Home Australia Anzac Days Come and Go, But the Enemy Changeth

Anzac Days Come and Go, But the Enemy Changeth

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Ascot

by Mary W Maxwell

Those of us who immigrated to Oz tend to take the national holidays with extra sentiment – January 26 and April 25, Australia Day and Anzac Day. I personally consider Anzac Day sacred. Not because of Gallipoli or the military in general, but thanks to a sense of belonging.

That is what makes a nation a real entity, the feeling that one is part of something big and long-lasting. I even get a patriotic buzz when I see Anzac biccies. Seriously. And the sound of a didgeridoo moves me every time.

For the last three Anzac Days, the editor of Gumshoe News, Dee McLachlan, has allowed me to hold forth in whatever way I felt inspired:2015, 2016, 2017.  This year Dee agrees with my saying that there are many new ways in which Australians may have to go to war. 

So Who Is the Enemy?

Tomorrow morn, April 25, I’ll go to a local dawn service in Glenside, SA. The prayers and the Last Post will give me a chance to muse on Uncle Val Solomon (Mal Hughes’ uncle, not mine) and Don Wreford’s reaction to Uncle Val’s delight at being on the ship en route to Gallipoli. And nephew Mal’s reaction to Don – “Yes I know what you mean, Don. I served in Vietnam unwillingly and now think of it as a war crime.”

At GumshoeNews we are hammer and tong against the bombing of Syria. OK, maybe only paper and pen, not hammer and tong. We’re also working our way towards a different sense of who the two parties are in any given war. Who be the Us and the Them?

At this point – April of 2018 – I have quite the new sense of it (I mean new for me; maybe a large number of folk came to this view ages ago.) Simply: the jackasses who work for the Top Dogs are the enemy.

Why don’t I declare war on the Top Dogs?  Because I don’t know who they are, and I don’t have much hope of finding out.  So I am going for the next layer down.

I declare war against, say, the planners of the “false flags” that we so studiously write about at Gumshoe. That’s the 9-11 hijackers (the really real hijackers), the Boston Marathon bombers (the really real bombers), etc.

Defo, the media. Defo.

All members of the law profession who either help the wrong man get accused, help the guilty escape, OR who simply ferme’d ses bouches while such things happened.

Yes, the enemy, IMHO, includes those whose position of responsibility calls for them to take action against evil colleagues but who just fritter the day away concentrating on other matters instead. How dare they? ’Fraid of losing our little pay packet are we?’ Fraid of not making it from cradle to grave without a blemish are we? Aw, poor wittle things.

Arrest Me?

I’m trying to calculate how far I can go without stepping over the line to where I will be arrestable. I declare war.  That’s probably arrestable. Hmm, but self defense is legal and they – the aforementioned jackasses – are killing me.  They are out-and-out planning to wreck my (our) habitat, poison my (our) water, take away my guns (ours, I don’t have any).

Maybe we need a uniform for OUR troops so we can march in an Anzac march just like the march that Uncle Val’s troops have had for the last 102 years. We definitely need marching music to keep the spirits up. We need training. We need muscle.

This is war, Folks. I asked Dee to upload a photo of The Ascot at the top of this page. That is the best I can do at the moment to depict the enemy symbolically. I don’t blame the horses, you know. Or the jockeys.

I blame where our English-speaking international aggression has brought us. And where we are headed, thanks to the layer of jackasses (such as Aldous Huxley) who assume that taking over people’s minds is just an oh-so-clever thing to do.

Gorrrd. I am sick of all this.

Come on everybody, get patriotic.

Let slip the dogs of war.

Do something.

 

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27 COMMENTS

  1. I went to my first ANZAC day at an RSL back in the early 80’s. I watched people gamble, get drunk and fight each other all in the name of our diggers. It was also my last. To engage any of these types in some meaningful dialogue is pure folly. Every year l think about the returning soldiers from Vietnam being pelted with fruit and other sundries, to today’s abhorrent treatment of those damaged in Afghanistan and lraq, all wars based on lies. And as far as Syria is concerned, according the ADF website, we have over 700 personnel and two FA18 Hornets over there ready to do the same again. Lest we forget indeed…

    • ….. and the Saudis dropped a bomb on a wedding party in Yemen yesterday, killing 20, including the bride ..

      apparently we are going to retaliate against the Saudis via selling them some more shiny new aussie made “lethality”

      HAVOK!

