Elsewhere

 

The media/political/international relations scene is depressingly chaotic.

With that in mind, I'm confining my blogging to more cheerful content until things settle down - if they ever do.

Start here.

History Rhyming in Images

 

Los Angeles 2025

This post, gentle reader, is a montage of images.

Half were photographs taken in Europe during the second world war.

Auschwitz 1944

The other half were taken in Los Angeles during the last couple of days.

Los Angeles 2025

They're posted without comment, except to point out that in each case one minority group was targeted by government.

Berlin 1943

Warsaw 1942

Los Angeles 2025

During World War Two those targeted were Jews.           

During the last few days, the people targeted are undocumented immigrants.

You can come to your own conclusions.....

Malice or Bitterness?

Pic courtesy CAWA

No doubt, gentle reader, you came across the reporting of shouts of abuse directed at a Welcome to Country introducing this year's Anzac Day dawn service at Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance, and at a similar ceremony at King's Park in Perth.

It seems that there was a degree of organisation behind the Melbourne disruption, but the Perth incident was not planned.

Cries of outrage were heard from a range of sources, both directed towards the disruptions, and the place of Welcome to Country rituals at Anzac Day commemorations generally. Ex-service community social media networks lit up, again displaying strong feelings and abysmal ignorance.

The controversy highlights currents of malicious chauvinism that have simmered below the surface in this country for at least a century.  

The first of these currents relates to Anzac Day. The day is simply a commemoration after all. It is not a celebration of national pride, or a glorification of the warrior class - whatever that is. The men who died are not honoured by the screams of outrage directed at the inclusion of Welcome to Country ceremonies. Their memory is demeaned by it.

Anzac Day belongs to the whole nation, and is essentially an inclusive tradition. Welcoming attendees to a dawn service is simply a manifestation of this.  

The ignorance revealed by objections to all Welcome to Country ceremonies, not just those on Anzac Day, is another issue entirely. In the first place, given that indigenous Australians comprised over five hundred  distinct clan groups, welcoming people to country occupied historically by that clan by an elder is an entirely authentic process.

 "Country" does not refer to Australia in this context, something entirely ignored by those who mistakenly believe they are being welcomed to 2025 Australia. Various ex-service organisations made a virtue of declaring that nobody had the right to welcome them to the country they had fought for, completely forgetting that none of these clans have ever claimed to represent the whole country.

Then there are those who take offence because the elders who conduct the ceremonies are usually paid for the privilege. I find that strange, given that one of the hallmarks of a successful capitalist community is its willingness to pay for ritualistic expressions of symbolism. 

It matters not whether putting money into a collection plate at a church service or paying for admission to a football match is payment for witnessing a form of social ritual, these practices are very much part of contemporary mores and have been for a long time.

Frankly, I believe that anyone who would object to a gesture of welcome has been very poorly brought up. As my mother would have said if she had been alive to witness these objections - "They need to grow up!"

  

Karma and the Voice

 

Image courtesy Om Swami

Karma (as it appears in the AI overview in my Google search) is defined as "the ultimate consequences of an earlier action. Essentially, good karma leads to positive outcomes, whilst bad karma leads to negative ones".

The Coalition had a dose of bad Karma on May 3rd, and I'll attempt a quick analysis which I reckon informs the result. I'm no political commentator, but there are patterns in the results that are pretty obvious.

Peter Dutton used the Voice referendum as a wedge to both unite his party with the Nationals, and discredit the ALP. In both those strategies, he was successful, and plenty of pundits forecast that his negative campaigning leading up to the referendum would be poisonous when the country next went to the polls.

So let's see if there's any truth to that notion.

Here's a list of seats that the Coalition lost to Labor -

Banks; Bonner; Leichhardt; Sturt; Bass; Braddon; Deakin; Menzies and Moore.

Quite a few of these seats recorded a better than 40% "Yes" vote in the Voice referendum. Here they are -

Bonner; Sturt; Deakin and Menzies.

Then we should take a look at the so-called Teal seats and other Independents recording better than 40% "Yes" in the referendum -

MacKellar; Warringah; Kooyong; Ryan; Curtin and Clark.

