James Martin - Centenary

Exactly one hundred years ago today, Private James Charles Martin, the youngest Australian soldier known to have died in World War 1, died. James was fourteen years and nine months old.  He died not of Turkish bullet, but typhoid fever.  That was at Gallipoli.

Invasion - European Suicide

By VE Day 1945, Europe was smashed by war, swamped by refugees. But it was still Europe, still white. (A few muslim pockets existed in places such as Albania and Bulgaria but they were localised and insignificant.) Seventy years later, the European Union has nineteen million muslims, and the continent forty-four million. At least 12% of Russia is muslim.

And, in addition to, and often overlapping with, the muslims are millions of Africans and Asians. 

The invasion began in the second half of the forties. Imperial Britain and France had always allowed free entry of people from their colonies. So, back then, the non-whites and muslims seized their opportunity and came in droves. Why live in shitty Jamaica or Pakistan when you can live in a white country? Living into a white country is living like a Lotto winner. In clover.  Meanwhile, in the Fifties, Germany invited Turks as “guest workers” - guests who never went home.

The governments of the parliamentary parties - frozen like rabbits in a car’s headlights - refused to close the door, presumably because the prevailing orthodoxy of liberalism said no. Parliamentary politicians cravenly seek the vote but do not know where it is. They think that what is presented in the newspapers and on television is real.

But now, since about 2013, the invasion has been ramped up. We have had the Africans crossing the Mediterranean in huge numbers in leaky boats. When the whites do the humane thing and rescue them, the whites stupidly land them in Italy instead of back on Libyan beaches. The Africans head for northern Europe. “I want to live in England”, they demand.

And now, the muslims, especially the last few months. The muslims arrive in Greece, from Turkey, and immediately demand to enter Germany, or Sweden, or wherever they prefer. When denied, they physically force their way in. Police are being physically overwhelmed by sheer numbers. The Hungarians, the only ones showing any sense, have rapidly built a fence. So the muslim stream, like an alien intelligence, is moving, probing for weaknesses in other countries.

The whole world wants to pack up and live in the white countries. The only liveable countries in the world are white countries, and Japan and Singapore. Significantly, the last two are deeply influenced by white civilisation - but not enough to let refugees in. 

And what happened when no one thought it could get worse? Lunacy of lunacy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel shot the problem through the stratosphere, inviting all the Syrian refugees to come to Germany. And come they have, and the rest of the Third World with them. When they are not shouting “Inshallah “ they shout “Merkel, Merkel”. Merkel should be stoned.

Madness. Opening the doors to alien invaders is racial and civilisational suicide.

So now, the white countries are facing their greatest threat since the barbarian invasions of the first millennium AD, but especially those of the fourth century. In that century, barbarians overwhelmed the Western Roman empire. They invaders were not just warriors on horseback, but whole peoples with women and children in tow. As now, they were driven by wars and crises in their homelands.

Is it too late? If Europe - and all the white countries - are to be saved it will not be by the parliamentary parties. We will be driven to turn to the hard men, the very hard men. Ethnic cleansing and genocide get a bad press but one gets to the point where there is nothing else. No price is too high if we are to save our countries, and our race.

Muslim Invasion and the Progressives

With the present muslim (and African) invasion of Europe soaring, I have paid close attention to the comments after articles in the online versions of the Guardian and the New York Times. These two papers are the most liberal/progressive in the world, as are their readers.

While the papers still  pump out the usual pro-refugee official line, I have observed  a growing disconnection between the Guardian and New York Times on one hand, and their readers on the other. The tone of the comments has changed - and hardened - over a matter of only days. Commentators have gone from being sympathetic and blaming the the troubles of the Middle East on the USA to angrily realising that these aliens forcing their way into Europe are not migrants nor refugees but muslim invaders.

When even liberal/progressive people can see the obvious, a seismic change has occurred.

The readers of the almost as progressive/liberal Independent had already changed, a sign in itself.

Nazi megastructures and women

People talk about gender equality as though men and women were equal and identical.  I am rather more interested in differences.  The two sexes live on different planets with utterly different interests.

How different these interests are is illustrated by a television series called Nazi Megastructures.  It is about the remarkable, often very big engineering successes of the Nazi regime:  lots of steel, concrete and big machines.

I doubt if there is a woman on this planet who would voluntarily watch Nazi Megastructures.  However, my wife did, accidentally, see a part of one episode.  That episode concerned the ME 262, the first operational jet fighter, and the underground factory built to make it.

Some reference, to do with speed, was made to the Spitfire.  My wife asked if the Spitfire had a propellor.  What man would ask such a question?  We roll eyes at such queries.  Males just know about Spitfires.  We know while still in our mother’s womb.

