She knew very well that it would lead to disqualification, but used her platform in a much more powerful way than continuing in the competition. Big respect, she's a badass.

If you haven't heard it before, please listen to the song "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda" by Scottish-Australian songwriter Eric Bogle. That song, as well as "I Was Only 19" by Redgum, perfectly encapsulates the reason for the memorials.

The songs do not glorify our success as a military nation, nor do they portray the soldiers they are about as grand heros or defenders of freedom. They are about very young men, sent away by their country to experience unimaginable horror and suffering, only to return to a home with, at best, minimal support and, at worst, the shame of the community they once were a part of.

Each name on each of those memorials- thousands of them- represent an experience of the unimaginable, and a family irreparably changed. They are a reminder of what was taken, and of the sorrow that was caused. I do not see them as prideful, celebratory or reverential, and I do not know of anyone who does. They are a commiseration.

With regards to ANZAC, and it's place in Australian culture, you are essentially looking at modern Australia's foundational myth. In the 1950s and 1960s when Australia was having its own civil rights moment, the original foundation myth of terra nullius and the "brave", white settlers conquering an untamed land finally began to feel too untrue to most Australians, too much like a myth. Colonial Australia needed a new explanation for its existence and it is around that time that the Gallipoli campaign started to be promoted by various historians and authors as Australia's "coming of age" as a nation.

The intention was to give (white) Australians a point of reference for themselves, something they could point to and say "the things that we are, this is where they came to be". Qualities like mateship, camaraderie, larrakinism, hard work, disdain for authority or aristocracy and resilience in the face of adversity. Those were the qualities promoted as being cemented in the national psyche at ANZAC Cove. It is a manufactured narrative, but those writers were very successful, as you can see.

There's more that can be said for Australia treats it's narrative history, especially that of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, but that's better left for another (long) post. If you're interested in how Australia viewed it's two competing foundational stories in the 1990s and 2000s, and how it effects the way we talk about our history today, look up the History Wars. Let me know if you think there was a winner.

Regardless of David's original intentions, he is being victimised for exposing war crimes. There is nothing just in his incarceration.

It was a US made Bell 212

Yeah cool, here's one good thing we can do to make a positive change but fuck doing it because of the other, completely unrelated thing, right?

"And that's not because ancient Romans and Greeks weren't living to a ripe old age.

Per the article: "While average life expectancy before the common era was roughly half of what it is today, the age of 35 was hardly considered 'old' for the time. The median age of death in ancient Greece was, by some estimates, closer to 70 years, which means that half of society was living even longer than that. Hippocrates himself, the famous Greek physician and so-called father of medicine, is thought to have died in his 80s or 90s."

Shame the age didn't give this much attention to the regular defacement of the gorgeous mural just behind this statue that some knob kept painting bible verses over last year.

More details here.

Basically she had written in her diary about her enduring feelings of guilt over the deaths of her children, which is what formed the base of the original case against her. Prosecutors argued that the children were probably smothered, despite there being no physical evidence for that.

A recent enquiry heard new evidence that at least 2 of her children carried a genetic defect that could potentially have caused their deaths, which coupled with the circumstancial nature of the evidence used in the original conviction was enough the NSW governor to pardon her under reasonable doubt. That pardon lead to a trial in the criminal court of appeals which have now acquitted her of the charges.

She was pardoned in June and has subsequently has been acquitted in the criminal court of appeals.

Have you had a listen to Drive-By Truckers? Southern rock without the yee haw rebel pride.

Kiwis are seething