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09:19 AM - Red Crystal During NPR's segment, Paul Walker, a former director of the international Red Cross, stated that one problem lay "within Israel" where the "relief society there felt unable to use the cross or the crescent as a symbol" and thus humanitarian workers were denied the protections of international law afforded to those willing to use the other emblems. He later downplayed the religious significance of the existing symbols, "The cross was never meant to be a religious Christian cross, it's the reverse of the Swiss flag." However, whether the Swiss flag was originally based on the symbol of the Arma Christi or the Theban Legion of the patron saints of Zurich, it is nevertheless rooted in ancient Christian symbology. The true believer will no doubt question how and why irreligious symbology is necessary to humanitarian efforts. The answer, according to the Swiss foreign minister, is the need for a clearly neutral "instrument for the protection of both civilian and military health services on the field of battle" wherever the current symbols "are not sufficiently recognised and respected." To cite perpetually war-torn SW Asia as but one example, Islamists often regard the Red Cross as a "Crusader" symbol, Westerners tend to see the crescent as an Islamic or Arab national symbol (or both), while Israel's primary aid society has kept to the sidelines of the Red Cross / Red Crescent movement on account of an understandable unwillingness to adopt either Christian or Muslim symbology. Despite the obvious necessity for a universal and neutral symbology available to humanitarians of any (a)political or (ir)religious orientation, it is only a matter of time before the oversized talking heads in our right-wing media start to blast the international community for adopting such a symbol. They will, no doubt, place the blame firmly on the scourge of "secular humanism" allegedly running rampant across the globe (other than Red State America and Red Cresent nations) and waging war against the Cross, Christians, Christmas and all that is holy. Technorati Tags: (
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I heard a fascinating