{"id":63148,"date":"2026-04-27T14:34:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T04:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/?p=63148"},"modified":"2026-04-27T14:34:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T04:34:00","slug":"my-blog-is-on-holiday-today-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/?p=63148","title":{"rendered":"My blog is on holiday today"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Today is a public holiday (ANZAC Day) where we remember the efforts of our past generations who fought in wars. This used to be a rather sombre day when some reflections were in order about the men and women who died ‘defending’ our nation. However, it is now a full-on, merch-driven, commercialised glorification of war that has become repugnant to say the least. All of the WW1 veterans are now dead and the WW2 returnees are going the same way. In this modern era, we are confronted with the black\/white narrative (we were good they were evil), which obscures the reality of war and the political machinations that typically accompany it. In our national War Memorial in Canberra, we are still displaying the deeds of Australia’s ‘most decorated’ soldier, who happens to be currently charged with several war crime murders in Afghanistan, such is the hold that the war-glorification lobby has with policy makers. In Australia’s case our involvement in several wars has been the product of unnecessary colonial master-servant type arrangements (us being the servant) and\/or ridiculous alliances with the war mongering US. At least we are not participating in the slaughter by the IDF in Gaza, Lebanon and the US-IDF in Iran. But it is also clear, that the Australian soldiers certainly did it tough and I have sympathy with that – and personal associations with my grandparents and parents. But, on a pragmatic basis, my blog is taking the day off so I can use the time to finish some work that has impending deadlines.
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You can find more about what today is about by consulting this blog post – 100 years ago today in France …<\/a> (April 25, 2018).<\/p>\n

And, on a personal note: My younger brother died last Friday. RIP troubled one.<\/p>\n

(c) Copyright 2026 William Mitchell. All Rights Reserved.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today is a public holiday (ANZAC Day) where we remember the efforts of our past generations who fought in wars. This used to be a rather sombre day when some reflections were in order about the men and women who died ‘defending’ our nation. However, it is now a full-on, merch-driven, commercialised glorification of war…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-admin","entry","no-media"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}