If you are reading this, thank a Teacher. If you are reading it in English, thank a Soldier
This afternoon at 16:30 I depart Brisbane for Saigon. Blogging will be minimal over the duration of my sojourn in a Third World country however I will try. The biggest problem that I can forseee, will be my Third World standard knowledge of mobile blogging.
Best of the season to you all and thanks for visiting.
The Common Koel Bird – bludger and user!
Its storm season in Brisbane and every afternoon the noisy Keol can be heard coo-eeing around the suburbs. Locals call the Koel, or Eudynamys scolopacea, the Storm Bird as his call generally precedes a storm. Actually, it also follows a storm and if the storm wasn’t so noisy you could hear him calling during the storm. But let’s not spoil a good suburban myth.
I was all set to blame him for all the storms that have been stopping me finishing my current project. However, after checking out his form I find he’s not really telling us a storm is on the way – it’s all coincidence. He arrives from PNG each summer storm season and his call is a mating call. But you knew that didn’t you?
That’s all well and good; you can’t knock a bloke for trying to get himself some nookie. It’s the bit after I don’t like. After mating these birds look for some other dumb bird pair and land them with the egg. The hosts baby-sit the egg and then rear the Koel chick until the chick itself notices that it’s a different breed. You’d think by this time the male host would be asking his hen some pretty searching questions. But no, the Koel chick uses up all their time and energy and then just flies the coop. He heads north to PNG and joins with all the other bludging user Koels.
No questions asked. What a con.
How stupid do the host Mum and Dad look now.
I’m trying to build a deck on one corner of the pool and it has to be done by Saturday when the family gather for a 21st party. It actually should be finished before I fly to Vietnam on Thursday.
The job was planned to start a week or two ago and did but the day I started digging out the turf, 6 December, the heavens opened up. 160 millimeters or 6.3 inches later and the rain slows. My friend and helper, a builder, doesn’t work on wet days as in I’ll be there Monday IF IT DOESN”T RAIN
Like – Sorry Sarge, I don’t want to patrol today – it’s raining.
Bloody civilians.
The rain stops and the sun comes out creating a sauna effect. My son comes over and we busy ourselves securing the beams and then start bringing in the cubic metre of crusher dust that goes underneath the decking, wheelbarrow load at a time.
Under the patio, the temperature reads 30 degrees C. I take the thermometer and lay it down on the pool coping where we are working and then later, when we have smoko (cold apple juice) I check the temperature – 55 Degrees C or 122 Degrees Fahrenheit.
Instant de-motivation.
Minutes after I see that temperature, I hear the Koel herald a storm. Suddenly I don’t care if it is a suburban myth, I don’t care if he is a bludging user and I don’t care about him getting his way with some Koel chickie bird. I just want the storm.
Can’t work in the rain.
It pours and we are forced to stop work. The temperature drops, the pool overflows for the fourth time this week and the job site reverts to a swamp.
I’ll have another go tomorrow.
Some comic relief from politics.
From old Army mate Paul.
The Vietnamese Socialists are still getting up my ribs. The Australian Government/Customs are happy that I have 6 months left on my passport on return to Australia but not the bloody Vietnamese.
They want 12 months. This socialist bullshit costs me another $230 for a quick new passport and not a little inconvenience. $230 isn’t a big deal but would be better utilized in the bars markets of Vung Tau.
By the time I got my new passport I was left with an eight day window to arrange a visa through the Sydney Consulate. Not enough time – you will have to pay double to get the visa before the booked flight (18th Dec).
I promised my son I would be polite to all official looking people, particularly if they are carrying AK47s, but I’m not to sure whether I didn’t make that promise to quickly.
Never mind…it will all work out in the end.
Saturday afternoon and evening at the famous Breakfast Creek Pub with out-of-towner Tim Blair in attendance along with The Chief Bastard, Murph and Todd from A special kind of sauce, Paul from Paul and Carls daily diatribe and Matt Marty from The Rat Pack.
Also very pleased at last to meet Arthur Chrenkoff who stayed sober for the whole event. The final phase of Athur’s Australianisation is yet to be completed but we will work on him having a drink next time.
Tim accuses me of spilling a full schooner in his lap and then denying it. I thought it was only half a schooner – if I had known it was full I would have reacted in a more extreme manner. I mean those bloody things cost 4 or 5 dollars each.
At least I didn’t spill Tim’s chardonnay.
