Old Koreelah

What are we most offended by? Having someone else’s flag in the corner of ours. (The US state of Hawaii is still happy to have a Union Flag like ours does). Having a foreign Head of State? Most Australian’s will put up with a fair amount of crap before we get riled enough to toss out the baby with the bath water. Although I once supported the push for a republic, the recent degeneration of the Republic of America has caused me to value the stability of our monarchy. In centuries to come, what will our history books say was the pivotal moment that got our She’ll Be Right attitude off its backside? Being asked to swear an oath of allegiance, etc. Perhaps Charlie should purge his advisors.

Is there any evidence of the Tangerine Todder ever trying to control his own (multiple) defects?

…so should strongly support local action to close them down. Some nations attract foreign investment because their citzens tend to follow the rules. At the other end of the scale: places like Haiti, where eventually the people rise up against the gangsters: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/30/haiti-port-au-prince-violence-gangs-police

Australia’s PM Billy Hughes was a significant cause of WWII. At the 1919 Versailles peace conference he was one of the most vociferous supporters of forcing Germany to pay reparations, which America’s Woodrow Wilson was dead against. Gemany’s economy was already a basket case, so this added to the grievances that Hitler fed off in his rise to power. But wait, there’s more! Billy Hughes also did his bit to cause the Pacific War. After helping the Allied nations during the Great War, Japan asked to be treated as an equal to European powers. Billy Hughes steadfastly refused, causing the Japanese envoys to walk out of the League of Nations. At home, the peace-makers were humiliated and lost power as the Hawks gained control of Japan’s government. Their slide towards war was thus sealed.

He doesn’t have to; there’s always a military person to carry it. Interesting story from the Clinton years, when the threat of Soviet attack had evaporated: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-11591213

The engineer specified separate shallow square footings for my western verandah posts. It’s an exposed location, so I dug a trench, hung the verandah structure off the house, with posts dangling in the trench, then concreted them in. Much better anchored and perfectly in line (which I could not have done the traditional method.)

Nev I hope you’re writing a book! You have lots to talk about; unfortunately, the best title is already taken:

At that age, like so many of my peers, I knew bugger-all about the world and even less about the reality of power politics, so could very easily have been drawn into the war. Half a century later? We know that Australia won it’s part of the Vietnam War. As posted previously, I’m immensely proud to hear accounts from our former enemies of their respect for Australian soldiers, because they buried the dead and didn’t mutilate them. Even better, what some returning Australian veterans have done to reconcile with their former enemies. America sure didn’t win. They stuffed up enormously. Ho Chi Minh had worked in the US as a young bloke and so admired the place that his postwar Declaration of Vietnam’s independence from the French is closed based on the US document. Forgetting all the help the US got from Ho during WWII, they backed the wrong side. They wasted a generation of men but were beaten by superior resolve.

I missed out by one day: born 13th Dec, the 12th came up. One of the lucky ones.

From that greatest generation, when women showed us they could do anything.

I grew up in a little cattle and timber town and the most successful local grazier was very generous in his support of the community- but never joined the RSL. Captured on Crete with a bullet through the groin and carried miles by his mate, he survived terrible conditions in POW camps and coal mines in Silesia. The one thing that kept him going was his dream that after the war his back pay would buy him a small farm. He never received that back pay and the bluddy RSL gave him no assistance at all. He started with nothing and worked his heart out until he owned several beef properties, but always shared his good fortune with others. My grandies’ other grandfather spent time there and the kids are very proud to stand with him on ANZAC Day. He recently opened up to me about an incident where his APC hit a mine and the bloke on top was thrown about twenty metres - but survived. He described how hard it was to extricate the injured driver from his cramped station. Not so long ago he received a medal for his conduct that day. He didn’t tell us about the blokes down the back who were killed.

Taiwan is a little different: There is some ambiguity about it being part of China proper; when the KMT retreated there during the Civil War, they displaced several indigenous peoples- who had themselves been colonised and exploited by Imperial Japan. Taiwan is a functioning democracy, in direct contrast to the autoritarian One-Part state on the mainland. Will other democracies stand by and see this democracy over run and subjugated, as we saw in Hong Kong? Taiwan is strategically important to the west, producing the bulk of high-tech chips needed for military and industry- a prize China will risk much to capture and which the west would sorely miss.

