Australian Military Cracks Down on Social Media
While the U.S. military has embraced social media, albeit hesitantly, it's fair to say that social media -- an undisciplined, egalitarian free-for-all -- is a bit unnerving to the military mindset, with its respect for order, authority, and accountability. As a result some other professional militaries are thinking twice about whether to let service members use social media...
(Media Post)

Defence to review 'risk' of social media
Defence Minister Stephen Smith has warned the use of social media by Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel could put the military's reputation at risk...
(The Sydney Morning Herald)

Does Posting Things to Twitter Make You a Journalist?
There’s been a lot of discussion about what the U.S. military strike on Osama bin Laden’s compound says about the state of the media today, and the latest debate is whether Sohaib Athar — the Pakistani resident who live-tweeted the raid — is a journalist or not...
(GigaOM)

iPhone app may have assisted in the tracking, discovery of Osama Bin Laden
For the past 10 years, the hunt for Osama Bin Laden was on.  By land, by air, by sea -- and by app.  At least that is a possibility one tech blog tnooz.com is reporting about Tactical NAV, a military-grade navigation app created by U.S. Army Capt. Jonathan Springer...
(New York Daily News)

Tunisians clash with police over Facebook ‘coup warning’
As the Arab spring heats up in Syria, Libya, and Yemen, the flames of revolution still seem to be burning strong in the country where it all started...
(Global Post)

Beware of the Bin Laden cyber-scams
There are no free airplane tickets to celebrate Osama Bin Laden’s death.  There are no official photos or video, either.  And sorry, that sandwich chain supposedly giving away subs gratis because of the demise of the terrorist leader? Not happening...
(ajc)

Mrs. Mullen spotlights family issues in new blog
Building resilience and providing long-term support are keys to strengthening military families and better equipping them to weather the frequent, multiple deployments so prevalent in this decade of war, the wife of the nation's top military officer said...
(Capital Flyer)

The West Australian

Vietnam 'seals off protest site' BBC News Vietnam has sealed off the scene of a rare protest by thousands of ethnic minority Hmong in a remote north-eastern mountainous area, reports say. It comes after army units were sent in to quash the demonstration for greater autonomy, which started on ... US Probes Reports of Deaths After Hmong Protests in VietnamBloomberg Ethnic Hmong hold mass protest in VietnamMonsters and Critics.com Rare rally tests Vietnam's religious toleranceReuters AlertNet New York Times -Reuters Africa -MSN Malaysia News all 43 news articles »

The year is 2047. The Code Wars finally ended in stalemate – NSW is littered with empty, rusting Australian Rules stadia, and Victoria has been laid waste by the NRL’s Clone Army of Storm Forwards.

Former AFL CEO Sir Andrew Demetriou, gently nudged from his position when the Ceasefire was signed three years ago, is bored.

He is sitting by the window in his room at the Samaranch Benevolent Home For Retired Sports Administrators, a tattered Magpies blanket over his knees, a Foxtel beanie keeping his ears warm. A loop of him reading Brownlow votes is playing on the TV.

He looks out over the lawn, where Sepp Blatter is, as usual, arguing with Jacques Rogge over a large pile of rocks that they are convinced is both money and theirs. A couple of old Sports Ministers are milling about, trying to get noticed and surreptitiously dropping pebbles in Blatter's and Rogge's pockets.

Away in a corner, Malcolm Speed shouts at no one in particular, at least no one who will listen, about corruption in cricket and what the hell is this new 3-Over game, it will be yet another Death Of Test Cricket. The boys from the BCCI steal a few rocks from Blatter and hurl them at Mal, shutting him up for a while.

The cycling crew are looking remarkably spry again today, Sir Andrew thinks; must have had another Care Package delivered. Yup, there's John Coates going through the empty box and denying that it's there. Coates jealously eyes the pile of rocks, and crash tackles a Sports Minister, stealing his dressing gown and all his pebbles.

Over in the Soccer Australia/FFA pen, the electric fence is working overtime as the inmates try to climb it, get zapped, and try again. Sir Andrew laughs softly to himself as he remembers the last time a new inmate was introduced; the crazy old coot had a new idea about how to get over the fence, and was gummed to death by all the others.

Oh, and that time Craig Foster and Les Murray, there on the pretext of a family visit, stood outside the fence screaming at them until Security had to tear gas the whole lot! That was a day, that was.

The Swimming and Tennis coteries are having another feud over who's the prettiest, but, as it does every day, the cattiness merely degenerates into a lot of whining and both sides retreat to the comfort of their sponsors' marquees.

It looks cold outside, judging by the way the basketball chaps are shivering in their threadbare pyjamas, without slippers on, but no one seems to notice them.

He turns away from the window and surveys his room for the millionth time, looking at the remnants of a life once mighty, mementos of a man with power beyond belief.

One wall is covered in photographs of state Premiers and Prime Ministers beaming at the opportunity to be in his presence. His favourite is of Julia Gillard, not for the photo itself, but for the sweet memory it brings; "merging" the Bulldogs with Greater Western Sydney back in '17, and the entire, bitter, chapter that was devoted to it in her memoir "Moving Sideways".

He turns to his left and looks at the framed Press Passes that he'd had confiscated from journalists who dared suggest that Greater Western Sydney wasn't a fantastic idea. Next to that, the shrunken heads of Ricky Nixon and Eddie McGuire. His floor is carpeted with the pelts of a dozen nameless football fans who'd been tracked down by the AFL Spetznas via their anti-Administration comments on sports blogs.

A familiar itch on his chest; he opens his dressing gown and absently rubs at the scar from the Pacemaker installation back in '11. He hadn't even needed one, but Lachlan and Jamie had insisted it was a gift, and an insurance policy for them, so that the best sporting CEO in the country wouldn't be taken from them too soon by capricious fate.

Too bad about the remote control they'd had installed in it, he thought. Ah well, I was always their Boy, let them think they own me, like I kept the supporters for so long believing that they owned the game.

He wheels over to his bookshelf and feels a tiny pang of regret that he'd read something in his life other than Management Double-Speak manuals. Just a tiny pang, mind you, and he quickly pushes it aside; you don't get to where he was and do what he did if you're capable of feeling regret.

It's ten o'clock; time to feed Sam. Newman crouches in his cage, his sad eyes saying not very much except "I'm hungry". The eyes were all that was left of his face after an unfortunate lighting malfunction one night on The Footy Show, and Sir Andrew had rescued him some months later from a low-rent gig telling dick jokes in an RSL.

The nurses won't let me take you out any more, Sam, I'm sorry - you remember what happened last time don't you, oh yes you do you naughty little tennis player-chaser you. He scratches Sam gently behind the ear and drops some kibble in his bowl, then puts the cloth over the cage to stop the creature getting too excited at the sight of a Bryn Edelsten on the Brownlow coverage.

Well, he thinks, time to have another crack at the Memoirs. He switches on the PC and looks at an almost-blank screen, yesterday's efforts mocking him. This book-writing caper's meant to be easy, he thinks. Look at all those shaved apes who'd actually played sports, they seemed to churn out books easier than they churned out assault allegations.

He stares at the keyboard and wonders how many different ways there are to say "going forward", and "world's best practice" and "stakeholders", and realises that that's all he knows how to say.

All those years, he thinks, all those years. All those supporters giving me more and more money through memberships, tickets, taxes and Foxtel subscriptions. Commodifying everything and everyone and selling them to the highest bidder was the way, someone told me once, and what have I got to show for it?

A few scraps of paper, a few shrunken heads, and David bloody Gallop living next door, yelling through the wall about ratings.


Justin Shaw is the Deputy Editor of The King’s Tribune. He Tweets at @JuzzyTribune

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At 12.15pm last Monday afternoon, I turned on ABC News24 and was told that Barack Obama was due to appear on television at 12.30pm.  There was no information on what he intended talking about. Since this was 10.30pm on a Sunday night in Washington, you didn't need to be particularly bright to work out that something was up. 

Obviously there was an announcement that couldn't wait.  Without really thinking about it, I assumed it was related to Afghanistan or Iraq. 

I had work to do and didn't get back to the television until 12.35pm.  Obama had not yet appeared.  I opened up my Twitter client, TweetDeck, and discovered reports that Osama bin Laden was dead. By about 12.50pm, multiple media outlets were claiming they had confirmed these reports. 

Many of these claims were tweeted.  Some tweets contained a link to a website report. Between 12.30pm and 1.35pm when Obama finally appeared (at 11.35pm Washington time) most television stations and every cable network were all over the story.  Twitter was heaving.

A number of people retweeted Keith Urbahn, chief of staff to Donald Rumsfeld.  Urbahn is now seen as the man who first published the news about bin Laden. 

He has since pointed out that his source was a "network TV news producer".

During this time, I also became aware of a Twitter user @ReallyVirtual, who had unwittingly tweeted about the assault on bin Laden's compound as it happened. 

Many hours later, I looked at his account, read the tweets, and laughed at his dry humour.

By the time Obama appeared, I had read a number of articles on various US media websites, mainly CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times. 

The Times site was hard to reach, such was the traffic.  Most of these articles had little to say, apart from claiming that various sources were anonymously confirming the death of bin Laden.  Some ran profile pieces and timelines from 9/11.

Obama's appearance was far from an anti-climax because no details were available on what had taken place in Pakistan.  Until Obama spoke, no-one even knew the killing of bin Laden took place in Pakistan.  The short address confirmed what had been swirling on the internet and on television, and provided some brief details of what had occurred.  Many questions were left unanswered.

For the next couple of hours I relied on television and so-called mainstream media outlets for information and analysis.  There was much to read on media websites.  The people and organisations I choose to follow on Twitter provided links to articles of interest.

Television showed scenes of rapturous crowds outside the White House and at other places around the United States.  These pictures were punctuated by an army of commentators confidently pontificating on the significance of the occasion.

By late afternoon, Australian time, there was little new information to be had.  Aside from the people celebrating in the streets, the United States was fast asleep. I was out and about, so I turned to the car radio.  As always, you can rely on ABC radio's PM program for solid reporting, context and sensible analysis.  I think I learned more of value in those 40 minutes from 6.10pm than I had over the previous hours since 12.15pm. 

In fact, if I hadn't heard of bin Laden's death until 6pm, I would have been just as informed as any other average news consumer by 7pm.

Back home, I watched the evening news and 7.30.  The story continued to rest as we waited for the Americans to wake up.  As most Australians were going to bed on Monday night, new information emerged from briefings and interviews on American media outlets.

What's my point? 

Simply that I continue to marvel at the silly talk about Twitter and social media whenever a major event takes place. This was a "CNN moment", some said, on a par with that network's on-the-spot coverage of the Gulf War in 1991. This was another moment that showed the irrelevance of traditional media, some said.  "I get all my news from Twitter now," one enthusiast tweeted.

New media, social media, has outgunned traditional media, went the argument. Am I missing something? 

Yes, I learned about what had happened from Twitter.  I am a prolific user of Twitter.  I use it to monitor the news.   But Twitter is a tool, not a media outlet.  It's a platform.  Like Facebook and other social networking tools, it's a means of disseminating information.  It connects people.  And, yes, these days breaking news, some of it from non-journalists, tends to appear first on Twitter.

But so what? 

What did I really gain from just happening to be on Twitter in the hour before Obama appeared on television?  Very little.  If you're a news junkie, the buzz from watching an event unfold on your computer screen is quite absorbing and I happily admit I love these occasions.  But they don't amount to anything much.

Before going to bed on Monday night, I read a number of articles in the Australian newspapers and quite a lot from the American press, especially The New York Times.

Twelve hours after news of bin Laden's death leaked out, I was only just beginning to get my head around its significance and importance.  I'm still doing so, days after the event.

It's absurd to value the speed and immediacy of news over the completeness, complexity and understanding that only time, more information, reading and reflection can deliver.

It's absurd to value the instant judgements of journalists, pundits and assorted "experts" who appear in the media in the first minutes and hours after an event of significance.

Commonsense, let alone an appreciation of history, should tell us that we are a long way from comprehending the significance of the last couple of days. We certainly shouldn't get too excited about a tweet which delivered a piece of news before a television journalist did so.  These things may excite those whose livelihoods depend on the kudos of being first with the news but they don't have any practical effect on the rest of us.

It's far better to see the new platforms and technologies as complementary.  As this article by Erick Schonfeld on TechCrunch says, Twitter doesn't supplant other media, it amplifies it.

Don't forget, much of the material being tweeted last Monday afternoon came from Twitter users watching television or reading online media sites. That's why the traditional media outlets have set about colonising Twitter and dominating it.  Promotion of mainstream media publications, websites and television stations is ubiquitous on Twitter these days. 

If you’re interested in news, politics and current affairs, they’re hard to avoid, particularly when a presenter or a journalist is encouraged or required to tweet on their employer’s dime.

Unless it’s one of those events where ordinary citizens can contribute original eye-witness material, such as people did during the recent spate of natural disasters, the cacophony of social media chatter is often just as meaningless and diversionary as the more glittering babble offered up by the mainstream media.

Any knowledge and understanding I have of what happened in Pakistan on Sunday is derived primarily from traditional journalism delivered by traditional media outlets.  Much of this material was fed to the media by the US government at a time of its choosing and in the form it chose.  It came to me via traditional media outlets, even if Twitter was used to direct me there.

It's still down to me to maintain my interest in the things I think matter.  It's down to me to read widely, to think and to learn.  It’s my job to remain sceptical and questioning.

Most of all, it's down to me to not get distracted by the gaudy baubles of the media, mainstream or social.

A version of this article first appeared on Malcolm Farnsworth’s website AustralianPolitics.com.

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As we were eating lunch one cold day in October, our guard opened the big iron gates to our compound and in rolled three bright and shiny SUVs.  Six Americans emerged – apparently they just happened to be in the neighbourhood – and invited themselves into the house.

We offered them tea, and a place by our kerosene heater and they got down to business. How well do you know the area, they asked. And have you noticed anything unusual or interesting? Not that we think you might know anything in particular, it’s just perhaps you’ll look around a bit and notice something. Here’s our business cards, do give us a call if there is anything ...anything at all .... we might be interested in.

The location was Abbottabad, a few years ago.  And the discussion we had just had was so cheerfully and politely vague that we knew we’d been talking to the CIA.  But no matter. While we weren’t exactly shocked, we did think Abbottabad was one of the safest places in Pakistan.