        • As a matter of fact, the Saudis who fly their choppers into Yemen and shoot and missile the indigenous people, are trained in Australia, at a base on the Sunshine Coast.

          Local protests forced the training flights to go outside of built up areas but the Queensland Government supports the development of these highly trained murderers, and the spineless Sunshine Coast Daily refused to publish the purpose of the training.

    • Given the fact that, bar the Eureka rebellion, Aus hasn’t fought in ANY war that had ANYTHING to do with self-determination, the need to get plastered is hardly surprising

        • The Ireland edition of Wikipedia says:

          “Approximately 4,000 of these men were Irish. In addition to those who died, 392,856 men were injured during the campaign. By far the biggest loser in terms of men who died was the Ottoman Empire. 86,692 of their men died defending Gallipoli. All these men didn’t die in the battles during the campaign.”

          I had never known the casualties were so high. Aussie dead: 4400.

          But biggest Aussie lost was at the Somme.

  2. In London houses without a badge of insurance of a private insurance policy with the brigade whom were with the the company of the same insurance, either put the fire out or would not, the private insurance companies finally amalgamated in to one fire brigade, the amalgamation of all armies contributed by all countries having a military organization, having now to outlaw all millitary held within a national definition are no longer acceptable, the cost reduction of amalgamation can now reduce nations debt and finance redirected to infrastructure.

  3. David, I am off to the local march, to “parade”, not because I am a show-off, or intend to get drunk, but because many of my mates, who did not die on the battlefield, but have died and are dying because of that oh, so, dreadful battlefield that is continually being foisted on to us by the Banking Cabal and their political slaves.

    Yes, in “our” war many wanted to go, because they had been “brainwashed” since birth that, it was the right thing to do. Their fathers and their fathers’ fathers had done it. It was part of being a man, in the true British bullshit tradition.

    In our case it was to repel the Communists. What a cock and bull story? A few, like myself had no choice, if we were in a particular unit we had to go.

    Little did I or any of my generation know that the real Communists, Nazis, call them what you will, were those that are in the very banking industry, City of London, Wall Street, that create these wars that make so much money for them. They and their sons never go.

    Thanks to the internet, if young people use it usefully, they now have the opportunity to become educated about such things.

    • Mal my comment was not aimed at people such as yourself that understands the futility of war in foreign countries for foreign interests. Rather the indoctrinated masses that have been bombarded with corporate media propaganda ( thanks berry for the post below ) and exposing their faux nationalism and sycophantic tendencies.
      I fully understand everything you stated and I am in total agreement.
      And if I hear “they died for our freedom” once more l will be reaching through the screen for the throat…

  4. And my Grandfather was on a train from Pretoria and was shipped up to East Africa, where they marched around for years — evading crocodiles and hyenas. When he returned he used to make Sunday his walking day — often just walking across the mountains for 30 miles. His diaries are fascinating. They show no hatred or revenge, but an understanding of a disrupted world.

    I have just received an email from one of the readers about the Japanese surrounding Australia, and printing money…

    ” (notes) my father had some of them with the Japanese Government of Australasia (and I think Pacific) on them.

    “A Japanese submarine surfaced off Gippsland near Woodside (I grew up not far from there) and the Volunteer Defence Corps (VDC) opened fire with the 303’s and could hear the bullets bouncing off the hull….”

    My feeling about ANZAC day differs to that of Mary. She gets “a sense of belonging.” I find ANZAC day strangely alienating. My lineage fought in the same wars… different battles.

    Listening to the commentary on 774 — a woman had delayed her chemo treatment to walk.

