7748-0890-X
$39.95
New in Paperback: July, 2003
ISBN 0774808918 $24.95

On the 100th anniversary of the Halifax Explosion, a war crime: The organization of the city as a war port is the ‘business’ best adapted for profit

Painting of the Halifax Explosion

Infamy of the massacre of the Canadian people in Halifax

December 6th is the centenary of the horrific Halifax Explosion of 1917 – the largest explosion in history before the infamous devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by US atomic bombs in 1945. The tragedy is being marked by an intensive program of events and initiatives, including scores of books, exhibits, radio and TV programs, memorial meetings in Halifax and Boston, and a stamp issued by Canada Post.

The following article by Tony Seed reports on a paper presented by anti-war activists in Halifax in 1983 and expands on it for this publication. On this date, we pay our deepest respects to the families of all those who died as a result of this disaster.

Demolition of anti-fascist memorials in Poland: Falsifications about country’s liberation from Nazi rule

Monument in Rzeszow celebrating the liberation of the city from the Nazis. In 2016 the city rejected calls from Poland’s historical legacy institute to remove such memorials.

By DOUGAL MACDONALD

On June 22, 2017, the Polish government’s lower house voted to amend the “decommunization laws” to demolish all monuments and memorials honouring the Soviet Union’s liberation of Poland from the Nazis. The fact that the amendments were passed on the 76th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union would appear to be no accident.

The Battle of the Somme and Beaumont-Hamel: General Haig’s murderous “Great push forward”

On the Important Questions of War and Peace

July 1 marks the centenary of the start of the Battle of the Somme. It is commemorated in Newfoundland as Memorial Day – the 100th anniversary of the slaughter of  732 Newfoundlanders from the Newfoundland Regiment who either lay dead, wounded or were presumed missing near the French village of Beaumont-Hamel. Ordered “over the top” by their officers, during an assault that lasted approximately 30 minutes the regiment was all but wiped out. Newfoundland, as a colonial dominion of the British Empire, was automatically at war when Britain declared it.