<< KETTLE’S DARKENED CONDITION NOTED ~ MAIN ~ JOB ADVICE SOUGHT >>
DOCUMENT SPEAKS
Anti-Howard obsessive Tony Kevin in today’s Age:
Apparently every World War II veteran still living recently got a letter from Howard and his Veterans’ Affairs Minister. Robin Gollan of Canberra told me: “A few days ago, like thousands of other old men and women, I received a shiny medallion and a letter signed by John Howard and De-Anne Kelly. They thanked me for my part in protecting ‘the Australian way of life in times of conflict’ and for helping to build ‘our community in times of peace’.”
Gollan said that to Kevin? Interesting. Here’s Alan Ramsey in today’s SMH:
Last week Gollan, now 87, got a letter. It came with a commemorative medallion marking the 60th anniversary of the end of his war. The letter rekindled memories of his dead friend. It fired up a lot else, too. “I’ve been boiling for so long,” Gollan said yesterday. So he sat down and wrote a letter of his own.
This is what he wrote.
“A few days ago, like thousands of other old men and women, I received a shiny medallion and a letter signed by John Howard and De-Anne Kelly. They thanked me for my part in protecting ‘the Australian way of life in times of conflict’ and for helping to build ‘our community in times of peace’ ...
So Gollan’s comment to Tony Kevin was actually a published letter, which goes on to condemn John Howard for surrendering “the self-reliance, for which we fought, to curry favour with the most dangerous military power in history. He has stoked the fear of terrorists who may target us because of his fawning subservience to US President George Bush.” Whatever you say, Mr Gollan. Ramsey describes Gollan (a friend of his since 1982) as a former schoolteacher who, following his WWII service, became a lecturer at Sydney Teachers College before a thirty-year career at Canberra’s Australian National University. This apolitical biography sells Gollan a little short:
In August 1952, Labor MHR Daniel Mulcahy had placed a question on notice regarding the appointment of communist sympathisers Dr Robin Gollan and Michael Lindsay to the staff of the Australian National University (ANU).
Gollan wasn’t merely a sympathiser:
Republican and veteran Marxist Robin Gollan has offered an interesting explanation why Australian republicanism was weak during the late 1930s. In Gollan’s account, “all the effort” of “the far Left, particularly the Communist Party and those influenced by its ideas”, was “put into building an anti-fascist front to force conservative governments to pursue the policy of collective security”.Gollan did not remind his readers that those anti-fascists of the Australian Left opposed rearmament before 1939, and that between 1939 and Hitler’s invasion of the USSR they denounced the war as an imperialist conflict of no concern to the Australian people.
It was actually Australian commies like Gollan who curried favour with “the most dangerous military power in history”—the Soviet Union. Which is why, presumably, Ramsey omitted his friend’s fascinating poltical background.
(Via reader Jay Santos)
UPDATE. Reader Harold points out another apparent omission:
None of these people mention that the medal doesn’t just arrive - you had to apply to receive it.
My mother and father were eligible for this medal (not ‘medallion’) through their service in the Army during WWII, as were their old army friends. To receive it they had two weeks to apply to receive the medal and nominate whether they just wanted it sent to them or presented to them by their local MP.
I guess it would take some of the shine off Gollan’s story if he admitted that he actually applied to receive the medal.
Once again, lefties prove they simply cannot tell the truth. Why don’t they at least try to tell lies no one can check?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 08 17 at 12:05 AM • permalinkThis guy would have the perfect profile for GetUp.org.au! Just imagine it:
Member Robin: “I was never really political, but John Howard has just gone too far.”
Accompanied by a cute Concerned Elderly Australian photo.
Posted by dsmith_michigan on 2005 08 17 at 12:24 AM • permalinkGood on you for turning this rock over, Tim, and showing what’s underneath!
Posted by Susan Norton on 2005 08 17 at 12:36 AM • permalinkNone of these people mention that the medal doesn’t just arrive - you had to apply to receive it.
My mother and father were eligible for this medal (not ‘medallion’) through their service in the Army during WWII, as were their old army friends. To receive it they had two weeks to apply to receive the medal and nominate whether they just wanted it sent to them or presented to them by their local MP.
I guess it would take some of the shine off Gollan’s story if he admitted that he actually applied to receive the medal.Wow. Nice work Tim. You should be on some kind of media monitoring program - perhaps on the ABC.
Posted by Mr Hackenbacker on 2005 08 17 at 01:35 AM • permalinkAre they handing out Walkleys for bloggers yet?
—Nora
Posted by The Thin Man Returns on 2005 08 17 at 01:42 AM • permalinkAppropos of Tony Kevin, when I worked in Defence in the early eighties, he was my opposite number for a short while in what was then (I think) the Foreign Policy and Security Division.
