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.
Where were these cool toys when I was serving. Damn. That looks efficient. Better than the shoe box APC I had to put up with.
A squadron of 25 new state-of-the-art Australian Light Armoured Vehicle (ASLAV) are to be formally delivered to the 2nd Cavalry Regiment in Darwin today providing Army with a major boost in land capability. Defence Minister Robert Hill said the new ASLAVs are equipped with the Army’s premiere night-fighting equipment, the latest target locating system and fire control measures, which incorporate advanced thermal imager technology.
Senator Hill said the new ASLAVs would make a significant contribution to 1st Brigade’s ability to be a readily deployed combat capable force able to meet a wide range of possible threats and tasks.
Here is a shot of the earlier model ASLAV on patrol in IRAQ with the 2nd Cavalry Regiment
More>> here if your interested
When I was away the news of the North Korea rail disaster broke and I was listening to a junior relative ratting on about how if it happened in the USA we would know all about it.
I mentioned it might be because the US is a free and open society and North Korea isn’t, but the lessons from her exclusive public girl?s school held true and my comment went through to the keeper.
She saw nothing good about the US or Bush and had I questioned her, Howard would have got some stick as well.
What’s my point? Clearly she is picking up this rubbish from her teachers and I for one think that?s an abysmal abrogation of responsibilities on the teacher?s part. She is only a teenager and already biased in her thoughts on world events. Attractive, intelligent and pleasant but none of this will matter if she isn’t taught to look at all the facts before forming an opinion. With everything going for her the teachers have only taught her to parrot their left wing diatribe.
I socialize at a major GPS school in Brisbane and am long use to Howard being held to ridicule at the Staff club. If I point out Liberals responsible fiscal management versus the 23% overdraft I suffered under Labour, they resort to pulling a Howard like face and talking like Gollum from the LOR. Everyone rolls around laughing at their wit and I wonder what they are teaching the kids.
I would like to think they are teaching them to look at the world a little deeper than starting all debate with ‘Bush is evil’ and going on from there.
I would like to think they are teaching them to recognize the natural bias of journalists and commentators (Yes – me too!) and factor that in.
I would like them to think that competition extends people and systems, that no one should be exempt from critical assessment and that the closed shop recommended by the Teachers Union disguises inefficiency.
I would like to think some of these issues will be taken on board by our professional teachers but I’m not holding my breath.
Meanwhile the debate on insufficient male role models in the education departments of Australia waxes and wanes. A Catholic system tried to get scholarships for men only to be countered with ‘No – must have equal amount of scholarships. 12 for men must have 12 for women’
Gender equity should work both ways.
Our male teachers have to sustain continual attacks on their integrity and honour. A disgruntled kid falsely accuses a mate, a male teacher, of touching him inappropriately and his career is ruined. Never made court, kid and Mother confessed – career still ruined. Mud sticks.
Result? Men stay away in droves from teaching.
Just a few things to fix!
Alan Ramsey makes
serious accusations based on a conversation with a now deceased Army Padre. He quotes Gerry Cudmore, padre to 1RAR in 1965, as saying troops had told him of US troops tossing VC suspects out of choppers and handing over female VC to South Vietnam soldiers for death by gang rape.
Professor Bunyip solicits my opinion whilst accusing me of being AWOL. Oh – the shame of it! Well not really…I have been AWOL before.
I wasn’t there on the 1RAR tour and therefore can’t comment on the accuracy of Ramsey’s memory but I can say this. Either I spent 13 months in a war zone medically unfit for operational service with my eyes and ears not functioning or rampant rape and murder didn’t happen.
I think the latter.
My Lai happened, Lt Calley was bad. Other attrocities would have happened but not as a rule and certainly not by Australians. Millions of men at war with associated standing down of norms of society would certainly have produced some bad apples but for Ramsey to write his article around heresay smacks of just another anti-war rant.
Ramsey says;
I knew him as Padre Gerry Cudmore, then 32, army chaplain with the first Australian combat troops sent to Vietnam 39 years ago. Tomorrow is the anniversary of the Menzies government’s formal announcement it was taking us – by deceit and connivance with Washington – into war again, a travesty to be repeated by the Howard Government 38 years later.
Clearly, this man will always have a negative view on any conservative approach to solving world problems but for him to quote an honourable man such as Gerry Cudmore only after Gerry is not in a position to vouch for his words smacks of opportunism.
It makes me wonder whether he had any conversations later on about VC attrocities. 1500 people shot in the back of the neck at Hue. Thousands of village officials murdered by the VC after being forced to watch their daughters or wives being raped and then subjected to ‘bayonet masectomies’ as a warning to those who hoped for a democratic Vietnam.
I guess not and if he had, he would’ve forgotten – like he forgot Gerry’s name.
I served in 1RAR before the Vietnam war and remember Cudmore well. If he was aware of any serious allegations he would have brought it to the notice of authorities but if it was heresay he would simply have mused on the matter, maybe mentioning it in passing to a wide eyed, naive man with a recent degree from the journalist school of left wing mantra. Gerry had a sense of humour and after some association with us soldiers may well have developed our habit of telling
ousiders anything to get rid of them.
