It's Un-Australian To Not Question ANZAC Day

Hello Turkey, Russia, Germany, United Kingdom, France, and of course Aoteroa (New Zealand), and India, Canada, and all of the other nationalities involved in the 1915 conflict on the Gallipoli shore, where European powers played-out their Empirical aspirations and their generals and politicians used their young men as virtually expendable cannon-fodder...

It is simply not my place to tell others what to feel about ANZAC Day, particularly Turkey/Turkish people, but I do consider it an obligation to honour my grandfathers by adhering to and acknowledging the example they set me...and that example is to question the very nature of what has become very nearly a circus...I question whether many of the people who turn-out to Dawn Services and/or go to Gallipoli, etc, really have any idea what it is they are 'recognising'...it's not particularly their fault as individuals, but I'm sick of hearing the same trite slogans trotted out by students and relatives, etc, because it very quickly becomes meaningless...

Don't take my word for it, really research for yourselves the genuine motivations of the Dardenelles Campaign, and particularly the role that Australians, New Zealanders, et al, were cast to play by our Empirial overlords...we (ANZAC) were the distraction designed to make things easier for British troops landing elsewhere on the peninsula, and the overall discussion (predominantly between Britain and France) was about how to carve up the 400 year old Ottoman Empire after it was defeated...

And today we turn out like prize livestock to applaud the same British Royal family, who 100 years ago were almost predominantly German, the same Britain that officially turned it's back on Australia when Singapore fell to the Japanese in February 1942, cutting us loose as expendably uneconomical and therefore irrelevant...again, read ya' history books...(and then go looking for the truth as well-Ed)...indeed Ed, it is often said that 'the winners write history' and their collective recollectionings can tend to be a little, shall we say, self-excusatory...but I digress... 

I do not apologise this time for not doing a post for a coupla' days because this past week has been a confronting and deeply depressing time, and if I've even strayed near the blog, I've been churning out chunks of un-postable anger and vengeful vitriole...(well if that was 'un-postable', how much more angry was it than what's below?-Ed)...no, it's all angry mate, just anger parred-back to something a little less 'sue-able' and/or arrestable...resultantly, I also do not apologise for the infused fury and impending sense of quiet rage that pervades this post and I would like to preface it with a brief re-iteration of my experience of ANZAC Day and what it means to me...I know I've been through a lot of this in previous ANZAC Day posts on this 'ere blog, but not only has very little changed, that change has seldom been for the better...

My life story is often one of extraordinary privilege and even luxury as befits a middle-class white-boy born in this country, this great wide land...(this stolen land-Ed)...indeed Ed, indeed we did steal it, with murder, mayhem, disease, and deceit, and that segues into the outrageously disgraceful way we have treated Aboriginal people...and an opportunity for me personally to acknowledge both 1) those horrendous practices and their devastating outcomes, and 2) the service of Aboriginal people in 'their countries' Armed Services...(and whilst not legally recognised as 'human beings' under 'Terra Nulleus'-Ed)...indeed...

(You know, I find it quite amusing that Australia's first European settlers were predominantly convicts transported because of their crimes, and yet the Empire that judged and shunned them made it's fortunes largely with slavery, murder, and theft, not least of all in the very country to whence It had dispatched it's crooksEd)...interesting observation Ed, but the story I'm telling today starts with the extraordinary privilege of being a boy growing-up in 1970's Australia, and having both my grandfathers still alive, and both of them decorated WWII veterans, and neither having ever attended an ANZAC Day march/commemoration or the RSL (Returned and Services League) despite the fact or even because they would have been lauded as the gentle heroes they were...because of them I have the dual luxuries of a gentle heart and the knowledge born of violent experience...

Pops was a Scottish child immigrant who enlisted and served in the Australian Army as a 'Rat of Tobruk' and fought in many other 'iconic' theatres/campaigns across the Mediterranean,/North Africa, and in New Guinea/the Pacific...he several times made Corporal due to deaths in his unit, but was regularly busted back to Private because of his 'larrikin' nature, including spending time in Gladstone Gaol for briefly going AWOL (Absent With Out Leave)...I spent many ANZAC Days with Pops and Grandma at their house...

*Graphic Violence Warning*- I can only recall one specific 'war story' that he told, a shocking story about his first night in Tobruk when his unit strayed into German positions and his mate was shot through the head...they spent that first night fighting their way back into their own trenches, and then the next 2 days fighting to retrieve the body...and when he grabbed his mates body by the ankles, the corpse had already rotted in the desert sun and the feet came away in his hands...they had to use a sheet/tarp to fetch back his body...I cannot describe the look on Pops' face when he told this story...

He was far happier to 'travelogue' his service as part of the Oz Army...bazaars in Tunisia where they tried to sell the Aussies "chicken, no' shnake...no' shnake, chicken" (as said with a Scottish/Tunisian accent), or time at Gladstone, etc...and Papa was the same, they rarely if ever spoke of their war 'exploits' and neither were ever involved in anything remotely to do with their service...(apart from the Daws Rd Repatriation Hospital-Ed)...indeed, and I'll get to that, now in fact...

