Some things (mostly Parisian things, it must be admitted) are classics.
The Decisive Moment, 1932
Some things are more of their time.
The Decisive Moment, 2009
Category Archives: War
The Fallen
No post today, just this link to those who’ve given their lives in the Canadian mission in Afghanistan so far. And here are a couple of different links to one who didn’t.
And a re-post from July 2nd of last year:
Instead of racking my brains to come up with a (likely inferior) way of expressing my gratitude to the troops overseas, I think I’ll just suggest you read this eloquent letter from Lorrie Goldstein in the Winnipeg Sun. While reading it, I was thinking of a girl I used to babysit, now a mother of three and on her third tour of duty in Afghanistan. And I was thinking of Trevor Greene, still in St Paul’s Hospital, still working on rebuilding his life after an ambush and an axe to the head.
While you are reading this letter, never for one moment forget that the decision to go overseas, to become involved in wars, peacekeeping actions, and all such deployments, is a decision that is made not by military personnel, but by politicians. Direct your own letters and thoughts accordingly.
Given the recent lacklustre support by Toronto City Council for the men and women now serving our nation in Afghanistan, we dedicate today’s editorial celebrating Canada’s 140th birthday to all members of our military.
Thank you for choosing to serve Canada, whether you were born here or came here from another country.
Thank you for deciding that Canada is worth defending, both at home and abroad.
Thank you for being ready to sacrifice everything, not just a safe, comfortable life here at home with your loved ones, but your very lives, if necessary, to protect us and those who are in need of our protection abroad.
To the families of all who serve in our military, thank you for sharing your precious sons, daughters, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandchildren, relatives and friends with us.
Like you, we pray they will complete their missions and return home safely to you as soon as possible. Like you, we pray for a just and lasting peace.
To those who face the unimaginable grief on this Canada Day, and every Canada Day to come, of missing the presence of a loved one because they died in the service of their country, know that we are thinking of you today.
That we grieve with you. That we pray for you. And that we will remember those you loved, and what they did for us and to help people they didn’t even know, forever.
To their parents, thank you for raising sons and daughters who willingly answered the call of their country.
We will always think of them as the fine young men and women of military bearing, frozen forever in the flower of youth, that we see in the pictures released upon their deaths.
But we know you remember them in a thousand different ways built up over a lifetime of memories — of lazy summer days, at family celebrations and of how they looked on their first day of school, or on the day they graduated.
To the wives, husbands and children of all those who have made the ultimate sacrifice in the service of their country, we cannot imagine the depth of your loss.
But we share your pride in who they were and like you, we celebrate what they did with their lives, because their lives mattered.
And so on this Canada Day, on our nation’s 140th birthday, we remember them, because they represent what Canada is all about at its very best.
Strong, free, honourable, compassionate — and dedicated to the service of others
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Empire, or Humanity? What the Classroom Didn’t Teach Me About the American Empire, by Howard Zinn
Passed along from NagOnTheLake by Metro, here is a thoughtful autobiographical essay by Howard Zinn, a former soldier and current thought leader (what we used to call philosopher, before we decided that old words were old-fashioned).
Amusement Parks of the Damned
Well, it IS in Coney Island.
Waterboard Thrill Ride at Coney Island
Benjamin Franklin on Despotism
So today we get TWO quotes o’ the day, but when presented with a bounty one must simply accept it and share it with one’s friends. Really, this one is a stunner. I’d add my own thoughts, but what Benjamin Franklin and Gore Vidal have said really cannot be improved upon by my words. It would be like painting the Lincoln Memorial or something.
From We Are the Patriots, by Gore Vidal, here is what Benjamin Franklin had to say about the future and the implications of the newly-written Constitution of the United States of America:
“There is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and I believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.”
And here is what Gore Vidal has to say in his opening paragraphs:
I belong to a minority that is now one of the smallest in the country and, with every day, grows smaller. I am a veteran of World War II. And I can recall thinking, when I got out of the Army in 1946, Well, that’s that. We won. And those who come after us will never need do this again. Then came the two mad wars of imperial vanity—Korea and Vietnam. They were bitter for us, not to mention for the so-called enemy. Next we were enrolled in a perpetual war against what seemed to be the enemy-of-the-month club. This war kept major revenues going to military procurement and secret police, while withholding money from us, the taxpayers, with our petty concerns for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
But no matter how corrupt our system became over the last century—and I lived through three-quarters of it—we still held on to the Constitution and, above all, to the Bill of Rights. No matter how bad things got, I never once believed that I would see a great part of the nation—of we the people, unconsulted and unrepresented in a matter of war and peace-demonstrating in such numbers against an arbitrary and secret government, preparing and conducting wars for us, or at least for an army recruited from the unemployed to fight in. Sensibly, they now leave much of the fighting to the uneducated, to the excluded.
During Vietnam Bush fled to the Texas Air National Guard. Cheney, when asked why he avoided service in Vietnam, replied, “I had other priorities.” Well, so did 12 million of us sixty years ago. Priorities that 290,000 were never able to fulfill.
raincoaster 