With all the uncomfortable socio/politico/economic changes we are going through, November 11 is celebrated throughout the Commonwealth by those who remember as Remembrance Day.

World War II ended 76 years ago. In schools around the Commonwealth a siren would sound at 11 am, and in schools for decades afterward, school children would stand beside their desks, heads bowed in silence for three minutes.

In business organisations and professional offices employees wearing red poppies in their lapels would also stand silent for three minutes, and in smaller towns and villages, a police or fire siren would sound at 11 to remind everyone that war was over.

Few people even remember that ritual any more, and no one believes that, in the words of the old African-American spiritual Down by the Riverside, 'I ain't going to study war no more.'

It can still be found via Google, where you can find most things, and it brings back a wash of nostalgia for a world that still believed those words expressed the possible. Now the words remind us that there are 20 active armed conflicts going on, new ones this year in Mozambique, Tanzania, Rwanda and Botswana, Tigray, Yemen, and the campaign against the Rohingya of Myanmar.

According to global press reports, trauma faced by any of the major world/trading powers affects us intimately. This is not just because Trinis are among the most dispersed people in the world. Being island people, we are conditioned to wander. There is scarcely any country in the world, including those listed above, in which you will not find a Trini-born resident. Nor can you find any country where people are not affected one way or the other by armed conflicts in others.

I thought, as I considered the implications of Remembrance Day, how fortunate we are in Trinidad and Tobago, to be without such armed conflict.

Then I stood in my shoes and I wondered. Are we?

What about the armed conflict between neighbourhood gangs under the guidance of government-recognised community leaders? What about the dozens of deaths this year by 'drive-by shootings'? What about the war on young women, who have become an endangered species?

And the war on those who block access to essential medications here? Is that different from what is done in most of the countries involved in armed conflict listed earlier? People die here too as a result.

We ignore damage to business connections as a result of transport problems in the south China seas, piracy off the coast of Croatia and the ever-increasing number of supply chain links broken by other countries' conflicts these days.

Syria is on its knees, as is Afghanistan. They differ from us in quality but we should empathise with some, as the lack of resources to save people's lives is affecting our tiny nation as well. Already the supply of medicines desperately needed for those suffering with the 'comorbidities' that people now die from are missing from hospitals and pharmacies.

It was explained last month by our senior government medical official that damage to organs