If you are reading this, thank a Teacher. If you are reading it in English, thank a Soldier
GARDENERS who bought liquid fertiliser made from cane toads have been warned the product may spontaneously explode in storage.
FrogWatch NT gave the warning yesterday for people who have bought bottles of their product ToadJus after reports of them exploding.
In better news, volunteers rounded up 200 toads at Darwin River Dam and Howard Springs last Friday.
Hope they don’t bottle them as well.
In the bad old days when I was carrying an M16 with murderous intent in my heart, there always existed one distinct disadvantage and that was to fire the thing effectively I had to expose, at the very least, the right hand side of my face.
This sort of thing clearly comes under the heading of a poor life style activity and had I done a Risk Assessment like I did last week for guys climbing a ladder to remove an antenna, I would have approached the Lieutenant and told him it was just so against all Work Place Health and Safety issues that I couldn’t in all honesty condone the activity. Of course the Lieutenant wasn’t known for his sense of humour and I had a job to do……that was the name of the game.
Roll on forty years and the name of the game has changed courtesy of the Israeli weapons R&D guys.
I presume the soldier can also press ‘Record’ to get a lasting image of the look of astonishment on the face of the target and his last words…Holy Mohammed, where did that come fr………
Heads up from old Army mate Joe.
DEFENCE chief Angus Houston has ordered a full investigation into video images posted on the internet showing skylarking Australian soldiers in Baghdad brandishing weapons.
I was alerted to this yesterday with receipt of a Defence Media release that the Australian used as a basis for their front page ‘serious news’ type headlines. OK, slightly off-key, a bit tacky, maybe not very professional but all indications are that it is really a minor misdemeanor and should be handled at company/Major level and certainly shouldn’t be remanded past the Commanding Officer.
Brig Jim Wallace, ex SASR officer and now a devoted christian sees it this way as well while predicably, a ‘never heard of him before’ academic, has been assailed in his ivory tower by the ABC to put the episode and Defence in a poor light.
He meets the requirement by stating;
… the offensive videos at the centre of the latest army scandal show soldiers see themselves as separate from the rest of the community. The soldiers found responsible for the video, in which one holds a gun to the head of a man in Arab dress and another is shown quickdrawing his handgun, could be thrown out of the army.
Identified as Social researcher at Flinders University and former infantry soldier Dr Ben Wadham he reiterates his point;
“Trophy shots are like an artefact of military culture – they show us that the military sees itself as separate from the broader community,” he said.
I wonder what regiment Ben served in….I’ve got a quid it was the local University Regiment as he gives the impression of considering himself a far more worthy person than us common infantrymen.
A bit tacky, as Ive said but it really doesn’t warrant headlines unless balanced with articles on the pressures that these guys operate under.
A beat-up.
UPDATE: CB has supplied the good doctor’s resume in comments Nothing there to change my original thoughts.
UPDATE I: The good doctor has commented and I withdraw the put-down “I’ve got a quid it was the local University” as has seen real service in 2/4RAR. (read comments)
TERRORISM research in Australia is skewed towards the concept that Western policies are to blame and fails to explore fundamental questions about the nature of terrorists and the ideology driving them.
University of Queensland terrorism researchers Carl Ungerer, a foreign affairs and national security adviser to former federal Labor leader Simon Crean, and David Martin Jones yesterday criticised the direction of terrorism research in Australia for ignoring the role of radical Islamism in breeding terrorists.
ARC chief executive Peter Hoj was forced to defend the council’s funding of terrorism research earlier this week after a Flinders University sociologist, Riaz Hassan, awarded more than $800,000 to study suicide terrorism, proposed to interview terrorist leaders.
What a novel approach. I can’t imagine why Churchill didn’t think to interviw Hitler to try and work out why he was at war with Germany. What was Riaz Hassan going to do – Phone up Osama’s PA and request an interview?
Clearly, the 800 grand would be better spent building an assylum for socialologists to keep them out of harms way
An Australian man is being investigated for sending more than 2 billion spam emails, most of them promoting Viagra.
And, it seems, most of them landed on my computer even though the report claims they were mostly targeted at Dutch computers.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) said it had received a tip off from Dutch authorities that an Australian male resident was responsible for the flood of spam hitting computer servers located in Holland.
Penalties can exceed a million per day;
The ACMA said penalties for contravention of the Spam Act include fines of up to $220,000 per day for first-time corporate offenders and up to $1.1 million per day for repeat offenders.
But surprisingly do not include being keel hauled whilst trussed up with USB cables after having being forced to overdose on viagra.
Pity!
