Uncommon valour

I love history. I was a history major in university and I am constantly listening to lecture series' or books about history. When I travel I try to visit places of historical significance such as Tienanmen Square in Beijing or the Killing Fields and Angkor Wat in Cambodia for example. So to find out that I have a relative (however distant) that was awarded the Victoria Cross is something I can geek out about.

The Victoria Cross (VC) is the highest military decoration which is, or has been, awarded for valour "in the face of the enemy" to members of the armed forces of various Commonwealth countries, and previous British Empire territories.

It takes precedence over all other orders, decorations and medals. It may be awarded to a person of any rank in any service and to civilians under military command. In the United Kingdom, it is usually presented to the recipient or to their next of kin by the British monarch at an investiture held at Buckingham Palace. In those countries aside of Britain where the Monarch of the Commonwealth realms is the head of state, the Governor-General usually fulfils the same function. It is the joint highest award for bravery in the United Kingdom with the George Cross, which is the equivalent honour for valour not in the face of the enemy. However, the VC is higher in the order of wear and would be worn first by an individual who had been awarded both decorations (which has not so far occurred).

The VC was introduced on 29 January 1856 by Queen Victoria to honour acts of valour during the Crimean War. Since then, the medal has been awarded 1,356 times to 1,353 individual recipients. Only 13 medals, nine to members of the British Army, and four to the Australian Army, have been awarded since the Second World War.

The Victoria Cross was awarded to my great, great, great uncle Patrick Roddy in 1858.

Ensign (now Lieutenant) Patrick Roddy

Date of Act of Bravery, 27th September, 1858

Major-General Sir James Hope Grant, K.C.B., Commanding Oudh Force, bears testimony to the gallant conduct of Lieutenant Roddy, on several occasions. One instance is particularly mentioned.

On the return from Kuthirga of the Kuppurthulla Contingent, on the 27th of September, 1858, this officer, when engaged with the enemy, charged a Rebel (armed with a percussion musket), whom the Cavalry were afraid to approach, as each time they attempted to do so, the Rebel knelt and covered his assailant; this, however, did not deter Lieutenant Roddy, who went boldly in, and when within six yards, the Rebel fired, killing Lieutenant Roddy's horse, and before he could get disengaged from the horse, the Rebel attempted to cut him down. Lieutenant Roddy seized the Rebel until he could get at his sword, when he ran the man through the body. The Rebel turned out to be a subadar of the late 8th Native Infantry,—a powerful man, and a most determined character.

Growth is a challenge

There is a (apparently) famous quote from Buddha that says “believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”

I learned of this quote from a friend on facebook, who felt that this was somewhat profound. Perhaps it is. I think that many that will see this quote won’t think about it. They’ll give some superficial ascent to its apparent message simply because it comes from Buddha or because it doesn’t come from a dominant western philosophy. They’ll it quote because they think it demonstrates to others that they are intelligent and urbane.

What does it mean though?

What does it mean to believe only those things that we are able to reason through on our own and understand that it agrees with our own common sense?

Mirriam-Webster dictionary defines reason as “the power of comprehending, inferring, or thinking especially in orderly rational ways.” We must be able to comprehend fully anything which we are to believe. Put another way there is no room for faith. Now I exercise faith in many things. For instance, I am exercising faith in the chair I’m sitting on. How? Well I can’t explain how it is able to hold me up despite being made up of atoms which are mostly empty space. I can’t explain it, but I still sit in the chair. I am therefore exercising faith.

The second thing we must test any potential truth or fact against is our common sense. In my experience common sense is relative. Many claim to have it, but it seems that few exercise it. What seems like common sense to me may not be for many others. For instance, I think its common sense that one should not live beyond their means, and they shouldn’t borrow more than they can pay back in a reasonable frame of time; yet there millions of people in the West that do live beyond their means and borrow far more than they can reasonably expect to pay back in any time frame. In fact many nations in the West act in this same manner.

So either, common sense is relative to the individual and therefore not an absolute in terms of determining truth, or humans aren’t rational. Of course if we aren’t rational how do we properly utilize reason which relies on our rationality?

Where I am I going with all of this?

I think that if we are honest with ourselves we will acknowledge that people are lazy in many different ways and to varying degrees. One of the way in which people are lazy is intellectually, people tend not to think critically. If they come to believe in something, they will tend to only listen to, read, and engage in things that reinforce that belief. They will avoid those things that challenge their beliefs.

