A SENIOR union leader has publicly stated he believes the September 11 terrorist attacks were a conspiracy and the Twin Towers were imploded.
Kevin Bracken, Victorian branch secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia and president of the Victorian Trades Hall Council, is calling for a “proper investigation into the events of September 11”.
“I believe the official story is a conspiracy theory that doesn’t stand up to scientific scrutiny,” he told ABC radio host Jon Faine this morning.
Part of the power group running Australia – says it all really.
I don’t believe for one moment that Gillard wasn’t aware of Abbotts impending visit to Afghanistan when she allowed the press to build up steam on Abbott not wanting to go to Afghanistan with her.
TONY Abbott says he told Julia Gillard at a meeting on September 22 that he had booked a visit to the Australian troops in Afghanistan.
In what he has called an “act of low bastardry”, he says she failed to reveal this information as a corrosive argument ran unchecked as to which political party was more supportive of the troops.
Very poor show PM – there is simply no defence for what you have done.
Ms Gillard took a swipe at the media for not focusing on issues of “real concern”, saying there was a “ridiculous” debate about the need for more tanks.
“You may as well send them a submarine,” she said.
Good line PM. I bet we’ll hear about it for a while but it is disingenuous and trivializes the debate.
I’ve heard it all before. Not the submarine bit but people saying tanks are useless in certain theatres. They were never going to work in South Vietnam due to the jungle. You only need to ask an infantryman whose arse was saved by Centurions, including this one, as to how effective the tanks were.
Generals of the arm chair variety are today saying Afghanistan is not tank country and if you look at the mountainous terrain you might tend to agree. However, it isn’t all mountainous as I’ve seen any amount of videos of soldiers patrolling in decidedly flat terrain and if I’ve seen it once then there exists a case for deploying tanks.
The Canadians have deployed their Leopards even though they aren’t air-conditioned likes ours.
This from a US defense site
“The heavily protected direct fire capability of a main battle tank is an invaluable tool in the arsenal of any military. The intensity of recent conflicts in Central Asia and the Middle East has shown western militaries that tanks provide protection that cannot be matched by more lightly armoured wheeled vehicles…. [Canada’s existing Leopard C2/1A5] tanks have also provided the Canadian Forces (CF) with the capability to travel to locations that would otherwise be inaccessible to wheeled light armoured vehicles, including Taliban defensive positions.”
The Dutch had their Leopards there as did the Danes while the US do have Abrahams deployed so maybe it isn’t that simple.
Generals are political creatures as well as soldiers and they will be very well aware that the current government doesn’t want to deploy any more soldiers to Afghanistan. So to say “we would like tanks” could be seen as a bad career move. On the other hand, if the government were to say “we are looking at expanding our Afghanistan force to build it up to a independent group and would you like tanks with that? you might get a different answer.
DO we need tanks in Afghanistan or do we want them there? I don’t really know as I don’t know all of the considerations but I do know we are not going to have an open debate about the issue.
In case you wonder what us retired soldiers think of the recent decision to court martial three soldiers due to their actions in Afghanistan then here is a letter doing the rounds of the ex-service community with explanatory notes by a Vietnam Veteran.
For those of you who don’t know, Roger Tingley won his Miltary Cross as a 2nd Lieutenant in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The email letter below has been written by Roger as a result of the decision (apparently against the wishes of the Chief of the Defence Force) by one (military) lawyer to court martial 3 young soldiers who made a (split second) decision, tragic as the consequences were, to return fire in a combat situation recently in Afganistan, a situation which it is certain that lawyer has never nor never will have to face, and a situation so dreadful that lawyer could never in her worst nightmares begin to imagine or understand.
Combat soldiers who served during the Vietnam (and any other) war could almost certainly tell of at least one situation that they either knew of, or themselves experienced, where innocent people became casualties. The politicians who send our young men to war know, or should know, without question, that a tragedy such as this is always likely to occur. That these young men now have to face further tragedy in their own lives, regardless of the outcome of their respective courts martial, is a disgrace beyond belief. If someone is to be punished for the tragic deaths of the innocents in this situation, why not the politician(s) who made the decision to send them in the first place or even the electors who chose that (or those) politician(s) to make that decision.
These three young men, privates, the lowest rank in the military hierarchy, are the scapegoats for just another of the tragedies which occur when old men send young men to fight their wars.
RJ Wood
former Lieutenant Platoon Commander during the Vietnam War.
One of the young men sent to fight old men’s wars.
The letter:
I am but a small part of growing and grave concern: not just within the ADF Family and the wider Veteran Community; but of the Australian Electorate at large; that we are seeing the first real nails in the coffin of the ANZAC Military Forces as we knew them.
That the nails are being manufactured from political, delivered by civilians, held by senior civilians in uniform and hammered in, by direction, by mid level military careerists who recognize their masters.