A small article in the Courier Mail highlights combat pay rates for Aussies overseas (no link)
The federal Government will review the pay and conditions of Commandos serving in Afghanistan who are paid $28,000 less a year than their SAS comrades. Their skill levels are about 90% of those of an SAS soldier but they are paid a Special Operation Allowance of only #12,880 a year or $247 a week. SAS troops receive a Special Actions Forces Allowance of $40,979 a year of $788 a week.
Travel overseas for free, get given uniforms and a huge range of Ultimate Boy’s Toys to play with and then meet lots of interesting people and get to shoot at some of them. Tons of fun plus receive an allowance of near $800 a week over and above your salary all with serious tax concessions.
Great job…can’t understand why recruiting is down.
As an historical point, I seem to recall everyone in Vietnam got the same combat pay although base pay rates varied and that combat pay would buy 4 packets of cigarettes a week in todays shops.
And for those readers who never understand when I’m being flippant, they all deserve every penny they get….I’m just jealous.
I wonder what our allies are getting? Does any reader know?
Downer on six of the Bali Nine drug trafficers being set for the death sentence after an appeal raised their life sentences to death by firing squad.
Downer said he was surprised that the convicts’ lawyers were not the first to be advised and that the Supreme Court had opted for more serious sentences than the prosecutors requested.
“In terms of the procedures, I must say they have been, to say the least, a little unusual in that the first we heard about this was through the media,” Downer said.
“The Indonesian Supreme Court’s clearly taken the view that trafficking in heroin is a profoundly grave offense,” he added.
I have no great problems with that but I would just like them to take the view that mass murdering innocents a la Bali is likewise a profoundly grave offence.
THE Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin, is dead.
News.com has the initial report
He was killed in a freak accident in Cairns, police sources said. It is understood he was killed by a sting-ray barb that went through his chest.
He was swimming off the Low Isles at Port Douglas filming an underwater documentary and that’s when it occured.
Ambulance officers confirmed they attended a reef fatality this morning at Batt Reef off Port Douglas.
News Flash tip from daughter Liz
JOHN Howard has singled out Muslim migrants for refusing to embrace Australian values and urged them to fully integrate by treating women as equals and learning to speak English.
Mr Howard said: “There is a section, a small section of the Islamic population, and I say a small section … which is very resistant to integration.
He’s right.
The comments prompted a fierce reaction from young female Islamic leader Iktimal Hage-Ali, a member of the Prime Minister’s advisory group. She accused Mr Howard of threatening to further marginalise Muslims. “There’s no value in pointing out the minority of the Muslim group,” she said.
“There’s a whole lot of other ethnic communities whose parents, whose grandparents don’t speak the English language, and it’s never a problem in the mainstream Australian community for them to go on living their everyday life without speaking the language.
Iktimal Hage-Ali needs to come to grips with the fact that Islam has the monopoly on terrorism. The one common factor through all of the carnage throughout the world is ‘Islam’. The terrorists are all either born or converts to Islam and that fact alone needs separate considerations. Too many of the Muslims migrating here publicly put down on our way of life or stand silent as others do.
Physician, heal thyself.
The status of the missile is now clearly defined as having the software and mechanics to deploy a cross-tip screwdriver mid-flight to remove the top central air vent before entering the vehicle for final demolition.Some punters writing to the Australian editor clearly have not grasped where the media world is heading with one Luddite questioning Downer believing blogs before the Red Cross in Lebanon.
WHEN it comes to holes in ambulance roofs, Alexander Downer would rather believe a US-based blogger rather than the Red Cross in Lebanon. This is just more of the same from a person who took us into the Iraq fiasco for non-existent WMDs and can’t remember anything about Australian companies bribing Saddam Hussein.
Iain Lygo
Anglesea, Vic
Quite smart of Downers’s advisors really but then obvioulsy all of Iain’s rationale is founded on the basic premise that everything Howard/ Downer does is wrong anyway. Try to broaden your reading Iain – you might learn something.
Andrew from Tasmania has a similar viewpoint. In fact both letters smack of the Editor having a anti Howard/Downer (insert today’s events) software package that just churns this shit out.
THAT websurfing is dangerous, addictive and extremely time-consuming is clearly proven when our Foreign Minister relies on a blogsite report to make a statement on the war in Lebanon, yet has no time to read emails, faxes and cables with dire warnings about AWB’s dealings with Saddam Hussein.
Andrew Wyminga
Bicheno, Tas
Anyone who reads the Zombie report in full and thinks it doesn’t raise questions is far too blinkered by ideology to accept the fact that people like Martin Chulov have agendas to put Israel in a bad light and the terrorists on a pedastal.
Common sense eventually prevails with Tony Parkinson, Downer’s media advisor, nailing the issue.