Gum Free Capital

 

I had a reason to be in Canberra for a few days, gentle reader, in connection with speaking gig at the 75th Anniversary of National Service Commemoration.

Canberra is different.

It's like another country. There are small things.

For example, I wanted to freshen my mouth after a long flight, so I asked for chewing gum at an airport newsagent. I was told, quite sternly, that there was no gum available. Asking "why", I was informed that it is "unhygienic".

Now I thought that Singapore was the only place where you couldn't buy gum, but not so.

Then there's driving in Canberra. It's also different. Apart from the extensive network of ring roads and roundabouts, there's also a limitation on the word "street" I kid you not. There are few streets in Canberra.

There are Drives, Crescents, Closes, Avenues, Circuits and Places. The streets are there, but generally only residential areas contain them. There obviously was a need for a posher term, when it came to titling the roads in the national capital.

The setup of traffic lanes is also unique. Apparently the connecting roads are designed to allow higher speeds than is typical in most cities. It works if you know your way around. I didn't, and even with the benefit of a navigation system in my hired car, got lost frequently.

The fact that the car I was given was not what I'd selected didn't help. It was European (Volkswagen Tiguan T-Roc) and I was told it was an "upgrade". The indicators were on the wrong side of the steering column, which meant much windscreen wiping when cornering, and the connections for my phone cable incompatible.

Those issues, accompanied with the start-stop fuel saving engine feature, and the dual clutch automatic transmission made it a pig of a machine to drive, and I eventually parked it in my hotel car park and used taxi vouchers.

Finding eating places is also a challenge. The familiar commercial strips were absent, and if there are supermarkets I couldn't find them. Apparently there are five altogether (Coles and Woolworths) but They proved elusive.

Canberra is different....

 

Fitout Finished

Sunrise at Miles

The fitout of my Hace is completed, and I've taken a couple of trips in it. 

These are my conclusions -

It's comfortable, both to drive and to sleep in.

It cruises well on the highway, the only exception being its performance in high winds. It feels more like a yacht than a van under those conditions, and the options, and options are to stop and wait until the wind drops, or keep the speed below 80km/h.

The system I bought to allow for off grid camping works well. It consists of a Bluetti AC70P together with an inverter connected to the alternator. This powers a Kings 45L fridge.

Bribie Island

It's good for three days when parked, but you only need to drive it for half an hour to charge the unit up to 100%. You can do road trips, stay somewhere overnight off grid, and live in it without having to use the installed 240V connection.

I use a portable gas stove with pressure cans and it does the job well. Washing up is a bit of a pain, but the collapsible bucket I found at BCF does the trick. I bought a camping sink online which has proved less useful, although it's OK for quick ablutions.

There's also a portable toilet, but for emergencies only. Storage in plastic boxes which are housed under the bed and slide out on demand are pretty cheap and convenient. 

Camping sink - really a vanity only.

I use occy straps to keep everything located, and haven't had any problems with this method so far, but always wear eye protection when working with them. 

The purchased items are the power unit and the refrigerator. Everything else is material repurposed or found in my disorganised garage. 

The van is surprisingly economical on a trip, using between 11 and 12 litres per 100km, which is OK for a fully equipped camper. 

Columboola veterans' retreat.

Items that need improving include the Japanese head unit (it's buggy, and the radio tuned for urban Japan is pretty useless) and the interior appearance. At the moment it looks a bit like a jumble sale.

Still, my daughter has given it her seal of approval after attending a music festival in it.

Deja Vu

About 56 years ago, four students at Kent State University were shot dead by the Ohio National guard.

I remember it well, as I was at the time a rifleman in 7 RAR and we were patrolling on operation Concrete. The news filtered through to us when we got back to Nui Dat at the end of the operation. The students were protesting the invasion of Cambodia, an event that was happening only 100 Kms to the North West of our location. 

Neil Young released "Ohio" shortly after the massacre, and despite the fact that Nixon was re-elected in 1972, the impact of this song, together with publicity about the My Lai Massacre  (which was in news at about the same time) began to have a profound effect on public opinion against the war.