I worked with Pakistani journalists – male and female - creating a viable evening radio show that was somewhat similar to ABC’s PM (or so I hoped) and was broadcast throughout Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.  Our compound housed a radio studio, newsroom and living quarters. I was the only white woman in the group and most of the staff had come from other cities. Many were graduates from the impressive and surprisingly liberal University of Peshawar journalism school.

When we weren’t producing radio - we worked six days a week - or suffering from the long chilly winters, our days off were spent driving up into the mountains and having picnics, or gently trekking along the wooded trails of the Sarban Hills.

In Abbottabad I would go shopping with the female journalists to buy material for new salwar kameez and learn the intricacies and subtleties of having a fashionably cut outfit. (The difference  between a six inch and nine inch trouser cuff is the difference between chic and why bother?). After shopping we would go to the juice bar or coffee shop, and sit in the ladies section to keep from prying male eyes.

As you drive further north, it is less common to see women on the streets, even accompanied by a man. In Abbottabad I would go for afternoon walks around the middle class streets, where houses were fenced, gated and guarded – much ritzier and more elegant that the monstrosity that Osama bin Laden was killed in. Most of the male journalists had a hard time letting me go out by myself but had to agree I was in no danger. Abbottabad seemed a gentle town, full of good decent people.

Nights were spent having great feasts, listening to music, watching Bollywood films (which were considered a bit racy) or dancing. Boys and girls (everyone aged up to about 55 is called a boy or a girl) singing competitions were always a good evening’s entertainment. Sometimes we would drive up into the hills, to the late night cafes open in the national parks and have soft drinks and dangle our feet in the river. Or we would just go outside and sit on the porch, eat watermelon and listen to the crickets.

The drive from Islamabad to Abbottabad is longer than the 50 kilometres distance would suggest. Winding roads up mountains and then down, long haul trucks, constant road blocks and checks and the general disposition of Pakistanis to drive cautiously, means the journey can take more than two hours. If you take a public bus it could take as long as four hours – prayer stops, tea and pee stops, and driver rest breaks made the journey interminable.

Abbottabad is not like Islamabad with its concrete soulless boulevards. It is a lovely city defined by its army heritage. A great deal of the town was built by the Raj – and there are still beautiful parks and roundabouts, buildings and monuments from colonial times. Old tanks and cannons frame ornate garrison gates, statues of fallen generals with big handlebar moustaches are scattered around town.

Abbottabad is mostly middle class. The shock that residents have expressed in the past few days about having a terrorist in their midst seems to me totally genuine. It is not the kind of place for radicalism or ferment. It has good schools and a teaching hospital, there are many excellent doctors and nurses and academics and teachers. There were also retired army officers with beautiful clipped accents, booming voices and firm handshakes who can make you swoon with their good manners and correct upright posture.

One day before I reluctantly left Abbottabad the house was broken into when we were at a picnic. We gunned it back into town, arriving shortly before about 20 police filed through the front door, automatic weapons at the ready. The police moved from room to room, ready, it seems, to take out the miscreant in a hail of bullets. By this time half of our street and anyone within a five mile radius had cottoned onto this rare event – a robbery in the neighbourhood. The house was filled with people,  everyone insisting on giving their version of events - which given the house was empty at the time of the break in, was poetic embroidery at its best.

The cops started talking darkly about 'interrogations' and 'confessions'. They seemed to be indicating that an interrogation automatically meant a confession and that they would be able to stitch up their man by close of business that day. My friends told me that really, there wasn’t a hope in hell of getting it sorted, the cops were next to useless and we all better have tea. Within half an hour  the kettle was on and the automatic weapons were propped up, forgotten, in the entrance hall.

And you’re surprised about Osama bin Laden?

On Monday my friend Jamal wrote this on my facebook page:

“Virgie can u believe that we were living so much near the most wanted person on the planet. I am speechless! I appeal all the unwanted people to leave our cities and villages. Please let us live. We want peace, peace and peace. Abbottabad is famous for the best residential education institutions. Yes there is a lot of talk about Abbottabad but for (the) wrong reason. Virginia can you please share some of .... weekend outings of the beautiful hill station of Abbottabad. Let us show the world the true Abbottabad.”

Virginia M Moncrieff is an expatriate Australian journalist

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A 32-year-old former soldier who created an anti-gay Facebook page and aimed to 'out' and harass gays serving in the Australian Defence Force has been identified and charged.

Rashard Mendenhall fired by Champion over Osama bin Laden tweets
Pittsburgh Steelers running back Rashard Mendenhall is being dropped as an endorser by corporate sponsor Champion over his controversial tweets objecting to the celebration over the death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of U.S. commandos Sunday...
(USA Today)

Obama Will Not Release Photos of bin Laden, Citing Risks with Facebook’s Privacy Policies
After days of wrestling with the issue of whether to release photos of Osama bin Laden’s corpse, President Obama announced Wednesday that the images would not be distributed because of potential risks...
(The Bennington Vale Evening Transcript)

Military Bloggers Unite! (And I Fight With the SECDEF)
This weekend, I was able to make it to the 6th Annual Military Blogger Conference in Washington, D.C. Like the BlogWorld New Media Expo I attended in October, this was a chance for new/social media folks to get together, talk about the issues that drive us, see what's going on in the world of social media, and (of course) do some networking/hanging-out...
(Army Strong Stories)

The Sixth Annual Milblog Conference was great!
Got back last evening from the Sixth Annual Milblog Conference and I think it was the best one I’ve attended thus far! (I think I might say that every time I attend,lol, but seriously..great panels this year,I learned a lot and IMHO Andi ,and Military.com and USAA.com did an Awesome job once again!)
(Hooah Wife and friends)

Facebook hate sees ex-soldier charged
Following email threats made against a senior army officer and a Facebook "hate page", the NSW Police have laid charges against an ex-member of the Australian Defence Force...
(ZDNet)

War, first-hand: Military vets and relatives share their stories on stage
For most Americans, the realities of war  — the violence, the sacrifices, the loss — are images on a television screen from a distant country. We hear about war on the news, but we don’t hear the personal side, up-close, from those who lived it...
(Baltimore Sun)

Producer stunned by Aussie war experiences
The executive producer of the new family history show In Their Footsteps says sometimes the truth is more exciting than anything you can make up.  Michael Caulfield and his team follow 10 Australians as they trace the footsteps of their family members who fought or were involved in the nation's war efforts...
(The West Australian)

Making sense of the Osama op through tweets
The credit for breaking the news about the raid on Osama bin Laden's mansion in Abbottabad can probably be given to Twitter. IT consultant Sohaib Athar, who live tweeted the operation (without knowing it), is an internet star today. Interestingly, there were others also who wrote about the operation...
(Rediff)

Mendenhall drops the ball on bin Laden
It's a small step from Twitter to twit, as evidenced by the remarks of Steelers running back Rashard Mendenhall on the social networking service after the U.S. military operation that killed Osama bin Laden...
(Observer-Reporter)

We will probably never know a lot of what transpired in that shabby villa in Abbottabad but what we do know is that the release of information has been dreadfully mismanaged by the White House and calls into question whether anyone there is interested in much more than making themselves look good or damaging someone else.

The number of stories emerging from the White House and immediately being contradicted by the White House, and in the process leaving the White House spokescritter, Jay Carney, resembling a stunned mullet, include: which of bin Laden’s sons was killed, bin Laden using a woman as a shield, his wife being killed, bin Laden firing at US forces, the raid being monitored in real time, and the cause of the helicopter crash.

We also can say with some degree of certainty that we’ve been misled on the involvement of Pakistan.

Oddly enough, the one area that everyone seems to have fallen over themselves in agreeing about was Pakistan’s involvement in the operation. While bin Laden’s carcass was still cooling anyone who was anyone in Pakistan was claiming there were no consultations. CIA Director Leon Panetta joined the chorus in rubbing the nose of the Pakistanis in their own unreliability.

But the CIA ruled out participating with its nominal South Asian ally early on because “it was decided that any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardize the mission. They might alert the targets,” Panetta says.

To set the stage for this one has to take into consideration the nature of Abbottabad. It was founded by a British general and, under British rule, was the administrative center of the Hazara District of Punjab. Since independence it has remained a garrison town. It currently is the headquarters of two infantry regiments, the Baloch Regiment and the Frontier Force Regiment. In addition, the compound where bin Laden was killed is about 300 yards from a police station, about half that distance from a university, and half a mile from the Pakistan Military Academy. It is also very close to Kashmir. So bin Laden’s hideout was in a residential area, in a heavily garrisoned town, close by a disputed frontier.

The main concern, again from Panetta, was the Pakistani reaction, again from TIME:

Some of the aides had been involved in the Carter Administration’s effort to go after the hostages held by the Iranians 30 years ago; others had been involved in the ill-fated “Black Hawk Down” raid against Somali warlords in 1993. “What if you go down and you’re in a firefight and the Pakistanis show up and start firing?” Panetta says some worried. “How do you fight your way out?”

A very real concern that we will touch more upon later. On any raid getting into the objective and accomplishing your mission tends to be the easiest part of the planning process. Getting out with your skin mostly intact is always the hardest nut to crack. And how do you unscrew the situation created by having your armed forces in a fire fight with the armed forces of an ostensible ally, and ally who controls your supply routes into Afghanistan, in the middle of one of their cities?

The scenario, as we’ve been told, unfolds like this: Around 2am a helicopter crashes into a residential neighborhood, in this otherwise quiet garrison town not far from a contested border region. There are immediate explosions as breaching charges cut holes in the walls and doors of the bin Laden’s compound and a 40 minute fire fight ensues. As the gunfight winds down there is an explosion as the disabled helicopter is demolished and another, larger and noisier, helicopter arrives on the scene. Then both helicopters fly away.

No local constable decided to mope over to the crash site. No fire trucks or ambulances scrambled to the scene. The gun fight, even though it was tweeted live, didn’t provoke a response from either the police or either of the infantry regiments garrisoned in the city.

A lot of dogs didn’t bark, so to speak.

What we know about the raid, and I use the work “know” very advisedly, is that it apparently consisted of three helicopters. Two of the helicopters were MH-60 variants, one was apparently an MH-47. At least one story mentions a fourth helicopter of undefined type. The number of shooters involved was about 20, according to latest reports, with more than likely additional personnel involved in the intelligence exploitation of the objective.

The critical piece missing from this picture is a security element for the assault force. If, as Panetta suggests, one of the concerns was that Pakistani security forces would show up and start shooting the raiding force, more likely than not, would have contained a security force to stop anyone from interfering with the operation. The last thing you’d want is a couple of dozen SEALs sandwiched between an unknown number of al Qaeda fighters with bin Laden and a couple of Pakistani infantry battalions. Typically this security element would have been a contingent from the Ranger Regiment.  For instance, in the prisoner snatch that led to the Battle of Mogadishu, a small Delta contingent was used to attempt to capture a Somali warlord while a company of Rangers sealed off the objective area. This contingent would have added another 40 persons to the raid and at least one, or maybe two, MH-47s.

Even if we can explain the  absence of curiosity on the part of Pakistani security forces and emergency services by incompetence we are still confronted with both the absence of a security force, and a rather, in my opinion, leisurely amount of time the raiders spent on the objective when every minute exponentially increased the chance that Pakistani police or army would arrive on the scene.

In my view, this all leads to the conclusion that the local Pakistani officials were complicit in the raid. They may not have know when it was coming but they knew enough not to send out police, fire, or military personnel to the scene until after everything was over.

And then there is the former head of Pakistan’s ISI who insists that not only was there security but the Pakistanis provided it:

Lieutenant General Durrani, however, said that the denial was a “political” maneuver by the intelligence services to avoid claims that they were working too closely with the US.

He said: “It is more likely that they did know [about the raid]. It is not conceivable that it was done without the involvement of Pakistani security forces at some stage. They were involved and they were told they were in position.

“The army chief was in his office, the cordons had been thrown around that particular place. The Pakistani helicopters were also in the air so that indicates that it was involved.

Was the national leadership in on the raid? We can’t know. We can suspect from the speed with which Panetta said the Pakistanis were cut out and the Pakistanis claim they were cut out of the mission that maybe both are being somewhat parsimonious with the truth. The claim that Pakistan scrambled fighters to intercept the raiders, when neither their police nor army showed any inclination to do so despite being within an easy walk of the scene also sounds suspicious. Going a bit farther, Australian Defense Minister Stephen Smith said in an interview:

Mr Smith disputed a suggestion the Pakistan government knew bin Laden’s whereabouts.

“It doesn’t follow from that that Pakistan or the Pakistan state or the Pakistan government was knowingly harbouring,” he told ABC Television today.

US President Barack Obama praised Pakistan for helping US forces kill and capture bin Laden, and had rung Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari to thank him, Mr Smith said.

The minister also disputed an assertion the US didn’t notify the Pakistan government of bin Laden’s death.

“It’s clear to me from President Obama’s comments that he was pleased with Pakistan’s assistance,” Mr Smith said.

This makes sense when one considers that early reports were that the raid was staged out of Tarbela Ghazi air base in Pakistan:

From Ghazi Air Base in Pakistan, the modified MH-60 helicopters made their way to the garrison suburb of Abbottabad, about 30 miles from the center of Islamabad. Aboard were Navy SEALs, flown across the border from Afghanistan, along with tactical signals, intelligence collectors, and navigators using highly classified hyperspectral imagers.

Later reports claim that the raid was launched from Jalalabad, Afghanistan. Either site it well within range of the MH-60 but Jalalabad is 160 miles, or about an hour, away. Tarbela Ghazi is about 35 miles away. All things being equal you’d prefer the shorter distance for the sake of simplicity and reduced fatigue on the part of your troops.

At a minimum if there was no “official” cooperation there appears to be significant coordination between elements of the Pakistan government and the US government on this raid. To the extent this cooperation was unitary or to which it was facilitated by cash transactions we’ll probably never know. But it would have been the height of irresponsibility to send a small raiding force into an ostensibly hostile environment without providing protection for the raiders. It would have been equally irresponsible to send in a security force and risk a full fledged gun battle between US troops and Pakistani security forces. And I can’t believe that any military commander would have let that happen.

Sailor who was the last surviving combatant of the first world war

Claude Choules, who has died aged 110, was the last known combat veteran of the first world war, during which he served in the Royal Navy. He witnessed two historic events at the end of the conflict. He was present at the surrender of the imperial German navy at the Firth of Forth, off Scotland's east coast, on 21 November 1918, 10 days after the armistice, and at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands, on 21 June 1919, when the German Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter ordered his interned fleet to be scuttled. Preventive action limited the scuttling to 52 of the 74 ships. These included 10 battleships, five battlecruisers, five cruisers and 32 destroyers.

