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Last Updated: Jul 5th, 2008 - 05:21:16 |
G'day cobbers,
Just after dusk this evening the Murikan Embassy hereabouts destroyed the peace and tranquility of our neighbourhood with a veritable fusillade of what I took to be shots, crashes and loud staccato sounds punctuated with shrill siren noises. As I rarely listen to the "news" I did not know what to make of it. Nor did my cat and the local dogs. So I went outside to investigate thinking that perhaps the Murikan military had finally got their heart's desire and some perfidious "terrorists" were attacking the Murikan Embassy. As private fireworks are banned in this city save for a few specific hours on two days a year NOT including the 4th of July, fireworks did not immediately come to mind. Then I remembered it was the 4th of July and I understood.
Interesting that Murikans in foreign lands feel the need to make loud noises that disturb the peace when celebrating "their" Independence Day. Interesting also is the fact that there is clearly one law for Canberrans and another for the Murikans and their Embassy in this city. If I had attempted to use fireworks in the way our glorious Murikan allies did today I would be lucky to merely have the police take me away (rather than a SWAT team take me out – courtesy of the US War on Terror).
It really is time that the Murikan Empire folded its tents and went away - preferably leaving the Dakotas to the Lakota Sioux and so on. BUT Murikans (as a society) are sooo militaristic, sooo credulous, sooo avaricious and sooo self absorbed that they have no comprehension whatever of the need to do that. The result? They are, as a society about to disappear up their own fundamental orifice and the rest of the world is unlikely to shed a tear.
Why the noise and bombast to mark this occasion? Presumably to let the rest of the world know they are here: As well as there, and everywhere, with military bases in some 140 countries and with vicious covert Murikan killers and Black Ops agents lurking everywhere else. Local populations apparently must be impressed, over awed and made to feel the omnipotent US is a law unto itself wherever it goes. And it is. Or was. BUT this will be the last Independence Day upon which USans will primp, preen and scream in the faces of the peoples of the rest of the world. Next year the vaunted US military, corporate and political establishment will either grow its own food or starve. So be it.
Of course, ever since the British Empire seemingly sank beneath the waves we in Oz have desperately sought to emulate the US and to suck up to its military. I guess our political leaders realised early on that it was better to feed a handful of troops to the Murikan Moloch (Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan …) every so often rather than oppose the war mongering US behemoth and end up being embargoed and starved economically or bombed into the Stone Age at the whim of the masters of the New Babylon.
What sticks in my craw though (and always has) is the cretinous way in which Australians have sold their souls (sovereignty) to what they think is the biggest kid on the block. First it was the UK now it is the US. Probably the nearest jingoistic equivalent in OZ to the 4th of July is ANZAC DAY. On that day we go in for orgies of militaristic self-congratulation despite the fact that it marks a day of intense national military humiliation and historic moral degradation.
How is that the case you ask? Well, on 25 April 1915 Australian troops in company with New Zealanders (the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps - ANZACs), having sailed to the other side of the world invaded the country and people of Turkey. We did that at the command of and in company with the forces of our British masters at the time. We had no quarrel with the Turks and Turkey was NO THREAT to Australia or its national interests. Indeed most Australians barely knew Turkey and its people existed. No matter. We went and invaded Turkey at Suvla Bay and Gallipoli. We, and the British forces, took heavy casualties and after a few months we ignominiously retreated, licking our wounds.
Over the years our defeat at Gallipoli has been morphed by our rulers (and their political, military and media puppets) into some sort of glorious military feat which we are constantly told "made us a nation" Yes Siree Bob! Just like the Declaration of Independence made the US a nation. The covering lie about Gallipoli included a story that the retreat was a magnificent success because we (allegedly) suffered no casualties when actually in the act of escaping our ridiculous and untenable military predicament.
