Revising New Zealand's history on ANZAC day
New Zealands history of state spying
The New Zealand Anzac Poppy
09/15/08: The day history repeated: Morelia Independence Day Bombing .
Reflections on Youth Day...
Afghan Cricket Team on the Road to Making History
Today in New Zealand and Australia was ANZAC Day. The day commemorates New Zealanders killed in war and also honours returned servicemen and women. The date itself marks the anniversary of the landing of New Zealand and Australian soldiers – the Anzacs – on the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey in 1915. Red Poppy's are worn as they are in other countries on Remembrance Sunday, but this year some prominent voices on the left are not going to be pinning the paper flowers to their shirts. In an article entitled “Why I won't be wearing a red poppy” activist John Minto wrote;
We will once more be lectured on Anzac Day with predictable speeches from our political leaders who will tell us that those whose lives were lost "died for the freedoms we enjoy today".
It's not true. This is the Great Lie from the Great War. It's a phrase which has meaning for World War II but has nothing to do with the mindless, jingoistic madness which led a generation of young New Zealanders to be decimated on the far side of the world
Chris Trotter notes that The Dardanelles Campaign was not undertaken in the name of freedom and democracy “but to strengthen the sword-arm of one of the most brutal autocracies on the face of the planet” Trotter goes on to write that the New Zealanders who visit the war memorials in Gallipoli on ANZAC day do not not know the true history of World War 1, and New Zealand's involvement.
They do not know, because they have not been told, that the ANZAC’s died for an imperial economy which, even in 1915, had ceased to be internationally competitive...They do not know, because they have not been told, that the ANZACs slaughtered tens of thousands of young Turks so that the British and their French allies could carve up the territories of the Ottoman Empire between them – an act of diplomatic depravity which continues to generate death and despair across the Middle East to this very day.
Matt McCarten has pointed out that during World War 1, New Zealanders who refused to be drafted and sent to the war were deemed traitors and brutally imprisoned and called hypocrisy on the fact that despite the call of 'lest we forget' associated with ANZAC day New Zealand has volunteered in every war called by Britain and the United States.
Our latest round of military adventurism is helping the invasion of Afghanistan where we participate in killing Afghans who oppose their country's occupation by foreign forces. We tell ourselves that when innocent civilians are killed or mutilated, it's unfortunate, but somehow acceptable, because we're fighting for their freedom.
The number of New Zealanders attending the dawn parades on ANZAC day appears to be increasing as we move further away from the Great War and, it seems, forget history, I am reminded of a line from the Australian folk song 'And the band played Waltzing Matilda'; “And the young people ask, "What are they marching for?" And I ask myself the same question”
