Wrapped Tight by Andrew Brel. Episode 7: Conscription

Conscription means basically writing someone's name on a list. But that’s not the full meaning of conscription.

Conscription, also known as the draft in American English, is the practice of compulsory enlistment in a national service, mainly a military service, enforced by law. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names.

The modern system of near-universal national conscription for young men dates to the French Revolution in the 1790s, where it became the basis of a very large and powerful military. Most European nations later copied the system in peacetime, so that men at a certain age would serve 1 to 8 years on active duty and then transfer to the reserve force.

Conscription is controversial for a range of reasons, including conscientious objection to military engagements on religious or philosophical grounds; political objection, for example to service for a disliked government or unpopular war. Mostly conscription is controversial for the same reasons that slavery was.

Conscription of young boys into war by rich old men, almost invariably White, has a history as old as historical records. The fuel that drives every war is the blood of young conscripts. Always for the exclusive benefit of the old white leader men.

Conscription of a poor underclass to serve the financial interests of the rich old leader class is a practice as old as prostitution and money lending, older than the invention of Gods to make the worker class supplicants compliant.

Long before man created God, the rich old man leader class found ways to force the young, poor and vulnerable into killing at their command for their personal benefit.

All societies that prosper today in the rule by rich old white man model of evangelic fascist democracy are founded on the blood of young men conscripted into war.

Consider what it takes to form an army to kill the designated enemies of the state in order to pillage the spoils of victory. Who benefits from this process; where an army of youngsters proceed like automatons, programmed to kill on command expecting nothing in return other than the opportunity to kill for duty without expecting a share of the profits their killing generates.

That privilege is limited to the rich white old men. The Leader class who write the laws that conscript the kids to do their bidding for no higher purpose than creating more wealth for the rich old white men who conscript these young boys using tried and proven methodology involving Fear, Nationalism, Patriotism and Religion.

A cycle of serial abuse of youth by the experience of age.

From the beginning of social order, where leaders established abundance that attracted the attention of greedy neighbors who raised army to steal, the need to defend wealth arose. Defense as a National duty took two forms. One was professional, where the strongest most adept at fighting and killing are recruited into a professional army, indemnified in law and trained in the arts of warfare to respect the rules and laws that evolved as wars consumed the planet.

Soon it became apparent that no society could maintain a paid professional standing army all year round, year after year, and still make enough profit for the leader class to enjoy Emperor like lifestyles.

This created a demand for indentured servitude. Conscription was born. Why pay a solider when you can convince a poor kid to do the killing for you at a fraction of the costs.

The methodology of how best to conscript is a refined science. Starting with slavery; when early on in our species development, Warrior Kings supplemented their fighting Knights with slaves. Often for use as Cannon fodder. After the abolition of slavery, a new form of slavery emerged. That is conscription; a process that requires creating a servile impoverished underclass, then educating them into faith based compliance pairing the Almighty with the Nationalist obligation. To the extent that they volunteer for their servitude. Entering a service whose methodology is to “Break down the Man to create the soldier”. Once the soldier awakens, that is the man for life.

The most significant factors for recruiting a ‘blind-faith follow-command’ army, are;

Age; Pre teens are easier to train to follow commands blindly.

Educational level, where the least intelligent are easier to train to follow commands blindly.

Socio-economic background, where the poorest are easier to train to follow commands blindly.

Religion, where the most religious already submit to blind faith making it easier to train to follow commands blindly.

Race, where existing predisposition to racist loyalty makes it easier to assemble a cohesive group that will follow commands blindly.

To convince young men to serve in this personal wealth scheme is not that hard. Getting the majority to feel that they are volunteering in a “YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU” World War 1 model of nationalist indoctrination based on a demonized threat worked on a majority since the start of 20th Century Wars.

In the past hundred years of war and conscription, assembling an army of conscripts usually follows two distinct paths.

One is the organized Legal prescription that prepares armies for war within the rules of War, as agreed in the Geneva Conventions. A draft that selects either some or all of the school leaver population.

The other is the ‘illegal’ brand of gang style terrorist designated groups, either operating as liberators following invasion by a regulated army, or as mass murdering criminals seeking opportunities for enrichment. This is more common in third world countries lacking the resources to educate a complaint resource of children trained to volunteer for National service.

The first records of formal conscription requiring youth to serve in the military date back to ancient Egypt some 3,000 years ago. That system was simple. Rich powerful men from the leader class recruited the lowest poorest layer from the worker class, based on size, and desperate need, then paid them slave wages to kill on command. Often pairing them with slaves to boost the numbers rushing off to defend their wealth.

The modern era of near-universal national conscription for young men dates to the French Revolution in the 1790s, where it became the basis of a very large and powerful military, enriching the rich old white man leader class with more wealth than any privileged small leader class had ever enjoyed before.

That kind of opportunity caught the eye of the rest of the Civilized world. Compulsory enlistment in a militarized national service enforced by law caught on like wildfire with every leader class. Most European nations copied the conscription system in peacetime, so that men at a certain age would serve 1 to 8 years on active duty and then transfer to the reserve force.

Under the feudal laws on the European continent, landowners in the medieval period enforced a system whereby all peasants, freemen serfs, and noblemen aged 15 to 60 living in the countryside or in urban centers, were summoned for military duty when required by either the king or the local lord, bringing along the weapons and armor according to their wealth. For those unwilling to serve the leader class in this way, others of a more supplicant disposition were conscripted to punish their non compliance, often with brutal death.

For as long as there have been Organized armies with conscripts invading and oppressing in the guise of ‘Defense’, there has been Organized resistance.

Civilians joining coordinated militias providing their own weaponry evolved a successful model of guerrilla warfare, to compete with the organized major powers who could afford formal conscription and training of troops.

Essential to both models, the formal training available to the major powers and the informal Guerrilla tactics of the oppressed, was the need to conscript young boys to train as gunmen.

Every Government that ever assembled an army understood that young boys will need to be able to shoot to become soldiers. This training, preparing young boys to become riflemen, was best served by starting them young.

Hunting became ever more popular as a method for teaching pre-teens the art of killing with a gun. All Royals in every monarchy that ruled in those glory years when God chose Monarchs to run the planet, modeled behavior for their subjects by celebrated kill for fun hunting.

Big Game hunting they called it, in a glamorous, honorable and brave duty that normalized killing for fun with a gun for entire generations of little boys, who would then go on to become conscripted soldiers lining up to shoot and kill for King and Country.

Learning to shoot and kill became a right of passage to manhood for entire generations of Boys in the British Commonwealth, and especially the American Colony. For conscripts, the lack of good skills as shooters would decide their military value. Good shooters, to the left, bad shooters, to the cannon fodder line. If you can’t shoot straight then your value is as a target to take the bullet for the boy who can.

In many of the Colonial wars, Resistance to the oppressors army would depend on hunters with shooting skills for their successes against overwhelmingly superior numbers. Volunteers in self regulate militias without any of the benefits of a conventional army. Just farmers with their own guns and advanced skills as shooters.

In the Anglo Boer War, the Boer farmers, who were all volunteers and experienced distance-marksmen, were able to inflict much much higher casualties on the red coat British, who were mostly conscripts with poor shooting skills made worse by their single shot old style weapons.

In this example that sets out conscription by a powerful conscript based military and a resistance movement of armed volunteers organizing their own militias, let’s look at the facts from a conscript versus volunteer model in a battlefield scenario

The First Anglo-Boer War was fought from 16 December 1880 until 23 March 1881 between the United Kingdom and Boers of the Transvaal. The British army was an enormous seasoned force comprising both trained officers and poorly educated, poorly trained conscripts, dressed in Army uniforms with Army issue guns and bullets. And tried and proven tactics honed in the glory years of the British Empire. Against all odds, the war resulted in a Boer victory and eventual independence of the South African Republic.

The Boers, mostly a farmer society, had no regular army. When threatened the men in a district would form a militia organized into military units called commandos. They would elect officers democratically. Commandos being civilian militia, each man wore what he wished, usually everyday dark-grey, neutral-coloured, or earthtone khaki farming clothes. Each man brought his own weapon, usually a hunting rifle, and his own horses.

