Category: In the News

Maciej Ceglowski, former hacker, painter and all-round interesting guy, commented on the Washington Post article that refers to secret outside-the-law prisons run by the CIA.

The article teases by saying that these prisons are in “eastern

European democracies”. The Post knows which specific democracies, but

won’t divulge them at the request of the U.S. government, for reasons

of security. Maciej writes that there is a considerable body of

evidence that suggests that his home country, Poland, is one of the

eastern European democracies in question.

Like most first-generation immigrants from oppressive regimes to North America

— myself included — Maciej holds America and its

principles — if maybe not its current administration — in high

regard. (He and I also hold Canada in rather high regard, but he trumps

me for having coined the Ceglowski Axiom,

“Any sufficiently advanced society is indistinguishable from Canada”.)

That’s why his closing paragraphs ring particularly true to these ears:

There’s an almost absurdist irony to the situation. The reason Poland

and other countries in Eastern Europe are so unabashedly pro-American

is that for fifty years, America stood for the antithesis of this kind

of behavior. Poles knew full well about secret prisons, torture,

incarceration without trial, and secret services that operate outside

the law, and they looked to the United States as a society that stood

against this kind of arbitrary exercise of state power.

Fifteen years later, we have television shots of

Polish and American generals standing side by side in in fraternal

solidarity in Iraq, and now perhaps hosting a special little Polish

branch of an American secret prison system. There’s a deja vu to this

that I hope other Poles will find as upsetting as I do. And I get to

feel the shame from both directions, since my adopted country is

colluding with my native one to break the laws of both.

It’s November 11th, the anniversary of the singing of the Armistice, marking the end of World War I. It’s commemorated as Remembrance Day in Canada, various Commonwealth countries and in France and Belgium and as Veterans’ Day in the U.S.

Here in Canada, we often read this poem on this day:

In Flanders Fields was written by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae MD, a field surgeon assigned to the First Field Artillery Brigade. It was written after a particularly bloody battle in Ypres that started on April 22, 1915 and that lasted 17 days. McCrae later wrote about the experience:

I wish I could embody on paper some of the varied sensations of that seventeen days…Seventeen days of Hades! At the end of the first day if anyone had told us we had to spend seventeen days there, we would have folded our hands and said it could not have been done.

In early May 1915, after performing a funeral for Alexis Helmer, who was both a student and friend (there was no chaplain available), McCrae sat in the back of an ambulance, from which wild poppies could be seen growing in a nearby cemetery.

(Poppies thrive in disturbed and upturned soil. The vastly improved artillery of the era and the introduction of trench warfare provided plenty.)

He wrote the following into his notebook:

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow,
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

He showed the poem to a Cyril Allinson, a 22 year-old sergeant-major, who was delivering mail at the time. Allinson is quoted as saying:

His face was very tired but calm as we wrote. He looked around from time to time, his eyes straying to Helmer’s grave.

The poem was exactly an exact description of the scene in front of us both. He used the word blow in that line because the poppies actually were being blown that morning by a gentle east wind.

It never occurred to me at that time that it would ever be published. It seemed to me just an exact description of the scene.

McCrae wasn’t satisfied with the poem and tossed it away. Luckily, a fellow officer retrieved it, and it was submitted to two British magazines: The Spectator and Punch (both of which still exist today). The Spectator rejected it, but Punch published it in December 1915.

Update: This commenter informs me that Punch stopped publishing in 2002.

“Scattered explosions and a 99% chance of gloating on Little Green Footballs…”

Take a look at the random ad that got served along with the news story titled Gigantic Apes Coexisted with Early Humans, Study Finds:

If you’re Canadian, you recognize the image shown here: it’s a poppy pin, which is traditionally worn on lapels during the days leading up to Remembrance Day (November 11th), the day on which Canadians commemorate the sacrifices made by our veterans.

Here on this blog, it’s been a tradition to honour the veterans that day by posting a poppy image (here are my 2003 and 2004 entries). A number of other Canadian bloggers have done the same.

This may change. The Royal Canadian Legion gave Pierre Bourque some static for posting a poppy image on Bourque Newswatch, something he’s done for the past eight years. The reason:

…one Steven Clark, Secretary, Poppy and Remembrance Committee of the Royal Canadian Legion, who, in an inspired twist of bad PR, fired off a pointed email and demanded that I remove the poppy from Bourque.Com, the biggest and most powerful one-page website in the country.

“The Committee”, reprimands Mr. Clark, “acknowledges your effort to promote Remembrance but, as we do not have control over website content, the use of the Poppy image is not authorized.”

After receiving hundreds of emails in response from Bourque and his readership, here’s what Bob Butt (a man whose surname is so appropriate it’s downright Dickensian) had to say in reply:

“Hi, Sorry you’ve run into this but the poppy is a trademark of the Legion and anyone who wants to use it has to apply. Otherwise it would be all over the place. There are numeorus (Sic) examples where it has been used for sales and other purposes. As it is not in the public domain and because it is a registered trademark of the Legion the organization is taking every step it can to protect it (and I do mean every step). All this can be avoided in the future if you ask to use it on your site and you get the proper approval. Sorry, I know your heart and many others are in the right place. Unfortunately we have to protect this image or lose its use as a symbol of Remembrance.”

Colby Cosh sums up my feelings on this matter quite nicely, so I’ll let him do the talking:

I never thought I was helping to remove a piece of our cultural heritage from the public domain by buying Remembrance Day poppies. And I am certainly surprised to learn that “Remembrance” itself has become anyone’s formal property. I won’t pay for or wear one ever again. And neither should you.

Click the image to download the book [4.8 MB, PDF].

I remember reading about A Short Guide to Iraq [4.8 MB, PDF]  in SPY magazine during the

first Gulf War — a guide for U.S. soldier stationed in Iraq during

WWII. Here’s the intr, which aside from the bit about defeating Hitler, is still applicable today:

YOU HAVE been order to Iraq (i – RAHK) as part of the world-wide offensive to beat Hitler.

You will enter Iraq both as a soldier and as an individual, because on

our side a man can be both a soldier and an individual. That is our

strength — if we are smart enough to use it. It can be our weakness if

we aren’t. As a soldier your duties are laid out for you. As an

individual, it is what you do on your own that counts — and it may

count for a lot more than you think.

American success or failure in Iraq may well depend on whether the

Iraqis (as the people are called) like American soldiers or not. It may

not be that simple. But then again it could.

In its 44 pages, the book provides the U.S. soldier enough

cultural and background information to function as a simple goodwill

ambassador in Iraq. Some of this information may be fairly obvious to

the cosmopolitan modern reader, but you have to remember that this was

a time before CNN, the internet, relatively inexpensive air travel and

several wars that taught us all about mideast geography.

The book looks like a pretty thorough introduction to Iraqi culture and

it seems as though the War Department (since renamed to the Department

of Defense) was taking great pains to win hearts and minds.

(Perhaps it was an era of better-behaved U.S. soldiers, the sort of whom Joi Ito wrote about in his piece on the anniversary of the atom bombing of Hiroshima.)

The illustrations included in the book are rather amusing. Here’s

“Bargaining takes time”, a fact that would’ve been unknown to many

Americans back then, but now familair thanks to cheap trips to Asia and

the bargaining scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian:

“How ’bout 30 dinars and I don’t electrocute your balls?”

This bit of advice is obvious today, but it wasn’t back then:

As is this:

My favourite tip in the “Do’s and Don’ts” section:

If you should see grown men walking hand in hand, ignore it. They are not “queer”.