What’s wrong with peace, love and understanding.
Elvis Costello wrote a ballad, John Lennon implored us to explore the concept, the vision, the creed of peace, one world, no boundaries.
So what is wrong about that?
Why not have respect for the other fellow, within reason?
Recently I wrote a blog (a reply) to a Gold Coast Bulletin article about a re-enactment of the Gallipoli landing to be performed by the surf lifesavers of the coast. It goes something like this.
Gallipoli re-enactment on the Tweed will commemorate 1915 landing 100 years on …
IN THE moments before the first rays of sunlight peek over the horizon on Anzac Day, Jack Evans Boat Harbour at Tweed Heads will become a giant outdoor stage for a dramatic re-enactment of the dawn landing by the Anzacs on the beach at Gallipoli.
Funded by an Australian Government Anzac Centenary Grant, Tweed Heads & Coolangatta RSL Sub-branch and Twin Towns Services Club, the re-enactment on Anzac Day, April 25, is expected to bring thousands of people to the boat harbour parklands behind Twin Towns to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli landing.
Tweed Heads & Coolangatta RSL Sub-branch secretary Dr John Griffin said the idea came to him after a visit to the Australian War Memorial in 2013, where one of the original landing boats was on display.
Dr John Griffin.
You can understand that my loins were stirred, to say the least. I’m also a little pissed orf that the proposed re-enactment landing beach was for many years a family (no bucks, low bucks) caravan/camping park before the developers paid someone off and closed that avenue for an affordable holiday in ‘paradise’.
So, before I launched into the standard Tuesday morning Dodges Ferry to Mornington drive amongst a moving traffic jam (make first and second gear your friend) at 0700 hrs I penned a blog to good climate Aussies (bloody Queenslanders) and to the effect that I hoped that the organisers had arranged for a generous supply of blood, guts and shit from the local abattoir and that the soundtrack to the whole bizarre affair should include the haunting, agonising screams of dead and dying young men who, maimed and dying were called to the realisation that this adventure was folly, despair and gore.
I offered the thought that the continual perpetuation of the glorification and celebration of war was not cool.
My comment was virtually not published and apparently not appreciated. My indigent response on the day following was faithfully published as appears below …
• Terry James of HobartPOSTED AT 7:07 PM MARCH 02, 2015
My comment too pithy to print, eh.
Comment 3 of 3I mean. Fuck me, if you’re gonna celebrate, re-enact, and celebrate war then do the whole horrifying thing. Do it properly!
My goodness I love the Information Age. No excuse for ignorance.
What’s so wrong about peace, love and understanding? Health, wealth and happiness
• Peter Maddox, in Comments: Many years ago as a rather naïve 17 year old I curiously asked my father ( a former soldier and POW on the Thai/Burma railway) “what was war like”? and his answer which has resonated with me ever since:- “I’d shoot my own sons before I would let them go to war”…….nothing more to say!