And how do we know that? Well, our leaders and their media puppets keep telling us so. And who is to say otherwise? After all only those who were there would know and even they would only know what occurred within their sight and experience. Anyway that is how it's done. Simple really. I remember my Dad repeating the story to me in the 1940s when I was little more than a toddler. No doubt he was told the story soon after it happened – when he was little more than a toddler. Once one is told things by authority figures when one is young, ie before one is able to critically evaluate the information, it tends to become part of the turgid mass of paradigm material by which we govern our lives.
So anyway, in OZ ANZAC DAY is a big deal. Moreover, it gets bigger every year – as the veterans from previous wars get fewer and fewer. Why is that you say? I ASK MYSELF THE SAME QUESTION.* But, it seems most of my fellow Australians do not. On ANZAC DAY the OZ nation is knee-deep in militaristic parades and the media is full of it. Because the old veterans have almost died off the powers that were (TPTW) are now encouraging children and grandchildren of veterans to march and wear their ancestors’ military medals. Apart from keeping the militarism alive this indoctrinates children into a mindless jingoistic military culture before they have the critical ability to question the process and its meaning. Probably not all that dissimilar to the mindless jingoism driving Independence Day I suppose.
As Australians are not necessarily less intellectually endowed than I, I assume their failure to question the mindless jingoism of ANZAC Day (which is mirrored by TV images and commentary of some current or historical military event virtually every week in OZ) must have something to do with their spiritual immaturity. But the degree of ignorance and refusal to examine this reality in terms of Australia's invasions (as a foundation member of the Coalition of the Willing) of Iraq and Afghanistan evidences that the spiritual deficit is sooo great that one has to assume that the bulk of the (non-robotoid) OZ population is still at the spiritual toddler stage. They want to be fed but care not how that is done, who does it, or who gets hurt in the process.
Australia has pretended to withdraw from Iraq but prime minister Rudd has indicated that we still have some 1,050 so-called non combat military there. Given the treatment the US (with the tacit approval of Australia) has meted out to "non-combatants" in recent years the subterfuge of calling our military "non-combat" soldiers seems a bit ridiculous if not dangerous, but apparently Australians are happy with the lie. And of course, Australia was only allowed to withdraw some troops from Iraq provided that it committing more troops to Afghanistan. So, the secret global government has no problems with OZ. The last (Howard) government having become totally "on the nose" the alternative team (Labor under Kevin Rudd) was sent in to continue running the country for the good of the Cabal. And so it does.
Bring on the global banking and economic collapse. Anything less will have no effect. Something has to be done to shock our spiritual toddlers into growing up.
Namaste
Ron
* In his hauntingly sad ballad "Band Played Waltzing Matilda" Liam Clancy captures beautifully the real essence of war for combatants, or at least for those seriously wounded and those with real spiritual maturity. The sentiments expressed are truly universal. Well worth a listen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3pU7rsim3E
Note: "Waltzing Matilda" was virtually Australia's national song at the time of Gallipoli and indeed even in my childhood. The words of the song embody the free spirit, resourcefulness and defiance of authority associated with the Australian national character. Arguably the plot of ‘Waltzing Matilda’ is based on the conflict that raged between shearers and rural workers and their squatter (land owner) bosses in the early 1890s, before the song was written by Banjo Paterson near Winton in outback Queensland. "Matilda" was the name given to the camping gear or "swag" men carried on their backs as they walked from station to station, farm to farm and town to town looking for work in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Apparently “Matilda” was an old Teutonic female name meaning ‘mighty battle maid’ and the name became used as a slang term meaning a de facto wife who accompanied a wanderer. In the Australian bush a man’s swag was regarded as a kind of de facto wife, hence his ‘Matilda’. Thus humping one’s swag or ‘bluey’ around the countryside became "waltzing" Matilda.
There were no cars and few working blokes could afford a horse in those days so they camped under the stars as they walked the countryside. During the Great Depression in the 1930s the custom of “humping the bluey” or “waltzing Matilda” experienced a huge revival as many blokes couldn't find work in the cities and took to the road carrying their swag from place to place hoping to get a feed in return for doing farm chores and the like.
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