Tim O'Dwyer's article certainly is testament to Napier Waller having single-handedly succeeded as an artist: if the principal purpose of art is to make one think, there is not much doubt that it has made Tim think.

Click the crimson text link 'airman' in the fifth paragraph of the article. The image given calls to mind an account I read some time ago, but to which I have lost the reference.

Tim speculates as to the artist's airman's location being the bomb-damaged Cologne cathedral. Perhaps it was. Or perhaps it could have been a church in Kleve? A quick Google search turned up this site: http://72.14.235.132/search?q=cache:funXz0p4EEAJ:www.stmaryswoodford.org.uk/magazines/summermagazine2007.pdf+Bombed+Kleve+cathedral&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au . The relevant item commences on page 12 of the HTML version, on the third line from the top. Although the airman of this particular account was English, not Australian, many Australians served as RAF aircrew in WW2, and the circumstances and experiences encountered would have been similar for all.

The linked account is not the exact one I once read, but I am sure it refers to the same person and event. Not recorded in the linked account, but from memory, I recall a superb example of diplomatic understatement: when asked, some time after the war by a German resident, whether he (the airman) had ever seen Kleve before, the reply was to the effect of "Only once. From the air.".

Australians killed in action in WW2 numbered approximately half of those KIA in WW1. Of that total, 1 in 4 died as aircrew in the skies over north-west Europe. One can only speculate as to whether there had arisen a determination on the part of WW2 enlistees, perhaps as a result of the counsel of their elders, to serve where they could hit back to greatest effect, and not drown in mud.

Perhaps the look on Waller's airman reflects the artist's inner conflicts with respect to any counsel of his own given as a returned 1st AIF serviceman: in effect, "how did it come to all this?".

For another account: http://www.theaucklander.co.nz/hardquestion/story.cfm?storyID=3791789

reflect on this how come kids have to die for us

WHO IS THIS US that they need to die for us

i thought jesus died for us
but no i get it
your grand father died for us
no your grandfather died as a kid

because some clever banker wanted to take over some euro kings cartel to create their own cartel

200 million died for that [us] last century alone
soon one third of us going to die for the same blood thirsty cartel

lets get over the need to have people die for us
and have people live for a change

enough of this dying ccc-rap allready
how many dead do you need to die for you?

call a spade a spade
[stop shoveling this dying for us cccrap]

wake up your dying for them not us

This ANZAC day give a thought to the victims of Australia's first war overseas: the Boer War.

"The English term "concentration camp" was first used to describe camps operated by the British in South Africa during this conflict." After Britain, "Australia provided the largest number of troops followed by Canada.

ANZACs, defenders of freedom or bemedalled killers for a dying empire?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War#Australia

Remember them, and remember, no more war.

Bravo to OUG's call on the "they died for us" stuff. The entire ANZAC commemorative cult reinforces - repeatedly - a depoliticizing firewall. With that firewall in place, Australians are forbidden implicitly from questioning the barbaric imperialist politics that caused Australia's involvement. Such same enforced ignorance prevents Australians from considering the British Empire's major achievement of the (latest) Afghanistan War i.e., the safeguarding of the enormously increased opium production in the UK-Aus-Can-Dutch occupied southern Afghan provinces.

Behind the firewall, the mysticism of ANZAC now depends on an overdose of pathos; militarist and even national (much less British imperial) symbols all shuffle away discreetly, as if hiding from public view, afraid that Australians may see all the ghastly incongruities of their dubious achievement. Even the macho cult makes only token appearance, as in the increasingly hyped Anzac Day football match at the MCG - probably a more popular event after WW1's leg amputees died off in greater numbers.

As I stated elsewhere here (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=8819), Australia was on the wrong side in WW1. The embargoes, blockades, alliances, and gunboat extortionism before WW1 all compelled the central Europeans and Turks into a war for survival. The British Empire's sadistic treatment of the defeated (Germany in particular) gave the strongest impetus towards that country's later fascist imitation of the same brutal sadism and racism.

Australia was an unthinking, gullible lackey in the whole enterprise. ANZAC mythology now perpetuates such a condition, holding us back still from realizing our independence.

