Happy Anzac Day

"I remember watching a TV news story some years back about the Anzac Day ceremony at Gallipoli.

"The reporter was interviewing a young Australian wrapped in a flag, and asked her why she had come to Gallipoli.

"'I came to pay my respects,' she said. 'They died so that we could be free.'

"I was utterly depressed by her answer. Gallipoli, of course, had nothing to do with dying for anyone's freedom, and that is the tragedy of the story.

"For that young woman to have travelled all that way, braved the freezing wait for dawn, and still not really have a clue about what happened there and why it was about so much more than pro patria mori, it seemed to me to be another tragedy."

--Ben Knight, "Breaking through our Gallipoli 'myth'", ABC News, 2008 November 2

Gallipoli battlefield cemetery

statue of an Ottoman soldier carrying a wounded ANZAC soldier

"As the cries of the wounded continued and the hot sun rose, the Anzacs were moved to pity. They had never seen such bravery before. A truce was arranged and Anzacs and Turks together helped to bury the dead."

--A.K. Macdougall, Australia in History: Gallipoli and the Middle East, 1915-18, 2004


"We mounted over a plateau and down through gullies filled with thyme, where there lay about 4000 Turkish dead. It was indescribable. One was grateful for the rain and the grey sky.... I talked to the Turks, one of whom pointed to the graves. 'That's politics,' he said."

--Aubrey Herbert, Captain in the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, 1915 May

ARMISTICE DAY WAR POETRY READING

Australian soldiers in Ypres, Belgium, 1917

photo by Frank Hurley

At 11:00 on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, “The War to End All Wars” came to an end.

Designated Armistice Day, it is still commemorated as such in France and Belgium, as Remembrance Day in the UK and Commonwealth countries, as Volkstrauertag in Germany, and as Veterans Day in the United States.

In World War I, on the Western Front, a years-long stalemate between the German, French, and British armies would see millions of men die pointlessly in the living horror of trench warfare.

Out of this colossal tragedy arose poetry that is among the most beautiful, disturbing, and compelling poetry ever written.

“These men are worth your tears.”
--Wilfred Owen

Classic World War I Poetry

read by Radigan Neuhalfen

Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, Cafe Amsterdam

2010 November 10, Wednesday

20:00 (8:00 PM)

Stupid, Greedy, Fat, Stupid Americans

> Subject: FW: OH USA YEAH RIGHT
>
> Right here in our own country:
>
> food banks are empty
>
> unemployment is over 15 million
>
> repossessed homes are at a record pace
>
> probably 1,000,000 in 2010
>
> repossessed cars at a record pace
>
> bank failures almost 2 per week
>
> 401 plans slipping
>
> medical insurance out of sight
>
> No Social Security C.O.L.A. 2010,11,12
>
> Doctors are stopping Medicare patients
>
> Gulf Coast states in deep trouble
>
> Our young men coming home in body
>
> bags from unnecessary wars in record numbers
>
> record numbers of illegals in OUR country.
>
> Our political leadership throughout our
>
> Federal & State level are worthless!!!
>
>
> These are just SOME of the reasons that I
>
> support the information in the copy below.
>
> Please be sure to read the last 4 lines
>
> and see if you WILL pass this along.
>
>
>
> SO 'Pathetically'  TRUE..................
>
> OH USA   YA RIGHT!!
>
>
> We're "broke" & can't help our own Seniors, Veterans, Orphans, Homeless etc.,?????????
>
> In the last month we have provided aid to  Haiti , Chile , and  Turkey .
>
> Our retired seniors living on a 'fixed income'
> receive no aid or get any breaks while our
> government and religious organizations pour
> Hundreds of Millions of $$$$$'s and Tons of Food to Foreign Countries!
>
> We have hundreds of adoptable children who are shoved aside to make room for the adoption of foreign orphans.
>
> USA a country where we have homeless without shelter,  children going to bed hungry,
> elderly going without 'needed' meds, and
> mentally ill without treatment -etc,etc.
> YET...................
> They have a 'Benefit' for the people of  Haiti
> on 12
> TV stations, ships and planes lining up with food, water, tents clothes, bedding,
> doctors and medical supplies.
>
> Imagine if the *GOVERNMENT*  gave 'US'
> the same support they give to other
> countries.
>
>
> Sad isn't it?
>
> 99% of people won't have the guts to forward
> this.
> I Just Did!

Re: FW: OH USA YEAH RIGHT


“In March 1997, a joint poll by the Washington Post, Harvard University and the Kaiser Family Foundation asked Americans which area of federal expenditure they thought was the largest. Was it Social Security (which actually constituted about a quarter of the budget)? Medicare? Military spending? Sixty-four percent of respondents said it was foreign aid—when in reality foreign aid made up only about 1 percent of total outlays (Washington Post, 3/29/97).