My daughter asked, “What is a Spitfire?”

Now it does not really matter does it that women are not interested in these megastructure and are ignorant of Spitfires, does it?  Not one iota.  But it beautifully shows how different men and women’s interest and worlds are.

And yes, ladies, the Spitfire did have a propellor.

Betrayal of those who fought and died.

This year, we Australians mark the centenary of the Gallipoli campaign.  Last year, most of the world commemorated the centenary of the start of start of World War I.

We think little of glory but instead of the heroism and sacrifice those men, young men and boys.  And we remember not just those who fought and died in the Great War, but the other wars too.

Did the ANZACs who came ashore in 1915, or their sons who fought in the mud and jungle of Papua-New, or the Americans who died at Iwo Jima fight so that our countries could be swamped, as they are, by Asians, Africans and Muslims?  Did they?  They have been betrayed by the parliamentary politicians and governments who opened the doors.

Not in Vain - James Martin

Fourteen years and nine months. That was the age at which Private James Martin - the youngest Australian soldier known to die in World War I - died. Born in January 1901, James was precisely as old as the young Commonwealth of Australia for which he fought.

James lied about his age when he joined the 21^st Battalion, in April 1915.  He arrived at Gallipoli in September - all too briefly enjoyed the excitement of action with his mates - and died of typhoid, on a hospital ship, on 25 October.  A century ago this year. 

At fourteen years years and nine months, he was a boy. What a waste. James did not even get a grave in an immaculate war cemetery.  He was buried at sea, so far from home and family.

Did James Martin die in vain? Did he?

For decades, especially after after World War II,  the common perception of World War I went down a false path. That war was seen as a monstrous tragedy – which it was, and a war for no reason – which it was not. The war was seen as just stupidity, just accident, just bungling. No one was to blame – or everyone was.  No. No. No.

So why did World War I, the Great War occur? 

In the thirty-seven days between the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and the start of the war, various people in various countries, for various reasons, made various decisions.  Good decisions, bad decisions. Smart motives, dumb motives. 

Historians have written big, complicated books examining these reason, motives and factors. They have studied in detail all the actions, thoughts and utterances of the players.  All very complicated it seems.

But really, it was simple. Three decisions, by Germany, pushed the world over the precipice, and into the abyss. Just three.

Let’s start with the third decision:  Germany invaded Belgium and France. This unprovoked invasion was unacceptable.  It was a big thing.  If Germany got away with it, Germany would have dominated Europe,  carved it up, looted the continent. That was not on.

And do not underestimate the big importance of little Belgium. Belgium’s neutrality had been guaranteed by treaty amongst the great powers. Treating that treaty as a mere scrap of paper caused a moral outrage not easily understood today.

That double invasion is why Britain and its empire, bit the bullet and declared war on Germany. It is why other countries fought. It is why James Martin, and the others, joined up.

Now, go back, just a little, to the other two reasons. In response to the murder of the Archduke, the Austrians wanted to punish Serbia, the country they blamed. But as that could easily lead to war with Russia, the Austrians turned to Germany for support. 

The German government gave them unconditional support. Unconditional. That was the infamous blank cheque. Yet the Germans knew full well that it could so easily lead to a big war. How utterly irresponsible.  How criminally incompetent. So that was the first German decision:  the blank cheque.

Also, senior men in the German army and government wanted a war with Russia. Russia was growing fast. In a very few years, perhaps even by 1916, Russia would be militarily stronger than Germany.

Thus the Germans thought, strike now, smash Russia, while Germany still could. That was the second decision.

The point of invading France, via Belgium, was to knock out Russia’s ally, France, in forty days and then turn east and defeat Russia. That plan, the Schlieffen plan, did not last five minutes in practice.

Consequently

Consequently, we got World War I. Consequently, somewhere between eight and nine million men in uniform died, a third, or more, of the current population of Australia. Civilians died too. Starvation and disease took everyone from babies to old people.  All up, up to nineteen million soldiers and civilians died.

Grief

So many families suffered so much grief, so much pain.  Imagine how James Martin’s family must have felt at the loss of their beloved son.  His mother’s hair went white overnight. And all the the women, the wives. So many young wives faced fifty, or even sixty, years of bleak widowhood, sometimes without even the consolation of children.

All this because the rulers of Germany made the three decisions they did.

People put up with casualties and grief because they understood it was a Just War, a war for good reason. Germany had to be stopped. 

In vain?

These soldiers who died, were their lives wasted?  Yes, their lives were wasted. Did they die in vain? No. They fought the good fight. They were heroes. James Martin was a hero. 

Young James Martin shall grow not old,        as we that are left grow old;

    Age shall not weary him,                             nor the years condemn.

        At the going down of the sun                   and in the morning

            We will remember him.

