Today’s guest author is Jaycee, with an exquisite reflection. Thank you for sharing this story, Jaycee.
(Image Credit: The Saturday Paper)
I have a war story . . .well, not actually about war itself, but about how it broke and remade a life. It is a true story and was told to me by Darcy C., an old farmer who lived on the farm next to us (in my first marriage) in the hills. He was one of those generations of farmers whose family had been in the district since its inception. A dry old stick who knew everything that went on in the district, he was taken to telling a yarn or two when he had nothing else to do or it was raining. I was always a keen listener.
Of course, Darcy told me the main parts of the incident and I picked up bits and pieces elsewhere in the district. You have to be a bit canny when making inquiries of this nature – the locals don’t like giving anything away. It’s a bit like fly-fishing for trout – you have to know how to search the shadows.
It went like this.
Pray for me my sweet,
Lest I forget to pray myself,
For God is a distant star . . .”
The small casement window of the dining room of the old house lay slightly ajar so that the gentle afternoon breeze just lifted the cotton lace edged curtain and it brushed against the glass fronted china cabinet next to the window. A crystal-glass wind chime tinkled sweetly as the breeze chinked its pieces together, making little pin-pricks of sound. On top of the cabinet stood three objects, two of which were framed photographs and one ceramic figurine of a young lady with a basket of flowers over her left arm. One of the photos in a gilt-edged frame showed a young snapshot of the just recently deceased Herbert Griegs with his new bride, Mary-Ann. Herbert is dressed in his army uniform. They both appear very, very happy. The other photo is of a young family, about the same age as Herbert and Mary-Ann. There is also a small child in the photograph. The man is also in a uniform, but it is the uniform of the Fascist army of Italy. The young family, too, appear very happy. All these people, with the exception, perhaps, of the child are now deceased. Herbert and the wife of the Italian soldier died of old age. Mary-Ann and the Italian soldier died in the Second World War.
Here is their story.
Herbert Griegs and Mary-Ann were married in the local church at the small country town where they were raised and intended to live after the war. They did not doubt that Herbert would return from the war: it just seemed impossible that he would not. There was so much life ahead, the promise of a fine full life on the farm.
Herbert was already in the army when they married. He had joined up some months before so he had finished his basic training and was on leave. He expected to be posted to barracks in the eastern states awaiting orders to go overseas to active service. They had been married a week and three days when Herbert’s orders came through. He kissed his new wife goodbye reluctantly and travelled with a large number of soldiers away to New South Wales.
In the days of the Second World War, in many country places in Australia, soldiers were billeted on farms in the countryside. If there was a shearing shed on the property, the army would staff it with a cook and kitchen helpers and put a hundred or so soldiers there under canvas. Such an event happened at Mary-Ann and Herbert’s farm, two or three months after Herbert had been shipped off to New South Wales. Soldiers from all parts of the state were camped there.
This was a very unsettling time for Mary-Ann, for she missed her husband terribly, and in the course of fate, whether it was similarity in looks, sympathy toward their fate or simply the uniform, Mary-Ann one day was seduced by one of the soldiers. Why? Well, who knows? It could have been for a number of reasons or desires but for whatever reason she did, Mary-Ann was the most shocked, and fell to despair when she found she was pregnant to the soldier who had by now long gone away.
Mary-Ann became so desperate that she somehow, some way, found the address of a place in the city that would, for a price, do abortions. Mary-Ann paid the money and was attended by the anonymous people. But the operation was a failure. She hemorrhaged badly and it couldn’t be stopped. She died in the room of a house in the back-street of the inner-city. During the night her body was removed and left propped against a tree in one of the parklands that surround the city.
Herbert received the news with horror and disbelief. Impossible! How could she be dead? She was alive and healthy six months ago, she was smiling still in his memory, she was laughing just out of reach on the slopes of the field-daisy covered hills behind their farm-house when he chased her up the slopes and laughing, pulled her down on the yellow and green carpet and there amongst the miles and miles of open countryside under a soft sky they made love.
“No! It couldn’t be so, No!”
