We Will Remember [redacted]

25 Thursday Apr 2013

Tags

Afghanistan, Anzac, diggers, post traumatic stress, war injuries

Story by Emmjay

Our traditional view of the valiant digger is certainly that of a noble self-effacing hero. A ragtag larrikin in a pair of over-sized shorts and massive boots with a slouch hat and a rollie cigarette dangling precariously from his lip. This improbable warrior has more than likely just put his life on the line for his mates and overcome enormous odds to defeat a far more numerous foe through rat like ingenuity and courage, a single shot .303 rifle, a cup of tea and a yard of number 8 fencing wire.

We will remember him. He was our Dad or Grandad, uncle or brother. He has lived through unimaginable horror and he carried his burden silently. Only his immediate family know the price he paid for his service to God and country. The same price they continue to pay long after the bullets have stopped flying.

But that was yesterday and the image of our digger today is more like the bloke in the picture above. He is anonymous in life and almost invisible. He is a highly-trained and well-equipped (we are told). He – and of course nowadays also she – is a professional killer. We see him visited by our Prime Ministers and Ministers of Defence and pixellated out on our flat screen TVs – particularly when he is an elite Special Services assassin.

That is, until he has the misfortune of being killed by a gang of ragtag vagabond insurgents in filthy scraps. Killed with improvised explosive devices – not ultra high tech clean weapons, but stuff that they cobbled together through rat-like cunning and ingenuity from explosives they stole or bought from our allies. We don’t call these men our enemies because we cannot discern them from the people we are calling our allies.

We call them insurgents. And when our diggers kill them, we show them not in flag-draped coffins flown home for honourable burials with pomp and ceremony and eulogies from prominent politicians. We show them dead in a dusty ditch with blood and flies. No noble warriors there. Not family men leaving widows and children to fend for themselves until they grow into the next generation of “allies”. Insurgents.

But there are two more diggers that we never seem to see these days. One is new. The other is as old as time itself.

Recently the Americans created and awarded a new kind of medal to some specialist military personnel – are they really what one might call “soldiers” ? These good men and women visit death and destruction on our mutual enemies by sitting at computer screens somewhere far removed from the battlefield – and fly drone (unmanned) aircraft allegedly capable of assassinating only the most important enemy leaders. We call them precision-strikes because there’s never any unintended damage or death. We would call that “collateral damage” – in the unlikely event that it was ever to occur.

No smell of high explosives. No dust and blood for these high tech warriors. No service in hostile foreign lands far from loved ones deep in harm’s way. No personal risk beyond a slight case of RSI. These heroes are putting their carpal tunnels on the line for God and country. Let’s give them medals.

The timeless image of our forgotten digger is the man who was badly wounded but who lived. This bloke is an embarrassment. Well, he must be, because we treat him like he doesn’t exist. Especially if his wounds are psychological.

He’s one we will do our best to forget.

We know exactly how many diggers have been killed in Afghanistan. We get updates moments after the event – who, when, where. But the digger who is wounded is a fast fading statistic at best; more likely a report written in invisible digital ink.

There’s not a lot of military glory in mental health disability, is there.

Our military commanders insist we have no endemic mental health problems with our returned soldiers. So it’s no surprise that we seem incapable of making sure that there is first rate psychological support for the man or woman who has gone through hell and come back worst for wear. Because he or she is a phantom.

It’s up to him or her to suppress the anguish and recurrent horror. And it’s up to their family to shoulder on their own the endless burden of service to country .

The family certainly won’t forget.

But our politicians and bureaucrats will do their darndest to make it as difficult as possible for returned service men and women to receive proper care. Deny, obfuscate, red tape, red tape, red tape. Disgraceful.

And we as Australians have got to do a lot better than this.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and The New World Order – Part 1 of 4

23 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by Therese Trouserzoff in Uncategorized

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

Council on Foreign Relations, The New World Order, William Blasé

Harold Pratt House

Interesting (and quite long) Period Piece Sent to us by HPH

From Wikipedia : The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an American nonprofit, nonpartisan membership organization, publisher, and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs. Founded in 1921 and headquartered at 58 East 68th Street in New York City, with an additional office in Washington, D.C., the CFR is considered to be the nation’s “most influential foreign-policy think tank”.^[1] It publishes a bi-monthly journal, Foreign Affairs.

