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Defence suicide and sick puppies

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ALMOST 80 members of Australia’s defence force have killed themselves since 1997. Oh my god, that’s awfull!
…opposition defence personnel spokesman Mark Bishop said the suicides were a result of defence culture. He said the suicide rate should force the Government into releasing the findings of a review of suicides.
No it shouldn’t. Reading on we find that the national rate is 1.6 of all deaths while the ADF is about half that. What’s his bloody point. He has taken a positive stat and reversed it and then pointed out why this stat is bad. False premise springs to mind. Sexual harrassment is a problem in the ADF! In a force the size of the ADF, with it’s tens of thousands of mainly young, fit men and woman there has been 107 cases of harrassment. 107! My God, I wonder how they get time to soldier. Well, actually, it’s only 88 substantiated cases but let’s not let exceptionally good figures ruin a good beat-up. I’m neither making light of suicides nor sexual harrassment but could we have some balance. With both the listed figures being less than national averages the Senator could have just as well congratulated the ADF considering they are going through a difficult time at the moment with deployments all over the world as they fight terrorists and help stabalize our volatile island cousins. This subject was reported three days ago but with other matters on my plate I hadn’t posted this piece. It is more relevant now as I have been a part of a ex-service network email distribution that made much of the Bishop report. Of late I’ve been receiving emails extremely critical of the government from an ex member of my battalion who forwards emails from one Keith Tennant, an advocate of sorts for the ex service community. I received one last night and was so moved as to answer in a theme that was critical of the political posturing contained within. Amongst other things, I said;
Your links on your website detract from your purpose. Linking to activist sites, 9/11 conspiracy theorists and people like Margo Kingston clearly put you in that angry left wing area that sees no good in the country, no good in the military and definitely no good in our current fight against terrorism. My opinion, after reading your website, is that your political leanings detract from your mission. I’m not so much questioning your work but the more the angry political attacks…they can’t serve much purpose, they annoy me and I’m representative of your target.
I also took him to task for his email signature that says;
Veterans Will Continue To Advise Young Australians Not To Enlist In The Military Under Current Circumstances
There was some to’ing and fro’ing of emails that culminated in my being blackbanned from his email list. Keith’s final email read;
You really are one sick puppy. So, anybody who doesn’t fit your vision of the world and your profile of what is right and proper in Gillett’s mad head is a commo and rabble rouser. and …well, just about anything else I suppose. Of course you wouldn’t at all be one of those mad, war mongering right wingers who want to send everybody else’s kids and grandkids off to the latest War EXCEPT YOUR OWN, would you? With lunatics like you around I marvel how we ever gained any respect at all and how Governments have ever listened to us. You are blacklisted so don’t bother replying. We are busy every day and have been for years fighting for the entitlements and rights of lunatics like you. My advice to you is…….. Stick a tampon up your arse, light the wick and blow your brains out.
Which pretty well proves, in an ad hominem sort of way, the point of my earlier email. Keith’s web page, The Aussie Digger is loaded with compassion for his fellow ex serviceman..you might like to drop in – I’m sure he would appreciate the extra traffic. I received another answer to my email that raised points in a rational and calm manner and I replied in a similar vein. Some members of the veterans community are concerned about suicide and I am one of those. I did some quick reading here and at the ABS on the subject of suicide, or more relevant to this issue, youth suicide and found the reports do not paint a rosy picture. Suicide has touched me personally and it can only be defined as ‘painful’ and raises reflections on ‘what could I have done?’ and the answer is all too often…nothing. Notwithstanding, I don’t think the government should necessarily be hauled over the coals for it. I’m of the opinion that there needs to be a precondition of some physciatric disorder that prevails regardless of profession that can be triggered by, what to many others, is an inconsequential event. So even though good works are being carried out by the military and society generally to alleviate the problem, it will always exist and we need to keep that in mind instead of mindlessly thowing accusations around. Youth suicide is an across border problem. It is not a pretty picture but it does suggest that the Army doen’t stand alone with it’s suicide problem. No one carries press about suicide rates for wharfies, or airline pilots or rural workers as there are no such figures readily available and it’s a good way to bash the government or generals anyway. UPDATE: I sent Keith an email linking to this post but he was right, I’m black banned and the email was rejected.
Defence