The letter from his brother didn’t tell of the circumstances of Mary-Ann’s death, and he didn’t find out till he returned home for the funeral on compassionate leave. But still he was so shocked that even the sordid details didn’t seem to sink in. How? How? he kept asking himself and he would sit for hours at his brother’s kitchen table and sometimes look as if he were about to ask a question but then would close his mouth in silence and look deeply into his cup of tea. He mechanically went through the ritual of the funeral and stumbled from the graveside in silence. It was in silence also that he returned to the barracks in the East to be shipped off overseas to the war in Africa.
On the crossing to the front he searched again and again through all the details in his mind that he knew of the tragedy. He started to hate Mary-Ann. He stood her before him in daydreams and called her “whore”, “slut”, “betrayer”, and any other names that he thought he could hurt her memory with, but at the end of it all he called her “love” and wept for the sadness of it.
Then he started to hate the soldier who had seduced her. He looked around at the noisy men about him and tried in his heart to pick the types that would seduce “a lonely sympathetic woman”. Several times he fought fights with braggarts who told lurid tales of their “conquests” before they left home. He had to be dragged off one fight before he killed the man. Fortunately none of these fights reached the ears of the high ranking officers; it was just the “locking of horns” amongst the men, the release of tension before the approaching theatre of war.
The first action Herbert’s battalion was to see was the assault on Bardia in Libya. By now Herbert’s hatred was directed toward the enemy out front and there was no more eager soul for battle in the battalion. He was in a state of silent desperation. He silently nurtured the philosophy of “kill or be killed”; it didn’t matter to him at all. What was there home now? What was there here? Who was he fighting for? It just didn’t seem to matter anymore. He just wanted to throw himself into the teeth of war with a seething vengeance. He wanted to kill, if only himself, he wanted to kill! At zero hour the artillery barrage began. Herbert was humming and whistling nervously. Then the barrage lifted and the first wave of infantry attacked behind the engineers who blew the wire with Bangalore torpedoes. Herbert was rushing, running into the acrid fumes amid the fires and shooting. He shot at a few fast moving shadowy figures near a guard post. The horizon jumped and jerked with the flashes from the Italian artillery. He ran past a truck destroyed by their own barrage – wild orange flames swept around the cabin of the truck from the burning tyres, the flames lashed and licked at the metal like the wet tongue of a huge animal. His temper was almost uncontrollable as he rounded the corner of supply building of the post. An Italian soldier suddenly stepped out of a doorway just ahead of him with his hands on the verge of raising in surrender. He didn’t get the chance. Herbert shot at point blank range and the soldier fell in front of him. He rushed up and plunged his bayoneted rifle into the man’s chest. The soldier gasped. “Ah Dio Boia!, Dio Boia!” he cried and Herbert too yelled out amid the wild weird racket of battle all around him. It seemed as if a demon had escaped from the depths of his soul and he cried out for the release of it all while the filthy smoke from the burning machinery engulfed the entire battle scene and he fell to his knees beside the body of the dying soldier. Herbert felt his chest constricted and his breath laboured in short gasps as he knelt there with his hand on the Italian soldier’s chest.
He became aware of some words spoken near his ear. It was the dying soldier. At first Herbert was shocked, open mouthed, he lifted his rifle to strike the soldier again till he realized the man was no threat and that he was saying over and over again, “Non e colpa tua, non e colpa tua.” The soldier’s hand moved slowly, falteringly up to his chest pocket, then quivering fell to his side. He was dead.
Herbert jumped to his feet and stood staring down at the first man he had killed. He was about to rush off when he was drawn, compulsively to reach into the dead soldier’s breast pocket. He did this quickly as if repulsed at the thought that he could be looting a dead body. He quickly put his hand in and pulled out a leather folder. He thrust it quickly into his own pocket and scrambled off to the battle further ahead in the mist of dawn and fire.
Herbert did survive the war and he did go back to the farm amongst the gently sloping hills of the hinterland. But he did not go to the grave of his wife in the grounds of the little church on the edge of the town. He could not face her name on a tombstone and he could not say her name for a long, long time.
His farm was suffering from lack of care and he himself moved about under an oppressive cloud of lethargy and listlessness till his friends and neighbours all felt it was only a matter of time till he broke down or cracked up. Herbert could feel himself being slowly drowned by his despair and was aware that he would have to do something to get his life back on track soon or he would go under. A friend of his from the district who had gone to the African war with him had returned and gone into a ministry with the church. Herbert drove to the city one day to speak with him of a certain matter that was troubling him. He was shown to the minister’s room and left to knock on the door.
