Time for an Apology

 

Pic Courtesy Adelaide Now*

The following letter, gentle reader, has been emailed to all candidates in my federal electorate.

It will be interesting to see what responses I get, if any.

I'll keep you posted.

*This picture, from the AWM archive, was used to illustrate an article by Grahame Cornes, a member of my rifle platoon, in Adelaide Now on Dec 4th 2020.

Note - The links don't work in the letter.

Find them here.

Update 15.04.22 - Genevieve Allpass, Suzie Holt and Garth Hamilton (who says he will take it up with the minister) have responded. If Hamilton is fair dinkum, he'd be taking it up with the PM. After all, the PM is one of the two people (the other is the Leader of the Opposition) who should be making the apology.

Kilcullen on Ukraine and Other Things

 

Pic courtesy Wikipedia

Dr David Kilcullen is a commentator for whom I hold a great deal of respect, if for no other reason that he called the invasion of Iraq "f**king stupid".

History, of course, proved him correct.

I'll depart from the usual convention that I follow on this blog, gentle reader, and simply link you to a recent  podcast of a talk that Kilcullen had with Peter Jennings of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, rather than sharing my own (comparatively uninformed) opinion.

It's well worth a listen. 

It's Broke

Pic courtesy Caterina Sullivan 

There's an old saying, gentle reader, which goes something like this - "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". When it comes to the state of Australian politics, I believe it is indeed "broke". 

You don't have to look very far to understand the level of this dysfunction. 

Where do I start? 

Young people can't buy homes, they are exploited by their employers because of the power imbalance created by the fading union movement, and even when employed, their jobs are often insecure and they haven't seem a wage rise in their living memories. 

At the other end of the age spectrum, our elderly are languishing in "Nursing" homes (without nurses), being fed baked beans, and dying from Covid because their paid carers have to work across a number of institutions to make ends meet whilst transmitting the virus from one site to another like pollinating bees. 

At the same time, our political class, irrespective of party affiliation, is rife with corrupt practice, blatant cronyism, and bereft of any semblance of much needed reform. 

Remember "reform"? 

That was stuff that happened when we had leaders like Hawke and Keating. 

Perhaps this situation is the culmination of a slowly developing distortion of our system of government, which was not based on party affiliations, and the power of those mechanisms, but on the notion of a local representative caring for the needs of his/her constituents. The membership of these parties, although it is improving, is still not reflective of the communities they claim to represent, no matter whether gender, race, sexuality or identity is considered. 

 Even the selection of these candidates, as we have seen recently, is a top-down process, usually controlled by the party apparatchiks.  

It's not incorrect to claim that the interests of the parties, through the power they wield, is always placed ahead of the interests of the constituents. When you think about it, this is an inevitable trend, if only to ensure the survival in power of whatever party we're considering. 

A more recent phenomenon, that of oligarchs taking advantage of this dysfunction to coerce voters through their extravagant spending in the media by the fulmination of lies and misinformation, is even more sinister. 

We have only to look across the Pacific to understand the consequences. 

So it is "broke". 

 How do we fix it? 

 Obviously, the quality and motives of the candidates is vital. 

We need the best and the bravest. 

They won't be found using branch-stacking, factional warfare and grooming political advisers as they rise through the ranks of the party. 

 Often they self-identify. Some of our best independent politicians have emerged simply as a result of their authenticity and courage. Ted Mack and Peter Andren are examples. 

 So I'll be looking at the quality of the candidates in my electorate when the PM visits Yarralumla, which could happen as soon as today. 

To be honest, none of them are actually inspiring

History Doesn't Repeat - But it Rhymes

We're downsizing and moving house, gentle reader, and during the process I unearthed the pictured front page of the Toowoomba Chronicle of Wednesday, March 19th, 2003. It was, in a "special war edition", reporting Bush's ultimatum for Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq prior to invasion by the Coalition of the Willing. My youngest daughter had been given a school assignment to complete on the report, and she had kept it.

It got me thinking.

