The Power of Attention

 

Joseph R McCarthy courtesy Wikipedia

 You don't have to look very far in recent American political history, gentle reader, to find a figure resembling Donald Trump.

That figure, Joseph McCarthy, the Senator from Wisconsin, who was prominent from 1950 until 1954, until he was censured by the Senate, had galvanised public opinion around the issue of alleged Communist subversion in American institutional life. 

McCarthy's activities for that relatively brief period of time, had an impact well beyond both the span of his crusade, and the walls of the US Senate.

The combination of power, fame and falsehood has always held a magnetic attraction for the US media. In a country where there is no publicly funded media of any real consequence, corporations that make a profit by selling copy (print or digital) will always be attracted to what is loud, exciting and simple. 

This monopolising of the spotlight is an important pathway to political power across the Pacific. There are any number of cliches bearing witness to the phenomenon. There is no such thing as bad publicity. is just one of those cliches, and one that Trump understands very well.

Trump, either consciously or instinctively, is well aware of this phenomenon and has exploited it adroitly. This exploitation has taken on a sinister turn recently, with his administration's attempt to push aside media agencies that challenge his narrative.

He has also demonstrated that he is prepared to take on many institutions previously protected by their status, including the churches, the courts, and the military.

McCarthy met his demise when he took on the US military, and after he was denounced by Edward R Murrow, a highly respected broadcaster, he quickly lost favour and with it, attention. 

Unfortunately, by that time he had done a great deal of damage during the half a decade of his notoriety. Anti-communist hysteria spread beyond the shores and institutions of the USA, and had an influence in Australian politics lasting well into the early sixties.

Our tragic adventure in Vietnam was just one outcome. Echoes persist even today. They're all over social media.

Social media thrives on memes that are loud, exciting and simple.

Social media is a good earner for a few. It has become a parasite feeding on rumour, fear, and outrage, and the platforms are lining up to take advantage of the spoils. 

That fact that it influences the outcomes of elections and is being harnessed by political operatives is perhaps the most worrying aspect of all.  

 

A Cockeyed Bob?

 

Police station and residence. The government house we lived in was identical.

Those of you living in south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales have probably had enough of cyclone Alfred. 

We've been minimally effected, and apart from my bush house doing the watusi which meant that everything on its shelves ended up in a heap on the floor, life has proceeded as usual.

Tropical cyclones are part of my lived experience, having grown up in north Queensland, and my earliest memories are those surrounding a cyclone which crossed the coast at Carmila on March 11th 1950. I was about three at the time, but can remember parts of it, including sheltering under a sturdy oak table in our kitchen whilst the school residence broke up around us.

This link takes you to a newspaper account in the Townsville Daily bulletin of 13th March 1950. It took two days for the full story to get through, a contrast to the real time reporting we're seeing today. Dad gets a mention in the report.

The house lost all its corrugated iron roof, and part of the gable end at the front. We were obliged to live in the school for a couple of weeks whilst the residence was re-roofed.  

Another early memory was the smell of burning linen. A family down the road from us also moved into the school, and one of them came down with Tuberculosis. Back then, we were advised to burn all bed linen used by this family. My mother had taken bed linen out of storage which had been a wedding gift, and loaned it to this family.

Repair crew that was sent into Carmila by rail.

Mum was very upset when it had to be burned, and I recall the smell, and her distress.

Since then, I lived in Townsville for a while, and was there when cyclone Aivu crossed the coast near the Burdekin River between Townsville and Bowen on April 4th 1989. Whilst that cyclone didn't do a great deal of damage around Townsville, it caused lots of flooding to the north, and for a while looked to be a major threat.

This may have been why,  given my recall of the Carmila experience, I moved my family overnight to my new school which had been built to cyclone proof standards in 1987. I rationalised that if the school was going to be declared a cyclone, I would be prepared by being on site.

As I write this, in Queensland, at least, no lives have been lost, although the same can't be said for Northern NSW.

