Grallina Cyanoleuca

We had a very windy couple of days last week, and this critter appeared on our lawn.

It was a fledgling Peewee which had been blown out of its nest by high winds that had been around for a day or two. As they say in the classics it was one of those winds that would blow a dog off a chain.

Obviously, it had a very bleak future exposed on the ground, and at the mercy of cats, dogs, and crows, but had not yet learned to fly, so was going nowhere.

It was also completely naive, showing no sign of fear when I gently moved it under a shrub, out of sight and out of the sun.

I could find no sign of the nest, so when it was still there late in the day, it became time to attempt to get it to safety.

Some quick googling revealed a phone number for National Parks and Wildlife Queensland, and the helpful person there gave me the number of a rostered vet who was looking after injured or stranded wildlife.

This one wasn't injured, but was definitely stranded, so I put it in a box and drove it to the vet.

She said that this wasn't the only fledgling that had been brought in, as they were just at the stage of development when they were about to come out of their nests, but the unseasonal winds had created a problem for that particular population.

I never did enquire whether it had been successfully relocated - perhaps I should.

I have no idea what the protocol is for critters handed in, but assume there is something in place. Apparently, this is a better option than trying to care for them at home.

It's not a straightforward process, especially in terms of what they should be fed on.  The vet said that most well-intentioned people give them the wrong food which usually causes their fairly swift demise. 

A New Constituency

                                                    Pic courtesy AFR

Green's MP Max Chandler-Mather on Tuesday night, after the treasurer's budget speech, moved to amend a series of bills in order to make a protest speech about the government’s stage three tax cuts.

In doing so, he made the following statement -

The perversity of it is that we all sat here, hearing the treasurer talk about a sensible budget with tough choices, but everyone in this place is going to get an extra $9000 a year once the stage three tax cuts come into effect.

What are the tough choices that we’re all making here? What are the tough choices that the billionaires and millionaires are making, who are going to get the $9000 extra a year out of the stage three tax cuts?

Why on earth are my fellow MPs would wondering why people don’t like politicians. The amendment we’re moving tonight is to highlight the hypocrisy of a government that claims to care about ordinary people but gives $9000 extra a year to the politicians in this place who are already well overpaid.

This is, of course, a stunt, but it will play well with his constituency.

That constituency, gentle reader, is urban dwelling young people who are paying high rents, and can't see any prospect of getting access to the overheated housing market. It's an angry, and ever increasing group, and the Greens (and to a lesser extent the Teals) will continue to get strong backing from these people, who are articulate and resentful. 

Labor ignore them, and the Coalition ridicule them. Both major parties do so at their political peril.

Maybe, to apply a cliche, the writing is on the wall. That writing is in bold font with text in teal and green.

Grievance or Vengeance?

 

                                  Pic courtesy Sydney Criminal Lawyers

There is an intriguing historical pattern, gentle reader, observable in the rise to power of a number of totalitarian leaders.

Without labouring the point, you can look at Germany between the wars, China since World War Two, and the USA in the Trump era. Even the UK is currently moving through a chaotic political episode which has its origins not so much in grievance, as nostalgia.

In the UK, there is a sense in which something has been lost (the glories of the empire perhaps) and Brexit was a ham-fisted attempt to recover it. It hasn't ended well.

But back to Germany, where post the Great War, people were struggling against poor economic conditions, skyrocketing inflation and unemployment, and a strong sense of grievance after the punishing sanctions set out in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.

Hitler and the NAZIs exploited these fears and frustrations, and the results played out in the most tragic fashion.

China holds major grievances against both the West and Imperial Japan, which have been festering since long before the Nanking massacre, and the Opium Wars. One of the forces driving the ceding of Hong Kong (and the CCP's iron fist used to put down dissent) is collective Chinese memory of how Hong Kong came to be British in the first place.

More recently, the phenomenon of the election of Trump (albeit by a minority of voters) reveals how desperate many Americans have become, faced with a decline in their living standards, offshoring of their once great industrial empire, and a loss of faith in their institutions. One clear measure of the physical health of a nation is life expectancy, and in the USA, it has recently seen a decline.

Noam Chomsky was prophetic back in 2010 when he noted - 

"If somebody comes along who is charismatic and honest, this country is in real trouble, because of the frustration, disillusionment, the justified anger, and the lack of any coherent response".

