The Vietnam Era

Lou Butcher · **Posted:** Wed Mar 01, 2006 12:15 am

I too have been a union delegate and at various times I have become hot under the collar, when the greater unwashed left faction have adopted a bias opinnion about the Vietnam War.

The labour party was not the only political side who used the situation to their advantge.

We all agree that whatever the outcome of the Vietnam War we did what was wanted of us. Pure aand simply OUR DUTY.

Point to ponder,the Labour party objected strongly over our involvement in the Vietnam War, but it was Bob Hawke PM of the day who volunteered our sons and daughters to go into the Gulf war in 1990, and for ten years now the Liberal government has kept them there. We have been involved with the Gulf War longer than we were in Vietnam.

Also Bob Hawke when he was the ACTU President, urged and bullied the unions to ban loading ships with supplies for our troops.

I have a great distrust of any pollie doesn't matter which side of the dog proof fence they stand. They are there for they own benefit and kudoes.

Isn't it time to bring of troops from Iraq.

REMEMBER THE DEAD AND FIGHT LIKE HELL FOR THE LIVING.

Seejay · **Posted:** Wed Mar 01, 2006 12:35 am

Allen, to clarify 'entire labor party' - my swipe was at the entire number of the ALP in office during that period, and I have to confess that their successors have the same stigma in my eyes. If your Dad was one of those, I'm sorry but it wouldn't change my opinion.

My opinion of the unions in total has not changed either, and I've been in several as well as having to deal with them as part of a few management teams. I haven't seen one yet that hasn't got self-interest of those running it as the top item of their agenda. Try being in the AMWU as a member and asking for their help - it don't happen! Tell me one union that came out in support of the military in the 60's and 70's. Tell me one union that attacked the wharfies union for not sending supplies to our forces in Vietnam. Tell me one union that attacked the postal union for not sending mail to the troops in Vietnam. Need I go on?

The police, firies, medicos I place under a different category as they also serve Australia (albeit in a slightly different way to the military)- as opposed to serving themselves as the majority of union organisers do.

Union members? Most of the members don't really want to be members, but join because of pressuring or outright threats of retaliation. Why don't they vote against idiotic strikes? Same reason. And it still happens.

As for the universities? How many of the students protested FOR the troops? Yep, they're made up of ordinary people with their own opinions, but so easily led.

I have a friend up here that recently completed her studies via James Cook Uni, and yes, she did an arts degree. Her thesis was on the effects of society on Vietnam Veterans AFTER the war. As soon as she made the subject known, everything became that much harder for her to accomplish. Internet access became restricted due to 'prioritisation', photocopying became unavailable due to 'revised resource allocations' and machine downtime, and so on. Yet her fellow students doing more acceptable theses like 'The Human Face of Karl Marx' or other such subjects had no problems at all.

bobcat · **Posted:** Wed Mar 01, 2006 12:54 am

CONSPIRACY!!!!

Break out the Ratsack ... I smell a rat!!!

Bobcat :cat:

BC · **Posted:** Wed Mar 01, 2006 6:05 am

Lou,

Just a follow-on from your comments above. We have conveniently forgotten that Bob Hawk actually sent our military forces to the 1st Gulf War before the okay was given by the UN.

We also forget that Bob 'Cretin' Brown was one of the pollies yelling the loudest and calling for Bob Hawk to support the US and send troops to the Gulf.

He has done a back-flip on this current episode though.

As for the unions, I've never been a union member, but I have had many dealings with union organisers and secretaries. From my observations the unions do not operate under a democracy as they claim. It's purely a manipulation of numbers to fit a democratic result.

I've been the meat in the sandwich in a turf war between union organisers of the same union. The lies and intimidation of workers/members was unbelievable. Fair play and 'welfare of the workers' went out the window.

I have also found that the union delegates and organisers really don't know their awards properly. I've caught them out a number of times. They sometimes just make it up as they go and hope they can bluff you.