And the term "Cockeyed Bob?" I haven't heard it used for decades, but apparently it was once applied to severe and unpredictable storms.

That would describe Alfred. 

Textbook Intimidation

I'm posting this, gentle reader, because I've seen nothing more bizarre in my lifetime.

The first few minutes of the video show Zelensky reminding Trump and Vance of the history. They didn't want to hear the facts of history.

They were more interested in grandstanding for the domestic hard liners.

It's a shameful piece of television, and doesn't bode well for international peace. For some reason, Trump is in thrall to Putin, and doesn't seem to have the vaguest respect for Ukraine and its people.

He is obviously quite prepared to appease the Russian Federation simply to get even on his domestic political opponents. That is the only history Trump is interested in. 

Here is a man who will put his own vindictive retribution before the freedom and survival of a country of thirty seven million.

As we say in Australia, he's "getting square".

It doesn't bode well for our relationship with the US, and our billion dollar AUKUS deal.  How can you trust an administration with a leader concerned only with narcissistic revenge?

Here's the transcript. The first few minutes of the grab cover Zelensky's attempt to unwrap the history, but the transcription doesn't include that -

Zelenskyy: What kind of diplomacy, JD, are you are asking about? What do you mean?

Vance: I’m talking about the kind of diplomacy that’s going to end the destruction of your country.

Zelenskyy: Yes, but if you …

Vance: Mr President, with respect, I think it’s disrespectful for you to come to the Oval Office and try to litigate this in front of the American media. Right now, you guys are going around and forcing conscripts to the frontlines because you have manpower problems. You should be thanking the president.

Zelenskyy: Have you ever been to Ukraine to see the problems we have?

Vance: I’ve actually watched and seen the stories, and I know what happens is you bring people on a propaganda tour, Mr President.

Do you disagree that you’ve had problems with bringing people in your military, and do you think that it’s respectful to come to the Oval Office of the United States of America and attack the administration that is trying to prevent the destruction of your country?

Zelenskyy: First of all, during the war, everybody has problems, even you. You have nice solutions and don’t feel [it] now, but you will feel it in the future.

Trump: You don’t know that. Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel. We’re trying to solve a problem. Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel.

Zelenskyy: I am not telling you, I am answering …

Vance: That’s exactly what you’re doing …

Trump, raising his voice: You’re in no position to dictate what we’re going to feel. We’re going to feel very good and very strong.

Zelenskyy tries to speak.

Trump: You right now are not in a very good position. You’ve allowed yourself to be in a very bad position. You don’t have the cards right now. With us, you start having the cards.

You’re gambling with lives of millions of people, you’re gambling with world war three and what you’re doing is very disrespectful to this country.

Vance: Have you said thank you once?

Zelenskyy: A lot of times.

Vance: No, in this meeting, this entire meeting? Offer some words of appreciation for the United States of America and the president who’s trying to save your country.

Zelenskyy: Yes, you think that if you will speak very loudly about the war …

Trump: He’s not speaking loud. Your country is in big trouble. No, no, you’ve done a lot of talking. Your country is in big trouble.

Zelenskyy: I know, I know.

Trump: You’re not winning this. You have a damn good chance of coming out OK, because of us.

Zelenskyy: We are staying strong from the very beginning of the war, we have been alone, and we are saying, I said, thanks.

Trump, speaking over Zelenskyy: You haven’t been alone … We gave you military equipment. Your men are brave, but they had our military. If you didn’t have our military equipment, this war would have been over in two weeks.

Zelenskyy: I heard it from Putin in three days.

Trump: It’s going to be a very hard thing to do business like this.

Vance: Just say thank you.

Zelenskyy: I said it a lot of times.

Vance: Accept that there are disagreements and let’s go litigate those disagreements rather than trying to fight it in the American media, when you’re wrong. We know that you’re wrong.

