….due to influenza.
If I survive, hospital Sparrow Chat will be back soon……(cough, splutter, sneeze!).
Lest We Remember
“The eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month.”
It has a certain ring to it, an air of mystery, almost spiritual; vaguely magical. Our memories of war are like that. They bestow on it a grace war doesn’t possess; an attribute reality swiftly denies.
If, that is, we stop to think about it for too long.
Yesterday was an anniversary. It marked the end of hostilities in World War One, a war that terminated with an armistice at 11am on November 11th, 1918. The armistice was signed at 5.00am on that day, but wouldn’t take effect until 11.00am. In those six brief hours, and despite everyone knowing what time the war would end, 10,900 allied soldiers were killed, wounded, or went missing.
“We remember those who gave their lives in the service of their country.”
Those words are spoken around the western world at commemorations on November 11th each year. How hollow they sound when the truth is known; when, that is, we stop to think about it for too long.
They never “gave” their lives. Ten million men had their lives forcibly taken away (over 20 million died in total) in the, so called, “Great War” of 1914-1918, and over nothing more than a political power struggle.
Those who yesterday displayed the most grief (in Britain they are those with the finest display of lapel poppies), who shuffle to the Cenotaphs and memorial stones with their synthetic wreaths and black mourning suits, are the political ancestors of the slaughterers – the politicians who, as always, got it wrong.
None of them died in the Great War of 1914-18.
They all died in their beds, with their wives or mistresses beside them, in their fancy bedrooms in their grandiose houses, with their female servants and their black market caviar.
None of them died of cold, or hunger, or bad meat, or shot at dawn by their own side because their minds and bodies had taken just that bit too much stress, and anguish, and fear.
“They gave up their lives for their country.”
“Giving” is a choice. These men had no choice. They were rounded up, shipped to France, and slaughtered en masse through the ineptitude of their own crackpot generals and power-crazy politicians.
It is right that we should remember them. It does their memory a disservice when what we remember about them is a lie.
“The eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month.”
It has a certain ring to it.
Unfortunately, the bell that tolls harbors a fatal crack.
Filed under: Political incorrectness
It’s Getting Better In Iraq, Isn’t It?
“”There are times I get up in the middle of the night and I say, ‘Oh my God, how are we going to solve it? God help me to help those kids!'” ~ Said Ismail Hakki, President of the Iraqi Red Crescent.
From CNN.com/world:
“The head of Iraq’s main humanitarian group said an 18-year-old approached him with a baby suffering from leukemia. The desperate mother said she’d do “anything” for treatment for her child — and then offered herself up for sex.
Said Ismail Hakki breaks down in tears as he recalls that story. Leukemia can be treatable to a degree in much of the world, but not in Iraq. The baby died two months later.
“It shook me like hell,” said Hakki, the president of the Iraqi Red Crescent. “All my life I’ve been a surgeon. I’ve seen blood; I’ve seen death. That never shook me — none whatsoever. But when I see the suffering of those people, that really shook me.”
The plight of Iraq’s children is nearing epidemic proportions, he said, with mothers and fathers abandoning their children “because they’re becoming a liability.” The parents don’t do it out of convenience, they do it out of desperation……”
Read the rest of this heart-rending story, and watch the videos, HERE.
Filed under: Bush’s victims