And forget the PC, metrosexual anti-war sentimentality: the virtues of combat can still be considered virtues because they are essential to defeating such plagues as imperialism, fascism, and racism. Consider the celebrations of independence wars in former colonies. Sadly, Australia does not yet fit such a definition.

'Let us be moved not only by the remembrance of war-time killing and suffering but also, …by war-time "destruction of beauty and human ideals".'

We'll have much more to remember quite soon. It looks as if the government is planning to increase the size of the Australian contingent in Afghanistan.

See: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/26/2552712.htm?section=world

And Australians have allegedly inflicted a "major blow" on the Taliban.

See:

http://australianetworknews.com/stories/200904/2552653.htm?desktop

Quote:

"The Taliban made their stand in a mud walled house. But an American warplane destroyed it with a 500 pound bomb."

Meanwhile the Taliban are inflicting a few "major blows" of their own – mainly on Pakistani civilians.

See:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/world/asia/26buner.html?em

For an insight into what the Taliban insurgency is doing to the Pakistani civilian population listen to this BBC podcast.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p002rs6w

If the Taliban do manage to seize Pakistan's nukes those of us who survive will have quite a bit of remembering to do.

Meanwhile the government is reportedly planning the biggest build up of Australia's armed forces since World War 2. See:

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,25383845-953,00.html

Quote:

"The multi-billion-dollar investment in maritime defence, including the F-35 stealth plane, a doubling of the submarine fleet, and powerful new surface warships."

Looks as if the market for war memorials and rememberances is about to enter a bull phase.

As a small isolated nation in a turbulent region whose main ally is looking a bit shop worn Australia is going to need a lot more bang for its buck than conventional weapons can deliver. My guess is that Australia will become a "virtual nuclear power" like Japan. We won't have the bomb but we'll have the capability of developing and deploying nukes fast should the need arise. "Fast" in this context means with a 2 year lead time.

When the Taliban were in Kabul before the West’s invasion, opium production there was at around 100 tonnes per year. Right now Afghan opium yields are over 8,000 tonnes per year; that’s a neatly calculable jump of 8,000%!

Opium farmers in the remote areas of Burma hardly get a look-in on the global heroin market nowadays. And yep, Burma’s nationalist junta is vilified in the West as the bad guys, prompted by the successes the Burmese Army have had defending their sovereignty against the "Opium War" strategy and its overarching Globalization empire.

Not so on the Afghan front, however: the world smack trade is now around 90% Afghan-supplied (I recall recent sources claimed 92% and 97%). But why discriminate against "Afghan" involvement, usually such low-rung operators? We mustn’t forget the valuable protection and "mentoring" offered by western armies to such free trade. Around 80% of opium production is in Helmand, Nimroz, Farah, Uruzgan and Kandahar provinces, predominantly patrolled by Commonwealth troops. The warlords running these programs have a free rein.

On a huge scale of money laundering, Afghan opium is now valued by corrupt (mostly western) financiers as an essential part of their hedge and equity fund rackets. At least 5% of funds derives from the illicit drug trade, as one of the few remaining "real" commodities in the globalized "free trade" finance sector; the rest mostly compromises toxic derivatives garbage of glorified and massively bailed-out debt.

Any military operations for international stability and security should start with raids against the usurers' criminal havens in such imperial finance centers as: the Cayman Is., Isle of Man, Dutch Antilles, Antigua, the Channel Is., and Amsterdam and the City of London itself.

Mil-observer,

By all means let's invade the Cayman Islands, etc.

Then again we could simply decriminalise the use of heroin, cocaine, cannabis etc and give junkies the drug of their choice on prescription free of charge. The drugs would be sourced from carefully controlled state-owned greenhouses.

The dealing of drugs would still be illegal; however as the profit would be gone – the dealers could not compete with free drugs from the government. Those involved in the supply of illegal narcotics would have to find some other way to make a buck.

Let's face it. Prohibitions never work. The so-called "war on drugs" is farcical. It does more harm than good. There is no "military solution" to this issue.

