the 60th anniversary of the Sétif massacre. & "how it ended"

international | rights, freedoms and repression | other press

Monday May 09, 2005 12:17

by iosaf

pull up your stools, light your pipes, fill your glasses Iosaf is going tell one of his stories,

As you no doubt all now know, 60 years ago, the big war ended, when we the peoples of Eire were in the emergency, because we didn't know which was worse liberal imperialism or nazi-ism or bolshevism and if neutrality had worked for Franco and the Swiss, it might work for us too.

And on the 8th of May it ended in Europe. Well it had sort of ended before that, but the official ending was the 8th and the Russians held off making official announcements till the 9th. How did it really end? You may ask.

If you had these, they're called "papers", you had ID, a ration book, title deeds / rent-book, degree, CV, inter cert, driving license. They helped 60 years ago. Not many people had them.

But it all didn't end, oh no, the japanese went on fighting everyone else in the East, (the other side of the disk) till the replacement droid for Roosvely mr Trueman dropped weapons of mass destruction on them in august 1945.
Thats why the emperor and empress of Japan spent VE day in Glendalough yesterday, looking at St Kevin's grotto, and getting bitten by the midges.

So it was that on the 8th of May 1945, the world leadership had lots of leadering things to do. An it really is quite fascinating what they did.

The remnants of the Reich leadership put on funny moustaches, the wrong uniforms, and using faked student identity cards (the type you use when you're too young to drink but have the thirst on you) and made their way north to Scandinavia, south to Bavaria and Switzerland and west to Ireland and Spain.

Heh! yes - you there, yes you Seanín, get tyhat tobacco out of your mouth, I said spit it out. that's better.

Now where were we, oh yes, the leader of the Engurlish who at that time controlled a liberal imperial system on which the sun never set

::::"coz god wouldn'd trust them in the dark Iosaf!"

Yes, thank you for that interjection, Dunkie but I'm tellling the story here, anyway, the leader of the Engurlish was Winston Churchill he went to Westminister and told them all they had been saved from the threat of german domination and suggested they all leave the building and go out in the square outside and enter the little church and have a big pray in to say thanks the holy way. Thereafter all the engurlish had a massive party on the street and nine months later there was a baby boom.

And in Paris, the French, did the same sort of thing, their leader was charles de Gaule, and he gathered all his fans together at the Arc de Triomphe which had been built by Napoleon to comemorate perpetually his victories over the allied forces of europe, and sang the marseilles and got really drunk too. With them were lots of Americans, for at the end of the war almost 19,000 US troops had gone AWOL in France, and as a sign of their contribution to the genepool, Eurodisney was built years later outside of Paris on the massgraves of soldiers from World War One (the Great war to end all wars after the napoleonic wars). And of course there were spanish republicans too, coz they get everywhere, and Leclerc the free french general who had liberated Paris almost to the year before, had given some of those veterans of the Spanish civil war (to end all wars) a tank to drive down avenue de la grand armée and go under the arc de triomphe. But not all of them were there, for over 8000 had been sent to Mauthaussen concentration camp. and others had just died.

And in russia, everyone was delighted, becuase they knew that this now meant peace and prosperity and ice cream, because the radio had told them, "win the war against fascism and you get ice cream". Shostakovitch the popular composer was really happy, for he knew in his bones that it would only take another 10 years for his music to be played, because Stalin didn't like it. Stalin meanwhile was too busy being paranoid to worry about either ice cream or Shostakovitch, and at the same time he addressed all the russians and soviets in Moscow at the end of the Great Patriotic War, he had sent a forensic team to Berlin to examine every last inch (centimetre for the russians are metric) of the Berlin Bunker for traces of old Hitler's body.

What did I say about the tobacco chewing?
Yes spit it out. ALL OF IT.

In some places, the end of the war didn't seem like the end of the war. In southern germany, where many of the surviving Reich leadership were busy trying to get to, over 20,000 german troops remained in a bubble caught between US and USSR. It would take them many months to be "processed" and the end of the war for most europeans was this -

A radio announcement.