Joy as pedophile’s house burns

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RESIDENTS of a tiny town in Victoria drank beer and cheered as they watched a convicted pedophile’s home engulfed in flames.
Most of the town’s 16 residents and at least two dozen spectators, watched the weatherboard home of Terrence Allan Ellis, 52, burn on Sunday, soon after an open day at a pioneer park.
Can’t say I blame them.  If I lived in the town I could see myself in attendance handing out cans of petrol to keep it going.
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HMAS Sydney II

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The Australian reports a survivor from the WW2 sinking of HMAS Sydney with the loss of all hands, has been located in a grave in Christmas Island. Us Gilletts have a long association with HMAS Sydney. Two of my Great Uncles witnessed the first Sydney sinking the Emden in WW1, my father served on the second Sydney during WW2 and I returned home from my war (Vietnam) on the third Sydney. Just over a year ago I posted on my father’s time on the Sydney and his very lucky escape from a watery grave. The ‘survivor’ exhumed at Christmas Island is not recent news. All investigations into the loss of the cruiser make note of a body found in a RAN life raft at Christmas Island but in the days before DNA identifciation little could be gained from the body. Without evidence, the RAN never listed the body as a sailor from the Sydney. Today it should be different and at least one family of the 645 lost can hopefully gain closure. In this case, the family may have already been identified.
TED McGowan thought he was going to take it all in his stride. Then on Tuesday evening, the call came from Canberra; the final resting place of the unknown sailor had been unearthed on remote Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean.

John Perryman, the Royal Australian Navy historian, told him a forensic team was dusting off the skeletal remains of what may be the only physical link to Australia’s worst maritime disaster, the sinking of HMAS Sydney in November 1941 off Western Australia.

It may also turn out to be Mr McGowan’s brother Tom. “I feel exhausted,” Mr McGowan admitted yesterday. “I thought I would be able to handle it, but I was completely overcome.” He has been the driving force behind the navy-led expedition to Christmas Island.
Two issues give Mr McGowan hope: a good set of teeth and a canvas shoe. When the body was examined by the island doctor on or about February 6, 1942, the corpse had a “perfect set of teeth”, as did Tom McGowan, a rarity in those days, and a shoe in the raft had “McCowan” or “McEwan” branded on it. I hope it works out for you, Ted
Defence

Democrat’s wish list

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Sex scandal threatens to sink Republicans The Times reports
THE iron grip with which Republicans have held the House of Representatives for the past 12 years appears looser by the day with each fresh disclosure in the sex scandal involving Congressman Mark Foley and teenage boys working on Capitol Hill.
and quotes a pollster.
Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, predicted yesterday that the mid-terms are set to mirror those of 1994 when Democrats were swept from power by a wave of voter anger. He said: “I watched something similar happen in 1997 when Tony Blair’s Labour Party won its landslide against the Conservatives. The Republicans are sinking fast.”
I’m not convinced. When the story first broke I surfed around to get some idea of the severity of Foley’s crimes and stumbled across Tim Dunlops “Road to Surfdom Hysteria” I followed a link from this line “The emails are stomach-turning: you can see them here. I followed the link anticipating hot flushes, nausea and the development of a burning desire to kill the nearest paedophile. I was dissapointed. I read them again…well, they are creepy in a “send me a picture of yourself” and “what would you like for a birthday present” sort of way but the hysteria eluded me. Tim Blair quotes Kerry Howley at Reason on Line who says
The Mark Foley pedophilia sex scandal lacks two things: pedophilia and sex.
I would hope that Foley’s’ public office’ days are over, he apparently has a track record of bothering Pages and comes across as creepy and immature, but if it reflects significantly on the Republican vote I’ll be surprised. The “holier than thou” hypocritical reaction of the Democrats lacks substance in the light of actualy having sex with an intern (Clinton); get drunk, crash a car into the water and leave the passenger to drown (Kennedy); and actually having sex with a 17 yr old male page (Studds) to name just a few transgressions. Casualties so far;
Foley’s has resigned,
The chief of staff for Republican Congressman Tom Reynolds, Kirk Fordham, has resigned after questions were raised about his role in the handling of the congressional page scandal, and Speaker of the House Hastert is under pressure but will most probably survive.
One for being stupid and weird and two for keeping the fact under wraps. That should be it and if pundits are predictng the collapse of the Republican Party over one bad apple then they need some history lessons.  People in glass houses…….etc
US Politics