I have reached the stage where I suspect anyone who wants to continue the so-called "war on drugs" of being either stupid, a self-righteous prick, in the pay of the drug suppliers or a combination of all three.

mil-observer

Your cross post was excellent. Thanks, and fully agree.

My comments above were gender based, but my intent was to raise awareness about how ordinary people keep war alive for reasons within ourselves that, as a society, we still don't seem to want to analyse or even confront.

Anti-war criticism tends to focus on the warmongering of the powerful and treats ordinary people as unwitting victims. Yet, our leaders would not keep involving us in war after war if there weren't so many eager young warriors to fight them.

Confronting male masochism - particularly the type found in the song 'The band played WM' - is an absoute taboo, but until we confront it as a society, we will continue to be trapped in endless war.

Oops ... sorry. I posted to the wrong discussion. My above comment was meant for the thread 'Some Anzac Day songs'.

Drugs destroy people - as individuals and as communities. Legalizing drugs merely destroys more people via normalization/destigmatization, widening access and lowering prices. Youth in particular are most vulnerable to the addictive poisons. Even pro-legalization hacks concede that legalization would raise the number of addicts, as expressed in that infamous March 2009 issue of The Economist.

Of course, none of that should surprise, because history teaches us that it has happened before. British, Dutch and French imperialists all issued dealers' licences for opium since the 19th century, while the British fed ganja to many of their Indian coolies. The consistent point of such policies was to create a passive, dependent and apathetic population, while boosting profits via addictive commodities. Both Adam Smith and Karl Marx applauded the rise of opium as an openly traded commodity; Marx even claimed that opium trade broke through some stereotypical "oriental despotism" in China.

It is well known that the British Empire used opium to destroy China before, during and after the two "Opium Wars" of the mid-19th century. Having ransacked and plundered China under the leadership of Gordon (later killed in Sudan by a resistance which today's imperialists would label "terrorists" and "human rights abusers"), the Empire forced the Qing Dynasty to permit and support opium dealing throughout the entire country. In fact, the ensuing social devastation and corruption left scars that severely impaired the modernization of China and the health of the Chinese people.

Where not corrupted and perverted by the duplicity of liberalist whore-politicians, the War on Drugs is one of the few "just wars" going.

So pass the ammunition. But the priority targets must be the narcotic industry's big profit makers; as I explained before, the Cayman Islands is just one of the major drug dealers' many money-laundering centers.

[SJF: Np. Reply and original thread @ http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=8819&page=0 ]

mill-observer.
Why then do the countries with the most fervent anti-drugs policy have the most addicts and the most corruption?
Why were drugs not a problem in Western cultures until prohibition?
About 75% of crime is drugs related. Is stopping a few phyconauts *really* worth the violence, crime and expense?
There are many beneficiaries from prohibition, but mostly they are the criminal gangs, the criminal financiers...basically the same cast of characters that profit from war.
You give yourself away with the "liberalist whore-politicians" line.
True, more Right wingers make money from drugs and hence want the prohibition to continue...but attacking people for a desire for freedom? This is like calling "virtue" a bad thing! (Also common from Right: "Do gooders!")
I'd just like my police to have time for real crime.
stevenlmeyer has it right: War does more harm than good...unless you put no value on human freedom and human lives and think it is virtuous to curtail people's freedoms.
Why is the press not particularly worried that the "good war" in Afghanistan has had the effect of massive increase in heroin? Why no mention of the gas pipeline? War, like drugs appears to be too profitable for humans to deal honestly. Remove the profit and the lies and perhaps peace has a chance.
BTW. We clearly "forgot" the ANZAC lesson, having repeated it in Iraq. Killing for politics is evil. Only defense of the homeland justifies state sponsored killing.

Several amazing assumptions here. Sorry if I interrupted anyone's session of hallucinogenic intoxication!

