13 December 2011

MDC takes another swing at the World War memorials

13 December 2011 | johnboy

The Memorial(s) Development Committee has put out a media release on their revised plans for dedicated memorials to World Wars One and Two on Anzac Parade.

“We have made some design modifications as a result of the community’s feedback and a review by an accredited architectural expert. These modifications will reduce the footprint of the memorials by up to 25 percent.

“They will be repositioned on the allocated Rond Terrace site to preserve the Parliament House/Australian War Memorial vista and to ensure continued public access to the Rond Terrace site for local community events.

“Their realignment and repositioning will in no way change the original commemorative purpose nor design intent” Mr Buick said.

The next step in the process is for the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, Tony Burke, to consider the EPBC Referral.

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Deref11:07 am 14 Dec 11

rbw said :

Deref said :

Does anyone have any idea why these people are pushing this?

Research boaz and joachim pillars
solomons temple
design of canberra
freemasons

you will have your answer

oh
and
reptoids too 😛

😀 I suspected as much.

rbw10:30 am 14 Dec 11

Deref said :

Does anyone have any idea why these people are pushing this?

Research boaz and joachim pillars
solomons temple
design of canberra
freemasons

you will have your answer

oh
and
reptoids too 😛

Deref9:02 am 14 Dec 11

Does anyone have any idea why these people are pushing this?

Hanksinatra1:14 am 14 Dec 11

I recenly buried my Uncle Teddy Todd, veteran of Kododa and Borneo. I have some doubt he would have much truck with the Veterans Memorial Committee. I take his general view that these kinds of offices are beyond the imaginings of the ideals that he indeed fought for, and to a large extent he lived his life in the channell of these experiences.

A nice sounding committee, but he at least would have been better off with a cheque, Times are tight I guess.

matt312217:54 pm 13 Dec 11

creative_canberran said :

matt31221 said :

Waiting For Godot said :

This really is sad. They are trying to force memorials onto the public which they don’t want, and which are superfluous and unnecessary. It is symptomatic of an edifice complex and a severe inferiority complex.

It is a psychological fact that the countries with the lowest casualties in a war feel it necessary to build the biggest memorials, and it is a physiological fact that the money being wasted could be infinitely better directed.

Unless I have misunderstood your post completely – I really despise people like you. Who said the public doesn’t want memorials – to remind us of the sacrifice our own people made for this country? The horror that occurred in these wars are simply unimaginable, we should not forget the sacrifice that our ancestors made. I say make the memorials bigger. Never ever forget. Shame on you and shame on anyone who does not want memorials to honor them.

Dude, middle of the photo, big thing with a copper dome.

Other capital cities, cenotaphs and war memorials.

Regional centres and country towns, cenotaphs and memorials.

There’s no shortage. The proposed ones are misguided.

The more the better my brother.

creative_canberran7:43 pm 13 Dec 11

matt31221 said :

Waiting For Godot said :

This really is sad. They are trying to force memorials onto the public which they don’t want, and which are superfluous and unnecessary. It is symptomatic of an edifice complex and a severe inferiority complex.

It is a psychological fact that the countries with the lowest casualties in a war feel it necessary to build the biggest memorials, and it is a physiological fact that the money being wasted could be infinitely better directed.

Unless I have misunderstood your post completely – I really despise people like you. Who said the public doesn’t want memorials – to remind us of the sacrifice our own people made for this country? The horror that occurred in these wars are simply unimaginable, we should not forget the sacrifice that our ancestors made. I say make the memorials bigger. Never ever forget. Shame on you and shame on anyone who does not want memorials to honor them.

Dude, middle of the photo, big thing with a copper dome.

Other capital cities, cenotaphs and war memorials.

Regional centres and country towns, cenotaphs and memorials.

There’s no shortage. The proposed ones are misguided.

matt312217:29 pm 13 Dec 11

Waiting For Godot said :

This really is sad. They are trying to force memorials onto the public which they don’t want, and which are superfluous and unnecessary. It is symptomatic of an edifice complex and a severe inferiority complex.

It is a psychological fact that the countries with the lowest casualties in a war feel it necessary to build the biggest memorials, and it is a physiological fact that the money being wasted could be infinitely better directed.

Unless I have misunderstood your post completely – I really despise people like you. Who said the public doesn’t want memorials – to remind us of the sacrifice our own people made for this country? The horror that occurred in these wars are simply unimaginable, we should not forget the sacrifice that our ancestors made. I say make the memorials bigger. Never ever forget. Shame on you and shame on anyone who does not want memorials to honor them.

poetix7:28 pm 13 Dec 11

rbw said :

Their memorial brochure (http://www.mdc.org.au/MDC_Brochure.pdf) states the phrase:

hendre magnit ulla
faciniat. Duis adignim
dolor sequam, si tisis
amconulpute faccums
andreet, conullutat
ipsustrud et nit amet
vero odigna aci ea
facat.

Google translate had a complete FAIL with translating this latin phrase.

Any ideas what it is?

To be honest i’m not surprised they continue to try for this monument given the Governer General’s involvement on the committee

Hendrix’s magnetism
fascinates me.
God’s finger
is sad, as his tie
was caught in the computer.
DEET consultants intrude
and nits love ace green ears’
fascination.

I-filed7:14 pm 13 Dec 11

That’s great news. They are far less intrusive as described and drawn here.

creative_canberran7:08 pm 13 Dec 11

rbw said :

alaninoz said :

rbw said :

Google translate had a complete FAIL with translating this latin phrase.

Any ideas what it is?

Placeholder text.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipsum

I don’t think so. The first sentence mentions “great crime” which would have something to do with war you would think. I also don’t think they would leave placeholder text on an otherwise well polished distributed plan.

I think we need some deeper thinking on this one.

Google doesn’t turn up any other place where those words appear in the same order. I think it’s just luck that “great crime” ended up in the first sentence.

But really, putting words on it 99% of people wouldn’t understand doesn’t make sense. How about Alfred Lord Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’,

creative_canberran4:05 pm 13 Dec 11

Have to say these seem both redundant and misguided. To reduce the sacrifice and high costs of world wars to a couple of chunks of stone is entirely wrong. The walls of remembrance at the AWM show the names of those who died and literally shows the human cost of war. To reduce these deaths and the deaths of tens of millions of civilians to two chunks of rock is dishonourable.

Even worse though than doing a poor job at remembering the costs and losses in war, I think it’s clear these monuments are intended to glorify at least some aspects of war. This from their website:

“The two Memorials are to be symbolic of the two defining 20th century world events and must be monuments that communicate inspirational and timeless messages to reflect the spirit, sacrifice, and commitment of the Australian nation during these nation-building events.”

These wars were not nation building, in fact the argument that they somehow forged the Australian nation is an absolute myth.

We blindly followed Britain into a European War amongst inbred and moribund empires.We let our xenophobia mask our true geographic reality. In every conflict from WWI to now, we have been the loyal servant of “great and powerful friends” rather than our own nation. And when suddenly a war isn’t in favour and the myth doesn’t hold, we turn our backs on those who served like in Vietnam.

If we look at the wars on a global scale, far from nation building, they were nation and empire destroying. We saw the fall of the British Empire, Ottoman Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire and Tsarist Russian Empire.

The Treaty of Versailles and conclusion of WWI demonstrated the high price of vengeance imposed by the victors of war, which coupled with the disastrous post-war economic conditions led to the rise of fascism and ultimately WWII.

These faceless, bland monoliths are a sad and misguided way to remember war. Let the names, let the stories of those who have served on both sides be the memorial, for it is from the past that we can learn no to make the same mistakes in the future.

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