Almost nineteen years to the day later, another military invasion has taken place, this time the Russian Federation has embarked on a "special military operation" in the Ukraine. 

Both operations were sold to the population of their respective countries as exercises in liberating an oppressed population, and the militaries involved used overwhelming force. Remember "shock and awe"?

Operation Iraqi Freedom turned out to be probably the greatest strategic blunder made by western governments this century, and its aftermath let to the development of ISIS, years of suffering for millions of Iraqis, and an enormous cost in blood and treasure paid by the countries involved. 

Australia sent troops, an action which I protested by refusing my Anniversary of National Service medal at the public presentation timed to garner support for Howard's decision. For us, it wasn't without a cost. Two Australian service personnel died in the conflict between July 16th 2003 and July 31st 2009.  

The same relatively small price is not being paid by the unfortunate Russian soldiers involved in the current debacle. They seem genuinely bewildered by the reception they're getting from the Ukrainian people. The same hostile reception wasn't evident in Iraq initially, but by 2014 it was present in spades. Funny that, the idea that a population objects to their national sovereignty being removed by a foreign military presence. The Vietnamese, as I recall, had a similar reaction over fifty years ago.

So what do we learn from this sad historical symmetry?

One universal truth is that the military industrial complex, whether it is the product of a constitutional republic like the USA, or an autocracy like the Russian Federation, thrives on warfare, and its default position is always kinetic.

It also creates enormous suffering for the innocent. As this is written, the quantum of displaced Ukrainians approaches 3.6 million. The invasion and destabilisation of Iraq resulted in 9.2 million refugees.  

As an aside, we've just heard that 450 asylum seekers held in detention are being released to move to New Zealand in a deal struck nine years ago. Apparently focus groups are telling the Coalition that the fear and loathing they exploited to use boat people as a lever to hold on to power has receded. Boat people are no longer political collateral, and the threat of the urban Independents looms large in some of the blue ribbon Liberal seats. 

The historical rhyme emerging here is the willingness of the Coalition to use individuals as political currency with no reference to Christian ethics. This from a Prime Minister who makes frequent reference to God.

In 1965-72 the collateral were conscripts. In 2001 - 2022 they are refugees. History rhymes....

     

The Importance of Sequence

Image courtesy Susan Carlson.com

 Fifty-two years ago, gentle reader, I first discovered the importance of sequence.

The incident occurred when I had returned from a TAOR1 patrol and I reversed the weapon clearing sequence. I followed that well-drilled sequence to the letter, except that I cocked the weapon (my trusty SLR2) before removing the magazine, instead of vice versa.

It was fortunate that I adhered to another important part of the sequence (pointing the weapon skywards) before pulling the trigger, and ended up causing no more damage than one neat (and mostly invisible) hole in each layer of my tent. 

The digger sharing the tent never understood why it would leak at the height of the monsoon. The holes were over his stretcher. I told him about it forty years later when I met him at Toowoomba when he came to collect his sick grandson from my school.

I got away with it without a charge of UD3 because I was by myself, there were no visual witnesses (although everybody heard it), and I joined the small group unsuccessfully looking for the origin of the shot. I'd also pocketed the spent round.

Sequence is also important when moving house, as we are at the moment. Tradies (painters and floorers) have to be engaged in the correct order, and when two buildings are involved, as they are for us, it becomes complicated.

Even relatively small issues, such as moving boxes and furniture from one house to the other, require very very careful sequencing.

You don't want to be double handling furniture and (heavy) boxes of books when you're seventy-four. Maybe doing the bulk of the work by hiring a ute wasn't such a good idea.

I'll let you know when it's all done. My back will no doubt let me know first..... 

1. Task Force Area of Responsibility

2. Self-Loading Rifle (L1A1 Australian manufactured version of the Belgian designed FAL)

3. Unauthorised Discharge - one of the most common A4s (military charges).

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It Takes One to Know One

Pic courtesy The Mercury News

One little recognised fact about the recent history of Ukraine is that Paul Manifort, who chaired the Trump presidential campaign from June to August 2016, was influential in grooming the corrupt Viktor Yanukovych who became, in 2004, president of Ukraine after an election fraught with electoral fraud and voter intimidation.