It’s encouraging to see that Australia can put a former national leader on the hot seat and give him no more respect than any other citizen is due.

ANZAC Day is the best time for our leaders to ponder the true cost of committing our troops to yet another overseas adventure. Battlefield casualty figures are only a small part of the total price. One thing I’d like to see more of on ANZAC Day is more attention to the fact that many of our former enemies are now our friends. Perhaps a good measure of a nation’s worth is how well we treat those we defeat. The last thing we want is the intergenerational hatreds perpetuated by so many wars.

Okey fellas, as a long-time HD basher it’s time to bury the hatchet; Nev may be misguided in his choice of steed, but at least he still rides, which is more than many of us do.

That’s the conventional view, based on lack of evidence of farming. Early days, who knows what will be dug up one day? Ten thousand years ago is pretty ancient to me! If an advanced culture existed before the Younger Dryas event, any survivors would likely have lost their most sophisticated technology, leading them to be classed “stone age”. (Few of us today have the skills to grow our own food, let alone find, mine, refine, smelt and work metals. The higher-tech stuff is just magic to most of us.) Although survivors would be returned to a subsistence life, they would surely pass on many traditions and stories- hence so many ancient myths like Atlantis, The Flood, Vimanas, etc. (Anthropologists on our continent have wondered why Aboriginal languages and customs are so complex, given their simple lifestyle.) Me too, but if it exists, it would mostly be miles out to sea, buried under deep silt.

Similar story in Amrica, When the US military standardised on the Jeep, Ford reluctantly agreed to build the Willies design under license, but Ford-built Jeeps used Ford engines and drive train.

In had a school principal like that; we learned to use that tactic to keep him happy. I called out my first building inspector for each stage of my house build until he gave up coming- too many other priorities. It seemed he was well satisfied that I was over-engineering the place.

Very true, Nev. It’s best to assemble as much evidence as possible before jumping to any conclusions. Throughout history people have been making unsafe assumptions about what they’ve discovered. I haven’t suddenly arrived at this perception of human history. I blame my childhood hero, Heinrich Schliemann. He was laughed at for using ancient myths as a guide, but without them he might not have discovered Troy. The excavation of Gobekli Tepe sure has upset the traditional model and it appears to be just a small part of a vast region of very ancient structures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Göbekli_Tepe .

I doubt that. Watch a couple of episodes of this series: https://www.history.com/shows/life-after-people Most of our buildings, machines, etc will be gone in one thousand years. After ten thousand, only glass, ceramics and stone structures will be there, but likely washed away, covered by silt or rising seal levels. Nobody is claiming ancient civilizations were like ours, with 8 billion people fed by massive global industries. Very ancient mines, some with oxidised coal, have been found in North America. The main evidence of very ancient civilizations is stone that lasted the ages, that no known ancient cultures could have built (and which even today might not be possible). Increasing numbers of well-qualified specialists are questioning the conventional view of human history. I can post lots of links for anyone interested.

OME I agree with your post, but not this bit; thousands of artifacts have been found. Conventional archaeologists cannot explain them, so ignore them, but plenty of less conventional scholars study them. Given that most of today’s civilization is built near coasts and that about 12,500 years ago sea level rose over 100 meters, it’s impressive we have found so many artifacts of the previous peoples. Most of their relics are undoubedly buried under silt several km offshore.

…but I do agree that our planet suffered that Ancient Apocalypse that Spacey mentioned. There’s mobs of evidence that advanced civilization(s) were wiped out about 12,500 years ago, along with heaps of big animal species. The asteroid believed responsible probably had few mates that missed us. Still being in distant orbit, they will clobber us again one day. (Ancient prophesies may well be based on advanced astronomical observations made long ago.) Who and what will survive? Maybe Elon Musk’s Mars colony, but more likely peoples living close to the land in poor countries. New Guinea highlands might be the cradle of the next human adventure. One archaeological dig dated their drainage ditches at 11,000 years, so maybe they survived the last event.