Careel Bay

Palm Beach, The Northern Beaches

Whale Beach, The Northern Beaches

Remembrance Day

        Remembrance Day is a day to remember those that fought to defend our country, our society's values ,our way of life and our freedom.

        People who volunteered to defend us against some great evils.

         Remembrance Day is not a day to ponder how politicians and big business have corrupted our society and betrayed those fundamental values and freedoms. Nor is it the time to ponder how a government can declare we are at war, when no army has attacked us or our interests.

        It's a day to remember those who fought for our country.

        At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them.

Careel Bay

Happy Samhain

this card can also be viewed at:

http://members.optushome.com.au/webbears/Cards/Samhain1.htm

Bujinkan Sydney Metro Dojo

Traditional Japanese Martial Arts of the Samurai and Ninja.

We are training under a Japan trained Shihan and meet to improve our skills through practice.

Bujinkan is a system based on nine schools:

-Togakure-ryu Ninpo
Ninjutsu

-Gyokko-ryu Koshi-jutsu
Nerve and muscle strikes

-Koto-ryu Koppo-jutsu
Bone breaking

-Shindenfudo-ryu Dakentai-jutsu
Grappling & striking

-Kukishinden-ryu Tai-jutsu
Complete fighting system and battlefield art

-Takagiyoshin-ryu Jutai-jutsu
grappling

-Kumogakure-ryu Ninpo
Ninjutsu

-Gyokushin-ryu Ninpo
Ninjutsu

-Gikan-ryu Koppo-jutsu
Bone breaking

Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu is the collection of traditional Japanese Martial Arts of the Samurai and Ninja inherited by Soke Masaaki Hatsumi. Nine schools of martial study form the core, each with their own specialties and differences. Three are Ninjutsu schools, the only forms of Ninjutsu surviving, while the others are more typical of the Japanese martial arts of antiquity.

Northern Beaches Training Group

Contact Steve or Steve:

041 441 0327,

041 538 6916 ( SMS only )

or bujinkan@ebearweb.net

Whale Beach

Bouganvillia

Bouganvillia

A nation stepping over the boundaries

 
The 22nd of September 2007

The rights of the states are being weakened by a diluted federal system, writes Tony Stephens.

It is now clear that Australia would not have come into being as a nation in 1901 if the people who voted for the new constitution had been told that the federal system would be so changed in little more than a century.

The notion of federalism as a sharing of power and responsibilities between the Commonwealth and states has been tested and distorted for some time. John Howard's speech to the Millennium Forum in Sydney last month, in which he spoke of "aspirational nationalism" and played down the role of the states, revealed just how distorted federalism has become.

The benefits of hindsight give history a certain inevitability, but Federation was a close-run campaign. It is hard today to imagine Australia as a collection of nation states with checkpoints on the borders and separate defence policies but for some time in the 1890s moves towards Federation appeared doomed.

John Robertson, who believed NSW would become a nation in its own right, said in 1891: "Federation is as dead as Julius Caesar." Alfred Deakin, the leader of the Victorian push for Federation, wrote in 1900: "The fortunes of federalism have visibly trembled in the balance during the past 10 years … To those who watched its inner workings … its actual accomplishment must always appear to have been secured by a series of miracles."

Although Victorians voted for Federation in 1898, NSW failed to pass the first referendum. Those in Queensland and Western Australia did not vote at all. A second referendum in 1899 won the day, although Western Australia did not vote until July 31, 1900, and Federation was inaugurated on January 1, 1901.

The notion of federalism, with its limitations on power, was dear to Deakin, and to others of similar political persuasions to the present Prime Minister, such as Edmund Barton, the first prime minister of the federated nation, and Robert Menzies, still a Liberal Party hero.

Peter Coleman, a former leader of the NSW Liberals, has expressed a fear that "federalism may have become a non-core Liberal belief".

Goodness knows what Menzies would think of the state of federal power in 2007. Perhaps he would understand that, like life, little in politics lasts.

The manner in which Menzies conducted his prime ministership, for example, could not last into the 21st century.

David Solomon recalls in his new book, Pillars of Power, that it went largely unremarked in the 1950s when Menzies took a ship to England with the Australian cricket team, stayed for a month or so, then made the six-week return trip.

Evolutionary federalism and the increasingly presidential behaviour of the prime minister are two of the more remarkable changes that Solomon has noted in Australia in the past 30 years. He believes that no Australian prime minister has been as dismissive of federalism and the rights of the states as John Howard.

