ANZAC DAY
US military building up in Oz
AS we have now commemorated Anzac Day, it is time to get vigilant about what sneaky surprises are occurring to endanger our way of life and families.
This past week a rotation of US marines into Darwin jumped to 1600 plus tools of war. We were told by our Prime Minister months ago that the marines were for training purposes only.
The US Commander on television in Darwin said that deployment to trouble spots in both the Indian and Pacific regions was also an option.
What, where, how have we committed our Australian soil as a launching base and target. We must demand no attack is to start from Australia without a full Australian Parliament debate.
The US will tell us after the event. Years later we will discover that politicians knew in advance. It has taken Japan over 70 years to have the US start scaling down bases in Japan and similar in the Philippines. These places were sick of murders, rapes, sexual diseases, narcotics, prostituting local families reliance on US dollars and US service personnel tried by their own tribunals or ghosted out.
Adding insult to injury the US is talking up a naval base south of Perth in West Australia, including nuclear submarine and nuclear weaponry. This must be an affront to our good Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation alliances and trade with Indonesia, India, Vietnam and China.
The US has not accepted defeat in Vietnam and protected CIA black operations in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.
Here we go again with the profits of war because the tools, having been made, have now got to be used.
Ravages of war
HOW fitting that reader Jan Smith’s selfabasing letter was published under Kudelka’s incisive cartoon (Letters, April 25).
Wars unsettle families for generations in ways that transcend politics. In my mother’s mail last year was a sad missive from the army’s Unrecovered War Casualties project regretting no DNA match to her uncle Andrew, obliterated as an underage volunteer on the Western Front. His loss stirred his sisters to engage in the successful anticonscription campaigns and his name passed to my brother for safe keeping. Andrew’s returned soldier brothers remembered him fondly but never marched on Anzac Day. I am sure their Irish working-class origins would feed Jan’s cartoon understanding of the dreaded Left, but please, let it rest for one day of the year.
Matter of pride
JAN Smith warns against questioning Anzac Day lest it destroy pride in our history but then repeats the myth that Australia was somehow an untested nation prior to 1915. There is much to be proud of in our history, especially our democratic history. We are one of the oldest continuing democracies in the world and many of the foundations of a strong society were established well before 1915.
In 1900, New Zealand and Australia had the highest GDP per capita in the world and we were considered world leaders in social and political processes, the Scandinavia of the times.
April 25 happens to be also the date of A new way to have your say themercury.com.au readers have a new way to have their say. It’s free to use, just register and have your say. For more details and to register, visit the website. the elections of 1896, when South Australian women were the first in the world to be able to stand for parliament and only the second place, just after New Zealand, where women voted.
It was also the first referendum held in Australia, where free secular education was resoundingly supported. It is appropriate that we solemnly commemorate and take pride in those who have given their lives to protect our country but we must also take pride in the very things for which they died.
Culture warriors
JAN Smith laments that the Left, whoever they are, “as usual will denigrate this day”. I suggest Jan looks at the Kudelka cartoon in the same day commemorating those who continue to fight in the ongoing culture wars.
Diminishing desire
JAN Smith, the Right does not have custodianship of Anzac Day but, since PM Howard, have succeeded in turning a day of remembrance and reflection into a jingoistic day of nationalist chest-beating.
I am a returned serviceman and consider myself Centre Left but every year my desire to participate in the growing circus of who can remember more loudly and more publicly led by politicians who seem to love creating veterans but are loathe to support them on their return diminishes.
Upgrade airport
THE Editorial ( Mercury, April 24) personifies a state going gangbusters in the tourism industry but also raises questions about the makeover of Hobart International Airport. For decades Tasmania has been marketed as a prime tourist destination and not unexpectedly our state is now reaping the rewards. The challenge is to provide a capital city airport with state-of-the-art facilities sooner than later.
Peacemakers forgotten
ANZACS invaded Gallipoli for British patriotism. More than 60,000 Diggers got slaughtered. Not one died for Australia. Anzac Day is promoted as a holy day when we are told to remember those who died fighting for freedom and democracy. Not a word about those imprisoned and attacked for protesting against militarism and conscription.
Mountain issues
I TOO have concern about traffic congestion if the cable car goes ahead. I am content to travel as far as the Springs, and if any visitors want to see the view I take them to Mt Nelson. I don’t want more eyesores on the mountain, and I am anxious about the economics of the venture. I have travelled to Cape Town where the cable-car trips are often cancelled because of high winds, and I feel the same could happen here.
Echoes of Trump
JUST reading a book about Henry VIII and the similarities to Donald Trump are amazing. Henry failed to heed advice from his ministers and changed his mind from one minute to the next so that all around him had no idea what he was going to do next. Sound familiar!