Hamburg at night 1943

Hamburg is a big city. It’s up the top of Germany and it’s a port. It’s where the Beatles really cracked it” as a band. It was bombed to oblivion in summer 1943. They called it ‘Operation Gomorrah’. It’s where we learnt the term “der feuersturm” (the fire-storm). It was then burnt again and again.

The germans see some connection between economic bastardry and the global climate. No such connection exists in Australia

Amongst the Lancasters that gathered over the city on those balmy summer nights were those piloted by the kids who’d graduated a year earlier than my father. Flight officers at 18 or 19. My father was lucky, he served in the Pacific a year later, when the might of the United States was on our side. His war consisted of numerous booze-ups and a long pub crawl up the Queensland Coast. His own version of the ‘Good Soldier Schweik’. He was very happy to travel north and not arrive at any place rather than being shot at. A sensible strategy. His father had been more enthusiastic, one of the first to land at Gallipoli, he was quickly shot several times and spent the rest of WW1 in a hospital bed. My father returned to Hamburg as RAAF Flight lieutenant and medical graduate in 1952. In time for the Coronation, and vetting would-be migrants before they left for Australia. Problem, was, the economic miracle, (Wirtschaftswunder) had taken place. Germans were prosperous again, and working a miracle. Father returned to work after partaking in german hospitality, (gemutlichkeit) and enjoyed several years in grim British hospitals as a colonial amid the grim reality of national health, rationing and post war austerity.

John le Carre

It gave him a taste for german art and literature and sadly for us children an obsession with Wagner. When he returned and set up a little practice in suburban east Ringwood, his patients included several ex Luftwaffe pilots, and they would exchange merry stories in german and english about boozing, chasing women, and the stupidity of being an eighteen year old and fighting in another silly war. Through german, we learnt, ‘shadenfureude’, ‘gemutlichkeit’ and ‘weltanschauung’. John Le-Carre, most recently described the influence of his german teaching on his appreciation of language and understanding. He also described possessing another language as being crucial to seeing the shape of things. He wanted to go beyond the terms ‘hande hoc’ and ‘Teufel englander’ and find the nation of poets, artists and dreaming romantics. I stayed with Biggles. Our despatchee from the North, describes the same.

Dual languages give you a window on the world. Mark Twain, described german compound nouns;
(eg: Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz “the law concerning the delegation of duties for the supervision of cattle marking and the labelling of beef”), as being so long they acquired a perspective.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel attends a session of the lower house of parliament Bundestag to vote on legalising same-sex marriage, in Berlin, Germany June 30, 2017. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

Curiously Germany is now the crucible of western civilisation. Merkel, Churchill-like but without the cigar stands alone. Germany defends the principles of, compassion, humanity and decency. The victorious Anglo Saxon countries have retreated into a sub-feudalism of neo liberalism. They are deaf to the decline of their systems of governance, hijacked by special interests, short termism, and greed. And the party system corrupted by a culture of political donations from anywhere. They’ve forgotten their own sense of history. Germany hasn’t. Germany understands how the creep to fascism, begins with small steps. To our shame we know this to be true, when we talk of homelessness, indigenous australians, and the disparity between the haves and the have nots. Joe Hockey personified the disconnect when he blithely said; “want a house get a better job”. Australia’s “let them eat cake’, Marie Antoinette moment.

At the heart of this disconnect is Rupert. The exalted Lord Rupert, who feasts on Brexit, Trump-ism and Abbott. The G20 will be held in Hamburg. Ordinary germans have a keen sense of irony and history. Without the US, Australia and the UK’s leadership it suffers a League of Nations moment.
But from the G20 something new will prevail. Leadership that looks beyond just economics.

Proposed 2018 Moomba Float. Cameron and Milleband to be replaced by Turnbull and Shorten

To her credit Merkel rises above the pettiness, the snubs and the ingratitude of peasants. And Britain, dragging, denialist, suffering its own Selbstmort (suicide), weazles on platitudes about human rights and equity. The protesters are being asked to co-operate. We know they sense the irony. This is the watershed of the Anglo Saxon democracies. They’ve lost their mojo. Europe stands alone.

