Frank’s old school. The Austin Healey, first prize for translating “The Nigger of the Narcissus” into Strine, (courtesy of the Briquette Council).

Strap yourself in for another one from Frank, but we assure you this will not be a bumpy ride. For as Professor Henry Higgins will tell you; ‘the missiles raining over Ukraine, fall largely over the plain‘. this is an undisputed fact from our correspondent in Kiev Andrei Dropov, (pronounced “Drop-off’) who is busy translating into local dialect our P.M’s trenchant support to assist the beleaguered country with press releases and photo opps.

Yallourn, famously planned and then, dug-up through a bureaucratic oversight.

One can only hope that this sustained attack on credulity, truth and sensibility will render the Russian war machine moribund, lest it lead to general necrosis of the sensible  climate debate as has occurred in Australia.

Still we have it on good authority that Dr Brendan Nelson is taking submissions from Ukrainians arriving in Australia for a planned annexe to the AWM’s ” Over a hill somewhere’ interactive museum addition. In which snippets of the Ukrainian national anthem will be played over  a re- enactment of Australia’s elite SAS kicking bound Afghanis down a hill. Though Ukraine is remote from Australian military intervention it was felt that the spirit shown by the Ukrainians in their spirited defence and a recent shipment of Vegemite bound them to the noble tradition of ANZAC. A tradition that will ensure even if they lose, they will still win.

‘Knock off’ at ol Yallourn.

Frank writes;

Доброго дня

 I did “scientific German” at Yallourn Tech. Our class took it in turns to read out aloud bits out of a text which had chapters on various branches of science and then had to translate these, which we did with the (permissible) aid of a dictionary.

Franks house demolished (via a bureaucratic oversight) in ol Yallourn.

I’ll never forget the lesson when we read and translated the chapter dealing with the atrophying of organs by underusing them. By the time the climactic dropping off of the organ arrived at the end of the chapter, we were all in pain from uncontrolled laughter.

This atrophying isn’t confined to organs. Non use of knowledge leads to similar results. Thus, it was with my knowledge of soil science. I’d forgotten all about Chernozems when thinking about the Ukrainian conflict. Gas pipelines, NATO encroachment, nuclear armaments and reactors, oligarchs, Russian history (from Rasputin to Putin), Flashman’s Crimean adventures (like when he threw a Russian princess? out of a troika when being pursued by Cossacks who were gaining on him) these were all crossing my mind, but not Chernozem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGGkDogh0kM

Rasputin doll advert. Very popular amongst the ‘chinless’ in ol Imperial Russia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCLvZ3pffpc

Chernozem (black earth) is a usually deep black soil.
In Polish there is: Czarnoziem (Czarna ziemia) 
In Ukrainian there is: Chornozem (Chora zemlya), Чорнозем (Чорна земля) 
In Russian there is: Chernozem (Chernaya zemlya), Чорнозем (Чорна земля)

So, what are they fighting for? It wouldn’t appear to be their languages. I don’t think they’re that pedantic.

House near Kiev demolished through bureaucratic oversight.

Chernozem soils are mostly confined to the prairies, the steppes and the pampas.

Ukraine, often referred to as the “bread basket of Europe” has the richest soil on earth.
A third of the planet’s chernozem soil covers more than half of Ukraine’s arable land.

So it isn’t just gas, pipelines, Russian pride, Western strategic interests, economic greed, arms sales 
and billions of dollars and rubles that are at stake. 

Black gold and black soil are an integral part of the mix.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=druW_nssy7o  A Song of the Steppes 

‘Saint Shane of Warne’. Arguably more prominent on a global stage than Rasputin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8OjWaQdaLw Adios Pampa Mia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF1KRnkKNlc Bury me not on the Lone Prairie

In Yuendumu we’re in limbo. Awaiting the outcome of the trial which I will not comment on until it is all over.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xy8NugHzjE

до наступного разу (do nastupnoho raza)

Russian advert: “Take Fire, Flood and Despotic oversight insurance, or your roubles will turn to t-roubles’

Frank

Leadership. What’s in a leader?

Dear reader, tragically we return to our saga.  In which our heroes, Ces and Quent are just about at the end of the line? Who’s line? 

The Thin red line, the one that separates ‘Us”-sia from Russia, cos kleptocracy aside,  democracy aint all that flash at the moment either. 

She was in a word Furious..

Dutto had denied her a carve-up of spoils post Scomo, and the worst was that Angus had gone soft-cock on the Murray Darling. Turns out he wasn’t interested in capitalising on rivers global. Instead he was just content with local river systems . For Sophie this was the most serious rebuttal of all. For being ex member for INDI,  she HATED parochialism. 

Is it charisma?

World water resources was what she had her eye on. And in this respect (dear reader,) she was one eyed!