The constitution gave the Commonwealth power to make laws in a relatively limited number of fields and left the remainder to the states. Now the states find themselves increasingly providing services mandated by the Commonwealth. Federal governments have achieved this transformation using their control of the tax system and the states' dependence on federal money to deliver essential services.

Before "aspirational nationalism", the Work Choices legislation confirmed that the Commonwealth could use the corporations power in the constitution to control a large number of areas where the states had previously held sway. Then Howard moved to take control of the rivers, to manage water in the Murray-Darling basin, saying: "You will only solve this problem if you effectively obliterate state borders." Now he is taking over selected hospitals - and the Opposition Leader, Kevin Rudd, not to be outdone, suggests that Labor might take over all hospitals.

Solomon says the prime minister - and, for that matter, each premier - increasingly functions like an American president, but without most of the checks and balances. In 1980 Dr Elaine Thompson coined the word "Washminster" to help describe the Australian system as a blending of the Westminster system of parliamentary, cabinet government, with an important contribution from the American system, a formal separation of the powers of the executive, legislature and judiciary that was written into the Australian constitution.

Solomon argues that Australia has moved beyond Washminster. Parliament has been downgraded in importance. The prime minister and his ministers are no longer "responsible" to parliament. When the Howard Government gained a majority in the Senate, that chamber ceased to exercise any independent review of the Government's activities.

Another change in the pillars of power has been that the public service has become increasingly responsive to the demands of the government of the day. The "permanent heads" who formerly ran departments have been replaced by men and women on relatively short-term contracts, directly responsible to the prime minister. They can be dismissed with relative ease. Solomon doubts whether the service is as good at offering ministers independent, frank and fearless advice as it was when supposedly less "responsive" to the political agenda of government.

Pillars of Power, by David Solomon, is published by Federation Press ($39.95).


SMH 22-9-7

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/a-nation-stepping-over-the-boundaries/2007/09/21/1189881777255.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

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' I would like to quote my right hand man in answering this question: Max Moore-Wilton said "I have no recollection of being aware that there was no evidence. I was certainly aware that a report had been provided to the Task Force that children had been thrown overboard. I have no recollection of being told that there was no evidence of children being thrown overboard, although I note in the reports that some of the defence personnel had raised that issue, and as I think the task force report indicated or the chronology, which I have never seen, indicated that this did not necessarily mean that children had not been thrown overboard." -John Howard 15/2/2002 '


http://www.ebearweb.net


Stephen's Snaps
http://photo.ebearweb.net/

This week Truk photos.

Simply nice photos, Landscape, Seascape, Underwater, The Northern Beaches Sydney.

Bouganvillia

Bouganvillia

Bouganvillia

Daffodils

Jacaranda

Jacaranda

Gerbra

Bouganvillia

Flowers

Bouganvillia

Blue Lagoon Resort , Truk

Public Toilets!

Why do they build them, if they are just going to be locked when you need them?

More than 70% of the public toilets I come across are locked. What are you supposed to do? People have been arrested for going to the toilet when dunnies aren't available.

Come on! Let the public use the public dunnies!



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Everyone thinks I'm psychotic, except for my friends deep inside the earth.

http://www.ebearweb.net


Stephen's Snaps
http://photo.ebearweb.net/

This week Truk photos.

Simply nice photos, Landscape, Seascape, Underwater, The Northern Beaches Sydney.

From Blue Lagoon, Truk

From Blue Lagoon, Truk

From Blue Lagoon, Truk

Jacaranda

Pay rise for politicians, but workers must wait

Mark Davis Political Correspondent
June 20, 2007

FEDERAL MPs are set to get a pay rise of $153 a week from next month while the country's lowest-paid workers will have to wait until later this year for their next minimum wage rise.

The Remuneration Tribunal has approved the latest salary increases for MPs which deliver a special "restructuring" 2.5 per cent pay rise on top of their annual CPI adjustment worth 4.2 per cent this year.

The latest increases, which the Greens and independent MP Peter Andren will move to overturn, will take the base salary for a federal backbencher from $118,950 to nearly $127,000 from July 1.

Salaries for the prime minister, the opposition leader, ministers and parliamentary office-holders will rise by larger amounts.

The Greens leader, Bob Brown, said the pay rises were not justifiable and should be overruled by Parliament which can disallow Remuneration Tribunal determinations.

