Remembrance Day 2008

Post Information
Print & pdf

How Should we Honour the War Dead?

by Alan Morrison

poppy-7738861.jpgThe 11th of November is a date which impinges as a dichotomy on our already seared consciousness. Remembrance Day. Remember our war dead - especially from the First World War. Remember the heroes. Poppies. Wreaths. Solemn-faced politicians making a show of care about life and death. Elderly, stiff-gaited uniformed gentlemen with medals. Brass bands. Sentry-like cenotaphs against the dark, dank, drizzly-grey skies of November’s winter foreboding. Pomp and circumstance. Always a glorification of the heroism in militarism but never a hint of condemnation in it.

    One shudders to put one’s head over the parapet to interject a thought which may detract from all that jingoistic fervour but… dare I ask: Is there any genuine substance to it all?

    I venture to suggest that Remembrance Day as we know it is an outmoded institution which is not only inappropriate for the purposes of the remembrance of the foulness and futility of war but is also an affront to those whose lives have been wasted by it. There was no heroism in World War I. Not really. It may have felt like that for some as they gave their lives for their country. But if ever there was a futile gesture it was laying down one’s life in World War I.  Heroism is wasted if it leaves no lasting legacy. Death, if it is futile, is a jumping into the void devoid of moral virtue.

Read more



Comments

What’s up, Comrade Bush?

Post Information
Print & pdf

By Vincent Bevins

combush.jpgCajoled for years to take on Western-style economic liberalism there’s more than a wry smile on the faces of some of South America’s left wing leaders as George Bush and others step in to save collapsing financial institutions, writes Vincent Bevins

The irony has not been lost on the political leaders of Latin America’s insurgent left movements that the governments of Europe and the US are now taking measures that involve far deeper state intervention in the economy than actions they themselves used to harshly criticize when attempted in other regions.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez joked that George Bush “is finally beginning to understand the road to socialism” and notes that “he isn’t criticized for nationalizing the largest bank in the world.”

“What’s up, Comrade Bush,” he said.

Read more



Comments

When nobody understands

Post Information
Print & pdf

The Economist

lingos.jpgThink of the solitude felt by Marie Smith before she died earlier this year in her native Alaska, at 89. She was the last person who knew the language of the Eyak people as a mother-tongue. Or imagine Ned Mandrell, who died in 1974-he was the last native speaker of Manx, similar to Irish and Scots Gaelic. Both these people had the comfort of being surrounded, some of the time, by enthusiasts who knew something precious was vanishing and tried to record and learn whatever they could of a vanishing tongue. In remote parts of the world, dozens more people are on the point of taking to their graves a system of communication that will never be recorded or reconstructed.

Does it matter? Plenty of languages-among them Akkadian, Etruscan, Tangut and Chibcha-have gone the way of the dodo, without causing much trouble to posterity. Should anyone lose sleep over the fact that many tongues-from Manchu (spoken in China) to Hua (Botswana) and Gwich’in (Alaska)-are in danger of suffering a similar fate?

Read more



Comments



Anwaar’s articles appear simultaneously here at Truth Spring and at Soul Vibes in The Pakistan Tribune.


US loses its status as economic world power
DAVOS, Switzerland, 2008
.: ARTICLE BLOCKED :.
ON MARCH 2008
Who links to my website?