ANZAC day is being perverted into a fantasy, a celebration that all is good and that we can blithely deny responsibility for what our nation does. People died in wars because our governments GOT IT WRONG.

Those people die in hope that we survivors would at least do better, take responsibility for what Canberra does, watch what decisions our Lords & Masters make on our behalf, and where necessary intercede.

One example close to my heart is West Papua, a nation of indigenous Australians who refused to aid the Imperial Japanese forces, a nation which aided the Americans who landed there in 1944; a nation which Canberra in 1962 helped to illegally trade to Indonesian rule by supporting UN General Assembly resolution 1752 (XVII). The RSL in 1962 tried to speak against it but a stooge lied to the League saying there was nothing that could be done to help our WW-ii allies.

- - Out of respect for the fallen and for the future they hoped to help, we should do better than pretend Canberra is a perfect; ANZAC day is the one day on which we should tell Canberra what we think, that would be a more fitting memorial.

ANZAC should be a reflection about the sacrifice that others have made to keep our personal freedoms.

yes sacrifice..such a great buzzwords
suffering saints..god want's no suffearing

i dont want some kid to die..he didnt scarifice everytghing..for me
govt stole it from him..just as govt is taxing people to death today
revenue raising for mates

colusion between mates
notice the towo big loosers of the war
japan/germany..are industrial giants...[it was to seize that industrial capactity..!]

position [out of depression]]
that your grandpop's/peers/friends/mates/lovers..died
lest we forget the homo sex...the boys club loves to keep its boys in line

yes religeons..>..are in the same insane boys club
but i love god..[and try to love his creations]..
but religeons is that staw too far

please stop thinking
that loving god mean's i gotta love religeon

religion serves evil
[for proof the concept of 'a just war']
that just dont invalidate 'thou shalt not murder'

get it yet
im not into religeon
in just into god..who is *in everything..[omni=present]

no stuff it

im not over it yet

jesus died for our sins
kids dying for our security
is the same!..insane perversion

that YE DO TO THE LEAST
ye did to him!

how thick the warmongers be

One under god sometimes can see through nonsense. They died for our freedoms? How did it serve the cause of freedom to put one fourth of the world’s land surface under British control? How did it serve freedom to put Boer families and blacks in concentration camps where many of them died? How did it serve freedom when the British fought two opium wars so they could continue to sell opium to the Chinese. At that time one seventh of the income of the British government was from the opium trade.

We can remember those who protested the wars. We can remember those who kept us out of war. Bertrand Russell went to prison in the UK for opposing WW1. E. V. Debs went to prison in the US for the same reason. Emma Goldman was deported from the US. She protested WW1. President Eisenhower who led the Allied forces in western Europe during WW2 made peace in Korea and kept the US from getting involved in the Vietnamese war. Unfortunately Kennedy and Johnson put the US in war there.

At the onset of WW1 the British wanted to involve poets and writers to support the thrust for war. Thomas Hardy did not go along. He wrote:

The Man He Killed

Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have set us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!

But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.

I shot him dead because--
Because he was my foe,
Just so: my foe of course he was;
That's clear enough; although

He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,
Off-hand like--just as I--
Was out of work--had sold his traps--
No other reason why.

Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat, if met where any bar is,
Or help to half a crown.

Let us remember those who protested war, kept us out of war and pointed out the evil of war.

continued

continued

Wilfred Owen died fighting for England in WW1. Before he died he realized the horror and senselessness. He recognised the lie in DULCE ET DECORUM EST - the first words of a Latin saying (taken from an ode by Horace). The words were widely understood and often quoted at the start of WW1. They mean "It is sweet and right." The full saying ends the poem: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - it is sweet and right to die for your country. In other words, it is a wonderful and great honour to fight and die for your country.

http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html contains Owen’s poem together with the notes on it:

DULCE ET DECORUM EST(1)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares(2) we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest(3) began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots(4)
Of tired, outstripped(5) Five-Nines(6) that dropped behind.
Gas!(7) Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets(8) just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime(9) . . .
Dim, through the misty panes(10) and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering,(11) choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud(12)
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest(13)
To children ardent(14) for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.(15)

Wilfred Owen
8 October 1917 - March, 1918