  7. Self-defense might be legal but self-defence certainly isn’t:

    FIREARMS ACT 1973 – SECT 11A GENUINE REASON REQUIRED IN ALL CASES
    (1)         An approval or permit cannot be granted, and a licence cannot be issued, under this Act to a person who, in the Commissioner’s opinion, has not been shown to have a genuine reason for acquiring or possessing the firearm or ammunition for which the approval, permit, or licence is sought.
    (2)         A person has a genuine reason for acquiring or possessing a firearm or ammunition if and only if —
    (a)         it is for use by the person as a member of an approved shooting club and the person is an active and financial member of the club; or
    (b)         it is for use by the person as a member of an organisation approved under this paragraph; or
    (c)         it is for use in hunting or shooting of a recreational nature on land the owner of which has given written permission for that hunting or shooting; or
    (d)         it is required by the person in the course of the person’s occupation; or
    (da)         in the case of a prescribed paintball gun, it is required by the person to conduct or engage in paintball in accordance with this Act; or
    (e)         it is to form part of a genuine firearm collection or genuine ammunition collection; or
    (f)         it is for another approved purpose.
    (5)         Approval cannot be given under subsection (2)(f) to the possession of a firearm or ammunition for the purpose of personal protection.

  9. Many years ago I was in a conversation with a Gallipoli veteran. I made a disparaging comment about the Turks. After a moment’s pause the veteran said; “Oh no! Johnny Turk was a good soldier! He fought bloody hard. He was trying to win.”

    And so he should. An invader landed on his shore with the intention of taking over his patrimony. But the supreme grief is that the mothers of those valiant Turkish and Australian men lose the fruit of their womb that they had invested so much of their lives in. And so it is for all reckless wars.

    It’s a great tragedy and a most severe blow to mothers that often live after their slaughtered progeny.

    But there is a truism: “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world”.

    • Gee, Diane, Aboriginal EMIGRANTS. Maybe they have planted many seeds.

      As for this remark:

      “We were seen as less than human in those days. We were less than the flora and the fauna at the time and [the Australian Government] were just waiting for us to die out.”

      — goes for all of us at the moment.

  12. What an odd day. I had seen an ad for a dawn service one mile from my home. Got there at 6am: Eucalpytus Lane, Glenside. I approached I saw that it was the Jamie Larcombe Center (hospital for mentally disabled veterans). I thought “Isn’t that nice, the old soldiers can just roll out of bed and be there.”

    But nobody showed up. By 6.15am the sky was light enough to show off the usual ugly clouds, leftover from the day before. Then I went downtown and to north Adelaide. By noon the sky was its beautiful old self – I mean old as in say, 1995. No cloud. A blue sky. Blue as in B-L-U-E. I guess they gave a holiday to the guys who do the sky-junk every morning in Adelaide.

    Just got home and checked the details of the dawn service. It was scheduled for 7am not 6am. Oh well. I did notice one thing about the huge Glenside “mental health” campus. Martin Bryant, see “fodder note,” could have had nasties done to him without all the doctors and nurses noticing as there are many “huts” on the property.

  13. At one of the soldier memorials in Adelaide today I saw a bouquet of roses laid unofficially. (The official ones were greenery with a purple sign “Lest we forget.”)

    This one mentioned only the boy’s name and year of death, 2011. So I have looked it up on the ADF website:

    It is with deep regret the Australian Defence Force announces the death of Sapper Rowan Jaie Robinson during operations in Afghanistan.
    Sapper Robinson was serving with the Special Operations Task Group when he was tragically killed in action on Monday 6 June 2011 (Afghanistan time). He was from the Sydney based Incident Response Regiment (IRR).

    His colleagues described him as a superb young man who was fit, happy go lucky and a great team member. Sapper Robinson was a dedicated and professional soldier whose skill belied his youth. Those who had the pleasure of meeting him instantly warmed to him and his easy going nature made him popular with his peers and chain of command alike.
    Sapper Robinson was awarded, the Australian Active Service Medal with clasp: International Coalition Against Terrorism (ICAT), Afghanistan Campaign Medal, the Australian Defence Medal and the NATO ISAF Medal.

    This was Sapper Robinson’s second deployment to Afghanistan, having deployed on Operation Slipper in 2007.

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