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.
Mark Osbourne from WA asks; Australia 17 Ireland 16. Is that all you’ve got?
Good question. I’d like to think Eddie Jones is playing ‘setting the odds’ and ‘not telegraphing punches’.
I certainly hope so but at times on Saturday night I was worried. In fact I was worried up to the final whistle.
Oh, the stress!
Could I possibly live with Australia not being the best at something?
But there is hope. The sports pages also headline “The All Blacks also look vulnerable.” In their match against Wales the All Blacks looked several shades of grey as a spirited Welsh team gave them a big touch up.
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Most readers would be aware that I’m a retired Army officer and may be surprised when I say I agree with Carr in his criticism of ‘Colonel’ Kelly. When I first read of the ‘Colonel’ I was embarrased that a professional Officer would put aside his duty to be apolitical and publically critisize a politician. What is the world coming too? I ask myself. Next we will have military officers critisizing the Government about the conduct of the war.
Todays letters in the Australian make much of this matter with statements like “Soldier should stay clear of politics” and “what is serving army officer like Colonel Mike Kelly doing sending a letter…….?
Norm Barnwell from Merriweather says, and I quote in full;
When we have professional soldiers meddling in political affairs we have serious problems. As a lesson Colonel Mike Kelly should be brought home and made to face either a court martial or at the very least be returned to Duntroon to learn the politically correct behaviour for a soldier in Australia’s army
Norm is dead right……except it is unlikely that Colonel Kelly is a professional officer, he is a lawyer. Lawyers don’t graduate from Duntroon, they don’t even go to Duntroon. They get their law degree from a main stream university and then volunteer for a commission. They do an extremely short course that teaches them how to salute and how to wear a uniform and are then let loose on the soldiery with all their uni days baggage.
Notwithstanding this, he is expected to act as if he was a professional officer and he has made a professional gaffe. He should be brought home and his resignation called for so he can be free to stay with the ALP (he is a member) and play politics at the bar and at the club on friday night.
Having said all of the above, there are exeptions to the rule and I do know of officers who have graduated from Duntroon and then subsequently studied for a law degree. You will never hear from these guys as they are professional officers first.
The latest deaths took to ‘X’ the number of soldiers killed by hostile fire since May 1, when Mr Bush announced an end to major combat operations. That is ‘Y’ more than were killed during the six week military campaign to oust Saddam Hussein.
Is any one else getting sick and tired of this template? Fill in the figures to denigrate the soldiers service or to make Bush/Howard/The Great Satan etc look bad.
How about:
So far in the war against terror, in the Iraq theatre alone, 288 Coalition soldiers have paid the supreme sacrifice so journalists and editors are free to use their deaths to take cheap shots at Bush/Howard/The Great Satan.
Update: From reader Kev Metcalf;
Alternatively –
“So far in the war against terror, in the Iraq theatre alone, 288 Coalition soldiers have paid the supreme sacrifice so that, on averge, x number (currently 33450) of Iraqis, could not only live, but live in relative peace and freedom”.
The Washington Post reports the US Senate has voted to limit US aid to Malaysia.
The Senate voted yesterday to restrict military aid to Malaysia in response to Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s assertion that Jews control the world through their influence over major powers.
No link available without divulging your age and country so I’ve quoted the relative paragraphs in full
Voting without dissent, the Senate amended its foreign aid spending bill for next year to make aid to Malaysia contingent on a determination by the secretary of state that Malaysia’s government “supports and promotes religious freedoms, including tolerance for people of the Jewish faith.” The secretary could waive any restrictions for national security reasons.
The amount of money involved, $1.2 million for military training, is relatively small but constitutes the bill’s entire amount for Malaysia, Senate aides said.
Mahathir, scheduled to retire this week after 22 years as prime minister, triggered an international outcry earlier this month when he told an Islamic conference that “Jews rule this world by proxy” and urged Muslim nations to unite to avoid being “defeated by a few million Jews.”
His remarks were “dangerously wrong” and “play directly into the hands . . . of radical Islamic extremists,” Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told the Senate yesterday. “This is not an issue of free speech. . . . His anti-Semitic remarks lend credence and legitimacy to the hateful messages of local terrorists [who] seek to sow mayhem throughout the region.”