The average Boer Resistance fighter who made up their commandos was a farmer who had spent almost all their working lives in the saddle. Because they had to depend on both their horses and their rifles for their survival they were skilled hunters and expert marksmen.

Most of the Boers had single-shot breech-loading rifle, primarily the .450 Westley Richards, a falling-block, single-action, breech-loading rifle, with accuracy up to 600 yards. As hunters they had learned to fire from cover, from a prone position and to make the first shot count, knowing that if they missed, in the time it took to reload, the game would be long gone.

At community gatherings, the Boer communities perfected long gun skills in target shooting competitions using targets such as hens' eggs perched on posts over 100 yards away. The British conscripts by contrast had no culture of target practice celebrating the snipers skill.

The British infantry uniforms at that time were red jackets, dark blue trousers with red piping on the side, white pith helmets and pipe clayed equipment. Providing a useful target in the brown African landscape. The Highlanders wore the kilt, and khaki uniforms. They were a well seasoned fighting force whose tactics had proven successful in the Second Afghan War. Many of the British soldiers were conscripted from the lowest layer of British society.

They were trained in traditional tactics of warfare at that time. March in formation, ‘left right, left right’ and follow orders. The standard British infantry weapon was the Martini-Henry single-shot breech-loading rifle with a long sword bayonet attached. The average British soldier was not trained to be a marksman and had little target practice. What shooting training British soldiers had was mainly as a unit firing in volleys on command. ‘Ready. Aim. Fire’ was often a three minute process of preparation for that enormous group effort that included a loud shouting by the officer commanding to assist the invisible enemy, the prone marksmen behind cover 600 yards away, to keep their heads down until the loud boom passed, after which it was open season on the bright red targets.

And so this unhappy dumbed down band of hot sweaty British boys marched in formation in the heat of the South African summer wearing their bright red markings heading for a Boer target many miles away. Left right, left right. The Boer Farmers hidden prone in ideal shooting locations with their advanced sniper skills must have thought it was unfair on the poor boys being asked to die so hopelessly.

Subsequent battles became a proving ground for tactics valuing mobility, stealth, marksmanship and initiative while the British emphasized the traditional military values of command, discipline, formation and synchronized firepower.

The outcome was predictable. In almost all of the battles in this war, the British casualties averaged 100 for every Boer killed. The Boers claimed a famous victory over the world’s leading superpower. Volunteer amateurs against a professional army populated by conscripts.

After that lesson in resistance to an oppressive occupier, the British Government reevaluated military tactics. Although this revaluation did not address the obvious problems with recruiting conscripts. Conscript recruitment doing the build up to the second Anglo Boer war showed that a large percentage of those conscripted did not pass the medical requirement to join the British Army. Because they suffered from diseases arising from poverty, like malnutrition and sub normal ability to understand commands.

When they returned to South Africa 18 years later, in 1899, they came prepared, for the Guerrilla tactics the Boers would use. They had a game plan, the officers to direct it and the conscript force to do the dirty work a scorched earth, ethnic cleanse concentration camp genocide solution required.

During the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), the British defeated the Boer guerrillas by operating concentration camps in the South African Republic, Orange Free State, Natal, and the Cape Colony. Genociding the population with a little Scorched Earth Ethnic Cleansing to wrap up the win for God, King and Country.

In February 1900, Herbert Kitchener, aged 50 at the time, took command of the British forces and implemented the tactics that secured the British victory

This time the occupying force didn’t march in formation in Red Coats towards skilled marksmen hidden from sight. Instead they brought the new advances in military tactics to bear. They built concentration camps. Then they ethnically cleansed the farmland, seizing the women and children to inter them in concentration camps. Then they scorched earth the Boers farms and livestock. And then they allowed many women and children to die in their concentration camps in a conspiracy to Genocide with which they threatened the Boer fighters. Either the Boers guerrillas would surrender, or their wives and children would continue dying in the British camps.

The Boer War concentration camp system was the first time a whole nation had been systematically targeted, and the first in which entire regions had been depopulated. But not the first where the killers of children were mostly conscripts following orders.
Eventually, a total of 45 tented camps were built for Boer internees and 64 additional camps were built for Black Africans. The vast majority of Boers who remained in the local camps were women and children, estimated to number around 40,000 by May of 1902, the majority of which were women and children. About half of the total Boer population of Boers. The total deaths in camps are officially calculated by British Army records at 27,927.

Probably as many as 50% of the Boer population were destroyed in the first genocide of the 20th Century.

If you locate the British Army list of 45 tented Concentration Camps, you will see the name of Winburg. Winburg is s small Town in the Orange Free State. British Army records show that is where 487 women and Children died, between 1901 and 1902.

In August of 1980 I spent an afternoon walking around Winburg. Seeing the sights before show time at 7 pm in the Town hall. I was on tour in the Free State as a (conscripted) Guitar player in the South African Army Entertainment Corps, backing Legendary Afrikaans singer Al Debbo. After sound check and before our show in Winburg Town Hall I went for a walkabout this low income run-down town, where the only green park area turned out to be a cemetery.

On one side I saw a few dozen rusty metal crosses, looking neglected as weeds grew all around. I walked through them, noticing they had not been tended in many decades. Probably since they went in which the dates showed was 1899, 1900 or 1901. They read “For King and Empire” above just name Rank and Serial number with the date they became deceased. These were the graves of the conscripts, many in their teens. Forgotten in death as befits their low value stature. Left to rust in weeds.

Later I would compare these pauper conscript graves to that of the professional aristocratic commanders. For example, Major-General Andrew Gilbert Wauchope CB CMG. Andrew Wauchope was a 53-year-old British Army officer who was killed 11 December 1899 on by a Boer marksman early on in the war at the Battle of Magersfontein. His tomb in the cemetery at Matjiesfontein is an elaborate marble affair, as befits a leader of stature. As was evident when visiting the Boer War graves, the cost of graves remembering those who served reflect the difference in stature between the lowly conscripts and the aristocratic leaders.

Marveling at this insight into War Graves on that day as a 19 year old war historian, I moved to the other side of the Winburg Cemetery. Chalk and cheese. On the other side of the cemetery I saw multiple enormous mausoleums standing in pristine well-maintained green lawn. Expensive marble structures. I read the messages on several, written in Afrikaans, all of which were the same with just the name and children numbers changed. “Here lies Aunt Sannie and her four children. Murdered by the British on this site. 1902.”

By May of 1902, when The Treaty of Vereeniging was signed ending the British genocide, the total number of Black South Africans in concentration camps was recorded at 115,700. The total Black deaths in the British camps was estimated at a minimum of 14,154. A curiously arbitrary estimate, most easily understood by knowing that British racism meant the details of Black numbers they killed was not worth recording. It is quite possible that hundreds of thousands of Blacks died at the hands of the British. Not worth mentioning in dispatches.

Considered by some as the first Genocide of the 20th century, British Military strategy changed after the Boer War. Conscription changed. And the authority of leaders to act on their own cognizance broadened accompanied by assured immunity for Officers. As global law regulating warfare tightened the opportunities for unregulated mass murder, the need to indemnify officers from possible criminal charges kept pace in British and global legislation.

In the American Civil War conscription was used by both the Union and Confederate armies to refill their troop numbers. The Union introduced the Enrollment Act of 1863, also known as the Civil War Military Draft Act. This required all able-bodied men between the ages of 20 and 45 to register for military service. Men were chosen for service by lottery. To avoid service, men could pay a $300 commutation fee or hire a substitute.

The Confederacy introduced the first Confederate Conscription Act in April 1862, making all white men between the ages of 18 and 35 eligible for military service. The age limit was extended to 45 later in 1862, and then to 50 in 1864. The Confederate Congress passed exemptions to maintain agricultural and industrial production, including the Twenty-Slave Law, which allowed one white man per plantation with at least 20 enslaved laborers to be exempt.

In the history of war, conscription and occupation, few conflicts can match the Muslim occupation of Greece for barbarity. The 400 year occupation in which the Ottomans sent both conscripted men as well as hired mercenaries to occupy Greece.

