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Graves at Sanctuary Wood military cemetery in Ypres, Belgium. Never before, and certainly never on this scale, had the bodies of ordinary soldiers been treated with such individual respect. Photographs: Christopher Furlong/Getty

In my study I have a grainy oval photograph of Mr and Mrs Weldrick from Barnsley, both stern-faced and wearing hats, standing behind their sons grave in a field in Flanders. The Weldricks had two sons and two daughters. At the age of 16, one of the daughters got herself into trouble, as they used to say, and the baby was brought up as one of the Weldricks own children. That baby was my grandmother. For years, she would also make the annual pilgrimage to Belgium to put flowers on her brothers grave though he was really her uncle. I remember that she kept pressed cuttings of the flowers. And this year, for the first time, I am also going and taking my own son with me.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission celebrates its centenary this year. For 100 years it has buried the dead, collected information about them, and maintained those distinctive white graves in famously well-kept cemeteries. Never before, and certainly never on this scale, had the bodies of ordinary soldiers been treated with such individual respect. For centuries, the rank and file were discarded in mass graves, with only the officers deemed worthy of individuation.

With the work of the War Graves Commission, other ranks were given the same honour as officers; they were all buried alongside each other, all with the same sized headstone. This democracy in death was revolutionary stuff at the time, and there were many who complained that the commission gave the families of the dead little choice in how their loved ones were to be commemorated.

What freedom is it if you will not even allow the dead bodies of peoples relatives to be cared for in the way they like. It is a memorial not to freedom but to rigid militarism, complained Viscount Wolmer, in a parliamentary debate on the subject in 1920. Some from such aristocratic families found it particularly egregious that all the bodies were to be treated the same. But the TUC spoke for many when it insisted that those visiting the dead will expect to find equal honour has been paid to all who have made the same sacrifice, and this result cannot be attained if differences are allowed in the character and design of the memorials erected.

It was a fascinating debate basically, freedom v equality and though I cannot imagine the result being the same today, the fact that the War Graves Commission carried the day meant that the graveyards of the first world war stand as a powerful witness to the final obliteration of all social divisions.

My son and I hire cycles in Ypres, and follow the map out of town into the sunny blissful pastoral that is the Flanders countryside. This must have been what it was like before the guns and the trenches, full of cows and goats and birdsong. We pass several little cemeteries, some with just a few hundred men. And then to Georges final resting place, at the edge of a field, a long way from Barnsley.

Private George Weldrick of the 2nd Battalion York and Lancaster Regiment, died of his wounds 100 years ago next April. He was 25. His older brother had been killed at the start of the war but his body was never found. So, too, both of his cousins. But George fought throughout the worst of it, at the front, in the trenches, in the infamous Ypres Salient surrounded by lagoons of mud and death. In the end he was killed during the German spring offensive of 1918.

As far as I can tell, George was wounded in the same battle that the Germans let loose 2,000 tonnes of mustard gas. Many were blinded. A few days later, he died of his wounds. Standing in this lovely field, I cannot begin to imagine the horror he experienced.

I dont much care for the larger cemeteries such as Tyne Cot or, worst of all, the Roman-style triumphalism of the Menin Gate a sepulchre of crime as Siegfried Sassoon rightly called it. These places rally a militaristic spirit that doesnt sit right with me. But out in the fields of Flanders, away from the trumpets, in the little cemeteries, behind a hedge, at the back of someones garden, there is space and calm to remember the stupidity of war. Lest we forget.

Giles Fraser was in Ypres to make a documentary on how the first world war changed the way we remember the dead. It will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 10 November 2017

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It took the horrors of the trenches to finally bring a democracy to death - The Guardian

Posted August 25, 2017 10:20:36

It's been a month of burka stunts and citizenship chaos, in which door-stopped politicians have been bluntly asked: is our democracy broken?

But amidst the chaos, perhaps we need to ask ourselves: what are democracy's values? In Australia, 2017, that is. A trip to ancient Greece isn't necessary.

Just mosey on down to Canberra and Old Parliament House, now known as the Museum of Australian Democracy (MoAD), which this year celebrates its 90th birthday.

As part of the anniversary, a bunch of us 100 to be precise, including Dick Smith, Kerry O'Brien, Warren Mundine, Susan Ryan, Jenny Brockie were invited to participate in a glittering occasion last week, called Democracy 100 You Can Make a Difference.

