ANZAC reflections

Yesterday was ANZAC Day here in Australia and New Zealand. Another public holiday, but one that's sacred to most Australians and Kiwis.

It's our equivalent of Memorial Day in the USA. It's when we remember and honour the dead -- and the living -- of all the wars in which our servicemen and women fought.

This is focused upon the first-ever campaign fought by ANZAC troops (ANZAC = Australian and New Zealand Army Corps -- a British Army clerk created the acronym to save time and repetition, because each soldier had to be identified individually as an ANZAC because they were all listed as British at that time). This was the debacle at Gallipoli, in the Turkish Dardanelles, in which 450,000 ANZACs were killed or wounded in a useless, tragic saga of self-indulgence, incompetence and sheer pig-headedness from the British Armed Forces, from Winston Churchill to his generals and navy people.

The few positive things to come from this bloody fiasco were (in no particular order of priority)...

• a true and unique sense of national identity and worth
• an awareness of the cavalier contempt of the British military establishment for "colonials"
• an awareness of the blind incompetence of that same British military establishment
• the establishment of the reputation of the "Diggers" as the most irreverent, inventive, "kiss-my-arse"-brave, deadliest and most feared soldiers in the world (a reputation that still holds true to this day)
• the United Nations' first choice as peace keepers
• a willingness to respect and befriend former enemies (Turkey and Japan are close friends these days)

A few years ago, I became concerned by the dwindling attendances ar ANZAC Day parades and ceremonies. This year, like last year, we've witnessed record attendances. Ever since our troops began service in East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq, we've seen a resurgence in support for them and their predecessors. Not to glorify war, but to honour their service and sacrifice, and to acknowledge our reliance upon them for keeping Australia free and at peace.

I have a close friend who served as a captain in Australia's SAS (Special Air Service). My father served in the Australian Army, with distinction, during World War II. Both hated war and refused to talk about their exploits and experiences, except for the occasional guarded comment, usually along the lines of "you have no idea of what you're talking about -- wait until you've been in real fighting before you open your mouth and reveal your ignorance and arrogance".

My friend's car bears a sticker that says "Nobody loves a soldier until the enemy is at the gate". Thankfully, that no longer seems to apply, in Australia, at least. And, while we neither want nor glorify war, we understand and appreciate the importance of being vigilant and fearless when it comes time to stand up and be counted.

That's MY business!

It happened again last week. I set out to provide a little information in response to a couple of requests, and ended up creating an entire web site before I realised it. In fact, several web sites!

Normally, I plan out a web site fairly carefully. But, just occasionally, this kind of thing happens. I grows and grows, just like Topsy. I'm not sure why.

The upshot of all this is that I now have a web site I can point people to whenever they ask "John, what do you do for a living?" and my heart sinks, because I do so many things and it would take forever to explain it all.

I realised that some of the more technical terms and descriptions may not mean much to visitors, so I began posting manual pop-up windows with succinct explanations linked to those terms. Then I realised that I had products or programs related to those aspects of small business or direct selling that could be helpful to visitors. Then it dawned on me that these pages could be helpful if they were available from ALL of my business web sites if I linked them to those sites.

Are you beginning to see the chain reaction happening here?

This could become a nightmare so easily! *lol*

Still, the new site is a useful promotional resource for prospective small business and direct selling profession clients. Not only does it explain what I do, in as much detail as they need and choose, but it does it on a more personal level, because it's part of my personal domain. Since my clients tend to all become friends, that has to be a good thing.

I think!

Anyway, here's the new site: http://www.johncounsel.biz