Trump: You’re buried there. Your people are dying. You’re running low on soldiers. No, listen … And then you tell us, ‘I don’t want a ceasefire. I don’t want a ceasefire. I want to go and I want this.’

Trump: You’re not acting at all thankful. And that’s not a nice thing. I’ll be honest, that’s not a nice thing.

All right, I think we’ve seen enough. What do you think? Great television. I will say that.

End...

So sad. So bizarre.

Australian Coffee Culture

 

Coffee & Chicory (Pic courtesy museums Victoria)

I’ve been around long enough, gentle reader, to have lived through some remarkable changes in the way we drink coffee in Australia.

As far as I can remember when I was growing up, my parents never drank coffee. They were both tea drinkers. The coffee that was around at that time was execrable, which may have had something to do with it. 

I do remember my mother always having a Coffee substitute in her pantry. To this day I'm not sure what it was used for. Perhaps it was part of a cake recipe. It was never used to make coffee.

When I was old enough to leave home, I started drinking instant coffee occasionally. Working as a young teacher in the bush meant that I was exposed to staff room milk. If you're not familiar with staff room milk, suffice to say that it was frequently off on Mondays, after sitting in the staffroom across the weekend. This forced me to drink black tea, a habit I've maintained. I could never stomach black coffee.

Then I was called up conscripted, the tea and coffee often came in ration packs. At this time I reverted to coffee, perhaps because it was a mild stimulant. Mostly in the army I was bored stiff, and the caffeine provided a little bit of excitement.

This continued once in Vietnam, although occasionally there was some excitement. Drinking coffee had by this time become a habit.  

Back in civvy street I remained addicted to coffee and cigarettes, but gave up the latter cold turkey by refusing to buy smokes. The social pressure (smokers retreating when they saw me approaching to bum a durry) did the trick.

A few years back into teaching I had an itinerant job supporting kids with disabilities in bush schools, and saw the inside of plenty of roadhouses. They almost always had a boiling urn and enormous tins of instant (usually Bushells) coffee in the corner.

I returned to this work post retirement (which I failed first time round), but by then (2010) proper barista coffee was becoming available in these same roadhouses. It was usually served by backpackers with interesting accents.

The contrast between what was available in the seventies in the bush, and what is sold now is stark.

Trips to Vietnam post retirement introduced me to Vietnamese coffee (very strong and smooth and served with condensed milk) and a sojourn in the USA and Cuba in 2018 revealed that American coffee is not a patch on ours. I found the Vietnamese brew slightly more robust than what I encountered in Cuba. Both were better on the street than in the USA, but not of the quality that you can find locally.

Whilst I probably haven't travelled enough to make any reasonable comparisons, I reckon that Australian coffee is amongst the best in the world. Italian immigration post world war two probably has much to do with this. An Italian coffee culture developed first in Melbourne and has spread. Having said that, when I was in Italy in the eighties, I don't remember being impressed by their coffee.

Australian coffee culture has been exported to the USA and chains have developed. 

Australians are great innovators, they import excellent beans, and their baristas are the best. The machines used are invariably good quality and this helps. We're now growing coffee on the Atherton Tableland, so the coffee scene can only improve.

Only the best of everything originates in that part of the world, including my bride...

Appeasement Revisited

Pic courtesy Cagle.com

Any student of history, gentle reader, will recall an incident in 1938, when a national leader returned to his country after signing a peace deal with an authoritarian european leader.

He was very pleased with himself, and waved the written agreement around, proclaiming "Peace in our time!"

This was after that authoritarian leader had taken over vast swathes of territory from a neighbouring european country with military force.

Move forward to February 2022, when another authoritarian leader invaded a neighbouring european country, after annexing large swathes of its territory in 2016.

Another recently elected national leader has now intervened, he claims, to make peace. He is prepared to allow the aggressor nation to retain control of the territory it has taken by force, and is sidelining in negotiations the leader of the country invaded. 

When challenged by the media as to the morality of this process, he blamed a previous administration for the situation.

