This post features one of my favourite quotations from World War One – and one of the best-known war poems of modern times.

The quotation is from John Viscount Morley’s Memorandum of Resignation from the cabinet of John Asquith in August 1914, at the outbreak of war.

John Morley - a real hero of the Great War

Morely resigned when it became clear a majority of the British cabinet supported the push, led by Foreign Minister Edward Grey, to declare war on Germany.

John Morley was one of the very few members of the cabinet who remained steadfast in opposing Britain’s entry into the war. This short extract from his  memorandum is eerily prescient:

“…What grounds for expecting that the ruinous waste and havoc of war would be repaid by peace on better terms than were already within reach of reason and persistent patience. When we counted our gains, what would they amount to, when reckoned against the ferocious hatred that would burn with inextinguishable fire, for a whole generation at least, between two great communities better fitted to understand one another than any other pair in Europe? This moral devastation is a worse incident of war even than human carnage, and all the other curses with which war lashes its victims and its dupes.”

The more I observe its output, the more my respect for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation declines.

It’s not just that it pushes disinformation about current events that help ferment and justify wars of aggression.

It’s not just that it dissembles and evades the truth about major so-called ‘terrorist’ events, whether domestic or overseas.

Why was this volunteer invader entering Turkey illegally?

The ABC also uses the past to refurbish pro-war conformism. A good example is this year’s ANZAC Day website extravaganza: Gallopoli, The First Day

To view it yourself, you’ll need a good broadband connection and 2GB of RAM+ is recommended. It’s an audiovisual extravaganza – bringing history to life with 3-D terrain maps and other wizardry.

The author, Harvey Broadbent, specializes in this area of history. He’s fluent in Turkish, highly knowledgeable and well qualified to present material about the period. In terms of the narrow confines of the project, the A-V presentation does a good job. But where’s the historical context?

Sure, it’s fun to see the Day One of the Gallipoli assault become as realistic as a video game (although without a shoot button, I doubt die-hard gamers will stay long). But how about context? What about some answers to the ‘why’ questions?

The ABC presents an Australian view, so it seems to me the first question it might ask about the Gallipoli fiasco is: Why were shiploads of young Australians sent there at all? What was the nature of Australia’s quarrel in 1915 with the Ottoman Empire, as it was then? Why did we hate it so much that we shipped armed warriors halfway round the world to invade another nation’s sovereign territory?

Darkness can be thought-provoking…

Is Earth Hour the ultimate in tokenism?

Is it Australia’s silliest export ever?

Do the marketeers, politicians, show-biz personalities and other media-promoted talking heads actually perform a useful role as ‘Change Agents’?

Or are sneering eco-sceptics right for once?

I for one believe that scepticism is misplaced. Effective marketing of tokenism can be a wonderful thing and should be more common.

British and German troops take a day off from killing each other, Christmas 1914

If only the troops in World War One, who fraternized across the trenches during Christmas 1914, had been backed by Hollywood and Madison Avenue. Who knows, we might have ended up with a peaceful 20th century – leaving humanity the resources to pursue happiness and wellbeing?

Another interesting exercise in tokenism is illustrated by the chart below. It shows world opium production between 1990 and 2004. The contribution of Afghanistan is so large it’s indicated separately.

Note the one year – 2001 – when co-operation between the Government (then under Taliban leadership) and the UN was so successful that Afghanistan’s opium harvest almost dropped to zero.

The world nearly began the new millenium junk-free – but the War on Terror soon fixed that.

Tokenism is all very well, but the War on Drugs is serious business. A limited supply is good business, but no supply= no business.

The Sinking Lusitania (War Illusrated Vol 3)

In May 1915, a single torpedo from a German U-Boat sank the Lusitania,  a British passenger liner of the Cunard Fleet. The vessel went down in 18 minutes. It was a terrible maritime disaster.

Nearly 1,200 perished – both passengers and crew. Approximately 100 were children and more than a tenth of the casualties were American citizens. Coming only a few years after the Titanic tragedy, the sinking of the Lusitania captured the public imagination on both sides of the Atlantic.

The British media howled outrage. The ‘Piratical Hun’ had sunk a passenger ship. A civilian target!

The Lusitania Disaster reported in the New York Times

In the USA, supporters of Britian went into overdrive. It took all the skills of the German Ambassador of the day to calm down the Wilson Administration. In the event, the USA did not enter the Great War until two years later.

Part of the German ‘defense’ was their claim that the Lusitania carried armaments for the British war effort. On that basis, it was a legitimate military target. Germany argued the British were guilty of smuggling armaments on a civilian vessel, inviting massive loss of civilian life.

Germany lost World War One; the USA and Britain were victorious. Winners typically write the history books. Winston Churchill once remarked “History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it”

1915 British War Propaganda

Iceland is warming up, on a timescale that cannot be explained by global warming alone. Icelanders have been getting very hot under the collar.

Iceland, a model for 'People Power'?

‘People Power’ really does mean something in Iceland. It’s a concept Icelandic politicians and media must factor in. They don’t have any choice.

I’ve never visited that chilly land, but I’m impressed by what I see of the country and its people. My dog, who has a shaggy coat, would enjoy the weather.

I get the impression Icelanders are like a huge, unruly, extended family. In a family like that, when enough relatives get fed up, the going gets tough – even for the family patriarch and his inner circle.

That’s happening now in Iceland and I admire their feisty spirit. Icelanders, having come to the understanding that their country has been bankrupted by incompetents, swindlers and liars, don’t just drown their sorrows in front of the TV. They don’t put up with channel switching. They go out on the streets and abuse the local TV station personally, in significant numbers, spoiling the fun for smooth talking heads, the very people they blame for ruining the country’s economy.

If it happens to be New Years Eve, so much the better. Icelanders take their party to the TV studios. Associated Press reports:

A nationally televised meeting between Iceland’s prime minister and other political leaders was forced off the air Wednesday night when angry protesters disrupted the broadcast.