Nick Leys, in todays Strewth colum in the Australian, takes Cairns Mayor Kevin Byrnes to task over dressing up as Arafat for a charity function.
CAIRNS has been rocked by debate over the past week after mayor Kevin Byrne thought it would be a good idea to attend a charity debate and lunch dressed as Yasser Arafat ? just two days after his death. Byrne defended his actions as just a joke, but a local businessman of Palestinian descent is far from laughing.
Just two days after his death is not an exact date as we all recall nobody wanted to declare Arafat dead until they found his PIN number for all his stolen billions.
Nick has the whole town ‘rocked‘ but all he quotes is one Cairns resident.
John Hawash yesterday lodged a complaint with the anti-discrimination board, saying the mayor had “made a fool” of all Cairns residents. “This problem has to be rectified. It’s done damage to the city. There are investors coming from the Middle East to Cairns and this sort of thing will scare them away.”
The type of Middle East investor that is ‘shocked’ by fancy address that lampoons Arafat should stay in the Middle East and we shouldn’t have anything to do with them.
I should declare an interest here. Kevin Byrnes is an ex Infantry Major from my Regiment and his Chief of Staff is likewise, an old friend from Army Days. When I phoned for an indepth analysis of the ‘shocked’ city I found my friend absent on a holiday in China and Kevin busy getting on with his Mayoral duties.
Great to-do about nothing but it does give Nick Leys a chance to put Conservatives in a bad light.
You’ll just have to do better Nick.
Michael Long, the Victorian footballer continues restarts..umm….well at least he walked the last few kilometres into Canberra on his mission to save his Indigenous brothers from themselves..from the government. I note he was smart enough to walk out of Victoria but as I said before there are better things he could do for his people.
Mark Latham makes a brilliantly meaningless statement saying
“Long had done a great service, I think, to put Indigenous issues back on the agenda.”
Typicall Dead Parrot statement. Maybe Mark missed the fact that a mob of drunks at Palm Island preempted Michaels task during the course of his walk/drive to Canberra. They have definitely put Indigenous affairs back on the agenda.
Michael puts other matters on the agenda when he quotes the poem Me, We. No that’s not the title – it’s the whole bloody poem. I’m glad I don’t have an Arts degree or sometime in my life I may well have had to discuss Me,We.
Out west near Goondiwindi some local farmers got ticked off with local youths stealing from them and over re-acted by slipping a rope around one of the thieves neck and dragging him around for a while. The boy, understandably shaken, will hopefully redirect his life to avoid such treatment. The trouble is, the lad has dark skin which has everybody screaming RACISM.
If I caught someone trying to steal my property then race wouldn’t be an issue. It would occur to me though, to train the miscreant to associate pain with theft.
At Palm Island, police are still the bad guys, according to the MSM. The drunken mob that tried to kill them by setting fire to the police station, Court House etc are using the ‘Poor Fellow Me’ defence which strange as it may be, never works for us white fellows.
In 2000, in Darwin, I had a conversation with an ex National Serviceman who since Army days had worked as a builder. For some of his life he was contracted to erect houses for Aborigines in missions in the Territory. I showed interest hoping for an answer to the many problems, but it was not to be.
Once someone had died in the house no one would live in it. The NT Government then tried to relocate the house to another mission. They still woudn’t live in it. They then tried to break the houses up using walls from one with floors etc from another. They still woudn’t live in it knowing that a tribesman had died in a building associated with ‘that wall’
I’m not sure if this still is the case and no way do I knock them for their beliefs, other than to say education will fix it, but it does indicate how far we have to go.
Maybe that should be ‘how far Family and Community Services Minister Kay Patterson has to go as she discusses ways of addressing the Indigenous housing crisis.
People in the communities have said they want to repair and maintain their own houses and that is admirable.
I just hope it works.
Our cousins over the ditch in New Zealand long ago abrogated all responsibilities regarding defence as they swung Left in the 1980s. I have a lot of friends among their numbers but I no longer feel sorry for them. They have been voting in weirdos for some time now so they have only themselves to blame.
PM Helen Clarke has been at the ASEAN meeting and has signed a non-aggression pact with the members.
Whoopee. NZ is a threat to whom?
As friend and fellow Brisbane blogger aptly points out in today’s Australian this is not really a big deal.
Surely, there can be nothing more illustrative of impotent posturing than the decision of the New Zealand Prime Minister to sign a non-aggression pact with ASEAN members? It’s a bit like a budgie signing a non-aggression pact with a cat.