“Come in,” a voice called from inside. “Why, hello Herb!” The minister smiled and rose from his chair.
“Here, come over here and sit down. Cup of tea? Good, good,” – he poured a cup from a pot. “Just had one myself – I’m afraid this isn’t the army now, nothing stronger,” and he laughed.
“Ta, thanks, Brian – no, it’ll do fine.” Herbert spoke quietly.
After the cup of tea was placed in front of him Herbert started to sugar and stir the drink with slow solemnity. The minister settled back into his chair and gazed quizzically at his old friend.
“You don’t look too cheerful, Herb,” he spoke.
“Well, no, no, I’m not much fun to be with these days.”
“Is it the memories of the war?” the minister asked.
“That . . . and Mary-Ann,” Herb answered.
“Hmm, I think I can sense that . . . but what precisely is the trouble with Mary-Ann?” The minister queried.
“I haven’t been able to go to her grave since I’ve been back,” Herbert spoke softly. A silence fell between them.
“You remember Bardia?”
“Do I?” the minister replied. “Scared the pants off me.” He snorted “Glad it’s gone. Why?”
“Brian,” began Herbert, “Brian . . . I killed a man there . . .”
The minister squinted his eyes a little. There was something more in this, he felt. He replied with a stock answer:
“Well . . . we all killed there. Many of our side were killed also.”
“No,” Herbert spoke slowly and carefully. “I murdered a man there . . . an Italian soldier. He was about to surrender, I see that now, but . . . but I was full of hate, full of Mary-Ann . . . I didn’t give him a chance. I killed him out of my own hatred – I killed a man.” Herbert dropped his head in shame.
The minister raised his eyebrows at the problem he saw before him, but then, he was thinking, who didn’t kill in hate of some kind, did people kill for love? We were all full of hatred when we went there, otherwise we’d have stayed home and raised families! The minister spoke these thoughts and moved to quieten his friend’s fears, and because he spoke with the sincerity and honesty of friend to friend, he could see it sinking in. An inspiration came upon him:
“Have you told this to Mary-Ann?”
“What? But it’s too late now – she’s dead, Brian, dead and gone.”
“Dead maybe, Herbert . . . but not gone, surely.”
Herbert raised his head to gaze steadily upon his friend.
“Why don’t you go down there Herb, go down and visit the grave? It won’t hurt, and who knows, you may feel some sort of response to your worries. It certainly couldn’t really do any harm.”
It seemed a strange thing to do, to go down and consult the dead. He was a little apprehensive and also a little scared, so clutching a small bouquet of field daisies that he and Mary-Ann had lain in those days so long ago, Herbert walked through the whitened cemetery gates on a grey-clouded, winters day. He stopped before the white marble gravestone that read:
Mary-Ann Griegs
Loved wife of Herbert Greigs
Died Oct. 4. 1940
A Tragedy
Herbert stood before the grave, feeling lonely, not knowing what to think, what to say. So he just stood with his hands clasped in front with the small bouquet held upside down in his fingers. He thought over the happy days, the early days, the sad days in numbness and the war days in pain. The picture of the dying soldier came into his memory, the man’s life fading from the brutal attack of the bayonet.
“Dio Boia, Dio Boia!” the man had cried, the words now clear in Herbert’s mind. And then the final fatalistic sighing of the dying soldier:
“Non e colpa tua . . . Non e colpa tua.”
Herbert never could understand what the soldier meant by those words, even when he heard them translated, surely it was HIS fault the soldier died. HE was the one doing the killing! He repeated the words now to himself and the repetitive tone seemed to bring clarity to his thoughts till suddenly, as if illuminated by light, he understood the juxtaposition of their lives – Mary-Ann, the soldier’s, his own – and he suddenly realized why Mary-Ann had risked her life and destroyed the unborn child, her child, for whoever the father, it was still her child. But she destroyed her child and lost her life, not out of self-protection, but rather for a greater prize to her – Herbert’s love. She died for love of him . . .