Muslim million

Australia has about half a million muslims now.  How long before it is a million?  It is not just their breeding, and breeding.  Inspite of them being a tumour in Australia, the government still lets them come in as refugees and immigrants.

Irish stupidity

The Irish have just voted in a referendum to change their constitution to allow same sex marriage. I expect that they will rue this decision down the track because it is stupid and stupid decisions always cause trouble.

Malcolm Fraser and the Muslim Invasion

Australia has muslims - half a million invasive, alien muslims. There had long been an insignificant number, but now we have so many, and they are breeding and breeding.

How did we go from no problem, to a muslim problem. Overnight. The answer is one name: Malcolm Fraser. In 1976, when he was Prime Minister, he opened the door and let the muslims in -  and they have never stopped coming.

At that time, there was a civil war in Lebanon and Maronite and Orthodox Christians in Australia made the quite reasonable request that the Australian government accept refugees from Lebanon. The government agreed, and what became known as the Lebanese Concession was put in place to expedite their admission to Australia. But, crucially, Fraser did not restrict entry to Christians. Why not? Government officials and Christians warned Fraser that the muslims would not integrate, but he ignored them until too late. Why? Did Fraser want to be “non-discriminatory”? Whatever his reason, we got the muslims.

Malcolm Fraser should have been stoned.

Bali Nine: Chan and Sukumaran

This morning, 29 April 2015, Australian born Asians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were executed in Indonesia for heroin trafficking.  They were the ringleaders of the “Bali 9”, arrested in 2005.

In recent times, their imminent executions have got enormous attention in the Australian mass media and thus by politicians.  There has been so much cant and posturing.  “Australia” has supposedly been outraged by their death sentences. Really?

I would have preferred that they had not been executed. They were not so evil as to merit it, but nor were they victims. Punishment should match the crime and I do think execution was more than enough.

Given that had gone to Indonesia and, knowing the risk, deliberately disobeyed the well-publicised laws, the Indonesians were not going to say, “well, you are not such bad men, so we will not execute you”.  No.

Just maybe, quiet diplomacy might have gotten the sentences commuted. Instead there was this very public objecting by journalists and politicians.  There was no way the Indonesians were going to give in to that.

I saw Chan, on television, say something like, “eight out of ten get through; you think you are going to be one of the eight”. They made a calculation, took a risk and now have borne the consequences.

Guidance of the young

My mistake

In 1971, I made the biggest mistake of my life:  I enrolled in a Bachelor of Engineering at the University of Queensland. That might not strike everyone as a mistake, but it was. That error has shaped my life. I have never escaped it.

So why was enrolling in engineering such a bad mistake, and why did I make it?

Well, I confused my interests with my abilities.  Let me repeat that as it is so important - I confused my interests with my abilities.

Positive thinkers, motivational gurus, assert that one achieve anything if one is determined enough. Anything. Rubbish. Utter rubbish. These charlatans should be shot for peddling such arrant nonsense.

However, they did not cause my problems, as I never took much notice of them anyway.

I loved science. I loved technology. I still do. I read science. I do online courses. But I was, and am, no good at science.  At school, I struggled with science and maths. I worked like a dog - for ordinary results.

My best subjects were History, English and Geography. So why enrol in electrical engineering?  Crazy.  I should have enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts majoring in History. History is, after all, my ruling passion.

But I was young, immature inexperienced. I was the first person in my family to go to university in five million years.  I had no one ahead of me to guide me, to say “No, you’re on the wrong path”. I was lost, out of my depth.

At the time, I decided that I would do engineering as a career, and keep history as a hobby. That seemed sensible, but it was so wrong. 

If I had chosen Arts and History,  would I really have been better off in the long run?  I don’t know. Certainly - by doing engineering -  I have not been successful in life.  I have not gotten to a point at which I am satisfied. Certainly.

But there is no guarantee that I would have been better off doing Arts.  None whatsoever. But maybe - just maybe - I would have been.  At least, I would have been in with a chance.   Engineering was no chance.

I was motivated to succeed at engineering but motivation is not enough. One has to have ability, and I did  not.

That is the same in any field. You might want to be a top tennis player.  Well, if you have not got the talent - tough. You will not get to Wimbledon, no matter how determined you are.

Avoidance?

How could this error, enrolling  in engineering, been averted?  Very easily:  by career counselling at school. A thirty minute discussion with an experienced counsellor, in 1970, and I would never have done engineering. Never.

I emphasise “experienced”:  life experience as much as any other.  We do not need someone who went to school, went to university and then got a job as a counsellor.

Career counselling did not happen to me. Such a counsellor was not readily available. Nor did it occur to me, then, that I needed counselling.