Water, water, everywhere and not a drop to drink

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In the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge says it all, although for different reasons but if we’re not carefull a poem from the 1800s could herald the problems of today. Water is a problem in Australia and always has been but it’s more of a management problem than one of supply. Travel the country and you will have to agree with me. Uncapped bores at Coorabulka, open irrigation channels in the Murry Irrigation Area and uncountable megalitres of water emptying into the Cambridge Gulf in NW Australia. We just haven’t been serious and we have to change. I have just had the Water Wise plumber, employed by the Brisbane City Council, at my home and that programme is a good start. All taps checked and given new washers when needed, All showers checked for restricted flow valves and replaced where necessary. Even taps over hand basins, the kitchen sink and in the laundry now have restricted flow. The main shower now flows at 9li per minute rather than 20 and the shower effect is the same. The cost of his visit of about two hours…..$20.00. I have ordered a water tank (3,000 li) and will water the garden with rain water through an irrigation system. I will order a cover for the pool to limit evapouration and likewise save on power with less filtering requirement during winter. All of this, of course, is bandaide treatment to a much larger problem. My water rates will drop (quantatively..but watch the cost per litre rise) and if every house owner does something it will make a difference. We do have to water-discipline ourselves but the governments have to react to the infrastructure shortfalls. I agree with Howard when he says the federal government should be controlling the nation’s water and the case of Queensland offers the best reaon for this. For almost a decade now, politicians in the sunshine state have been paying lip service to infrastructure while bragging about the thousands of southerners that are attracted to move to state every month. We grow and the infrastructure remains stagnant. There is no way known that a state government can express surprise when the state runs out of water. It’s only now that Beatty is talking about building a dam and connecting the current dams with pipes to try and drought proof SE Queenlsand. Caught out unprepared but the everyone forgives him and doesn’t ask the hard questions like ” A new dam will take years to build and should have been started 5 years ago..why only bring it up now? The Greens hold too much sway with the Labour state governments with the result that the lung fish and obscure frogs take an unnatural place in the food chain above humans. Madness. If the waters rise the lung fish can move up or down stream and as they have already survived millennia of drought and flood I’m a little more circumspect about who’s who in the food chain than the Greenies. Lyndsay Tanner writes;
EVERYWHERE you look, Australia has a problem with water. After decades of overuse and waste, water resources are under extreme pressure. There’s no shortage of water, it’s just that most rain falls in the lightly populated north and we use water incredibly wastefully. Our population is only slightly larger than the Netherlands, but the volume of rain which falls on Australia is roughly 90 times greater. The emerging water crisis should not come as a big surprise.
Which is all well and good but the only person castigated in his piece is Howard while the states have played a major part in the current crisis. I’ve long been saying we need to address the problem with the scale of something like the Snowy River Scheme. C.Y. O ‘Connor started building a pipe line from Perth to Kalgoorlie in 1898 and finished in 1902 covering a distance of some 400 hundred miles and opening up the famous ‘Golden Mile’. I continually read that the idea of piping from the very wet northern tropical zones the the South East populated zones is uneconomically viable. Well, we need to stop listening to the accountants and start listening to some visionaries If C.Y.O’Connor can do what he did in the 1880s what can we do with todays technology. We are building gas pipe lines all over the place in Queensland hundreds of kilometres long and are we not planning an East Timor- Darwin pipe line that will have to be some 800 kms long? We have the technology and the motivation so all we are discussing is the cost. We have raised billions by levies to buy back guns and to save Ansett pilots from poverty. Could we not consider a long term levy or government bonds like war bonds to finance any such project? I don’t know…just thinking!
General Musings