“Oh God,” he cried at the realisation, “Oh God! oh God! oh God!” and he fell to his knees in front of the grave and the meaning of the soldier’s last words fell into place and he sobbed the same words to his wife:
“It’s not your fault, it’s not your fault! It’s not your fault!” he wept, falling down on his knees with his face clasped in his hands, he wept, and so as his tears were falling to the earth, so was his soul descending down, down, till he felt he could ‘touch’ the soul of his beloved. And now he understood – the unborn child she sacrificed to Herbert to save her love, and the Italian soldier he sacrificed to Mary-Ann to show his love. “Pity the killed, pity the killers, pity us all, God pity us all !” he wept to her. A light rain misted over the small graveyard, beside the church on the edge of the town. The bouquet of daisies had slipped from his hands and lay softly on the flat polished gravestone, its yellow and green glowing brightly against the wet, white marble.
Herbert Griegs came back from that time of despair and started farming again. He never married again and spent his years in service to the local community and the church. The wallet he took from the dead soldier that night contained, beside other things, a photograph of a young family – the soldier, his wife and a young child. This photograph he put in a gilded frame matching the one of his own marriage and stood them side by side on top of the china cabinet in the dining room of the farm house. These people are now all gone and soon, but for this, I feel, will be forgotten.
(Image Credit: Wikipedia)
THE PUB 
Leone,
The top gargoyle has cute ears and much nicer teeth and claws.
The posture though indicates an advanced age…
The sculptor didn’t get enough glower.
Good grief!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-23/us-arrests-1140-on-child-sexual-predation-charges/6567464
Spectacular view though.
While monkey gibbers and shrieks in the monkey house (used to be House of Representatives but monkey and his baboon mother have made it a monkey house) about “terrists” brave men and women of the Syrian Kurds are making gains against the “death cult.”
https://pando.com/2015/06/17/the-war-nerd-a-glorious-victory-for-once/
Taking advantage of a mistake by ISIS the Kurds pushed them back, surrounding many ISIS fighters. The fate of those fighters? As the war nerd states “their beards have probably finally stopped growing.”
Those Syrian Kurds are showing that even muslims can move into the 21st century. Not only do they have women on the front line, some fronts are commanded by women! When ISIS decided to attack the Assyrian Christian villages the Syrian Kurds decided to defend them and that is how they made some major victories against ISIS. Muslims defending christian villages!
ISIS on the other hand is old fashioned or perverted Islam (I don’t know enough to decide either way) and women are powerless with huge restrictions on how they dress, can’t leave their house without a male family member accompanying them etc. Women of other faiths/sects are sold into sexual slavery etc etc.) ISIS is a sunni group and sunni’s in Saudi etc have been funding them—if ISIS keeps losing then this funding will dry up—nobody likes a loser.
Turkey is unsure but mainly on the side of ISIS—Turkey is worried about a resurgent Kurdish population and army in Syria and Iraq.
To me—seems like there are things we can do to help the fight against ISIS. Instead of training the corrupt Iraqi Army why not help the Kurds? (in areas well away from the border with Turkey.) Or fly supplies and weapons to Kurdish areas. Diplomatic pressure on Turkey to allow Kurds to move from Iraq to Syria to bolster numbers or supplies, on Saudi to stop funding the ISIS thugs (both are sunni and stuck in the Dark Ages.) Diplomatic pressure will of course have to be applied by many nations not just little us.
Re whether dual nationals who have fought for ISIS should be allowed back in is rather more nuanced than monkey is saying (these measures are not measures to protect us from ISIS, this is monkey trying to scare us so he can stay top of the dunghill.) Are they disillusioned ex-fighters? Are they wanting to come here to radicalise others or carry out lone wolf attacks? This does have to be very carefully determined by appropriate authorities (psychiatric etc.)
Those that are sick of the fighting and disillusioned could provide lots of intel, help prevent other youths becoming radicalised and wanting to fight for ISIS. Those that don’t need to be imprisoned for a long time, preferably in a prison containing only former ISIS fighters.
Two Australians fighting for ISIS got killed in fighting today. I am afraid that that is war. They made their choice, I won’t cry for them.
Pol Animal,
All my Muslim friends assure me that
ISISDa’esh doesn’t even to be described as a perverted form of Islam. It is savage tribalism ornamented with a few rags plucked from Islam.That also accords with my own understanding of Islam.
It feels like we are getting toward some sort of “end game” with this govt’..they are pushing and pushing the envelope on Muslims, Terror and screw the social economy as far and further each week..they are coming up against more and firmer opposition in legal, humanitarian and ethnic groups…not to mention economic suicide in a “do nothing” govt’. I think they are hoping to construct a “King David Hotel moment” soo they can go the next inevitable stage feeling fully justified.
