insulting the dead on a day for remembering isnt mature but just plain stupid. theres nothing wrong to debate the issues he has raised but hes made more enemies due to the timing regardless of whether he is right or wrong. what he did was similar to crashing someones funeral, you just dont do shit like that...for a start its disrespectful and secondly hes shown to everyone he lacks any common semse. so if you think thats mature then you need some etiquette lessons son.

Edited by Socawho: 27/4/2015 08:56:42 PM

Absolutely garbage. No chance of it working.

Stop swallowing the propaganda.

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2015/s4220857.htm?site=westernvic

MARK COLVIN: It's become almost commonplace to talk about the incompetence of the allied generals and strategists at Gallipoli, and the futility of the operation itself.

Winston Churchill recognised the terrible losses he'd caused by resigning from government and going to fight in the trenches.

What's been less discussed is the futility of the strategic vision behind the Gallipoli adventure in 1915.

In Gallipoli, The End of The Myth, the historian Robin Prior says that needs to change.

https://www.awm.gov.au/education/talks/gallipoli-end-of-a-myth-launch/

His research shows that even a complete victory in the Dardanelles would have achieved exactly nothing in terms of the war's big picture.

Professor Prior spoke to me this afternoon.

ROBIN PRIOR: It's a disaster because even if the allies had been victorious at Gallipoli, nothing would have followed, the war would have gone on. The main army of the main enemy in that war was the German army and it happened to be on the western and eastern fronts.

MARK COLVIN: Let's just background it a bit, the idea was to push through the Dardanelles, get into the Black Sea and then move up the Danube and establish a second front against the Germans?

ROBIN PRIOR: That's right, the armies that landed at Gallipoli weren't themselves going to push trough to Constantinople, they were going to get to what was called The Narrows, knock out the Turkish force and sweep the minefields that had been preventing the fleet from getting through.

The fleet would then proceed to Constantinople, the Turks would surrender and then the British and French then would proceed to Constantinople, form a coalition of Balkan states and they would advance up the Danube attacking Austria, Hungary and Germany from the rear.

MARK COLVIN: So it's a soft underbelly strategy, it's an idea that you can distract the Germans from the western front and make them send lots of divisions down south and east?

ROBIN PRIOR: That's right, you will make them… weaken the western and eastern fronts and if you're not successful there, that means you'll be able to break through in the west.

MARK COLVIN: So what's wrong with that strategy?

ROBIN PRIOR: Almost everything. The coalition of Balkan states is the main problem, we're talking of Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Serbia, even Montenegro. The problem is with the state of their armies in 1915, they were little more than peasant levies. They had very few machine guns, very little artillery. The Romanians were pumping out just two shells per day from their one shell factory.

MARK COLVIN: Two shells a day?

ROBIN PRIOR: Two shells a day.

MARK COLVIN: And anybody who knows anything about the First World War, knows just how many shells were expended every hour.

ROBIN PRIOR: In the opening bombardment at the Somme for example nine months later, the British fired 1.7 million shells, which proved not to be nearly enough at the German defences. So two shells per day is not a lot.

Their artillery was joined by oxen, they had very few aircraft and the additional problem is that all these states hated each other much more than they hated the Austrians, Hungarians and the Germans.

MARK COLVIN: And you're saying that the political work hadn't been done to form a - what we would now call a coalition of the willing?

ROBIN PRIOR: This would have been a coalition of the very unwilling indeed and the diplomatic work had not been done. Bulgaria inclined towards the central powers, which in fact they joined later in 1915. Romania inclined towards the Entente.

MARK COLVIN: And for people who don't know the central powers were Germany and Austria, Hungary.

ROBIN PRIOR: Germany, Austria and Hungary. Romania inclined towards France and Britain and there had not been any spade work done to get these countries to form any kind of uniform policy.

MARK COLVIN: And Greece, Macedonia - the countries that made up the former Yugoslavia are notorious. That's where we get the world Balkanised from isn't it?

ROBIN PRIOR: It is, it is. I mean Greece is a good example. The king was pro-German, the prime minister pro-ally, so how that would have played out is very murky indeed.

MARK COLVIN: So essentially what you're saying is that even if on the very first day, the Turks had simply surrendered, it would have achieved nothing?

ROBIN PRIOR: It would have achieved nothing. Even supposing you could have got this coalition of rag-bag armies together, the communications up the Danube Valley consisted of a couple of narrow gauge railway lines. We're speaking of a million men here, they could have hardly been supplied with that sort of rudimentary infrastructure.

MARK COLVIN: And again for people who haven't really studied the First World War, railways are the absolute key to most of the successful operations in it.

ROBIN PRIOR: Yes. I mean why the western front for example was where it was, was that three or four million men on either side could be supplied by the sophisticated railway system of north-western Europe. That's why the western front was there.

Why the other fronts were not as well populated was that it was impossible to supply the troops.

MARK COLVIN: How should we be commemorating Anzac. Do you have any problems with what's happening on Anzac Day this year?

ROBIN PRIOR: Look not particularly. Some people are worried that it's militarizing our society, I don't see that. A lot of people are interested because they have relatives who fought there, grandparents, great-grandparents, great-uncles. It's part of that wider genealogical movement in that sort of sense.

MARK COLVIN: So when we stop for a minutes silence on Anzac Day, what will you be thinking of? What should we be thinking of?

ROBIN PRIOR: I'd be thinking that there were a lot of brave men who gave their lives at Gallipoli and elsewhere so that we could be free to choose, in fact whether we go to dawn services or not, live the sort of lives that we're living now.