Chinese try to buy Metal Storm

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THE Chinese military allegedly offered an Australian weapons inventor more than $US100 million ($A134 million) to go to Beijing and work on one of the deadliest guns in the world, the Nine Network reports. But Australian and US military forces are said to be determined to ensure the gun, known as Metal Storm and developed in Brisbane, does not end up in enemy hands.
Metal Storm technology is an electronically initiated, stacked projectile system that removes the mechanisms required to fire a conventional weapon. Effectively, the only parts that move in Metal Storm’s technology are the projectiles contained within the barrels. Multiple projectiles are stacked in a barrel. The technology allows each projectile to be fired sequentially from the barrel. Metal Storm’s fully loaded barrel tubes are essentially serviceable weapons, without the traditional ammunition feed or ejection system, breech opening or any other moving parts. Metal Storm barrels can be effectively grouped in multiple configurations to meet a diversity of applications.
The technology is all about firing of projectiles or rounds being controlled by a computer chip rather than a comparatively slow human operating with a mechanical reload system. Both the human and mechanical aspects of automatic weapons that have been with us for more than a century, limit the speed of reload. As computers function in nanoseconds, or a billionth of a second, and the round is not being reloaded the cyclic rate of fire can be measured in milliseconds. The barrels come prestacked and what Mike O’Dwyer has done is work out how to fire the forward round without sympatheic detonation of the following rounds .As each round is fired by electronic signal it arms the following round This was the breakthrough and in itself will change the face of war and policing. Metal Storm cite a round leaving the barrel every three milliseconds or 333.333 rounds a second or 20,000 rounds per minute. These figures are for a single 40mm grenade launcher! The barrels themselves are then stacked so the weapon system consists of multiple barrels that can be fired in any sequence and any number of rounds per sequence. It’s all in the software. This sort of weapon invalidates the human wave attacks that China used so well in Korea. No wonder they want to buy the technology! The Metal Storm website makes interesting reading.
Defence

A good weekend of football

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I’m West Australian born and bred and now live in Brisbane so with the Western Eagles (85-84) and the Broncos (15-8) taking the AFL and NRL cups respectively I’m more than happy.  Both very good games of football but the Broncos win made the taciturn Wayne Bennett the most successful coach in league history (six Grand Final wins) and gives Shane Webke, a local football hero here in Brisbane, a perfect closing curtain for his football career. It’s always good to beat our bigger southern cousins…in anything…at any time! Ahh…Queensland…perfect one day, better the next
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BEAZLEY PUTS UP THE WHITE FLAG