Ed: I love a good non-profit, but strangely influential think tank – don’t you ?

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and

The New World Order – Part 1 of 4

For those who may be confused by the controversies surrounding the “New World Order”, a One-World-Government, and American concern over giving the UN more power; those unaware of the issues involved; and those wishing more background, I offer the following.

Originally presented for an Honors Class, “Dilemmas of War and Peace,” at New Mexico State University, the paper was ridiculed and characterized by Dr. Yosef Lapid, (an acknowledged and locally quoted “expert” on Terrorism and Middle Eastern affairs) as “paranoid… possibly a symptom of mental illness.” You may judge for yourself.

Citing source data is the “scientific method,” but does not seem to apply to “Conspiracy Theories.” A thousand sources may be quoted, yet will not convince the “skeptics,” the “realists.” It seems to me the “symptoms of mental illness” are on their side, if they refuse to look at evidence (“There are none so blind as those who WILL not see”); or perhaps something more sinister is at work, such as a knowledge of the truth, that does not want YOU to know.

To be paranoid means to believe in delusions of danger and persecution. If the danger is real, and the evidence credible, then it cannot be delusional. To ignore the evidence, and hope that it CANNOT be true, is more an evidence of mental illness.

The issue involves much more than a difference of philosophy, or political viewpoint. Growing up in the midst of the “Cold War,” our generation were taught that those who attempted to abolish our national sovereignty and overthrow our Constitutional government were committing acts of treason. Please judge for yourself if the group discussed is guilty of such.

If one group is effectively in control of national governments and multinational corporations; promotes world government through control of media, foundation grants, and education; and controls and guides the issues of the day; then they control most options available. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and the financial powers behind it, have done all these things, and promote the “New World Order”, as they have for over seventy years.

The CFR is the promotional arm of the Ruling Elite in the United States of America. Most influential politicians, academics and media personalities are members, and it uses its influence to infiltrate the New World Order into American life. Its’ “experts” write scholarly pieces to be used in decision making, the academics expound on the wisdom of a united world, and the media members disseminate the message.

To understand how the most influential people in America came to be members of an organization working purposefully for the overthrow of the Constitution and American sovereignty, we have to go back at least to the early 1900’s, though the story begins much earlier (depending on your viewpoint and beliefs).

That a ruling power elite does indeed control the U.S. government behind the scenes has been attested to by many americans in a position to know. Felix Frankfurter, Justice of the Supreme Court (1939-1962), said: “The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes.” In a letter to an associate dated November 21, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt wrote, “The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.” February 23, 1954,

Senator William Jenner warned in a speech: “Outwardly we have a Constitutional government. We have operating within our government and political system, another body representing another form of government, a bureaucratic elite which believes our Constitution is outmoded.”

Baron M.A. Rothschild wrote, “Give me control over a nation’s currency and I care not who makes its laws.”

All that is needed to effectively control a government is to have control over the nation’s money: a central bank with a monopoly over the supply of money and credit. This had been done in Western Europe, with the creation of privately owned central banks such as the Bank of England.

Georgetown professor Dr. Carroll Quigley (Bill Clinton’s mentor while at Georgetown) wrote about the goals of the investment bankers who control central banks: “… nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole… controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences.”

The Bank of the United States (1816-36), an early attempt at an American central bank, was abolished by President Andrew Jackson, who believed that it threatened the nation. He wrote: “The bold effort the present bank had made to control the government, the distress it had wantonly produced…are but premonitions of the fate that awaits the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like it.”

Thomas Jefferson wrote: “The Central Bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the principles and form of our Constitution…if the American people allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

Does that not describe the situation in America today?

The U.S. managed to do without a central bank until early in this century, when, according to Congressman Charles Lindbergh, Sr., “The Money Trust caused the 1907 panic, and thereby forced Congress to create a National Monetary Commission.” Headed by Senator Nelson Aldrich, father-in-law of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the Commission recommended creation of a central bank.

