An exchange on an Open University forum.<\/p>\n
Fast Forward<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u2018Named, unnamed. Remembered, forgotten. They all did that trick the dead do. Whether they died immediately, more or less immediately or later, they all did that trick. From living human being to corpse – the fastest transition in the world.\u2019 As I lie here Beside me when he ceased to exist. soft unresisting flesh to be scraped up and shovelled explain all this? In the aeons after the blast \u2018Treat only those you think you can save,\u2019 Sheena Bradley, 2012<\/p>\n Me:<\/strong> Lest we forget.<\/p>\n Sheena:<\/strong> Do you think there might ever be a time, a decade or a century when there is even a slight chance we could forget? I doubt it.<\/p>\n Me: <\/strong>There’s always hope.<\/p>\n I’m aware “Lest we forget” has different meanings to different people and in different contexts.\u00a0 With hindsight, it was an inappropriate response to your post, Sheena, and I’m sorry I made it.\u00a0 I was thinking of the Great War, not the Troubles.<\/p>\n For me, “Lest we forget” means “never forget the suffering we bring upon ourselves by blindly following orders to subject others to violence”.<\/p>\n For others it seems to mean “Never forget what sacrifices others have made for you, so be prepared to make sacrifices for them”.\u00a0 There “Lest we forget” is used to promote what was Veterans’ Day and is now Armed Forces Day – but why don’t we also celebrate Peace Day with parades and banners?\u00a0 There’s money and street closures made available to celebrate the military, but why not the Fire Brigade too, for example – they also put their lives on the line for us and they do it more often – what makes the military so different?\u00a0 I’m coming round to the way of thinking of Forces Watch<\/a>, that such events are the marketing activities of the arms industry, making killing palatable and something to be proud of.\u00a0 And that way of thinking leads to “Lest we forget” meaning a demand for patriotism, nationalism and bigotry, where expressing a preference for peaceful solutions gets one called a coward or a “terrorist sympathiser”.<\/p>\n Then there’s the version of “Lest we forget” that seems to me to be the underling problem to finding peace in Northern Ireland, the perpetuation on both sides of “Never forget what those b~~~~~~s did to us”.\u00a0 The perpetual generation of hatred, especially as indoctrination of the young.\u00a0 Earlier this year we witnessed in Glasgow an Orange parade – bands and marching and banners and crowds coming out to watch the spectacle.\u00a0 All I could see were bitter old men and angry middle-aged men wearing orange sashes, and lots of small boys dressed in military uniforms looking all proud to be maintaining the tradition.\u00a0 The atmosphere was just anger and hate; it was appalling and pathetic to see.\u00a0 It is nothing like a Scouts’ St George’s Day parade and poles apart from the likes of Warrington’s Walking Day<\/a>.<\/p>\n As well as talking, listening and reconciling, there’s an awful lot of forgetting needs to be done in and around Northern Ireland: forgetting to maintain the tradition of instilling children and young adults with blind hate.\u00a0 It makes us sick when Moslem extremists like IS<\/a> do it, and when Christian extremists like the Lord’s Resistance Army recruit child soldiers in Africa.\u00a0 So why is it OK for religious extremists in the British Isles to recruit children to propagate and perpetuate their militaristic tradition of violence and hatred against their fellow people?\u00a0 And it would help if we quietly dropped Armed Forces Day in Northern Ireland too – it is counter-productive having the British Army setting an example of militaristic street marches.<\/p>\n For the love of God, as a society, can we please just stop passing on a tradition of hate and instead learn to forget?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n PS: Airstrikes kill civilians<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An exchange on an Open University forum. Fast Forward \u00a0\u2018Named, unnamed. Remembered, forgotten. They all did that trick the dead do. Whether they died immediately, more or less immediately or later, they all did that trick. From living human being … Continue reading
\n(Robert Mc Liam Wilson, Eureka Street)<\/i><\/p>\n
\ncrimson rivers stream by
\npainting obscene pictures on my brain.<\/p>\n
\nhalf a young man\u2019s face, open minded, sanguine
\nlooks on. He was smiling<\/p>\n
\nThat girl has something recognisably human about her meat,
\nothers have been blown entirely to bits,<\/p>\n
\ninto plastic bags. Cajun dust settles on carnage.
\nDoes a meld of politics ordnance and circumstance<\/p>\n
\nin the ringing piercing silence
\nin my head, I hear distant white coated voices,<\/p>\n
\nas the last sigh of life escapes my torn lips
\nunheard; the fastest transition in the world.<\/p>\n