Bruce Springsteen has released Streets of Minneapolis which is already having an impact given the extent of its shares on social media.

There has been, and always will be, a visceral reaction across the Pacific  to US citizens being shot by uniformed people in their own country.

This incident may represent a turning point in US public opinion.

It's certainly deja vu. 

(The words mean "already seen").

 

Advice for the Troops

 

When I was on the way to Vietnam on the HMAS Sydney in February 1970, we were given a pamphlet outlining how we were expected to behave as soldiers in our interactions with Vietnamese civilians.

We had very little contact with civvies, except on leave in Vung Tau, so it wasn't all that useful, but coming across this little piece of history online the other day, reminded me that the military did make an effort to provide some factual information for its soldiers.

In the fact sheet above, issued to American GIs in World War Two, the military explained the phenomenon of fascism, the ideology that these same GIs were fighting.

Taking some of that advice, and applying it to the current situation under the Trump administration, is a revelatory exercise. 

The Fact Sheet #64 was entitled "Can We Spot It?"

The second paragraph begins with - 

Any fascist attempt to gain power in America would not use the exact Hitler pattern. It would work under the guise of "super-patriotism" and "super-Americanism". 

Trump's slogan is "Make America Great Again". 

It goes on to list three fascist aims -

1. Pitting of religious, racial and economic groups in order to break down national unity - In the United States native fascists have often been anti-Catholic, anti-Jew, anti-Negro, anti-Labor, anti foreign-born"

That is a pretty accurate summary of what is happening in the USA now, where members of minority groups are being taken off the streets into detention. It has an application in this country as well, when you look at the hate that is daily posted on social media, usually referring to Indigenous Australians, Muslim Australians, and Asian Australians. It's the bread and butter of One Nation.

2. Fascists cannot tolerate such religious and ethical concepts as "the brotherhood of man". Fascists deny the need for international cooperation. 

This has a very familiar ring when Trump's railing against globalism is considered.

3. It is accurate to call a member of a communist a "communist" - Indiscriminate pinning of the label "Red" on people and proposals which one opposes is a common political device. It iis a favourite trick of native as well as foreign fascists.

This labelling is used with boring frequency. It has the advantage for the neo-fascists in this country and abroad in that it removes any possibility of debate. The label is enough. It is particularly popular on social media, as it operates as a type of shorthand which suits those who are too lazy or ignorant to describe what they actually object to. 

My father fought fascists in World War Two, a war in which forty thousand Australians died.

The ignoramuses who post about the communist menace have short memories, or no understanding of history.

History Rhyming

Pic courtesy holocaust encyclopedia.

If you have any interest in history at all, it's not difficult to detect a pattern emerging aligning the current Trump administration with Weimar Germany and from there the rise of Nazi Germany.

The Nazis needed scapegoats. They had the Jews. Now it's completely obvious that undocumented (or documented) immigrants are the scapegoats. They are building internment camps, (called concentration camps until that term went out of fashion).

You could have assumed the US military command would save the day because they would refuse Trump's illegal orders. They didn't. The motorboat strikes were the litmus test. US military command is getting frog-boiled.

Senator Mark Kelly and Representative Elissa Slotkin saw this coming a mile away. Kelly has been threatened with demotion and loss of his military pension.

Slotkin has received bomb threats at her home, and numerous death threats. The Nazis used intimidation to silence their critics although they were slightly less sophisticated. Remember Trump labelled her actions as "seditious behaviour punishable by death."

The ICE crackdown, is getting incrementally more violent by the week culminating in the shooting of a protestor in Minnesota. Remember Hitler's Brownshirts. Intimidation worked well for them.

That's the domestic stuff. Now for foreign policy.

Hitler first annexed Czechoslovakia and the Sudetenland (1938) and Bohemia and Moravia in 1939 on the basis that the populations were German speaking.

Trump has kidnapped Maduro and threatened Greenland, Cuba and Columbia. There have been reasons given which talk about the security of the USA. Hitler talked about Lebensraum.