I've learned not to trust anything they tell you or agree to. It's funny, but whenever you ask them to put something in writing, they never do! :-k

beartoo · **Posted:** Wed Mar 01, 2006 9:33 am

Amen to that Brian. As the owner of a business employing people, I've been fed a load of rubbish by organisers and officials about rates of pay and conditions. I've had three people in the same union tell me different things. Had to get the relevant award and look up the correct rates to make sure I wasn't in breach of award conditions.
My employees once got mail from the union telling them that I was underpaying. This is a union upon whose executive I sat for ten years. They didn't have the decency to give me a call and talk it over. Turned out I was paying over the award, as I'd thought. One of my opposition companies was paying under. I knew that from people that worked as part-timers for my company and the opposition. The opposition was a much bigger and more powerful company than mine. When I brought up the fact that they were underpaying, the union did jack sh*t about it.
Like CJ, I've been on both sides of the fence and there's right and wrong on both. I certainly wasn't trying to make a case for unions being perfect organisations run by perfect people. Competence varies from union to union and no doubt from time to time with different personnel.

tafmo · **Posted:** Wed Mar 01, 2006 12:03 pm

BC wrote:

I remember an bloke by the name of Toohey (can't remember his first name) during the Vietnam era. He was either a journalist or unionist and he used to raise funds and send them to the North Vietnamese.

I remember him being interviewed and when it was suggested that his funds could be used to buy weapons to be used against our troops, he said that he wasn't concerned because he was against our troops being in Vietnam!

I used to wish someone would have strung him up. :twisted:

CJ,

His name was Brian Toohey, he was an investigative journalist who wrote for a magazine called ‘ The Eye’, and who held several positions on various papers as writer or editor. They included papers like the Financial Review, The Sun-Herald, and of course the National Times of which in the 1980s he was editor, and whose name, like Four Corners, became synonymous with the revival of muckraking.

You have support from many people in your assessment of Toohey, including Paul Keating interestingly enough. He said, “Some of the people who wrote these stories have great malice towards me, and they continue to write stories like that, like that low-life Brian Toohey, and people like Farmer, who’s a professional failure. I mean I’ve got these people on my back all the time, well that’s part of the stock in trade of politics, but people in my own party take notice of them, well that’s a pity.”

The following two articles were written by Brooke’s economics editor Gerard Jackson, who is not a Toohey fan, in 2003 and 2004….Please excuse the length, but you should find them of interest.