Unfortunately, Trump may have a primitive form of charisma, but honesty? Besides, uncharismatic leaders can be extremely successful.

There doesn't seem to be a major gap between grievance and vengeance, something that becomes obvious when the behaviour of newly-minted autocrats is examined.

Hopefully, Australian nationalism, such as it is, takes on a more tolerant and forgiving  aspect. We don't, fortunately, take ourselves all that seriously.

That's always a good thing.....

Monetizing Disinformation

Image courtesy Chequado

It's satisfying to note that a professional purveyor of disinformation has finally got his comeuppance.

He has done enormous damage to the lives of his victims, the families of the children and teachers slaughtered, and no amount of money can change this, but it does show that at least one American institution remains capable of delivering justice.

The other phenomenon that the outcome of this case allows, is to shine a light on that uniquely American activity of creating sensational disinformation, and selling it for a profit.

To quote the  BBC report -

Jurors also heard evidence that Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, made millions of dollars selling nutritional supplements, survival gear and other products on the Infowars catalogue. 

This playbook has been frequently (and profitably) employed by the blogosphere in the USA for decades now, and it is partly responsible for raising the temperature of their political discourse.

Sensationalism appeals to the public's basest instincts. Fear, hate, loathing and contempt will always sell. Social media has supercharged misinformation. The algorithms do the rest.

It has created a cascading effect, ultimately leading to the sad and divided political and cultural discourse that we see across the Pacific.

It's a cautionary tale for Australians. 

Let's not go there..... 

The AWM - Memorial or Museum?

 

Vietnam memorial as it looked when I visited in 2020.

A low-key announcement was made in a press conference on 6th October by Matt Keogh, Minister for Veterans' Affairs in the presence of Brendan nelson, the Chairman of the War Memorial's governing Council, saying that the current $550 million expansion of the memorial would allow for greater attention to the frontier wars.

There are two elements to this announcement that are worth discussing, gentle reader.

The first is the cost of the expansion, and in my view, the necessity for it. I have been an infrequent visitor to the AWM, mostly in relation to my project on national service. On these occasions, the staff (particularly in the reading room) have been very helpful, and the holdings in the library are extremely important.

The many displays, on the other hand, and their cost, are in my opinion, difficult to justify. It's almost as if the displays have taken on a life of their own, being developed and re-developed at a furious rate. Perhaps the haste is driven by the possibility that in time we may run out of war memorabilia to. display. It only....

I guess they have an educative function, but maybe that function could better be implemented by the teaching in our schools of the facts of our wartime history, rather than the mythology. There is a need, and always has been, to create mobile displays that take the history to the schools in their local situations, rather than expecting organised (and expensive) tours to be organised.

The second noteworthy element is the introduction of the commemoration of the frontier wars into the role of the AWM. This has always been controversial, driven by the notion that a war is only a war when people in uniform fight it. This is a strange concept driven more by the ANZAC myth than the reality of history. The fact that our colonial history is pretty ugly, does not mean we should ignore it. That's simply another form of "cancel culture", that the conservative media rails against.

It's difficult to ignore genocide (the destruction of the Palawa) and the massacres, both by Aboriginal Australians, and the settlers, that are recorded in our colonial history.

What I found quite bizarre, is the reaction of some members of our veteran community., who believe that they have a unique ownership of our military history, and are only people entitled to hold an opinion about it.

The phenomenon observed in the ranks of some that "my war was worse than yours" reminds me of the days (mostly during the seventies and mid-eighties) when RSL clubs turned Vietnam veterans away, because we were told "Your war wasn't a real War..."

Obviously, as a nation we've learned something since that time. 

If only we ran out of wars...

Some Thoughts on Olfaction

This song takes me back to my childhood, but nowhere near as much as the smell of cane country.

