The PR Blog

The Adelaide River Stakes is the name given to the mass exodus of people prior to and following the Japanese air-raid in Darwin on 19^th February, 1942. Thanks mainly to an ill-informed statement by a former Governor General, Paul Hasluck, that it is a story full of shame for our national persona, but it is a myth.

The truth is that with much closer examination it was anything but a shameful episode in our most serious year of peril. The propaganda disseminated by the government of the day was based on inadequate information, over-the-top censorship and a failure to take the population into its confidence. The faults lie with a succession of failed civilian and military administrations which, like the behaviour of most politicians, was a deliberate trail of cover-ups and refusal to admit fault.

American elections have had a wacky, wild, and wooly history with all kinds of corruption from stuffed ballot boxes to buying votes to voting multiple times, to dead people voting (almost always for Democrats) and miscounting of ballots. Joe Stalin is credited with saying, “The people who cast the votes don’t decide an election, the people who count the votes do.” Stalin was a Communist in Russia not a Democrat in Georgia.

Some cynics would say, “A rose by any other name is still a rose.” Or a skunk called a wobbet still stinks to high Heaven.

I went down to see Redhead (my Mum) yesterday morning. I had a headache which had been stubbornly hanging on for a few days and I was not feeling that chipper. It was about 8 am when I arrived and Redhead was sitting on her throne also known as the Magic Chair as I staggered down her walkway with a thudding head and eyes that did not seem to enjoy the bright summer sunshine of Queensland.

I HATE not being well.

Redhead got off her regal chair and deigned to rise to come to the door to greet me.Two nervous manx cats scarpered out the door because a " stranger"  had arrived. Hell, I have only been coming for over 6 months since they arrived.  But, no, I am still a " stranger. "

Which brings me to Sailors and Shoeboxes full of memories.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought us a panoply of lies and evidence-light declarations that were less intended to inform Americans than to consolidate power and buy time. Among these were Anthony Fauci’s famous shift from arguing against wearing masks, to recommending wearing one, and, finally, to wearing two. 

Fauci also tried to convince us that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was not manipulated in a lab even though his inner circle had emailed him about “unusual features” of the virus that looked “potentially engineered.”  And, of course, we had “fifteen days to stop the spread,” an evergreen concept that dragged on for two years. Lest readers fault us for forgetting, there was also the “gain of function” controversy, the focused protection battle, school closures, lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and vaccine misrepresentations. 

Let’s look at the swap of WNBA player Brittany Griner for Viktor Bout.

Bout, aka The Merchant of Death (a moniker gifted by his prosecutors), was convicted for “trying to kill Americans”. Actually he was convicted of trying to sell arms to FARC, a group of Columbians that were fighting the Columbian regime supported by the United States. This attempted “killing of Americans” amounted to trying to arm people who were fighting U.S. military and bureaucratic forces who were in Columbia ostensibly enforcing U.S. drug laws. Bout was arrested in Thailand. There have been no allegations he committed his “crimes” on U.S. soil yet, he was tried and convicted in a New York courtroom.

I’ve started and restarted this article, pondered how to avoid hurting anyone’s sensitivities, and in the end have decided to accept Admiral Farragut’s advice at the Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864: Damn the torpedoes - full speed ahead!

I have an intellectual and emotional stake in this matter of the Charge of Beersheba (Be’er-Sheva). My maternal grandfather, 2788 Trooper John Joseph McGrath, was a horse breaker who served in the 2^nd Remount Unit for more than three years under Major A.B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson in Egypt and Palestine. My father, QX 17611  S/Sgt James Hammill served in the 2/ 14^th LHR between the wars, then in Tobruk and the Middle East, including Palestine, with the 2/9 Bn. The subject of the Charge of Beersheba was not an infrequent topic at home and in places that I visited.