Submitted by Paul Daley on
Good history demands the full and uncomfortable story be in the official account
Suggestions that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is impeding or trying to censor an official history of Australia’s East Timor peacekeeping mission are disturbing but unsurprising.
Submitted by Paul Daley on
Better to confront the human cost – the horrible deaths and the scarred survivors – than indulge in sugar-coated commemoration
Every 11 November there is a lot of talk from our politicians about the peril of forgetting – “lest we forget”.
We’ll hear it again today, as our leaders in commemoration speak of the “glorious dead” and “the fallen” – the Australians who “sacrificed” themselves in a “spirit” of Anzac, apparently to guarantee the “freedoms” (contestable, and an issue for another column) we now enjoy.