In fact, all of these seats with the exception of Fowler, Indi, and Kennedy, recorded a majority "Yes" vote.

The fact of the matter is that the strong swing recorded against the Coalition on May 3rd was led by voters who supported the Voice. The evidence is clear when you look at the electorates Labor won and the Independents held.

It's completely likely that they carried their disgust about Dutton's campaign to the ballot box.

What goes round comes round..... 

Update -

The Coalition has broken.

Remember how Dutton followed Littleproud in kicking Blackfellas.

More Karma?

A Cautionary Tale

Pic Courtesy Scamwatch

Until a few days ago, gentle reader, I thought I was scam-proof. I've always avoided the usual traps (clicking on links in emails, etc) and am security conscious to the point of hypervigilance.

Not so.

Two days ago, I had my card refused at the bakery early in the morning, so paid cash, wondering what was going on.

I had been home only a few minutes when my bank phoned saying there had been suspicious activity on my card (overseas transaction). Once they knew it was an unauthorised transaction, they gave me the option of cancelling my card, or letting me monitor transactions closely.

I chose the latter because I didn't want to be lumbered with using cash until a new card arrived.

Then, almost on cue, an email arrived, telling me to contact PayPal because there was unauthorised activity on my account. I checked the account, and indeed there was a transaction (purchase of antivirus software) that I had not authorised.

(I use PayPal to sell my book).

I phoned the number on the email, and then began a long conversation with someone who sounded South Asian, was very polite, and had all my details at his fingertips.

The problem was, he wasn't working for PayPal. He was a very sophisticated scammer who had set up a successful ambush. If I had checked the number when I logged into PayPal and found it was different, I would have realised what was going on, but I didn't.

Over about twenty minutes he kept me on the line whilst he claimed he was ensuring my account was secure. He wasn't. He was moving funds from my account using money transfer Apps which he convinced me to download to my phone, on the pretext that he would use them to test the security settings.

At this point I became suspicious, especially when he heard me talking to my bride, who by this time, was also becoming suspicious. He asked me who else was on the call.

I hung up, and phoned my bank. After the usual identity process, they put me through to their security team, who confirmed that $5000 in two separate transactions had been removed from my account.

A prolonged conversation ensued, during which the bank agent sought as much detail as I could provide. It was a very thorough interrogation, and apparently useful.

The bank retrieved the funds overnight, but my card was cancelled, and access to my online banking denied until I could get the two devices I used (iMac and iPhone) certified cleaned. 

This involved cost and inconvenience, and the technician involved told me he was getting an average of five jobs a week cleaning and certifying devices which had been used by scammed customers. 

There are a couple of lessons. One is never to phone a number on an email, until you're absolutely certain it is genuine. It's easy to do so by checking the origin address on the email. I didn't - first time ever.

The other is to follow your instincts, which I subsequently did by terminating the call, but not before the damage was done.

I was very impressed by the thoroughness of the bank, and their persistence in securing the return of the funds. I'm not entirely sure how that was done. Readers may make suggestions through commentary.

I dodged a bullet...

In Memoriam

From left - Bob Hughes, Allan Aldenhoven and John Walker. (Pic courtesy AWM)

Today, gentle reader, is the fifty-fifth anniversary of B Coy, 7 RAR's encounter with a bunker system at grid reference 588698 near a feature which the operational maps called the "bone".

I remember it as if it were yesterday.

We had, as a company, a number of fleeting contacts leading up to the action which had indicated that VC were active in the area. It was the middle of the dry season, and access to water was an issue both for us, and whatever VC were around.

At the end of the encounter, all three platoons had taken casualties - 4 platoon one KIA (Bob Hughes), and one WIA (Karl Metcalf), 5 platoon one WIA (Colin Tilmouth), and 6 platoon (Graham Kavanagh) who died of dehydration on the 21st, the day before we hit the bunkers.

We had been inserted into the AO on the 19th April by patrolling all night along the dry creek bed of a stream called the Suoi Lho O Nho, led by Karl Metcalf, OC 4 platoon. Karl's navigation skills saw the whole company safely arrive in the AO. Most of us were exhausted at the end of the insertion, as we had stumbled for hours in the pitch dark along a rocky creek bed in close single file, fully laden with rations, water and ammunition, and immediately following a period of R & C at Vung Tau, when we'd drunk plenty of beer and other local concoctions. 