If "75% of crime is drug-related", as ozandy claims, then how can we support ozandy's claim that "There are many beneficiaries from prohibition, but mostly they are the criminal gangs, the criminal financiers"? Specifically, if prohibition imprisons or even shoots a big dealer (as it so often has, like Pablo Escobar) then how is that dealer a beneficiary of prohibition?

ozandy: "countries with the most fervent anti-drugs policy have the most addicts and the most corruption...drugs not a problem in Western cultures until prohibition"

No. As UNODC’s Director-General Antonio Maria Costa countered to a Dutch cannabis promoter at last month's Vienna conference of the UN’s Commission on Narcotic Drugs, Dutch policy has not brought that country low rates of drug use. Costa referred to official statistics to demolish that myth, reminding conference participants that the Dutch have the largest anti-drug budget (0.7% of GDP) all because of their liberalist policies on narcotics. Costa reminded that the Dutch are changing their policies precisely because of their serious problems in such liberalization.

And to claim "drugs not a problem until prohibition"! Such tragically confused logic fails to see that prohibition was introduced precisely because the drugs became a problem, not the other way around. As Costa declared: "Drugs are not harmful because they are controlled; they are controlled because the are harmful," and "a policy change is needed against crime, not in favor of drugs".

And what's with the passive anti-war cliches like "war does more harm than good"? How was that calculated? Should the Chinese, for example, have NOT resisted when the British Empire's gunboats came with opium and missionaries? Should fascism have been allowed to simply roll through wherever it wanted in the 1940s? "War does more harm than good": such a silly, irrational assertion.

And spare us the reptile-brain "Right-Left" binary stuff. In their practically applied barbarism and callous disregard for workers and other poor people, imperialist drug legalizers are as obviously "right wing fascist" as we could ever expect to find in the political scene.

ok seems the war on drug users is a cultural cost of war[as anzac mourning has gone a respectfull time past,..lets talk about war[war allows for war powers[the reason we have a drug war is purely so govt can exceed its limitations

see that the constitution gives laws constituted powers[to create acts for those who gain their powers under the con-stitution[it purely controls those who fall under the act]..other than that we have criminal law[needing a victim[and civil law..[the law of contract]

drug/law is percicuted under civil/acts..[acts that are MEANT to control govt acts..lol//[not the people]..but by clever lawyer tactics 20 out of 21 drug-users plead guilty..[despite no clear victim,..appart from the idiots,..conned decieved and tricked into pleading guilty..via[creating a contract]

but here is the scam 89 percent of the drug guilty/pleas are for a plant..[legally a plant affixt into the ground cant be possesed as the law deems it to belong to the ground,..yet police can come and remove the plant[legally'a'fixture]..and create a fungable..[a tradable commodity]...then get the retards to plead/guilty to possesion..[by police creating a signed contract;caled a con-fession],..then they take the contracted-confession to a civil/court and get the judge to enforce their con-tract...lol its a joke]

for the few who plead not guilty they yet have been coerced into signing contracts..[to get out of jail,..then by submitting to the rape of procedure..[then lose their legal;standing by responding to legal terms such as defendant[or mr]..that are legally suss terms inplying guilt..[but no lawyer going to tell you that...lol..they clean up huge by this war on the ignorant and stoned

under magnacarta/law testimony of REAL_INJURY needs two/witnesses..not self incriminalisation,[via contract obtained under jures/[duress]..by men with guns and tape recorders seeking to make contract to create self/incrimination a crime

here is a real scam,..conducted as a real war..using the rules of war[where police are distracted from real_crime to percicute children mearly using a plant..[read gen 1;29..god gives us EVERY herb/plant bearing seed..]..yet the spawn of satan will deem a plant a drug them percicute children for a joint[..so it can fight drug wars to kill his other children]

OUG: "...legally a plant affixt into the ground cant be possesed as the law deems it to belong to the ground".

Wrong OUG. It's a simple property issue, whether via direct ownership or custodial responsibility. Whatever tricks police pull to extract confessions (and thereby faster convictions) are all grounds for concern about the legal system itself, and the tendency for English law and its descendants to let around half of the actually "guilty' off scot free (with the help of mercenary counsel too, of course).

Btw, on plants and the God-given innocence of nature as something untouchable: would you propose that "plant" status means intervention or controls from state are intrinsically immoral and/or unlawful? Do you propose such special exemption status for coca, opium, peyote, daytura and other narcotic plants too, all much stronger and more dangerous than cannabis?