Even their “soft-cock” moderate ; Turnbull, today, after recently declaring the ABC. an independent , at arms length from the govt’ broadcaster, weighed in with censoring demands….and topped it up with direct interference in phone calls to arsehole Scott, duplicitous Spiegleman and jezabel Jones, demanding..thank you very much..an explanation..so much for independence!
Is there any mechanism for removing a speaker as biased as M/s Bishop?
kaffeeklatscher
Thanks for that Samsung pic. Good Idea I guess but how long till the advertisers get on to it?
A general observation Today from mainly blue collar workers.
The 2 Blokes killed fighting for Isis. Good riddance. I tend to agree.
Shorten. Has some problems/perceptions to overcome I think.
Q and A. Not many knew about it. The ones that did said he should be chucked out.
Abbott. Still a wanker but stong on security.
Asylum seekers- Don’t want any more Muslims here. They cause all the trouble. When it was Vietnamese Reffos they were OK.settled in. Not the Arab Muslims. They want to take over.Don,t know how this will be addressed.
Political Animal
Watched a doco on Kurdish women’s units fighting ISIL on Russia Today over the weekend. RT is of course pro Russian but they also have some great documentaries sourced from around the world. Anyway , it was a very powerful doco and the final oath they took at the end of training was quite instructive. It mentions the irrelevance of race , religion , creed , sect and the like and the importance of solidarity , socialism and democracy.
Their Zoroastrianism was another feature that came out.
joe6pack
True re you observations. Re the screens . Apart from the ads I had an idea for stopping people getting pissed off by being caught behind a slowish joe6pack truck . Put on a good movie or a live top sports game on . The view forward can be a PiP in the corner.
The “War Nerd” loves the Kurds and has spent a fair bit of time in Kurdish areas.
This crap about citizenship is irrelevant, time wasting, party-political bullshit!
10 flags today? I guess they are getting a bit desperate (I hope!)
From over the road. A great NE Flagometer.
I somehow think the transport authorities around Australia will never allow such a system to be introduced .
You are suppose to be concentrating on driving ,Not watching tele.
I have just until tomorrow morning to put my anger and disgust in a box as I deal with my neighbour who has gone a yard too far in his treatment of his animals. He is a dairyfarmer and is one of those people who shouldn’t be allowed to be in charge of animals….
On Sunday my son left a message on his mobile to advise him that one of his jersey cows had calved a couple of weeks ago and was still in our back paddock….neighbour had been telling me for weeks he was coming ‘tomorrow’ to get this cow plus a couple of others. A couple of hours later he turned up on his motorbike, cut the cow and calf out of our herd and sent them running for the gate on the other side of the paddock. He had trouble getting the cow to go through the gate opening – the calf was obviously scared witless so doubled back and rejoined our herd. Neighbour got the cow out, closed the gate and drove the cow down to the dairy without her calf.
Yesterday there was no sign of the calf so I assumed neighbour had come and collected it. However, this afternoon I heard a calf bawling and there it was with our cows looking for a drink. I rang my son and as soon as he got home from work he came up and yarded our little herd and the calf. He rang neighbour and left a message asking him to collect the calf. Nary a word from the man…I don’t have the wherewithall to feed this poor little animal – ended up giving it half a litre of half strength UHT milk (all I had) to which I added an egg yolk which I hope will get it through the night.
foreverjanice
The BASTARD !! Doesn’t matter what animal but growing up on a dairy farm the Jersey moo cow became the one I love. Truly sweet natured animals, so that makes it an even bigger Grrrrrr from me at that news. .
Janice,
I HATE people who don’t look after their animals. Whether a dog or a cow they cannot fully look after themselves. When you take on an animal you have to take it on all the way: ensuring food, water, veterinary care etc. And that one way trip to the vet.
I am in suburbia so cows are out of my experience but I get angry at dogs left 24/7 in backyards, sometimes from morning to late at night. Dogs have to walk!
How can you separate them from their mum? Heartless!
OMG, he said “N…..”!
Gee, they are sensitive little petals over there.
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/06/22/politics/obama-n-word-race-politics/
The ABC. has buckled..as we knew it would…a sad ending for a genius institution and many creative people..a sad ending..the chinless, Scott with the pick-pocket’s eyes hasn’t either the imagination nor the gumption to run a yo-yo down it’s string, let alone such a wonderful organisation.