Alan Ramsey, or Ali bin Ramsey as we call him, is on the same rancid level of leftist journalism as Brian Toohey. In You're soaking in it, Mr Howard (The Sydney Morning Herald, aka The Saddam Times, 8 May) bin Ramsey asserted that the "Pentagon kept the lid on the [Abu Ghraib] scandal until nine days ago".
Ramsey is a calculating liar. As I wrote elsewhere: ". . . the abuses at Abu Ghraib had been public knowledge since last January . . . General Kimmet publicly announced on 20 March that criminal charges had been filed against soldiers and that 17 had been 'suspended from their duties until the outcome of the investigations'". This also means that Seymour Hersh's tale that he was the one who exposed a military cover-up is a complete fabrication.
But phony outrage and cold-blooded lying come naturally to fanatical leftists like Ramsey. Clambering onto his high moral horse, never difficult for a lefty, Ramsey accused the media of downplaying or ignoring these events, which makes one wonder what he smokes before breakfast.
What's important here is the hypocrisy of Ramsey and his ilk. In Painful truth in memories of the bicycle padre (The Sydney Morning Herald, 28 April 2004) Ramsey recounts an alleged conversation he had in Vietnam with Gerry Cudmore, a Catholic chaplain in the Australian Army. (Incidentally, Father Cudmore supported the war against Saddam, a fact that Ramsey omitted from his article).
Ramsey claims that Father Cudmore had told him stories of American atrocities committed against Vietnamese peasants. Now I made my own inquiries about Father Cudmore and was told that if he "had had any information about abuses by American or Australian soldiers he would not have hesitated to speak out. That's the kind of man he was". I say was because Father Cudmore recently died.
So the fearless and truth-loving Ramsey decides not to reveal anything of these so-called atrocities until Father Cudmore passes away, thus leaving no one, especially Father Cudmore, to contradict his tales of horror. How very, very convenient.
(Has anyone noticed that Ramsey's tale also maligns Father Cudmore's character by indirectly accusing him of knowingly aiding and abetting atrocities by remaining silent?)
Now what's unbelievable about Ramsey's fantasy is not that he wrote it, or even that his disgusting rag published it, but that some people are stupid enough to believe it. To believe that the pathologically anti-American Ramsey would conceal for nearly 40 years stories of American atrocities surely beggars belief, as does the accusation that Father Cudmore would have done likewise.
Therefore, on the basis of what I've been told about Cudmore, I have no hesitation in calling Ramsey a liar.
The likes of Ramsey always use My Lai as a starting point and a fallback position to support their anti-American allegations. That My Lai was an atrocity is an indisputable fact, that it was an isolated incident is equally true, unlike the atrocities carried out by the Hanoi's communist regime.
Therefore the real story here is that Ramsey, the man who accuses the media of covering up the Abu Ghraib abuses, actively covered up, and still does, Hanoi's systematic atrocities against the people of South Vietnam.
What lying leftwing journalists like Ramsey and Hersh never reported is that what differentiated the US military from Hanoi and its Southern stooges is that while the Mai Lai massacre was an isolated act that appalled the US military, North Vietnam had implemented a vile policy of systematically terrorising the population through mutilation and massacres.
There was the terrible atrocity at Tay Loc where scores of men, women and children were murdered by the Viet Cong in an act of calculated butchery. Then there was a bus carrying 22 peasants that the Viet Cong stopped. They murdered every one of them. These savage incidents were part of a cold-blooded reign of terror planned and authorised by Hanoi and ruthlessly waged against South.
The Hue massacre was the most shocking example of the North's barbaric policy. On January 30, 1968, the Vietcong, on instructions from Hanoi, broke the Tet truce by launching an offensive against the South.
Hue, an administrative centre just south of the border, was over run by communist forces that quickly set about their cold-blooded business of calculated mass murder. Thousands were thrown into trenches and then buried, even though some were still alive.
The following is Uwe Siemon-Netto's mea culpa to the English magazine Encounter,1979:
Having covered the Viet Nam war over a period of five years for West German publications, I am now haunted by the role we journalists have played over there. Those of us who had wanted to find out knew of the evil nature of the Hanoi regime. We knew that, in 1956, close to 50,000 peasants were executed in North Vietnam. [As Nguyen Manh Tuong stated at the 1956 National Congress in Hanoi: "It is better to kill 10 innocent people then let one enemy escape".] We knew that after the division of the country nearly 1 million North Vietnamese had fled to the South.
Many of us have seen the tortured and carved-up bodies of men, women and children executed by the Viet Cong in the early phases of the war. And many of us saw, in 1968, the mass graves of Hue, saw [take note, Mr Ali bin Ramsey] the corpses of thousands of civilians still festively dressed for Tet, the Vietnamese New Year. Why, for Heavens sake, did we not report these expressions of deliberate North Vietnamese strategy at least as extensively as of the Mai Lai massacre and other such isolated incidents that were definitely not part of the U.S. policy in Viet Nam? [Why indeed, Mr Ramsey?]
What prompted us to make our readers believe that the Communists, once in power in all of Viet Nam, would behave benignly? What made us, first and foremost Anthony Lewis, belittle warnings by U.S. officials that a Communist victory would result in a massacre? Why did we ignore the fact that the man responsible for the executions of 50,000 peasants, Truong Chinh, was — and still is — one of the most powerful figures in Hanoi? What made us think that he and his comrades would have mercy for the vanquished South Vietnamese? What compelled, for example, Anthony Lewis shortly after the fall of Saigon to pat himself on the shoulder and write, "so much for the talk of a massacre?' True, no Cambodian-style massacre took place in Vietnam. It's just that Hanoi coolly drives its ethnic Chinese opponents into the sea. That's what Nasser threatened to do to the Israelis, no massacre intended, of course.
Are we journalists not in part responsible for the death of the tens of thousands who drowned? And are we not in part responsible for the hostile reception accorded to those who survive? Did we not turn public opinion against them, portraying them, as one singularly ignoble cartoon did in the United States, as a bunch of pimps, whores, war profiteers, corrupt generals or, at best, outright reactionaries?
Considering that today's Vietnam tragedy may have a lot to do with the way we reported yesterday's Vietnam tragedy; considering that we journalists might have our fair share of guilt for the inhuman way the world treats those who are being expelled by an inhuman regime which some of us had pictured as heroic, I think at least a little humility would be in order for us old Viet Nam hands, Mr Lewis included. And if I did not strongly believe in everybody's right of free expression at any time, I would even admonish him to keep quiet about Indo-China, at least for a while.
Robert Elegant, who had been a journalist in Vietnam, wrote in a similar vein to Encounter, August 1981, about the shabbiness and dishonesty of much of the 'reporting'; from Vietnam. Are these men liars, Mr Ramsey? Is Siemon-Netto lying about Hue, for instance?
In 1997 Chi Thien Nguyen, a Vietnamese dissident described to The Australian the appalling conditions he endured during his 12 years in Hanoi's Gulag. He called the suffering of the Vietnamese people an "outside prison" and called on the world's democracies to pressure Hanoi to end its "cruelty and barbarity", which still continues. But of course, Chi Thien Nguyen is a liar. Isn't that so, Mr Ramsey?
Perhaps Ali bin Ramsey will muster the courage to fully explain why he covered for Hanoi's systematic atrocities.
I know that expecting honesty or remorse from Ramsey is a futile hope. After all, Australia is probably the only Western country in which no left-winger has ever apologised for supporting Pol Pot or Hanoi's communist butchers.
In addition, let's not forget that the humanitarian Ramsey, who now rails against abuses in Abu Ghraib, made fun of Saddam's literal shredding of opponents.
On a final note: Readers might think I'm exaggerating the dishonesty of the media, if only that were so. The Wall Street Journal published the story of Don North, an experienced TV news producer, who made a documentary on seven Iraqi businessmen had been surgically mutilated on Saddam's orders (Want a Different Abu Ghraib Story? Try This One, 14 May).
North's Remembering Saddam details what happened to these men under Saddam and how the liberation their condition was immensely improved through the help of the Bremer and Wolfowitz and the charity of Americans like Fred Kestler, Dr Agris.
So far every U.S. broadcast and cable network has refused to show the documentary. The same networks that have saturated cable and the airwaves with pictures from Abu Ghraib have adamantly rejected this documentary. I can only think of one answer: these journalists do not want the American public to see the true savagery of Saddam's regime and how some Americans are trying to repair the damage. After all, that might help President Bush.

