5 thoughts on “Armistice Day”

1. I join you in your depression. It’s so difficult to question this damning aspect of human behaviour without people seeing you as one who disrespects those who died in those conflicts.

2. Last night we went and saw the Anne Sophie Mutter playing with the SSO, conducted by the indomitable Simone Young at the Sydney Opera House. The performance was wonderful and Anne Sophie Mutter was masterful, exquisite and joyful.

   Later on we thought that the people who hate so much, who bring war, have no place in this space, it was a hate free zone protected by a shield of crotchets and quavers.

   Then I thought of Zubin Mehta, who conducted the Israeli Philharmonic playing Beethoven in Tel Aviv – a concert symbolic of forgiveness.

   Furtwanglers run in with the Nazis and Shostakovich’s terror of arrest; two of many musicians whose work survived the hatred of lesser men. The music lives on.

3. Peace is a sure thing. It is after all the object of war. (Not that the belligerents, including the victors, often get the peace they wanted, and lose-lose outcomes are common). The question is whether on the whole the world will be a better place when the guns fall silent.
   Usually not. But it will come to Ukraine. A letter I have just sent to Timothy Snyder, ingeniously combining a green hobby-horse of mine with long-shot social engineering.
   ***********************************************************************************
   Reparations for Ukraine

   It’s not too early to start planning for the peace, which will surely come. As early as 1942, the US Army was training thousands of officers not to fight the war but to administer the territories and populations it expected to conquer. The British had started exploring the problem in 1941. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_civil_affairs_in_the_United_States_Armed_Forces

   Financial reparations from Russia to Ukraine must be part of it, but they need to be complemented by measures that may open the door to a true reconciliation, however long it takes. I suggested earlier a joint commission of historians, which could develop a consensus account of controversial events such as the role of far-right Ukrainian groups in the early years of the conflict. Another obvious idea is a large programme of youth exchanges, on the model of the Franco-German one (FYGO) that has reached over 9 million people since 1963.

   Here is another idea: timber. Ukraine will need large volumes of it in post-war reconstruction, especially if it shifts to modern construction methods using engineered wood. These now allow all-timber buildings of up to 18 storeys (https://www.moelven.com/mjostarnet/). Timber construction (often on a lightweight concrete foundation) has numerous advantages: speed, coming partly from prefabrication of roof trusses etc; aesthetics; carbon sequestration; even better fire resistance. The benefits extend beyond the practical. The architect of an all-wood office block in London asked “how many buildings smell so great?” https://archello.com/news/detail-engineered-timber-structure-of-the-black-white-building . It is fitting that the oldest wooden building in the world is a 7th-century temple in Japan.

   Russia, unlike Ukraine, has vast forests, and its main timber export market in China is probably shrinking, as is world demand for paper. Russia would probably become a major timber supplier to Ukraine for purely commercial reasons. But there are psychological benefits from making the timber a physical form of reparations. “The Russians destroyed my old house, but gave me these beams for the new one.”

   Yours sincerely
   James Wimberley
   11/11/2023

4. The day is hardly ever called Armistice Day anywhere in Australia by anyone now – particularly not by pwned pollies, generals, schools, and msm shills. This is the result of deliberate government spending hundreds of millions of dollars, probably billions, over the past forty years on revisionist militaristic pandering and public reeducation campaigns. Back in the day Armistice Day might be interchangeably called Remembrance Day – a day to recall the blessed peace of the guns finally falling silent, to remember the horrors and abject futility of war. Armistice Day has finally gone all the way down the ANZAC Day track carved out first by an alienated, angry, shocked, grieving, disillusioned, public who remembered all to well the lies told, but in a decade or so once they’d largely died out that track too was commandeered by militaristic institutions and rerouted to hero worship and the glorification of war without end. War demands more.

   Svante

5. Good afternoon John,
   Like DV I believe it is a men’s issue. There is much evidence that gender equality leads to more trust, and collaboration. Company boards with gender equality produce superior outcomes. Scandinavian countries with balanced coalitions have superior socioeconomic outcomes and economies (in spite of high taxes) than Westminster system countries.
   I believe that the Albanese government understands Inclusive Growth, and is trying tom move towards it. With a Trump/Johnson/Dutton mob of flat-earhters to contend with it will require a great deal understanding and courage to convince enough people that collaboration gives better outcomes, socially and economically, than confrontation.