Our Auntie is dead..may she rest in peace.
“Q and A. Not many knew about it. The ones that did said he should be chucked out.”
The Great Australian Ignorance.
Mallah can’t be ;chucked out’. He is Australian-born a genuine Aussie, not a dual citizen.
Such arrogance, assuming anyone who ‘looks foreign’ or has a non-Angle name must have been born somewhere else.
Can’t be bothered watching, have no idea of what really happened or the context, don’t know who the bloke was or what he said, but let’s chuck him out anyway.
Kaffee,
This poor little calf happens to be male which is why the mongrel bastard dairyfarmer had no compunction about ‘losing’ it. I am going to have a lot of trouble being civil to him in the morning, and I guess I am going to be stuck with raising it because the poor little thing won’t get any kindness for the week it will have before ending up in the saleyards.
Janice,
It sounds like a case where a bit of human castration would be appropriate.
leonetwo
I have watched it any he isn’t some poor bloke and nothing is taken out of context. A attention seeking idiot and is a reason why most seem against the muslim community. You don,t have stick up for idiots like this just because the libs don,t like them. I don’t like this prick either.
gigilene
What’s not to love ?
“A Love of Jersey Cows and the Determination to Stay In Business ”
Each country should keep their criminals or otherwise unwanted people. You can’t simply send them back to where they came from just because they’ve committed some crime, no matter what crime. The country has given them a double-nationality; therefore it should take the responsibility. Prosecute them, send them to jail, but keep them in the country. It’s as though Australia – and others too – just want healthy people, and upright ones for convenience. This is not reality. There is a mix and will always be. My view, anyway.
It is not surprising that Australian born Muslims turn out like this Mallah bloke. abbott has been spewing hate against these people ever since the LNP and msm enabled him to do so. Nothing good ever comes from attacking and promoting hate against a section of the community and this PM should be stopped in his tracks – there is no excuse for his behaviour.
KK
Cows are my friends. Have always been. I watch them grazing in fields and feel like patting them. They’re gentle, placid, generally obedient, and have such a warm coat to stroke.
The hate against Muslims begins in camps such as Nauru, Manus, and others. Mistreated people don’t forget.
Joe
What’s wrong with being attention-seeking, or being an idiot? There’s plenty of them around, and always have been. It seems this guy was actually in Syria aligned with the same guys we support. And he innocent of any crime by law, apart from some death threats, hardly a deportable offence for non-citizens. But he is Muslim, right? We are on a very slippery slope here.
Kaffee, I saw my Dolly in that video! I bought her from a bloke who got her from a clearance sale, parked her in his backyard and then decided it wouldn’t work out. She had her 8th calf at foot but she was such a lovely placid and healthy old girl that I took her home as a house cow. She produced another 5 calves, the last one a jersey heifer in her own image. (By this time we were dairyfarming and I had learned to do artificial insemination).
Apart from some death threats,
Glad death threats to public servants are in the same league as jaywalking .
He was just on the project and the way he carried on probably turned a few more people against muslims..
gigilene
[Mistreated people don’t forget.]
Over a decade ago I read articles describing George Dubya Bush as Al Qaeda’s greatest recruitment officer. Over 90% of people rounded up and basically tortured were innocent of any wrongdoing, as were the people being killed in various bomb/drone/Spec Op stuff . With shit like this happening who would not want to take arms against the bastards responsible ?
This sort of report is by the way not rare. The Septic Tanks had a particular penchant for sending drone missiles into Afghan wedding parties killing hundreds of civilians,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/world/asia/03afghan.html?_r=0
I cannot see anyplace for this govt’ to go from here except to encourage and covertly finance militant gangs..much like the brown-shirts and the black-shirts of the European fascist movements. There is not much sophistication in these people…the more simple the better…Abbott has upped the ante on who is and who is not “for us or against us”..now he has to enforce it!
This is where the covert gangs come in…you can almost here him at the presser..: ‘Look..er look..we can’t be held responsible for ..for a group of people who hold their concern for the loyalty of certain types..of certain types.. for our country above the rule of soft options..”
I would advise any radical left-wing persons to think about leaving the country for their own safety.
oops..YOUNG..radical..