And it is not just at school that counselling and guidance are needed, but in the few years after that, and perhaps longer. Looking beyond my personal experience,I have long seen this need for guidance of young people, and seen the failures that could have been avoided with counselling.

Dashed hopes of the young

My son Stephen went to ADFA, the Australian Defence Force Academy, to become an army officer.  He has now gone on to the Royal Military College, Duntroon. When Stephen started at ADFA, he and all the others had such golden hopes, hopes of golden careers. All expected to graduate.  Well, sadly, some of the youngsters have have fallen by the wayside.

Some were unsuited, some just not good enough. Some sustained injuries. For others, it was just bad luck. Or too much drinking.  Many will regret the way things did not turn out until the day they die.

I hate seeing the young disappointed, their hopes and dreams dashed.  Bitter disappointment, so often undeserved, is normal in life. Disappointment can last forever.

When Stephen tells me of these friends and fellow cadets,  I often think how a bit of counselling - formal counselling - might have helped.  Some would have sorted out their problems while others would have come to understand that they were not suited.

Engineering crops up in these stories. Some cadets enrol in engineering and find it all too much, and end up dropping out.  Yet they might have, if they had been counselled, chosen a different degree, and had good careers as officers. Anyone going into engineering anywhere, not just at ADFA, needs guidance. Only certain people are suited to engineering.

Yes, tell them

When I was working at Queensland University, in the nineties, on the train home I used to talk to an acquaintance, a mining engineering lecturer. He said that lecturers could see that some students were unsuited but that they did not know if they, the lecturers, should say anything to them.

“Yes, for God’s sake, yes”, I said. “Speak to them.”   I wish someone had spoken to me.

Mentor

Enrolling in engineering was a mistake. Not getting out was another one. I was stuck but could not see what to do. It did not help that it took me a long time to give up hope altogether. And I did not want to leave university. I liked it. It was my world. And leave to where? Where would I live once I left my residential college at the university? How would I get a job? What job? I lacked confidence and experience in these matters. Ideally, I would have switched to Arts, but would have lost my Commonwealth Scholarship for at least a year.

I needed someone to take me aside, make me understand  that I needed to cut my losses, maybe just quit university there and then.

But I had no mentor, and that is what we often needed, a mentor.  The ancient Greeks realised that a young man needs an experienced older man to advise, explain and guide.

Yes, guide them

Some say we should not try to tell young people what to do, should not try to guide them. Let them  make their own decisions, learn from their own mistakes. No. Mistakes can be so expensive, can last decades, even forever.

Why pay that price? Why? Why make mistakes one does not have to?

For many decisions, young people do not have the experience to make important decisions. They have not been alive enough to accumulate that experience. Their brains are not even fully mature until about twenty-five.

I want to see more young people have better lives, not wasted lived like mine. I want to see fewer people doing degrees that they never use, wasting their time and public money. I usually dislike nanny state managing of all problems but, I investment in career - and life - counselling at school, and in the years afterwards, would reduce the number of people wasting their time and lives.

So, young people need formal counselling,  guidance and mentoring.

Introverts and introvertism

A friend of mine, in my Toastmasters Club, had been an Area Governor. Area is the level immediately above club. He said that one of the good things of the role was that it exposed him to some people at the very top of the Toastmasters organisation and, at that level, there are some very intelligent, very professional people. Just recently, at a TM event, I listened to a talk by such a person.

He spoke of introverts and extroverts, but especially the former. Introverts and extroverts, are misunderstood. Extroverts are seen as gregarious, socially activate people, while introverts are seen as quiet, under-skilled, shy people. That is not the difference.

The difference is what is going on in their heads. In the case of introverts, a lot is going on in there. Whole universes exist between an introvert’s ears. Introverts read which is where the universes come from. The speaker was too polite to say that rather less, or less of substance, is going on in an extrovert’s head. The extroverts need social interaction; it is oxygen to them. An introvert is not averse to social interaction, but is not so dependent on it, and does not need it all the time. An introvert needs solitude, some of the time.

Introverts are not less socially skilled than an extrovert. They may be better in that introverts may actually listen to you. Introverts like low key social environments. An introvert will enjoy a drink and a talk with friends (and hate the TV and music in pubs and restaurants). Introverts dislike parties. Introverts love them.

Some people are not one thing or the other. They are called ambiverts.

In the twentieth century, extroverts came to dominate. Extrovertism became the orthodoxy: one needs to be outgoing, leaders need to be charismatic, …

The speaker, at this Toastmasters event, recommended a book called Quiet: The Power of Introverts  in a World that Can’t Stop Talking. The author is Susan Cain. There is also an interesting TED talk at http://www.thepowerofintroverts.com/susan-cain-ted-talk-2014-quiet-revolution/