Meanwhile the other side of the globe, the protesters turned out in their tens of thousands calling for a return to democratic government. And from the government that gifted them the Brave New World of, “One country Two systems’ a deafening silence.

Rupert and the Neo-Cons at work again. Job well done!

Mission accomplished.

Opening of “Ruperts World” Theme Park in Hong Kong.

Did he really serve at Kokoda? Or did he only go as far north as Broadmeadows? What did you really do during the war Grandpa?

Which one of them really needs the wheelchair?

There is something wrong about the eternal, glorious, ennobling spirit of Anzac. Would you believe some people are faking their war credentials? They’re putting real Anzacs about, by pretending they’ve performed acts of courage, daring and unquestionable faith in the eternal glorious flame of Anzac-hood by faking their military history. Some of them have never ever been to war. Worse still they’re bedecking themselves with Croix de Guerre’s, Iron Crosses,(first and second class) Orders of the Chrysanthemum, Stars of Lenin, and MC’s DSO’s and V.C’s just in order to feel good, and pull the odd bird at a post Anzac day Piss-up..

We at Pcbycp are OUTRAGED!

This is worse than fake news. It cuts to the very core of aussie Anzac hero-dom, and besmirches all those who died gloriously on the field of battle to preserve, God, King and Country and the sacred entitlements of pollies to go on sending young men to war in VAIN.

THIS MUST STOP!

Like flies to a carcass. And it works. Dress up as a digger and you get four sheila’s. (But there’s always the thought, one amongst them could be a MAN)

From a New Zealand web site comes the following news:

‘Liar, medal cheat, wannabe, valour thief — those are a few samples of the insults you’ll find on the website run by the Australia and New Zealand Military Imposters Group (ANZMI).
Key points:
• ANZMI post on their website names and photos of people they claim are guilty
• Members of the website say anonymity is important for them to operate
• The CEO of Veterans 360 says the website is often used to vilify veterans

ANZMI have investigated hundreds of reports of people either inventing or embellishing their service record.
More than 300 of those cases, complete with names and photos, are published online by the anonymous group.
ANZMI claim they have never been wrong, but its detractors argue the group unfairly destroys the reputations and mental health of people, many of whom are also veterans.
One of the small number of people who run ANZMI is a man who goes by the pseudonym Neville Trueman.
He feels strongly about the group’s work.
“If you go to war, you come back a different sort of a person,” Mr Trueman said.
“It’s just simply not right that people will falsely claim that they’ve been through that experience.”

We at pcbycp heartily agree.

But now we’re really worried.

WE at pcbycp would like to apologise to “Spasticus Autisticus”.

Mr Abbott claims he was awarded a Rhodes scholarship. We have no proof of his scholarship, his intelligence or his prowess as a sportsman. He’s as thick as the proverbial, and clearly is not nuanced for imagination, intelligence, subtlety, candour, insight, tact, anything!

He doesn’t even talk like a Rhodes scholar. Malcolm’s got one, and he’s all class.

This can only have one effect, to draw the ire from those who believe they have been ousted by those wearing Fake Rhodes scholarships…. Mr Abbott step forward. How much did you pay? And, who was in on the lurk? No good pretending to be the Avignon Prime Minister and holding counsel with the IPA if you’ve got a fake Rhodes scholarship.

Cecil. A real life Colossus. When he wasn’t granting scholarships across the “White Empire” he was busy on making the Intervention work!

Cecil Rhodes, a man of impeccable credentials would be turning in his grave.

Gustave Dore was a great artist. But a terrible bore at parties.

It’s been ten years since the intervention. Here’s a fragment from our esteemed correspondent up north. It was read at the recent, (Last Thursdays) event held at RMIT to celebrate this milestone in orchestrated bludgeoning stupidity. It begins on a reflective note.

‘There is a bit of the Ancient Mariner in me:
He holds him with his glittering eye
The Wedding guest stood still….

