Australia-Army work etc and gripe about media here
Trip Start
Jan 08, 2004
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40
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Trip End
Ongoing
Melbourne,
Australia
Saturday, September 3, 2005
Hello from Melbourne, Australia where I have been for about a month.
Firstly I want to mention some work that is available with Mr John (my English (or ex English) friend who lives in Kamphaeng Phet). He runs an internet shop and also does some other IT (computer) work. Recently he has been developing a new business idea and he now requires the help of a native English speaker for him to be able to grow his business and develop his ideas. He would initially train the right person up and they could stay at his place for free while this happens
Caravan at Chakola
. Then they could go and live wherever they wanted, providing it had a decent internet connection to do the work he wants them to do (I think preferably in Thailand or another nearby country). He would pay an amount that wouldn't be sufficient for most people to live on in an expensive country but in Thailand it would be well over the average Thai salary and would be sufficient for someone to have a comfortable but not extravagant lifestyle. Anyway if that is of interest to anyone please let me know and I will pass you onto Mr John. He wants someone pretty soon if possible as his new idea is waiting on this extra person. If no one has taken that job by February, when my calendar frees up, I will be very interested in getting that job myself. So hurry up. It seems to be a good way for me to earn money and not have to be away from Kanjana and her family so often. Anyway, I arrived in Australia early last month and headed almost immediately up to Chakola. Far too much time sitting in vehicles. Irene picked me up and we headed out to the new Operation Challenge site. WOW! They have been very busy since my last visit moving all the games and activities across onto the new property. Very impressive. My time there was fun as always and it seems I will be working there a little more in late Oct. I wish I was able to work more at Chakola (I will continue to refer to it as this even though it has moved)
Fire place
. I have taken some photos of the area and will up load them onto this site when I can. Thanks Sue for the idea of asking about that work.Mum and my brother Craig picked me up and we drove down to Melbourne during some quite strange weather which was the start of a very cold period in South Eastern Australia. Soon after arriving in Melbourne I started working with the Army.
I have been working for the Army for about 3 weeks now. I am mainly just doing mundane office work and also preparing myself to give some lessons and help conduct some tactics training. (TEWTs for the Army people in the audience). It has mainly been alright and most of the people I am working with are reasonably nice. The work is often pretty boring but it is not too difficult nor too stressing. I was expecting more. I get to do exercise each day and I am making quite decent money compared to what I have been making in the last few years and spending very little. So, overall it is OK.
Today as I walked in the gate of the Army barracks and showed my Army ID card to the civilian security guard, an older tired looking woman came running past. She didn't make eye contact or say hello as she approached me but as she ran past she rudely demanded that I walk on the other side of the road
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. It is not unusual to run into such rude people in the Army. Many people who hold some sort of authority think that it makes them important and they like to try to push other people around as a way of boosting their own egos. I ignored her and kept walking. I have been quite pleasantly surprised so far in the 3 weeks that I haven't come across too many people like this woman. As she reached the gate she turned around and came running past again. Again, but in an even more abrupt and rude manner she demanded that I walk on the other side of the road. This was of vital importance to her as it, she stated, was written in some orders somewhere that I should be on the other side of the road. I crossed the road and said, as sarcastically as possible "very nice to meet you too". This of course just made her more angry and she started ranting and raving that she was Lieutenant Colonel so and so (a couple of Army ranks above my rank) and bla bla... I can't actually hear anything anyone says when they start talking in that manner as my hearing automatically turns off, but I could tell she was speaking in an unfriendly way. In a normal environment I could just walk away from such a person, but in the Army it is not allowed. Being stuck and having to listen to this woman rant and rave made me feel like hitting her. But I can't hit a woman (even if she refuses to act like one) so instead I felt like telling her to f..
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. off. But I also realised that that wouldn't help the situation either. So I just gave her a very menacing stare and said "yes ma'am" in an aggressive sort of way. That seemed to work and she shut up and left. It is quite annoying that far too many people, similar to this, exist in the Army. For the money they pay me I am quite happy to work reasonably hard, carry heavy packs up and down hills or even do boring and extremely pedantic paperwork. But I don't need the money bad enough to put up with people speaking to me in that way. Hopefully I won't see much of her again. Interestingly the Army's junior leadership pamphlet clearly states that: "Leadership is the art of consistently influencing and directing men in tasks in such a way as to obtain their willing obedience, confidence, respect and loyal cooperation in the manner desired by the leader." Australian Army Handbook on Leadership 1973. I wonder why I meet so few people who meet this simple goal. Hmmm, anyway, mainly things have been OK so far so I will continue with the Army for now.
