Tag Archives: war

The unseen casualties to come

I am saddened by the physical destruction, and especially the death and disruption of innocent lives happening now in the Ukraine. But I think (and hope) this will end soon. However, this war will affect far more than the Ukrainian people. As US President Joe Biden said,

“It’s going to be real. The price of these sanctions is not just imposed upon Russia; it’s imposed upon an awful lot of countries as well, including European countries and our country as well,” Biden said. “Both Russia and Ukraine have been the breadbasket of Europe in terms of wheat, for example — just to give you one example.”

This will have a massive impact on the world’s poor. Many reading this will feel the financial cost of increased prices, but that burden can be absorbed. We simply will have less buying power and less options of things to buy. But we won’t go hungry. For people living at or below the poverty line, and especially in developing countries where limited food choices become both expensive and scarce, it’s a different story. People will go hungry. People will revolt. People will die.

Since WWII many of the global conflicts have been about oil. The conflicts of the future will be about food and water. No matter what the reason, global conflict affects us all more and more in the interconnected world we live in. It’s one thing to look at the horror of lives lost in a conflict like this, still another to know that more casualties are coming.

Weapons of mass recording

As we watch war and resistance play out in the Ukraine, we are watching it from the film footage of civilians. Phones have become weapons against propaganda, weapons against tyranny, weapons of war. Instead of the story being told by a handful of brave reporters, anyone with a phone is now reporting and sharing updates.

These videos are being mapped and checked for authenticity, and they are being shared on social media. The battle might be being played out in the Ukraine, but it’s also being replayed all over the world. And now Elon Musk’s Starlink will ensure that the videos keep coming.

Resistance is now a shared global experience. The phone camera has become a weapon against tyranny.

Misinformation machine

Yesterday I shared this tweet:


Daniel Funke shared a thread of images that are NOT from the current invasion of the Ukraine by Russia, but are being spread in social media as if they are from the current battle.

Today I read an article that stated, “Facebook has blocked Russian state media outlets from using its advertising platform or using other monetization features in response to the invasion of Ukraine.”

Its amazing that propaganda is so prevalent today when there is such easy access to information. But we are not living in an age where facts travel at the speed of fiction. Lies spread faster than truth. Sensationalism trumps information, and upset or outrage create the perfect venue for the re-sharing of fabricated stories that go viral.

Facts blend with fiction into a narrative that is anything but real news. What stories do the news stations in Moscow share with their citizens? How different does the news sound in neighbouring Belarus, compared to China, compared to news here in North America?

It’s easy to share narratives that match your own view, even if the source of the data is unreliable. We are living in an era when misinformation reigns. Social media has become an unstoppable misinformation machine, and every time we click a like, re-share, or forward a narrative that isn’t true, we become part of the machine. After all, we are the social in social media. We are cogs in the misinformation machine.

The geography lottery

You don’t pick your parents. You don’t pick your country of birth. My grandfather was born in the Ukraine. I could have been too. My other grandfather escaped Poland before the second invasion in WWII. Much of his family that didn’t escape perished. I could have never come into existence.

There are children being born today that will have little or no chance of ever going to school beyond high school. Others who will start work before their 10th birthday. Still others that will know hunger in ways we never will.

We take for granted the opportunities we are given. We complain about things that others would consider a luxury… I wish my car had heated seats. I wish I had the latest phone. I asked for onion rings but they gave me fries.

Sometimes it’s worth pausing for a moment to appreciate that through sheer luck of birth, we have been given opportunities others will never get. We won a lottery that others dream of winning. Be grateful. Be thankful. Be generous. Be kind in thoughts, words, and deeds… Especially to those that have not been as lucky.

Take 6 minutes to watch

KENYA’S AMBASSADOR TO UN MARTIN KIMANI’S SPEECH ON UKRAINE-RUSSIA CRISIS WOWS THE WORLD!!

https://youtu.be/ZxZlaiuicYM

It is seldom that I hear a world leader who understands that we can not live in the past. There are so many places in the world where a challenging history of strife and unrest cause an unstable future. Disputed borders create unstable societies and civil unrest. Countless people suffer and die unnecessarily.