Those who know me are aware that I’m forever, as they say in Dutch ‘van de hak op de tak springen’- digressing until the wedding guest’s eyes glaze over and he starts looking at his watch, or these days at his mobile phone.
This is why I’m taking refuge in reading from my notes.

Rule 1 pre intervention. ‘If you’ve got a gun, use it’!

When Jakamarra first asked me to come along to this event, I declined. I have no intention of being yet one more opinionated white fellow pontificating about what Aborigines should or shouldn’t do, I said to Harry.
No, he said, you have to come, you’re my cultural advisor!
The delicious irony of this, is not lost on either of us, but if you think about it, that this is ironic illustrates the power imbalance that exists.
Aboriginal Australia is severely hampered in its efforts to withstand the ethnocentric assimilationist interventionist assault which started in 1788.
The vast resources, cultural advisors, legal, sociological, education and fiscal experts and a well oiled propaganda machine and a not so well oiled bureaucracy which are available to the authorities are denied Aboriginal Australia, except to Intervention fellow travellers and quislings.

When you search the internet, that adage ‘A lie told often enough becomes the truth’ is attributed to both Vladimir Lenin and to Joseph Goebbels. No need to go back as far in history on the other side of the world, to see this in action. The Intervention and its euphemistically named sequel Stronger Futures are based on oft repeated lies.

Bruce Pascoe, in his brilliant book ‘Dark Emu’ wrote “then all of us must be alert to that greatest of all limitations to wisdom: The Assumption…”
That is what drives the assimilationist imperative- lies and assumptions.

Clearing the land for Development. Another Government policy initiative.

I’d now like to read out a quote from a speech Patrick Dodson made at University of New South Wales:
“The strategy for assimilation of our peoples is not a mistake made by low-level bureaucrats on behalf of successive governments who didn’t know better. It was and continues to be a deliberate act orchestrated at the highest levels in our society, and no amount of moral posturing can hide that reality. This Assimilation I talk of has not been evidenced by equality, but by further control, incarceration and subjugation to norms and values without our consent.”

The longer I live at the present day front-line of the assimilationist assault the more convinced I’ve become that Patrick Dodson has hit the nail squarely on the head. It very neatly dovetails with what Mahatma Ghandi said when talking about the British Raj in India:
“ …a subtle but effective system of terrorism, together with an organized display of force on the one hand, and the deprivation of all powers of retaliation or self-defence on the other, has emasculated the people…”
I’d now like to speak about what my wife calls the ‘Massacre Mentality’

John Howard 2007. Master strategist. Invading Iraq and Australia all at the same time.

In 1928 a mere 50 Km from Yuendumu at a place called Yurrkuru, Fred Brookes was sprung sleeping with Bullfrog’s wife. Bullfrog with some help killed Fred Brookes. The murder triggered a series of punitive raids led by Gallipoli veteran Constable Murray. The raids became known as the Coniston Massacre in which around one hundred or so men women and children were killed. The exact number of people killed is unknown, nor are the victims dignified by having their names recorded in history.
Constable Murray was subsequently exonerated in an enquiry which found that the “killing of blacks” had been justified.
Bullfrog lived to a ripe old age and died in Yuendumu.

In 2007 the ‘Little Children are Sacred’ report included allegations of sexual abuse of children. This was then seized on to justify punishment of the residents of most remote Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory by the imposition of the Intervention.

The Massacre Mentality in action’.

Rupert defamed! Outrageous charicature of Lord Rupert as just the puppeteer. HE OWNS ALL THE PUPPETS!

Dear Rupert. We are shocked at some of the commentary coming out of the bleeding hearts, the lefties, the do-gooders. They are defaming you. And it’s just sour grapes cos we know though you’re fabulously wealthy, you’re sticking up for ordinary Australians. That’s why we read the Australian AVIDLY. It offers sensible and simple solutions to quite tricky problems. It’s a source of constant reassurance, to those of us who are deeply worried about CHANGE!.

