Author: Kev

Retired infantry officer. Conservative by nature and politics; Happily married and father and grandfather of eight. Loves V8 powered Range Rovers, Golden Retrievers, good books and technology and think there should be open season on Greenies. Born in the mid forties and overdue for servicing but most parts still work.

Bush bugging beatup

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Mark Steyn hits the nail on the head.
….unmoored from reality, wafting happily into fantasy land safe in the hermetically sealed Democrat-media bubble, Sen. Barbara Boxer and her colleagues are apparently considering impeaching the president for eavesdropping on al Qaida calls made to U.S. phone numbers.
 It’s the same as taking Churchill or Roosevelt to court over their complicity in breaking Enigma and the Japanese codes and then conducting the mortal sin of listening in to the enemies communications. More from Steyn.
Consider Iyman Faris, a naturalized American citizen also known as Mohammad Rauf and nailed by U.S. intelligence through the interception of foreign-U.S. communications. He was convicted in 2003 for doing the legwork on an al Qaida scheme to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge Do you want Iyman Faris in jail? Or do you think he should have the run of the planet until he’s actually destroyed the bridge and killed hundreds of people? Say, the Golden Gate Bridge just as you’re driving across after voting for Barbara Boxer and congratulating yourself on your moral superiority.
 If you do want him, and others like him off the streets then you need to accept that one of the quickest avenues of doing so is communications interception. You can’t have it both ways. I recommend you read the full article. The link is in the RH bar
US Politics, War on Terror

Extra SAS and ‘Chooks’ sent to fight the Taliban

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Another SASR Squadron off to join the fray in Afghanistan. AUSTRALIA will boost its military presence in Afghanistan to more than 500 troops to counter an increase in violence from a resurgent Taliban. Two Chinook helicopters and 110 special forces soldiers will be deployed to the troubled country, seen as a front line in the war against terror. The Chinooks, commonly called ‘Chooks’ have had a chequered history in Australa with crashes and 12 squadron disbanding and ‘rebanding’ over the 33 years they have been in the ADF inventory. In May 1989, the Defence Minister, Kim Beazley announced the withdrawal of the Tactical Transport Group Chinook fleet on cost grounds, and that Army Black Hawks would perform the essential roles of the Chinook. This is a bit like saying a Land Rover can do the job of a Mac truck and the fact that this is a false hope didn’t take long to become apparent, even to the ALP. True, the Chinook is most probably the most expensive rotary wing aircraft to maintain in any countries inventory but it is also almost indispensable to the countries infrastructure. Its heavy lift capacity makes it ideal for civilian applications as well as defence deployment. Besides ADF deployments, other tasks for the Chinooks have been lifting Wessex helicopters for the RAN, and wrecks of wartime Boston bombers from the jungles in Papua New Guinea. Also lifted was an extremely large statue of Australian aviation pioneer Sir Lawrence Hargrave onto Mt Keira at Wollongong, typical of many tasks undertaken for the civil community. The first time I flew in one was in Vietnam. The US Chook picked up us 20 odd soldiers then flew over and picked up a bulldozer. I was sitting over the hatch that had a round beam from which hung the dozer. It looked all too lightweight to me but off we flew with the dozer oscilating and me hyperventilating. Great piece of kit and it’s good to see it is supporting the new soldiers as they battle the new terrorists. UPDATE: Too date, 61% of Age readers who have participated in a poll on sending troops to Afghanistan have voted for the continuation of the Taliban regime with all it’s brutality. Age Poll It could only happen at the Age.
Defence, War on Terror

Cyclone Clare weakens

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TROPICAL Cyclone Clare roared towards Western Australia’s Pilbara coast last night, forcing families into evacuation shelters as emergency workers prepared for a dangerous storm surge and destructive winds. The cyclone on the map defines neatly the area where I went sailing a few years ago. Click here for the almost finished article on that trip. Sea and air ports, roads and shops were closed and more than 150,000 barrels of daily oil production shut down as the category-three cyclone headed towards the northwest coast.
Despite the red alert, about 10 young men could not resist the chance to surf a rare swell in the famously flat waters of Dampier Harbour. The group soon realised the conditions were too dangerous and headed to shore, but two stragglers got into difficulty and had to be rescued by police. Locals raised the alarm as the pair struggled to reach the safety of Sam’s Island, about 600m off the shore.
 An onlooker, obviously the master of understatement, comments;
“It was traumatic for everyone watching them, that’s for sure,” said an onlooker who alerted police. “The police couldn’t believe anyone would be out there. They had to act really quickly because all their rescue stuff, including their boat, was locked down for the cyclone.”
I’m sure the Police language would have been more colourful. The Storm Surge effect is caused by cyclones occuring at high tide. This phenomena is exacerbated by the fact that the tidal range in the area is in the magnitude of 12 metres. Good luck guys and could you have the place cleaned up by the time I visit in May this year. Thanks. UPDATE: Clare has been downgraded from a category three to a category one storm as it heads for the state’s Gascoyne region.
General Musings

