Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar (Egypt), Popular Chorus, 1949. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. The idea of a ceasefire is as old as the idea of war. In old records, one reads of halts in firing for humans to eat or sleep. Rules of combat developed out of an understanding that both sides had to rest or refresh themselves. Sometimes, this understanding included the lives of animals. During the Easter Rising in 1916, for instance, the Irish rebels and the British troops stopped their shooting…