Though unconstitutional, as only “The Congress shall have Power…To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof…” (Article I, Section 8, U.S. Constitution) the Federal Reserve Act was passed in December 1913; ostensibly to stabilize the economy and prevent further panics, but as Lindberg warned Congress: “This act establishes the most gigantic trust on earth…the invisible government by the money power, proven to exist by the Money Trust investigation, will be legalized.” The Great Depression and numerous recessions later, it is obvious the Federal Reserve produces inflation and federal debt whenever it desires, but not stability.

Congressman Louis McFadden, House Committee on Banking and Currency Chairman (1920-31), stated: “When the Federal Reserve Act was passed, the people of these United States did not perceive that a world banking system was being set up here. A super-state controlled by international bankers and industrialists…acting together to enslave the world…Every effort has been made by the Fed to conceal its powers but the truth is–the Fed has usurped the government.”

Although called “Federal,” the Federal Reserve system is privately owned by member banks, makes its own policies, and is not subject to oversight by Congress or the President. As the overseer and supplier of reserves, the Fed gave banks access to public funds, which enhanced their lending capacity.

Peter Kershaw, in “Economic Solutions” lists the ten major shareholders of the Federal Reserve Bank System as: Rothschild: London and Berlin; Lazard Bros: Paris; Israel Seiff: Italy; Kuhn- Loeb Company: Germany; Warburg: Hamburg and Amsterdam; Lehman Bros: New York; Goldman and Sachs: New York; Rockefeller: New York. (That most, if not all of these families just happen to be Jewish, you may judge the significance of yourself). The balance of stock is owned by major commercial member banks.

According to Devvy Kidd, “Why A Bankrupt America?” The Federal Reserve pays the Bureau of Engraving & Printing approximately $23 for each 1,000 notes printed. 10,000 $100 notes (one million dollars) would thus cost the Federal Reserve $230. They then secure a pledge of collateral equal to the face value from the U.S. government. The collateral is our land, labor, and assets… collected by their agents, the IRS. By authorizing the Fed to regulate and create money (and thus inflation), Congress gave private banks power to create profits at will.

As Lindberg put it: “The new law will create inflation whenever the trusts want inflation…they can unload the stocks on the people at high prices during the excitement and then bring on a panic and buy them back at low prices…the day of reckoning is only a few years removed.” That day came in 1929, with the Stock Market crash and Great Depression.

—ooo—

Next: Part 2 of The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and The New World Order

If you would like to cut to the chase – try : http://amtruth.com/articles/CFR_NWO

Table

22 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by Therese Trouserzoff in Lehan Winifred Ramsay

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Cat, Hokkaido, Lehan Winifred Ramsay, Painting

Table

Story and Painting by Lehan Winifred Ramsay

When I first moved to Hokkaido I tried to keep my cat inside the house, it was very cold, he was very upset to be moved. But he got out of the house and I couldn’t find him, I looked for two days and called him. On the afternoon of the second day I heard him crying, and I found him up in the machinery of a big truck parked across the road, next to the rice vending machine.

The truck had been gone all the day before, it had returned from its work that afternoon. My cat had crawled up into that truck and it appeared that he had stayed in that truck while it drove all the way to the middle of Hokkaido and back. Did he really do that? Or did he crawl in later when it was warm and he was cold. I don’t know, but I always thought that he travelled all the way to Hokkaido and back in that truck, that’s what I like to believe.

Anyway, he was in his later days a staunchly unidiosynchratic cat who woke me up almost every night we spent together and who would occasionally vomit in the bed at three am, which in the winter was particularly unwelcome.

But he was also measurable in years of days of ordinary life. There were many of them, ordinary days of being, together. He was a cat, and I was not, and I would not be surprised, nor blame him, if he found me uninteresting and if indeed he considered me at all. I think I would be lucky if he did. That was his privilege, as a cat.

He was a cat, and one of the blessed thing about cats is that they are fine company. He was a bit ornery and cranky too, and in wanting to believe that I could manage – to carry him through my own travails – I lived a life way beyond my capabilities. And maybe that was good too, I’m sure even a cat likes a bit of independence sometimes. He found his own patch of sunshine, much more efficiently than I did.