Choules migrated to Australia in 1926 and, during the second world war, he served in the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) as a senior demolition expert in Western Australia. Early in the war, he identified and disposed of the first German mine to wash up on Australian shores, near Esperance. With Japan on the rampage in 1942, he set explosives to blow up oil tanks and placed depth charges in ships unable to leave Fremantle harbour in anticipation of a Japanese landing. Had the Japanese invaded, he would have had the improbable task of riding a bicycle about 500km south to Albany to blow up harbour facilities there, too.

Choules, who held dual British and Australian nationality, was born at Wyre Piddle, Pershore, in Worcestershire. His father, Henry, was a haberdasher, and his mother, Madelin, became an actor. His mother abandoned the family when he was young – for many years, he thought she had died – and his older brothers, Douglas and Leslie, were sent to different family homes while his father raised Claude and his sisters, Phyllis and Gwen. This would later shape his make-up as a considerate, conscientious and attentive father, polite to all.

Choules dropped out of school at 14 and fibbed about his age to join the navy in 1915. The previous year he had tried to join the army as a bugle boy after learning that his brothers were serving in the British army. Both had fought at Gallipoli before going on to the western front in France, where Douglas was gassed and died a year later, and Leslie won the military medal.

After training on HMS Impregnable, at one time a 140-gun, square-rigged wooden battleship, Choules (who acquired the nickname Chuckles) served on HMS Revenge, the flagship of the Royal Navy's first battle squadron. Between 1920 and 1923, he served in the Mediterranean in the battleship HMS Valiant, and for a time was involved in the construction of the navy's first purpose-built aircraft carrier, HMS Eagle. He then served for two years as a petty officer on board the Eagle in the Mediterranean before being seconded with 11 other naval personnel to go to Australia in 1926 on loan to the RAN as an instructor at the Flinders naval depot, near Melbourne.

Both of his brothers had already relocated to Australia before the war, so he asked for a permanent transfer to the RAN. He returned to Britain to train as a torpedo and anti-submarine instructor, and was also involved in the construction of the RAN's heavy cruisers Australia and Canberra. He was part of the commissioning crew of HMAS Canberra.

Choules took his discharge from the RAN in 1931, but remained in the reserve. He rejoined the RAN the following year with the rank of chief petty officer. He remained with the service after the second world war, transferring to the naval dockyard police, enabling him to remain until 1956, five years longer than the regulations allowed for RAN ratings, who in those days had to retire at 50.

But he was still not done with the sea. He bought a crayfishing boat and spent the next 10 years fishing off the Western Australia coast with his wife. He also shot rabbits and culled kangaroos – until he saw the film Bambi. An excellent ballroom dancer, Choules had special shoes made for his whirls across the dance floor as he did the foxtrot, which he taught to his daughters and grandchildren. He also loved to play the mouth organ. Not surprisingly, his favourites were sea shanties.

As a centenarian, he retained a sense of humour, insisting that a laugh was good for the soul. Towards the end of his life, a degenerative eye disorder took its toll. His daughter Anne attributed his long life to his fitness, healthy lifestyle and a happy, contented disposition.

Choules never owned a car until he was 50, and rode a bicycle everywhere. His wife of 80 years, Ethel, a children's nurse, died in 2006, aged 98, and he spent his last years at the Gracewood hostel at Salter Point in Perth. He published his autobiography, The Last of the Last, in 2009.

Choules is survived by his daughters, Daphne and Anne, his son, Adrian, 13 grandchildren, 26 great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren.

• Claude Stanley Choules, sailor, born 3 March 1901; died 5 May 2011

WA today

Ex-ADF man on gay hate charge The Age SYDNEY police have charged a former Australian soldier over the creation of a Facebook gay hate page that targeted four members of the Defence Force. The arrest comes less than a month after The Age revealed the harassment, which targeted an army major ... Facebook gay hate page: ex-ADF man chargedSydney Morning Herald Man charged over offensive Facebook group and threats – Surry HillsNSW Police Online (press release) all 28 news articles »

Filed under: History, Learning, Europe, Oceania, United Kingdom, Australia, Books, News

Claude Choules, the last known combat veteran of WWI, has died aged 110. Born in England in 1901, he was too young to enlist in the army when the war broke out in 1914, so he waited until he was 15 and enlisted in the Royal Navy, where he saw service throughout the war.

Unlike most veterans, he liked the service and stayed on. While working as a visiting instructor for the Australian Navy, he fell in love with the country and moved there. When war broke out again he fought for his new country in its navy. He retired after 40 years in service but never stopped being active. At the tender age of 80 he took up writing and penned his memoirs. Over time he became a pacifist and controversially refused to participate in ANZAC Day parades. There's much more to his story, so check out the link and his memoirs, assuming the book isn't sold out by now.

Choules fought on the sea, so with no battlefields to visit, where can you see the legacy of WWI's last combat veteran? A good start would be the museums of the two navies in which he served. The Royal Naval Museum in Portsmouth, UK, currently has an exhibition called Sea Your History: 20th Century Royal Navy that shows what life was like aboard naval vessels during the two world wars and beyond. This gives a good insight into what a teenaged Claude Choules had to endure. The Royal Australian Navy Heritage Centre at Garden Island Naval Base near Sydney also has displays about life in the navy. I wouldn't be surprised if both museums make special exhibitions to mark the passing of this remarkable man.

But you don't have to go to the UK or Australia to see Choules' legacy. He lived through the most momentous event of the early 20th century. The war changed Europe and the world. The millions of deaths seriously weakened Europe's hold on their colonies and emboldened independence movements in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. The old aristocracy found itself hit hard financially and began to lose their grip on society. Large numbers of women got to work in factories and other "man's jobs" for the first time, and began to question why they couldn't vote.

While the First World War wasn't the sole factor in the end of colonialism or the rise of women's rights, it was a major one. If you want to see Claude Choules' legacy, just look around you.


[Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons]

Last WWI combat veteran dies: where can you see his legacy? originally appeared on Gadling on Thu, 05 May 2011 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Adding yet another fascinating element to Sunday's raid, aviation experts are speculating that the destroyed helicopter may have been a stealth model never previously seen.

According to Wired's Danger Room there are three theories:

• The wreckage is from a conventional helicopter so badly damaged it's unrecognizable
• It is a modified Army MH-60 Blackhawk made quieter and more stealthy
• Far flung speculation that pieces are from a brand-new radar evading stealth chopper

The wealth of photos from the crash site seem to point to the second theory, and it's supported by CIA director Leon Panetta's statement that the team was "carried in two Blackhawk helicopters that went in."

Rivetless skin, unusual control surfaces, a covered tail rotor and infrared-absorbing paint all point to the choppers classified pedigree.

According to Carlo Kopp, joint head of an Australian think tank,

Such a helicopter would not be invisible or silent, but would be harder to detect and track using an X-band or Ku-band radar, and quieter than a conventional helicopter.

If these assumptions are correct it implies a far greater ability for the U.S. to strike fast and unseen around the world.

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See Also:

• They Called Themselves The Khans, Paid Their Bills On Time, Drove A Red Suzuki... Meet The Bin Ladens
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• India Had Warned The U.S. That Bin Laden Was Hiding Close To Islamabad

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The death of Osama bin Laden offers a perfect opportunity to revisit the list of the World's Most Wanted. So who still makes it?

He wasn't the World's Most Wanted Man. Officially, at least, there's no such thing. But when Osama bin Laden died from a shot to the head and another to the chest sometime between midnight and 1.30am local time on Monday, the man who, in the popular western imagination, held arguably the best – and certainly the best-publicised – claim to be regarded as such left behind him something of a conundrum for those who compile such lists: who could replace him?

It's not such a straightforward question. Leaving aside such niceties as one man's evil terrorist mastermind being another man's blessed freedom fighter, attempting to place in order of importance crimes on the kind of scale that might warrant inclusion in a Top 10 of global iniquity is a task fraught with difficulties. How do you measure a Serbian ethnic cleanser against an American serial killer, dismemberer and necrophile; a Mexican drugs baron against a Rwandan genocide-merchant?

Most lists, sensibly, do not try. The first and perhaps the most famous of all, the FBI's 10 Most Wanted Fugitives – from which Bin Laden was summarily ejected on Monday, his photograph stamped with a blood-red banner and the single word "Deceased" – doesn't rank its members, who are confined to criminals indicted by a US federal grand jury. Bin Laden, indicted in absentia in New York in 1999 for his alleged part in the US embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi the previous year, was a bit of a misfit on that list.

His fellow fugitives were, for the most part, fraudsters, rapists, murderers and drug traffickers, with bounties on their heads ranging from $100,000 to $2m; the reward offered for Bin Laden's capture totalled $27m (£16m). Robert William Fisher, for example, is wanted for allegedly killing his wife and two young children and then blowing up the house in which they all lived in Scottsdale, Arizona in April 2001; Alexis Flores for his alleged involvement in the kidnapping and murder of a five-year-old girl in Philadelphia.

Heinous crimes, but hardly the equivalent of masterminding 9/11. Or indeed, as assorted warrants put it, of "organising a global network committed to bringing down the United States". That explains why the FBI created a separate list in 2001, in the wake of the September 11 attacks: Most Wanted Terrorists. The death of the al-Qaida figurehead leaves 29 people on that list, including his reported deputy, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and also indicted for the US embassy bombings; Fahd Mohammed Ahmed al-Quso, wanted in connection with the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, which killed 17 US sailors; Adam Yahihe Gadahn, sought for providing "material support, comfort and aid" to al-Qaida; and Abdul Rahman Yasin, indicted in the 1993 bombing of the New York World Trade Centre.

The FBI's hope, it seems, was that the terrorist list would have the same mobilising effect on the US public as the original 10 Most Wanted, first launched on 14 March 1950 after the FBI director, J Edgar Hoover, spotted the potential of the publicity generated by a news agency story profiling the "toughest guys" the bureau would like to capture. The first person placed on the list was Thomas James Holden, wanted for the murder of his wife, her brother and her stepbrother. Down the years it has also featured the likes of James Earl Ray, the prime suspect in the assassination of Martin Luther King; the infamous serial killer Ted Bundy; and (briefly) civil rights activist Angela Davis.

According to the FBI, 494 fugitives have figured on its 10 Most Wanted list, and 464 have been captured or at least or located, 152 of them with the help of the public. Priorities have changed over time, the agency says. In the 50s, the list was "primarily comprised of bank robbers, burglars, and car thieves". In the radical 60s, "the list reflected the revolutionaries of the times, with destruction of government property, sabotage, and kidnapping dominating". The 70s were overwhelmingly about organised crime, and in the 80s and 90s the 10 Most Wanted began to include suspected international terrorists as well. In more recent years, common crimes have included rape and other sexual abuse, crimes against children, white-collar crime, gang violence and drug trafficking.

Maintaining such a list on a global scale has obvious pitfalls. Interpol, the international police organisation, makes no attempt to prioritise. The 321 criminals who currently feature on its website range from an Australian kidnapper to an Argentinian counterfeiter.

(In Britain, rather more prosaically, Crimestoppers UK's 10 Most Wanted includes one John Levy, wanted for "driving off from a petrol station without paying for £51 worth of diesel".)

Since 2008, the US business magazine Forbes has published a list of The World's 10 Most Wanted Fugitives, compiled in consultation with law enforcement agencies internationally (see below). Its criteria, the magazine says, are that fugitives have been criminally indicted or charged in national jurisdictions or by an international tribunal, stand accused of "a long history of committing serious crimes", and are "still considered dangerous". In addition, each is said to represent "a type of criminal problem with which legal institutions in diverse jurisdictions are grappling". It also ranks its candidates from one to 10.

Described as "armed, dangerous and very tough to catch – the world's worst thieves and thugs who have eluded local police, armies and international organisations for years", Forbes's most recent list was topped by Bin Laden. It also includes Semion Mogilevich, "the face of Russian organised crime"; Joaquin Guzman, "Mexico's most notorious drug trafficker"; Dawood Ibrahim, "India's most wanted man"; Italian mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro; Rwandan businessman (and alleged genocide financier) Felicien Kabuga; Joseph Kony of the brutal Lord's Resistance Army; and James L Bulger, a Boston mobster wanted in connection with up to 19 murders.

But the list is disputable. Britain, for example, would probably quite like to see Andrei Lugovoi, the former KGB operative wanted for the murder by plutonium poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, somewhere on a list of this kind (although he hasn't been charged). Augustin Bizimana, likewise, is the most senior of the 12 or so people wanted for genocide by the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda not to have been apprehended; the former defence minister faces charges over the massacre of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994. Some might like to see the name of Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the Sudanese dictator seen as responsible for ethnic cleansing that has left 300,000 dead and 2.5 million homeless in Darfur and the first sitting head of state ever indicted by the International Criminal Court. And what of Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb army chief indicted for genocide in The Hague in 1995? He's still out there, laughing.

So who will replace Bin Laden for the list-makers? It seems logical he could make way on Forbes's list to last year's runner-up, Guzman. The FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist list will simply shrink; Bin Laden's name will not be substituted. But on the Top 10 Most Wanted, the jury's out. Some reckon Zawahiri is a shoo-in; other favour the Libyan, Anas al-Liby, or the Egyptian Saif al-Adel, both allegedly implicated in the east African embassy bombings. Adan el Shukrijumah, a Saudi citizen suspected of planning to attack the New York subway in 2009, and Yasin, wanted in the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing, are also mentioned. But, some observers say, Bin Laden's replacement on America's 10 Most Wanted could be an altogether less rarefied species of lowlife: a white-collar criminal, say, or a bank robber. Ultimately, such lists are always going to be subjective.

The new 10 Most Wanted List

1 Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán Mexican drug lord

"El Chapo" or "Shorty" (he stands 5ft 6in tall) heads an international drug trafficking organisation, the Sinaloa Cartel, and became Mexico's top drug kingpin in 2003 after the arrest of his rival Osiel Cárdenas of the Gulf Cartel. Appears simultaneously on Forbes's lists of the world's most powerful, most wealthy and most wanted men. Ruthless and determined, Guzmán has succeeded in turning Ciudad Juárez, a strategic smuggling point that overlooks El Paso, Texas, into one of the murder capitals of the world through mind-numbingly brutal battles against both the Gulf and La Linea cartels, leaving thousands dead. A faction from La Linea has recently defected to Shorty's side; a local street gang, the Mexicles, has sub-contracted its services in killing, kidnapping, drug dealing and extorting; and even elements of the police and army seem to have thrown their lot in with him. Sinaloa smuggles many tonnes of cocaine from Colombia through Mexico into the United States, and is also heavily involved in Mexican methamphetamine, marijuana and heroin.

