The centenary of the first world war is being memorialised around the world. But as it fades from living memory, our children’s education sits uneasily with the uncritical demands of commemoration.
Scott McIntyre’s legal challenge against being sacked by SBS will be an interesting test of whether the Fair Work Act offers any safe haven for employees to maintain a personal and political identity.
Tackling Gallipoli is an onerous challenge: it carries baggage that must be accommodated or unpacked with extreme care. Western Australian artist Lev Vykopal’s two exhibitions offer a mix of reverence, analysis, critique and poetry.
Although more than 100,000 Australians have lost their lives as a result of war service, photographs of our dead have never been published in newspapers.Perhaps we should reconsider this.
It is naïve to expect men to kill and die for their country, to live through the horrors of a particularly barbaric war, and to come out the other end unscathed – despite our popular myths.
As Australians commemorate the Anzacs who died at Gallipoli, spare a thought for the 10,000 French soldiers who also died on the Dardanelles in the first world war.
In 1915 and 1916, the Ottoman Armenians were destroyed as an organised community and more than one million of their number were killed – just as the Allies’ failed invasion of Gallipoli took place.
On Anzac Day 1982, five gay veterans tried to lay a wreath at Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance, but were turned away by the Shrine Guard and the state RSL president. This year, that won’t happen.
Protests on Anzac Day, rather than being ‘utterly alien to Australians’, have a long tradition and embody the democratic right to dissent for which the troops fought.
Australia has continually faced a returned soldier crisis. This is something that marked men returning from all the wars of modern memory – from the Great War to Afghanistan and Iraq.
We are used to thinking of Gaza as a war-torn stretch of ground. A place where life goes grimly on in the face of an intractable conflict. A graveyard not only for civilians caught in the crossfire, but…
This Anzac Day the words “lest we forget” will often be spoken. It’s a usage that we don’t otherwise hear. Why do linguistic fossils such as “lest we forget” linger – and how do they help us remember the fallen?
When Australian soldiers fought at Gallipoli, they did so under the Union Jack. Our flag has changed since then and debates about national identity have shifted. Is it now time for a new flag?
The democratic freedoms Australians hold dear today – freedom of the press, assembly and speech – were won on home soil by courageous women and men who sacrificed much, but rarely recognised for it.
Australians now seem so fascinated by the Victoria Cross that such attention has begun to get in the way of a balanced perspective on its place in military history.
Anzac Day is the one day of the year it’s legal to play two-up. If we want to retain the thrill that was so important to the diggers, we’d keep it illegal rather than sanitising the practice.
Every country has its most symbolic year from each of the world wars, and can trace the consequences of the bloodletting that accompanied the global realignment of the last century.