(Thanks, R. :)

(Thanks for explaining 'Waltzing Matilda'; I've always wondered. :)

Reader Ron writes:

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Re: From the RMN Archive: 'Anzac Day, 2015'

G'day Hobie,
I trust you are well and thriving.
Here's my take on ANZAC Day.

The legend of the ANZACS is a central foundation myth used by Australia’s controllers and their propagandists to build a cohesive Australian national identity. 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 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 peoples' 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 secret rulers have morphed our defeat at Gallipoli 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 early 1940s when I was a toddler. No doubt he was told the story soon after it happened - when he was a toddler. Once one is told things by authority figures when one very young, that is, before we are able to critically evaluate the information, it becomes programmed into our psyche and part of the turgid mass of subconscious paradigm material by which we govern our lives.

On ANZAC DAY Aussies 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. So, courtesy of the Murdoch and other Gobalist controlled media, in Australia ANZAC DAY is a big deal. Ironically 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.(Link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFCekeoSTwg)

But, it seems most of my fellow Australians do not.
On ANZAC DAY and for at least a week prior, the Australian nation is knee-deep in militaristic commentary and parades and the media is full of it. Because the old veterans have died off 'The Powers That Are...still desperately clinging on', now encourage 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 mental ability to question the process and its meaning. Probably not all that dissimilar to the mindless jingoism driving the US belief in bringing democracy to the world.

I assume Aussies' failure to seriously question the mindless jingoism of ANZAC DAY is due to 'wall to wall' propaganda not dissimilar to what occurred with the COVID-19 scamdemic. Whatever. However, the degree of ignorance and refusal to examine our militarist paradigm after multiple invasions supporting Britain over the years followed by our invasion of Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Ukraine et al,as a US "tag along" evidences a national inferiority complex and a societal spiritual deficit of huge proportions. Most Australians still appear to be 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.

To be fair though, the level of media intimidation of those who, in John Pilger's words, ‘question the manipulation of the remembrance of Australia's blood sacrifice for imperialism, old and new' is severe. Pilger notes that the militaristic media propaganda is "Aimed at the young, a maudlin "new patriotism" reaches an annual climax on April 25, the anniversary of the first world war disaster at Gallipoli known as Anzac Day. The message is undisguised militarism promoting the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Thus, Prime Minister Rudd says, absurdly, that the military is Australia's highest calling".

Incidently I much prefer Liam Clancy's haunting rendition of "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda.

"Waltzing Matilda" was virtually Australia's national song at the time of Gallipoli and indeed even in my childhood. The words of the song supposedly embodied the free spirit, resourcefulness and defiance of authority associated with the Australian ‘out back' characters in pre-Federation days. 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 in those days and few itinerant blokes couldn't afford a horse 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.
Peace and Blessings,
Ron

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