We heard ex-prime ministers Bob Hawke and John Howard muse out loud about our democratic future, in an intriguing interplay dubbed a "multi-partisan conversation", brokered by Annabel Crabb and broadcast on the ABC.

Then, at the end of our Greek-inspired menu with beautiful wines from the Canberra region, the invited guests at 15 tables were exhorted... to play a game!

You could almost hear the quiet groan. Please, no role-playing, with partygoers asked to be senators or parliamentarians, fulminating on some confected set of issues. Luckily, the game turned out to be considerable fun.

We were distributed a deck of cards in three different colour sets, devised as part of a complicated process undertaken over the last 18 months by the museum and the University of Canberra's Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis.

They'd questioned 1,244 Australians recruited at random, and 10 focus groups, about their attitudes towards democracy.

Out of that arose some consensus, which was very broad in nature.

And as part of the game we were asked to put ourselves through a mild form of House of Representatives tension and rank the ideas raised by the survey participants in order of importance.

We were asked a number of questions: What do you think are Australia's most important democratic values? What should the responsibilities of champions of democracy be? What could be done to strengthen our democracy?

In the "values" category, I wonder how you would choose between the ten options offered to us?

We had an extra wild card on which to write down our own idea as a group.

Mr Howard, who was at our table, nominated "listen to the mob", which I didn't agree with.

It reeks of anti-thinking in my view. But guess what? I lost the argument! Just as politicians who don't manage to persuade their confreres do. Welcome to their world, I thought to myself.

In the "how to strengthen democracy" category, these were the options culled from the focus groups:

Again, I don't know how you would answer. But that is surely the point of our system. We are entitled to our own views, our own rankings and to argue with each other but to use words, not stunts or swords.

One first-time voter from the surveys nailed it, in my view:

"We need to get more involved but they don't have time for us and our views. Apart from election time. Then they're interested in us. Maybe that's what needs to change. They need to be as interested in our views when they've been elected."

Without a doubt, the times demand we talk rather than yell more.

Topics: government-and-politics, canberra-2600

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Democracy in 2017 needs fewer stunts and swords, more genuine discussion - ABC Online

I was a child of the Cold War. I grew up being taught to fear the commies. They wanted to take away all my rights, make us slaves, send us to camps, nuke the planet. You know, standard scare-the-crap-out-of-a-7-year-old-with-existential-dread.

Of course, as the Cold War thawed and eventually ended because Rocky beat Ivan Drago and gave a speech, commies werent so scary anymore. Sure, their ideology was still bad, their economic philosophy was stupid, and they would never rule the world, but they werent scary.

I still dont find them frightening anymore. I mean, basically whats left of the commies is China, which is just a bunch of capitalist oligarchs; Cuba, which has become a hipster tourist destination; and North Korea, which is only kinda communist and mostly just good for the occasional nuclear annihilation nostalgia. In America, communism is pretty much the domain of millennials wholl lose interest after their first good job and the hard-core types who spend most of their time holding meetings about planning meetings to hold a rally if they can get off work. For the most part, communism is dead. Oh, I forgot Vietnam is still communist, but were friends with them, so it doesnt count.

But sometimes, sometimes I remember why communism existed in the first place. Earlier this week, Louise Linton, the wife of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, gave a good example for why Russia isnt a monarchy anymore. She posted on her Instagram a picture of herself striding off a government jet with her husband after visiting the Scrooge McDuck vault of gold at Fort Knox, and tagged all of her expensive clothes.

Look, I get that shes rich, I mean her parents own a freaking castle in Scotland and shes married to a former Goldman Sachs guy; shes not hurting. You shouldnt begrudge peoples wealth; its one of the Ten Commandments for a reason. People just get lucky by birth or work or simply picking the right numbers and end up stinking rich, but it doesnt make them a bad person. Look at the group The Giving Pledge 158 billionaires who collectively donated $365 billion to charities. Nicki Minaj, whos worth about $70 million, just randomly decided to start paying off peoples student loans one day on Twitter. Makes me regret not following her. Theres nothing wrong with making money. There is a problem with it turning you into a jackass.

