Election's Over

Now that the election's over, we've heard much less of the mindless "stop the boats".

It would be a good time to stop treating asylum seekers as political collateral, and begin to consider them as human beings.

We actually have a bipartisan approach in that both major parties see the issue simply as a political wedge. 

Wouldn't it be great if they could speed up the processing, shut down the detention centres, and let these people get on with their lives. Given that in this country we take a whole .4% of the world's refugees, I doubt anyone would notice - except perhaps the shock jocks and commentators like Blot and Blur.

That's wishful thinking, of course. There's always 5% of the population paranoid enough to swallow the slogans. And given the balance in the house, both sides will play it for the political advantage they can gouge from this 5%.

This makes interesting reading.

Giving Credit

Well, it's probably over - at least in the sense that the US is now able to extract itself from the bloody mess.
 
The War in Iraq, that is. And the Right in the US want to take credit.
 
They're welcome.
 
4287 Americans KIA and 30,182 wounded.




107, 152 civilian casualties.

 

1,785,212 Iraqi refugees.
 
The country still has no government.
 
The Coalition took its eye off Afghanistan in favour of Iraq, and we see the consequences. The balance of power in the Middle East has shifted in favour of Iran.
 
They want credit? They're welcome.
 
Click on the post title to watch an interesting Video

Bottlebrush

I planted this 12 months ago.

It's done well.

Keys n Things.

I've been skiting about how reliable the MX5 is.

Big mistake. After I'd said something like - "Nothing ever goes wrong with this thing" - something did. I have an excuse for my big mouth. After owning many Peugeots, the Mazda's reliability is a constant source of amazement.


What did go wrong was merely inconvenient. The car continued, as they say in the classics, to proceed.

It proceeded, however without benefit of radio or remote locking. I'm pretty sure it has to do with the battery. Both things failed at about the same time. This battery is original. As a 2003 model, it's getting on for seven years old. I don't drive the car every day, and when I'm working west, or travelling interstate, as I have been lately,it can sit for days (and over the last few months - weeks) without being started.

There is therefore a good reason why the radio started flashing "code" at about the same time the remote locking device also lost its memory. According to the techies at Mazda, if the voltage drops below a certain point, it can confuse the in-car computer which remembers stuff like codes. The strange thing is - the car continues to start first time every time, and it cranks over enthusiastically.





Because I'm not the original owner, I didn't have the radio code. It was necessary to take the car to an authorised Mazda dealer to have both radio and remote re-programmed. Apparently they plug a laptop into the system somewhere and mutter incantations as they reset everything.


I can't complain - it cost all of $21. I can't remember the last time I parted with such a small amount of dosh at a garage where something had actually been fixed.

The battery will cark it eventually, of course.

But now I have the magic code.

(Both these shots were taken with an iPhone).

For What It's Worth

Illustration: Andrew Dyson- The Age










I've refrained from commenting on the current controversy about the three Commandos charged for their actions in Afghanistan for two reasons.
 
One is that every second blogger has already done so; the other is that I'm not sure I have anything to contribute.
 
Having said that, the issue nags away, and I feel very uncomfortable about the whole notion of serving soldiers being treated in this way.
 
My memories of service as a rifleman are also a factor. The army must be a very different organisation these days from what it was back in 69-70. The notion that soldiers could be charged with manslaughter after an incident in which they were under fire would have seemed fantasy back then. This incident was not, I understand, a situation anything like, for example, My Lai, where without question action against the individuals involved was justified.
 
Personal recollection of being under fire is that the last things on your mind are the legal niceties. A whole bundle of more basic emotions kick in. Funnily enough, the relevance of the identity of the person doing the shooting tends to fade - I remember being so angry that someone out there was trying to kill me, that all I wanted to do was fire back. At the time, it didn't matter to me that the people doing the firing were "friendlies". Little lumps of 7.62mm diameter lead coming at you at supersonic speeds don't sound friendly.
 
We didn't fire back, of course, because we couldn't identify targets, and rules of engagement demanded we were sure of our targets - very fortunately as it turned out.
 
My point is that individual actions in situations such as these have to be viewed through a prism much wider than the narrow legalistic one apparently applied here.
 
Which leads me to some questions - hopefully someone out there can answer them.
 
Why were reservists involved in such an operation? Were they trained sufficiently? How well were they briefed? Did they fully understand the rules of engagement? How reliable were the communications used? What were their orders? At what level were these orders given, and how specific were they? What options did they have?
 