Libnat Product Endorsement # 6 – Belt Tightening for Australians

21 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by Therese Trouserzoff in Uncategorized

≈ 9 Comments

Joe says "No Way is this the product the TGA had a go at for false claimed efficacy". He also said economic stuff.

Joe says “No Way is this the product the TGA had a go at for false claimed efficacy”. He also said economic sounding stuff.

Libnat Product Endorsement #5 Lycra – or Romance Blossoms behind the Bike Shed

20 Saturday Apr 2013

Posted by Therese Trouserzoff in Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

originally titled “pollie wants more than a cracker”

This Week’s Mindset (#3) – Oranges at Half Time

19 Friday Apr 2013

Posted by Therese Trouserzoff in Emmjay

≈ 30 Comments

Tags

Mind set report

Report by Emmjay

Sports fans heaved a sigh of relief at the half-time whistle in the school holiday championships. One prominent parent of a high school student was overheard in the locker room negotiating a performance enhancing supplement to get through the second week of the holidays without going on report for a spear tackle she made on her Jaidyn.

Other supplements in this weeks mindset included lomotil abuse. Lomotil is not actually banned, but has been shown to only have marginal effects on alleviating parental shits when the chant of “I’m BORED” is uttered one too many times.

It is easy to see the frustration on the faces of coaches this season with players who find it impossible to get around to cleaning up their crap, getting dressed, eating anything other than junk food or getting off their arses and going outside to reacquaint themselves with the big ball of fire in the sky.

Parents seeking refuge from domestic overload were well represented in the workplace this week with abnormally low absenteeism in all sectors but particularly education. Vacation care workers packed down tightly and practiced their rolling mauls – hoping to get over the line just once this season. However teams with skilled kickers tended to fare better when booting into the son sun.

There was no school holiday for the state premiers, their edumacation ministers and the federal government over implementing the Gonski report. It was like a huge game of pass the parcel where everyone claimed to be in favour of the game, share its objectives, vote for apple pie and motherhood (except in the case of single sex marriages) etc, but nobody had thought of putting a present inside the wrapping paper.

Speaking of same sex marriages, human relationship mind setters were puzzled by the curious happenstance of conservative British and Kiwi governments approving legislation to afford gays and lesbians the same opportunity for marital misery as heteros. One Pig’s Arms mindset reporter was alarmed by the excessive use of video footage of hairy-chested Kiwi brides tossing around corsages, however he suggested that the gays were even less decorous.

A few international events grew large in this week’s mindset. A small number of deaths in spectacular circumstances in one part of the world possessed most of the mindset playing field; a large number of deaths in a minor league (that we were more interested in last year) failed to capture much mindset yardage this week.

No major sportscaster reported results from the Syrian civil war games this week and the conflict is definitely in danger of relegation to a lower division of western mindset consciousness.

And similarly, Oscar Pistorius failed to register in this week’s mindset, indicating that the global mind set appetite for bizarre superstar tragedy is in decline for the moment.

Sports fans are showing an increasing lack of interest in sham doping scandals amongst the football codes and doping agencies are showing a distinct lack of interest in swabbing the new Western Sydney round ball players who, through some miracle seem to have made it to the grand final in their first season. Club officials are trying to sell the idea that the team’s stellar performance is mostly due to the massive fan base support but no fan has come forward to pee into a bottle for the team.

Redneck A-League shoot-out results in the US have shown yet again that an entrenched professional closed-mind set still beats an inspired amateur mindset without any doubt. Contrasting this in the NSW National Park freestyle shooting events, results have been more mixed. The amateur non-shooters seem to me grabbing a larger mindset share as the gun-totin troglodytes drill a few more cordite holes in their Kodiac boots. Ballistic commentators have said that the O’Farrell refereeing is inconsistent and most probably severely wind-affected. The spokesman for the “Fishing in National Parks” wing of the party was unavailable for comment and the sign on his door was definitive.

That’s all for this week, tune in again next week when we delve into the surprising lack of coverage of anti-Thatcher protest over the fact that she was not cremated at the stake.