Anzac Day

Today, April 25th, is Anzac Day, a national holiday here to commemorate the first major military action of members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps during World War I.

Over 8,000 Australian and 2,700 New Zealand soldiers died at the battle of Gallipoli in Turkey. For the duration of the war, total losses were over 60,000 for Australia and 18,000 for New Zealand. Given the small population of both countries - Australia had less than 5 million, New Zealand had less than 1.2 million - such losses were enormous. A comparable loss today in the United States would be 3.6 MILLION dead.

Since World War II, Anzac Day has been to commemorate the lives of Australians and New Zealanders lost in that war as well, and all wars since then. There are no longer any living veterans of the first World War, and those from the second World War are all now well over 80 years of age.

It is a solemn day, with nearly all offices and shops closed. Marches of veterans and their families are held in every suburb and city. Here is some reporting of it:

ABC News
SBS News

Maybe one day we'll figure it out.

Here and There (Bilocation)

In this virtual environment, it's easy to go to the old home. Back in DC, I listened to NPR at WAMU on the radio; it's real easy to listen to All Things Considered or Marketplace here on my Real player. What is a little weird is listening to the evening news at 8 in the morning.

Of course, I read washingtonpost.com to catch up on DC and US news. It's not like reading the paper - especially the comics - but it works.

Here my print news sources are the Sydney Morning Herald and Australian Financial Review; for television, it's SBS (Special Broadcasting Service) and ABC news (that's Australian Broadcasting Corporation). Both are state-funded. SBS is very interesting, as its mission as a network is "to provide multilingual and multicultural radio and television services that inform, educate and entertain all Australians and, in doing so, reflect Australia's multicultural society". They also report in English.

For the papers, I buy them maybe two or three times a week. Newspapers here are more expensive in the United States. The Sydney Morning Herald is $1.30 (about US$1.21) and the Financial Review is $2.70 (about US$2.51); I haven't yet checked to see if they provide discounts for daily delivery.

The Australian perspective is rather refreshing, and more comprehensive in its international coverage. The financial news follows the U.S. business environment since the United States makes up such a large share of world business news (plus it's making a lot of news right now, with the deepening recession and subprime mess).

What is so amazing aboout our internet age is that I can have my feet in both the U.S. world and the Australian world at the same time.