MARK COLVIN: But they did so in what was, as a piece of warfare, a completely futile operation?

ROBIN PRIOR: Absolutely. You can have futile episodes in war without necessarily the war being futile itself.

MARK COLVIN: Robin Prior, Visiting Professorial Fellow at the School of History at the University of Adelaide. And you can hear a longer version of that interview on our website from this evening.

Unlike some here I am proud of the fact that some Australians aren't so blinded by the lottery of birth that they are willing to look critically at the country we inhabit.

I'd say it's the mark of a mature person and a nation to be introspective.

Is there a more un patriotic nation than Australia?

Yes. Schweden

I should think most of Northern Europe is up there with us, but then I think generally you'd probably see a strong correlation with the top Human Development Index and Social Progress Index countries and the level of apapatriotism.

Maybe there's something to that? :-k

Juxtapose Mcintyre's incoherent, half-baked discourse against Samantha Armytage's plain speaking casual racism

She does say good on her for being white instead of black

If she said 'good on her' to the Jamaican looking chick they'd have labelled her racist for the comment as well. Most probably for singling out the non-anglo looking one.

In this day and age you can't have an opinion if you're white it seems.

No. Norwegians and Finns are very patriotic. This has to do with both being under Swedish rule at one time amongst other things. Sweden has not been in a war for over 250 years (on paper) so they don't really feel as proud. Nazi took Oslo, Finns fought the Russians. Swedes supplied nazi and allies with iron.

Having a recent history of being occupied by another country would certainly have an effect, granted, but what about Swedes, Germans and Danes?

I remember being in Switzerland with a local friend for some TV show and there was a bit where local kids all came out with Swiss flags and she was horrified, for example.

Edited by paladisious : 28/4/2015 11:20:48 PM

A big problem in Western Europe is the pc brigade. If you wave a flag you are a nationalist.... Therefore a racist. In USA, Australia, nz & Canada etc when you wave a flag you are patriotic.

Yes. Schweden

I'm not so sure about this. I defer to your knowledge of Scandinavia.

But of the Swedes I know and have known, and there's quite a few, there have been some rather patriotic ones.

Sure lots don't give a shit about being Swedish and are as you suggest. But others are all 'Sweden this, Sweden that'. They're absolutely obsessed with anything Swedish and I suspect they may have a sense of superiority. Some only want to hang out with other Swedish people. By the same token, others hate other Swedish people. And then others don't hate other Swedish people but love to meet foreigners and are, in some cases, married to foreigners. Also a pretty decent number of Swedes fly the Swedish flag over their homes, don't they? I haven't spent enough time in Sweden to say that, but that's based on what some of my Swedish friends have said.

So that's not to say Swedes are all really patriotic, because heaps that I know aren't patriotic at all. But I don't know if I'd say a huge proportion of the population is unpatriotic. But again, I haven't lived there (yet) so I don't know.

Then again, there are a heap of Australians obsessed with everything Australian and tattoos suggesting it, etc.

What I found most interesting was Finns with Swedish parents. I lived with 5 Finnish girls in Ayia Napa. A few of whom were Swedish Finns (i.e. brought up in Finland but with Swedish parents). One of them was obsessed with everything Swedish. She, apparently, spoke better Swedish than she did Finnish. Everything for her had to be Swedish. She was obsessed with Swedish guys. I'm not sure she was interested in other nationalities much at all (but I may be wrong there).

- They're obsessed with Britain in ways that most people in Britain are not.

- Some of them seem to live in the 19th Century.

- I think they feel superior to everybody else (especially native Irish) by emphasising their British-ness.

- They kind of have an inferiority complex, brought about by the fact that they're not really British. So they go to lengths to portray themselves as as British as possible.

I'm not so sure about this. I defer to your knowledge of Scandinavia.

But of the Swedes I know and have known, and there's quite a few, there have been some rather patriotic ones.

Sure lots don't give a shit about being Swedish and are as you suggest. But others are all 'Sweden this, Sweden that'. They're absolutely obsessed with anything Swedish and I suspect they may have a sense of superiority. Some only want to hang out with other Swedish people. By the same token, others hate other Swedish people. And then others don't hate other Swedish people but love to meet foreigners and are, in some cases, married to foreigners. Also a pretty decent number of Swedes fly the Swedish flag over their homes, don't they? I haven't spent enough time in Sweden to say that, but that's based on what some of my Swedish friends have said.

So that's not to say Swedes are all really patriotic, because heaps that I know aren't patriotic at all. But I don't know if I'd say a huge proportion of the population is unpatriotic. But again, I haven't lived there (yet) so I don't know.

Then again, there are a heap of Australians obsessed with everything Australian and tattoos suggesting it, etc.

What I found most interesting was Finns with Swedish parents. I lived with 5 Finnish girls in Ayia Napa. A few of whom were Swedish Finns (i.e. brought up in Finland but with Swedish parents). One of them was obsessed with everything Swedish. She, apparently, spoke better Swedish than she did Finnish. Everything for her had to be Swedish. She was obsessed with Swedish guys. I'm not sure she was interested in other nationalities much at all (but I may be wrong there).

Well done, you've just described West Belfast.

So in short (from your experiences):
Sweden has a mix of people who are either patriotic, neutral or unpatriotic. Yes?

You see the flags mainly on people who live by the water.
For some reason when people are abroad they sometimes become more patriotic.
I would still say that after living in Sweden for 13 years that Australians are more patriotic than Swedes by a mile.