Herewith is the current dispatch

Hi OMs, YLs and XYLs,

Consulting that modern suppository of wisdom (to paraphrase our favourite former Prime Minister), Wikipedia, I find that the word ‘compassionate’ evolved from the Latin ‘compassio’ (co-suffering) a word embodied in the Golden Rule: “do onto others as you would have them do to you”. With the notable exception of masochists, this isn’t a bad rule to aspire to live by.

The word ‘communication’ also evolved from Latin. ‘Communicare’ (to share).

Billy Bragg, Do unto Others… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdxBdl0JTyQ

Humanity has raised communication to highly sophisticated and complex heights, the same can’t be said for compassion. Before eliciting pedantic comments, let me make it clear that these are generalisations.

To my mind the crowning glory of Humanity’s evolution is the incredible and wonderful cultural/linguistic diversity. Sadly (here comes another generalisation) this diversity is far from given the appreciation and importance it deserves. Smart bombs (as in contrast to ‘stupid’ bombs) and those euphemistically named “area deprivation devices” (land mines) and “Improvised Explosive Devices” (IEDs or roadside bombs in plain English) are way down my list of Human achievement.

A Dispatchee sent me this:
http://videosift.com/video/British-Reporter-Loses-His-Shit-And-Reports-The-NEWS  
We all need to let off a bit of steam on occasions. This is an example of how it should be done. Well worth three minutes of your time.

One form of communication that gave me great pleasure, was (and hopefully will be again) amateur radio (“ham” radio). Yuendumu had a very low QRM (static interference) level compared with any urban location with its swarm of motor vehicles, motors, electric cables etc. that generate radio frequency ‘noise’. It also had very low QRN (interference from other radio stations) for the simple reason that the density of radio transmitters was very low. From memory there were only 28 or so licensed Amateur radio stations in the Northern Territory. The Wireless Institute of Australia issued a “worked all states” certificate to overseas Amateurs who could prove they had ‘contacted’ someone from every State and Territory in Australia. They proved this by submitting a batch of QSL cards (postcard sized verification cards exchanged with other amateurs with details of radio contacts- date and time, band, signal strength etc.). My favourite radio frequency band was the 20-meter band (14 Mhz), which under the right sunspot conditions enabled communication with the whole globe, by either the short or long path. Yes folks, the world is definitely round.

I recall that there were 350,000 radio amateur stations in Japan, many of whom needed that VK8 (Northern territory call-sign prefix) QSL card to complete the set to enable them to claim the WIA certificate! Thus if I called CQ and had my antenna pointed at Japan, it was reminiscent of those old documentaries that show pole fishing for tuna. “Kon ban wa Katsu-san, anata-no signal reporto five and seven, watashi-no antenna-wa twenty meters high desu. Watashi no QTH-wa Yuendumu-desu….” …“ Arrigato Frank-san please send me your QSL card”

“ It is very crowdy in Japan today” I can’t recall a single contact in which I was told that Japan wasn’t ‘crowdy’. I had visions of a heap of friends, neighbours and family surrounding Katsu-san in a tiny radio shack in Osaka, while he spoke with me. Very crowdy indeed. I was able to almost invariably tell my Japanese friends that in Yuendumu (“I cannot find this on the map Frank-san”) we had clear skies (‘Yoyi tenki desu’, I think is what it was called). The Maori name for New Zealand is ‘Aotearoa’ which means ‘the land of the long white crowd’. I think Japan should be named ‘the land of the eternal crowd’ (in more ways than one!)

Which brings me to a poster emanating from the Central Desert Regional Council:

Southern Tanami Kurdiji (Mediation + Justice)
Compassionate Communication TRAINING (their capitals)
Mediation Centre- Wednesday 6 April 2016- 5pm start
Tribal Elders, Directors and Executive Members are all invited to attend this training with CSP staff to learn about Compassionate Communication for a more peaceful community.

Which for some unexplainable reason prompted me to look up the Wiktionary definitions of ‘patronise” and ‘patronizing’:

“To treat as inferior unduly, talk down to, treat condescendingly”
and
“speaking or behaving towards someone as if they are stupid or not important”

When it comes to communication between Mainstream and Indigenous Australia it all amounts to a massive Communication Breakdown…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgRwHtmOA2E&nohtml5=False  (Led Zeppelin).

As for Compassionate Communication, I won’t bother to go there.

73’s
VK8FB

 CSP=‘Community Safety Patrol’ the new name for the Yuendumu initiated Night Patrol.

The Q-code evolved from the pre AM (Amplitude Modulation) and SSB (Single Side Band) morse-code days. It enabled people that spoke different languages to do a fair bit of communicating. A bit like written Chinese whereby people that speak a different Chinese language and/or dialect can communicate with each other.

73 is –…  …– (dah,dah, dididit….. dididit, dah dah)  in morse and means ‘good bye’