2 Dawood Ibrahim Head of Indian crime network

The most wanted man in India heads up a 5,000-strong organised crime network called the D-Company that is involved in everything from drugs trafficking to contract killing in Pakistan, India and the UAE. Currently on the Interpol wanted list for organised crime and counterfeiting, besides association with al-Qaida. According to Washington, Ibrahim uses the same smuggling routes as al-Qaida and has worked with both the mother organisation and its offshoot Lashkar-e-Taiba, responsible for the November 2008 Mumbai attacks. He is also suspected in the 1993 Mumbai bombings that killed 257 people and wounded 713. Like Bin Laden, Ibrahim may well be based in Pakistan.

3 Semion Mogilevich Russian 'boss of bosses'

Arrested in Russia for tax evasion in 2008, Ukrainian-born Mogilevich was released in 2009. Wanted in the US in connection with a $150m share fraud; believed by both European and US law enforcement agencies to be the "boss of bosses" of most Russian mafia syndicates in the world. Nicknames include "Don Semyon" and "The Brainy Don"; often described as "the most dangerous mobster in the world".

4 Matteo Messina Denaro Cosa Nostra kingpin

Sicilian mafioso who has effectively taken control of Italy's Cosa Nostra following the arrest of Bernardo Provenzano and other leading mobsters. Nicknamed "Diabolik", after an Italian comic-book character. Known for his fast lifestyle, Porsches and Rolex watches, he has been on the run since 1993.

5 Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov Uzbek mobster

Major Russian mobster originally from Uzbekistan and apparently known as "Taiwanchik" for his Asian appearance. Washington describes him as a "major figure in international Eurasian organised crime" engaged in "drug distribution, illegal arms sales and trafficking in stolen vehicles." He is even alleged to have bribed the figure skating judges in the 2002 Winter Olympics.

6 Felicien Kabuga Mastermind of genocide

Accused of bankrolling the Rwandan genocide, inciting bloodshed through his radio station and even supplying the machetes and hoes used in the massacres, Kabuga is wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda for "serious offences under the 1949 Geneva Conventions, crimes against humanity and genocide" in connection with the massacre of more than 800,000 Rwandan men, women and children in 100 days of terror in 1994. Allegedly hiding in Kenya.

7 Joseph Kony Ugandan guerrilla leader

Head of the Lord's Resistance Army, a guerrilla group engaged in a violent campaign to establish theocratic government in Uganda. Has also operated in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sudan, abducting an estimated 66,000 children and displacing more than two million people since 1986. The International Criminal Court has indicted him on 33 charges including crimes against humanity and war crimes.

8 James 'Whitey' Bulger Old-school US mobster

The ever-so-slightly embarrassing older brother of William Michael Bulger, a former president of the Massachusetts state senate and the University of Massachusetts, Bulger was part of the Winter Hill Gang, a Boston-based Irish-American crime network that for many years ran illicit drugs and extortion rackets. Pursued by the FBI for more than a decade for racketeering, murder (his name has been linked to 19 killings from the early 70s up to the mid-80s), conspiracy to commit murder, extortion, conspiracy to commit extortion, money laundering and narcotics distribution. Bulger's wealth is estimated at between $30m and $50m (£18m-£30m), cash he is said to be using to evade arrest with his longtime girlfriend. Last confirmed sighting was in London in 2002. There is a reward of $2m for information leading to his arrest.

9 Omid 'Nino' Tahvili Head of Canadian crime group

Head of a Persian organised crime network in Canada linked to assorted Triads and other global criminal groups. Arrested on charges of torturing a relative of a man he suspected had stolen a chunk of his organisation's illicit drugs money, he walked out of a Canadian maximum security prison in a janitor's uniform in November 2007 after promising to pay a guard to let him out (he never forked up). US law enforcement wants to talk to him about a fraudulent telemarketing business that targeted people in the US, stealing some $3m from hundreds of victims, most of them elderly.

10 ? Ayman al-Zawahiri Al-Qaida number two

Born in June 1951 into a prominent upper-middle class family in Cairo, Zawahiri was the final "emir" of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which he merged into al-Qaida in 1998. Reportedly a qualified surgeon, he speaks Arabic, English and French. According to former al-Qaida members, Zawahiri has worked with al-Qaida since the organisation's earliest beginnings. He is often described as Bin Laden's right-hand man, and by some as the "real brains" of al-Qaida. The friendship between the two men supposedly began in the 80s when Zawahiri is said to have given medical treatment to Bin Laden in Afghanistan in the teeth of a Soviet attack. According to terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman, Bin Laden considered Zawahiri his mentor. Most experts believe 9/11 could not have happened without Zawahiri's controlling influence.

Globe and Mail

Libyan Crowds Mourn Gadhafi's Son as Battles Continue Voice of America Photo: AP In this photo made on a government organized tour, supporters carry a poster of Libyab army colonel who was killed in NATO attack in April, during funeral ceremony for members Gadhafi family in Tripoli, Libya, May 2, 2011. ... NATO searches for drifting mine off MisrataReuters Africa After bin Laden death, Libya rebels ask US to kill KadhafiAFP Gunfire as Gadaffi's son buriedNEWS.com.au Reuters -The Australian -Aljazeera.net all 5,172 news articles »

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The West Australian

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April 25 commemorates the landing at Gallipoli by soldiers of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps on April 25, 1915. From this was born the legend of the Anzacs and the birth, in the crucible of war, of the Anzac spirit.

...

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Blue Angels flights trickier than combat, member says - Fort Worth Star Telegram | Brent Stevens, the business of actual flight -- what he calls "stick and rudder skills" -- is considerably tougher as a member of the Navy Blue Angels flight team, entertaining thousands of people in air shows like the one this weekend at Naval Air ...

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USN Blue Angels 2011 Schedule

Aerobatic flier will perform feats at weekend's Wings Over Wayne - Goldsboro News Argus | Rob Holland, aerobatic flier, runs through tricks including loops, rolls and hammerheads. Holland will perform at Wings Over Wayne 2011. Reporter Gary Popp, left, takes a test flight with aerobatic flying instructor Rob Holland. ...

RAF top guns heading to Lowestoft - Norwich Evening News | The world famous Red Arrows will be flying over Lowestoft this summer, it has been confirmed. To send a link to this page to a friend, simply enter their email address below. The message will include the name and email address you gave us when you ...

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Today in Aviation History – April 15 from CRUFC

There have been two major online releases of military records relating to New Zealand, on FindmyPast (www.findmypast.co.uk) and Ancestry (www.ancestry.co.uk).

FindmyPast has released the following collections on its site:

* Nominal Rolls of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force 1914-1919
* First Division Roll of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force Reserve (Sep 1916)
* Second Division Roll of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force Reserve (Aug - Oct 1917)
* Native Reserve Lists (1918)
* Military Defaulters List (New Zealand Gazettes of 1919 to 1921)
* New Zealanders who served with the Australian Imperial Force (1915 and 1916)
* Guthrie Index - index of New Zealanders who served with British and other Forces.
* Smith Index - from records held at Archives of the Australian War Memorial and the Australian Department of Defence Army Office of New Zealanders who served with the Australian Forces.
* Halpin Index - from The National Archives, Kew, re: New Zealanders who served with the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.
* British Section NZEF - from an undated list held by the National Archives Wellington, those who enlisted in England and embarked for Egypt on 12 December 1914.
* Fijian Contingent - soldiers who left Fiji on 5 August 1918 per Talune for the Narrow Neck Camp, Devonport, Auckland.
* Section 3 of the Roll of Honour, The Great War 1914-1918
* Stock Index - from various sources

Full details at http://www.findmypast.co.uk/search/military/new-zealand/wwi-soldiers

Just picked up from John Reid's Anglo Celtic Connections blog that Ancestry has also just added military material for New Zealand. Here goes:

* New Zealand Army WWI Casualty Lists, 1914-1919
* New Zealand Army WWI Roll of Honour, 1914-1919
* New Zealand WWI Military Defaulters, 1919-1921
* Chronicles of the N.Z.E.F., 1916-1919
* New Zealand Army Medal Rolls, 1860-1919
* The Defenders of New Zealand
* New Zealand Army WWII Nominal Rolls, 1939-1948

Full details via http://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/rectype/recent.aspx

(With thanks to John Reid and FindmyPast)


Chris

Knowing how much I adored post-apocalyptic young adult novels as a kid (like The Chrysalids, or anything written by John Christopher), my mum bought me the Tomorrow, When the War began series by John Marsden years ago. They've remained on the bookshelf in my old bedroom at Mum's for years, left there with plans to read the books when I came to town to visit and stayed over.

Finally, l after having moved back to my home town after ten eyars away, I picked up the first book a few weeks back. And promptly adored it.

Written from the point of view of a teenaged girl who's outback Australian farming town home has come under attack by an unknown foreign army it looks back at what she and her gang went through in order to not get caught. I'm 3/4 of the way through book one, and am completely hooked. The story is really natural, the heroics of the kids believable yet admirable. This is the kind of story young boys could really get into which makes it even more magical to me.

Last year it was made into a film. not sure I want to see it. The world of Tomorrow's too clear in my head. CAn't wait to see how he draws the story out voer several books!

The street where I grew up in Sydney was a war street. There were long silences, then the smashing of glass and screams.

Pete and I played Aussies-and-Japs. Pete’s father was an object of awe. He weighed barely seven stone and shook with malaria and was frequently demented. He would sit in a cane chair, drunk, scything the air with the sword of a Japanese solider he said he had killed. There was a woman who flitted from room to room, always red-eyed and fearful, it seemed. She was like many mothers in the street. Wally, my other mate, lived in a house that was always dark because the black-out blinds had not been taken down. His father had been "killed by the Japs". Once, when Wally’s mother came home, she found he had got a gun, put it in his mouth and blown his head off. It was a war street.

The insidious, merciless, life-long damage of war taught many of us to recognise the difference between the empty symbolism of war and the actual meaning. "Does it matter?" mocked the poet Siegfried Sassoon at the end of an earlier slaughter, in 1918, as he grieved his younger brother’s death at Gallipoli.

I grew up with that name, Gallipoli. The assault on the Turkish Dardanelles was one of the essential crimes of imperial war, causing the death and wounding of 392,000 on all sides. The Australian and New Zealander's losses were among the highest, proportionally; and 25 April, 1915 was declared not only a day of remembrance but the "birth of the Australian nation". This was based on the belief of Edwardian militarists that true men were made in war, an absurdity that is about to be celebrated yet again.

Anzac Day has become the preserve of those who manipulate the cult of state violence – militarism – in order to satisfy a psychopathic deference to foreign power and to pursue its aims. And the “legend” has no room for the only war fought on Australian soil: that of the Aboriginal people against the European invaders. In a land of cenotaphs, not one stands for them.

These days, the war-lovers have known no street of screams and despair. Their abuse of our memory of the fallen, and why they fell, is common among all servitors of rapacious power, though Australia might be a special case. No country is more secure in its strategic remoteness, yet no western elite is more eager to talk war and seek imperial “protection” from those of threatening pigmentation who might fall down on us as if by the force of gravity.

Australia’s military budget is A$32 billion a year, one of the highest in the world. Australian Cruise missiles will soon be aimed at Asia for the first time. Less than two months’ worth of this war bingeing would pay for the reconstruction of Queensland in the wake of catastrophic floods and cyclone, but not a cent is forthcoming. In July, the same fragile flood plains will be invaded by a joint US-Australian military force, firing laser–guided missiles, dropping bombs and blasting the environment and marine life. This is rarely reported. Rupert Murdoch controls 70 per cent of the capital city press and his "ethic" is widespread.

In a US cable released by WikiLeaks, the Labor prime minister and now foreign affairs minister, Kevin Rudd, warns the Americans to "deploy force" against China if  Beijing does not do as it is told. Another Labor leader, Kim Beazley, secretly offered Australian troops for an attack on China over Taiwan. In the 1960s, prime minister Robert Menzies lied that he had received a letter from the American-supported regime in Saigon requesting Australian troops. Oblivious, Australians waved farewell to a largely conscripted army, of whom almost 3,000 were killed or wounded. The first Australian troops reported secretly to the CIA in "black teams" - assassination squads. When the government in Canberra made a rare complaint to Washington that the British knew more about America’s war aims in Vietnam than its Australian comrades-in-arms, the US assistant secretary of state, McGeorge Bundy, replied, "We have to inform the British to keep them on side. You in Australia are with us come what may." An Australian soldier once said to me: "We are to the Yanks what the Gurkas are to the British. We’re mercenaries in all but name."

WikiLeaks recently disclosed the American role in the Canberra "coup" in 2010 against prime minister Rudd by Julia Gillard. Lauded in US cables as a "rising star", at least one of Gillard’s Labor Party plotters has turned out to be an asset of the US embassy in Canberra. Once installed, Gillard committed Australia to America’s war in Afghanistan war for the next 10 years – twice as long as Britain. Gillard herself likes to appear flanked by flags, but with her robotic delivery and stare, it is an unsettling tableau. On 6 April, she intoned, "We live in a free country – and in largely a free world – only because the Australian people answered the call when the decision came." She was referring to the dispatch of Australian troops to avenge the death of a minor imperial figure, General Charles Gordon, during a popular uprising in Sudan in 1885. She omitted to say that a dozen horses of the Sydney Tramway Company also "answered the call" but expired during the long voyage.

Australia’s role as "deputy sheriff" in Asia and the Pacific (promoted to "sheriff" by George W Bush) is to police great power designs now being challenged by most of the world. Leading Australian politicians and journalists report on the Middle East having first had their flights and expenses paid by the Israeli government or its promoters. Two Green Party candidates who dared to criticise Israel's lawlessness and the silence of its local supporters, are currently being set upon. A Murdoch retainer has accused them of advocating a "modern rendering of Kristallnacht". As a result, both have received multiple death threats and their campaign stickers were defaced with swastikas.

Put out more flags, boys.


www.johnpilger.com

John Pilger will introduce, discuss and take questions on his new film The War You Don't See on Tuesday April 19, 5:30 for 6pm at Teachers Federation Auditorium 23-33 Mary St, Surry Hills. Details here.