"While 1.2 million pensioners have had no real increase in their meagre $219 per week since Howard came to power, MPs are getting more than $150 a week on top of the extra tax cuts for the rich in the Costello budget," Senator Brown said.

The latest decisions flow from a tribunal decision last year to restructure the pay system for senior public servants, increasing salaries over and above the annual inflation-based salary reviews from 2006-07 to 2008-09. MPs' salaries are linked to a benchmark public service salary.

Earlier yesterday it emerged that the 1.2 million workers who rely on federal minimum wages are likely to get their next pay rise on the eve of this year's federal election under a timetable revealed by the Australian Fair Pay Commission.

The chair of the wage-fixing body, Ian Harper, said that while the commission would announce the size of the wage rise next month it would give employers more time to start paying the increase.

Professor Harper would not nominate the "operative date" for the increase. But the commission had listened to employer feedback that the two-month gap between last year's decision and the operative date had not been long enough to adjust payrolls and secure Australian Industrial Relations Commission rulings on allowances.

But the commission would ensure employers did not have to begin paying the new wage rates in the December-January holiday period. Professor Harper's comments suggest employers may have three to four months to start applying the wage rise after it is announced in early July.

That would see the rise hitting workers' pay packets in October or November. This is when the Prime Minister, John Howard, is expected to call the election.

Fraud inquiry MP repays $24,000

A FEDERAL Liberal MP at the centre of an alleged electoral allowance fraud inquiry has quietly repaid almost $24,000, it was reported last night.

Ross Vasta, who is one of three Queensland Liberals being investigated by the Australian Federal Police, told Channel Seven he had repaid the Department of Finance over "administrative errors" in his electoral spending. Mr Vasta was not available to comment last night.

Police raided the offices of Mr Vasta, Andrew Laming and Gary Hardgrave in March following claims that their taxpayer-funded allowances had been used to prop up the state Liberal Party's election campaign. All three MPs have denied any wrongdoing.


SMH 20-6-7

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/pay-rise-for-politicians-but-workers-must-wait/2007/06/19/1182019118070.html

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Procrastinate Now!


http://www.ebearweb.net


Stephen's Snaps
http://photo.ebearweb.net/

This week Truk photos.

Simply nice photos, Landscape, Seascape, Underwater, The Northern Beaches Sydney.

Daffodils

Bouganvillia

Rose

Careful, he might hear you

June 2, 2007

Under John Howard's terms, freedom of speech doesn't include any expression of dissent, writes David Marr.

At the heart of democracy is a contest of conversations. The tone of a democracy is set by the dialogue between a nation and its leaders. For the past decade, Australia has had a prime minister almost superhumanly reluctant to engage in frank debate. Of course, debate ploughs on in Australia. Hansard is fatter than ever. The Prime Minister is always at the microphone. But after being belittled for most of his political career, John Howard came to power determined that public debate would be conducted on his terms. These are subtle, bizarre and at times brutal.

Since 1996, Howard has cowed his critics, muffled the press, intimidated the ABC, gagged scientists, silenced non-government organisations, neutered Canberra's mandarins, curtailed parliamentary scrutiny, censored the arts, banned books, criminalised protest and prosecuted whistleblowers.

This is not as Howard advertised himself on arrival. Then he spoke proudly of his party's tradition of defending individual liberty and the rule of law. He still does. He painted his victory as a repudiation of "stultifying political correctness" that left Australians able "to speak a little more freely and a little more openly about what they feel". The ravings of Pauline Hanson he represented as a triumph of free speech over stifling orthodoxy. And after Aboriginal protesters burnt the flag on Australia Day last year, he rejected calls for their prosecution. "Much in all as I despise what they did, I do not believe that it should be a criminal offence," he told Neil Mitchell of 3AW in Melbourne. "I do hold to the old Voltairean principle that I disagree with what he says but I will defend to the death his right to say it, and I see that kind of thing as just an expression, however offensive to the majority of the community, an expression of political opinion."

The Old Voltairean has fallen a bit short. He leads a Government notably uncomfortable with freewheeling debate. Uncomfortable is too kind a description: the dislike is profound. For a decade now, public debate has been bullied and starved as if this were an ordinary function of government. It's important not to exaggerate the result. Suppression is not systematic. There are no gulags for dissidents under Howard. We reserve them for refugees. The occasional victories liberty wins in Canberra are illuminating. There are limits. But Howard's Government has been the most unscrupulous corrupter of public debate in Australia since the Cold War's worst days back in the 1950s.