“Today, Americans think about 20 percent of the federal budget goes toward foreign aid. When told the actual figure for U.S. foreign aid giving (about 1.6 percent of the discretionary budget), most respondents said they did not believe the number was the full amount (Program on International Policy Attitudes, 3/7/05).

“It’s no wonder that most Americans think they live in an extremely generous nation: Media reports often quote government officials pointing out that their country is the largest overall aid donor, and the biggest donor of humanitarian aid. But what reporters too often fail to explain is how big the U.S. economy is—more than twice the size of Japan’s, the second largest, and about as big as economies number 3–10 combined. Considered as a portion of the nation’s economy, or of its federal expenditures, the U.S. is actually among the smallest donors of international aid among the world’s developed countries.”

--Ben Somberg, "The World’s Most Generous Misers," Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, 2005 Sept/Oct

===

In 2009, of the 22 wealthiest countries in the world, the Swedes, Norwegians, Luxembourgers, Danes, Dutch, Belgians, Finns, Irish, British, Swiss, French, Spanish, Germans, Canadians, Austrians, Australians, New Zealanders, and Portuguese all were more generous to their fellow humans than were the Americans.

--Poverty.com; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

===

US federal government funding for all of its international programs, of which international aid forms but a portion, is generally 1% of the total US federal budget (in 2008, it was 3% of the 38% discretionary budget spending, which equals 1.14% of total spending).

Most of the US federal government budget is spent on US citizens, mainly through the Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid programs:

“Social Security claimed just over one-third of mandatory spending in fiscal 2008 (see figure 4). Medicare and Medicaid took up 25 percent and 13 percent, respectively. The remaining 28 percent covered income security programs (such as food stamps), retirement and disability programs (including pensions for federal retireees), and other programs.

“About half of fiscal 2008 discretionary spending paid for defense, and most of the rest went for domestic programs such as agricultural subsidies, highway construction, and the federal courts (see figure 3). Only 3 percent of discretionary spending funded international activities, such as foreign aid.”

--Tax Policy Center of Urban Institute and Brookings Institution

===

“As percentage of GDP, Arab states of the Persian Gulf are the most generous, with Kuwait contributing 8.2% of its gross national product and Saudi Arabia contributing 4% in 2002.”

--Wikipedia; SAMIRAD

Happy Australia and New Zealand Army Corps Day

Anzac Cove

1999 June

“Dr Martin Crotty, a New Zealander who lectures Australian students, tells a story of one student who 'thumped the table after I'd given a seminar and complained at having a New Zealander come and tell us about Anzac.'

“'He was genuinely shocked when I told him what the N and the Z stood for.'

“The historian said Australians had a very 'parochial' view of WW1 and were even less aware of France and Britain's involvement than they were of New Zealand's.

“'The push should be not to just understand New Zealand but to see the Gallipoli campaign and the war in general in more internationalist terms,' he said.”

--http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/2355369/Aussies-forget-the-NZ-in-Anzac

towards 1941 December 7: weep on the shoulders

"Let us begin with a short and elementary lesson in practical economics.

"The Japanese, cooped up on their little island, and as prolific as Italians, need more land. All the pretty words in the world and all the treaties in the world and all the well-meant speeches of all the well-meaning old ladies and gentlemen in the world won't change this fact....

"They live in a country that is smaller than California (155,652 square miles for California and 148,756 square miles for Japan) and of these only 16,000,000 acres can be used for agriculture, which is less than 2% of all the arable land of America. If you want the comparison to come a little nearer home, it is a trifle less than the improved farmlands of New York State alone. Even with the help of one of the best staffs of scientific agricultural experts to be found anywhere in the world, you will see at a glance what sort of problem it is that faces these poor island folk. Living so near the sea-shore they would of course fish; but although they have now reached the point where they are raising certain sorts of fish in the muddy water of their rice fields, the difficulty remains unsolved and unsolvable in view the fact that the population increases by more than 650,000 people a year.

"It was inevitable therefore that Japan should look for more territory; and it was only natural that first of all she should think of the badly administered and sadly neglected lands that lay just across the China Sea.... The road to Manchuria was indicated by the land bridge of the Korean peninsula from which the mainland of Japan was separated by the narrow Strait of Korea. This strait is only 102 miles wide and is conveniently divided into halves by the Tsushima islands, those islands near which the Japanese fleet destroyed the Russian squadron in the year 1905, and killed Russia as a possible rival in eastern Asia....