Your critics suggest you are a dictator, and the community is sick of your ‘winner take all fascism’. How dumb can they be?

One of your former knights has gone full out in trying to discredit you. That’s just ungrateful. We know you’ve worked hard. And it was your own dad you had to kill in order to become the most powerful Jedi Knight in the Universe. And why? Because Sir Keith failed to DESTROY the evil ABC. It is your destiny Lord Rupert. See the job is DONE!

Lord Rupert as a young man with Sir Keith who failed to kill the ABC when he had the chance.

Sir Menadue is a bit like Sir Tone of the Santamaria. He called News Corp a ‘rogue organisation”. He claimed you’re trying to get the Australian government to change media laws so that you can own Channel Ten. That’ll leave just the tiny outpost of Fairfax and castle ABC. Fairfax is weak, and the ABC you have in your thrall. Reliable reports from inside castle ABC suggest there’s more Murdoch knights in it than journalists. Keep at it, and the ABC will fall. It’ll be 1453 again. Cleansed of the ABC you can get onto more important things and steer away from dangerous leftist politics. It’s all in keeping Mitch Fifield’s “two policy strategy”.

‘Beer and Circuses’. Good beer is getting harder to find and when the family has had enough of cooking shows and reality tv, (Sky News) they can all enjoy the fun of the circus.

Menadue must be tried. He is a Quisling. He said this (with minor editing) within the ramparts of Castle ABC;

Lord Rupert in communion with his father, before the fateful decision that in order to destroy the ABC he had to kill HIM!

“The Australian government should resist any attempt to expand the media power of the news organisation which already controls 60 or 70% of the metropolitan media in Australia. It is a disgraceful organisation. Step after step [Murdoch] seeks favours from government to promote his rent seeking. Channel Ten is in voluntary administration and one of its billionaire backers, Murdoch’s son Lachlan, is in the box seat to buy the network if the media laws are changed to allow it.

In recent decades his organisation has become a disgrace. It’s trampled on democracy in three continents, it’s damaged the media enormously in three countries.

A Great Admirer of Lord Rupert.

It’s an unfortunate and tragic pattern, the damage that Murdoch is doing around the world. I think it’s a tragedy that a person who looked as if he would be an important contributor to a new, open style of media has turned out to produce such a dreadful rogue organisation such as News Ltd.
He is recently, of course, a supporter of Trump, a supporter of Theresa May, a supporter of Brexit; he supported the Iraq invasion and still justifies it. He’s a climate sceptic; his organisation has been accused and convicted of phone hacking and there is serial sexism at Fox News in the US.
It’s an appalling record for an organisation but of of great concern for me is the way he uses governments. Murdoch is; the great rent seeker, using his influence to change media laws in Australia now, just as he did in the 1980s when he used “political persuasion” to get the Hawke Labor government to “gift him” him the Herald and Weekly Times in Melbourne.
He is now seeking in the UK amendments to complete his $20bn takeover of Sky TV. It’s interesting to me that his papers in Australia and elsewhere are always attacking what they call welfare bludgers and single mothers yet he uses governments more than anyone else I’ve ever known.
News Corp publications liked to “rip apart” activists and organisations who might be critical of them, including GetUp, the Australian Press Council and the ABC. They are not content to dominate mainstream media; they just want to silence organisations that might be critical of them.”

What rot. We’re with you Rupert. Your cause is above politics. It’s doing what’s right for ordinary Australians. And judging by the level of political debate. Very ordinary indeed.

Ira Maine is back!

The metaphysical poet, Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) was Chilean Consul to Spain  when General Franco and his Nationalists, in the aftermath of their failed coup d’etat, laid siege to the Spanish capital, Madrid, in 1936. Franco’s Fascist armies, which included Legionnaires, North Africans, Italians and Germans, found themselves pitted against a determined Republican opposition which was  commanded, extraordinarily, by Russian generals!

Franco of course, was not alone. All over Europe, in Britain , France, the Netherlands and elsewhere the predictable rabble of Blackshirts and Brownshirts strutted,  celebrating the German ‘Aryan’  economic miracle whilst the rest of ‘degenerate’ Europe continued to  suffer the horrors of the Great Depression.

