Afghan Grass Trimmer
April 30, 2009
Always be deeply cynical of stories that float around the mail systems, especially if they are accompanied by pleas for prayer, and/or onforwarding. Emotion and fact rarely marry in the internet chapel. Despite the caution I found myself warming to the alleged story (see below) behind this picture of a soldier trimming a patch of Australian grass sown, grown and mown in Afghanistan. Standing by to be told it is an American soldier with his Kentucky Blue in a Carolina training camp. Read more
Afghan Refugees
April 20, 2009
Mark Twain enjoined “Let your secret sympathies and your compassion be always with the under dog in the fight – this is magnanimity; but bet on the other one – this is business.” Sadly our government too often confuses the two. Afghan travellers looking for a better life have their boat explode from underneath them, sink, some drowning, others burning and the others somehow being picked up in one piece by our Navy. So I love seeing images such as these (SMH multimedia presentation of Burns Unit) – images of the refugees in high tech, first world health care getting the very best we can give them. Sad that a disaster had to precipitate such compassion but I am proud to be part of a community that can and does provide this sort of care. But can you imagine the dislocation in the minds of these patients, transitioning from the squalor of a crowded refugee boat to a hospital in Perth? I wonder where their journey ends. I hope it is here – the end result of some magnanimity, not elsewhere, the end result of some business.
Afghanistan Prophecy
March 8, 2009
In the late eighties I would occasionally wander down the end of the hall to the afternoon intelligence briefings. They were different to the ones we attended in the morning. The generals attended the early sessions and we briefed them on the issues they wanted to hear. (And it did not hurt for young “thrusters” to be seen by the senior wallahs either!!).
Australian Immigration Madness
October 31, 2008
I travel in and out of here with nary a thought for border control, just glad that I can do so easily. But we (Australia) have an extremely fine mesh immigration net that catches all sorts. I know from experience that it hooks the sharks, and does so in such a way that we are the envy of other border management agencies around the world. But sadly it catches the good guys as well. Sometimes with fatal consequences. Mohammed Hussein here is one example. Read more
Sweetwater Flower Girl
January 22, 2008
That is what her name means in Pashto, the language of the Pashtuns. It is a more poetic and uplifting post title than the more dramatic one I was concocting. Here she is, her face staring down from a poster twenty feet high in the Forbidden Palace, Beijing. Read more