A number of men in my (5) platoon had collapsed by the time we arrived, and apparently the same was happening to other callsigns and Graham Kavanagh (6 platoon) had collapsed and became progressively weaker as time passed. I remember seeing a group of soldiers clustered around him as we passed through their position. He died of severe dehydration just before a medivac chopper turned up.

Graham Kavanagh's medical report. (Note misspelling).

Doug Gibbons (OC 5 platoon) had taken a half platoon squad out mid-morning on the 22nd to patrol along a dry creek, and it was a sentry from the bunker system that opened up on that patrol. Colin Tilmouth was wounded and choppered out, after Doug Gibbons retrieved him.

Colin (Charlie) Tilmouth

4 platoon,  led by Karl Metcalf, assaulted the bunkers, and the VC used RPGs to repel them. It was shrapnel from an RPG round fired into a tree that killed Bob Hughes. I was part of a half platoon group that remained as a blocking force on the banks of the dry gully whilst all this was going on. Looking back on it, it was only dumb luck that spared me, and others from my section, from participating in the assault. 

After an afternoon when artillery, a light fire team (Bushranger gunships), and USAF F-100s joined in to attack the bunkers, tanks were summoned. It took them the best part of the evening to turn up, and by then it was too dark to move on the bunkers. Apparently, the combination of tanks, infantry and darkness would not have been conducive to a successful assault.

Next morning the tanks moved in and destroyed the bunkers, but the VC had (wisely) decamped.

This was our first serious contact as a company, and the second time we had been under fire. The first time was when 4 platoon opened up on us on 13th March in a friendly fire incident when Paul Lusk was wounded. I was patrolling next to him at the time, and the incident remains firmly implanted on my memory. Being on the receiving end of a volley of M60 concentrates the mind.

So today, I remember Bob Hughes, Graham Kavanagh and Colin Tilmouth (who was repatriated to Australia, and died in 1990).

May they rest in peace, and their memory be honoured. 

Sed pro gratia dei.....

History Rhymes Again

Image courtesy Reuters

During my short stay in hospital, gentle reader, I did a little reading. 

One of the books I read quickly (easily achieved in a hospital when you are waited on, and aren't interrupted by routine necessary chores) was Mosquito by Rowland White.

I was interested in it because I have an obsession with military aircraft, and find the topic interesting because of personal experience in a variety of these machines in my short and unspectacular military career.

It's an engaging narrative, but more because of its behind-the scenes portrayal of the Danish resistance in World War Two than technical aspects of the aircraft.

De Havilland Mosquitos were used in a spectacular raid on the Shellhaus Gestapo Headquarters in Copenhagen and dropped supplies and personnel to resistance groups. 

They also routinely transported ball bearings from Sweden to the UK to maintain the supply of these much needed components during the height of British aircraft construction during the early stages of the conflict.

But what I hadn't expected to find in this monograph was a the simultaneous contextual outline of the Nazi occupation of Denmark, which was portrayed by the Third Reich's propaganda as an exercise in peaceful cooperation between the Danish authorities and the Nazis.

It wasn't, of course, and when the Danish resistance, supported by the allies, began to have an effect the Nazis retaliated.

This retaliation consisted of rounding up about five hundred Jewish members of the Danish community and transporting them to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia. 

It could have been a lot worse. Many Danes, with the help of the resistance organised a massive rescue effort. The used boats to ferry Jews across the Oresund strait to Sweden, in an operation coordinated by the resistance, and involving ordinary citizens and some brave members of the Danish police and government. Over seven thousand were saved.

Images of people being herded into railway wagons in August 1943 put me in mind of a similar phenomenon taking place right now in the USA, a country once considered a bastion of democracy. 

The people targeted for deportation into South American Gulags in El Salvador aren't Jews. They're allegedly gang members.  The process is however eerily similar, separated as it is by over eighty years and taking place in different continents..

Again, history rhymes....