Fair enough.
Fires a Dreamtime payback,
say blacks.
Aborigines are claiming that ferocious central Australian bushfires are being driven by a wind called Piriya, which is exacting Dreamtime payback for the siting of the exclusive six-star Longitude 131 safari camp resort near Uluru’s sacred north face.
They seem to have a
dreamtime word for everything that goes wrong. In the
realtime it’s either a bushfire or inter tribal warfare over the lucrative receipts from tourists.
I wonder if the dreamtime has a word for education. Most probably not.
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Under the headline
Brown blind to immoral reality Janet Albrechtsen continues to place Brown under a micriscope.
Here is a tale of two Australians. The first is Special Air Service trooper Andrew Russell. The second is Australian Greens senator Bob Brown. They are a study in contrasts – duty v self-indulgence, the ultimate commitment to country v cavalier grandstanding. Russell died in Afghanistan protecting us from terrorists.
Brown parades around on the fringe of politics trying to free two men who trained with al-Qa’ida. Russell will be remembered as a brave soldier, Brown as the epitome of the power without responsibility that defines fringe politics.
Brown’s wearing of a photo of Hicks and Habib at his infamous day in the House further implicates him in dreamtime. The two enemy terrorists have been incarcerated for about two years now at the Guantanamo Bay resort for those who want to kill us westerners because we are and he feels they should be released.
Well it ain’t going to happen.
Janet says;
Here are the facts so far. Hicks was captured in Afghanistan in late 2001 by the Northern Alliance. He was schooled by al-Qa’ida in four terrorist specialisations – weapons training, casing, surveillance and ambush training. Before that he trained with the Kosovo Liberation Army and before fighting in the Balkans he was a member of a Kashmiri terrorist organisation, Lashkar-e-Toiba, also believed to have links with al-Qa’ida. Hicks has form. He did not hop aboard some Lonely Planet tour for adventurous under-30s.
and on Habib;
According to intelligence sources, as bad as Hicks’s record looks, Habib’s is worse. The Habib family claims that he was in Pakistan looking for schools for his children. But a spokesman for Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has told The Australian that Habib was in fact training with al-Qa’ida in Afghanistan before September 11. And even Habib’s wife concedes that Habib tried to raise funds from Sydney’s Muslim community for Omar Abdel Rahman, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing. Yet Brown wants Habib and Hicks returned to Australia, knowing that no Australian law will keep these men off the streets.
Why is it that the Left support these fools. Are they going to quote another freedom; Freedom of Association? Freedom to serve with associates that are trying to kill Australians like Andrew Russel. Remember these two were fighting with the Taliban, that group that beheaded women for adultry defined as looking at another man.
What is it with the Greens? There are no freedoms that justify these sort of actions. There is no way to rationalize signing up to kill your countrymen.
At the moment a vote for the Greens is a vote for the terrorists. Go that way if you must but remember when you do vote for them It’s not a vote for conservation, it’s a vote against everything that the 95% of Australians holds dear.
I’ve had little time of late to blog on the Brown/Nettle sideshow what with kids, Legacy, other websites, World Cup Rugby, a trip to day surgery and general laziness but there are things that need saying.
The Australian headlines
Greens more Nazi than ratbag: Lib
I’m not sure I’d go as far as to give them the credit of being as organized as the Nazis but he has a point.
It has always been my contention that the Greens were conceived behind the rubble of the Berlin Wall. I can see the parents viewing all the deleriously happy East Germans and wondering…where to go? How else can we attack capitalism now that Communism had been outed. A bottle of cheap vodka and the depression of seeing all those fools, unable to understand the wisdom of communism and the scene was set.
Andrew Bolte puts more flesh on my words when he calls Bob Brown
a dangerous fanatic
I’ve always subscribed to Freedom of Speech and even signed up for the war against communism as part of my subscription fees but of late I been thinking the right needs refining.
The fools of the world need to be yarded in one locality…the rabble on the streets at Canberra spring to mind, and kept out of other paddocks.
Comment of the night on the ABC 7.30 report from some old geezer who’d driven down from Young to see the prez; “look at these clowns- they need a bath, and this idiot over here has a bath-ring in his nose; he can’t blow it, and there’s snot running down his face- what a dickhead”.