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Just in from Defence Media. I’ll quote it in full just to do my small part in alerting the public to the ALP’s lack of considered policy.
Interviewer: “…on day one of a Beazley led government you’d order all of the Australian troops out of Iraq, would you?” Mr Beazley: “The only exception I’d make to that is those guarding Australian diplomats.” (Lateline, 27/9/2006) Kim Beazley’s latest commitment, to cut and run from Iraq, is inconsistent and weak. It would represent a setback for the War on Terror and would put Australian troops at greater risk. For example, Mr Beazley fails to understand that withdrawing all elements other than the Security Detachment in Baghdad, would leave these Security Detachment personnel without the logistics and air support they rely on and, therefore, dangerously exposed. To take another example, he now wants to remove our frigate from the North Arabian Gulf. In January, Mr Beazley acknowledged the critical role played by our frigate when he said: “We support the continued protection of Australian diplomats in Baghdad, and our naval presence in the Gulf fulfils the dual purpose of protecting Iraqi oil terminals and inhibiting the movement of terrorists around the Gulf.” (Sydney Morning Herald, 12/1/2006) His latest irresponsible policy would play directly into the hands of terrorists. Mr Beazley doesn’t appreciate the significant role played by our soldiers based in Tallil. In June this year, the southern province of Al Muthanna became the first of Iraq’s eighteen provinces to transfer to full control by Iraqi Provincial Government, with security presided over by Iraqi security forces. This was in large part attributable to Australia’s efforts in providing security and in training the 2nd Brigade of the Iraqi Army’s 10th Division, who are now taking a key role in providing security. Australia is now playing an overwatch role, including training and mentoring and being on hand to provide security backup, if required, for Al Muthanna and Dhi Qar (the second province to transfer to full Iraqi control). Having come so far, it is important to bed this progress down. Mr Beazley disregards this imperative. In a statement reported by Al-Jazeera on 28 December 2004, bin Laden said that Iraq is where the “third world war…is raging”. On 26 July 2006, in a speech to a joint meeting of Congress, democratically elected Prime Minister of Iraq, al Maliki pledged that “Iraq will be the graveyard of terrorism and terrorists for the good of all humanity.” The stakes in Iraq are high. In the words of Mr Beazley’s former Chief of Staff and former Foreign Affairs Secretary Michael Costello: “to disengage from Iraq now would be the biggest single encouragement the terrorists could get”. (The Australian, 13/1/2006). The Government is determined to ensure the terrorists lose. Mr Beazley proposes walking away and letting them win.
Keep pandering to your left wing Beasley…it just guarantees more conservative government.
Defence, Politics

‘Whatshisname’ Garrett says something

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Somebody called Garrett has slammed the Prime Minister and his two right-hand men for being “philistines”, whose obsession with sport comes at the expense of the nation’s art and culture.

Mr Garrett said the country lacked national debate about the health of its creative arts industries where key areas including dance, film and medium-sized theatre were struggling.

Ask yourself why. If dance, film and theatre are struggling then it’s because the public aren’t interested in the offerings. Every time I flick past the ABC or SBS I only stay long enough to witness another ‘struggling’ artist rediculing Howard, religion, America, the military, patriotism, married couples with children or couples wanting to own a house.

Small theatre seldom has a kind word to say about our society. Still fuming at the ignorance of the Australia voter for re-electing Howard they rush to tell us, potential seat warmers at theatres, just how ignorant we are.

MELBOURNE Theatre Company director Simon Phillips finds these disturbing times. “You have to question how far we have come and how low can we go,” he says.

He is too diplomatic to be specific, but the war on terror has seen civil liberties crumble and David Hicks remains detained without rights in Guantanamo Bay.

I see your civil liberties and raise you civil responsibilty…..a winning hand but Garrett, Phillips and that doyen of ‘Putting down Australians, David Williamson just don’t see it.

Up yours, Garrett. Produce something that dwells on the good points of our society and the public will flock to the theatres, maybe even Howard and his ministers might venture forth as well.

General Musings, Politics

The Whitlams

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After Margaret’s attack on Janette Howard yesterday the Age carries a piece headed Margaret Whitlam refuses to apologise while the Australian carries a piece headed Janette maintains silence as Margaret retracts claws. Believe what you will, it matters little. The woman is mere just trying to sell her biography. Gough gets in the spirit of book selling and makes an equally contoversial statement as he denounces “politically contrived racism” against Australian Muslims and warned it could harm relations with Indonesia. This politically contrived racism must be different from the contrived racism in his 1975 statement to Cabinet along the lines of [his] not having hundreds of f*****g Vietnamese Balts coming into this country. Hang on, I get the difference.  The current contrived racism is politically based whereas Gough’s ’75 statement was ideologically based.  The thousands (hundreds of thousands actually) of Vietnamese were flooding the seas in an attempt to escape Gough’s mates in Communist Vietnam so I can almost understand where he’s coming from. Almost. As I said, this is just about selling Margaret’s biography but I do think they both should have chosen quotes that stood close scrutiny. I have categorised this post under ‘Humour’…what else?
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