Who knows?
At Wagga, over the ANZAC Day weekend, I had some time with friends from 1RAR days and had Ramsey said his peice before ANZAC Day he would’ve had some soldiers looking for explainations. But then we Vietnam Vets are fair game for left wing journalists. We are used to it and think so poorly of them that our time is better spent commemorating the honour of men like Gerry Cudmore.
Does John Laws expect us to believe that he had inside information that would implicate Howard in ‘Government by Broadcaster’ and then sat on it for four years?
Ask yourself one question.
Why has he released this information now?
More>>
The $4 Billion-a -year Aussie film industry is under attack from the Greenies. In their on going battle against capitalism they have halted the filming of a scene from the movie
Stealth through the Land and Environment Court.
Justice David Lloyd of the Land and Environment Court found the environmental dangers of filming in the “sacrosanct” wilderness area would include “incidental destruction of native vegetation” and unintentional killing of the larvae of a giant dragonfly, known as petalura gigantea.
God help us.
The scene has a woman running through the swamp dodging bullets. As no one actually fies bullets in movies what we have is a woman running near small detonators being set of in the water to simulate bullets. It would be no more traumatic that a person moving through the swamp with a stick.
Mr Carr said he would work with film company AFG Talons Productions to follow “every legal avenue” to appeal because the judgment sent “the worst possible message for overseas film-makers”. “NSW is in the midst of negotiations with two other major film projects and does not want to put those jobs at risk. The decision puts a $4 billion-a-year industry at risk and threatens 50,000 jobs in the NSW film and television industry,” Mr Carr said.
A question for Bob Carr. Who gave the Land and Environment Court powers to put our film industry at risk?
Back from leave – will commence blogging in the morning
I’m not a proffessor and I didn’t do maths beyond high school so the news that a Professor in South Australia wants police to stop letting drivers off the hook for speeding ‘just a bit’ has me confused.
DRIVERS are given too much leverage by police before being booked for speeding, the traffic safety guru responsible for the gradual lowering of the suburban speed limit to 50km/h has warned.
Professor McLean uses the analogy of the limit on blood alcohol level to back up his suggestion to cut the police tolerance of speeding.
The legal limit of 0.05 per cent blood alcohol level was chosen because statistically that level doubles the chances of a car crash.
“So travelling at 69km/h in a 60km/h (zone) is like travelling at 60km/h with a blood alcohol level of 0.1 per cent,” Professor McLean said.
It’s the last sentence that has me confused. I think it’s a case of any figure will do and now I’m in the news again, maybe I’ll finally get that grant.
The people who make my car will not guarantee the speedo accuracy to anything closer that 10% so I’m out on a limb here. I guess if I don’t drive in South Australia I should be safe but the ‘Nanny State’ wankers are after me.
More>>
On viewing the obscenity of the films released of animals celebrating the death of the four American civilians the term Urban Renewal came to mind.
The US media was dominated by the story of four American security contractors who were attacked, burned, mutilated, dragged from the back of a car and hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River “like slaughtered sheep” by an angry mob in the Sunni Triangle town of Fallujah.
Fight fire with fire. Level the place. My idea of education being an answer falls on it’s face when confonted with this mindless savagry. Sometimes reeducation is best delivered by 7.62mm rounds at 2700 fps.
Prance and smile now, you bastard.
Labour are still insisting they will bring home the troops by
Christmas
I’m relieved. I was worrying about how the 50,000 odd servicemen and thousands of police in Australia at the moment would be able to handle the terror threat without the help of 20 or so Air Traffic Controllers and the few hundred Infantrymen guarding Australian assetts in Iraq.
Latham must have heard of one of the principles of war that argues against splitting forces.
Good. It should be harpooned while it is wallowing around.
Lets revert to one nation, one Government, one law.
Yesterday I thought we were going to be presented with ATSIC by another name. Latham still thinks it the go but I think the punters are sick and tired of separate governments. Howard is reading it that way as well and even his detractors must admit Hawke’s ATSIC has failed.
Reinstitute Indigenous Affairs as a separate department and give it the flexibility to respond to known problems. Laws, policy and standards are in place to help disadvantage Australians – lets use them wherever it matters.
Update: The Editor of the
Australian underscores the problem we have in Australia by printing this letter from Andrew Sweeney
MARK Latham’s plan to abolish ATSIC is racist. He would find it inconceivable that parliament could be abolished, yet he plans to decide the fate of indigenous governance himself.
Indigenous Australians won’t be free until they have governance that privileged white men can’t sack.
Mr Latham should look to his own prospects for governance. Privileged white voters like myself don’t want another heavy-handed PM.
Reality check, Andrew
It’s a reasonable case to say ATSIC itself is racist. It is, after all, an Australian Government body that disenfranchises most Australians
There is no such thing as
governance that privileged white men can’t sack. All governance is sackable by the votors and the last thing we want is an un-sackable body playing loosely with public monies.
Your not priviledged because your white but because you are an Australian. We all have a vote (except if your white and then you can’t vote for ATSIC)
Andrew says heavy-handed, I say decisive. If it ain’t working – fix it or demolish it.
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