Without drawing too long a bow, you could say that under Trump, the USA has been Weimar Germany for awhile. The Germans, however had an excuse to feel aggrieved post Versailles, but Americans aren't dealing with hyperinflation.

Pic courtesy Wikipaedia

Perhaps the MAGA cult, spread by oligarchs like Musk, has been a major influence.

Is Greenland is the new Poland?

Wasn't it JD Vance who said Trump is America's Hitler?

We live in interesting times....

A Royal Commission?

Pic courtesy CPA

We're hearing, gentle reader, a clamour for a Royal Commission after the Bondi tragedy.

I have written that this clamour can be classified under the heading of "cashing in" on that tragedy, but beyond that, perhaps the notion has some merit. 

Let's put aside the politics and the ghoulish behaviour of most of the media, (especially social media) and consider terms of reference for a Royal Commission.

The generality of the call is all we're hearing at the moment, not the specificity* of its terms of reference.

Here are my humble suggestions of what those terms of reference should be -

1. Was there a connection between the events of October 7th 2023 on the Gaza/Israel border, the IDF's response since, and an increase in anti-semitic rhetoric and behaviour in Australia?

2. Was there a connection between the activities of Islamic State Franchises in the Philippines and Australia and the radicalisation of the shooters at Bondi?

3. Was the granting of a firearms licence to Sajid Akram an oversight on the part of the NSW firearms registry?

4. Are the various state firearm's registries competent to ensure that militants don't gain access to weapons, and are they sufficiently resourced to ensure this?

5. Are the National Intelligence Community (NIC) agencies competent to cooperate and share information that will prevent a recurrence of this atrocity?

If this is to be a good faith enquiry to prevent another attack like Bondi, these are the factors that need to be examined. The brief of the commission needs to be narrow and specific to prevent it weaponizing the politics of the situation.

A simpler brief will also allow the findings to be expedited. A Royal Commission needs to heal divisions, rather than exploit them, to unify rather than to blame, and to provide a strategy to prevent this obscenity from happening again.

Any outcome that doesn't ensure the last one is futile. 

*With apologies to Kevin Rudd.

 

Not the Pajama Game

 

Pic courtesy The Weekly Times

I had expected, gentle reader, to be listening to test cricket today.

I say "listening", because watching it on television means being unable to do much else, whilst listening allows opportunities for other simultaneous activity.

No doubt this is a product of a lifelong habit which began when as a child, I made a crystal set, and listened to the cricket with the earplug that was part of the kit.

This had the advantage of not disturbing anyone else when Australia was touring in the UK, and the broadcast was going out in the early hours of the morning. As the eldest of six, this was important, as school residences (in which I grew up) were designed for smaller families. Sharing a bedroom with a sibling was routine.

I'm not listening to cricket today, of course, because the Melbourne ashes test lasted only two days, following the pattern established earlier in the series.

There's much wailing and gnashing of teeth, from Cricket Australia and the barmy army. The former has lost a motsa, and the latter group has spent a great deal of money on travel and accommodation, only to find big gaps in their planned itinerary.

There are solid reasons for tests not lasting more than a couple of days. It's an obvious trend, which in my humble opinion is a reflection of the influence of white ball cricket.

I don't know a lot about cricket, although I've been following it for over seventy years and played as a schoolboy at boarding school. I was a hopeless batsman, because my eye/hand coordination has always been poor, but I fancied myself as an off-spinner.

Almost all the test players play the pajama game which demands a very different approach to both batting and bowling than test cricket. They have developed a set of skills which suit the shorter form of the game, and much of this approach to the game has leaked into test cricket.

Hence "Bazball" with its range of shots including the ramp shot, the switch hit, the helicopter shot and the reverse sweep which are now appearing in test cricket. From the bowler's point of view techniques such as bowling dry and angle creation have come into favour.

I guess cricket is evolving. To be honest, I would prefer to listen to test cricket which is closer to what I was used to back in the day. Test cricket should be cerebral rather than physical. 

What really irks me is male cricketers being described as "batters". What's wrong with "batsmen?" To me "batter" has always been a method of cooking fish.