• Read all responses to this article

A politician who helps hold the balance of power in the Australian parliament has been accused of ordering army cadets to...

Knowing how much I adored post-apocalyptic young adult novels as a kid (like The Chrysalids, or anything written by John Christopher), my mum bought me the Tomorrow, When the War began series by John Marsden years ago. They've remained on the bookshelf in my old bedroom at Mum's for years, left there with plans to read the books when I came to town to visit and stayed over.

Finally, l after having moved back to my home town after ten eyars away, I picked up the first book a few weeks back. And promptly adored it.

Written from the point of view of a teenaged girl who's outback Australian farming town home has come under attack by an unknown foreign army it looks back at what she and her gang went through in order to not get caught. I'm 3/4 of the way through book one, and am completely hooked. The story is really natural, the heroics of the kids believable yet admirable. This is the kind of story young boys could really get into which makes it even more magical to me.

Last year it was made into a film. not sure I want to see it. The world of Tomorrow's too clear in my head. CAn't wait to see how he draws the story out voer several books!

A bustling port on the north-east coast of Queensland, home to what seems like half the Australian army, Townville hardly seems like the most fertile ground for a slice of luminous musical beauty. But it's where the seven-strong collective known as The Middle East were born, where some of them live to this day and where they recorded some of their gorgeous album *I Want That You Are Always Happy.* Back in 2005, singer & guitarist Rohin Jones found a kindred spirit in Jordan Ireland. Together they shared a love of Silver Jews, Bill Callahan and Lambchop, "not that we wanted to regurgitate any of them," Jones cautions. Writing and arranging together and separately, the pair began The Middle East's adventure. "There was," notes Jones sagely, "nothing else to do". They took the name The Middle East "for no reason at all, other than that we needed a name. It doesn't have any meaning; nobody has ever thought we were fans of Osama Bin Laden" and set about making what in 2008 would become their debut EP The Recordings Of The Middle East. "Jordan and I have a problem," admits Jones. "Obviously we're full of good intentions, but we're both hardcore perfectionists and we're both incredibly lazy, which is a genius combination for getting absolutely nothing done." Enter band member Mark Myers, who recorded that first EP. "Without Mark, nothing would have happened." Primarily for friends and family, The Recordings Of The Middle East was loved by the few who heard it. There was even a tour of Australia. Better still, Blood had been featured in films and television shows. There were successful UK live dates including an especially well received outdoor show at Somerset House last year; there was high acclaim from press and praise from radio DJs, and even Ellie Goulding declared she was smitten. As the word spread, there were tours with Beach House, with Doves ("It was horrible: they were great but they had a million things on stage and so did we. You can guess the problem") and with Mumford And Sons ("they're friends and we coped well with them, but because both bands have banjos, that was enough for people to think we were musically similar: we're not"). Soon, it was time to top up the studio tan once more. The Middle East wouldn't countenance an outside producer - quite right too, nobody could possibly handle these complex, brooding, life-affirming songs with the deft, loving touch of their composers - so they built a studio at the bottom of their house and recorded much of it there, but there were also jaunts to studios in Cairns to the north of Townville and, since The Middle East were beginning to bloom internationally, to Denton, Texas and Birmingham, Alabama. Black Death 1349 is as dark as its title, while the unsettling, brooding Mount Morgan concerns the Queensland gold mining town of that name. "That's myself and Jordan's most collaborative moment," explains Jones. "I really, really dislike talking about individual songs and what they might mean, but it's loosely based on a tale Jordan's grandfather remembered about how gold was discovered there; how people tried and failed to keep quiet about it and then how the environment around it was destroyed". I Want That You Are Always Happy is an album of twists, turns, beguiling contradictions and not without light and shade. My Grandma Was Pearl Hall is underpinned by its haunted and haunting keyboards; Hunger Song is the album's catchiest moment, but Jesus Came To My Birthday Party is a blast of unadulterated joy destined to seduce the mainstream. Naturally, even a taskmaster as hard on himself as Jones is glad to have a finished product, but there's always more to come and more to be expected. "I don't know whether people will like it. Obviously I hope they do and I hope they can get what they want from it. For us, I see it as an amiable first attempt and I know we can do better. In fact, I would like to try again someday." And now, with touring plans still to be determined it's time to take stock. "What I'd really like more than anything is to write songs for the rest of my life and be a nobody," smiles Jones. "That would be fantastic." The album ‘*I Want That You Are Always Happy’ *is released on June 6^th alongside the first single, *‘Hunger Song’*. Head to the band's *Facebook* (http://toastpress.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4e1e2dbf318b66a015b7b5f9f&id;=cbe75acd4c&e;=a438566334) to hear 2 new tracks from the album. *www.themiddleeastmusic.com* (http://toastpress.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4e1e2dbf318b66a015b7b5f9f&id;=ee4bb42309&e;=a438566334)

Recreating the Civil War through Twitter
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Manila: Top communist leader A. Faye (not her real name) told her brothers and sisters not to post their reunion pictures on Facebook and Twitter after the event at a posh condominium in Global Bonifacio City...
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The aches and chills started a few days before the end of Rye Barcott’s summer research trip to Kenya, where he’d been studying and living in one of Africa’s roughest slums. He’d taken his anti-malaria pills religiously, but a nurse he’d befriended there confirmed his fears. He’d come down with a mild case of the infectious disease...
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Scyld Berry's ire with the ECB is never far away in the 2011 Cricketers' Almanack, but the outgoing editor admits England's travelling fans won him over

If the Barmy Army has even persuaded Wisden Cricketers' Almanack that its existence is a good thing then conservatism might one day be banished from the land. Scyld Berry has departed as Wisden editor in ill-explained circumstances, but at least he can claim to leave with a perhaps unique reputation among Wisden editors as a man of the people.

One of cricket's most graceful writers and original thinkers, Berry admits that England's travelling band of supporters won him over during the glorious pursuit of the Ashes urn in Australia last winter.

"My opinion of the Barmy Army was not favourable when it began, because the songs contained foul language which should not have been imposed on children watching," Berry writes in his Notes by the Editor. "But last winter their songs were no worse than bawdy, ridiculed senior Australian players rather than the juniors and were surprisingly tuneful, and the focus was on the cricket rather than on themselves."

It has suddenly all become clear. That low-level droning sound in the media box was Mr Berry singing along.

Wisden goes as far as issuing advice to the ECB on how to show the common touch. "I urge the ECB to help [the Barmy Army] parade at home matches – in designated areas – by enabling ticket holders to book more than a few seats in a row as well as by lowering prices."

This is thoroughly sensible stuff. Group tickets are severely restricted on many international grounds in an attempt to control crowd behaviour. This can have the ridiculous effect of, for example, a cricket club going on a day out to the Test and not being allowed to sit together.

The ECB could easily make an exception in the case of the Barmy Army, or at least by a link with its own Twelfthman setup – the official fan-based community of England cricket. Committed supporters can actually impose better behaviour on crowds by a general understanding of their responsibilities to the game, just as rugby league crowds have always policed themselves by issuing powerful rebukes to any supporters deemed to be stepping out of line.

Berry could hardly be more eloquent in his praise of England's Ashes victory. "It would be hard to think of a sizeable human organisation that has come closer to perfection for a couple of months than England's cricket team during the Ashes series in Australia," he gushes. Deadlines prevented him from adding "or less close to perfection in all the one-day cricket that followed".

But his ire with the ECB is never far away. "Don't trash the Ashes," he implores, accusing cricket administrators, with sound reason, of "violating traditions built up over more than a century by staging a series in England in 2013 and 2015 and one in Australia in between". He goes on: "It is desirable that Ashes series in Australia should not be staged in the same winters as the World Cup as the last three have been, but nothing whatsoever can justify this overkill."

Amen to that, a suitably religious response when browsing the cricketers' bible. The sermon continues to browbeat the ECB for "the most ill-conceived fixture list since 1919" (in classic Wisden style, the misconceived 1919 season is assumed to be common knowledge: first-class cricket returned after world war one with a sense of enormous loss and a short-lived experiment in two-day matches).

Wisden might have made more of county cricket's financial crisis, although it does carry a disturbing warning from Nigel Hilliard, Essex's chairman. "Every Test match ground has a Test built into its business plan, and I understand why they do it but that is not too clever," he says. "Lord's and The Oval are not going to have a problem, but at the extremities, is a Test at Chester-le-Street in May going to work?

"I don't see clubs going out of business, but possibly some of them will go into administration. Football clubs do, but how many go bust? There is a lot of talk about counties joining forces, but it won't happen."

If a county does go into administration, it is highly unlikely that the ECB will set a precedent by bailing it out, in which case a buyer would have to be sought. The example of football suggests that foreign investors may be among the chief suitors.

Imagine a future in which Indian businessmen own a sizeable percentage of the county clubs, imposing their preferred future on the game with little interest in what Wisden annually refers to as cricket's great traditions. If the collapse of county cricket's members' clubs is followed by the collapse of county cricket's business management the future could be the collapse, in recognisable form, of county cricket itself.

Counties need to devise business plans earthed in reality and supporters need to realise that vaguely following their county from afar, with a daily perusal of the cricket scores, might be all very nice, but it does nothing to secure the game's future. Fail to understand that and the benefactors of the future may wish to design a solution in which India's raw capitalism is the dominant force and the county game stumbles into a brash new era.

Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 2011. Published 14 April, £45. The Shorter Wisden is available in abbreviated form as an eBook for £21.60.

Dear Bob Ellis,

Every time a woman suffers sexual abuse, sexual harassment, sexual assault or is otherwise violated, she suffers some form of trauma. She then suffers a rather disgraceful question: what should I do now? The reason this question is disgraceful is because it reflects badly on us. Australians, and Australian men in particular. We have created a society where women often do not have a remedy for being treated disgustingly by men. When someone is sexually assaulted in NSW, there is a 15% chance she or he will report it to the police.

That is, 85% of victims – overwhelmingly female – won’t report it when they are raped.

Part of the reason is the lack of sympathy to rape victims in the criminal justice system. There is the well known ordeal rape victims face in going through a trial. There is the likelihood that the rapist will not be convicted.

And there is the problem that many people will not believe her. There is the problem that many people will say it’s not a big deal. That it was probably her fault.

Bear in mind, according to NSW Rape Crisis Centre, "One in five women in Australia will experience sexual assault at some time in their life."

The number who suffer other forms of sexual harassment and abuse is incomparably higher. They, too, suffer in silence. They know better than to expect the criminal justice system to care. If someone who is raped can’t expect sympathy or understanding, why should they?

These results draw on a broader political culture in Australia. A culture that blames victims, that trivialises their experiences, and expects them to tolerate what we should all agree is intolerable.

Mr Ellis: do you think your column today was constructive? Do you think, bearing in mind the above, that it helped the situation facing women today? Or do you think that you have contributed to Australia’s disgraceful sexist culture of trivialising the experiences of women who suffer sexual abuse?

As far as your arguments go, I find it hard to believe you could actually think they are reasonable.

You begin by implying that if women "are tough enough for service on any battlefront", they should be "tough enough to be peeked at in the shower". Firstly, that isn’t what happened. Secondly, these statements are only inconsistent if you think that men have a right to treat women with contempt when they join the army. This kind of logic could presumably be used to justify anything. If men are tough enough for service on any battlefront, they should be tough enough to face a little electrocution, no? I mean, maybe they should be willing to face being mistreated, but that is an entirely separate proposition from whether we, as taxpaying Australians, should support an institution that violates the rights of Australians.

You then go on to cite various authorities on voyeurism, such as the Bible. I too, go to the bible whenever I need guidance on how to treat women. For example, Deuteronomy 22:28 teaches us that if a man is caught raping a virgin not pledged to be married, he has to pay her father 50 shekels and marry the woman, and may never divorce her. I also look to Numbers 31, when Moses instructed his men to kill all the Midianites, except female virgins “keep alive for yourselves.”

The point, Mr Ellis, if it is not obvious to you, is that our ideas of respecting women and opposing sexual assault have changed slightly over the last few thousand years.

You then describe a “tiny variant on what probably happened”: that the woman agreed to be filmed. This shows how truly you do not get the issues at all. The whole issue is that she did not agree to it. If she did agree to it, there would be no problem at all. Consenting adults can do whatever they like in the privacy (or otherwise) of their bedrooms (or elsewhere) – so long as it is consensual. If she didn’t agree to it, it’s wrong. Just as surely as it would be wrong if she filmed it without his consent.

Why can’t you understand that what was done was wrong? Do you find it so hard to empathise? Can you not understand that if it were you, you would feel hurt? Angry? Betrayed? Violated? That you couldn’t trust anyone around you? I would probably prefer if Australia abolished its army – but as long as we do have one, it is probably crucial to its functioning that soldiers trust each other.

Not only this, but according to media reports, the other cadets are angry at her.  Not at the men who secretly filmed her having sex without her consent, and broadcast it on the internet. Doesn’t that say a lot about the culture within the army created and maintained by our tax dollars? I mean, in my view, it would be ideal if no one joined the army. Or any army for that matter. But in light of the sordid culture that has been uncovered, why would any sane woman want to join such an institution? Do you think having a male-only army would be a good thing?

You then write, Mr Ellis, that considering everyone would probably soon have known the two were having sex, where was the “grave wrong in seeing” it happen? The idea that knowing two people had sex is the same as seeing it is so preposterous one hardly knows how to begin ridiculing it. Mr Ellis, considering you were born, you presumably know that your parents had sex. Do you think knowing this fact is the same as watching your parents have sex? By your logic, knowing that your parents had sex would be the same as letting you watch, and they would have no reason to believe any grave wrong occurred. Does this sound like a reasonable position to you, Mr Ellis?

You then go on to write that “She would almost certainly have got over it, in three years or ten.” Ok. I have a friend whose father died about ten years ago – she seems to have basically accepted it by now. Does that mean it wasn’t traumatic?

Mr Ellis, there are other people who agree with you. Andrew Bolt, for example, complained that what happened is "actually trivial": "One teenage girl cries, and the whole ADF must now tremble and turn pink." Is this the kind of company you want to keep on this issue?

I think Australians should learn to respect women and treat them with basic decency.

Or perhaps you disagree.


Yours sincerely,

Michael Brull

Michael Brull has a featured blog at Independent Australian Jewish Voices.

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THE Australian Defence Force has failed to fully investigate and punish dozens of serving members linked to an online social media campaign that publicly named and vilified homosexual personnel.