"The immediate causes for a war are rarely interesting. It is the real underlying motives that count. In this case, as in the case of the expedition of 1592, they were to be found directly and absolutely in the necessity of the Japanese government to provide its rapidly increasing population with food.

"As soon as Japan had defeated Russia and had driven the Muscovite troops back from the Yalu River, the river that separates Korea from Manchuria, Korea became a Japanese protectorate. In 1910 it became a part of the Japanese Empire quite as much as Formosa, which the Japanese had taken from the Chinese in 1895, or the southern half of the island of Sakhalin, which they had taken from the Russians in the year 1905 in lieu of a war indemnity. Today already half a million Japanese have moved in among the twenty million Koreans. The rest will follow in due course of time.

"As for Manchuria, it had long been a bone of contention between the two nations that fought for supremacy in the northern half of the Pacific. After the Peace of Portsmouth, which made an end to the Russo-Japanese war, the fate of the country was sealed....

"Many people seem to experience a profound indignation at what they are inclined to denounce as a brutal expression of 'Japanese ambition'. I would rather call them 'Japanese necessities'. In matters of international policy, a certain healthy egoism is rather a desirable quality. Japan has got to find an outlet for the extra people at home. It is finding such an outlet in northern Asia, in a part of the world that is very lightly populated, and that has been accustomed to such outrageous forms of government that the inhabitants cannot possibly be worse off now than they were ever before.

"If this northern Asiatic safety-valve did not exist, the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, Australia, New Zealand and the western coast of America would be forever exposed to a Japanese invasion and we would be obliged to station a battle-ship in front of every Polynesian island lest it be towed away over night by a Japanese cruiser.

"On the whole, the present arrangement seems much more practical. Those who feel inclined to shed tears at these callous and selfish utterances, are politely requested to weep on the shoulders of our own Indians."


--Hendrik van Loon, Van Loon's Geography: The Story of the World We Live In, 1932

kea (Nestor notabilis)

"THE MURDERING PARROT

"Found only in New Zealand, the kea passes the summer high in the mountains of South Island, feeding mainly on fruit but also taking insects and worms. But when winter comes it descends to the plains where sheep-farming is one of the main activities. It is there that this otherwise harmless vegetarian changes character. Originally its ancestors pecked the sheepskins hanging outside sheep stations for insects, or tasted offal from the slaughter-houses. Later generations of keas, having acquired this taste for flesh, began to prey on the bodies of living sheep, chiefly for the sake of the kidney-fat they had learned to look for. So expert is the kea that it will alight on the back of a sheep exactly where the kidneys are most easily exposed. The cruel beak finds its meal in an instant, leaving the poor beast mortally wounded."

--Animal World in Color, Volume 8 - Hunters: Birds, Fish, and Amphibians, edited by Maurice Burton, Childrens Press: Chicago, 1969

box

Happy Boxing Day.

War on Terror: The Boardgame

"Wage War on the Most Dangerous Abstract Noun Known to Man"

"The actual War on Terror is offensive. This is just a board game."

Just released last month; already banned at several toy fairs.

Clearly designed lovingly by people who enjoy critical thinking, this thing looks smart (stylish) and smart (intelligent). Check out a couple "Empire Cards" from the Card Appendix:

"Weapons Inspector - You need to make sure they haven't got anything that might trouble your liberating forces."

"Terrorist Upsurge - Seems like not everyone wants to be liberated. Ungrateful swines."

As a cartophile and sometime fan of Risk and Axis and Allies, I can't help but pore over the gameboard: New Zealand and the Philippines are apparently planned for the "Southeast Corner of the Map" expansion pack, Alaska is exhibiting symptoms of palsy, and - betraying the game's British origins - the Falklands are way prominent. (Only British folk could design a game of world domination in which the Falklands receive the high-profile treatment. Maybe also Argentinians.) More than offsetting this, however, is the inclusion of Antarctica, which is crazy cool. Antarctica is labeled as "Nowhere."


And Mongolia is on there! It has powdered off to the west and borders Afghanistan, but it's still nice to see it. Kazakhstan didn't make the cut.

Our friend Lajos commented on the game at BoardGameGeek.com:
"Ooooh, I can't wait to read more about this game (preferably the rules). The theme is absolutely brilliant and so are some of the card texts. How can anyone with at least some sense of humour be offended by this?"

For more info from BoardGameGeek, here's a shining review and a play session.

In closing, from the creators:
"The dialogue has effectively been closed. If you think terrorism is a symptom of a wider problem, rather than an inexplicable phenomenon, then you must be a terrorist. We hope this boardgame might play its humble part in opening up that dialogue."