Of course, when Linton posted the photo along with the list of her designer clothes, people began to call her out. When the Secret Service is out of money because it has to guard Trumps daughter during a spending spree and pay Trump to use the golf carts at the golf courses he lives at, it's really beyond the pale that Linton steps off a government jet tagging Valentino shoes, Mouret pants, and a freaking scarf that costs at least $200 (seriously, I Googled all the things she tagged). Her entire outfit, including the purse, is two-thirds of what I make in a year. The shoes alone are just about my take-home pay in a month. But $200 or more scarf?! Its a square of fabric. Ive been to the fabric store; I can get two yards of silk for like 20 bucks. Oh, but its designer! So fucking what? I get spending a few million on a Picasso, but two bills for a fancy napkin you wrap around your throat?

When people called Linton out, she went on a big tirade about how much money they pay in taxes, talking about how much they have sacrificed for the country, and told a commenter her "life looks cute." Look, lady, unless you got no legs and PTSD from an IED in Anbar Province, you dont get to compare paying taxes to sacrificing your body for the country. Hell, Peace Corps members sacrifice more, social workers who are on welfare sacrifice more, freaking fire jumpers out in Yellowstone sacrifice more than you having to pony up some cash.

Then she had the audacity to say her critics were out of touch. Seriously. I know people who prostitute to pay back student loans. Hell, I know some who do it just to pay the rent. So when you live with a guy whose goal is to cut taxes on the 1 percent and corporations for a president who is billing the U.S. government to babysit him while he shitposts on Twitter from the 11th hole, bragging about your stupid sunglasses kind of pisses us off when a lot of us have seriously thought, You know, I could probably rob this place and not get caught, when standing in line at the 7-Eleven using change to put gas in the car.

I have a pithy saying, The best argument for communism is capitalism and vice versa. Im cool with European-style socialism; corporations make the goods and give you jobs while the government taxes them and pays for your school and health care, and will feed you and put a roof over your head if necessary.

Capitalism is cool because if youre clever enough and lucky enough, you can be fugly as sin and still get laid regularly. Communism sucks, though, because its an authoritarian regime that crushes dissent, cant run a national economy, and makes shitty cars. Capitalism can be hell too. Just go back and read about the Gilded Age. You think its bad now, but corporations basically hired out the National Guard to shoot union workers, for Gods sake, back then. Upton Sinclairs The Jungle, a novel about the horrific conditions in the meatpacking industry at the turn of the century, wasnt that embellished. I mean, unregulated capitalism and its associated robber barons and plutocrats corrupting the government nearly tore the country apart at the turn of the last century. Anarchists were setting off bombs on Wall Street for a reason back then.

At a time when our countrys government is becoming more and more beholden to special interests and lobbyists; when corporations are putting quarterly profits above the environment, and executives get multimillion-dollar severance packages for driving a company into the dirt while their workers cant afford to go to the doctor; when people have to take on a lifetime of crippling debt just to get an education so they can rise above poverty wages I mean, cmon. Do these folks just not get it? People dont believe in the American Dream anymore; they dont buy the temporarily embarrassed millionaires shtick anymore. Theyre anxious, theyre desperate, theyre hopeless, and theyre getting angry.

For a D-list actress married to a Wall Street banker whos working for a guy who is basically a grifter and store-brand mobster to tell average Americans to get over her flaunting her wealth so flippantly while using government resources paid with their tax dollars? Well, all I can say to that is, Workers of the World Unite

AMANDA KERRI is a writer and comedian based in Oklahoma City. Follow her on Twitter @Amanda_Kerri.

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Louise Linton Is a Walking Ad for Communism - Advocate.com

Posters of Lenin and Stalin in Red Square, 1947 / Getty Images

BY: Alex Griswold August 24, 2017 12:24 pm

The New York Timeshaspublished several op-eds in 2017as part of its "Red Century" series commemorating the 100-year anniversary of the Russian Revolution.

Many of the pieces have notedatrocities the Soviets carried out. A number of the editorials, however, have also offered defenses for or praise of aspects of communism. Among them:

Women had better sex under communism

"Why Women Had Better Sex Under Socialism,"arguedKristen R. Ghodsee, a professor of Russian and East European studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

"Some might remember that Eastern bloc women enjoyed many rights and privileges unknown in liberal democracies at the time," she wrote. "But there's one advantage that has received little attention: Women under communism enjoyed more sexual pleasure."

Stalinism inspired Americans

"When Communism Inspired Americans," from left-wing Times journalist Vivian Gornick, is a retelling of her childhood spent in a radical Bronx family during the age of Josef Stalin.