Use of paid mercenaries to supplement low-cost conscripts developed alongside the conventional military. Conscripting youth is the cheapest way for a leader class to establish a large army, but often this resource requires some firming up with experienced killers. When it comes to effective military persecution sometimes paying trained killers with proven skills is a necessary adjunct to even well-trained conscript forces. Especially during the Ottoman occupation of Greece, Mercenary hire became an increasingly significant addendum to conscript dependent military force.

In 1981 I started a three month contract as a professional musician. Four nights a week at the Quirinale Hotel in Hillbrow. If you were mercenary looking for work in the Angolan Border war, at that time the South African Army was the leading recruiter of mercenaries. The Quirinale Hotel was where mercenaries came to meet the recruiters. Many of both would buy me drinks and chat, giving curious Andrew the chance to hear both sides of the mercenary recruitment story.

Interestingly enough, most of the mercenaries I met were seemingly nice people. Trained in British Army, they could earn more with the skill set they acquired in British Army training than in any other work opportunity on offer. Unlike conscripts, many of whom were resentful, mercenaries I met seemed to love their work, mostly because it paid so well. None had any qualms about being recruited by the Apartheid army.

If I had to pick one example to show how mercenary opportunity attracts the very lowest of humanity and invites unspeakable savagery as a consequence, it would be the Muslim Ottomans hiring the so called bashi-bazouk’s to supplement their brutality quotient. This group of Ottoman hired mercenaries appeared at the end of the 18th century, recruited to fight in Egypt against Napoleon. Their brutal excesses during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 forced the Ottoman government to abandon their use.

A bashi-bazouk describes 'one whose head is turned, damaged head, crazy-head’. These irregular soldiers of the Ottoman army were chiefly enlisted Albanians and Circassians, with some recruits from other ethnic groups of the Ottoman Empire, including slaves from Europe or Africa.

Although the Ottoman armies always contained irregular troops such as mercenaries as well as regular soldiers, the strain on the Ottoman feudal system, caused mainly by the Empire's wide expanse required a heavier reliance on irregular soldiers.

These bashi-bazouk’s were armed and maintained by the government, but did not receive pay and did not wear uniforms or distinctive badges. They were motivated and incentivized to fight by expectations of plunder. Essentially, a gang of murdering savage rapist thieves given license to take what they could find in exchange for eliminating dissent in the Muslim empire.

Because of their lack of discipline and regulation by military command, their usefulness was limited to fomenting terror. Bashi-bazouks were brutal killers, notorious for looting and torturing civilians in unspeakably barbaric ways that was the hallmark of their recruitment by the Ottoman command.

One example from many atrocities is The Batak massacre of 1876; carried out by thousands of bashi-bazouks sent to quell a local Bulgarian rebellion. The indiscriminate slaughter of some 5,000 non-combatant civilians at Batak shocked the general public in Western Europe and came to be known in the press as the ‘Bulgarian Horrors’ and ‘the Crime of the Century’.

The well-documented behaviors of these sub-human killers is too offensive to even cut and paste in this space. This low point of humanity is instead best remembered for ending that form of conscription; unpaid mercenaries recruited and enabled by Government giving unregulated psycho-killers weapons and opportunity rather than paying the costs of assembling a well armed militia answerable to the laws of War.

Ending this form of mercenary-barbarian empowered by the state to kill for pleasure and the reward of rape an pillage returned to the global theatre of atrocity in Palestine in the October 7 Zionist Genocide that saw many ‘International Brigades’ including British, American and French Nationals, travel to Palestine to emulate the bashi-bazouks.

Zionist Genocide mercenary-tourists able to earn a paycheck killing children and then return freely to their homes where Zionist leadership enabled child murderers to avoid any censure.

The end of Ottoman rule in Palestine came in 1918 following the defeat of its forces at the Battle of Megiddo by the British. Modern Turkey begins with the foundation of the republic on 29 October 1923, with Atatürk as its first president.

In Turkey, Conscription Law was introduced in 1919 and has stayed in force since then. The length of service has been successively reduced over time. Between 1919 and 1998, the average length of service was 18 months for non-educated males from 21 to 41 years of age. And 12 months for educated (university level). After 2001 it became 6 months for all males regardless of education degree. The educated have more value than the unskilled, who are better bang for that cannon fodder buck. Typically in all Armies the educated are automatically commissioned as officers.

By the turn of the 20th century, hiring unpaid unregulated mercenaries incentivized by the opportunity to rape and pillage fell out of favour. In its place emerged a form of International Brigades. Traveling mercenaries motivated by an idealistic reward and minimum wage. The Spanish International Brigades existed for two years, from 1936 until 1938. It is estimated that during the Spanish Civil war, there were between 40,000 to 59,000 volunteer conscripts, including some 10,000 who died in combat.

Beyond the Spanish Civil War, "International Brigades" is also sometimes used interchangeably with the term foreign legion in reference to military units comprising foreigners who volunteer to fight in the military of another state, often in times of war.

Formal regulated conscription took a new turn in 1914 as World War appeared for the first time. Multiple countries including the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada introduced mandatory conscription.

In 1914, at the outbreak of WW1, the British Army depended on a Standing Army of professional soldiers supplemented by volunteers. Many volunteered, some even lying about their age in order to serve King and Empire. But then many found themselves in Trench warfare following commands by the aristocratic educated Leaders. Many realized that War was not what they imagined when responding to the YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU call. That famous poster of Kitchener with his genocide-stained mustache still fresh from the Boer war atrocities

Famously in the battlefields of WW1 the rich leader class who populated the military leadership did not share in battle alongside the eager volunteers. Typically the officers would live miles from the front lines in occupied Chateau luxury with servants pouring fine wine at gourmet dinners during which time they were not to be disturbed with news from the front lines. Whatever event happened after 7 pm on the front lines would have to wait until the next morning. The officers dinners could not be disturbed. While boys died miserably in mould infested boots cowering in terror at the horrors of wet trench war in which officers routinely ordered young boys to run into machine gun fire and certain death. Many realized this was not the deal when they volunteered. Many realized they had been misled.

News of casualties from the front lines showed that Scottish volunteers were dying in far higher numbers than their English friends. The racist leadership would routinely allocate Scottish Battalions to charge into the machine guns across the barbed wire no mans land.

Lions led by donkeys started with Scottish Lions and English Donkeys. News of this uncomfortable arrangement where the Aristocratic Privately educated Officer Class demanded the poorest of the worker class serve their Monarch by sending boys over the top to certain death while they enjoyed private fine dining in silver service luxury, led to a fall in the numbers of 18 year olds volunteering.

Something had to be done to restock the live meat conveyor belt on the way to the abattoir. That something was conscription. Conscription paired with a healthy dose of propagandized lying. For King and Empire.

In 1916, the UK government passed legislation that made all UK citizens soldiers, with the exception of those who were too young, too old, too unfit, or in certain occupations.

Conscription was unpopular; over 200,000 people protested in Trafalgar Square in 1916. Conscientious objectors were sent to prison and work centers, where they were assigned to projects like building reservoirs or roads.

Conscription is not an invitation. It is a command with draconian legal consequences for refusal.

Later many of those conscripts had cause to wish they had objected, when they realized what was happening and decided to leave the front lines. They found that the price for changing your mind about running into heavy-machine-gun-fire was being shot by your own friends in a firing squad.

Conscription without consequences would not succeed. Between the beginning of the war in 1914 and the Armistice in 1918, 307 British and Commonwealth soldiers were executed by firing squad after courts-martial convicted them of cowardice or desertion, the latter charge described in very military language as “fleeing in the face of the enemy.”

307 times young boys, many of them shaking in shell shock terror that in todays treatment plans would qualify for full cover as PTSD with those responsible for causing it paying out millions in damages, were lined up against a wall and shot by a firing squad comprising other conscripts who would now have to live with that traumatic consequence of conscription.