Alan Ramsey and the SMH (Sydney Morning Herald) are only too typical of the Australian media. Ramsey is a cowardly lying political bigot who uses his position on the SMH, aka the Saddam Times, to libel Bush and heap scorn on those who dare to suggest that the President's policies toward the sadistic Saddam are both sound and moral.
Quite recently Labor Party frontbenchers launched a vicious on the American Government. Ambassador Tom Schieffer's response was to do his job, which is to defend the interests of his country and its integrity. But according to Ramsey and the SMH Schieffer was "deliberately setting out to publicly intimidate Labor."
Of course, the very patriotic leftwing Ramsey and the SMH Politburo (editorial board) were outraged. How dare this American schmuck defend the US and its president. Oddly, this upright Australian patriot did not find anything objectionable about Saad Al-Samarai directly interfering in Australia's domestic affairs when he threatened Australian wheat farmers. Nor did the same truth-loving columnist find anything sleazy in the Labor Party using Saad's threats against Prime Minister Howard.
As far as Ramsey is concerned, anything is fair that apparently promotes his beloved Labor Party while defending the murderous Saddam against the US.
But Ramsey being Ramsey could not stop with libelling Schieffer. No sireee. He had to libel Bush by calling him a "... a drunk, a thief, a possible felon, an unconvicted deserter, and a cry-baby …" The fact that Ramsey did this by quoting from Michael Moore's vicious book Stupid White Men does not alter the fact that he and the SMH share Moore's vindictive view of Bush, which was emphasised by his description of Bush as "a dangerous dill!" (In Australia a dill is a jerk).
At the SMH, quoting hateful neo-Marxist bigots like Moore is considered de rigueur and a clear sign of one's intellectual depth and commitment to social justice. That the Castro-loving Moore is a compulsive liar whose contempt for facts would make Goebbels blush is not something that would bother the SMH. Moore's book is a lengthy character assassination, a nasty tactic to which Ramsey and the SMH are no strangers, of President Bush by a political oaf who is still fulminating against the Republicans' electoral victory. It is also riddled with distortions and outright lies.
What a charmer our Castro-grovelling Mr Moore is. Two examples of Moore's humanity will give readers an insight into his twisted sense of morality. Passengers on the hijacked 9/11 planes were "scaredy-cats because they were mostly white." This statement is not only insulting to the victims and relatives of the terrorist attacks it also contains an undercurrent of racism that suggests Moore is a self-hating white man.
The second comment is just as revealing. This is what he had to say to Elian Gonzalez "... your mother and her boyfriend snatched you and put you on that death boat because they simply wanted to make more money." That's right, folks. Moore writes Elian a letter telling him that his mother and stepfather were just a couple of greedy wetbacks who betrayed Castro's kindness. And for this act of treachery they deserved, in Moore's opinion, to die.
It is truly pathetic when a leftwing political hack like Ramsey has to try and get at President Bush by leaning on someone as despicable as Michael Moore for moral support. At least this spectacle, like so many others before it, has highlighted the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the left, and particularly the SMH.