And in terms of how the incident has been dealt with -
 
Why has it taken so long for charges to be laid? Who made the decision to proceed? Did the person/persons making this decision have experience of combat as well as knowledge of the law? Are the rumours that the charges were laid to prevent the ICC from taking action true, or a media beat-up?
 
And so on…..
 
Until these questions (and many others) are answered, the whole question remains deeply troubling, and must be doing incalculable damage to the individuals involved in particular and morale in general.
 
And no matter what the Court Martial outcome, nothing will bring those kids back. This is something the soldiers involved will have to live with for the rest of their lives.

Coincidence?

Last Tuesday, as part of our brief sojourn in Perth, amongst other things, we visited King's Gardens. Now I'm not into gardens, but my bride is, and there was no way I could weasel out of this commitment, being part of the incentive I offered her to put up with travelling with me across the Nullarbor on a train.
 

The gardens were spectacular, as was the amount of information about what was growing there. This information was conveyed by a volunteer guide, a bloke about my vintage, who knew what he was talking about, and was obviously an enthusiast on matters horticultural.
 
One of the more surprising facts I learned from him, is that large number of the many wildflowers that attract tourists in droves are actually weeds imported originally from South Africa.
 
As we walked around (quite a few kilometers as is turned out), I kept seeing plaques in front of trees planted to commemorate soldiers killed in wars past. I asked our guide if any of these were dedicated to casualties of the war in Vietnam. He said they were, but we weren't going to pass them on this particular walk. There was, however, a register of names I could check at the Information Centre in the gardens, when our walk was through.
 
I did this, but the bloke I asked directed me to another volunteer, a woman about my age, who was introduced to me as something of an expert on the Vietnam War.
 
This connection was much more immediate than I could have predicted.
 
Five minutes' conversation revealed the following -

This garden volunteer was married to a Vietnam Veteran who had served as a platoon commander in my unit.

 Her brother was my platoon commander from August 1969 until June 1970.
 
This bloke - a very good man - had died from cancer earlier this year. He lived in Nerang and occasionally I'd driven down from Toowoomba to meet him for a lunch and a talk about old times. He'd been very helpful correcting some factual errors in a manuscript I'm working on.
 
We spent some time talking about him, and about the amazing coincidence that had brought this conversation about. The odds against it, when considered in the cold light of day, are astronomical.
 
And then light dawned. Gibbo had set this up. He was up there somewhere laughing at us.



He was always a thoroughly well-organised digger with a dry sense of humour..

Riding the Rattler (2)

The second half of this journey began at breakfast as we rolled across the Nullarbor.
The quality of both the food and the alacrity with which it was served was maintained. Part of the fun is interacting with fellow passengers, and on our train they were an interesting lot.
 
Apart from retirees and baby boomers spending their offsprings' inheritance, there was a sprinkling of tourists from Japan, Singapore and Europe, and a few backpackers. I was intrigued by a Japanese couple who carried all types of camera gear, and spent a lot of time leaping about to get unique shooting angles. I reckon they're preparing some publication or another.
 
Quite a few people seemed to be combining a journey on the Ghan with the Indian Pacific experience. I like trains, but two journeys of this length at once would have to induce a specific variety of cabin fever.
 
Don't get me wrong, travelling this way is relaxing - almost meditative, but the distances are vast.



We got off (detrained???) for a bit at Kalgoorlie, where we looked at brothels and a big hole in the ground. The mine was much more interesting than the brothels, and the bloke who mooned the bus as it went past added to the colour, if not the spectacle.
Kalgoorlie reminded me of Mt Isa. It's not the scenic capital of Australia, and like Mt Isa, looks much better at night. The floodlit open cut looked ike something out of Dante's inferno. There were signs everywhere explaining how the mining companies diigently rehabilitate the landscape once the area is mined out. I wish them luck rehabilitating this big hole.
 
They'd have to dig up half of Kalgoorlie to get enough fill.
 
Like many mining towns, drinking and brawling are popular pastimes. Again - reminds me of Mt Isa. In the Isa it was advisable to drink in the clubs, not the pubs, and if you were forced to drink in a pub, to avoid those where the furniture was bolted to the floor.
 


We swanned (pun intended) into Perth mid-morning. Apart from a dearth of taxis at the rail terminal, we had no hassles collecting our rented household appliance (a brand new Hyundai) and finding our B & B.
 
Now it's time to explore the sunny South West.