Rudyard Kipling"
“When you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier”
General Douglas MacArthur"
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
A mob is an ugly mob anywhere in the world Friday, Sep. 27, 1963
Thursday, September 07, 2006
A mob is an ugly mob anywhere in the world; some fanciers claim that a Middle East mob is the worst, although objective observers who have seen well-educated Chinese hoodlums from Singapore colleges getting to work with fire and iron on prostrate policemen are inclined to award them the palm; but all fair-minded witnesses will agree that a Djakarta mob in full cry under a noon sun ... can hold its own in world company.
—Richard Hughes, London Sunday Times
In screaming chorus, under a fiercely hot sun last week, a savage, looting Djakarta mob lived up to its world reputation. Boiling through the streets of the city, thousands of rioters went on a three-day rampage to protest the birth of the neighboring Federation of Malaysia, which joins Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak and North Borneo in a new British Commonwealth nation. With the tacit approval of Indonesia's rabble-rousing President Sukarno, who bitterly opposes the federation for the challenge it poses to his influence in Southeast Asia, the mob succeeded in presenting the fledgling nation with a full-grown diplomatic and military crisis before it was even one week old.
Shattering the Façade. The riots were triggered by independence ceremonies throughout the crescent-shaped new nation. Screaming "Crush Malaysia," Sukarno's mobsters stormed the Malayan embassy in Djakarta, threw rocks through the windows, pelted the building with rotten eggs, painted anti-Malaysia slogans all over the walls. As government police stood idly by, the enraged mob then turned its fury on the British embassy in nearby Friendship Square. They ripped down sections of the iron fence around the building and shattered its modernistic glass facade under a hail of stones. The rioters tore the Union Jack from its flagpole and set fire to Ambassador Andrew Gilchrist's Rolls-Royce. In full to the source.....