We haven't been hoodwinked. Each step along the way has been reported - perhaps not as thoroughly and passionately as it should have been, but we're not dealing in dark secrets here. We've known what's going on. If we cared, we didn't care enough to stop it. Boredom, indifference and fear have played a part in this. So does something about ourselves we rarely face: Australians trust authority. Not love, perhaps, but trust. It's bred in the bone. We call ourselves larrikins, but we leave our leaders to get on with it. Even the leaders we mock.

We've watched Howard spin, block, prevaricate, sidestep, confound and just keep talking come what may through any crisis. Words grind out of him unstoppably. He has a genius for ambiguity we've almost come to applaud, and most of the time he keeps himself just this side of deceit. But he also lies without shame. Howard invented the breakable, or non-core, promise - the first was to maintain ABC funding - five years before those children weren't thrown overboard. The truth is we've known he was a liar from the start.

Howard can admit error, but it is extremely rare. Apologies are almost unknown. More than any law, any failure of the Opposition or individual act of bastardry over the past decade, what's done most to gag democracy in this country is the sense that debating John Howard is futile.

One response has been to turn away and wait for him to disappear in the belief that Australia will once again be what we remember it was: free, open, principled, fearless, fair, etc. It wasn't. Most of what troubles us now about the state of public discourse began under Labor. Many of us complaining now did not complain loudly enough back then as Paul Keating bullied the press, the public service and the Parliament. But Howard has come to dominate the country in ways Keating never could. To the task of projecting his voice across Australia, he brought all the ruthless professionalism that marks his Government. Perhaps the man has now exhausted his welcome, but even when the Howard years are long gone, we will be left confronting the damage done and the difficult question of how we let this happen.

We roll with the insults, threats and suppressions because we have come to expect Howard's Government to behave like this. We're habituated. Christian warriors fighting sex on the screen demand film censors serve brief terms for fear that exposure to all that filth will "desensitise" them. After a decade, Australia is desensitised to John Howard. So why doesn't Labor rally the nation to fight Canberra's bullying in the name of free speech? Because the party's heart isn't in it and Australians have only the patchiest record of becoming passionate about great abstractions - even the greatest of them, liberty.

We've never fought to be free. Vinegar Hill was a convict breakout easily and brutally suppressed. The officers who overthrew Bligh spouted liberty to trade in rum. Shorn of the colour, Eureka was a bunch of miners who didn't want to pay tax. The great issue that drove self-government for the colonies was seizing control of land. We were as much a part of the British Empire after Federation as we were before. And each step away from Britain had to be forced on Australia until the great Mother of the nation finally turned her back on us and walked into Europe. Australia surprised itself by refusing to accept Menzies' tyrannical plans to ban the Communist Party. But only just. Referendums opposed by any of the big parties always lose, and usually heavily. Liberty was preserved in 1951 by 50,000 votes in a nation of millions. The barricades have rarely been manned since.

We aren't the larrikins of our imagination. Australians are an orderly people. We grumble about authority instead of challenging it. We despise politicians. Belittling them as a class is a cover for our own passivity. We elect leaders much as we hire electricians: we may whinge about the job and haggle over the bill, but essentially we leave them to get on with their work.

The historian John Hirst writes: "Australians think of themselves as anti-authority. It is not true. Australians are suspicious of persons in authority, but towards impersonal authority they are very obedient. This is a country which for a long time closed its pubs at 6pm and which pioneered the compulsory wearing of seatbelts in cars. Its people since 1924 have accepted the compulsion to vote. Its anti-smoking legislation is so tough that smoking is prohibited in its largest sporting stadium, the Melbourne Cricket Ground, though it is open to the skies."

Many puzzles of this subtle country can be solved by remembering how British we remain. It's structural. We have - and have voted to keep - the Crown. Our courts are British down to the horsehair wigs. The ethic of government is shifting from Westminster to Washington, but the framework remains British. We have a British suspicion of open information. Freedom of information legislation hasn't challenged an instinct for secrecy deep within government, justice and business. We were together in the rearguard of democracies opposing guarantees of citizens' rights, particularly American notions of free speech. With Britain now absorbed reluctantly into Europe's human rights regime, Australia remains the last Western democracy left without any national bill of rights. Polls tell us we'd like to have one - but we're not particularly concerned. It's another struggle for liberty we're not busting to fight.

