There wouldn't be much tweeking to do to up the horrible factor. Even watering down the facts tenfold is still too ghastly. I am so over the whole religious cult aspect of the war. I'm sure it was not this bad some 20 years ago. It is easy to understand the need for relatives and descendents to create some sort of meaning in order to come to terms with their loss but all it does is make it easier for the next time around. Even as a kid I used to think when going past those countless "Lest we forget" memorials that the best way to remember the soldiers who were killed is to make sure that it does not happen again.
I have heard of Wilfred Owen the war poet but never bothered to read any of his stuff until the last few weeks. The same poem popped up on at least three different occasions. It is impossible to imagine for those who were not there but his words convey far more than the endless pontificating and glamorizing of the last few years.
With the whole Albany thing and that poem in mind, could not help but think that what they were really commemorating during that first weekend of November was the centenary of live exports of meat to the Middle East. A big story here was about the two brothers who are vets from the second world war who were invited to some dinner with big wigs over in Canberra but expected to pay their own way there. One of them snarkily remarked that the government had no problem paying their fares back in the 1940s but has pretty much forgotten about them since. But the really amazing thing is that each generation grows up believing that things will be different this time and the government won't abandon them after they lose their legs, their arms or their minds on active duty. They all suffer in silence rather than warning the young ones not to follow in their footsteps.
An American cartoonist hit the nail on the head absolutely spot on. Veterans Day We are more civilized here in Oz. We give them TWO days.
There's some scary stuff in that article about the toxic waste dump known as Fort McLellan in the USA. Here we had the government shamelessly exposing soldiers to nuclear radiation and then wriggling out of the responsibilities when they started getting cancer and all sorts of inexplicable ailments. If you let your so called allies test nukes in your own country then why even bother with an army? With friends like that who needs enemies?
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branchandroot
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Date: 2014-11-12 03:43 pm (UTC)I am so over the whole religious cult aspect of the war. I'm sure it was not this bad some 20 years ago. It is easy to understand the need for relatives and descendents to create some sort of meaning in order to come to terms with their loss but all it does is make it easier for the next time around. Even as a kid I used to think when going past those countless "Lest we forget" memorials that the best way to remember the soldiers who were killed is to make sure that it does not happen again.
I have heard of Wilfred Owen the war poet but never bothered to read any of his stuff until the last few weeks. The same poem popped up on at least three different occasions. It is impossible to imagine for those who were not there but his words convey far more than the endless pontificating and glamorizing of the last few years.
With the whole Albany thing and that poem in mind, could not help but think that what they were really commemorating during that first weekend of November was the centenary of live exports of meat to the Middle East.
A big story here was about the two brothers who are vets from the second world war who were invited to some dinner with big wigs over in Canberra but expected to pay their own way there. One of them snarkily remarked that the government had no problem paying their fares back in the 1940s but has pretty much forgotten about them since.
But the really amazing thing is that each generation grows up believing that things will be different this time and the government won't abandon them after they lose their legs, their arms or their minds on active duty. They all suffer in silence rather than warning the young ones not to follow in their footsteps.
An American cartoonist hit the nail on the head absolutely spot on.
Veterans Day
We are more civilized here in Oz. We give them TWO days.
There's some scary stuff in that article about the toxic waste dump known as Fort McLellan in the USA. Here we had the government shamelessly exposing soldiers to nuclear radiation and then wriggling out of the responsibilities when they started getting cancer and all sorts of inexplicable ailments. If you let your so called allies test nukes in your own country then why even bother with an army? With friends like that who needs enemies?