December 9, 2005 ☼ Foreign Affairs
This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.
The cross and the crescent, being overtly religious symbols, have often got in the way of humanity. At least, they created controversies that got in the way of the International Committee of the Red Cross & Red Crescent (ICRC). Now international negotiations have led to the adoption of a new, and secular, symbol for ICRC — the Red Crystal. What’s more, national units can even ‘deface’ it with their favourite national-religious symbol. So that cross, crescent, star or even the Shah of Persia’s lion can be squeezed into the crystal. No such luck though for the swastika, which in 1977, long before the hindutva brigade’s political ascendency, the Indian Red Cross society wanted as an additional emblem. (via Wikipedia). Charles Krauthammer is angry but ignorant about the red swastika, which was first proposed by the Sri Lanka Red Cross society for reasons that have little to do with Nazism. (See Yoz Grahame’s post too)
In any case military instruction manuals now need to be updated. Field commanders must be issued with instructions not to shoot at those vehicles with the outline of the Ace of Diamonds painted on them.
If you would like to share or comment on this, please discuss it on my GitHub
Previous © Copyright 2003-2024. Nitin Pai. All Rights Reserved.