Reports of these summary execution of British boys fighting foreign fields for King and Country raised eyebrows in parliament. “I say Charles. Tell me again why we shot twenty of our own boys yesterday?” said the Good Lord with one eyebrow raised.

The responsible minister in the House of Commons, answering a question from a pacifist regarding the summary execution of shell shocked traumatized boys denied that “any sentence of death for a military offence had been carried out in France on any member of His Majesty’s forces.”

Then as now, politicians lie about conduct on the battlefield. Then as now there is no accountability for these deceits. As a result, this behavior continues wherever rich old white men send poorly educated poor boys to die for the War business. Qualified immunity is essential for the leader class operating a conscription model that sends children to kill and die.

Qualified immunity that includes no mention of how their conscription model works. The scam of indentured servitude where a highly motivated rich white leader class create a poor and ignorant underclass to nourish their need for new conscripts into their endless wars for the benefit of the few billionaires enriched by the military complex.

The United States joined the Great War late; but their impact ended the war quickly in unforeseen circumstances. Along with the first wave of troops sent to the European Theatre, U.S. Forces delivered the Fort Riley flu that would start the global pandemic, conveniently renamed as The Spanish Flu.

One of the first recorded cases of a new deadly influenza virus happened on March 11, 1918, at Fort Riley in Kansas. Overcrowding and unsanitary conditions created a fertile breeding ground for the virus. Within one week, 522 men had been admitted to the camp hospital suffering from the same severe influenza.

Soon after, while the US forces were mustering in readiness to ship out to the European theatre of war, the army reported similar outbreaks in Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama and California. Navy ships docked at East Coast ports also reported outbreaks of severe influenza and pneumonia among their crews.

This deadly new flu seemed to target military personnel and not civilians, so the virus was largely ignored by populist media, more concerned by current affairs such as Prohibition, the suffragette movement and the bloody battles in Europe. And so Wilson made the decision to not disclose the fact he was sending this infected group to the Battlefields in Europe.

From there the virus spread fast. The microscopic killer circled the entire globe in four months, claiming the lives of more than 21 million people. The United States lost 675,000 people to the Fort Riley virus in 1918; more casualties than World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War combined.

The Pandemic killed more people by 1919 than the War itself. The coughing illness of troops on all sides in November of 1918 motivated the decision to shut things down and go home. Wilson’s decision to send this virus to the front lines of war was vindicated. Biological warfare that affected the German trench troops, winning the German surrender.

Carried by conscripts to infect other conscripts. Resulting from decisions made by rich old white men.

The Fort Riley Flu, or Spanish Flu, depending on which account you read, started like any other influenza case, with a sore throat, chills and fever. Then came the deadly twist: the virus ravaged its victim's lungs. Soon so many were infected that the entrenched belligerents all agreed enough was enough. They all agreed on a number. 11. Armistice day. The 11th minute of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th Month. 11/11/11/11.

Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the United States (1913-1921) reversed his initial policy of neutrality at the outbreak of World War I, in 1917. Wilson told the US voters America should enter the war to “make the world safe for democracy.”

The United States became the world's richest economy around 1890, after the Civil War established the obvious benefits of a military complex testing its products in the field. Wilson knew by 1917 that he controlled the world’s largest economy that was built on a Military Complex. A business that required War for growth. That growth would require men willing to serve the Military Complex. When volunteer numbers for the honor of dying for the nations economic prosperity became insufficient, laws were passed to forcibly conscript youth.

In 1917, Congress passed the Selective Service Act, which required men between the ages of 21 and 45 to register for military service. The age range was later expanded to include men between 18 and 45. The draft had a high success rate, with only about 350,000 men avoiding it.

Men who refused to serve could be court-martialed and sentenced to long prison terms. The first wave of troops departing Ground Zero in Fort Riley knew that a deadly and contagious flu outbreak was affecting them, but the Wilson Government were not to be deterred. Sending the full might of the largest Army the US had ever assembled, along with their conscript carried contagious condition.

During WW1 the U.S. mobilized over 4.7 million military personnel and suffered the loss of over 116,000 soldiers. The war saw a dramatic expansion of the United States government in an attempt to harness the war effort and a significant increase in the size of the U.S. Armed Forces; galvanizing growth in the Military Industrial Complex.

There was substantial public opposition to U.S. participation in war. Then as now. Possibly as much as one third of Americans were opposed to the culture of War for economic prosperity.

Canada was equally enthusiastic about conscription. In 1917, the Military Service Act was passed, making all male citizens between the ages of 20 and 45 subject to military service. The conscription debate was a major issue in the 1917 federal election, which was won by Sir Robert Borden on a pro-conscription ticket. The patriots wanted conscription. Voting for War. More than 650,000 Canadians and Newfoundlanders served in this war. More than 66,000 died. More than 172,000 were wounded.

In turn of the century Germany all able bodied men aged 17-45 were liable for military service.

By 1914 the Germans had a well-established and organized system of peacetime conscription. At Age 20 men, would undertake two or three years of peacetime training in the active army. At the end of their training they went back into civilian life but could be called up to army service at any time, up to the age of 45.

Germany’s conscription system meant that by August 1914, soon after 19 year old Serbian class warrior, Gavrilo Princip, fired that famous bullet from his Browning 1911. 9 mm pistol, (the exact same weapon my Father carried through WW2 as his side arm) into the head of Rich Old White Aristocrat Franz Ferdinand, the German army needed just 12 days to expand from 800,000 to 3,500,000 soldiers.

In 1914 Germanys conscription was shown as the most effective and efficient use of conscription the world had ever seen. Paired perfectly with a booming Military complex to place the guns and bullets in the hands of the boys who had no say in being sent out to kill and die for their rich old white leader class.

In the United Kingdom, military conscription has existed for two periods in modern times. The first was from 1916 to 1920, and the second from 1939 to 1960.

After WW2 National Service as peacetime conscription was formulated by the National Service Act 1948 introduced by Clement Attlee's Labour government. From the first day of 1949, healthy males 17 to 21 years old were required to serve in the armed forces for 18 months, and remain on the reserve list for four years. They could be recalled to their units for up to 20 days for no more than three occasions during these four years.

Men were exempt from National Service if they worked in one of the three "essential services": coal mining, farming, and the merchant navy; for a period of eight years. If they quit these roles early they were subject to being called up.

Exemption continued for conscientious objectors, with the same tribunal system and categories. You could object to killing and dying for reasons of conscience, however the exemption would exceed the time national service took, and carry penalties that would last way beyond that. Typically the system ensured that conscientious objectors would lose their rights to a normal life for refusing conscription.

Then, just like that, in 1960 the UK did away with National Service.

In South Africa where I grew up, conscription was established in 1967, continuing for 27 years until it was abolished in 1994 via a constitutional amendment.

At its peak, conscription in South Africa consisted of two years of mandatory military service, followed by camps at intervals. Under apartheid, the call-up applied to all white men after completing their schooling or further studies. The End Conscription Campaign began in 1983 in opposition to this requirement. For the vast majority in South Africa at this time, the apartheid years, conscription was commonly viewed as “The best time of your life you would never want to have again.”

In the face of opposition by some 10% of the anti-apartheid population, Conscription was enforced with draconian punishment. Conscientious objection was never an option.

For example; Jehovahs Witnesses who objected to serving on Religious Grounds were exempt from the two years in uniform. Instead they served six years in Detention Barracks wearing Blue overalls.

During my two year forced conscription in the South African Apartheid Defense Force, I once visited a friend in The Pretoria Detention barracks where I noticed a group of boys in blue overalls shuffling along inside the prison walls. These were that year’s crop of Jehovahs witnesses.

I stood in amazement for all of ten minutes watching a group of some thirty 18 year old boys-in-blue. Wondering what kind of Militant Afrikaans Jesus would take away six years of their lives at 18 because their Jesus didn’t want them killing kids. I couldn’t compute the numbers. I was 18 and two years seemed interminably long. Imagine spending six years of your life from 18 to 24 in jail just because you didn’t want to shoot back children and your Jesus agreed that the other Jesus who said you had to kill black children, was wrong. It was a mind boggler that I still haven’t fully processed.

