John Thompson can be reached at: johnecthompson@rogers.com
Spirit over Steel: A Chronology of the Second World War
From Spirit over Steel: December 17, 1939: British deception operations about a massive buildup outside the River Platte fool the Captain of the Graf Spee – who is required by law to leave Montevideo but scuttles his damaged ship rather than getting his crew killed in a hopeless battle. Later, when Captain Langsdorf learns he was fooled, he takes his own life. Finnish troops cut off the 44th and 163rd Soviet rifle divisions; starving them of supply and leaving them strung out along several roads.- Saturday, December 17, 2011
Not many people realize it, but the observations some of us maintain every November 11th have a powerful resonance with some of the deepest questions humanity wrestles with. Our annual ritual involves a highly symbolic set of gestures and customs – some of which are thousands of years old.
At its essence, the simple Remembrance Day ceremony is a highly charged event. Knowing this should make it even more important.
On October 5th, Captain Robert Semrau was sentenced by a Canadian Court Martial for shooting a dying Taliban in combat in 2008. He was reduced in rank two grades and expelled from the service--a punishment which is a very harsh one to an officer in Military Law.
The Court Martial never should have taken place and will have a direct and dire impact on the conduct of all Canadian soldiers who go into battle in future. For the good of the Service, and for the defence of Canada, the verdict and sentence need to be overturned.
With the recent defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the distinction of being the world's most sophisticated and globalized terrorist group has passed to the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah. Yet many observers reasonably argue that this has always been more innovative and powerful than the LTTE. Moreover, the Tigers were a limited threat to the Western World, but this is not true of Hezbollah.
My first notes were written in my office at York and Adelaide in the heart of the downtown core... and it did not seem premature to pronounce today's big demo as a big flop.
I left my apartment and headed over to Gerrard and University to watch the big demonstration march by... I've seen many larger ones, even in Toronto. My estimate was 11,000 all told; the police think it was 10,000 and even Sid Ryan apparently described it as only 10,000. We had more protestors out for the G-7 back in 1988 and had 50,000 for the 'Days of Rage' against Premier Harris. The big protest has been a flop.