Despite the situation on the ground in Libya being described by none other than US Republican Hawk John McCain as a "stalemate" amid NATO’s refusal to apologise for bombing its rebel allies last week, the Western military intervention by way of an enforced 'no-fly zone' has on the whole aroused surprisingly little prominent opposition in Australia.

Instead we have seen a torrent of support not only from the usual voices but also from seemingly unlikely sources. Blogging extensively on the issue at Crikey for example, the purportedly left-wing Guy Rundle has demanded via some realpolitik moral contortionism worthy of Christopher Hitchens, arguing that people who desire "solidarity with the Libyan revolution" must support the military action.

 

Notable exceptions to the trans-ideological chorus of approval include a recent article by Amin Saikal here at ABC Drum, highlighting the West’s truly inconsistent morality in singling out the Libyans for 'saving' (while the Palestinians don’t qualify, despite being more deserving than anyone), and a critique of Rundle’s argument in New Matilda. Depressingly for those who believe in a lively local public sphere, there seems to be more diversity of Western views beyond our shores both in the form of left-oriented online opinion but also some international 'establishment' voices such as military strategists and conservative political commentators.

To find diversity within the massive wide-scale support for the intervention gushing from prominent political and commentary quarters, you need to look at the tone with which it is enunciated. The Right’s advocacy is tempered by the feeling that the intervention is too timid (and perhaps not clearly enough a US-lead operation), while mainstream Left-liberals present as anxious about supporting military action. But both have essentially given the nod. Various quibbles about the mission’s design, handling and scope should not distract us from the fact of a disturbing uniformity of opinion. Naturally everyone is desperate to see the end of violence by Gaddafi’s forces and the advent of democratic freedoms in Libya and elsewhere. But in place of reasoned argument and attempts to look beneath the rhetoric of ‘selfless’ interference and the appalling history it has always served to justify, we are witnessing what amounts to an orgy of Western vanity.

 

Soothing selflessness – bad history 

A silent yet rightfully obvious truth of history is that no powerful state militarily intervenes beyond its borders while declaring such action as motivated by naked self-interest. When Hitler’s armies invaded (or 'annexed') the Sudetenland in 1938, the Führer of present-day Downfall-fuelled imagination did not issue megalomaniacal demands for Europe’s violent subjugation. Instead, Nazi propaganda wove a reassuring story of liberating the local German-speaking population from Czech oppression and Bolshevik aggression, imparting deserved 'civilised values' in accordance with shared German heritage. In the short term this justification worked – enough for Britain and France to endorse the ‘transfer’ of German-speaking Czech territory to Hitler’s control at Munich in September of that year. The subsequent Polish invasion exactly 12 months later was similarly justified as rescuing its citizens from domestic terror.

           

Every imperial war of invasion, or rear-guard 'defence' of militarily acquired colonial territory against independence movements, has been accompanied by a déjà vu narrative protesting that the violence is in the best interest of locals who need to be saved by the 'security' and possibly 'culture' of their superior occupiers. For the long history of the West, this has been 'the white man’s burden' writ large. Not only have endless wars of aggression and colonial maintenance been mounted with accompanying protestations of disinterested aims, but even more remarkably with the claim that the subjugated population should actually be thankful to their foreign masters for expending efforts and resources that could otherwise be spent back home.

           

We only need to recall our own nation’s determination to repel imperialist Japan from the South Pacific during World War II, and particularly to imagine Australians’ response if Japan (a country that could claim to have a superior ‘culture’ to that of an immature British colony) mounted a successful invasion and occupation, to see how the idea just doesn’t wash when the boot’s on the other foot. And in the late 1930s Japanese citizens were assured that their nation’s military expansion was in the best interests of the region, known as the Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The brutal Japanese invasions and occupation of Chinese territory during this period were described as a "Holy war" for the overall greater good of the Middle Kingdom, protecting the local population from Communist aggression and generously bringing a more advanced level of civilization to poor and ‘backward’ people. More recently of course, the same basic civilising and modernising rhetoric is repeated in oft-heard Chinese claims concerning the present-day PRC’s military control of, and increasing Han presence within, Tibet.

           

Looking to the most powerful global actor since World War II, the USA has undertaken military actions or covert interventions within approximately 50 countries, in the process leading to the overthrow of many democracies and ushering in long periods of appalling dictatorship – perhaps most famously Iran in 1953 and Chile in 1973. When doing so, at least where the mission had Congressional approval and was made public (as opposed to the secret carpet bombing of Cambodia and Laos in the early 1970s, or the arming of the contras in Nicaragua during the ‘80s), naturally enough the long-familiar song of ‘good intentions’ was sung in massed chorus by the US and its Pollyanna allies. A frequently compliant media provided the megaphone.

           

Two decades after the demise of its competing superpower, the USSR, the seldom acknowledged fact that the USA today has more bases in every corner of the globe than any other country has achieved in history doesn’t, apparently, demonstrate unparalleled military and political dominance. It merely enables the continuation of a benign, neutral, natural order of things. A good example was Hillary Clinton during her visit to Australia earlier this year blithely describing the USA’s continued military and political dominance of the Asia Pacific as merely guaranteeing the ongoing freedom of the waterways. The undemocratic and quite Mafiosi-like implications were then hinted at when she said emphatically: "We've been here, we are here and we will be here".

           

Obama’s balm, liberal mythmaking

 

So why has the Libyan campaign reduced nearly everyone to such acquiescent head nodding? One key reason is Clinton’s boss, Barack Obama. That he was slow to formally commit to a no-fly zone demonstrated to many people on the mainstream liberal-left that the young US President was very different indeed from his predecessor. Yet if we look beyond the calm demeanour and moderate language, the evidence is rather different.

 

Within two weeks of becoming president, Obama stepped up Bush’s bombing of Pakistan by unmanned drones – despite being repeatedly asked to stop ever since by its elected government (supposedly a key ally in the ‘war on terror’) – in addition to subsequently deepening the Afghanistan military occupation. Obama is no ‘dove’, and even his much referenced opposition to the Iraq madness is fudged. On-the-record statements and much ballyhooed speeches by the future Commander-in-chief made clear that he opposed the invasion for financial and strategic reasons rather than those of principle. (And even these reasons might contradict those he gives for the current Libyan intervention.)

           

Because of – not despite – the above, Obama is a textbook US ‘liberal’ entirely in line with historical, as opposed to rhetorical, tradition. Noam Chomsky analysed the commentary in detail at the time to show that opposition from liberal voices to the Vietnam War (or the ‘American War’, as the Vietnamese call it) were almost uniformly for the same reason as those offered by Obama for not invading Iraq: strategic mistakes motivated by ‘good intentions’, rather than outright crimes. The morally unambiguous point that the US possesses no right to be in these countries in the first place is usually off the Richter scale of ‘normal’ discourse.

           

Another key reason cited for the Libyan intervention’s legitimacy is UN and Arab League approval. Yet while the latter initially called for the no-fly zone, it subsequently appeared to reverse course after reports of civilian casualties (meanwhile, only two of the 21 League countries, Qatar and the UAE, have committed forces to the mission). The African Union, meanwhile, was never behind the idea. Turkey and Egypt, both eager to maintain good ties with the West (the former having real motivation to please initial mission leader France while it awaits EU membership), are offering only limited non-military support. And when it comes to the United Nations itself, there is in fact no ‘international consensus’.

           

UN Security Council Resolution 1973, which sanctions establishment of the no-fly zone, actually received far from a ringing endorsement. Russia, China, Brazil, India, and perhaps more surprisingly Germany – hardly inconsiderable global players – suggested non-military means of resolving the conflict and refused to approve (abstaining, rather then voting against) the rather vague UNSCR 1973, which is seen by many – including Kevin Rudd, as he confirmed on the ABC’s Q&A program this week – as allowing for further commitment beyond the no-fly zone. Rather than ‘the international community’ or a substantial ‘coalition’, the Libya mission is thereby being prosecuted largely by the three starring protagonists in the history of colonial and imperial control over large tracts of the world during the last two centuries: the UK and France, then the USA.

 

Serious self-love: ‘humanitarian intervention’ and R2P

           

The big precedent for this kind of Western military action is the discourse of ‘humanitarian intervention’ first espoused by the political and media chorus of self-congratulation accompanying the March-June 1999 NATO bombing of Kosovo. More recently, it has gained official UN-speak jargon as ‘Responsibility to Protect’ or ‘R2P’. This presumptive and sanctimonious doctrine is beloved of diplomatic and think-tank insiders such as Roger Shanahan, who in a recent ABC Drum article extolled its ‘invoking’ in the case of Libya while lambasting Arab governments for failing to live up to a principle invented by Western powers. Requiring UN Security Council approval, the invoking of R2P requires ‘our’ (Western) approval – and usually authorship, if we are to trust its implementation – to undertake military actions within other sovereign states where it is argued the local population needs said ‘protection’. If powerful states so enamoured of R2P (so long as they are the ones who get to demand its enactment) were honest, the convention would be known as ‘R2I’: Right to Interfere, or Invade. This is what it amounts to, so long as a ‘selfless’ enough argument can be made – which is the norm, as history shows.

           

The NATO bombing of Kosovo was trumpeted by Western governments as heralding a wonderful new era of morally motivated, selfless ‘humanitarian’ intervention, giving fresh purpose to the Cold War winners’ military budgets and power thanks to what ought to have been an irrelevant institution in what we were repeatedly assured was a ‘post-ideological’ world. (NATO‘s stated reason for being was to protect Western Europe from Soviet aggression.) The Kosovo mission – justification for which has been seriously questioned outside mainstream media circles by academic historians and scholars of international law – emboldened the West to assume a newly minted existential bravado. This enabled the indulging of a seriously narcissistic love: one that could now be spread across all corners of the world.

           

Of course a few short years later, with the advent of the Bush era and its US-lead invasions of Afghanistan, and especially Iraq, the Kosovo-coined sanctimonious narrative of Western invasion was seriously endangered.  Yet today, now that Bush – who did more damage than his purported enemies to Western authority by failing to maintain its moral niceties – is gone, the important facts of US power he so blatantly represented appear to have been shoved under the carpet once more. We can, it seems, with clean hands again justify military action as re-authored by a more ‘liberal’ idealism, one that makes us feel a lot better than Bush’s brand. Hence the enactment of R2P: the ultimate Western vanity project asserting that in spite of everything the world still needs our help after all. The white man’s burden lives on.

 

Problematic Precedents

             

None of this is to definitively say there could never be a conceivable instance where military intervention may save further atrocities from occurring. Beyond ubiquitous justifications of Western power offered by the endless think-tank representatives we see on TV and in broadsheet opinion pages, academically well-known scholarship (such as here and here) that analyses the historical claims made by instigators of wars has frequently suggested two potential cases where a good argument can be made that intervention did effectively put a stop to horrific violence. The first is India’s invasion of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1971, undertaken following repeated calls for international action with the stated aim of halting genocidal attacks being carried out against the Hindu Bengali population by the Pakistan army. The second is Viet Nam’s invasion of Cambodia in late 1978 to oust its former ally Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, finally putting an end to the mass-murder of around 2 million people or over a quarter of the civilian population (an atrocity, but not Viet Nam’s stopping of it, which became well-known in the West as ‘the killing fields’).

           

On the surface you might assume this scholarship and qualified justification of military intervention might helpfully offer useful exemplars for the R2P brigade to advertise some precedent to the idea. However, the problem of course is that the historical actors in both examples were not only non-Western, but also our enemies: India, the far too independent socialist co-founder of the Non-Aligned Movement, and dastardly communist Viet Nam. (The latter was public enemy number one for just having defeated the apocalyptic US invasion that cost millions of lives (according to a 1995 Agence France Presse report in light of newly released Vietnamese documents, over 10% of the population), not counting the death tolls caused by bombing of Cambodia and Laos.

 

Such military interventions as these, which we would call ‘humanitarian’ if carried out by our own armies, were bitterly condemned by the US and most Western countries at the time.

 

'Worth it'?

           

It is too soon to tell if the Libya mission is ‘worth it’ for the local population (the moral claim of R2P, whether we buy it or not) as opposed to for the intervening parties: that our actions will not do more harm than they cause. Yet while you might reasonably expect that such historical moments demand sober deliberation, fully taking into account the historical precedence and outcomes of similar past claims and missions, it rather seems that the long and bloody story of Western invasion and occupation counts for little in the Obama era. Instead, the unctuous rhetoric espoused by the likes of David Cameron and Rudd in the last three weeks not only goes unchallenged most of the time but also seems to be doing its seductive trick.

           

US President Dwight Eisenhower once called the Middle East the "most strategically important region of the world", Chomsky reminds readers, due to one simple reason: its energy reserves. For those hoping the Libya intervention will buck the trend when it comes to self-interested Western involvement around the world, and that the country’s oil is somehow irrelevant (as Rudd disingenuously said with a straight face on QandA when asked), it needs to stressed that in addition to a current global output of two percent as the world’s ninth largest supplier, vast untapped reserves are widely estimated. Just as importantly, however, Libya offers the potential for an increasingly rare ‘pro-Western’ (US-friendly) state in the region. If the rebels do win their fight with Western assistance in the skies, it will not be a free lunch.

           

It is disappointing to see so many diverse voices automatically give Western military action the benefit of the doubt as if precedent counts for nothing. The Australian Greens surprised many people with their immediate support, Bob Brown even proudly arguing he was earlier than Labor in calling for a no-fly zone. One might have hoped the notionally left wing ‘progressive’ party would take a more circumspect and rigorous approach to the heated calls for the West to yet again bomb Arab land. John Birmingham has pointed out in the Sydney Morning Herald that the Greens’ support for the mission seems to actually contradict their own publically available defence (or ‘peace and security’) policy.

           

It is one thing to see the major political parties and prominent right-wing media commentators sanctimoniously assert the selflessness of Western military action with no qualification. It is quite another to see the likes of the Greens and other notionally left-of-centre voices given air-time on ABC panel discussion programs wringing their hands with self-importance as if there is no choice but to immediately join the chorus, or via more bellicose and ideologically counter-intuitive demands such as Rundle’s. It seems that even those with a history of sceptical thinking when it comes to Western military adventurism sometimes still like to be able to think we are Gods. Despite the bloody historical wreckage resulting from centuries of high-tech interference, apparently this time it will be different. In spite of everything, the West can redeem itself and save the world after all. 

