http://www.anzacday.org.au/

http://www.awm.gov.au/commemoration/anzac/anzac_tradition.asp

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/934

Just two days away from the biggest event on its calendar, the largest Returned Services League (RSL) branch in the country has declared war on RSL clubs, calling for an end to their 60-year relationship.

The president of the New South Wales RSL branch Don Rowe has accused the iconic clubs of damaging the RSL brand.

Mr Rowe says it is a split that has been decades in the making.

He says the cosy relationship between clubs and branches first started to come unstuck in the early 70s when RSL clubs started opening their doors to the general public.

"A lot of the clubs have gone completely away from the ideals and the aims of what they were founded for 50 or 60 years ago by the RSL branches," Mr Rowe said.

"Clubs have now become big business and that's what they are concentrating on.

"They don't really care if there is Anzac commemoration at the local memorial or not."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-22/nsw-rsl-branch-pushes-for-split-from-iconic-clubs/4644566

ANZAC day for Aboriginal people is also a day to remember dead mates, dead fathers, dead brothers who fell on the battlefield of history. Like for many soldiers and many people, these commemorations are not about war but about the tragedy of war... This year's Aboriginal ANZAC march was led by Governor Marie Bashir and General Peter Cosgrove...

Friends told me it was a well attended ceremony in which the long file of people going through the streets of Redfern were mostly people who had lost loved ones — a friend or a member of family — in useless battles, often with no medals nor recognition... The loss for some people there was still felt as hard as the day they were told their loved one would never return.

Apparently, the theme of this year's occasion was "Aboriginal prisoners of war"...

Though Aboriginal people fought as fully fledge soldiers since the Boer War in the late 1800, they were not recognised as citizen of their own country until 1967. I have had some Aboriginal friends who, having fought in the Vietnam War and despite having been given "citizenship", could not get a passport in the mid 1970s, yet...

But this is not a complaint about a country that has had some awful policies, but is a comment about a remembrance day... May the empty spaces left on the cenotaphs, remain empty of names and empty of new wars...

We need peace, not more wars...

May we all travel our life in peace... If the celebrations of "ANZAC day" achieve this aim, them medals won't be added to and no more shots will be fired...

Peace.

PS: apparently the ceremony also remembered Pemulwuy of the Eora as one of the first Aboriginal leaders fighting the English invasion of this country...

From Gary Foley

As an Aboriginal person who had family serve in World War I,  I am acutely aware that there are many Aboriginal families who had relatives who fought at Gallipoli. I am nevertheless always deeply concerned each Anzac Day about the way in which Gallipoli has become so politicised in the evolving memory of so many Australians. As historian Don Watson has written, “the more politicians and media commentators talk of the values of Anzac Day, traduce it for convenient contemporary instruction and daub themselves with the soldiers’ moral courage, the more like a kitsch religion it becomes".

In the process of the politicisation of Anzac Day and events almost a century ago on the Gallipoli peninsula, I feel that many Australians are further entrenching an attitude of denial about key aspects of their own history. They are seeking to divert attention away from earlier wars that had more to do with defining the Australian national character than Gallipoli did. By that I mean the colonial "wars" that many in Australia still have great difficulty in even accepting as wars.

The politicisation of our historical memory can be seen through two phases. The first phase was the sudden outburst of patriotic nationalism that emerged during the 1988 bicentennial celebrations. This event was tagged in a multimillion-dollar publicity campaign as the “Celebration of a Nation”, a slogan that was at the time parodied by Aboriginal activists as the “Masturbation of the Nation”. But it was this occasion, presided over by then Labor prime minister Bob Hawke, that led to the beginning of the phenomenon where young Australians bedeck themselves with Aussie flags and become patriotically drunk on nationalistic occasions such as Australia Day and Anzac Day.  

The other phase occurred during the period of John Howard’s prime ministership when two things happened. The first was when Howard attended the 90th anniversary of the ill-fated Gallipoli landing on Anzac Day in 2005 and declared that the Anzac legend had helped Australians define themselves. He said: "Anzac Day is a chance to reflect with pride on what it means to be Australian and the values we hold dear: determination, courage, compassion and resourcefulness". 

Howard had also presided over what became known as the “history wars” back home during his prime ministership. This was an unsavoury episode that is of particular importance to Aboriginal people because it involves the "whitewashing" and "airbrushing" of the history of Australia. In 1993 Professor Geoffrey Blainey coined the phrase "black armband view of history”. That phrase was used, pejoratively or otherwise, by some Australian social scientists, commentators and, particularly, Howard to describe historians whom they viewed as having presented an overly critical portrayal of Australian history since European settlement.

Implicit in Howard’s use of the phrase was a sense of denial about the true nature of the frontier conflict. That sense of denial was amplified during the “history wars” by a small group of conservative academics, most notably Keith Windschuttle, who became a celebrity in a nation seeking to continue its long tradition of denial about its treatment of Aboriginal people. Windschuttle was controversially appointed to the board of the ABC by the Howard government.

See toon at top...

Why does the Battle of Yorktown hold such a small place in collective memory in the United States?

The Battle of Yorktown, completed on October 19, 1781 after several days of fighting, saw the Franco-American troops prevail over the English troops. This battle marks the last major military event in the American War of Independence. Two years later, the Treaties of Paris and Versailles (September 1783) confirmed the birth of this new nation.

In Yorktown, "France offers independence to America": without the material and financial aid of Paris, without the commitment by thousands of its soldiers and sailors, the small army of the American federation born in 1776 could not have won. Yet this decisive competition has never really been recognized as such, both in historiography and in the collective memory of this country.

Read more:

https://www.les-crises.fr/yorktown-1781-une-victoire-occultee-par-le-nationalisme-americain-par-eric-juillot/

Well, I have no clue as to the "amnesia" about the Frenches helping the Americanishes against the Englishes... But one can guess:  The XYZ affair...

The XYZ Affair and the Quasi-War with France, 1798–1800

The XYZ Affair was a diplomatic incident between French and United States diplomats that resulted in a limited, undeclared war known as the Quasi-War. U.S. and French negotiators restored peace with the Convention of 1800, also known as the Treaty of Mortefontaine.

What was the purpose of this Quasi stuff: NOT REPAY THE FRENCH ANYTHING FOR THE VICTORY AT YORKTOWN... Simple. Not even say thank you... This would be my guess... And then the flow on was to create the US Empire by itself, for itself...

See also: https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/34475

The rest is history... Read from top.

GusNote: Yorktown may be the only last recent victory of the French against the English. Waterloo was a close call. See: https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/39525

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