Neruda, before the Franco business  and  already a well established poet, lived in the Madrid suburb of Arguelles;

 ‘…with bells and clocks and trees…..My house[he says] was called

the house of flowers because in every cranny

geraniums burst; it was

a good-looking house

with its dogs and children.

Remember, Raul?

Eh, Rafael?

Frederico, do you remember

 from under the ground 

my balconies on which 

the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth? 

Brother, my brother! ….’

 Neruda here is remembering how things were, before the siege, before the bombing, when fellow poets sat with him in the ‘…good-looking house…’ amongst the geraniums and laughed and drank and sang. I have not yet discovered who ‘Raul’ might be, but ‘Rafael’ is surely Rafael Alberti, a great friend of Neruda and a towering figure in twentieth century Spanish letters. Without question ‘Frederico’ is Frederico Garcia Lorca, poet and dramatist and ‘…under the ground…’ because he was murdered by the Nationalists for both his anti-fascist views and his homosexuality. His grave has never been found.

At the beginning of this poem called ‘I’m Explaining a Few Things’ the poet asks;

‘You are going to ask; where are the lilacs?

And the poppy-petalled metaphysics?

And the rain repeatedly spattering

 its words and drilling them full

of apertures and birds?

I’ll tell you all the news.

I lived in a suburb

….with bells 

and clocks and trees…’

Here is nothing his audiences might expect. The poet does not, cannot  have this poem;

‘…speak of  dreams and leaves

and the great volcanoes of his native land…’ 

as his more recognisably romantic work undoubtedly would. Instead, he is going to give you the news.

This poem demands something other than the otherworldly technicalities of the metaphysical. The bombing of Madrid took away everything Neruda saw as representing ‘…the sharp measure of life…’

‘…Everything

 loud with big voices, the salt of merchandise,

pile-ups of palpitating bread.

The stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue

Like a drained inkwell in a sea of hake;

Oil flowed into spoons,

A deep baying

Of feet and hands swelled in the streets,

Metres, litres, the sharp 

Measure of life,

Stacked up fish,

The texture of roofs with a cold sun in which

The weather vane falters,

The fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,

Wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down to the sea.

And one morning, all that was burning….’

There, in a few lines, miraculously, an astonishing evocation of the bursting, bustling joyous love of life that deserves no horror, no war, only continuance and celebration.  Neruda cannot help himself with his ‘…drained inkwell in a sea of hake…’ glorious, splendid stuff and deeply reminiscent of Clochemerle  and the films of Jacques Tati.

Yet…

‘…one morning the bonfires

leapt out of the earth

devouring human beings

and from then on fire,

gunpowder from then on,

and from then on blood.

Bandits with planes and moors

Bandits with finger rings and duchesses,

Bandits with black friars spattering blessings

Came through the sky to kill children

And the blood of children ran through the streets

Without fuss, like children’s blood.

Jackals that the jackals would despise,

Stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out.

Vipers that the vipers would abominate.

Face to face with you I have seen the blood

Of Spain tower like a tide

To drown you in one wave

Of pride and knives.

Treacherous generals,

See my dead house,

Look at broken Spain

From every house, burning metal flows

Instead of flowers.

From every socket of Spain

Spain emerges

And from every dead child a rifle  with eyes

And from every crime bullets are born

Which one day will find

The bull’s eye of your hearts.

And you will ask; why doesn’t his poetry

Speak of dreams and leaves

And the great volcanoes of his native land?

Come and see the blood in the streets.

Come and see

The blood in the streets.

Come and see the blood

In the streets!

END

This last few lines is almost too much, a screaming, appalled, unbearable demand, from a mind broken, made mad by the blood and the butchery.

‘Come and see the blood in the streets!’

There’s no room here for the philosophy of mind, of being and knowing, the transcendental, the abstract.