On a final note: Readers might think I'm exaggerating the dishonesty of the media, if only that were so. The Wall Street Journal published the story of Don North, an experienced TV news producer, who made a documentary on seven Iraqi businessmen had been surgically mutilated on Saddam's orders (Want a Different Abu Ghraib Story? Try This One, 14 May).
North's Remembering Saddam details what happened to these men under Saddam and how the liberation their condition was immensely improved through the help of the Bremer and Wolfowitz and the charity of Americans like Fred Kestler, Dr Agris.
So far every U.S. broadcast and cable network has refused to show the documentary. The same networks that have saturated cable and the airwaves with pictures from Abu Ghraib have adamantly rejected this documentary. I can only think of one answer: these journalists do not want the American public to see the true savagery of Saddam's regime and how some Americans are trying to repair the damage. After all, that might help President Bush.

You should also visit the National Gallery in Canberra when you’re down there for the reunion. I personally think it’s a National Disgrace for some of the swill it contains. :vom:

In 1996 they acquired ‘a number of important portraits in recent months in a range of media. These include the following: the Melbourne publisher and war hero Peter Isaacson, painted by Peter Zageris (presented by the Joseph Brown Gallery); the Australian painter Douglas Dundas, painted by Roland Wakelin (purchase); the sculptor Harold Parker, painted by James Quinn (purchase); the Australian journalist Brian Toohey, painted by Neil Moore (purchase); the politicians Sir William McMahon and Sir John McEwen, charcoal sketches by Ivor Hele (purchase); the medical scientist Sir Gustav Nossal, a bronze bust by the sculptor Julie Edgar (purchase); and the writer Patrick White, a bronze bust by the sculptor Peter Schipperheyn (presented by the National Australia Day Council).

Enjoy! :-#

Lou Butcher · **Posted:** Wed Mar 01, 2006 7:41 pm

BC

The Unions and Pollies won't put anything in writing. That's called "COMMINTMENT".

Something that a lot of people in high places were affraid to do.

But I must admit the biggest blues the AWU had was with other unions.

Thank Christ I can now sit back and reflected the history of the Vietnam Era.

:drinkers:

bobcat · **Posted:** Wed Mar 01, 2006 7:45 pm

Are com"mint"ments nicer than After Dinner Mints??? :-k

Cheers,
Bobcat :cat:

BC · **Posted:** Wed Mar 01, 2006 8:26 pm

Quote:

But I must admit the biggest blues the AWU had was with other unions.

Lou,

I will agree with you there, just about every major construction project would see a battle between the AWU and the CFMEU. Those two unions hate each other with a passion.

I sincerely believe there is a need for unions, for the betterment of workers and their conditions. Unfortunately, I just think the unions have forgotten that principle and have lost the plot.

At the grass roots level it is perceived as 'for the workers' but in reality it is about power and control. I have seen how union organisers have created situations to entrap employers so that they can score 'brownie points' to enhance their position within the union movement.

I have an intense hatred for one particular union organiser in who was boasting one day at a meeting that I attended. It concerned a major project that we were trying to be involved with. This union organiser was boasting how he had been directly involved in bankrupting two businesses because they had not played ball with him.

He had tried to do it with award breeches but was unsuccessful so he used his bullying tactics to restrict their business operations until they went bust. He was hoping that we would be intimidated and comply with his wants.

We didn't and about two years down the track and after he had ousted one of his collegues from another site, we too were given the heave ho!

It was because we would not insist that all our employees were members of the union. Our policy was in line with the regulations, it was the workers choice on union membership, many of who were in fact members. Those who chose not to were usually given a hard time by delegates and some other members until they succumbed.

So, if you think that compulsory membership on work sites does not exist, it is alive and well in the construction industry.

Most union organisers and higher are there for their own benefit, usually using it as a stepping stone to get into politics.

Seejay · **Posted:** Wed Mar 01, 2006 8:36 pm

A good read Tafmo. Fancy that - a journalist developing a conscience?

I think I might stay away from the national gallery and travel over to see all the old warbirds at the Temora Air Museum. At least they'll be worthwhile seeing, as opposed to the collection of crap at the gallery.

The Vietnam Era

Who is online