People want to feel safe and content. Part of this is comes from the removal of doubt which can lead to worry. So by not seeking challenges to our life’s philosophical underpinnings we are seeking internal peace and contentment.

An example of this can be seen in American news viewership where it would be unsurprising to find out that the predominant political stance held by viewers of Fox News is “right wing” whereas the predominant political stance held by viewers of MSNBC is “left wing.” Both of these networks are known for their politically slanted news coverage targeted at like minded individuals. They don’t present such slanted coverage as a means of opening a dialogue or public discourse, but rather as a means of making money by tapping into an already segmented audience defined by their political leanings.

Ethan Zuckerman, a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society commented on this reality in relation to the internet at the 2010 TED Global Conference. Despite the internet’s ability to open the world up for the individual this isn’t what is happening. Rather, people’s use of the internet might actually be narrowing their world-view rather than expanding it.

Mr. Zuckerman argued that despite the internet’s ability to provide news and information from global sources unimagined by earlier generations, rather than making us a more widely informed populace “it’s making us ‘imaginary cosmopolitans,” a problem exacerbated by social networking that more easily allows people to share information with those who share our world-view.

People use the internet much like they use television news sources. They find those sources of information that agrees with their already determined world-view and allow those sources to filter the world’s news for them.

So we create for ourselves self-instituted echo chambers that help to reinforce our perception of the world and our preconceived notions of reality.

Who doesn’t like a good ‘yes man’?

This is of course dangerous, because we come to place an inordinate level of trust in our sources of information due to our unwillingness or inability to think critically concerning the information we receive or even how to find differing viewpoints and to give them a fair hearing.

I had read an article once that spoke about a study that showed that people will rarely change their mind on something, even if they are shown that what they currently believe is false (I wish I could find the link to the article. When I do, I’ll post it here). They weren’t talking about big things like is there a God? Rather they were looking at things such as the cause of the Iraq War or Obama being a Muslim. If a person had heard something, and it matched with their preconceived notion of the world, then it was nearly impossible to get them to change their mind even when shown evidence that what they heard was false.

This all leads me to an article that was recently passed around by a friend of mine on facebook. The article entitled “Obama Created World’s First Superstate With US-Canada Merger” got me interested in a hurry. It’s opening paragraph was quite alarming.

“In a shocking coup d’etat said to rival Nazi Germany’s 1938 Anschluss (German for “link-up”) of the Austrian Repbulic, the United States this past week effectively took control of Canada creating what is being called by Russican diplomatic officials as the world’s first 21^st Century ‘Superstate’.”

Wow!

Now as a Canadian I was alarmed. In no way did I want Canada to cede control or power to another entity, especially to the United States. So I read further.

I read that there were evil machinations taking place behind closed doors and being covered up by “diplo-speak” that would see the autonomy of both the US and Canada compromised and that democracy was dead in both countries as “no votes [would be] allowed by either of them ever again.”

I read about the “shock and uproar” in Canada protesting Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s betrayal of Canada and how the American people were being kept in the dark by a corporatist conspiracy that controlled the nation’s news agencies.

One of the most damning claims made against the idea of the merger was that business leaders endorsed it and as such it was sure to be bad for everyone else.

It was an alarming piece of leftist propaganda innocently passed on by a friend who thought that others would want to hear of such nefarious goings on labeled as nothing short of “a capitalist corporate takeover of both the United States and Canada.”

In support for the article the EUTimes quotes at length the Pacific Free Press who talks about a conspiracy to keep the public in the dark concerning these secret deals where the people in power were able to not only keep all the media outlets silent on the issue but also social networking sites, environmental groups, union and the other political parties as well.

Despite this total information black out they reference not only the previously mentioned PFP, but also the Toronto Star and the National Post who managed to run stories concerning the high level negotiations. Support for the total outrage from Canadians must come from the lone PFP article, while the NP article is used to demonstrate how the US is being kept in the dark as it talked about the NY Times’ failure to mention the border talks, even thought the Wall Street Journal did report on it; yet another breach in the media blackout.

According to the NP, the reason that they aren’t talking about the issue within the US is that they simply don’t care. It’s an issue that is negatively affecting Canadian exports to America and as such the Americans could care less about appeasing Canadian business interests given that they are in two wars, fighting a sluggish economy and ramping up to another election cycle.

According to the White House press release that the EUTimes referenced the two governments are seeking to work together at “coordinating, simplifying and ensuring the compatibility of regulations, where feasible.” It goes on to state that both governments are working “to provide early notice of regulations with potential effects across our shared border, to strengthen the analytic basis of regulations, and to help make regulations more compatible.”