Consider, gentle reader, an alternative history which could have followed from the 1938 situation.

Consider, if Churchill, when he became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, had blamed Neville Chamberlain for the situation, an turned a blind eye to the aggression that followed, and the consequences.

That is precisely what Trump has done. He has blamed Biden for the situation, and ignored Russian aggression.

Far-fetched?

I'm not sure.

Putin is driven by his obsession with recreating an Imperial Russia, just as Hitler was seeking a one thousand year Reich.

Putin, apparently was traumatised by the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, just as Hitler was by Germany's defeat in 1918.

Both Hitler (as a soldier) and Putin (as a KGB agent) were proudly working for their respective countries when their governments fell. Both were/are fervent nationalists.

The parallels are stark...

Sound and Fury....

 

Pic courtesy Dan Connors - Medium

You can always rely on the bard, gentle reader, to find words fitting any given situation.

If he were alive today, I have no doubt that he would apply those words to the statements made by the abomination occupying the White House at the moment.

These statements are indeed sound and fury, but what do they actually signify?

To my way of thinking, they signify a mindset foreign to rationality, but uniquely American. This mindset is known as American exceptionalism. It's an important feature of their culture.

I have met plenty of Americans, in a range of situations including serving beside them in Vietnam (albeit a long time ago), working with American teachers in the seventies when a local shortage meant many were recruited, and visiting their country not so long ago.

My contact with Americans over the years has revealed a few things. Individually, they're reasonable people, but collectively, they harbour beliefs about their country that are largely delusional.

That's where the "exceptionalism" label applies. Many of them believe that because they're Americans, their country is exempt from the rules of international behaviour that apply to everyone else..

Life expectancy - International comparisons

Hence their scorning of international organisations, and most recently their sanctions against the ICC.  Put simply, they believe that they are somehow culturally superior to almost everyone else, and they are simply excused because of this assumed superiority.

Incarceration rates - International comparisons

This "superiority" is a fiction. Their life expectancy, incarceration rates, murder rates  and  health care standards provide real evidence of conditions of national inferiority.

 It's pretty clear that the US is indeed exceptional amongst Western countries, but in a negative sense. 

Health Care system performance

Trump's worldview is a blend of real estate entrepreneur and world championship wrestling promoter. As such, he does indeed represent the world view of many of his countrymen.

Murder rates comparison

 So his words do indeed signify something, but that "something" is exploitative, manipulative, and arrogant.

Not much has changed since 1970, when we used to say as Australians serving aside Americans - "You can tell them anything; sell them anything".

A glance at the images above affirms that aphorism.

As Australians, we have more in common with the Vietnamese than the Americans. Like the Vietnamese, we have a sense of humour, endurance and kowtow to nobody.  Remember that in the end, the Vietnamese overcame American exceptionalism....

Harry Smith's Story

I've just finished reading Harry Smith's Long Tan - The Start of a Lifetime Battle, and found it hard to put down.

Harry Smith was the commander of D Coy 6RAR during the battle of Long Tan in August 1966. Despite the title, his book covers events prior to and after the battle, as well as his own account of his company's ordeal when it defied an estimated regimental attack from main force NVA assisted by local elements of D445.

The book has the flavour of an exercise in setting the record straight, and he pulls no punches describing the intelligence failures that led to the encounter battle, the incompetence of senior task force commanders, and his conflict during the heat of battle with these same commanders in getting the artillery support he needed for the survival of D Coy.

Smith (who died in 2023) was a soldier's soldier, and disinclined to suffer fools gladly, especially when it came to the allocation of honours and awards for his soldiers. He spent the remainder of his life post Long Tan fighting for justice for the members of D Coy who were denied awards because of the quota system that operated at the time, and for many years post Vietnam.

Because there was a ceiling placed on the number of decorations to be awarded, senior commanders who experienced the battle from their command posts safe behind the wire at Nui Dat received honours whilst the soldiers under fire for hours had recommendations rescinded. Smith did extensive research for years, especially after the thirty year rule revealed the correspondence relating to these awards.