There’s only, in Joseph Conrad’s words;

“…the horror, the horror…’

Today’s dispatch is  ‘Leaves’.  Originally dispatched on 5 September  2016

ਚੰਗਾ ਸਵੇਰੇ ਮੇਰੇ ਦੋਸਤ

I once heard a radio interview with Barry Humphries on his return to Australia from his long self-imposed exile. Had he noticed any difference? “Leaves” he replied. He reminisced on his childhood in the leafy suburbs of Melbourne, and how there no longer was the smell of burning leaves.

I was born in occupied Holland. My fully bilingual (Dutch/German) father, committed many acts of resistance both active and passive. One such passive act of defiance was to name me after FDR. In his retirement he had an almost perpetual little fire going in an incinerator in his back yard in leafy Nunawading. I guess his burning of leaves was his version of Amnesty’s flickering candle. I can’t recall his little smoking fire being extinguished on total fire ban days. An act of passive resistance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CZBNwMy578  Elton John, Candle in the Wind

When we were in Canada I became aware of Canadians becoming dewy eyed about “The Fall” (Autumn). During an all too brief period the leaves turn into brilliant colours and then fall onto the ground. Back then I regarded this emotional attachment to coloured leaves with ethnocentric derision.
Now, I think there is something poetic about a nation regarding coloured leaves with quasi-religious fervour. No Union Jack for Canadians. No Sir! A maple leaf on their national emblem. An act of passive resistance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pliihF6gkiI …. Passive Resistance…Graham Parker

Put the demographics away, the directors and consultants have the final say
Hired in, take home all the ones who missed for souvenirs, for their kids to play

Passive resistance! it’s all programmed by programmers
Passive resistance! you’re just a nail underneath their hammers
Passive resistance! and it breaks my heart to know there’s no heart in them

I have started reading Kieran Finnane’s book, “Trouble (On Trial in Central Australia)”

In the Introduction she describes the Alice Springs Courthouse. This from page 2:

“…Lately graffiti has appeared on the footpath in front of the entrance stairs, small letters stencilled in black: ‘This is the front line.’ It says. It’s discreet enough for nobody to bother scrubbing it out. I’d like to know who did it, and what kind of battle they think is going on inside…”

I’m only assuming that this graffiti may well allude to the same as I alluded to when I named these missives Musical Dispatches from the Front, the so called Frontier Wars.

These wars were never declared nor have they ceased, albeit they continue under such euphemistic labels as ‘Closing the Gap’ and ‘Stronger Futures’.

The Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 was meant to be some sort of ceasefire (“The Invasion stops here’), yet the assimilationist behemoth rolls on.

As Mahatma Ghandi said:

“ They do not know, that a subtle but effective system of terrorism, together with an organized display of force on the one hand, and the deprivation of all powers of retaliation or self-defence on the other, has emasculated the people and induced in them the habit of simulation ….”

In the chapter titled ‘Warlpiri versus the Queen’ Kieran Finnane astutely observed that when it came to ‘cultural matters’, without exception, Warlpiri witnesses refused to ‘play the game’.

Passive resistance in action, no fifth columnists to be seen. Warlpiri solidarity was solid.

As I’m typing this Dispatch, at the Yuendumu Health Clinic opposite, I hear a leaf-blower fire up. This is a punctual ritual which takes place five days a week with quasi religious fervour.

A non-Warlpiri person clears the paths around the clinic of fallen leaves. It isn’t rocket science.

The question arises: “Why isn’t an unemployed Warlpiri person given this task?” I myself ethnocentrically posed the same question.

When Warlpiri people are asked what do they want, they often reply “A job” (…and induced in them the habit of simulation…), which is what the questioner likes to hear.

Yet often when jobs become locally available, the organisation offering the job doesn’t exactly get run over in the rush.

Warlpiri intellectuals realize that self-determination is of far greater importance than menial white-fellow jobs.

As for the leaves at Yuendumu Clinic, the question which should be asked is: ‘Is it imperative that the leaves should be blown off the paths?’

I think I know the answer….

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l4nVByCL44

Franklin Delano Baarda