What was the omniscient almighty thinking when he told Afrikaans Jesus to send his Christian boys to kill Black kids and then make sure any Christians who misunderstood this requirement should spend six years in jail. Learning their lesson about which Jesus knows best.

In 1983 the National Party government announced plans to extend conscription to white immigrants in the country, not only white South African born 18 year olds. The policy was promoted by Magnus Malan, Minister of Defence in the cabinet of President P. W. Botha as: "One of the biggest advances in South Africa is National Service”. He added that relatives were "prepared to sacrifice the husband or the child for their country because they consider it an honor to die for their country!”

South Africa, like Israel, the other Apartheid country that depended on conscripts to enforce and defend Apartheid racism, was not the only African territory to conscript youth into the malign intentions of corrupt leaders out to benefit only themselves.

The less advanced African countries, operating without the resources available to South Africa and Israel didn’t bother with any legal process for conscription. Why waste that time and money when you can just kidnap kids and train them to kill before they have developed any ethical compass, or even, the ability to read and write.

The methodology of conscription is the same, be it conscription to the army of a global superpower or a regional warlord. You need to convince kids to kill on command, without question, and ideally, without payment.

The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) is a Christian themed organization operating in Central Africa and East Africa, founded by Christian former choir boy Joseph Kony in 1987. Kony’s father, Luizi Obol, was a farmer and lay catechist of the Catholic Church. Preparing Joseph well for his role as founder and Supreme Commander of the Lords resistance Army.

According the United Nations, the LRA has been responsible for more than 100,000 deaths, the abduction of between 60,000 to 100,000 children, who were trained to kill on command, and the displacement of as many as 2.5 million civilians between 1987 and 2012.

The group frequently forced children to kill or maim their own families as a part of the conscription process, while abducted women and girls often become the wives of LRA leaders, suffering repeated rapes and sexual assaults. It was always Gods will.

The LRA exploited insufficient national and international presence in remote areas of eastern CAR and northeastern DRC to illicitly traffic natural resources to sustain its operations. Who was going to stop them stealing when there was no army available for this purpose.

Once the scale of Kony’s christian themed offenses was reported, charges at the ICC followed. The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Joseph Kony and four other members of the LRA. One of those was a Brigade Commander within the LRA, Dominic Ongwen. Dominic Ongwen was arrested and handed over to the court in January 2015.

Ongwen, who was himself abducted as a child, was tried by the ICC on 70 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including attacks against a civilian population, murder, rape, sexual slavery, forced marriage, torture; and conscription including the use of children under the age of 15 to participate actively in hostilities. In 2021 the International Criminal Court convicted him of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Ongwen is currently serving 25 years.

The ICJ gets a war criminal behind bars. While Bush, Blair, Biden and a host of others continue to enjoy the immunity that follows legitimized war criminals. This includes, for example, Kitchener, the British Lord behind the genocide in South Africa and the policy of executing boys who fell for his YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU poster.

When considering war crimes and the ICJ it seems peculiar that Ongwen is one of a very few behind bars right now. A Black man who was kidnapped as a Child and indoctrinated into his role in the LRA.

Ongwen was a victim of war crimes; including those of the colonial powers, starting with their theft of Africans starting with the slave trade. The Europeans who set up trade and settlements in the Americas beginning with Columbus’s voyage in 1492 saw slavery as an indispensable source of labor. African slavery was already part of the social construct and economy of Spain and Portugal and spreading to other parts of Europe. The transatlantic slave trade began in the 15th century. The first voyage carrying enslaved Africans directly from Africa to the Americas likely sailed in 1526.

The theft of conflict minerals has been going on for almost as long as the slave trade.

Western powers continue to destabilize African efforts to unify leadership by arming and incentivizing criminal gangs with whom to do business. The world-powers supply guns and ammunition in exchange for the proceeds of crime from the use of these small arms, knowing that in Africa, it only takes small arms and a small team of motivated psycho killers to visit anarchy. From that sponsored anarchy, all manner of deals are done benefiting the companies who trade in African resources, including Oil, Gold, Diamonds, Cobalt and Lithium.

The LRA only exists to exploit demand for illegal mineral resources in Africa, servicing, primarily, the US Market. Using the same Jesus that was sold to them in the first place to destroy their societal arrangement between the leader class and the worker class.

The story of Dominic Ongwen is interesting for many reasons. Dominic was conscripted by the LRA as he walked to Abili Primary School in Koro, Uganda, in 1988 when he was, at most, fourteen. Soon after this forced conscription of a child, his parents were both killed. Soon after being kidnapped, the newly orphaned Ongwen tried to escape. When he was caught he was forced to skin one of his fellow unwilling conscripts alive. A typical initiation ritual for a new conscript.

Under Kony’s direction the child Ongwen underwent more initiation ceremonies which included torture and being forced to watch violent rituals of people being killed. He was indoctrinated under the tutelage of LRA senior commander Vincent Otti, as an LRA fighter before rising within the ranks to become a major at the age of 18, and brigadier of the Sinia Brigade, one of the four LRA brigades, by his late twenties. Ongwen was a member of the "Control Altar" of the LRA that directs military strategy.

Had this minor child not followed the demands placed before him that set him on course for the actions he was found guilty of as an adult, he would have been tortured and killed. How culpable is a child abused in this way, for actions arising from this early life abuse.

Ongwen’s allegiance to the LRA faded as he grew older. Then, in, 2013, as the ICC started issuing arrest warrants for LRS principals, the U.S. offered a $5m reward for information leading to Ongwen’s arrest.

In late 2014 Ongwen escaped detention by Joseph Kony; for having disobeyed Kony's orders and having refused to answer Kony's radio messages. After escaping from his jailers camp near Songo, in Kafia Kingi, a prime location in the Ivory Trade that the LRA profited from by selling Ivory in exchange for guns , Ongwen came across nomadic cattle herders who handed him over to a Seleka rebel group.

The Séléka, was a mostly Muslim rebel group who successfully took over the Central African Republic (CAR), installing their leader, Michel Djotodia, as president March 2013.

Séléka fighters that ushered Djotodia to the Presidency ran wild across the CAR during his time in office, plundering villages and killing Christians as well as supporters of the former president Francois Bozize.

In September 2013 the very presidential Michel Djotodia announced that Séléka had been dissolved. The disbanded group dispersed into the countryside where they have been committing mass atrocities according to Human Rights Watch.

Executions, rape and looting by ex-Séléka fighters after the coup and disbanding have fomented religious tension where the population is 80% Christian.

Christian militias, using the name anti-balaka, have been formed to fight the Muslim Séléka. In response, the United Nations considered sending troops to stop the atrocities, and established the MINUSCA peacekeeping mission in September 2014.

The Séléka group didn’t know who Ongwen was when the newly escaped Kony prisoner found his way to their custody, and so didn’t claim the $5 million bounty before his location was provided to American Special Forces in Obo, CAR. Later, when they realized his identity, they tried claiming the bounty, but the US position was not receptive.

Soon after finding himself in the custody of American Special Forces, Ongwen became the only one of the five indicted LRA War Criminals to face justice. The only one of the five who learned his war criminal skills as a conscripted minor child, under duress.

The first case was against Ongwen was in 2005; Brigade Commander of the Sinia Brigade of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).

11 years later Ongwen finally faced the Judge at the ICC in March 2016, when the ICC confirmed 70 charges brought against him and committed him to trial.

Ongwen denied all the charges against him.

The Prosecutor v. Dominic Ongwen lasted almost four years; from 6 December 2016 to 12 March 2020.

4107 victims were granted the right to participate in the proceedings though most chose to participate in the trial through legal representation.

The case brought much evidence to light that benefits our awareness of conscripts liability in international law.

During his time with the LRA, the Catholic Ongwen had multiple wives, including;

1.) Jennifer, 2) Santa (Min Tata), 3.) Margaret, 4.) Florence Ayot, 5.) Agnes Aber (Min Ayari), 6.) Fatuma and 7.) Nancy Abwot.

It was in 1993 that wife number four, Florence Ayot, herself an abductee, was "transferred" to Ongwen after her own husband died.