These sort of people. This is the correct venue for Brown and Nettle.
Niall gives them creditablity in this comment.
Whether Bush likes free speech or not is irrelevent. The fact remains that here in Oz, we allow it, whereas where he hails from, you’re marginalised for doing so. Power & plaudits to Brown and Nettle for standing up to their convictions. Brickbats to those who voiced doubts but failed to be recognised. At least some have the guts and gumption to be seen to be real Australians.
With freedom of speech there are some social limits as in not saying f***k to your grandmother and this is where the children of the couple behind the rubble of the Berlin Wall get lost. It’s not guts or gumption to be socially inept – it’s just plain socially immature and if Niall’s point that we need to be thus to be real Australians then that is how we will be seen in the world. Socially immature.
A traumatized child is suing his parents for creating the circumstances that put him in a detention centre and left wing lawyers for keeping him there while they boost their company profits with pointless appeals.
Hang on…thats not it. He is suing the government. I don’t get it.
I can’t find a link but Stuart Rintoul raises the issue in todays
Australian. The boy, Shayan Badraie has previously been in the news and the subject of a
Four Corners edition that depicted the boy being manipulated by his parents to gain left wing sympathy. It worked but the rest of us, including the government are a little bit sceptical about it all.
They are Iranians, come here illegaly and are costing us a lot of money. The father, Mohammad Saeed Badraie, has the abilty and parental responsibility to alleviate the poor kids problems immediately. Stop traumatising your own son and go home.
Update: From reader Dave. The Age has a link
here
The refugee parents of an Iranian boy, 7, whom a Human Rights Commission investigation found to have been seriously traumatised by detention, will launch a $750,000 legal action against Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock and his department.
Mohammed Badraie, father of Shayan said he would follow his lawyers’ recommendation to seek substantial compensation for the pain and suffering inflicted on his son who still suffered from “night terrors and bed wetting” after being detained at Woomera and Villawood.
“It is not about money, although life is tough for us,” Mr Badraie said. “It is the need for an apology and an acknowledgement from Mr Ruddock for our unnecessary suffering.”
Mr Badraie has said he doesn’t want money so we only have to deal with the apolgy and acknowledgement. Ruddock’s chief-of-staff may like to use the following as the first sentence to the ‘apology’.
We are terribly sorry you inflicted all this unnecessary suffering on your children and by way of apology here are free tickets to Iran for you and your family.
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Friday night. Off to the famous Breakfast Creek to watch rugby. I had hoped Fiji might have permanently disabled a couple of All Blacks to help Australia’s chances later on but you can’t have everything. Still, good football, good friends and cold lager. Saturday night at home with family and friends and three consecutive rugby matches to watch. The old bar TV went on the blink and we had to steal my wife’s small TV to finish the marathon. Sunday quiet but in the evening Samoa frightened the Poms and showed two things. One, just how good a small Pacific nation can be with a minuscule budget and enormous courage; and two, the Poms are fragile under sustained attack. The Poms ran out winners after finally gaining ascendancy over the last 15 minutes of the game. The fact that they needed 16 men on the field to do it will be discussed by the WCR judiciary this week.
This morning I phone the local TV repair company and say I need trauma counseling- can he help. World Cup Rugby and the bar TV is on the blink. He will.
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According to Mat Price in this mornings Australian ABC bias did not rate with viewers. Well Haleleula- if they’re viewers, by definition they will not see bias. As Tim Blair said some time ago the proof that the ABC is biased is that you never hear the left say so.
32 column centimetres of confusing stats wasted on a ‘given’. I’ve generally given up watching the ABC as although they do have some quality shows, wherever they can they will present a political view and it is always left wing. Even when I do occassionally watch the SieveX reinactments and anti Bush/Howard/Iraq War/poor refugee shows I would never feel like making a pointless ‘doomed to failure’ complaint – I’ve already wasted too much time.
There were 147 complaints of anti US bias and 144 claiming the ABC was favouring the US. As the statistical base is comprised of centrist to left wings of the Labour party or people who have no political thoughts at all then it has no meaning.
Meaningless Matt! Like your comments on the Governor General.
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