This is of course the nefarious diplo-speak that shows how the US and Canada are now a single entity under a yet to be determined dictator.

As to who these Russian diplomats were that likened the deal to the German – Austrian Anschluss we aren’t told.

I received the article from a friend who got it from a friend (from there I don’t know). It is written with obvious political bias in order to further an anti-capitalistic platform. It’s also a good demonstration of what I spoke about previously; the echo chamber that we create about ourselves when it comes to seeing the world.

If the world is to move forward the people in it need to look at the world without blinders on. They need to see where the world has come from in order to provide context for the present to inform our actions in the future. We shouldn’t lie to ourselves or think that one political ideology or another has all the answers. To paraphrase Chris Rock, if you think you already know the answer before you’ve heard the question, you have a problem.

People bitch and moan about how news outlets like Fox News operate, but they don’t see that Fox News isn’t the problem. The problem lies with them and their inability or unwillingness to look outside their preconceived notions of the world and to see reality for what it is. They don’t take a moment to cease from constructing their echo chamber to actually listen to an opposing point of view. People need to understand that we don’t know everything and that there is no magic answer to all the world’s questions.

At least, I do.

A call for democracy

So I was away on an extended bi-country vacation recently when to my surprise riots broke out in Egypt. I caught snippets here and there concerning what was going on; that they were happening, the calls for democracy by western powers, the calls for Mubarak to resign and the involvement of the army.

As with any such event going on in the world there are opinions galore and conflation of many different ideas and agendas. In trying to do a little bit of reading concerning the ongoing events in Egypt I see that there are a number of reasons being supported by those protesting, or at least reasons that are being publicized concerning why the people in Egypt are protesting.

For some it is a show of solidarity with their Tunisian counterparts for their actions in the previous weeks. For some there are political motivations involving corruption, free speech, and free elections. For some there are economic motivations given the high unemployment rate, high food prices and low minimum wages. For some there are legal motivations concerning police brutality and the state of emergency laws. I’m sure that those taking part in these historic protests hold a vast array of motivations concerning why they are taking part in the riots. I’ve read though that the primary focus for the demonstrations has been deposing Hosni Mubarak's regime from power along with "a new government that represents the interests of the Egyptian people, and respects rights of freedom and justice."

From what I can gather there were two incidents that sparked the demonstrations / riots in Egypt. One is the previously mentioned Tunisian revolt. The other is the Parliamentary elections held in November of 2010 in which the ruling National Democratic Party won a majority of 420 seats, an increase of 90 seats, while the main opposition party the Muslim Brotherhood won only a single seat, a decrease of 87 seats. In the previous elections held in 2005, the Muslim Brotherhood had gained 71 seats, while the ruling NDP party had lost 73 seats.

The 2010 results were a dramatic turn of events. The NDP had won a (surprising?) 209 of 211 available seats. The opposition Waft party had won the other two seats but still joined the Muslim Brotherhood in boycotting the subsequent round of voting alleging voter violence, intimidation and fraud. The first demonstration was led by many of the country’s youth and was organized using social media. The first protest was held on January 25, 2011. This use of social media in organizing the protests led to the NDP government cutting the country off from the internet and mobile phone service beginning on the 28^th, the fourth day of protests and now openly supported by the opposition Muslim Brotherhood.

Amid this atmosphere of popular revolt and calls for democracy, the western powers tried to play things close to the vest while condemning the violence surrounding the protests and calling on the Egyptian authorities to ensure democratic reforms, that the will of the people would be heard and that their freedoms would be protected.

It’s hard to argue with that.

Yet they fall short of either condemning Mubarak or supporting him, instead trying to walk the fine line that gives the appearance of support for the Egyptian people while simultaneously trying to keep things with Mubarak intact in case he comes out of this still in power.

Noted commentator and MIT professor Noam Chomsky argued that what he western powers want is not real democracy in Egypt but rather a government that would help the west meet and / or maintain their geopolitical goals, as this has been their pattern in the past.

This too is hard to argue with.

The thing that I wonder about in all of this is the calls from many for democracy in Egypt. Many of those making such calls live in what are nominally democratic nations but haven’t truly experienced democracy themselves. Perhaps they see the plight of the Egyptian people living as they do under a succession of military dictators and subconsciously identify with them and are living vicariously through them knowing that they don’t have the balls to demand true democracy of their own governments.

Just a thought.