Yanukovych fled to Russia in 2014, after a popular uprising when his government was deposed after signing an economic agreement with the Russian Federation. It has become obvious given the history since 2014, that the last thing the Ukrainian people want is closer alignment with Russia.

Further background includes the fact that in January 2020, the US Government  Accountability Office, a non-partisan watchdog, concluded that the White House broke federal law by withholding Congressional approved military aid to Ukraine. This was after Trump unsuccessfully pressured the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to dig up dirt on Jo Biden's son in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election. 

Putin and Trump have, over the years, set up a sweet mutual admiration society.

On the  Clay Travis and Buck Sexton show last Tuesday, Trump said in reply to a simpering question -

  

“I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, ‘This is genius. Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine … as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful. So Putin is now saying, ‘It’s independent,’ a large section of Ukraine. I said, ‘How smart is that?’ ”

At the G 20 summit in November 2020, Putin praised Trump thus - 

"This was a really big contribution toward restoring the U.S. economy, and thus restoring the world economy."

It takes one liar very little time to recognise and understand another. 

Trump has used complete fabrication to gain and hold attention over and over again. The best most recent examples were his birther narrative, and more recently, the fraudulent election lie.

Putin has wheeled out allegations of the genocide of Russians in Donetsk and Donbas, and claims that the Ukraine government is controlled by NAZIs. The first claim has been completely discredited, and the second so bizarre as to be laughable, given the fact that the president is Jewish.

Yet, both Putin and Trump share the characteristic of setting up a simple and fearful lie, and despite all the evidence of the facts, sticking to it.

Both are megalomaniacs, likely psychopaths, and both have done enormous damage to their respective countries. Putin has begun to destroy the Russian federation's economy, and Trump has destroyed faith in the democratic process in the USA.

They understand each other very well.

 As the cliche explains, "It takes one to know one".

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Cannon Fodder

Russian captives (423rd Yampoli MRR* Unit 91791)

The Russian Federation's assault on the Ukraine has shocked and horrified the western media.

Most of the outrage has been directed at the disregard shown by the Russian government and military towards the Ukrainian people, and it is difficult for outsiders in the west to accept this behaviour in the twenty-first century.

It is, unfortunately, nothing new. The 2008 Russo-Georgian war has much in common with the current situation in the Ukraine.

This war displaced a 192,000 people including both Ossetians and Georgians, and it has so much in common with the Ukrainian conflict, including a Russian push for access to warm water ports, Russian fear of a state on its periphery seeking NATO membership, and the protection of Russian speaking enclaves as justification for military intervention. 

Prior to both the Russo-Georgian and Ukrainian conflicts, the Second Chechen War set a template of sorts, with the added complication of the involvement of Islamic militants. The Russian soldiers involved in these conflicts are as much victims of the wars as the unfortunate civilians caught up in them. Estimates of Russian casualties in Chechnya vary between 7500 (official Russian figures) and 14000 (Committee of Soldiers' Mothers). 

It should be remembered that many of these soldiers are conscripts. As of 2021, all male citizens of the Russian federation aged 18–27 are subject to conscription for one year of active duty which may include operational service. 

Soldiers returning from Chechnya have exhibited a disorder called CS (Chechnya Syndrome) which resembles the post Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan PTSD plaguing American and Australian returnees. All of this will no doubt be visited on Russian veterans of the Ukraine conflict when it is finally resolved.

Perhaps their situation may offer, in some perverse manner, a ray of hope towards the end of the conflict. How will the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers react to body bags being repatriated to Mother Russia in 2021?

Perhaps the deployment of mobile crematoriums with the units involved in the Ukrainian operation indicates that Putin is worried about backlash. 

As a footnote to this tragedy in Europe is the support for the Russian action displayed by the far Right in the USA. 

We live in strange times.

*Motorised Rifle Regiment

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