Ongwen also fathered at least eleven children, four of them with Florence Ayot.

During his detention by the ICC, Ongwen has been visited by family members. He became father to another child following the visit of one of his wives. He has been visited by four Acholi leaders, including the Paramount chief, His Highness David Onen Achana II. (The Acholi were estimated to number 2.3 million people living in Northern Uganda and South Sudan.)

Another visitor to the ICC Prisoner Ongwen was The Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Gulu, John Baptist Odama, a Ugandan Roman Catholic priest, who serves as the Metropolitan Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Gulu, in Uganda, since January 1999. During this Priestly visit Ongwen asked the Archbishop for a rosary, a hymn book and a prayer book.

Ongwen's case is unique because he was abducted by the LRA as a minor and forced on pain of death to be a child soldier before rising to leadership. So this is the first ICC case in which an inductee is being charged with the same crimes as those done to him. According to one commentator, "In no other ICC trial have case narratives been so opposite, morally complex and riddled with paradoxes".

Paradoxically, a victim of colonial war crimes in Africa was on trial at the ICC while not one of the Colonial war criminals who caused his misfortune ever have been. Ongwen is Black and Poor and born in Africa.

In one final cynical twist, on 28 February 2024, Trial Chamber IX of the International Criminal Court delivered in a public hearing its Order on Reparations to victims in the case of The Prosecutor v. Dominic Ongwen.

The Chamber set the financial liability, reparation due from Mr Ongwen to € 52,429,000 EUR and ordered collective community-based reparations focused on rehabilitation and symbolic/satisfaction measures.

Knowing that this guy is as broke as a guy with seven wives, about 20 children and no income or assets, could possibly be, The ICC still spent millions preparing a case for reparations knowing this was only symbolic. Perhaps ion they thought reparations should be paid they should have calculated the costs of this reparations event and donated that money in an actual meaningful contribution towards the victims of LRA one of whom is Dominic Ongwen.

While the ICC was issuing this enormously symbolic award against broke ass Catholic Ongwen, serving 25 years in jail, in Norway, at least one million war criminals of far greater stature and liability than Ongwen remain free to continue committing their war crimes.

Ongwen’s forced conscription in 1988 changed how leaders operated conscription methodology and how the International Courts processed War Crimes.

Global Post war changes in Conscription

The requirements of conscription methodology changed as almost every country did away with national service, unless they were at war, like South Africa and Israel.

The Russian Federation has had a conscription army since 1918. In recent years, approximately 400,000 young men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-seven are drafted each year to serve in the Military. A 12-month draft for all male citizens who are between 18 and 30 years old, with a number of exceptions. Avoiding the draft is a felony under Russian criminal code and is punishable by up to 26 months of imprisonment.

After the end of Nazism on April 30, 1945, Germany returned to conscription. Between 1956 and 2011, Germany conscripted men to mandatory military service. In 2010 the German Minister of Defence recommended Germany end conscription, effective from July 1st 2011.

Greece, the Hellenic Republic, has had mandatory military service, conscription, since 1914. 12 months in the Army, Navy and the Air Force for men between the age of 19 to 45. Citizens discharged from active service are normally placed in the Reserve and are subject to periodic recall of 1–10 days at irregular intervals. This applies to all Greek citizens. As I found out when I arrived for a holiday in Greece in 1987.

I was 26. Resident in England. As I went through customs at the airport, the official looked at my Greek passport, looked at me, looked at his screen and said. “Come with me.” I was detained because when he ran my passport through the Border scanner, it flagged me as a Greek citizen who had not done National Service.

“Why didn’t you do your Service” He asked.

“Because I don’t live in Greece” I answered, truthfully.

“I live in England. Can I go now, my wife is waiting for me to catch the flight.”

“You are going nowhere. Police will escort you to the nearest Army office and you can start your service now.”

“How long will that be” I asked, not really worried because I sensed he was either joking or being dramatic.

“Twelve Months.”

This young official, younger than I was, was incensed that I had not done my National Service. Greece has a hardline approach to National Service.

Fortunately I learned from that encounter with military authority that my two years of training in the Apartheid Army prepared me well for manipulating subordinates. After two hours in that brightly lit back room, in which I had the opportunity to meet the senior military officials at Athens Airport, they agreed that my Two Year conscription in the South African Defense force qualified me for exemption in Greece.

Had I not had the means to stand up for myself in refusing the orders to hand myself in for National Service, who knows what might have happened.

France, where modern era mass conscription began, depending on conscription for their many colonial atrocities, suspended peacetime military conscription in 1996. President Jacques Chirac's government formally announced the end of compulsory military service in 2001. Young people are still required, however, to register for possible obligatory service of an unspecified nature (should the need arise). A recent change is that women must now register as well.

Conscription in the United Arab Emirates is a mandatory national military service for all Emirati males aged between 17 and 30 for the duration of 11 months. The law is intended to bolster the United Arab Emirates defence capabilities and increase the military reserve force of the United Arab Emirates Armed Forces.

In South Korea, conscription typically lasts between 18 and 21 months for most able-bodied men. Exemption is difficult. Women are not required to perform military service, but they may voluntarily join the military

Since the Zionist occupation gave birth to the State of Israel in 1948, fixed-term military service has been compulsory for Israelis. The draft laws of the Israel Defense Forces only apply to Jews (males and females), Druze (males only), and Circassians (males only), because the Druze and Circassian communities are less populous.

There are about 143,00 Druze in Israel and the Golan Heights. There are fewer than 5,000 Circassians in Israel. Circassians are a branch of the Circassian diaspora, formed as a consequence of the 19th-century Circassian genocide that was carried out by the Russian Empire during the Russo-Circassian War. Most Circassians in Israel are Muslims. Their women are exempted from mandatory military service altogether.

Women from the Jewish community are not exempted, but serve for slightly shorter terms than their male counterparts. The IDF does not conscript non-Druze Arab citizens of Israel, though their men and women may enlist voluntarily.

Unique among the country's Jewish-majority population are the Orthodox Haredi Jews, who previously enjoyed full exemption from the IDF through a special religious exemption, organized by Israel's founding prime minister David Ben-Gurion in a trade off for allowing the Zionists to conflate Judaism with Zionism.

Their non participation and frequent opposition to the Zionist State became increasingly controversial in Israeli society, with growing discontent towards the increasingly populous Haredi community not "sharing the burden" of national duty.

In June 2024, after eight months of prosecuting genocide had depleted IGF manpower, Israel's Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Haredi Jews were eligible for compulsory service, ending nearly eight decades of exemption. The army began drafting Haredi men the following month.

Over the summer, the IDF Personnel Directorate sent out 3,000 draft orders to Haredi men aged 18-26. Out of those 3,000 men, only around 10% have been drafted into the military.

Those who ignored multiple draft orders will be prevented from leaving the country and may face arrest by Military Police and be taken to military jails. So far, some 900 “no exit” orders have been issued.

Improving Conscripts performance:

During the American Civil War opiates were the most effective painkillers available to military surgeons. They were also used to treat diarrhea, muscle spasms of amputees, gangrene, dysentery, inflammation from gunshot wounds, and to sedate agitated troops.

The Union Army requisitioned as many as 10 million opium pills throughout the war, and a further 2.8 million ounces of opiate preparation (such as laudanum).

Many veterans of the war developed opiate addictions. Opiate addiction became known as "soldier's disease" and "army disease", though the precise effect of the American Civil War on the overall prevalence of opiate addiction is unknown.

During World War I Morphine was commonly used to treat injuries. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers developed severe opiate addictions.

Since the beginning of conscription and the military training of young people, the leader class have striven to improve performance in battle conditions by both their voluntary professional recruits as well as their conscripts.

World War I saw extensive use of cocaine amongst militaries; used for medical purposes and as a performance enhancer. Cocaine was not at that time a controlled substance and was made readily available to troops. The British Army distributed cocaine-containing pills under Tabloid's brand name "Forced March”, which were advertised to suppress appetite and increase endurance.