It makes pretty shocking reading, and it obviously motivated Harry Smith to fight for his men until the situation was largely remedied in November 2016, representing the culmination of a fifty year battle.

Smith's commentary on the human costs of the war makes interesting reading. One example - 

Whilst I have always been deeply saddened by the loss of the 18 young men in a battle that should not have happened in a war we could not win, and as well, the 521 men who gave their lives during the Vietnam War,  I must say now feel too for the families and loved ones of those young enemy soldiers we killed. Many of these soldiers were just teenagers.  (p187).

Apart from the remarkable narrative of Smith's battle for his soldiers, this book provides an amazing insight into the way the Australian military is organised, and the difficulties experienced by a career soldier attempting to maintain a stable family life. Again, Smith's honesty shines through, and he is quite frank about his failed marriages.

The book had a special resonance for me, as I have been to Long Tan twice, and went to school with Frank Topp, who was killed in the first few minutes of the battle. He was a local, and I got to know his mother before she died a few years ago.

My first sight of Long Tan was in April 1970 when we used a site near the rubber as a forming up point before we set out along the dry bed of the Suoi O Lo Nho on a night company move into the AO of our second operation.

The second time I was there was in March 2006 on a tour with my sons and a group of Vietnam veterans, most of whom were ex 8RAR.

The second visit was much more pleasant than the first.

Arrogance

 

Image courtesy Vanguard News

Unbridled arrogance, gentle reader, has always been a feature of modern American culture.

I saw it first hand in 1970, and it was one of the reasons they "lost" Vietnam. 

Vietnam wasn't theirs to lose in the first place, of course, but that is a minor detail.

They fought what the Vietnamese call the "American War" without any understanding of the country or respect for its inhabitants. 

They weren't prepared to listen to anyone, especially the commonwealth forces who successfully defeated the communists in Malaysia.

Perhaps the best account of this from an Australian perspective was documented in 1985 by Hugh Lunn. His Vietnam, a Reporter's War is a great read, and his observations are exactly as I remember them. (959.704332)

Trump, displaying this arrogance, has attempted, using executive order, to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico. He can only change what the USA calls it, of course, because it's a stretch of international water whose naming rights are shared by the USA, Mexico and Cuba.

The executive order changes (through the US agency Geographic Names Information System) what it is called in the USA, but there is an international body (The International Hydrographic Organisation) which standardizes what it is called worldwide.

Trump has no jurisdiction over the IHO.

I sincerely doubt he has ever heard of it....

Oh Canada!

 

Pic courtesy Rosa Miranda Sauret

In the light of Trump's recent postings on social media about Canada, it's worth recalling, gentle reader, one significant historical element of US-Canada relations.

I'm writing, of course, about the tens of thousands of draft dodgers that travelled north to Canada during the war in Vietnam, between 1965 and 1975.

One estimate puts the number between 30,000 and 40,000. 

What is interesting about this history is that it seemed to have no effect on US-Canada relations. When you think about it, that appears odd. After all, the northern escape continued unabated for ten years, and these men whether they were draft resistors or deserters, were clearly in breach of the law in the USA.

Yet Canada accepted them as immigrants and made no attempt to determine their reasons for crossing the border. This turning a blind eye arrangement was accommodated by both Canada and the US, and it's interesting to consider the reasons for this.

One rationale is that the USA had much greater concerns when it came to international relations in general and relations with Canada in particular, so long as the number of war resisters could be contained, and they didn't want to rock the boat by making an issue of their treatment.

Strangely perhaps, draft and military offences were not included in the Canada-US extradition treaty. Basically, even if the US authorities had wanted to take action, they could do nothing providing Canada accepted these young men as immigrants, and indeed Canada did.