David Malouf has a wonderful notion that Australia and America were made such different places by the English we carried in our baggage. To America, settlers took a language of high abstraction: "Passionately evangelical and utopian, deeply imbued with the religious fanaticism and radical violence of the time, this was the language of the Diggers, Levellers, English Separatists and other religious dissenters of the early 17th century who left England to found a new society that would be free, as they saw it, of authoritarian government by Church and Crown."

By the time Australia was colonised, the language had changed. What came with the First Fleet was the English of the Enlightenment: "Sober, unemphatic, good-humoured; a very sociable and moderate language;

modern in a way that even we would recognise, and supremely rational and down to earth."

That could almost be John Howard's portrait of himself: the leader uncomfortable with high principle who prefers to deal in practical solutions. Over the past decade, "practical" has become a key Howard word that he uses to stop debate in its tracks. Try to explore the principles behind his politics, and more often than not his talk turns to practical options, initiatives, outcomes, consequences, points of view, guidance, solutions, partnerships and so on. Perhaps the most famous phrase he's uttered in office is "practical reconciliation" - his cover for shredding the notion that white Australia had particular moral obligations to Aborigines. Ask him why asylum seekers who arrive by plane aren't also thrown into detention and he replies: "The practical circumstances are different." Ask why he hasn't signed Kyoto and he replies: "What we need to do is embrace practical measures."

Australians find this deeply attractive. As Malouf recognised, we don't live in a country - and we don't use a language - that revels in abstractions. Liberty and freedom are not subjects of continuing public debate. We hear nothing like the great arias sung by American politicians in praise of fundamental freedoms.

John Howard is, in his own eyes, a champion of liberty leading a nation whose commitment to freedom is "on a par with or better than the other great democracies of the globe". In the innocent days before September 11, he fought for the freedom of small businesses to sack; the freedom of parents to send their children to private schools; the freedom of stevedores to employ non-union labour; the freedom of unionists to vote against strikes; the freedom of students not to join university unions. The preamble he and the poet Les Murray drafted for the constitution in 1999 guaranteed nothing while declaring Australians "free to be proud of their country and heritage, free to realise themselves as individuals, and free to pursue their hopes and ideals".

Despite reiterated claims over the years that Australia and America are at one in their commitment to freedom, Howard remains a resolute opponent of the document that guarantees that liberty in the United States. Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union prove his point that even the most "beautifully written" bills of rights can fail utterly. Even trying is dangerous. "I believe that if you try and institute a bill of rights, you run the danger of limiting, rather than expanding, freedoms," he told ABC radio in Melbourne. "All you'll do is open up yet another avenue for lawyers to make a lot of money being human-rights specialists and practitioners." But the three institutions Howard claims guarantee liberty in this country are three he has worked to curtail almost from the day he took office: parliament, the courts and "a strong free press".

On paper, no country's prime minister could be more devoted to press freedom. Howard declares he's an "uncompromising supporter" of the cause and opposed to "any kind of censorship". He says he believes that "if you have a strong, free, on occasion rambunctious c press which is willing to have a go and is not in any way intimidated by the political process, then you are far more likely to have a strong, robust, virile democracy than with a bill of rights".

Yet under Howard the press has found itself misled, intimidated and starved of information. On coming to power, Howard set about making sure the tactics he had used so brilliantly to claw down his rivals would not be turned against his Government. There would be minimal tolerance for dissent within the party, the Government and the bureaucracy. The great leaker would stop the leaks. Senior bureaucrats who survived the purge of the first weeks were instructed to report all calls by journalists to the Prime Minister's press office. Stories were doled out as rewards. More than ever under Howard, the press would win access through favourable coverage. The new communications minister, Richard Alston, was soon lashing the ABC over budgets and bias. Journalists were locked out of stories - particularly those involving the military and refugees - in ways Americans would find inconceivable.

On Australia Day 2002, the Woomera detention centre was in turmoil, with inmates on hunger strikes rioting and sewing their lips. A large number of press stood about in the desert that night watching. When the ABC journalist Natalie Larkins questioned a police direction to fall back 200 metres from the camp perimeter, she was arrested. Other journalists and photographers were threatened with arrest if they did not move. Sydney's Daily Telegraph condemned the police operation as "the latest and lowest example of Canberra's censorship. This pattern emerged during last year's federal election campaign c the scenes at Woomera on Saturday night would not have been out of place in the countries from which the asylum seekers have fled". But the Prime Minister mocked the idea that these scenes contradicted his sweeping support for media liberty.