What else? Oh, since just before I left Thailand, Kanjana and I have been looking at a house to buy. The house is just around the corner from us and is being sold by a nice older lady that wants to move closer to her family and live in a smaller house
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. She is selling the house at quite a reasonable rate and it seems quite likely that prices in this area will continue to rise in the future, as the sky train moves closer to here. The lady seems to like Kanjana and I, and she has decided to put off all the other offers to sell the house to us. I borrowed some money from Mark to put a holding deposit on the house and we have been contacting banks trying to get loans to buy the house. But so far they have not been willing to give us reasonable loans that we could afford. It is taking a long time, but the woman continues to hold the house for us as she likes us and wants us to have it. I had thought that it would be impossible but recently Kanjana found a bank that would loan us 800 000 Baht. Still we wouldn't have enough to pay the rest, but Kanjana has been talking to the woman to see if she can drop the price further and / or come up with some contract so as we can pay her the rest over time. The pay I am getting from the Army has certainly made all that possible. So we are still waiting to see what will happen. Hmmm, I am a bit unsure as it will make our budget a bit tighter, but it is a nice house which seems to be a good investment. Our current situation of having the family in two separate one room apartments is not quite ideal, although it does have some advantages. I'll let you know what happens.What else? Mainly things are OK and pretty normal
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. As usual in Australia I seem to be getting fat. I have been catching up with Mark and Chuck every week and also saw Dan and other Mark. And the Australian media are greatly annoying me. I am now going to have a whinge about that, so please stop reading if you want.Where to start? There is so much that is wrong.
Recently a "current affairs" program on Channel 7 at a popular time slot ran an article about Muslim youths in Australia. The made out that the Muslims were rough criminals and the program basically ran a racist scare campaign against Islam. At one stage they showed a film of a young Muslim saying "we will never fit into the Australian way of life". They advertised their show with that quote and they generated a racist public outcry against Muslims after their show was run.
A bit later in the week, Channel 2 has a 15 minute program, later at night called Media Watch. I would highly recommend this show to Australians. Media Watch went and talked to the Muslims interviewed by Channel 7 and also researched the full transcript of what had been said. The young Islamic men actually were quite nice and had agreed to go on the Channel 7 show only because7 had promised to show them in a good way and help stop the anti Muslim feeling that is currently in Australia
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. What the young guy had actually said before Channel 7 cut the film was that "we will never fit into the Australian way of life as quickly as some other groups have been able to, because it is not in our way of life to go to discos or to drink alcohol". Why the media in Australia likes to stir up trouble and racism and fear I am not sure, but they are well practised at it.
Another thing I have noticed recently, not just in the Australian media but in many Western media outlets, are articles on the rise of capitalism in China. Generally these articles seem to be half written in fear and half in pride. Fear because it is apparent that China will soon overtake USA as the main economic power. But largely the reporters' show great pride in the way they see the West is converting China into a greedy nation of consumers. The reporters generally show all the flashing neon lights in big Chinese towns, they show young people going to discos dressed in scanty clothes and they show young business men with stupidly expensive cars and the latest mobiles and other toys of the rich. To these Western reporters it seems to be a great thing that China has joined their little club of mindless consumption. What they don't talk about is the increase in inequality, drug use, prostitution, crime, divorce, suicide and HIV/AIDS that go along with this new lifestyle
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. They don't talk about the break down of the family units. They don't mention that it is only a tiny minority in China that can afford this lifestyle and in the mean time the farming peasants are once again left further behind with even less hope of ever catching up to the rich city people. They don't mention the increased pollution and the increased use of energy and resources, which means more dams. Who does that effect? Initially it doesn't effect these rich city Chinese or the Western investors that hope to share in the profits. It affects the farmers and villagers in China and neighbouring poor countries all the way to the ocean. i.e. Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. But they don't get a say, do they? The new even more greedy China is of course even less likely to grant freedoms to the Tibetans or the other many groups who the Chinese currently control and exploit. Hmmm watching this sort of thing doesn't make me overly happy, any more than watching a drug pusher gloat over converting someone into an addict would, or a HIV/AIDS suffer talking proudly about infecting other people would. OK, one more issue. There have been a few arrests recently of alleged Australian drug addicts or smugglers in Indonesia. Some Australians, for a long time have been travelling to poorer countries to lie around on beaches, wear inappropriate clothes, get drunk, behave inappropriately, take drugs, hire prostitutes, and generally make arseholes of themselves without any regard to the host nation's laws, religion or culture