Old news but good idea

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The ubiquitous RPG 7 may be reaching its use-by-date. THE British Army’s next class of armoured vehicles will be protected by a “force-field” of electrified armour that will vaporise rocket-propelled grenades. Britain’s Ministry of Defence has signalled that the electric armour, invented at the ministry’s scientific research centre, will transform armoured warfare, enabling vehicles to be more lightly protected and more easily moved around the world. Army News has the story as well as the Australian
The British electric armour is made up of several layers, the first of which is an earthed bullet-proof outer skin. The second skin is live, although insulated, and has several thousand volts of electricity flowing through it, powered by the vehicle’s battery. The third skin is the normal vehicle hull. When an RPG7 grenade hits a tank with standard armour, its conical warhead fires a jet of hot copper into the target at about 1600km/h. This can penetrate more than 30cm of conventional solid steel armour. On the electric armour, the grenade penetrates the insulation on the live second skin, creating a sudden surge in electricity that vaporises the copper stream in the same way that a surge burns out a fuse wire. The effect is to leave the inner hull intact and the crew safe, with the vehicle capable of taking repeated hits.
It’s not exactly current news though, I note UK DSTL released this article in July 2002.
Defence

A bad week to be a Queenslander

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A Jellyfish sting kills a girl at Bamaga, in far north Queensland. The Box JellyFish (Chironex Fleckeri) aka Fire Medusa or Indringa is often fatal and is present in tropical waters during the wet season. When I was in Townsville my Company Sergeant Major and his wife were attacked by a Box Jelly fish. She died and he was badly scarred for life. A 21 year old woman was killed by a shark at Amity Point, just over the bay from where I live. NORTH Stradbroke Island tourism operators have called for a shark-proof swimming enclosure to be built off Amity Point where a young woman was fatally mauled by up to three bull sharks at the weekend. Sarah Kate Whiley, 21, from McDowall on Brisbane’s northside, was attacked while swimming in waist-high water about 15m off the beach late on Saturday afternoon. The island’s beaches were closed to swimmers yesterday but were expected to reopen today. Redland Shire Mayor Don Seccombe said council would consider installing a shark-proof fence when councillors returned from holidays. In the meantime warning signs would be erected. Local fishermen said they were not surprised a pack of bull sharks was believed to be responsible. A terrible business all round and a stark reminder of natures savagery.
General Musings

Gee, Saddam was involved in training terrorists after all

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THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq. The existence and character of these documents has been confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD by eleven U.S. government officials. As Michelle Malkin says; This is important news. It ought to be on the front pages. It won’t be. So spread the word.
War on Terror

Mad Mayor

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THE mayor of Waverley, Mora Main, has a vision of a perfect world and it’s practically car-free.
Residents in Sydney’s east who needed to get somewhere would borrow keys to “share cars” – preferably electric ones – from the council carpark and use them to, say, do some grocery shopping.
 You might remember Mora Main as the idiot who decided not to fly the Australian flag at Bondi.
The rest of the time, they could just walk serenely from place to place (lugging the children, car seats, sand buckets, mobile phones, handbags and the shopping) or glide along on the light rail (that doesn’t yet exist).
 Besides cars, Ms Main would also like to see fewer air-conditioners (“because we get beautiful seabreezes and it is only 40 degrees once in a blue moon”), and fewer backyard swimming pools (because the sound of children splashing can disturb creative types trying to work from home). In the course of promoting these ideas, Ms Main – who is 50 years old, never married, has no children and whose politics are Green – has been accused of being many things, among them a batty Leftie, an autocrat determined to tell others how to live, while being out of touch with the lives of “ordinary people”. Could someone explain to me why people vote these fruitcakes into office. Surely the Ms Mains of the world can’t hide all their stupidity during the elections. Poor fellow, my country indeed.
Politics

Australia represented by a deviate

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Ian Lincoln, ambassador to Vietnam from 1986 to 1988, has been accused of passing on confidential information to communist officials about 54 boatpeople who landed in Australia in 2003, while serving on the refugee tribunal.

The leaking claims, which Mr Lincoln strongly denies, were made by the Vietnamese Community in Australia group in a written submission to a Senate inquiry dated August 8 last year.

