102 years ago today, the guns fell silent, marking the end of what was then (optimistically as it turned out) called The Great War or (even more optimistically) The War to End War. I’ve written many times about this disaster, but only once about the influenza pandemic that began in the last year of the war and ended up killing millions more people than died on the battlefields. It’s hard to think about anything else today, even as the existential threats of climate change, nuclear war and the collapse of democracy loom large in the shadow of the pandemic.
As on the day of the original armistice, we can hope that better days may lie ahead, but can only hope and do our best to bring them about.
John Quiggin 
Honest History has a page of linked articles on the Spanish flu pandemic of 1919 many relating it to the 2020 covid-19 pandemic:
http://honesthistory.net.au/wp/from-the-honest-history-vault-humphrey-mcqueen-and-others-on-the-spanish-flu-pandemic-of-1919/
While there, never ought we forget how the country was broken and sent so far backwards by by the war mongering bastards of the day:
http://honesthistory.net.au/wp/lake-marilyn-fractured-nation/
Some things should change. Yet here we are again, and sadly yet again:
https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/australian-war-memorial-keeper-flame-hider-shame
‘From the Honest History vault: Does Defence spending lead to war, and does it make any sense against pandemics?’
http://honesthistory.net.au/wp/stephens-david-from-the-honest-history-vault-does-defence-spending-lead-to-war-and-does-it-make-any-sense-against-pandemics/
Agreed: “War is among the greatest of crimes. It may be the lesser evil on rare occasions, but it is always a crime. On Remembrance Day and always, this is what we should remember.”
flanders poppies are grain crop weeds.
they did so well because of all that fertilizer from the high explosives and the rotting bodies.
lest we forget.