"It is perhaps hard to understand now, but at that time, in this place, the Marxist vision of world solidarity as translated by the Communist Party induced in the most ordinary of men and women a sense of one's own humanity that ran deep, made life feel large; large and clarified," she wrote.

"Americawasfortunate to have had the communists here,'"Gornick quoted her mother as saying. "They, more than most, prodded the country into becoming the democracy it always said it was.'"

The Bolsheviks were romantics deep down

University of California, Berkeley historian Yuri Slezkine penned a story on "The Love Lives of Bolsheviks," an account of how a belief in communism spurred Bolshevik leaders towardpassionate love affairs.

The romanticism Slezkine described dimmed a bit when he revealed one of the star-crossed lovers "unleashed the Red Terror [and] ordered the execution of the czar and his family," and anotherbecame "a leading advocate of forced labor in the countryside."

Lenin was aconservationist

Yale senior lecturerFred Strebeigh authored "Lenin's Eco-Warriors," a piece highlighting how Vladimir Lenin, "a longtime enthusiast for hiking and camping," passed reforms to protectRussia's environment.

"For now, at least, Lenin's legacy is preserved and Russia remains the world leader, ahead of Brazil and Australia, in protecting the most land at the highest level," Strebeigh wrote.

The Soviets supported the Harlem Renaissance

"When the Harlem Renaissance Went to Communist Moscow," wrote the University of Pennsylvania's Jennifer Williams. Williams chronicled how black artists in the 1930's thought there was greater opportunity in Moscow, arguingat the time, "the American Negro stands very little chance of achieving true representation" in Hollywood.

"In the Soviet Union, racial equality was not merely incidental but a state project," Williams wrote, detailing how the Soviets recruited Harlem artists for a propaganda film about race relations in America.

Unfortunately for the artists, the USSR's support for the film project was yanked once it achieved its true objective: diplomatic recognitionfrom the U.S. government.

Without the Soviets, we would not have "Star Trek"

Counterculture writer A. M. Gittlitz argued in "Make It So': Star Trek' and Its Debt to Revolutionary Socialism," that the sci-fi series "Star Trek" owed its genesis to Russian Revolution principles.

Gittlitz cited the novel Red Star, a book about autopian colony on Marsthatadheres to communism. That book helped spark Russian "Cosmism," a belief that the future of communism rested in technology and mastering space.

Gittlitz argued "Star Trek" was particularly inspired by Argentine Trotskyist leader J. Posadas. As aleader of Argentina's socialist movement, Posadas argued alien visitors would be socialists and would help "free Earth from the grip of Yankee imperialism and the bureaucratic workers' states."

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The 6 Worst Defenses of Communism Published By the NY Times This Year - Washington Free Beacon

MP Oudekki Loone (Center).

"Honored Minister Stavros Kontonis, I want to express my sincere gratitude and respect for your and the Greek government's decision not to participate in the conference whose topic was 'The legacy of the crimes of communist regimes in 21st century Europe,'" wrote Loone in a letter published on stavroslygeros.gr (link in Greek). "Your explanation of the reasoning behind your decision was perfect! Unfortunately such efforts to indirectly justify the Nazi regime and Nazi ideology are staunchly present in Estonian politics today."

According to Loone, her own decision to celebrate the Soviet victory in World War II on May 9 earned the ire of many Estonian journalists and politicians, but it also earned support. "Thus let me confirm to you that Estonia is not a Nazi state and that here, just like elsewhere, Nazis and supporters of Nazism are in the minority," she wrote.

Loone claimed that the Greek minister's decision was a reminder of European values and gave strength to everyone concerned about the rise of a Cold War-era climate today.

"This conference is a disgrace, but I am certain that a future exists in which such events will not be organized anymore," the Estonian MP concluded. "You only helped to bring on such a future more quickly."

Victims of communism and Nazim were commemorated in Tallinn on Wednesday, the anniversary of the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which was proclaimed in the European Parliament in April 2009 as the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism.

Since 2009, EU justice ministers and representatives of organizations that study the crimes of totalitarian regimes have met on Aug. 23 every year; this year, they met in Tallinn for the second time.

Greek Minister of Justice Stavro Kontonis refused to participate in the conference, as he claimed that Nazism and communism could not be compared to one another.

Estonian Minister of Justice Urmas Reinsalu (IRL) has promised to respond in writing to his Greek colleague.

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Estonian MP thanks Greek minister who defended communism - ERR News