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THE Australian Defence Force has failed to fully investigate and punish dozens of serving members linked to an online social media campaign that publicly named and vilified homosexual personnel.

A serving Australian Army officer says the "destructive" military culture will never change while Angus Houston remains chief.

While thousands visit Europe for the historical, architectural and cultural experiences, many more just want to get wasted and party, with the focus firmly on cultural exchanges of a romantic nature. And, if you’re young, optimistic and unburdened by children, jobs and mortgages, why not?

Although I’d traveled independently before, I didn’t experience the backpacker travel scene until the late eighties. That summer I went traveling round Greece and Turkey with Karen.

She was a student in London too and, although a less experienced and more cautious traveler than me, Karen gamely agreed to many of my suggestions.

While I had the upper hand when it came to travel experience, Karen was a seasoned party animal and man magnet who made me look like Anne of Green Gables.

In London we dragged ourselves to lectures by day and by night we worked together in an East End pub, scrimping and saving to earn enough money for our forthcoming adventure.

There Karen picked up a dazzling array of dishy but dodgy young men, while I kept my head down pulling pints and trying to avoid the aging beer-bellied East Enders who ribbed me mercilessly for being stuck up before inviting me out. Each time I refused their hounding intensified, a price I was quite willing to pay for a carefree summer backpacking trip.

To save money and avoid running out of cash later on Karen and I decided to free camp on the beach at the start of our trip.

There is nothing I enjoy more than planning my travels – I pore over the guide books for months before setting foot on the plane trying to work out which places I absolutely have to see, and which ones will have to wait for another trip. This time was no different and I finally picked a little-known Greek island where we could get a nice tan before heading to the party islands.

Karen was more into sunbathing and partying but I was determined to get off the beaten track, visit the ancient ruins and have a proper cultural experience, so this way we were both happy.

Unfortunately, my guide book failed to mention that the island of Chios was a military base inhabited mainly by several hundred bored, sex-starved Greek soldiers.

The long-suffering Karen was not impressed, but we slept on the beach anyway, washing in a nearby restaurant and kidding ourselves the staff didn’t notice when we slipped off to wash our hair in the basin after ordering a Greek salad.

Chios was a charming spot. The stunning beaches and lack of tourists filled my desire to discover undiscovered Greece but unfortunately we were too naive to give false names to the lusty Greek army boys.

At night the air would reverberate with calls of “Karen” and “Annabel” as the Greek soldiers hunted us down.

We huddled between the sand dunes giggling softly so they wouldn’t hear us with our sleeping bags pulled up to our chins. But they were a persistent bunch and we had to leave after four nights because we couldn’t stand the relentless male attention any more.

A few long ferry rides later, Ios lived up to its reputation as party central.

We soon met two fun-loving  Australian girls and hung around in a foursome bar hopping until the small hours. We always seemed to lose one another as the night wore on and invariably I was the only one who actually slept in our room at night. But come noon we’d be miraculously reunited, tucked up safely in our beds, trying to piece together what had happened the night before.

Our exploits were tame compared to some of the other travelers. I remember chatting to one man outside a bar who was swigging rough Greek spirits straight from the bottle. He offered me a swig (which I politely refused), then vomited over his shoulder before turning back, wiping his mouth with his sleeve and carrying on the conversation.

I didn’t hear of anyone taking drugs but there were all kinds of strange rumors about people being slipped hallucinogenic drugs on Ios. Still, we were fine and left the island after 10 days of hedonism simply because we were on the brink of exhaustion.

Endless days and nights of tequila slammers, dancing on bars and inane conversation take its toll no matter how young you are. Compared to many travelers I didn’t drink much but I still reckon about 25% of my brain cells were left behind on that Greek party island. Karen and the Aussie girls seemed to be able to drink more and cope with it better but even they were worn out.

Santorini whose scenic slopes adorn adverts for Greece, was nearby and sounded ideal for some much needed rest and recovery. But as we boarded the ferry I fell over and lay on my back cycling my legs in the air like an upended tortoise, pinned by the weight of my backpack. It took all three of my friends to help me back on my feet.

In Santorini we hired lumbering donkeys to carry us up the steep track to town. Santorini is all white buildings, blue skies and fishy air and that night Karen and I went to bed early looking forward to our first decent sleep for weeks.

When I woke in the night to find a strange man sitting on the chair by my bed I was terrified. And, worse still, unable to move or even utter a sound. The man didn’t actually do anything other than watch me but I frantically tried to move or scream out for hours.

Time dragged by. My throat constricted and ached. I tried frantically to move and eventually, with super human effort, I finally managed to move a foot and at last open my mouth to scream before running out of the room yelling at full volume:

“There’s a man in my room and I don’t know who it is.”

I was naked and didn’t have much trouble getting the attention of a group of French men at the restaurant next door.

The gallant Gauls grabbed a stick, jumped over the small wall separating us and raced into my room where Karen was sitting up in bed silently. The men soon came out again shrugging their shoulders and saying:

“There eeees no man inside.”

“Where did he go?” I asked Karen.

She handed me a sheet and spoke slowly as if to a child:

“I didn’t see any man, Annabel.”

That’s when I burst into tears wailing:

“I think I’ve had a bad trip.”

Our French heroes made their excuses and fled but after that we kept bumping into them again wherever we went.

Then it was my turn to flee as they sniggered and pointed at the crazy English girl.

Never mind the real dangers of traveling my mother warned me about, it seemed like the biggest threat was inside my head.

It’s a shame I’ve lost contact with those old travel friends now but some memories last forever.

I bet they still remember their old friend Tripper.

Naked  Travel Story Footnote

I’m still not sure what really happened to me but I now doubt anyone slipped hallucinogenic drugs into one of my  drinks.

According to the Dream Doctor sleep paralysis seems to be more likely. I particularly like his explanation because he claims that, while these dreams may make you feel like you’re going crazy, it doesn’t mean you actually are crazy. Very comforting.

This is his definition of sleep paralysis:

“Sleep paralysis occurs when we wake up mentally—only to discover that our bodies still are “asleep”—and we can’t move!

To make matters even more confusing, our awakening from REM sleep typically is only partial. This means we tend to have long and confusing dreams about being paralyzed, and, because we feel vulnerable, we often dream of being attacked.”

Share Your Travel Stories

What’s  your most embarrassing story or most memorable travel story? Please share it in the comments below or write your own blog post – we want to read it!

Naked Travel Stories Will be Continued…

Later, in an inspired move, Karen and I shred our plane tickets and hitchhike to the Oktober Fest in Germany. And despite all precautions we do run out of money.

Thank you for reading – stay tuned by email or RSS.

The Wilding Foundation and its founder, actress/director/producer Anna Wilding, have announced a special treat for two Christchurch families affected by the devastating earthquake that struck the New Zealand city on February 22.

This coming weekend, The Wiggles – the wildly successful Australian musical group catering to children under 5 years old – will be making a special presentation of children’s designer boots on behalf of New Zealand-born supermodel Kylie Bax and her Original NZ Boot Company, and Anna Wilding and the Wilding Foundation.

The Wiggles will be in Christchurch next weekend. The two families, identified by the Wilding Foundation with help in one instance from The Salvation Army, are “thrilled”. The presentation will take place at one of the group’s weekend concerts.

Ms Bax and Ms Wilding joined forces soon after the quake to distribute boots to those hardest hit by the earthquake. Since launching its fundraising appeal, the Wilding Foundation has donated thousands of dollars of funds directly to children who lost a parent in the earthquake and those families most in need. Ms Wilding – who started her launch appeal in Los Angeles – arrived in Christchurch 3 weeks ago on a fact finding mission and to continue administering funds and visiting the hardest hit areas.

The charity recently received a boost when Australian Group Men Wot Sing combined with Isabella Accapella and Altonsville Volunteer Fire Brigade and donated proceeds from their fundraiser for the Christchurch Earthquake.

The Christchurch earthquake left over 160 people dead and destroying the homes and livelihoods of thousands of others.

The Wiggles play in CBS Canterbury Arena on Saturday 16th and Sunday 17th April.

Related past articles

• Jackie Chan Announces Celebrity Charity Concert For Japan
• Supermodel Kylie Bax Donates Boots To Young Earthquake Victims In New Zealand
• New Zealand-Born Actress Launches Christchurch Earthquake Charity Appeal
• Christchurch Earthquake - A Personal Plea For Help
• Music Superstars Create CD for Flood Victims

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195061

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 04 BAGHDAD 000553

NOFORN

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/27/2019

TAGS: PTER, PHUM, PINR, PREF, PREL, IZ, IR, US

SUBJECT: MEK/CAMP ASHRAF - THE WAY AHEAD

REF: A. BAGHDAD 442

B. BAGHDAD 420

C. BAGHDAD 405

D. BAGHDAD 287

E. BRUSSELS 101

F. BAGHDAD 113

G. 08 BAGHDAD 2658

Classified By: Political Military Minister Counselor Michael H.

Corbin for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d)

1. (S/NF) Summary: The Mujahedin e-Khalq (MEK) faces a

difficult position in Iraq as the GOI has made clear it

considers the group a terrorist organization and seeks the

closure of the Camp Ashraf facility and the departure of all

the residents from Iraq. It plans to prosecute some members

of the group for crimes it believes the MEK conducted on

behalf of Saddam Hussein's regime against both Shi'a and

Kurds. The GOI is pressing other countries to take the rest

of the residents. Camp Ashraf is now under the security

responsibility of the GOI, with a small U.S. force in a

monitoring role. The GOI has provided written assurances of

humane treatment for the residents of Camp Ashraf and has

said it will not forcibly deport any member to a country

where he or she might face persecution. While the GOI is

impatient on this issue and faces considerable pressure from

Iran, it is learning that there is no easy or quick solution.

In order to break-up the cult-like nature of the

organization, the GOI is threatening to separate the leaders

of the organization from the rank and file. Unless done over

time and according to careful preparation and planning, this

act (or the decision to seek to arrest the leaders) will

cause a humanitarian crisis. If the GOI acts harshly against

the MEK and provokes a reaction (or the MEK provokes the

Iraqi Security Forces (ISF)), the USG faces a challenging

dilemma: we either protect members of a Foreign Terrorist

Organization (FTO) against actions of the ISF and risk

violating the U.S.-Iraq Security Agreement, or we decline to

protect the MEK in the face of a humanitarian crisis, thus

leading to international condemnation of both the USG and the

GOI. In consultation with the Commanding General (CG),

Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I), our selected course of

action is to encourage the GOI to negotiate directly with the

MEK, press both sides to exercise restraint, monitor the

situation at Camp Ashraf, and further involve international

organizations and third country diplomats. End Summary.

----------

Background

----------

2. (S/NF) There are currently 3400 individuals, most of them

members of the MEK, residing at Camp Ashraf, approximately 90

km Northeast of Baghdad. After being expelled from France,

the organization relocated to Iraq in 1986, at the invitation

of Saddam Hussein. They established the National Liberation

Army (NLA), an approximately 7,000-member force (some

estimates suggest it may have been as much as three times

larger) who pursued conventional combat against the Iranian

regime, sometimes unilaterally, other times in concert with

the Iraqi forces, utilizing Iraqi territory as their base.

From 1986 until the signing of the Iran-Iraq ceasefire in

1988, the NLA suffered significant casualties, particularly

in their last offensive. From that time until 2001, the NLA

continued periodic small-scale cross border raids and have

defended themselves against corresponding Iranian attacks in

Iraqi territory. There are conflicting reports of MEK

QIraqi territory. There are conflicting reports of MEK

operations conducted against Kurdish factions in the North

and Shi'a in the South in the aftermath of Operation DESERT

STORM.

3. (SBU) During the invasion of Iraq by Coalition Forces (CF)

in Operation Iraqi Freedom, MEK bases in Iraq were bombed.

Several MEK members were killed or wounded during the

attacks, but the MEK members were ordered not to return fire,

and they did not. The MEK/NLA subsequently signed a cease

fire letter on April 15, 2003. Heavy weapons and all light

arms were confiscated from the MEK, and the membership of the

MEK in Iraq was consolidated from several MEK camps to the

main camp at Ashraf. Joint Task Force-134 (TF-134) began to

provide security protection for Camp Ashraf and its residents

upon the construction of the adjoining Forward Operating Base

(FOB) Grizzly.

BAGHDAD 00000553 002 OF 004

4. (S/NF) Because of reports that the MEK had participated in

putting down the Kurdish and Shi'a uprisings and have had

relations with terrorist organizations, they do not enjoy a

large following in Iraq. Likewise, because they had fought

alongside Iraqi forces against Iranians, their popular

support in Iran is low. They have, however, succeeded

(sometimes with monetary incentives) in endearing themselves

to the surrounding villages in Diyala Province, providing

jobs, water, medical services, and other support.

5. (S/NF) Although the GOI had several times since 2003

called for the expulsion of the Camp Ashraf residents (CAR),

the situation came to a head in June 2008. After a

large-scale anti-Iranian (and some say anti-Iraqi) political

rally was held at Camp Ashraf, the GOI struck back. The

Council of Ministers issued a decree that labeled the MEK as

an FTO and made it illegal for anyone to do business with the

camp. It officially called for expulsion of the group from

Iraq.

6. (S/NF) Anticipating the expiration of the UN mandate

allowing unilateral action by CF in Iraq, and that protected

persons status could no longer be offered to the CAR after

December 31, 2008, the USG (Embassy/MNF-I) began preparing

for and coordinating with the GOI for the transfer of

security responsibility for the camp and its residents. The

Embassy asked for and received written assurances of humane

treatment for the residents (REF G). In summary, the

assurances provide that the residents will be treated

humanely in accordance with Iraq's Constitution, laws and

international obligations. They also provide that the

Government will not transfer residents to any where they may

have reason to fear persecution for their political opinions

or religious beliefs or where they may be subject to torture.

7. (S/NF) The GOI has presented its official position on the

MEK: they are a terrorist organization, but the members will

be treated as individuals. They have been given only two

options: repatriate willingly to Iran or to a third country

of their choosing.

-----------

The New Era

-----------

8. (S) As of January 1, 2009, the USG no longer accords CAR

protected persons status under the Fourth Geneva Convention -

a policy position reached by OSD in 2004. Currently,

however, 200 U.S. soldiers remain posted near Camp Ashraf (at

FOB Grizzly) to monitor and report on the situation at the

camp. These forces operate at the invitation of the GOI in

accordance with the Security Agreement.