An extract from this excellent piece in the Harvard Gazette, reminds us of the immediacy of our reaction to odours - Odours take a direct route to the limbic system, including the amygdala and the  hippocampus, the regions related to emotion and memory. This was brought home to me last week, when we visited, after an absence of over fifty years, cane country in FNQ*. Walsh's Pyramid and Gordonvale Mill I was brought up amongst the canefields, and my earliest olfactory memories are those of the smells of burning cane and bagasse. We used to chase the burnt trash as it came off the fires, or at least I did, until I ran backwards doing just that, and opened the back of my head with the corner of a tank stand. These days, the cane isn't burnt, as mechanical harvesting are removed the necessity, and to my way of thinking, something of the romance has been lost. Cane fires were always spectacular, invariably lit at dusk, when the wind was quiet. The Harvard Gazette piece explains the neurology of this connection, but experiencing it is something else entirely. I was reminded of this back in the early nineties when we took a family holiday in a friend's shack in the rain forest at Paluma. We went on a walk along a track hacked from the jungle, and at one point encountered an odour of rotting vegetation  that I hadn't experienced since Vietnam.  This particular encounter was etched on my memory as it followed an assault on a bunker system which cost one soldier killed and four wounded on 22nd April 1970. (p 208 - 214 in Michael O'Brien's book).  We were eventually rescued by two Centurion tanks, but the incident was obviously deeply embedded in my memory and the olfactory stimulus triggered it. I had to sit down for a bit which confused my wife and kids more than somewhat. FNQ resembles South Vietnam in a number of other important characteristics. The sea is to the right as you look North, the mountains are to the left, and the soil is red. It's God's own country.... Sounds of Then - Lyrics I think I hear the sounds of then, And people talking, The scenes recalled, by minute movement, And songs they fall, from the backing tape. That certain texture, that certain smell, To lie in sweat, on familiar sheets, In brick veneer on financed beds. In a room, of silent hardiflex That certain texture, that certain smell, Brings home the heavy days, Brings home the the night time swell, Out on the patio we'd sit, And the humidity we'd breathe, We'd watch the lightning crack over canefields Laugh and think, this is Australia. The block is awkward - it faces west, With long diagonals, sloping too. And in the distance, through the heat haze, In convoys of silence the cattle graze. That certain texture, that certain beat, Brings forth the night time heat. Out on the patio we'd sit, And the humidity we'd breathe, We'd watch the lightning crack over canefields Laugh and think that this is Australia. To lie in sweat, on familiar sheets, In brick veneer on financed beds. In a room of silent hardiflex That certain texture, that certain smell, Brings forth the heavy days, Brings forth the night time sweat Out on the patio we'd sit, And the humidity we'd breathe, We'd watch the lightning crack over canefields Laugh and think, this is Australia. This is Australia etc.. Source: LyricFind Songwriters: Chris Bailey / Geoff Stapleton / Graham Bidstrup / Kay Bee / Mark Callaghan / Robert James *Far North Queensland - Acronym used North of the Tropic of Capricorn, and instantly understood by those who live there.

Fair Go for Nashos

 

Those of you who subscribe to any number of ex-service Facebook groups may have already come across this petition.

In case you haven't, here is a quick and dirty explanation.

Between 1964 and 1972, 63,740 twenty year-olds were called up and enlisted into the army. This was the number of men who had their birthdates drawn in one of the sixteen ballots, and who passed the medical. 

In all, 804,286 registered for national service, but the bulk of these (92%) maintained their lifestyles when their birthdates weren't drawn.

Of the 63,740, only 15,300 saw active service in Vietnam, which means that 48,440 Nashos served their two years in units in Australia. Among them were such well known sporting celebrities as Doug Walters , Peter Brock, and Dick Johnson.

Most weren't celebrities, of course, and their lives were turned upside down by the simple fact that they were born on the wrong date. I have two in my extended family. One (who died a few years ago) served in Malaya, and one as a driver in a Brisbane unit. He was part of a small business in Clermont at the time and it took him (and the burgeoning enterprise) a long time to recover. He is now dealing with injuries occasioned at training.

It's worth remembering that this scheme was the only national service programme that was not universal, so it was completely unjust and morally absurd.

More detail is contained here.

When the two years was up, these men were entitled to return to their pre-Nasho jobs, but that was about the only benefit they received.

Contrast that with somebody like me who saw active service, was provided with a war service home loan and a *DLNS rehabilitation scholarship, and a DVA gold card at age 70. 

I reckon these 48,000 (or perhaps given the ravages of time, the approximate 30,000 who survive) are entitled to some form of compensation. The provision of a gold card at age 70 would seem to me to be utterly reasonable.

So I completely support this initiative.

I am bemused by some fellow Vietnam veterans who oppose it. 

The term "dog in the manger" comes to mind.

*Department of Labour and National Service