But the report examines how DFAT handled Mr Lincoln’s relationship with a 16-year-old he met in a park near his home in Hanoi in September 1987.

The report said Mr Lincoln later sponsored the boy to Australia in 1990, where the pair said their relationship became sexual.

Let’s see if I got that right. The Australian Ambassador in Vietnam had a thing about 16 year old Vietnamese boys, seduced one and then brought him back to Australia.

Of course we all believe that the relationship became sexual only after the boy was 18.

What was Bob Hawke thinking?

Uncategorized

ALP produces irrelevant policy

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The ALP continue to reinforce their lack of relevance by listening to the left wing of the party, that group busily working at keeping the ALP out of office.
Labor environment spokesman Anthony Albanese and Pacific Islands spokesman Bob Sercombe said a Labor Government would provide regional leadership to ensure that Pacific Islanders forced to leave their homes by rising sea levels would be considered refugees and given assistance to resettle.
 We have a potential problem miles and years away and the ALP use doubtful science as a reason to impliment a policy that may not be necessary Even Planet Ark are doubtful about the problem
“The evidence is building that the oceans are warming but so far we still have not seen any change in the sea level rise rate so that acceleration is not there,” he said.
So one day in the far distant future people living in Kirrabati might have a problem. The sea might rise a few centimetres and they might be obliged to rebuild their huts a little further up the beach. Anthony Albanese, believing all the worlds problems emanate from global warming and the subsequent rising seas, studiously ignores the myriad of others problems facing Australians, including the ones who elected him, and suggests we concentrate on people who don’t have a problem and who aren’t Australian. Get with the plan, Anthony, help produce some policies that are relevant to Australians. What is your party going to do about terrorism, defence, education, transport infrastructure, pensions, the Tax system….you know all that boring stuff that politicians who aspire to leadership worry about. The stuff that concerns the electorate. If the ALP only trusts you with environmental matters, as appears to be the case, then start working on our environment. What is your policy for plantation timber? Explain it to the electorate now so they can balance the jobs lost should your party be elected to power, with the doubtfull returns of having you actually being responsible for something. Environmental refugees…give me strength!
Politics

Letterman not smart

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Suffering from insomnia I occassionaly let the TV pause at David Letterman’s show from New York. Sometimes it is mildy amusing but has little to recommend it other than there is mostly only rubbish on the other channels.

Last night Letterman gave us all a brief glimpse into his intelligence

From Opinion Journal

Letterman to O’Reilly: ‘I’m Not Smart Enough’ to Debate War

It didn’t take long for fireworks to erupt last night when Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly guested on David Letterman’s “CBS Late Show,” with the late night host finally admitting he wasn’t “smart enough” to engage in a debate over the Iraq war.

The verbal fisticuffs began when Letterman asked if O’Reilly had a good holiday.

O’Reilly responded: “I had a nice Winter Solstice,” prompting a contentious exchange over whether Christmas traditions were indeed under attack.

But the confrontation really heated up when Letterman suggested, “Let’s talk about your friends in the Bush administration. Things seem to be darker now than they might have been heretofore.”

The comments prompted O’Reilly to launch into a point-by-point defense of the Iraq war, beginning with the argument that even if U.S. intelligence had “screwed-up” on weapons of mass destruction, “for everybody’s protection, it’s best for the world to have a democracy in that country functioning and friendly to the West.”

Letterman seemed to turn downright hostile, however, after O’Reilly defended U.S. soldiers and attacked Cindy Sheehan.

“The United States, particularly the military, is doing a noble thing – the soldiers and Marines are noble,” the Fox host insisted. “They’re not terrorists. And when people call them that, like Cindy Sheehan called the insurgents ‘freedom fighters,’ we don’t like that. It is a vitally important time in American history and we should be very careful of what we say.”

The comment prompted Letterman to admonish O’Reilly, “Then you should be very careful about what you say, also . . . I’m very concerned about people like yourself who don’t have endless sympathy for a woman like Cindy Sheehan. Honest to Christ, honest to Christ.”

The sometimes volatile Fox host let the personal attack slide and continued arguing his case.

A few moments later, Letterman threw in the towel, admitting: “I’m not smart enough to debate you point to point on this.”

The CBS star, however, couldn’t resist tempering his concession with one last insult, telling O’Reilly in the next breath: “I have the feeling that about 60 percent of what you say is crap.

It’s worth repeating.

I’m very concerned about people like yourself who don’t have endless sympathy for a woman like Cindy Sheehan. Honest to Christ, honest to Christ.

Honest to Christ, I’ll never be caught watching Letterman again.

Politics
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