Ideablawg’s Weekly Connections: Peace And Violence

This past week there were some defining moments in history all in a background of love, war, violence, and peace.

1. All You Need Is Love: This week we celebrated the anniversary of The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. In this moment of reflection, let us consider the various ways the boys engaged law and authority. Consider Paul’s marijuana as found by the Japanese authorities in 1980 or John’s deportation battle in the USA. If you want something more uplifting – recall John and Yoko’s bed-in at Montreal’s Queen Elizabeth Hotel. Here is a great legal connection – Allan Rock, lawyer and politician (now President of the University of Ottawa) – managed to convince the couple to go from Montreal to Ottawa in 1969 when he was President of the University of Ottawa Students’ Union. Here is a personal connection – Allan Rock taught me Civil Procedure II while I was at Osgoode Hall Law School. Only two degrees of separation between John Lennon and me!

2. War: Sixty-nine years after the end of World War II and we are still learning something new about the events of the War years. The Monuments Men, a movie that opened this past week, enlightens us on how art and architecture was saved or not saved during the war. I also recommend reading the book but if you do, read it with an iPad nearby to reference not only the art pieces but also the places in which the art was found. This further connects to the ongoing struggle for the return of art stolen during the war. I have written a previous blog on the issue. This past week, Germany considered extending the law allowing Jewish families to recover this art as more caches of such art are being found.

3. Peace: One of my personal heroes is Richard Feynman – the Nobel Prize winner in Physics who passed away 26 years ago on February 14, 1988. Not only was Feynman an engaging man and a tremendous mentor and teacher but he was also a clear thinker with a heart of gold. He’s the one who dropped the O-rings into the ice-cold water to demonstrate how the Challenger disaster accident really occurred. He also ended his minority report on the disaster by stating “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.” A dramatization of these events aired on the Science Channel last year with William Hurt playing Feynman. Having read all books Feynman, I recommend the autobiographical What Do You Care What People Think? and his lectures on Physics. Although he was one of the young physicist working on the Manhattan project and was at Los Alamos during the War, he had a very strong reaction to the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima. I strongly recommend watching his interviews on the subject here.

4. Violence: Is the independence of the judiciary something to fight about? In Turkey, a fistfight broke out over the government’s plan to restrain the judiciary. Certainly, this undemocratic move has political overtones in a country rife with such difficulties. This latest move is unsurprising considering the government’s past treatment of free thinkers such as Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Prize recipient in Literature, who was charged with a criminal offence after speaking out on the Armenian genocide. Ultimately, the government dropped the charges but certainly this was a precursor to the events of Taksim Square and to the latest round of violence. Orhan Pamuk is another one of my role models – read Snow and My Name Is Red to experience Pamuk’s lyric and unforgettable prose.