"I'm concerned the press have total freedom in this country and people who pretend that because of what happened in Woomera yesterday that there's some restriction on press freedom, there's some attempt being made by the Government to cover up what is occurring in detention centres, I mean that is just ridiculous."

By this time, the twin towers had come down and Howard was wrestling with a new kind of rhetoric - both tough and reassuring. "We should never sacrifice basic civil liberties in pursuit of terrorists," he told Australian journalists gathered in Washington in June 2002. "Equally, we should never squirm from enacting new and strong laws simply because they may unreasonably offend some people." He promised he would never overturn "fundamental" or "generic" rights, but it was never clear which rights these were. Once habeas corpus went in 2005 - arrest without charge and detention without trial - it was difficult to see what bedrock rights remained. As each piece of security legislation fell into place, Howard would claim: "We think we've got the balance right."

Attempts to understand how he weighed the scales proved futile. Instead of explaining himself, Howard pleads for sympathy as he attempts to resolve, in these difficult times, the "eternal dilemma" between security and freedom. "We are a society that respects the right of people and encourages people to exercise their freedoms to the full. And free societies always find striking that balance difficult. But that doesn't absolve us of the obligation to defend the freedoms that make us different."

The result has been a steady attack on the liberty of the press that saw Australia plunge to 35th place, behind many former Soviet Bloc countries, in the latest Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters sans Frontieres. A dozen senior journalists in the Canberra press gallery confirmed the slide when they spoke to Helen Ester for the collection of essays Silencing Dissent. Ester wrote: "The interviews highlighted issues such as control and surveillance, and paint a picture of cumulative deterioration in sources of political news and information, describing new layers of disempowerment, frustration and disinformation. Most of the interviewees noted that the Howard Government had ushered in a decade of unprecedented executive control over political communication."

The Paris watchdog, the Canberra press gallery, the Australian branch of the Commonwealth Press Union and the journalists' union, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, all concur: the Government is squeezing public debate. As evidence, they most frequently cite four cases:

¡The long pursuit of journalists Gerard McManus and Michael Harvey for refusing to divulge the source of a story which leaves them [as this essay went to press] awaiting sentencing for contempt of court.

¡The chilling effect of bans on reporting contained in federal anti-terrorism laws passed since 11 September 2001, particularly the five-year prison sentences for reporting the detention without trial of suspects and witnesses.

¡Difficulties placed in the way of reporting on refugees and asylum seekers who reach Australia by boat.

¡The failure of freedom of information laws, which the High Court last year confirmed gives federal ministers virtually a free hand to withhold documents from the public. Calls for reform of the FoI laws by the press, NGOs, lawyers' groups and the Commonwealth Ombudsman have all been ignored.

Governments have claimed since the beginning of time that the last thing they're doing is censoring. There's always some explanation for information withheld: security, morality, respectability, order, fair play, care for the vulnerable, the rights of business, the rights of government. It's the same list of excuses used all over the world. But for a supposedly larrikin people, Australians are easily persuaded and oddly blind to the violations of principle these excuses cover. In the new political correctness of the Howard years, Australians are never racists and Australia is always free.

Commentators fill op-ed pages arguing the opposite. More ink than ever has been spent in the past few years defending the nation's liberties. The recent slew of reports, books and articles on the state of freedom in this country is evidence of growing discontent.

There's never a night when some decent bunch isn't gathered somewhere discussing the bill of rights we have to have. But the steady constriction of public debate under Howard has aroused no deep concern in Australia. Only the little parties will touch the issue. Labor's indifference is colossal. We've accepted this as we've accepted so much in the past decade; not with enthusiasm, but with resigned forbearance. Isn't it just what governments do?

This is an edited extract from Quarterly Essay 26: His Master's Voice (Black Inc, $14.95).


SMH 2-6-7

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/careful-he-might-hear-you/2007/06/01/1180205513603.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1


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" Dogs love their friends and bite their enemies, quite unlike people, who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix love and hate. -Sigmund Freud "


http://www.ebearweb.net


Stephen's Snaps
http://photo.ebearweb.net/

This week Truk photos.

Simply nice photos, Landscape, Seascape, Underwater, The Northern Beaches Sydney.