Because I've been switching channels to avoid that prime piece of work, that moralless, loathsome, spotted reptile, that betrayer and deceiver, SA Labor's new Veteran's Minister, Martin Hamilton-Smith...how this rancid turncoat can even show his face in public is indicative of an ego swollen to true insanity...(no wonder he fits in so well with Labor then-Ed)...indeed...my opinion of this person aside, how is he allowed to run in a safe Liberal seat, as the endorsed  Liberal candidate, and then when elected, just betray all involved and jump to Labor?...(well because 1) the Liberals are so pathetically in-effective, and appear to be more than happy in that role as a perpetual political irrelevance...but far more important is 2) the one genuine bipartisan issue in South Australian politics, the pro-paedophile corruption...he's as absolutely complicit in the St Martins Cover-up as pretty much every other scumbag in Sow Strayan parliament...oh, and beyond that, he immediately gets a massive pay-rise as a Minister-Ed)...super...

Ah, Marty Moose, dear oh dear...just another Liberal leader who knows all about the St Martins Cover-up and has chosen to be complicit because it puts money in his pocket...whatta' disgrace...he gets paid a small fortune for his betrayal, itself an opportunity to actively engage in covering-up paedophilia above and beyond being just a pathetically complicit, irrelevant Liberal Opposition leader...(I think the terms 'pathetically complicit', and 'irrelevant' are KPIs for the Liberal Party in South Australia-Ed)...oh Ed, scythingly eviscerating yet hilariously abusive, you are a lark... 

Marty is a simpering personification of the rank selfishness and pro-paedophile corruption that defines South Australia...nothing more, nothing less...I remind availees that I spoke with Marty when he was in Mt Gambier, as the then Liberal leader (late 2007, early 2008?), and in the company of then (and still) Member for McKillop, Mitch Williams...I just happened upon the pair of them crossing the old Civic Centre carpark where the new Library is now, whilst on my way to the bus stop...for 20-30 minutes I described the St Martins Lutheran School Child Abuse Cover-up and they were animatedly shocked and dismayed, saying 'send me stuff', etc...(and what happened?-Ed)...whatta' ya' think? nothing, business as usual SA style...

And now Marty's Labor's front man for the appallingly deceitful and disrespectful closure of the Daws Rd Repat Hospital...my father is named after the man who was killed in Tobruk and another of Pops' mates whom was a patient at Daws Rd for the decade it took him to die of successive gangrene infections resulting from a lower leg wound, and Pops died at Daws Rd...it is an obscene deceit to try and justify this land grab by the bankrupt Labor government by saying that Daws Rd is 'run-down' and that services will be offered at major hospitals instead...anyone with a fundamental understanding of veterans and their multiple health issues, knows full well that a dedicated facility is the medically ethical and expedient thing to do...and then lets start-in about the moral obligation we have to these people...and then there's Mighty Marty...

It is not my place to tell someone who was involved with any conflict under the service of the Nation of Australia or Aotearoa (New Zealand), what they should and shouldn't think, I'm merely honouring the memory of my ancestors, my grandfathers, by defining the reality of what ANZAC Day was to them, a massively traumatic time that both would have happily lived without...they would have been deeply upset by the relentless often mindless media coverage that long ago stampeded from respectful remembrance into frenzy...gourd knows I broke weeks ago and have been changing channels furiously to avoid ANZAC coverage...and I know exactly where and when it was I broke because actor Sam Neill loomed up on my telly ask-telling me 'why is ANZAC the one we choose to remember?', and my first thought was, 'we don't get a bloody choice, mate, our obligation to honour ANZAC gets shoved down our throats with often cynical agenda...  

Gourd knows, often enough in my life I seek succour and strength and motivation in the sense of security that I'm not living my life in some dusty bullet-riddled foxhole in North Africa, or some mud pit in New Guinea, or stuck in the trenches of WWI, etc...(in my experience it's an almost daily exercise for you-Ed)...well, I got some shizzle goin' on, yeah?...(yeah, fair enough-Ed)...

Not A Word Of A Lie: in that I've referred a coupla' times to the Universe reaching out and giving me a pat on the head...(yeah, I remember-Ed)...yeah well this time it was a slap in the face that also sort of went up-side my head...(whaaa?-Ed)...I came home from my first and most likely last ANZAC Dawn Service, switched on the telly, and there was a close-cropped frame-up of our charming Premier Jay Weatherill, that buttoned-down slice of rolled-gold f***ery...and as the camera panned-back, Jay set down his wreath at the Remembrance Shrine on North Tce (Adelaide) and stepped back with all the rehearsed solemn sincerity he could muster...and I snapped like a dry twig with PMT...more,

 Tomorrow: South Australia Is An Insult To ANZAC

(Yay, a whole state that by it's very functioning is an insult to the memory of all those whom we allegedly hold in such high esteem-Ed)...indeed, because we insult our ancestors when we let these pro-paedophile scumbags run this state and turn our children into vulnerable prey...and yes, I'm talking to you too Mt Gambier City Council, because by your actions, with your complicit corruption, so you too have betrayed the children in this town, in this entire sick state...

(And then they have the bare-faced audacity, the sheer shreckin' nerve to churn out one of the most cynically hypocritical pieces of dross these sad ol' eyes have seen, their ludicrous Children's Charter-Ed)...and again recently...and I notice that The Border Watch newspaper claims to support this particular document...more tomorrow...

I am Nick Fletcher and this is my blog...and every day I try to hold the line, albeit a line of one, in a bizarre pitched conflict with State Authorities as those Authorities remain firmly committed to the St Martins Lutheran School Child Abuse Cover-up...and every day I suffer for it quite literally tooth and nail, physically and mentally...and the thanks I get is clearly somewhere well over the horizon...cheers and laters...