I found him a pain to work with, rude arrogant and impatient. I also recall him as a company man, concerned to protect the the interests of the Frazer Prime Ministership. This was, of course, his job, and on the whole his attitude and behaviour was and is typical of PM&C staff under any Government. But Kevin wasn’t in those days the first person you would pick to end up a bitter leftist conspiracy theorist.
At about this time there was a story going around the defence and security agencies about the hyper zealous PM&C person who’d prepared some urgent brief or paper that Frazer was yelling for and had given it to a p.a to race across to [old] Parliament House (this was when PM&C was in Core 6 of the Barton Building.) The p.a.‘s car was involved in an accident on the corner of MacQuarie St and Kings ave and the p.a. was badly injured. Hearing about the accident, the suckhole raced across, grabbed the paper out of the p.a.‘s (presumably palsied and bloody) hand while she lay waiting for the ambulance and ran it across to Parliament.
I’ve no evidence that this event actually occured, and the story was never consistently pinned on any particular officer. But it was certainly attributed to several of the more disliked PM&C persons, including Mr Tony Kevin!!!
Posted by Consuela Potez on 2005 08 17 at 02:35 AM • permalinkGollan was a far-left wing historian at ANU for decades and wrote books and articles on trade unions, labour politics, etc (but also a history of the Commonwealth Bank if memory serves). Much better to present him as a veteran (which he is) than a lefty academic (also true). Most Aussies will lend an ear to a WWII vet. Most don’t give a shit what a left wing historian says.
Shit journalism from Kevin and Ramsey. Both get a fail. Nothing new.
They thanked me for my part in protecting ‘the Australian way of life in times of conflict’ and for helping to build ‘our community in times of peace’.
Ironic.
Those who actually seek to undermine and betray our country can be, mistakenly, lauded as good and truthful witnesses.
They are still around; some of them a lot younger than Gollan, and many are in the media.Funny how the ordinary battlers whose ordinary opinions the leftist columnists love to present as oh-so-ordinary always turn out to be serious left-wing activists (usually with a University background). The BBC is good at this.
Gollum also says:
“We would not have survived without the American alliance. But the Americans I served with believed, correctly, we were defending a great democracy. Today the alliance, for which Howard and his coterie are prepared to sell our soul, is a militaristic plutocracy.”So in 1939 the Anglosphere was a great democracy, but now it’s a militaristic plutocracy? Gollum really is a museum piece—he should donate himself to the National Library as well as his papers. They could put him in a glass cage and off he’d go, a Working Exhibition of the Communist Academic c. 1946-1979.
Posted by Blithering Bunny on 2005 08 17 at 05:20 AM • permalinkDamn you pw -I thought of Lord of the Rings too and creepy Gollum and his treasured Precious.
O/T abc news tonight spent another 5 mins gloating over the Israeli evictions of their own settlers.
Tried very hard to work up a violence story but the best footage they could get was passive resistance(so beloved of anty) and Israelis setting fire to their OWN houses.
Didn’t stop anty from attempting a scenario.
Presenter to Mark Willacy -“They’ve barricaded themselves into a synagogue Mark- HOW DANGEROUS is THAT!!!”
Well not as dangerous as the massive bomb which was detonated in Iraq and was the subject of the next (ultra calm and composed )story.No comment about the dangers of that.So let’s get this in order.
1. Gollan is navigator in RAAF 1942-45 (well done)
2. Gollan becomes Communist academic (boo, hiss)
3. Gollan applies for a medal for WW2 veterans to celebrate 60 years after VJ Day (Here it is, Sir, thank you for your service)
4. Gollan writes a sneering letter to the PM who gave him a medal (ungrateful old bastard)
5. Gollan ensures publication of his sneering diatribe against the PM, carefully omitting his pinko background. (mendacious old bastard)I have a lot of respect for the men and women who donned uniforms in WW2, however in Comrade Gollan’s case I will make an exception.
FOAD you poisonous old shit.
Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2005 08 17 at 08:20 AM • permalinkOT:
If someone were to emigrate to Australia, where would be a good place to set-up a Software/ Project Management business?
http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30100-13414556,00.html
I’m SICK of Blairistans waste, plus the UKs heading for a huge recession.
Crash - Yesterday, I was watching coverage of the evictions on ITV news, and the reporter said that the Israeli Army “did not use the kind of force regularly used against Palestinians”. Strangely enough, I didn’t see any of the settlers shooting at the army, or blowing themselves up.
Lately, the BBC has been more fair than in the past (but not exactly fair) to Israel. It’s almost like ITV is trying to take up the slack…
The left always talks down to us like we are the dunb lumpen prolteriate. Therefore they should be happy that they have achieved the Leftie dream - a dictatorship of the proletariate.
Posted by platey mates on 2005 08 17 at 09:27 AM • permalink
Page 1 of 1 pages
Members:
Login | Register
| Member List
What could be more self-reliant than collective security? Or Marxism, for that matter?