Don McCullin

"Don McCullin's camera has captured some of war's most enduring images. From Jan. 31 to April 14, the National Gallery in Ottawa is hosting a display of his work."
-Globe and Mail,Jan 31, 2013

“Somebody’s made a film about me [McCullin, released in Britain earlier this year] and there’s this colonel of the battalion I was with back then in it. He says they have a reunion or did have reunion every year after the war in Vietnam and he says this individual never, ever turned up. Everybody says to me, ‘Have you ever found out what happened to this guy?’ I haven’t but you know, in photography, you usually don’t. A lot of the soldiers around him, when I found him sitting in that place, they thought he was what we call in England ‘swinging the lead,’ trying to get out of the fight, really. They basically left him there, in isolation.” Shell-shocked U.S. Marine awaits evacuation, Tet Offensive, Hue, South Vietnam, February 1968. Gelatin silver print.
(Don McCullin /Contact Press Images)

A Stone Age Lullaby

The only problem with the war games was that they did not go well.  The real question was to test out what would happen if we bombed the North.  It quickly became apparent that very little would happen.  The Red (or Hanoi) Team had some very good players, a smart general like Buzz Wheeler, and Marshall Green of the State Department; the Blue Team had men like Bill Bundy, General LeMay and McNaughton.  Hanoi had all the advantages; the bombing of the infiltration routes did not seem to bother it. The more the United States moved, the more men it could send down the trails.  For every American move, there seemed to be a counter move for Hanoi; the blockade of Haiphong saw the North Vietnamese simply put more pressure on the U.S. military bases in the South and slip more men down the trail. We bombed and they nudged a few battalions into the South.  We bombed some more of the greater military targets, and because we were bombing them we had brought in a surface-to-air (SAM) antiaircraft missile site to protect the South’s cities against North Vietnamese or Chinese bombing. So they put the SAM site under siege, and in order to protect the site, which was staffed by Americans, we had to bring in Marines, at which point they nudged a few more men down the trail.  The moment the Marines landed we had more difficult logistic problems, and the Vietcong simply applied more pressure to all supply routes, blowing up railroad tracks, ambushing convoys, making the small bases held by Americans increasingly isolated, dependent upon air supply (because there was little patrolling), and moving their machine guns in closer and closer to the bases, and beginning to shoot down the resupply planes.  The enemy was turning out to be very savvy, very clever, and to have just as many options at his disposal we did at ours.  Maybe even more. What was particularly disturbing, the civilians on the Blue Team were discovering, was that he could meet the U.S. escalations at surprisingly little cost of his own.

*** 

It was all very frustrating for the Blue Team and particularly for General LeMay, who was the classic Air Force man and who hated the restraints imposed by civilians.  He sensed that a new kind of war was coming and that once again the military would be frustrated, that sanctuaries would be given, that air power would be misused.

-David Halberstam
The Best and the Brightest

Urban II Urges UN Security Council to commit military force to Mali

From the confines of Jerusalem and the city of Constantinople a horrible tale has gone forth and very frequently has been brought to our ears, namely, that a race from the kingdom of the Persians, an accursed race, a race utterly alienated from God, a generation forsooth which has not directed its heart and has not entrusted its spirit to God, has invaded the lands of those Christians and has depopulated them by the sword, pillage and fire; it has led away a part of the captives into its own country, and a part it has destroyed by cruel tortures; it has either entirely destroyed the churches of God or appropriated them for the rites of its own religion. They destroy the altars, after having defiled them with their uncleanness. They circumcise the Christians, and the blood of the circumcision they either spread upon the altars or pour into the vases of the baptismal font. When they wish to torture people by a base death, they perforate their navels, and dragging forth the extremity of the intestines, bind it to a stake; then with flogging they lead the victim around until the viscera having gushed forth the victim falls prostrate upon the ground. Others they bind to a post and pierce with arrows. Others they compel to extend their necks and then, attacking them with naked swords, attempt to cut through the neck with a single blow. What shall I say of the abominable rape of the women? To speak of it is worse than to be silent. The kingdom of the Greeks is now dismembered by them and deprived of territory so vast in extent that it cannot be traversed in a march of two months. On whom therefore is the labor of avenging these wrongs and of recovering this territory incumbent, if not upon you? You, upon whom above other nations God has conferred remarkable glory in arms, great courage, bodily activity, and strength to humble the hairy scalp of those who resist you.

- report of speech of Pope Urban II at Council of Clermont, 1095

"Death of a Prisoner"

by Laura Poitras

Zero Dark Thirty

Who says it was "ceremonial"?

Theresa Spence forces highly political and successful meeting with Governor General

Lady Minto wife of Governor General of Canada presenting colours to Herchmer's Horse before they left Ottawa for Second Boer War
Lady Minto, Mary Caroline Grey 1858 to 1940, wife of Lord Minto, Governor General of Canada presenting colours to Herchmer's Horse, before they left Ottawa, 19th January 1900. Herchmer's Horse were an irregular volunteer unit heading for service in the Second Boer War in South Africa. From the book South Africa and the Transvaal War by Louis Creswicke, published 1900.

This invasion of one's mind by ready-made phrases (lay the foundations, achieve a radical transformation) can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase that anaesthetizes a portion of one's brain.

George Orwell
Politics and the English Language

I don't know how "ceremonial" got worked into the political reporting today, but the chaotic, shambolic improvised meeting of the Governor General of Canada with Chief Theresa Spence and her miscellaneous and fluid entourage, was anything but ceremonial. Ceremonial is trooping the Colour by the Governor-General's Horse Guard, awarding the Order of Canada, and appearances on Remembrance Day.  This was not that.  This was a forced meeting between the representative of the British Crown in Canada and the crazed, disorganized, delusional and possibly corrupt descendants of the First Nations signatories to the Numbered Treaties who nevertheless can distinguish chicken shit from chicken salad (a Lyndon Johnson specialty).

I admit there was a "smudging ceremony."  Very nice.  That's as ceremonial as it got.

Somehow, "ceremonial" seems an attempt to denigrate the First Nations power that was so much more wildly effective that government "messaging" that it would be laughable if so many reporters were not parroting the term, apparently without conscious thought.

Lord Minto had no compunction in advocating for the First Nations when they appealed to him over the head of Clifford Sifton and the government of the day.  He lost, but he did not hesitate to make his views known, or to hear such representations.

And then we have the brilliant chief Mawadoponess of Rainy River, giving his speech after the signing of Treaty 3 in 1873, a treaty that saved the CPR and possibly Canada from American Manifest Destiny, and  the Saulteaux from a fate suffered by American tribes when the Fort Laramie Treaty was trampled in the interests of greed.

“And now, in closing this council, I take off my glove, and in giving you my hand, I deliver over my birthright, and lands, and in taking your hand I hold fast all the promises you have made, and I hope they will last as long as the sun goes round, and the water flows, as you have said.” 

Alexander Morris
The Treaties of Canada with the Indians of Manitoba and the Northwest Territories

That seems pretty clear:  the negotiations occurred about 140 years ago, and are in perpetuity.

A certain je ne sais quois...

Vendee Globe 2012