‘Budgie’ Clark. I like it.
There has been debate for some time now about the US Marine who killed a wounded, unarmed terrorist during the battle for Fallujah.
Murder most foul or self defence? Predictably the Left call it murder and the right, justifiable homicide or words to that effect.
At this stage, until we hear the words and thoughts of the Marine, no one is in a position to call it either way.
No one other than the Marine knows the answer. Kevin Sites doesn’t – he just recorded an event. Commentators around the world can’t know either as there are too many factors involved.
Kevin Sites appeals to all to understand his point of view and why he submitted the film for release. His story rings true and doesn’t indicate any bias. I’m happy to accept that Kevin believes what he says
In Vietnam, when dealing with severely wounded or dead we would loop a rope around an arm, pull back out of grenade range and then turn the body over. You see, the enemy being fanatics, were known to remove the pin from a grenade as their last defiant act and secure the grenade with the lever under their body or a limb. When turned over the grenade would explode.
If they are prepared to do this as their last conscience thought do you think they won’t do the same when they have more control over their body.
They will, believe me. Romantics and novelists quote flags of truce and Geneva Conventions. The soldier sticks to reality and until he is totally in control Rule 5.56 applies.
Wounded isn’t enough. The Marine would be looking in the terrorists eyes for a hint of resignation or defiance. He would be looking for tiny body movements that might herald danger..a pistol coming up…a grenade being thrown or rolled. His limbic brain would be in control. It would be assessing the risk and preparing to fight or flee. It has already filed the fact that these terrorists, lying on the ground wounded, have previously killed Marines and it would not be prepared to give the terrorist the benefit of the doubt.
The Marine did what all soldiers have always done….assessed the situation and acted. This is not the time to cut any slack. Mistakes translate into death and hesitation itself can be a fatal mistake.
Kevin Sites doesn’t know all of this and if he thinks he does he’s wrong. Its a feeling not a sentence in a rule book. He is in Iraq filming action and has no responsibility to react in a split second to try and save lives except his own. He just records the events with a lens that in no way is wired through the brain and vision of the Marine.
Not for him the hundreds of hours Marines train to react very quickly to threats. Not for him the responsibility of the life of the man following him. He records history. It is the role of the soldier to play his part in making that history and it is no less important because that role is a small one.
The Marine didn’t go into that room prepared to fire He went in prepared not to fire if he was very quickly convinced it was safe. He has already applied first pressure to the trigger and as it is his and his mates lives at risk, and not the cameraman?s, then he gets the call.
The Marine only has to say;
Sir, I thought he was moving his hand towards a hidden weapon or rolling off an unpinned grenade or about to press a detonator or…..you get the message
and the investigating officer must clear him.
If the Marine’s perception of the circumstances was that he and his mates were under threat then he did what he was trained to do.
If, on the other hand, he went into the room, was satisfied that all inside were not a threat and then he killed one then that is murder.
That moment in battle when the ‘heat of battle’ has cooled is a very fine line that can’t be discerned by cameras or words. Initially it is a slow down of nerves, breathing, pulse and reactions – a sense of having survived and then quickly becomes a state of affairs when the tactics change to securing the scene and the prisoners.
Good commanders pick it quickly and true, some soldiers have to be told it is now over, but before you condemn anyone slow to change, measure the adrenalin in his blood and the fear in his heart and then comment.
If you can’t do either then leave it be.
In the long term I expect the matter will die. Sane and experienced men will know these things and feel all I have said.
Thankfully, the commentators aren’t the judges as well.
I missed it but apparently Justice Kirby ran for Parliament in the last elections and has been elected President. Either that or he has forgotten his role in society.
I would have thought he was required to uphold the laws of the land and, when required, to test them. I can’t see how he can do this if he starts with a stated bias.
In New Zealand he is quoted as saying he is prepared to curb Howard. I presume that means he now has a proven conflict of interest and must remove himself from adjudicating on all matters that come before the court that pertain to anything that hints of Conservatism.
HIGH Court judge Michael Kirby signaled last night that he was prepared to rein in the Howard Government’s enhanced mandate, saying the rights of minorities were at risk of being abused.
How long before Kirby’s seventieth birthday or can Howard just sack him when he has control of both houses
Must be tempting.
On the other hand it might be wise to leave him there so people have regular reminders of what might happen if they loose concentration and vote a Left Wing government into office.
Nah. Sack the bastard.