Dutton’s on talking straight Nazism.
The horror of this regime is that they don’t even have the excuse of having been done over by the equivalent of the Allies at Versailles after WW1.
They are doing what they are doing because they can: out of sheer bully-boy (aka thug) nasty and petty vindictiveness.
The German people – that (probable) majority who were conned by the Nazis, Big Business AND the press – at least had some excuse for believing the bully-boys of their time. After all, it can’t have been all that much fun having to wheel a whole barrow-load of almost worthless cash to the local store to buy one mingy loaf of bread. Besides, the suffering and the losses of WW1 weren’t all that remote.
What excuse do we have?
joe6pack
I saw it too, I didn’t say I liked the man, and all i’m sticking up for is his right to have his say. He might be wrong, we might not like the way he chooses to live his life, but he has a right to his opinion. Especially on a program that requires the asking of questions,
It’s a sad state of affairs when we are all supposed to think the same way and Australian citizens are supposed to say only what this government wants us say.
No mention on Their ABC of Julia’s little chat to Lenore Taylor.
Lots about TKS.
Who would have thought!
The LNP. have tapped into a rich vein of racial hatred and fear…hatred of strangeness of ethnicity and fear of some sort of “unknown-unknown” which has been interpreted as an attack on our lifestyle…why?..Why would a people come to this country to escape the terrors of their own to set about destroying the very thing they sought out?..but this fear is even extended toward the indigenous peoples of this country..the first peoples!! as if THEY TOO wanted to destroy the very land they thrive in!!..bizarre!!
I have worked for around fifty years in the building trade and in some various temporary occupations without being once confronted by a threatening situation from any local indigenous or ethnic group…never!!..I have seen Anglos abuse and attack ethnic and aboriginal people for no reason but unprovoked hatred…but never the other way around…so I don’t know for the life of me where the idea of fear for our lives comes from, except that it is beat -up by a vicious, cowardly media.
As a matter of fact, the humour and tolerance by ethnic people toward our distrust of them is legion..Barry Galatis told me of the moment that racial discrimination laws were first promulgated in this country…his aged father on reading of them in the newspaper, closed and folded the paper, placed it on the table, took a sip from his coffee , sighed and said with a touch of nostalgia..
“Well…that takes all the fun out of it…”
As I see it, this confection of fear and loathing for our fellow citizens is about the most “un-Australian” thing I have ever heard of..
It disgusts me.
Apropos not much:
— Darius Jedburgh, Edge of Darkness
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_of_Darkness
Jaycee,
First, do all aboriginal Australians thrive in this land?
Secondly, yeah, of course these horrors fear the “other” – especially that “other” which has far more right to this land than they/we have. It’s almost certainly the reason abbott is the self-proclaimed Minister for Indigenous Affairs, and for exactly the same reason as he is self-proclaimed Minister for Woman.
With the national broadcaster now moving toward only putting to air that which is approved by the right-wing, we can not expect any sympathy for social policy.
It is finished.
Have read a fair bit of post WWI to start WWII history (Churchill, “The Kings Depart” and some other coverage) and in Australia we really do not need to fear ASs or ISIS. We have been in a couple losing wars in Viet Nam and Iraq but hells bells hardly anyone in Australia would have noticed those going on.
There is no reason at all anyone should be fooled by the antipodial tuppence haypenny Hitler, abbott!
Just as well nobody listens to the ABC!
Fiona..perhaps I should have said “once thrived in…”
This dual nationality thing – we are being encouraged to believe that dual nationality is a bad thing and all people with that status are immigrants who have retained their original citizenship after becoming Australian citizens. That’s not the case. you can claim dual citizenship for several reasons.
http://www.smartraveller.gov.au/tips/dual-nationals.html
If you are born here to a parent from another country then, depending on agreements in place, you can claim dual citizenship by descent. My kids have cousins who have dual nationality – Australian and US – their mother is from the US and retains her US citizenship.
It’s also worth remembering that dual nationality has drawbacks. For example if you travel to Turkey, Syria, and some other places, you might find yourself called up for compulsory military service.
The way Abbott is now carrying on you could be forgiven for thinking all dual nationals are out to get us by committing acts of terrorism. We are heading into a dreadful ‘us and them’ situation and I do not like it one bit.
Given the lack of clarity over his citizenship status, he’d probably know…