The second thing that I wonder about in the midst of these riots / protests is what is it supposed to look like? What should have been the results of the Egyptian elections that sparked this outrage?

In the 2000 elections the NDP party won 353 seats, an increase of 35 from the 1995 elections. The largest single block of opposition was the Muslim Brotherhood with 17 seats, although they are officially listed as independents. The New Wafd Party won only seven seats, an increase of a single seat from the 1995 elections.

In 2005 the NDP party won 330 seats, the NWP won five seats, while the Muslim Brotherhood won 88 seats, an increase of 71 seats.

In 2010 the NDP party won 420 seats (their most seats ever won by a single party in Egypt’s history), the NWP won six, while the Muslim Brotherhood won only a single seat, a very dramatic turnaround from the seemingly growing support for the Muslim Brotherhood.

So it would appear that the dramatic results of the 2010 elections that led to calls of voter intimidation, violence and corruption was not the will of the people. The NWP and the Muslim Brotherhood both boycotted the election after the first round of voting noting the massive dominance of the NDP and the near complete lack of support for the NWP and the failure of the MB to win a single seat.

Historically the NWP has maintained a rather small portion of representation within parliament so it seems unlikely that they were expecting a massive windfall in 2010 (they in fact won 6 seats which fits in with their historical representation levels). The Muslim Brotherhood though may have entertained notions of gaining increased support from the Egyptian people given their successes in the previous two elections, going from 19% of the parliament seats to perhaps 25% or 110 seats.

I of course can’t say what the MB expected from the election or what level of support they felt they could realistically count on in terms of parliamentary seats. It does however seem logical that they expected at least equal or increased representation given that they boycotted the election. It also seems logical that this was the expectation of the people given their willingness to openly demonstrate against the elections results.

So if this is correct and that the Muslim Brotherhood was expecting greater representation and increased power within the government, calls for Mubarak to step down and for democracy within Egypt would seem to point to willingness by others to see the Muslim Brotherhood gaining power within Egypt if that is indeed the will of the people.

Again, fair enough.

In reading about the Brotherhood I’ve found out that they condemned the 9/11 attacks, have maintained a position of non-violence, and have been criticized by none other than Osama Bin Laden himself for having betrayed jihad. I’ve read that “the Muslim brotherhood started off as a social organization, preaching Islam, teaching the illiterate, setting up hospitals, and even launched commercial enterprises.” It is also reported to be the world’s largest, oldest and most influential Islamist group.

It "preaches that Islam enjoins man to strive for social justice, the eradication of poverty and corruption, and political freedom to the extent allowed by the laws of Islam" and is echoed in their slogan: Islam is the Answer. They oppose western colonialism and see themselves as the inheritors of the west’s prior position as the leader of mankind due to the west’s loss of life giving values. It has been argued by Sayyid Qutb in his 1964 book Ma'alim fi al-Tariq (Milestones) that "it is necessary for the new leadership to preserve and develop the material fruits of the creative genius of Europe, and also to provide mankind with such high ideals and values as have so far remained undiscovered by mankind, and which will also acquaint humanity with a way of life which is harmonious with human nature, which is positive and constructive, and which is practicable. Islam is the only System which possesses these values and this way of life." It also holds that Islam must reclaim its manifest destiny as an empire stretching from Spain to Indonesia unified in a Caliphate and organized around the Quran and Sunnah.

It’s hard to know what such an organization would be like if in power. The closest we can get is to look at Hamas, an official political entity based upon the Muslim Brotherhood movement.

It’s hard to know what a democratic Egypt would look like with the Muslim Brotherhood holding positions of power. Would it be the political entity that was condemned by Bin Laden as having betrayed the ideals of Qutb? Would it be like Hamas? It is almost impossible to know what they would be like given that they have been repressed numerous times over the past several decades. Driven underground have they become a moderated political group striving to do what is right for the people of Egypt? Or have they become more hardened in their positions of striving for Islamic empire?

I don’t know. Perhaps nobody does, even those within the MB itself. Power has a way of corrupting those who seek it.

I hope that those who call democracy in Egypt are willing to accept the will of the Egyptian people. Democracy in the occupied territories of Israel didn’t bring peace to the Middle East. Democracy isn’t the magic silver bullet for the world’s problems that some might think it to be. It is an imperfect method of mobilizing the apparent will of a group of people. It’s important to remember thought that not all people think alike and while one person might see secularism as utopia, for another it’s an Islamic Caliphate.

Can two opposed utopias coexist?

Well there is one way to find out.