Within a week of the end of the radio announcement, the Austrian Composer Anton von Webern was shot by a U.S. army chef "in error" whilst lurking hungrily with intent around the lentil sack. And for many millions, hunger and as immediately after the first War, disease claimed lives.

why that?

glad you asked that, because there were very few towns with proper toilets left in Europe. And many millions of people in Europe were somewhere they didn't want to be. So they all started walking.
And so it was that 1945 is the year of European exodus.

Millions of people of our grandparents' generation walked, home, or somewhere else. They left their camps, and there were no bright young volunteers to give them blankets. There were no applauses ringing out through the sky, no cups of soup. And for many there were no homes to go to.

And so the leaders of the world, changed the maps. Because they thought that would help.

And Germany was divided into "sectors", between the Engurlish, the French, the Americans and the Russians. Berlin and Vienna were also divided.
And the Westminister parliament debated whether or not it should give a fig of aid to stop the germans starving in their sector, because the war had been very expensive, and there wasn't enough ginger pop to go around. The Americans within a few years decided to follow the suggestion of a man called Marshall, to give all the countries in Europe aid, so that they could have bridges, houses, and toilets again. And also so they could plough the land destroyed by war and grow potatoes.

-Just like they'd done in peace?

Quite. Just like they'd done in peace.- All the jewish people who had survived and walked around Europe for several years looking in vain for their homes, without certificates to prove they ownded a heap of rubble, were offered Israel to live in a few years later but many of them had been rehoused in special camps built for the purpose along with german prisoners of war, and several thousand spanish falangists in the Ukraine and Bylerussia by Stalin, where they were so well looked after, over 70% of them were never heard of again.

-Wow! What did we do?

Well, Eamon De Valera went to the german ambassador, and said he was very sad that Hitler had died, and would do his best to get on with not only the next generation of American presidents but also help in something called "paperclips" to move stationary across the Atlantic to both north and southern continents.

-did he get marshall aid for that?

I delight in your interest, seanín, no, he got no marshall aid, and nor did his mate Franco for a while, and after Stalin rejected liberal imperialist conditions being set on marshall aid neither did Eastern Europe. At which point Churchill first madew reference to the "iron curtain", coz with aid, the germans were able to rebuild their country, but without aid the soviet sector was much slower and quickly and awfully became a stalinist dictatorship which was called the DDR.

What's this got to do with the 60th anniversary of the Sétif massacre, -and why is this in other press??????????????

Sorry, risible and chekov, didn't notice you come in there in the back row. Well, on the 8th of May 1945 when the radio announcements were made for those lucky enough to be eating military rations or living at home, many thousands of Algerians were shot by the French military at Sétif whislt demostrating for independence.
Algerians say 40,000 - 45,000.
the French say 15,000 - 20,000-
And indeed France has still not officially admitted responsibilty for the massacre.

here are the memorial links-

http://news.tf1.fr/news/monde/0,,3217930,00.html
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3224,36-647354@51-647257,0.html
http://www.walf.sn/international/suite.php?rub=6&id_art=19189
http://www.lequotidien.sn/articles/article.CFM?article_id=24419
http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/20050508.FIG0152.html
http://iblnews.com/news/noticia.php3?id=128016
http://permanent.nouvelobs.com/etranger/20050508.OBS6011.html
http://www.swissinfo.org/ses/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5763649&cKey=1115566526000
http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=295096
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3224,36-647179@51-647257,0.html

last links on neutrality / emergency period in Switzerland as the swiss examine their war time past which has taken them 5 years, and has only just been completed and has had repercussion at every level, in every bank, and will now form part of an agreed schooling education module, so that others just like yourselves learn about the past-

http://www.swissinfo.org/ses/swissinfo.html?siteSect=105&sid=5758051
http://www.swissinfo.org/ses/swissinfo.html?siteSect=105&sid=1074965
http://www.swissinfo.org/ses/swissinfo.html?siteSect=105&sid=4290498
http://www.swissinfo.org/ses/swissinfo.html?siteSect=105&sid=4594802