Recruitment is already, although the real facts are obfuscated, becoming a less than cost effective factor and we may be struggling in less than a decade, to find enough service personnel, particularly on the ground and NOT in a barracks base or airfield complex.
Those in power at this time, will by then be well supered….but we will remember them.
So, speaking of Remembrance Day…and the young men (and their poor families) who are about to be dragged through dirty political mud, be publicly pilloried and, whatever the outcome, have their very lives changed forever, may I, in the spirit of fair play, gently ask our current (RAAF) ADF Chief:
Is the Australian Government now going to publicly discriminate: or are they now going to charge any and every single Australian RAAF Ex Serviceman who ever took part in any deliberate bombing (especially Firebombing) of any city or town, anywhere in the world, in World War 2.
I sincerely trust that every addressee will ask the same question of at least one journalist and one elected representative…..well before Remembrance Day.
The Greens as usual miss the point and decide to use their new found power to introduce bills that will only impact on a tiny group of Australians
Greens leader Bob Brown’s decision to introduce a private member’s bill to restore the power of parliaments in the Northern Territory and the ACT to legislate for euthanasia poses a political challenge for the minority Labor government and for Gillard.
and this….
THE Greens have wasted no time flexing their new parliamentary muscles, with senator Sarah Hanson-Young set to introduce same-sex marriage legislation into the upper house later today.
Foreign Affairs…defence…Afghanistan…taxes..Climate Change…nah none of that stuff. Let’s just concentrate on our single issue, small impact, left wing contentious issues.
Stuff the other 90% of the country.
The Gillard government has reintroduced legislation that will allow soldiers to use deadly force in response to terrorist attacks at defence bases.
The original bill was introduced in June but lapsed when the election was called.
The aim of the bill was to to strengthen defence’s capacity to deter, detect and respond to any attack on a base, Defence Minister Stephen Smith said.
The Bill is in response to the Terrorists targeting Holsworthy Army Base.
In light of the recent charging of soldiers for soldiering I trust they have a Lawyer on duty with the sentries at each base.
LABOR has lost its first vote in parliament’s lower house after the coalition won a division on parliamentary reform.
The vote was 73-72.
More details as they come to light
The ALP/Greens government is winding back the clock on compulsory Union Fees bringing them back in to give them another stream of activism.
THE Government will introduce legislation today to restore compulsory student amenities fees at Australian universities.
Minister for Tertiary Education Minister, Senator Chris Evans, appealed today to the new parliament to support the bill, saying he wanted it to be passed by Christmas to ensure it will take effect next year.
Just a point – they are not Amenity Fees, they are Union Fees.
In Jul 2005 when Howard was working on getting rid of the compulsory union fees I wrote on the subject;
It’s all about power, folks – the power to control millions of dollars of student funds.
My children have a total of five degrees from UQ and I’m well aware of Student Union fees. No fees…no results…no degree…help Dad…mumble…bitch…moan.
And then one child borrowed the Union car to drive home…a Suburu Forester…better than mine at the time but then I wasn’t enjoying the largesse associated with controlling funds unfairly extracted from 40, 000 odd students struggling to get through Uni.
The Speaker of the House debate has intrigued me. Gillard appeals to the opposition to help her by ‘pairing’ votes that would allow her to select one of her members as Speaker without detriment. She says it’s based on Parliamentary reform but any reform she has in mind starts with “the ALP shall be in power”
In short, she is appealing to Abbott to help keep her in power which is definitely not his role.
Pairing occurs when members with opposing views agree not to vote, effectively cancelling each other out
Abbot had previously agreed to the ‘pairing’ when negotiating with Oakeshott and according to todays media and various ALP heavies that meant it was written in blood and should stand. But I figure any agreement with the Independents would only apply if they backed the Coalition and they didn’t.
The agreement meant an opposition MP wouldn’t participate in divisions to cancel out the Speaker, who doesn’t have an ordinary vote.
Solicitor General Stephen Gageler Solicitor-General Stephen Gageler has advised the government there’s no “necessary constitutional impediment” to the speaker being paired with a member of the opposing party – so long as a number of conditions are met.
He says the arrangement must be voluntary, and the speaker cannot gain a deliberative vote or be deprived of their casting vote
Sounds a bit loose to me.
For instance, Mr Gageler admits if pairing meant the speaker exerted influence over another member’s vote – thereby giving them the substance of a deliberative vote – “the potential for the application of the constitutional prohibition could not be ruled out”.
There are questions as to the legality of the proposal and, as the Coalition point out, it may invalidate legislation making it subject to later legal challenges.
Looks like ALP 75:Coalition 74 making it a hard row to hoe for Gillard.
Parliament should be interesting when it finally sits.
Update: More on the subject at The Punch
Facebook
Twitter