Whilst ‘Benny-Boy’ was paying out the Aldis lamp chord, counting the yards out, (it was a pre decimal Aldis lamp cord and keeping abreast of measurements, imperial versus metric was of vital importance) Sophie, steam literally radiating off her rebuffed hair- do, stormed towards us.  And turning one last time put another clip into the MP40 and sprayed the Special Response Vehicle one more time for good measure. 

‘Fuck you DUTTO” we heard her scream. As a Fair Work Commissioner, she had a command of language.

Being of the moment?

We pretended to be oblivious, as the seconds ticked by, hoping that with all his training and professional acumen, ‘Benny-Boy’ may find a way out. Our only option as any Ukrainian President would tell you was to stall.  Stall for time and hope against all hope that something might turn up. You thought wed say ‘Micawber- like’, but in the current idiom we’ll choose a more salient phrase, that something may go “GOGOL-LIKE’ for us. 

As she got closer we became aware of two things, the sound of bellicose and echoed laugher from within the turret of the Special Response Vehicle, and the heavy breathing of Sophie. She’d been miffed in business, and now, (dear reader) she meant “Business’. 

‘Shhhh’! I said to Ces, ‘this is it, pretend we’ve been thinking of how much fun it is to be on her side, as against Dutto and this may mellow her, as we take our chance’. 

‘Good to see you Sophie’, Ces corrected himself; “ exalted member of the Fair Work Commission’. How do it go’? 

Is it a gift ordained by a GOD?

‘Whaddayou fucken reckon, that man is thicker than a fuckin sack of potatoes, and the worst bit is, he thinks he’s fucken clever. Nothing worse than an ambitious Queenslander, they’re up to here with self-belief yet, they, believe that the world is flat and that Santa Claus is real. Or at least a fat bastard with an interest in nickel mining and democracy’!

We drew this as an oblique reference to Clive and decided to ignore it, for as we know , even for Sophie, trying to be too clever was a certain execution warrant. So we acted as all in her thrall. ‘Dumber than Dumb’. 

‘Does this mean the trip to Queensland and Warner Brothers World is off’?

‘Off’?  You’ll be lucky to get to ‘Wobbies World’ by the time Ive finished with you’!

Or a willingness to be a compete INDIVIDUAL?

Taking the mood of the moment none of us had the heart to mention to Sophie that Wobbies had been long closed.  We understood her feeling and, like a fair basic wage, which we knew was a complete Furphy we left it at that. 

“Well you showed him’! Offered Quent

‘Showed him He’s only just learnt the anger, the righteous anger of the unrequited. He doesn’t know it but after all is said and done I have the code’!

‘The code’? We asked, 

‘Yeah, the code, 

And wanna know something’? 

‘What’s that your Fair Work Commissionership’?

‘You’re gonna use the code to get us all outta here’.

‘That’s nice ‘offered Ces, 

Or pandering to fear and xenophobia?

‘Does that mean we can go free’?

Sophie looked at is, we could see her face galvanised by emotion, and from within, as a neutron star pulses with gravitational activity imperceptive to the naked eye, she began to erupt. 

Erupt with laughter, 

What began as a snigger became a guffaw, and the from the guffaw came a belly laugh that rolled and rolled until convulsed by laughter, she erupted in lachrymose laughter. Licentious laughter.  Levitational and lackadaisical laughter of such force, we decided it would be good for out health if we laughed along too. After a minute or two we all stopped laughing. 

Sophie then smirked, ‘allright then boys. You’re gonna help me out. See that Victoria Police Special Response Unit? When I say ‘Go’, you run for it’!

‘And You’?

She pointed to Benny, ‘When I say Fire, You fire those smoke flares, and we run for it. 

Or an ability to see things differently?

Get me’?

What could we do? It seemed like a plan. And if we did what we were told, perhaps we’d be spared. 

‘That sounds like a pretty sound plan Sophie’; Benny proffered, “yes I’ve got the flares, you tell me when and i’ll attach them to this rifle propelled grenade, Dutto will have no idea what hit him’!

‘Good then, Im glad someone amongst you knows how to get things done. 

When I say’!

We all three nodded, 

Benny tapped us on the shoulder, a slight tap, not as forceful as the one he gave to the Afghani peasant before helping him play roly-poly down the hill in Tarren Kowt, but forceful enough to know what he meant.  He then whispered “when I say now, you blokes hold onto the chord, and use these, (he handed us a pair of welding gloves), and abseil down the line, we’ll leave Sophie up here with Dutto. When the smoke clears we’ll be gone.  Get Me’?

By telling the truth?

It was the second time we had to respond to Get me’’ . We obliged. 

Sophie oblivious to the plan, put another clip onto her MP 40. ‘Now boys, Benny  when I give the word’ She put on a camouflage jacker, and held the MP40 tightly, and thumbed the war surplus potato masher grenade thrust into her belt. 