Before the war cocaine was a common ingredient in medicines and tonics for hay fever as it “cleanses the respiratory track by reducing swelling of the mucosa and nasal discharge.”

Until 1916 you could buy cocaine and heroin over the counter in Harrods. Shop assistants might have suggested "Ryno's Hay Fever and Catarrh Remedy”, basically pure cocaine, "for when the nose is stuffed up, red and sore”. After a refreshing hit of Ryno’s stuffy nose would seem so much less so.

The British ‘Burroughs Wellcome & Co. manufactured Tabloid cocaine tablets’ were marketed as ‘perfect for singers and public speakers longing to improve their voices’.

Overall, mass-produced cocaine, which was believed to be as harmless as tobacco, had become

widespread well before the war, and soldiers were a minority of its users.

After some instances of abuse by soldiers unfamiliar with good cocaine habits, moral panic ensued, the British Army Council passed an order in 1916 that prohibited the unauthorized sale of psychoactive drugs like cocaine and opiates to service members. That though was not the end for militarized Pharmaceuticals.

Often war requires periods of enormous stamina. Like for example, the WWII bomber crews conducting raids in Germany, flying for some eight hours or more at night, facing difficult conditions. Day after day. Seems only sensible to assist their ability to remain awake and alert.

Increasingly so in WW2, Amphetamines were given to troops to increase alertness. They had the added benefits of being anorectic, reducing appetites, and combatting fatigue. Nazi Germany, in particular, embraced amphetamines during World War II.

From April to July 1940, German service members on the Western Front received more than 35 million methamphetamine pills. Germany’s Big Pharma industry loved War.

Author Norman Ohler’s book, Blitzed, explores the records of Hitler’s personal physician Theodor Morell on his medical treatment of the Führer. We learn that from July 1943 to January 1945, Hitler received regular injections of Eukodal, a painkiller and cough medicine, with doses reaching 20 milligrams in 1944.

Consisting of an opioid called oxycodon, Eukodal is a near-cousin of heroin. While methamphetamine works as a potent central nervous system stimulant, Eukodal’s effects are narcotic and euphoric. In June 1944, after an assassination scare, Hitler was administered a 10 percent cocaine solution by a laryngologist Dr. Erwin Giesing for 75 days. So, at least from July to October 1944, Hitler was high on a powerful “speedball” of opioid and cocaine.

During the war the Führer received a weekly array of dozens of varieties of drugs, amounting to 120 to150 tablets and eight to 10 injections every week.

In 1944 German Army chemists produced the famous “D-IX” A methamphetamine-based performance enhancer. The researcher who rediscovered this project, Wolf Kemper, said, "the aim was to use D-IX to redefine the limits of human endurance.”

One dose contained 5 mg oxycodone (brand name Eukodal, an analgesic opioid), 5 mg cocaine, and 3 mg methamphetamine (brand name Pervitin).

The D-IX compound was reportedly tested on prisoners at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp that found an individual who had consumed the compound could march 90 kilometers per day without rest while carrying 20 kilograms of equipment.

Nazi doctors and military authorities testing the compound were enthusiastic about the results but the war ended before D-IX compound could be mass produced and distributed

More commonly high doses of pure cocaine ranging from 50 to 100 milligrams were tried and proven methods for getting the best out of fighting men.

Mind-altering drugs can make soldiers intoxicated and dependent, especially when paired with Ideology and charismatic leadership. This combination of intoxicants, ideology, and personality informs Ohler’s interpretation of Nazi Germany. The Nazis, who officially pursued a stringent and repressive anti-narcotic policy “hated drugs because they wanted to be like a drug themselves,” seeking to create “a state of collective ecstasy.”

In reality, however, “social intoxication” went hand in hand with turning a blind eye to “Pervitin fever,” as the stimulant “allowed the individual to function in the dictatorship. National Socialism in pill form.” Many Germans became dependent on “a disastrous cocktail of propaganda and pharmaceutical substances.” Setting the tone for just about every army that ever followed.

During World War II the German military was the first to introduce deliberate military doping, but soon others followed, with the British using in all about 72 million Benzedrine (amphetamine) tablets and Americans between 250 and 500 million.

Although in the last years of the war Hitler behaved like a speedball junkie, he was not the only pharmacologically-assisted political leader. Winston Churchill habitually used Benzedrine paired with his prodigious alcohol intake.

The pervasive civilian consumption of amphetamine, which at the time was not perceived as a harmful nor illicit substance, was recorded in most of the WW2 belligerent countries including Germany, Britain, the United States, and Japan, that continued long after the war was over.

Today, performance drugs still assist some fighters, militias, and armies.

On the other side of the military coin, the designated Terrorist groups looking to get the best out of their conscripts, drugs play a major role. Not only for performance enhancement in the battlefield, but also as a source of revenue. The Taliban and varies offshoot groups like the American funded Al Qaeda, took advantage of the poppy availability to generate heroin revenue.

The best known example of a performance enhancer that is also a lucrative revenue generator for anti-Nato militias is Captagon.

Captagon was first manufactured in by the US in 1961 as an alternative to amphetamine and methamphetamine used at the time to treat narcolepsy, fatigue, and the behavioral disorder "minimal brain dysfunction".

Dexamphetamine was already being used by the military to enable soldiers to stay awake for long periods of time and to "enhance courage and bravado". Captagon was supposed to be a milder version of these medicines. But by the 1980's the U.S. government declared it a controlled substance with no currently accepted medical use. Manufacturing of the drug ceased in the 1980's.

However, illegal manufacture of this American owned chemical formula has continued and escalated in the past few years in Europe and the Middle East. Especially in Syria, Captagon is a popular recreational drug as well, creating a lucrative market for Captagon producers.

The "Captagon" used by ISIS and other Jihadist groups to enhance their soldiers abilities is far removed from the Captagon of the eighties. Instead of just two main ingredients, manufacturing combines several other addictive stimulants with compounding actions into the chemical structure.

This refined Captagon is intended to cause irreversible changes in brain circuitry that govern impulse control and judgement, affecting a user’s ability to reason or think rationally. Ideal for street fighting to the death. Or even providing focus for a second-thoughts suicide bomber. For keeping sight of the one and only truth.

Captagon (fenethylline) has played a role in the Syrian civil war where the Captagon business generates revenues that fund the purchase of weapons, as well as aiding the effectiveness of blind-faith fighters by retarding their ability to think clearly.

Based on 2023 estimates, about 80% of Captagon is produced in Syria and exported from the port of Latakia with the assistance of the Syrian government under the command of Maher al-Assad The illicit global market for Captagon was estimated in 2023 to be worth approximately US$57 billion. By the Fenethylline Wiki Page

Since the fall of the Assad regime in 2024 the new Syrian transitional government has claimed it will end the drug trade.

What about conscription in the Islamic countries? How does it differ to Christian Armies.

Do Islamic State groups routinely target children for the ease of opportunity that we know children present for use as soldiers. Iran and Iraq both used children in their war (1980 - 1988).

In Syria, the groundwork for the violent ideological indoctrination of children predates ISIS and its mother organization, al-Qaida. During Syria’s military occupation of Lebanon, on November 27, 1985, a high school teenaged student drove a car carrying 280 kilograms of explosives into the South Lebanon Army’s base, killing at least 20 Israeli and Lebanese forces.

Hamida Mustafa al-Taher, born in Syria in 1968, carried out the suicide attack. In her death al-Taher became a national hero. Schools, parks, youth Ba'athist centers, and numerous events were named after her. Al-Taher’s purported heroism is still being used in primary school curriculums to encourage Syrian youth into Ba'athist ideology.

The indoctrination of Syrian children in the pre-civil war context has not been reported much. Like Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s ‘lion cubs’ in Iraq, the Syrian Ba'athist branch had its version, Ashbal (lion cubs) al-Assad (the last name of Syria’s ruling family [the name also translates as lion]).

Through the Ba'athist education establishment, al-Assad’s lion cubs received political indoctrination and basic combat training. Ba'athist indoctrination and militarization of youth was, in the case of Iraq, and is still, in the case of Syria, embedded in the education system. There are similarities between the Iraqi Ba'athist system, its legacy, and the insurgency in outlining the historical basis for ISIS’ use of children.