9. (S/NF) On January 1, the USG began a coordinated process

of turning security of the camp fully over to the GOI. This

process, which included training of the Iraqi Army (IA)

battalion (BN) stationed at Camp Ashraf and joint manning of

the checkpoints leading into the camp, was completed on

February 20.

-----------------------------

GOI Plans with Regard to Camp

-----------------------------

10. (S) An inter-ministerial committee was established by the

GOI under the direction of National Security Advisor (NSA)

Dr. Mowaffaq al-Rubaie. This committee is studying various

options for the CAR (REF B), including:

-- Arresting leaders. We know there are currently three

active GOI arrest warrants for MEK leaders. There are

Qactive GOI arrest warrants for MEK leaders. There are

reports of up to 54 MEK members wanted by the Iranian

Government (it is unclear how many of these 54 are actually

at Camp Ashraf).

-- Separating leaders from the rank and file. Rubaie noted

that one option being considered was to physically separate

the "top 50-100" leaders from the rest of the camp, either

within the camp or otherwise.

-- Relocating residents to diverse locations far from Iran.

Rubaie is studying a proposal to relocate CAR to "two or

three" other locations in the Western part of Iraq, "away

from the possibility of Iranian attack."

BAGHDAD 00000553 003 OF 004

11. (S/NF) While the third option is least likely, execution

of any of the three is likely to cause a humanitarian crisis.

A recent defector revealed plans for limited to large-scale

immolations, at Camp Ashraf and abroad, and acts of suicide

by at least female leaders should GOI enter the camp to

arrest leaders. There are also plans for large

demonstrations by CAR to protest any extended GOI presence in

the camp. These demonstrations, while intended to be

peaceful, could easily grow into a violent confrontation with

ISF (REF F). MNF-I rules of engagement (ROE) permit forces

to respond to situations in which deadly force is used

against unarmed persons.

--------------------------

International Resettlement

--------------------------

12. (S/NF) More than 1000 of the CAR allege ties to third

countries other than Iran. France, Germany, Canada,

Australia and the UK make up a majority of the claims. The

EU recently de-listed the MEK as an FTO (REF E). As such, we

have requested that the Department demarche European capitals

(REF D) to urge them to repatriate their nationals; to

consider, for humanitarian reasons, renewing refugee status

claims; and to allow those with family ties to enter their

countries for family reunification purposes.

13. (S/NF) The Iranian Embassy in Baghdad has told the Iraqi

Minister of Human Rights that it intends to issue valid

passports to all 3400 CAR and send them to Turkey (REF C).

Contrary to public statements (REF D), the Iranian Ambassador

told the Minister that Iran does not want to repatriate any

of the MEK defectors to Iran. ICRC officials told us

February 5 that they believed Iran would repatriate former

MEK members, but noted there have not been any repatriations

since April 2008. The ICRC has noted that they have no

reports of persecution of the former MEK members who have

returned to Iran, but also admits that its capability to

monitor in Iran is extremely limited. Without strict

international monitoring, it is likely that few of the 3400

CAR would chose to return to Iran.

----------------------

Way Ahead Here in Iraq

----------------------

14. (S) In conjunction with the MNF-I, our plan is to press

the GOI to honor its humanitarian assurances (most recently

reaffirmed by PM Maliki on Feb 19 (REF A)). PM Maliki

responded he would scrupulously respect the assurances.

TF-134 will monitor the camp and continue to facilitate

coordination between the CAR and the GOI.

15. (S) The 200 U.S. soldiers at FOB Grizzly will continue to

observe and record GOI conduct toward the MEK, as will an

Embassy team and international organizations, such as ICRC

and UNAMI. The CDA and CG MNF-I will personally protest any

violations of humanitarian assurances directly to PM Maliki.

Our military forces will not interfere with GOI efforts to

arrest leaders, but will seek to prevent mistreatment of

civilians, in accordance with CENTCOM ROE. Because U.S.

military intervention has the potential to precipitate a

crisis in our relationship with the GOI, Embassy and MNF-I

will coordinate with the highest levels of the GOI in an

effort to prevent such a crisis from developing or

escalating. Embassy will also immediately consult with the

Department in the event of any confrontation between U.S. and

QDepartment in the event of any confrontation between U.S. and

Iraqi forces.

16. (S) We will continue to encourage international

organizations to remain involved in the MEK situation. The

ICRC, admitting to a lack of resources, visited the camp once

again February 25. Although the ICRC will not establish a

permanent presence at Camp Ashraf, officials say they will

continue to monitor the humanitarian situation. The UNHCR

has noted its intention to interview the two recent MEK

defectors in Baghdad regarding their refugee claims.

Representatives of the CAR recently traveled to Baghdad,

escorted by IA forces, to meet with UNAMI representatives.

It is extremely important for these organizations to assist

in finding solutions to the MEK situation.

17. (S/NF) As our role in negotiations between the MEK and

BAGHDAD 00000553 004 OF 004

the GOI has diminished, direct interaction between the GOI

and the MEK has increased. Upon our recommendation, MEK

leaders have begun to address their concerns directly with

GOI authorities rather than to us. Tactical coordination

between MEK security forces and the IA BN has produced

positive results and has increased the confidence of the MEK

on the IA providing security for Camp Ashraf.

18. (S/NF) Since Rubaie's meeting with Western diplomats

January 27 (Ref D), we have engaged the French, British,

Canadian, Swedish and Australian Embassies regarding CAR who

claim to have ties to their countries. While the French

Government has noted its intention not to accept any of the

CAR, others are consulting with their governments on the

prospect. We will provide support to those embassies that

wish to visit their nationals and those who claim former

refugee status or to have family ties.

19. (S) We believe this measured and evenhanded approach,

coupled with extensive senior leader engagement, will defuse

a volatile situation. Nevertheless, we cannot be certain of

success. It is impossible to entirely eliminate the

possibility that (elements of) the GOI, or the MEK, will

instigate a confrontation in spite of our efforts.

BUTENIS

If the resistance is armed, it is terrorism. If the resistance is unarmed, it is extremism. If the resistance is verbal, it is anti-Semitism. And if the resistance is crushed, it is colonialism.

Attempts to redress Palestinian human rights have been check-mated with a litany of labels that are aimed to invalidate their every move.

It is ironic that the Greens candidates who dared to take a moral and non-violent stand against the Israeli occupation have copped the wrath of those who carry the political whips. Labels such as extremist, anti-Semitic and Nazi have been used as an emotional weapon to deride the lunatic left and mask many sobering facts. The antidote to a perceived vilification of Zionists appears to be to the vilification of the individual.

With swastikas and loaded labels smeared onto the Greens candidates, the individuals are placed in a defensive position where they are permanently tattooed as guilty – defeated Greens candidate for Marrickville Fiona Byrne, successful candidate for Balmain Jamie Parker, and Senator elect Lee Rhiannon.

It is a profound price to pay and a powerful tactic to silence future critics of Israel or supporters of the global Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.

On cue, the major parties promptly paid their dues to Israel. Tony Abbott stated that “the Coalition completely rejects any campaign designed to weaken Israel...I call on the Prime Minister to pull her alliance partner into line”. He referred to the BDS as “nonsense”.

Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said his government “did not condone nor support any boycotts or sanctions against the Jewish state”.

Opposition Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop referred to Lee Rhiannon’s pro-BDS comments as “extreme”, “highly prejudicial” and “deeply troubling”. This should come as no surprise given that Ms Bishop attended the Kevin Rudd-led delegation of 17 parliamentarians to the Australia Israel Leadership forum last December.

Trade Minister Craig Emerson referred to BDS as a “disgusting policy” and praised the Marrickville voters for rejecting this “Greens extremism”. The applause from Israel was almost audible from Australia.

If any of these whip crackers bothered to research the facts about the BDS, they would struggle to find any extremism. The BDS campaign was founded in 2005, one year after the International Court of Justice found that Israel’s wall, built on occupied Palestinian territory, to be illegal. Contrary to the scaremongering of its critics that compares the BDS campaign with Nazi propaganda, the Palestinian Civil Society BDS founder Omar Barghouti articulates the genesis and inspiration.

“We the representatives of Palestinian civil society call upon international civil society organisations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era….We also invite conscientious Israelis to support this call for the sake of justice and genuine peace.”

Anchored in international law and universal human rights, the BDS campaign has three stated goals: ending the occupation including the dismantling of the wall; equal rights to Palestinian citizens of Israel; the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes as per UN resolution 194.The movement categorically rejects all form of racism including anti-Semitism, and has attracted support from Jewish civil groups both within Israel and in the Diaspora.

Where exactly is the extremism with this vision that is “rooted in a century-old history of civil, non-violent resistance against settler colonialism, occupation and ethnic cleansing”? The extremism is more likely to be found in the anti-BDS propaganda, comparing this unarmed resistance to the Nazi boycott of Jews in 1930’s, whereby “dehumanizing them…is a vital step on the way to genocide”.

Australia’s bipartisan loyalty to Israel is apparently in question when the Greens gain the balance of power in the Senate in three months. Is this because the major parties need to save face with Israel or Australia?. Over 100 Australian leaders have ‘graduated’ from the Rambam Israel Fellowship, including Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd, Alexander Downer and Bill Shorten. The six day program is engineered by the Israeli Foreign Ministry. By their own admission, the Rambam organisers have declared that “for the money we invest in, you can’t ask for better results”.

The latest vilification of the BDS campaign is yet another example of a return on this investment.

Ironically, Ms Gillard has declared that “we are ready to support sanctions against Iran if it does not comply with the obligations placed on it by the international community”. But Israel will remain exempt from that same moral principle.

The BDS was borne out of frustration, where armed resistances and two Intifadas have failed to produce peace. The verbal resistance via successive negotiations and ‘road maps’ also failed. Hence, the BDS attempts to do what governments have failed to do. The most recent example of a non-violent and civil campaign took place across Israel’s borer on 30 January, where the Egyptian Third Army deliberately and collectively disobeyed their president’s orders to crush the demonstrators in Tahrir Square. The momentum inspired a domino effect across the region.

If indeed the Greens senators cause a rethink of the Middle East foreign policy, this is not daunting. This is democracy. It may indeed be a logical extension of a Roy Morgan national poll in June 2009 which found that 42 per cent of Australians found Israel’s actions in Gaza ‘not justified’, compared with 29 per cent who found them ‘justified’.

In our democracy, our politicians should shape our foreign policy based on our population and our national interests, not based on lubricated lobbying and ‘behind the scenes’ engineering.

Joseph Wakim is founder of Australian Arabic Council

• Read all responses to this article

Julia Gillard heads to China this month representing Australia in the Giants' Playground.The image is lifted from the new book by Cameron Forbes, 'The Korean War: Australia in the Giants' Playground'. 

I'm nominating this excellent book for a game all readers of The Interpreter are invited to join:

What should the Prime Minister read on the plane to China on 25 April?

After she has gone through the briefing papers one last time, what should she turn to get a wider perspective of the stakes involved? The first visit to China matches Gillard's trip to the US last month, and the two efforts will be compared. 

Just as interesting will be how it is measured against her predecessor's efforts. As John Garnaut comments: 'Whereas Kevin Rudd felt he needed to show that he was not too close to China, Gillard needs to be firm and not make mistakes'.

History will help the PM, and Forbes offers up geopolitics, diplomacy and war as a rattling good yarn. And, what it meant for Australia to join the US in what, against all expert predictions, became a war against China. 

In Washington, Gillard celebrated the 60th anniversary of the creation of the ANZUS alliance. Forbes shows how the alliance was forged out of the ashes of WW2 and the furnace of Korea. The alliance was the 'grand strategic pay-off', but the 'diggers would pay a blood price' in Korea. The sentiment may be familiar to a Prime Minister who has so firmly committed to stay in Afghanistan.

Forbes has the fine journalist's understanding that nothing involving the comedy and tragedy of humanity needs to be boring in the telling: his eye for the key detail is matched by a feel for the flings and follies of leaders. He places Australia's role in the war in the broader context of what the giants were doing on the world stage. 

The big actors perform: Mao, MacArthur, Stalin and Truman. And the 'great, blundering miscalculations' of the 20th Century's nastiest little war are retold. 

An Australian Prime Minister talking to the US and China could reflect on this story of initial triumph and then overreach by both sides; how the US completely misread the signals Beijing sent before entering the war. As Forbes remarks, from Korea to Iraq, 'many defeats and disasters can be attributed to flaws in intelligence gathering or faulty interpretations or wishful conclusions or wilful misrepresentations'.

He judges MacArthur's intelligence chief guilty of a cardinal intelligence sin, 'mirror imaging': 'The belief that one's enemy has the same basic thought processes, values and military intelligence as oneself, despite the fact that [the enemy] was clearly from a different culture'.

'Mirroring' reminded me of Hugh White's description of various discussions with the high-and-mighty in China and the US; from both directions he received confident assertions that the other side would never push the relationship to the brink because their economic interests were too deeply engaged. (Add Hugh's Quarterly Essay on Australia's future between Washington and Beijing to the reading list, plus The Interpreter debate.)  

Forbes' account of the problems the Australians in Korea had in coming to terms with the US military mindset, is a reminder that differences between allies can niggle in ways more intimate than the attacks of enemies.

The 'jealousy of unequals' (a Brit phrase to describe Australia and New Zealand) also applies to the relationship between the Commonwealth forces and the US in Korea.

Alliance differences in national argot and character can further complicate the fog of war. Forbes quotes a classic example from Max Hastings in one of the benchmark histories. At the battle of Imjin where the Gloucestershire Regiment was overrun by Chinese forces, the Brit commander informed US Corps HQ that the position was 'a bit sticky'. The US officers didn't grasp until too late that in British Army parlance, 'a bit sticky' translates as 'desperate'.

That reminded me of my favourite bit from Hastings on the jostling between the US military and their 'infinitely junior' coalition partners: 'An American unit in the Commonwealth Division area posted a sign over its camp entrance, proclaiming itself 'SECOND TO NONE'. The Australian radio relay station a few hundred yards further down posted a sign proclaiming itself 'NONE'.

Forbes offers up the individual Australian stories from Korea, illustrating anew that at the base of grand strategy stand the soldiers who have to do the job, yard by yard. That too, might strike a chord with a Prime Minister who has to attend the funerals of the soldiers she sends to Afghanistan. 

Cameron Forbes stands tall in a long line stretching back to Banjo Patterson at the Boer War — Oz hacks who mined history to frame Australia's memory and military understanding.

Photo by Flickr user Horia Varlan.

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