Jacaranda with rotating mirror effect

A Yellow Rose

Blue Lagoon,Truk

Blue Lagoon Resort,Truk

Blue Lagoon Resort,Truk

ANZAC Day, a day to remember those who fought for our country

Those who fought for our country, for our way of life deserve to be remembered. Regardless of how their ideals may have been betrayed by politicians. Support our veterans and service men and women. Not war. People get hurt in war.

ANZAC, Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, did not exist before Gallipoli. Gallipoli, planned and miss executed by Churchill. The way the men fought and died, for a lost cause, created the ANZAC legend.

Australians have volunteered and fought in many wars. As well as peace keeping and peace making operations.


Maori Wars 1860 - 1866 ( for England )
2500 served
20 died


Sudan 1885 ( for the Empire )
770 served
6 died


The Third Anglo-Burmese War 1885 - 1886 ( for the Empire )
1 served


Chitral 1895 ( for the Empire )
1 served


Boer War 1899 - 1902 ( for the Empire )
16,175 served
606 died


Boxer Rebellion 1900 - 1901 ( for the Empire )
556 served
6 died


WWI 1914 - 1918 ( for the Empire )
331,781 served
61,919 died


North Russia Relief Force 1919 ( for the Empire )
120 served


Native uprising in the British Solomon Islands 1927 ( for the Empire )


WWII 1939 - 1945 ( for the Empire )
557,799 served
39,366 died

Project Kingfisher a 1944 - 45 plan for Australian paratroops to rescue some 1,800 Australian prisoners of war held in Sandakan. It was planned and fully resourced by Australia except for the troop carrying aircraft. MacArthur refused to release the aircraft, despite the fact that aircraft were available and idle. Only one of the 1,800 or so Australian prisoners of war survived and returned home.


Korea 1950 - 1953 ( for the UN )
18,059 served
339 died

The first war that the Australian Regular Army fought in.

Operation Commando, the battle of Maryang San. 3 RAR dislodged an enemy, twice it's strength, from entrenched defensive positions, seized that ground and held it. 39 decorations were awarded for actions during this battle.


Malayan Emergency 1950 - 1960 ( for the Empire )
36 died


Vietnam 1962 - 1973 ( US request )
50,190 served
520 died

Long Tan. 11 platoon D company 6 RAR was ambushed by a company. It escalated and A, D and part of B companies 6 RAR forced the Viet Cong 275th Main Force Regiment plus and the D445 Local Force battalion to retreat. Some 230 members of 6 RAR defeated some 2,500 of the enemy, yes about 10:1. The Vietnamese left behind 245 bodies, total Australian casualties 18 dead and 24 wounded. Records later revealed the enemy lost 500 with 750 more wounded.



Indonesian Confrontation 1963 - 1966 ( for the Empire )
16 died


Fiji coup 1979
B Company 1 RAR was deployed aboard HMAS Success, HMAS Tobruk, HMAS Sydney & HMAS Parramatta off the Fijian shore.


The Gulf 1990 - 1991 ( US led )
959 served

RAN ships are still deployed in the Gulf.


1991 One SASR squadron ( 110 men ) joined some NZ SAS to form the ANZAC SAS Squadron in Kuwait for search & rescue.


Somalia 1992-1994 ( for the UN )
( Operation Solace 1993 ) 1 RAR, B Squadron 3rd/4th Cavalry Regiment, logistic support & HMAS Tobruk were deployed.
937 served
1 died


Rwanda 1994-1995 - ( Operation Tamar )( for the UN )


1998 110 members of 2nd SAS Squadron and NZ SAS were deployed to the Gulf for combat search & rescue - ( Operation Desert Thunder )
( ANZAC Special Operations Force detachment on Operation Pollard in Kuwait )


East Timor 1999 - ( Operation Citadel )( Australian initiative )
over 5570 served.

Aidabasalala. A 6 man SASR patrol was ambushed by more than 20 militiamen. The militia being beaten off with 3 killed and 3 wounded. No Australian casualties.


Afghanistan " The war against terror " 2001 - ( US led )

The SASR has been praised for the success of it's reconnaissances patrols.

US Major General Frank Hagenback, Commander of Coalition Task Force Mountain stated "You won't find a more professional group than the Australians that have served here with us"

Our contribution apparently ended in 2003, and restarted last year. However, I believe we have not stopped supporting operations there under  Operation Slipper.


