Daily Times

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month; or possibly a few hours later, certain quarters of the British media erupted over veteran journalist Robert Fisk’s ‘tribute’ to Armistice Day. He had once gain dared to berate the not-so-innocent poppy that has long been an emotive emblem of blood spilled during the First World War.

And, as usual, Mr Fisk is spot on.

What he objects to is the sheer hypocrisy of outward symbols masquerading as manifestations of actual values for the greater good. Thus he points to the role Poland played in the Battle of Britain against Nazi Germany. Back then, the Poles were hailed as heroes. Today, they have been reduced to the status of Eastern European bogeyman out on the rob in rich Western European countries like Britain, which continue to peddle the austerity myth that gives global corporations a free tax ride while the citizenry is left to pick up the tab. And the Nigel Farages of the nation that still likes to think of itself as being ‘great’ want to kick their children and grandchildren out of England’s green and unpleasant land.

There is nothing like a bit of Fisk truism to get the good old folk at the Daily Mail riled up. Bel Mooney, who is the paper’s resident agony aunt, was so incensed that she put on her professional hat to give the Middle East correspondent some free advice. Fisk and his ilk had overstepped the mark. And that has got to stop. Especially all this white poppy nonsense that dresses up in the false robes of peace; as if, Ms Mooney laments, the blood red poppy epitomises the very opposite.

It is shameful to the memory of the dead to mourn them while not giving a second thought to those whom are killed today, tomorrow and forever more. In equally far-off lands

Well, yes, actually. It does.

The point here is not to deprive anyone from mourning the lives lost in the First World War. But doing so becomes problematic when it is just one side that gets to have the spotlight on a grief that is not quite collective. And then there is the not so small matter of how the state’s participation in this elaborately orchestrated show smacks of untold insincerity. Especially given the fact that had everyone been so aggrieved by the Great War — then how to explain the break out of a second one an so soon after.

Which suggests that remembering those who died for King and country is rendered meaningless unless and until the necessary lessons are learned. It is a most macabre comedy of errors that saw London commemorate Armistice Day in the same month that it also chose to mark the centennial anniversary of the Balfour Declaration; which saw good ol’Blighty steal Palestinian land to pave the way for the creation of the state of Israel.

And it is this utter disconnect that Fisk is raging against.

Again, he is right.

It is shameful to the memory of the dead to mourn them while not giving a second thought to those who are killed today, tomorrow and forever more. In equally far-off lands.

It is shameful when Afghanistan, with each passing year, risks becoming a war without end.

It is shameful when we refuse to call the invasion of Iraq what it was; a war of aggression that was deemed the most supreme crime of all at Nuremberg.

It is shameful when Yemen is close to losing an entire generation that have never had the chance of childhood.

It is shameful when the myth is peddled that democracy can be built on the graves of those it murders.

Yet this is the West’s most enduring lie. That it let go of its imperialist past. It hasn’t. But much of its client corporate media perpetuate this gross falsehood. And this translates into the world being carved up once again by those who have sold it time after time.  On one side are those lives that must be protected at all costs; no matter what. And on the other are those who are positioned as the threat from which the former must be safeguarded. Thus does the cycle of subjugation and notions of former glory live on.  It is colonialism repackaged and re-marketed for the 21st century. Some say, just like Coca Cola, that it is even better than the real thing. And it is that which allows the warmongering Tony Blair — whom Fisk impishly yet not inappropriately refers to as Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara — to wear his poppy to remember the dead. But not the Iraqis against whom he waged a war of choice; and for which he has never been held accountable.

The writer is the Deputy Managing Editor, Daily Times. She can be reached at mirandahusain@me.com and tweets @humeiwei

Published in Daily Times, November 12^th 2017.