It is Armistice Day tomorrow - in 1918, at the 11th Hour, of the 11th Day, of the 11th Month, the guns fell silent ... good wishes to all who are commemorating #RemembranceDay
Good morning all on this Armistice Day/ #RemembranceDay , the 104th anniversary of the Great War's end. Australia's Great War (1914-1919):
- national population of 5m
- 416,809 enlisted
- more than 60,000 killed in action
- 156,000 wounded, gassed, or taken prisoner
My grandfather in Aug 1918 with his beloved sister Vera before going to France. My late grandfather would arrive for the Allied advance to the Nov 11 armistice. Like many, he would feel guilty for having survived. So many friends killed & wounded in the Great War. #RemembranceDay
My grandfather, 2LT Connolly, was 19 & a reinforcement officer in the British Expeditionary Force in late 1918. He passed well before I was born & many records were destroyed in WW2. Indebted to @TJGodden for making these drawings that allow me to glimpse his war. #RemembranceDay
My great+ uncles served @HAC_TheCompany (the oldest continuing squadron/regiment in the British Army & a sort of 'Hooray Henry' unit in the 19thC) in the Boer War and then for all of the Great War. Some would then be detached to the Royal Garrison Artillery. #RemembranceDay
Lieutenant PJ Connolly, RNVR, served in HMS Erebus during WW1 & after in the ill-fated Russian intervention. By all accounts a good officer, he went back to sea as a merchant mariner after the war & died before WW2 broke out. naval-history.net/OWShips-WW1-03… #RemembranceDay
My uncles, Nicholas and Timothy, who would make careers in the British Army, serving in the BAOR, Ulster, one in Aden, before rejoining the family business .... and writing letters to the Torygraph on reviving the Latin Mass #RemembranceDay
I was most grateful to be invited to speak this morning at the #RemembranceDay / Armistice Day service at the Bowral war memorial in the Southern Highlands. The war memorial lists the numerous southern highlanders who served in every war & operation from the Boer War to today.
The audio of my address this morning to the #RemembranceDay / Armistice Day service at the Bowral war memorial in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, Australia.
Good morning all & especially to all those commemorating #ArmisticeDay#RemembranceDay or #VeteransDay . "Lest We Forget"
[Will Longstaff's "Menin Gate at Midnight" or "Ghosts of Menin Gate" (1927)]
Good morning all on this Thirty-Third Sunday of Ordinary Time. Also, good morning to all Veterans throughout the former British Empire on this #RemembranceSunday
[Chaplain Gleeson conferring the Last General Absolution on the Royal Munsters at Rue du Bois in France, May 1915]
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Social media bill is another very poorly drafted law from the very same people who drafted the Voice constitutional alteration (which failed) & the Misinformation/Disinformation bill (which was withdrawn). Sheer lunacy for the Coalition to support the social media bill #Auspol
One of many problems we have with our Parliament in 2024 is its membership is simply not across how modern economies & communications work - you do not have to be any expert but you do need some lay understanding. One saw this in the Misinformation/Disinformation bill #Auspol
As a matter of public law - which binds everyone & should be as simple to follow as law can - the social media bill has ridiculous complexity & carve-outs ... and it is unreal to legislate on social media access separate from AI & exposure to its knowledge & also 'fakes' #Auspol
I am finally watching the @martyrmade / Tucker discussion on Churchill. I am not sure who among the critics have actually watched it. As I dislike Twitter pile-ons, I think everyone should watch what X says before X is put in the tumbril. My response as a Churchillian below.
Firstly, it astounds me (and no doubt many in the old Empire) why Americans in 2024 are so invested in the British Empire in the 1930s when the Americans of the 1939-1941 period wanted no part of WW2 & the US had to be bombed into WW2 & it was the Nazis who declared war on the US
Secondly, there is very little Darryl says that was not said earlier by many Revisionist historians of the same period, esp British ones wondering why they went through two continental wars that cost them their vast seaborne empire - cf Alan Clark, John Charmley, AJP Taylor etal
US delaying arms & munitions to Israel is all about domestic US politics - US allies especially in the Middle East see Biden Admin wiling to dirk *even Israel* here means Egypt, Jordan, Gulf Kingdoms etal start to reevaluate relying on the US vs an Iranian arc with PRC/RUS ‘help’
Rightly or wrongly, the US' allies seeing that if the Biden WH will cut *even Israel* adrift on arms and munitions supplies in a war after a massive terrorist attack, that their alliance with the US, too, operates purely at the whim of domestic US politics ... Obama's 3rd term
A global military alliance of intelligence support & arms sharing (going to standardisation of kit & calibres etc) is only sustainable, ultimately, to the degree that allies trust in the support of each other, esp when the going is hard... no one respects disloyalty esp enemies
Putting Tucker to one side here .... weirdest part of Putin's villain role in the contemporary Western mind (admittedly an historically illiterate mind] is that if Putin dropped dead tomorrow, his successor would follow the same policies, probably more aggressively.
In July 2018, I wrote this piece, "The Sources Of Russian Conduct", on my blog, in an effort to put "The Russians" in some context for that part of the lay Western readership that was not totally brain damaged by America's internal convulsions
Reality is that the West will never be close to Russia - we will have bouts of accomodation & OK times - but we also have many friction points. But we will need a modus vivendi with Russia in space, Arctic, and esp as Russia spans 11 time zones & Eurasian landmass
I am shocked - shocked I tell you - that the same people who were (catastrophically) wrong about Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, etal, have now been proven wrong about the war in Ukraine ....
Twitter trying to work out whether Prigozhin is "for real" this time or whether he is a character from the Cyrillic production of Turkey's 2016 'not quite a coup' ... or an Ernst Rohm or Lin Biao...regardless a lesson taught in these regimes is to never overrate your usefulness.
A key change in how RUS state fought the UKR war over past 6-10 months was to move slowly from 'war on the cheap' (Luhansk/Donetk militias & Wagner) to mobilising Russian reserves + bringing in more of the regular Russian armed forces hence extensive prep for UKR offensive
On any view, Wagner in 2022 filled gaps the RUS state wanted filled-it provided combat power ivo Soledar & Bakhmut in late 2022/early 2023. At same time, regular RUS units were being filled out & commencing the sappering & digging in for the very slow UKR offensive we see now.