War and force are not the answer.

“We must complete our recovery from the embers of dead empires in a way that does not plunge us back into new ways of domination and oppression.”

This message by Martin Kimani needs to be shared with all world leaders. It is timeless and will apply to our world for years, even decades to come.

Poppy by Roy Henry Vickers (Free)

In Remembrance 2019

Both of my grandfathers are Jewish and they escaped Europe before World War II. One left Poland with his parents, siblings, and his uncle’s family. The rest of the family stayed because they were in the sweater business and didn’t know what they would do in a warm destination in the Caribbean? For some of them, wiped out in the 2nd German invasion of Poland, the answer would have been ‘lived’.

My other grandfather was in the Ukrainian show cavalry, much like the Canadian Royal Mounted Police Musical Riders, but he was too short and would stand on his stirrups during inspections. One day a guest inspector had them dismount and he did not pass the inspection, so he was going to be sent to the regular army. He bribed a doctor to say he had a medical condition and escaped to Italy, then in an adventure that I’ll share another time, he found his way to British Guyana, where my father was born, then to Barbados where my parents met.

We moved to Toronto when I was 9. As a young teenager, I still knew very little of the war, but my grandparents knew people less lucky than they were, who did not escape Europe. I remember that we were at a party once and many of my grandparents friends were there, including some that still had their tattoos from concentration camps. We were in an apartment party room, with about 50 to 60 people and as was usually the case we had more food than we could possibly eat. When my family cooked for a gathering, at the end of the night it was rare for us to not be dividing up as much food left behind as was eaten! We had an abundance of food that night and so it was shocking for me to hear the following story the next day.

The party was in full swing and it was time for everyone to forgo the snack table and start eating dinner. My aunt was behind one of my grandparent’s friends, who was a holocaust survivor from one of the concentration camps. In front of him was another person in line. The person in front of him added some chicken wings from a platter of wings that was still almost full, and as this person looked for more food he held his plate slightly behind him. My aunt watched the holocaust survivor take some wings off of the person in front’s plate and place them onto his plate in one quick motion. It happened so quickly she had to think about what she actually saw. Then she also saw the almost full platter of wings still on the table, available for all to have.

It was still upsetting for my aunt, even as she retold this story the next day. I still remember the story over 35 years later. What did this holocaust survivor endure that, even in a time of overabundance, he had this urge to steal food from another’s plate? What was he re-living? What other ways did his past haunt him?

When I watch videos of veterans today, and hear stories of those who fought in wars, many say they wake up every day thinking of the friends they lost. When I went to the War Museum in Dieppe, France,  I heard video accounts of a massacre, that bore valuable lessons for the Western Allies before their D-Day attack. And when I visited the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, Israel, I truly began to understand the horror of man’s inhumanity against man. I wrote a post that reflected on this visit titled ‘Two Wolves‘ that I still re-read and share every Remembrance Day. From that post, I will leave you this quote, followed by the poem ‘In Flanders Fields’ by Canadian World War I doctor, John McCrae:

“There are parts of History we should not forget. After all, World War One was the ‘war to end all wars’… And so I am writing this on Remembrance Day for a reason. Whether it be concentration camps and the Holocaust or Hiroshima and Nagasaki or genocide in Russia, Rwanda, or East Timor… or any tragic historical event worth remembering… we choose to remember so that we do not repeat our mistakes. We must want and hope that things can be better. We must see lessons learned, not resentment and mistrust. The past will repeat itself if we do not see ‘joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith’… faith that tomorrow can be better than today.”

Take time to remember those that served, those that suffered, and those that were lost, so that we can have the freedom and liberties we have today.

—–

In Flanders fields

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.
~ John McCrae, May 3rd, 1915

In Flanders Fields

Thank you to Roy Henry Vickers for sharing his Poppy design, used as the feature image for this post.