In the Bad Boys' radio show we have a routine that includes international celebrations or events and while reading from the script I stopped at one date: Thursday 21st September, International Peace Day. I stopped. I literally stopped live on the air and I was trying to understand what I had just read. When you make a pause so long on the radio everybody can understand that something has happened, my brain had paused the same time and, like a film on fast-forward, all I could see were scenes I had watched on the televised news just one hour before the radio show started. I realized what was going on and, after a few seconds, I started introducing the next song in the cue just to give sometime to myself to take a deep breath. Three days later I'm still thinking of it, ironically, exactly the same day the World Chess Championships begin. A classic was a game that simulates battle the very same day the world celebrates peace. So how is our 21st September going to start? Good morning ladies and gentlemen, the news in brief: Fourteen dead in Iraq from a bomb explosion. Whites play, pawn E2 to E4. Blacks answer straight away, knight to F6, Alekhine's provocative move! The Taleban provocatively striked small villages in west Afghanistan near the borders with Pakistan, help from Pakistani militias suspected. White pawn to E5. More dead reported in Darfur, the civil war continues with hundreds of victims, especially kids. Lebanon hopes to start reconstruction soon, another attempt to assassinate Somalia's prime minister failed, Uganda's rebels hit again, Tamil Tigers strike a convoy, check! Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and, by the way, today is International Peace Day, check mate! No good news, nothing good and we can leave the international news hoping that we will find some peace in the national news. This is where the check mate is coming even faster with only one word: unemployment! Everyday, every hour, a new conflict starts somewhere in the world and all of them started in the name of peace; that's why we probably need a special day to remind us what real peace is about. If you are expecting all the conflicts to stop on that day, in the name of peace, you obviously live on a different planet because, here on earth, I'm sure something new will start in a minute. Oddly the only ones who will be peaceful are the chess players attending the World Chess Championships. Current USA sport |