… are rarely paid by the rich bastards who start the fucking things. Today, Australia pauses to “honor” those who have been blown to Kingdom Come with dawn ceremonies and trite phrases such as “Age shall not weary them.”

While I don’t doubt that most taking part are sincere in their tributes to the fallen, I also have no doubt that honoring those poor bastards is far from being the primary purpose of Anzac Day. Anzac Day is for the most part a propaganda tool used to convince young fools to fight today’s useless wars by glorifying those who fought yesterday’s useless wars. The truth is that, apart from the second world war and perhaps even the first, few of the wars fought by the men marching today were fought in the defense of this country.

And as bad as things were for those blokes, they are worse for those who fight today’s wars. No jack-booted, genocidal lunatics trying to take over the world this time — except for the ones in the Pentagon. You fall for the propaganda and sign up these days, you won’t be fighting against the modern equivalents of Hitler, you will be fighting for them. It is almost a given that any war you get sent into will be fought solely or primarily for the benefit of multinational corporations and/or the creation of a New American Century. It won’t be about protecting Australia, or even England, it will be about laying down your life for a bunch of psychopaths who won’t lose a minute of sleep slaughtering hundreds of thousands in order to fatten their wallets. But I guess there are worse things than dying for nothing, you could end up looking like these poor bastards– for nothing.