Use of children in military conscription has consequences for society.

According to figures available from the UK Office of National Statistics, National Service conscripts from the post WW2 period were more likely than the general population to be involved in crime (especially violent crime), and to have drug and alcohol dependencies. They were also more likely to have long periods of unemployment, and to suffer from mental illnesses than those who were not conscripted.

Conscription is a form of slavery; indentured servitude. Trauma is a constant side effect of conscription. My experience of conscription, two years spent training to kill Black children for Apartheids right to defend itself, was a traumatic abuse requiring decades of mindfulness to process into some form of order.

My experience of avoiding conscription introduced me to many of like mind. This included those who preferred suicide to killing others on command.

The incidence of suicide among conscripts is, as you would expect, high. The incidence of suicide in later-life arising from the traumatic stress of conscription is far higher than suicide during conscription.

At this time the highest incidence of suicide among conscripts is where you would expect it to be. Israels military is mostly conscripts. Those who object to being conscripted into a Genocide army during an active genocide are, as you would expect, dealt with harshly by the leader class.

The Israeli military reported that at least 28 soldiers are suspected to have died by suicide since the American sponsored event of October 2023. A military statement said 17 soldiers were killed in "suspected suicides” in 2024, higher than 2023 when 17 soldiers were killed in ‘suspected suicides,’ including seven after the outbreak of war.” it added.

According to figures released by the Zionist army in January 2025, at least 891 Occupation soldiers have been killed and 5,569 others injured since the outbreak of the Biden/Netanyahu genocide.

While most Israelis are very much pro genocide, some are not. In May of 2024 Pew data found: 39% of Israelis say Israel’s military response against Hamas in Gaza has been about right, while 34% say it has not gone far enough and 19% think it has gone too far.

The refuser movement in Israel is a patchwork of individuals, networks and more formal groups, some organized around specific military units and conflicts, others centering their broader political perspective, typically on the left. Although military service is often described as a national duty in Israel, conscription is in fact far from universal. As little as 50 percent of Israeli citizens actually enlist, according to left-leaning Mesarvot (Hebrew for “I Refuse”), a network of Israeli refusers. Refusing to serve carries a weighty penalty, as you would expect.

Other Israeli Jews avoid conscription through medical exemptions or fail to serve their full two-to-three year deployments due to physical or psychological conditions. Others simply opt for months-long prison sentences rather than years-long deployments in order to get back to their private lives sooner. Among reservists who have completed their initial deployment but remain eligible for redeployment until the age of 40, the numbers who serve are as little as 2 percent of the population. Many leave Occupied Palestine to avoid serving.

Despite such widespread avoidance of conscription, public opposition is relatively rare. In addition to the months-long prison sentences that can be renewed to years by Israeli military authorities, there is the more punishing fear of social ostracization by Israeli society, which is generally very militaristic.

The girls in Tel Aviv who reward the boys posting pictures of their abuses of Palestinian women are less interested in rewarding refusers with their sexual favors. That said, some draft resisters, especially those from left-leaning backgrounds, describe being supported by their immediate family, friends, and other community members, including employers. Nevertheless, fear persists. As you would expect.

Since October 7, 2023, only a dozen inductees like Behar Tsalik have publicly refused to enlist, along with a few hundred reservists. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, the Israeli military had 30 percent more reservists volunteer for redeployment than it had actually called up, according to Yesh Gvul (Hebrew for “There is a Limit”), a more centrist organization which supports Israeli refusers.

But as the ongoing genocide in Gaza revealed its true purpose, reservists like Yuval Green, a medic and member of Yesh Gvul, questioned whether they were rescuing the 240 Israeli hostages captured by Palestinian militants, or exacting revenge for the 1,200 Israelis killed on October 7.

As of this writing the toll of the genocide, obscured by the ongoing Israeli attacks and blockade, may top 330,000 deaths, according to estimates published in The Guardian. Nearly 70 percent of the dead who have been identified so far were women and children, according to a UN report.

The majority of those deaths were caused by conscripts or reservists. Many of whom are 18 years old. Not yet of an age where they can fully understand either the methodology of propaganda that makes them believe killing babies is an acceptable behavior, or one that they will never regret, exposing them to suicidal thoughts.

The death toll of Israelis in years to come will reflect the horrors these indoctrinated kids have been convinced to carry out. After you rape a hostage to death and feel that rush of power knowing you achieved this life ambition before the age of twenty, the rest of your life is a countdown.

The same after you pull off the famous double tap in a baby’s heart cavity. The adrenaline of knowing you were that good at sniping while still in your teens wears off. The memory of that shot never will. Each replay carries a variant of how great you felt at the time, and how much you would like to enjoy that rush again.

Nothing beats the thrill of seeing that second 5.56 mm round hit the smallest of bullseyes, the baby’s heart cavity, exposed by the first round you placed perfectly. Knowing you did your job as well as anyone ever could. Because it takes a skilled operator and a dedicated soldier to master that specific skill. The baby-heart double tap.

Then, years later, how can you revisit that kill thrill. Once all the Palestinian babies are gone, what if you find it becomes illegal to snipe babies with the heart double tap. What if people stop patting you in the back with congratulations and start looking at you as if sniping a baby in the heart twice is not a matter for national pride and civic duty.

Very few human beings can survive living with the reality of what they have done after committing premeditated child murder multiple times.

There are many documented cases of the PTSD effects of death camp workers and Nazi executioners ending their own lives, unable to continue under the weight of knowing what they have done, in the name of nationalism, religion or personal pleasure. Killing babies is deviant behavior. Deviance finds its own level through the stages of a life.

The ghosts of those dead babies live on in the subconscious of their killers. The only way to release them is the only way. If not today, tomorrow. Or the day after that, the month after that, or even the year after that.

Knowing that you are conscripting boys into a lifetime condemned to adjust to the weight of being what conscription made you, is it worth knowing more about who legislated for conscription.

The leader class who made conscription law. Especially in Occupied Palestine, the so called IDF, that is the rebranded collection of the volunteer terrorists cells, The Hagana, Irgun Zvai Leumi, Lehi, and so on.

The Original terror groups who drove the ethnic cleanse genocide in 1948 and called it a war of liberation, very quickly rebranded as a defense force once they had completed their claim to statehood by terrorism, who then indoctrinated the first generation born in occupied Palestine into compulsory military service. Perhaps incorporating these terror cells into a national unit called the Israeli Terrorist Force (ITF) wouldn’t have the same effect at the United Nations.

Conscription not only serves the nations need for more young men willing to kill children on command for two years of indentured servitude. More sinisterly, conscription into a deviant cause prepares young people for a life of compliance as serving members of a killer gang.

Once you have killed in cold blood you join a code of compliance. This aspect of Israeli culture in which all Jewish Israelis of both sexes serve at least two years learning to kill Palestinians as a right of passage to citizenship defines the State of Israel today, for the 76th years since conscription began.

That’s almost all I have to say about conscription.

In my view, conscription as legal obligation is the worst crime the rich white leader class ever committed. Ruining so many lives as a result. My conclusion as a former conscript and as the author of a book about conscription that I am told has been useful to doctors in South Africa treating PTSD affected soldiers from that 33 year war for Apartheid, the Angolan Border War, is this.

We know who passed these laws. And we know what these laws did. We know cause and we know effect. Forcing young people into an ideology that makes child murder not just their civic duty, but their legal obligation, ends their rights to ‘life liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ as ordinary human beings who are not seasoned baby murderers. A condition that once visited never washes away.

A Nuremberg show trial starring the best known leader-class advocates who manipulated their opportunities as Leaders to force conscription on children would go some way to raising awareness of just how odious conscription is.

Nowhere more so than in Occupied Palestine where 18 year old boys are trained from birth to believe they have the right to shoot babies in the heart, twice, and call that their National Service.

The content of this podcast relates to two of my books. Half the Story Has Never Been Told

And my book about conscription. The Emergency Bouzouki Player