Invasion and occupation of Iraq 2003 ( Operation Bastille & Operation Catalyst )( US bullied )
some 2,600+
1 died

Australia had 1370 troops in Iraq ( 8-8-5 )

Howard's argument, at the time, for our involvement in this war is summarized thus:

1. Most terrorist organizations want weapons of mass destruction.

2. Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.

Therefore Iraq may supply weapons of mass destruction to terrorists in the future.

Therefore they must be disarmed. But they are not fully cooperating.

Therefore we must invade them.

Sorry, but this logic too tenuous. It's like revoking your driving licence now, because, even though you have never done it before, next year you might drive after drinking.

And weapons of mass destruction have not been found in Iraq. Despite the fact that Colin Powell pointed to air photographs of Iraq and said there were weapons of mass destruction in those specific places. The US has now admitted that there weren't any. And the reason for the invasion has been changed, it was now because of the way Sadam treated his people.

The US and UK do have weapons of mass destruction! Seems like a double standard to me. In fact the US has plans to produce 125 new nuclear bombs per year! http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/us-blueprint-for-125-nuclear-bombs-a-year/2006/04/06/1143916656000.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

Another 450 Australians have been deployed to Iraq to replace 1,400 troops from the Netherlands. Before our last election Howard said there would be no significant increase in our numbers there, this is an approximate 50% increase. Howard does admit that it is a broken election promise ( something like "there will never, ever be a GST" ). He said it was a hard decision, and I'm sure it was.

In an interview on this topic he stated that someone had to replace the troops leaving the area and he did not make the decision to send our troops until after he was asked by Japan and Britain. He also stated that the deployment is in Britain's area of responsibility, but they can't deploy more troops because there has to be a British election this year (2005). That's right our troops went so the British labour government had a better chance of being reelected! And this after he was reelected after promising no significant increase in the number of our troops in Iraq!


The US invaded Afghanistan to capture bin Laden, who they accuse of planning the ' September 11 ' hijackings. That's right, they invaded a whole country to capture one man after the Taliban refused or were unable to hand him over. But have so far been unsuccessful. And don't forget that the Taliban was the legitimate government of Afghanistan.

And the US has been critical of Israel's battle against terrorists.


Fiji coup 2006
Deployed off the Fijian shore.


An Australian is still being held, in conditions similar to a 1920s zoo, by the US, it is well over five years now. The US claim the prisoners are probably terrorists and therefore not prisoners of war. However under the Geneva Convention those held who are not considered prisoners of war must be brought before a formal hearing to determine their status, this did not happen for over three years.

The Australian held has now plea bargained to get home. But there are questions that need answering.

How can our government not intervene when one of it's citizens is charged with a law that did not exist at the time off the 'offence' and the offence was committed in a third country?

Why didn't our government object to the US buying one of it's citizens from a third party?


Judges around the world have criticized the US for holding these people prisoners. Yet our government did nothing about it!

" children are still being interrogated and will continue to be held at Guantanamo. About 660 prisoners are in the camp. They have not been tried or convicted of any offence but are being held as part of what the US calls its war on terror. " http://www.abc.net.au/news/justin/nat/newsnat-22apr2003-35.htm

Prisoners that have been released have accused the US of torturing them. These people were held for at least two years, then released without charge. Why were they held in the first place? If they tortured those they have admitted they can't charge, what are they doing to the others they still may charge?

The US may be an ally, but it is not behaving like a friend!

Is it right to fight for ' justice ' when, in doing so, you don't adhere to the principles you are fighting for?



As well as the above operations Australian service personnel are constantly involved in peace keeping / peace making operations and always on exchange with the forces of other nations, eg UK, US & NZ. Where they may become involved in operations of their host country eg KFOR.

In November 2005 there was about 1600 Australian defence personnel serving at different trouble spots around the world.

" The ADF has over 3250 personnel serving on operations around the world details of which can be found on the Defence web site at: http://www.defence.gov.au/globalops.cfm. " Department of Defence 18-4-7


Our service personnel past and present serve us by protecting us and our country. They also carry out tasks allocated to them by our government. Even though you may not agree with some of the tasks they carryout, they deserve your respect. Especially those who have served in time of war.



http://www.diggerhistory.info/

http://www.defence.gov.au/army/ahu/index.htm

http://www.defence.gov.au/raaf/

http://www.defence.gov.au/

http://www.anzacsite.gov.au/


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