We waited, the guffawing of Dutto just audible above the silence. 

What will happen next,? Will Sophie give the order. Are orders just orders, or do they come from a higher order,? In order?

Or is it just the ability to play a well- tempered UKELELE?

Find out in our next orderly episode; ‘ Is that an order in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me’?  or “ Order of the Bath, was never so immersive’ 

Retreat from Moscow diorama AWM

Todays dispatch has an ironic tinge, cos out there there is another front and if you take a longer bow its out in the ‘Eastern front’. You know how the story goes, the Western front is all spiffing with bravery and over the top and ‘all quiet’, whereas the Eastern front is scary, limitless, dangerous and foreboding.  No Waterloo on the Eastern front, just an endless retreat from Moscow. It’s a sort of  self-perpetuating Afghanistan. Anyway, we at pcbycp have never got used to re-named place names.  On our wall map the globe is still one third pinkish with places like Bombay, Calcutta, Ceylon and Rhodesia pulsing with anointed light.

‘Boney’ had a bone to pick with the Russians

And the other great blob represents the Empire of Russia, with a double-headed eagle and extends all the way form Siberia to the bits that bordered on Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. On our wall-map those bits defined by the Russian Empire are coloured a sickly green. The colour of gangrene you may ask?

No pink-ish imperial possessions in Russia, which is a pity, for as the great pan-strategic poet laureate Rudyard Kipling, intoned, ” if the rest of the world played cricket what a jolly old world it’d be”.

In war ‘winners’ can well and truly be ‘grinners’

So heres a dispatch from the Ukraine via Argentina, where Frank has a sideways glance at bias in reportage and suggests the ‘Argies’ aint all bad, though they don’t have much of a cricket team.

Hola Amigos

Most of you will know that I grew up as a Dutch kid in Argentina.
I learned to read and write and do sums in Argentina. I also learned that “Las Malvinas son Argentinas’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqBC3l7i7dk

War can give you a kinda ‘sinking feeling’ also

The Buenos Aires of my childhood was a cosmopolitan city whose world-class Opera House (El Teatro Colon) opened 65 years before Sydney’s famous Opera House. I won’t bore you with more comparisons.
General Galtieri was one of Argentina’s Presidents during the so called ‘Dirty War’ which ‘disappeared’ as many as 30,000 people and featured such charming events as the harvesting of new-borns and the subsequent murder of their mothers and the throwing of live prisoners out of aircraft over the Atlantic Ocean. When Galtieri was losing grip on power, he started the Falkland Islands War.

Meanwhile in Great Britain, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was also losing her grip on power, so she jumped at the chance of responding to the Argentine challenge. Britain winning that two-month long war which claimed almost one thousand lives ensured the Iron Lady’s political survival.

When following the Malvinas war in the Australian press I was rather miffed by the one-sided reporting. I had to swallow what was left of my Argentine pride, as I was told of that miserable, evil, tinpot banana republic that was entirely at fault for this senseless war.

People, (even leaders) do weird shit to get their point across..

In 1981 General Leopoldo Galtieri was warmly received by the Reagan Administration. Galtieri’s proactive support of the Contras in Nicaragua was especially appreciated.

A decade later the Soviet Union dis-united. A major consequence of this disintegration was that all state assets were privatised and fell into the hands of the oligarchs. There’s that saying that shit rises to the top, well Vladimir Putin has.
In Britain they don’t call them oligarchs, but Margaret Thatcher went on to privatise everything she could. Her son famously was involved in the biggest British arms sale ever, to that peace loving nation Saudi Arabia, not to mention the failed coup d’état in Central Equatorial Africa which he bankrolled with his mates with the aim of getting favourable treatment in relation to oil leases.

War, gives “stay at homers” an opportunity for travel.

But no, the attack on Ukraine is all down to one man, that evil Vladimir Putin. And all those Russian school children who are learning to read and write and do sums, are also learning that “Украина русская”.

Sorry folks, I’m just not buying the one-sided portrayal that the Australian Press are presenting of a complex situation.

You only need to see the portrayal of Remote Aboriginal communities in some of the media to realise that often not all is as it seems or we’re being told.

“Oi, get your filthy hands off my desert!”
“What ‘e say?”

And a real opportunity to go camping..

Brezhnev took Afghanistan.
Begin took Beirut.
Galtieri took the Union Jack.
And Maggie, over lunch one day,
Took a cruiser with all hands.
Apparently, to make him give it back

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKqCknCOllg Pink Floyd

My favourite Louis Armstrong recording:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO3k-S_pqK4 (Wild Man Blues- 1927)

And the most relevant to these troubled times-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PYjx7Ehvu0 (Give Peace a Chance- 1970)

(turn up the bass notes and listen to the killer bass player)

Chau,

And sometimes war can make you feel like the last man standing…

Frank