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. Of course the effect of this type of tourism is devesting on small communities that would normally rely on the closeness of families and villages. While it does bring in large sums of money to that country's economy, it also brings with it many of the things I mentioned above when speaking of China. It brings in a demand for drugs and prostitution, it attracts crime, etc. Do the Australians undertaking this behaviour even consider these small communities they are affecting? No. Then when very occasionally one or two of them get arrested when these countries are trying to clean themselves up, the Australians are outraged. "How dare these dark skinned poor people arrest us? It is our god given right to treat them like shit and do whatever we want. We are white and rich." Or at least that is the way it comes across to me.OK, that is it. I hope most of you are ignoring the main stream media. The ones of you who have grown up believing the crap that it feeds you in Australian had better wake up pretty soon, as I get the feeling that world events are going to come and greatly disturb you otherwise.
See ya
Paul
Oh, I forgot
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. I found this interesting reading. It is a draft, unclassified Army document. It's purpose seems to be to update the Army about how wars are currently being fought. These are sections from the area that is discussing what is the character of the world environment that the Army currently finds itself in"The key driver in the external environment ... is Globalisation (including both the process of globalisation itself, and the backlash or reaction to it). There is no universally agreed definition of globalisation, but a widely-accepted definition is that globalisation is a process of increased connectivity, where ideas, capital, goods, services, information and people are transferred in near-real time across national borders.
Globalisation, as a social, economic and cultural process during the last decades of the twentieth century, has created winners and losers. The process of globalisation has led to trade liberalisation, the rise of a global economy, the embryonic development of a global culture. However, these developments have not been universally beneficial. Poverty, disease and trade inequality remain major problems for much of the world, and the global economy has been perceived as allowing increasing profits for the West while failing to address the problems of developing nations
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. Concurrently, the development of a global culture is perceived in some quarters as a form of Western (more specifically, Anglo-Saxon) cultural or ideological imperialism: corroding the local cultures, eroding the fabric of traditional societies, and leading to social and cultural dislocation...Moreover the process of globalisation is not fully controllable by national governments. Multi-national corporations, trans-national organisations, and non-state political and economic actors are key players in globalisation. Indeed, this is one reason why such inequalities and problems have been able to develop: in many cases, forces other than concious national ploicy drive the process of globalisation. This has hampered an effective response by the West toward the resentment and opposition generated by globalisation.
...The conflict environment has always included irregualars, local terrorists, rural guerrillas, bandits, tribal fighters and mercenaries. But today it also includes drug traffickers, multinational corporations, private military companies, unarmed protesters, environmental groups, computer hackers, rioters, intelligence services, militias, looters, people smugglers, pirates, religious sects, issue motivated groups, urban guerrillas, media and diplomatic alliances
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. Many of these groups are not 'threats' in the sense of being an armed opposition, and the application of military force against many of them would be highly problematic, in legal, moral and technical terms....During the Afghan war, CIA operatives in Langley Virginia flew remotely piloted Predator drones, armed with Hellfire missiles, against Taliban targets. By traditional definition, Virginia is not part of the Afghan theatre of war. But under contemporary conditions, an operator in Langley can participate in operations as effectively as can a soldier in Kabul. Langley is arguably 'in theatre' - and some might therefore have considered an attack on Langley by the Taliban as a legitimate act of war...
The home front is now the battlefront. Many actions taken by our enemies are aimed not at achieving a local tactical advantage, but at directly achieving strategic effects in the home front. For Australia, with a low strategic defeat threshold compared to some adversaries, this is a key concern....Similarly, the more we apply 'whole of nation' effects to achieve military objectives, the more our adversaries are likely to consider our whole nation as a legitimate target."
