crazed monkey

I was lamenting to a co-worker today that Canadians, by and large, do not reflect much on the significance of Remembrance Day. For most, it causes no interruption. Should you happen to be on the subway which stops for the two minutes of silence, certainly. Otherwise, you might go through the day unawares. James Bow wonders whether more should be done:

As for the people going to work, the act of stopping work (and stopping all transit vehicles to work — any chance of doing that for all cars?) is a significant gesture that one is less likely to do at home.

The aforementioned co-worker told me that everything stops in Israel during the two minutes of Remembrance Day silence. Sirens wail about the towns and all traffic halts until the silence is over — a slight inconvenience compared to the lives and youth lost by those who went to war for our freedom.

I am of two minds in this matter. On the one side, everyone should remember. It is all too easy these days to run through the day without stopping for a few minutes of contemplation. Stopping all activity would only remind people to take a moment and remember the sacrifice of those who served during war. Two minutes is not much to ask. However, those who are inclined to take the time to remember will take the time no matter what, even if it isn’t at the eleventh hour. Those who would never take a minute or two to stop and reflect would only view an imposed silence as an annoyance or an inconvenience. They wouldn’t take the time even if they were given time.

Posted on November 12th, 2003 in politics, world - No Comments »

For me, the early days in November are some of the year’s most sorrowful. The first days of autumn have taken their course, felling the brown leaves from their trees, covering the green life of the grass and revealing death in the stark branches. The cold of the coming winter is in the air, but its cleansing snow has not yet arrived.

It is in these gloomy days that Remembrance Day comes upon us, filling our heads with grainy images of fallen soldiers and scarred battlegrounds. As if coming out of hiding, aging heroes reveal their presence, hoping to infuse the sacrifice of others in our memories for just one more year. But every year their numbers dwindle, and so every year our memories lessen.

In the days leading up to Remembrance Day I do what I can to remember. I remember the story my father would tell about how the door of his family’s farmhouse was once blown open by the explosion of a fallen V-1 flying bomb. (If a V-1 passed over your head still buzzing its horrid noise then you were safe. If one ever stopped making that noise, it meant that it was falling.) I try to picture my grandfather in his RAF uniform, thankful that he was able to return safely home to Britain.

I remember the various war-themed books I have read and movies I have seen, their images melting together to coalesce into a series of horrific montages of death and destruction. One can never get a true feeling for war by watching its movies. The content is too sterile, too polished for a wider audience, too detached from the experience. I feel that books give a more honest picture, a more detailed first-person account which movies can never replicate.

I remember those who have died and those who are still serving in recent conflicts, like that in Afghanistan, to remind me that war is not a long-forgotten thing. Every year brings more veterans, and more names to remember.

Sadly, this year the hour of remembrance passed by without my acknowledgement. However, Remembrance Day to me is always more than the mere two minutes of silence at the eleventh hour. It is two minutes of contemplation, of gratitude, and of sorrow repeated many times over.

Posted on November 11th, 2003 in politics, world - No Comments »

I wasn’t going to comment on Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamad’s speech at the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, but when I read Smuggy’s take on it, I knew I just had to.

The CBC is going halfway and manages to fit in with the whitewashers while pretending to be unbiased. […] Our media could at least give people the option of deciding for themselves whether this guy is a nut or not - why do they need to put the squirrel-yelling guy through two hours of hair and makeup before they roll the camera?

I’m not sure which CBC article Smuggy was reading, but the one I read earlier today had a headline of “Malaysian PM urges Muslims to unite against what he calls Jewish domination” and an opening paragraph which read (emphasis mine):

In a blistering attack on Israel and hectoring criticism of the Islamic world, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad told a summit of Muslim leaders Thursday that Jews ruled the world and recruited others “to fight and die for them.”

And in case you misread that paragraph, or thought it a misprint, the next one quotes Mahathir (again, emphasis mine):

“The Europeans killed six million Jews out of 12 million, but today the Jews rule the world by proxy,” Mahathir, a widely respected statesman in Asia and the developing world, said in a speech as he became chairman of the 57-country Organization of the Islamic Conference.

You would have to be illiterate to come away from the CBC headline, let alone the text of the article, without the impression that Mahathir is a raving lunatic. The CBC, and many Canadian papers, the Globe And Mail included, do not, by any stretch of the imagination, leave it up to the reader to decide whether Mahathir is out of touch; they spell it out in the article headline and its opening paragraph. A journalist could have easily opened with any number of Mahathir’s statements, many of them strongly critical of modern Islam. Instead, they focussed on the strongly anti-Semitic portion of the speech, and rightly so, as that is a far larger story.

Certainly, a news article could be more critical of Mahathir’s beliefs, but that job is for the opinion pages. If someone living in the 21st century can’t read the facts, or even simply the text of Mahathir’s speech, and come away with the impression that Mahathir is a nut-case, at least as far as his beliefs of a Zionist conspiracy against Islam are concerned, then that person is as backwards as Mahathir and no comment editorial can spell it out for them.

Posted on October 16th, 2003 in politics, world - No Comments »

Andrew Sullivan has reviewed David Kay’s report on Iraqi WMDs. While I haven’t read the report, I fully recognise that the media is blowing it out of proportion. It is a preliminary report after all, albeit half a year in the making. As such, I cannot comment on Sullivan’s review. I can, however, take issue with the following:

That [Hussein posed an imminent threat to the world] is not what the administration claimed.

Oh, really? I suppose it wasn’t the President of the United States who said the following in a September 28th, 2002 address (emphasis mine):

The danger to our country is grave and it is growing. The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given.

If that doesn’t spell “imminent threat”, I don’t know what does.

Posted on October 3rd, 2003 in politics, world - No Comments »