ILLUSION IS THE FIRST OF ALL PLEASURES (VOLTAIRE).
THE WORLD WANTS TO BE DECEIVED (HITLER)
I wish to make one point: Historically, people deny that the invader is coming. They are caught off-guard.
Two examples
- Ardennes woods in World War Two and
- more recently, the experience of Sarajevo.
Please! I do not want Canada added to the list of democracies lost!
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1. ARDENNES WOODS
Click on “THE SPIES OF WARSAW”, 2008, by ALAN FURST. (http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=10764) A short set of passages from an excellent novel explain
ARDENNES
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardennes
Allied generals in World War II felt the region was impenetrable to massed vehicular traffic and especially armor, so the area was effectively “all but undefended” during the war, leading to the German Army twice using the region as an invasion route into Northern France and Southern Belgium via Luxembourg in the Battle of France and the later Battle of the Bulge.
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2. SARAJEVO
I was spell-bound by a conversation with a younger woman a few years back. She was studying law at the University of Saskatchewan, but born and raised in the beautiful and cosmopolitan city of Sarajevo.
On a lovely Saturday morning she and her sister happily boarded a train to travel to the birthday celebration of a relative. Within a short time they saw from the train windows the advancing soldiers and armaments. This was their first knowledge that their city was under siege.
They frantically phoned home to tell the devastating news to their parents. The two young women were unable to return home; the parents were unable to leave Sarajevo. The siege was for four years. Their home was entered, belongings taken, hardships for the parents -well told in the story “The Cellist of Sarajevo”.
This young woman felt she was representative of others: they didn’t know what was coming until it happened.
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Related Postings:
- Propaganda, Democracy: Imagining “the other”. Ralston Saul. The Cellist of Sarajevo. http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=769
A powerful passage by John Ralston Saul about the fighting of terrorists appears in this posting.
- Blinded by ego. Dangers associated with blindness. (HOAX: A German’s view on Islam) http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=10753