In any event, President Gerald R Ford granted an amnesty programme for draft evaders in September 1974, requiring them to work in alternative service occupations for periods between six months and two years.

Later in 1977, Jimmy Carter fulfilled a campaign promise to pardon any draft evader who requested one. I have no idea how many took advantage of this, although a figure of 556 is floating around in the archives.

This 2018 Canadian study (in French and English) by Luke Stewart provides useful background.

My only comment about Trump's offer would be that whilst travelling, I have mistaken a Canadian or two for an American and received a thorough telling-off for doing so.

One young woman said "That's the worst possible insult you could offer any Canadian! The basis of our identity is that we are NOT American."

Should we be Very Afraid or Simply Vigilant?

Darwin Harbour - Managed by the Chinese

During the last week, gentle reader, I came across a number of Youtube discussions about our relationship with China.

Watching these provided a way of filling in the time across lunch and tea breaks during the Boxing Day test in Melbourne. Test cricket is, after all, a quasi-meditative activity, and the breaks in play are too brief to allow the beginning of any new task.

Whilst the computer screen is handy, you might as well put it to good use.

I've always been fascinated by what is perceived as a resemblance between events between World Wars One and Two in relation to the India-Pacific region and the situation now in 2025. Mark Twain had something to say about history which is relevant.

Back in the late thirties, we had an emerging power in Imperial Japan, an isolationist USA, and an Australia that was ill-prepared for conflict.

These days, we observe an emerging great power in China, a President-elect of the USA who loudly uses isolationist rhetoric and an Australia that is once again, ill-prepared for conflict. 

Obviously, the situation is much more complicated than that, and I am supremely ignorant of the art and science of military preparedness, but I certainly don't want to see the mistakes of the past repeated. 

The first three discussions deal in turn with whether China is a military threat, what we should do about it, and two fairly similar viewpoints regarding the current situation. The last is included as a piece of devil's advocacy.

The first piece is an address by Peter Jennings AO presented by the Institute of Public Affairs. He has a distinguished career in the field, specialising in strategic policy, crisis management, international security and foreign policy. He was until 2022 the executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. It is fair to note that both Jennings and the IPA adopt generally conservative positions on most issues.

 Jennings has a a lot to say, but in summary, he advocates building up deterrence, and seems quite convinced that the Chinese will move against Taiwan by 2027. He also points out that AUKUS is irrelevant, as it is simply too far down the track, even if everything goes to plan. He also assumes that the USA will continue to want to be involved.

I simply don't share that last sunny assumption. 

Michael Shoebridge is the Director of ASPI's Defence, Strategy and National Security Program. He describes how we might quickly develop that deterrence capacity. He references Ukraine, the Middle East, and the asymmetrical conflict involving the Houthis and the US Navy in the Red Sea. Unlike Jennings, he's not so sure that the Americans will have either the capacity or the will to become involved in our near North.

Where Shoebridge makes sense to me is when he advocates the use of drones, and the rapid establishment of local capacity to manufacture quantities of low-tech cheap weapons that can be replaced to meet attrition. The capacity to provide the necessary hardware to sustain prolonged conflict is vital, as the Japanese discovered between 1940 and 1945. 

A discussion that neatly ties the issues together is this interview conducted by David Speers from ABC Insiders late last year with Mike Pezullo and Sam Roggeveen. Again, they repeat a view that conflict looms, but can be avoided. Pezullo is prepared to put the risk of war as a percentage, which he concludes is 10%. Roggeveen makes the very good point that Beijing is closer to Berlin than Sydney, and questions why we need submarines that effectively shrink that distance. 

The final video is puts an argument that Australia's own military-industrial complex is what drives the media's fixation with China, and governments of both political persuasions are complicit in maintaining that fixation. I'm not sure I agree with Boreham, but some of what he says resonates with my own experience as a conscript involved in a tragic war in SE Asia driven by the politics of fear.

I wouldn't want that episode repeated.

You, gentle reader, can make up your own mind....