2 minutes silence

[sasguru]

It's all you deserve.

I disagree. Few things in this world are absolutely black or white.

[cailin maith]

I can easily go without talking for two minutes, but it must be murder for women.

You have no idea

[Moscow Mule]

I disagree. Few things in this world are absolutely black or white.

Thankfully, you are allowed to disagree.

[EternalOptimist]

because most wars don't change anything much in the long run.

I thought that was the reason most wars were fought. To stop things changing i.e. to keep what we have got

[RichardCranium]

Tripe, why not have a minutes silence for all the people the British Armies have killed throughout history.

Aren't you missing Diestl's point? He said why don't we have a silence for all those who have been killed by those you mention above.

Is that in addition to the silences and services that already occur at the hundreds of memorials to Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the flattened cities of Germany that exist in Britain? Or the typically council-owned facilities that have been named after victims of atrocities and miscarriages of justice in the Empire?

Is it instead of the twinnings that occur between towns that we flattened and towns here - such as Coventry has done?

Should it replace the student exchanges that are arranged to increase awareness and communication between countries that were once enemies?

And should it be compulsory as part of the Lisbon Treaty? The Maastricht Treaty made explicit reference to the desire to bring European countries even closer together to make another European war less possible.


Or should we all just pump purple piss from our hearts forever for all the things we didn't fecking do but our ancestors did?

Do you know, it never occured to me until I saw Diestl's comments in this thread that I should NOT be thinking about foreigners in those moments of silence.

We're all one humanity. The point of Remembrance is: lest we forget.

If we stop remembering, we shall do it to one another again.

So we must not let the state have the power of life and death over all of us en masse. Nor must we let the state divide us into Christian v Moslem / British v European / pro-American v Arab. That way lies mass suffering that we can only read about in history books. And the only way to prevent it in the future is communal memory: regular, routine, voluntary Remembrance.

[RichardCranium]

There is a memorial on the downs above Brighton - very out of the way

It is on the site of the absolutely huge hospital that was there just for Great War victims to be treated so they could be sent back to the trenches for another go at being massacred.

[RichardCranium]

I disagree. Few things in this world are absolutely black or white.

Pandas, penguins and the odd chewy bits in Melton Mowbray pork pies.

HTH

[OrangeHopper]

Now that I didn't know. They've made a very good job of erasing all evidence of other buildings. I was rather "taken aback" by its out-of-the-way isolation when I first came across it. You can only see it, from a couple of miles away, from one road that drives across the downs and you need to know what you are looking for.

[RichardCranium]

Now that I didn't know. They've made a very good job of erasing all evidence of other buildings. I was rather "taken aback" by its out-of-the-way isolation when I first came across it. You can only see it, from a couple of miles away, from one road that drives across the downs and you need to know what you are looking for.

You can see it from the railway line that goes past too.

It comes up on BBC Radio 4's Making History and various other such programmes from time to time.

[sasguru]

So we must not let the state have the power of life and death over all of us en masse. .

Sorry but it does. it reserves the right to conscription.