Threnody – a poem, song or speech of mourning or lamentation; a dirge.
Responsible, resourceful, compassionate and professionally competent
25/08/2012One of the most difficult speeches to do well is one paying tribute to people who have died.
It is so easy to resort to platitudes or clichés, to apply saccharine and in doing so neither honour those who have died nor comfort those who remain.
Today’s speech by Governor General Lt Gen Sir Jerry Mateparae at the commemorative memorial service for Corporal Luke Tamatea, Lance Corporal Jacinda Baker and Private Richard Harris is a fine example of how to do it well.
. . . We gather to remember the service of three young New Zealand soldiers, who made the ultimate sacrifice in the service of New Zealand and for the mission to Afghanistan.
We gather to join with their families, friends and their mates-in-arms, particularly from Crib 20, to share in the grieving, to recall their sacrifice and to celebrate their lives.
These three young soldiers represent the best traditions of New Zealand’s contribution to resisting tyranny and to bringing peace and stability to conflict-ridden lands.
Although we live in this settled part of the world, New Zealanders understand this calling well. We have always sought peace and negotiated settlements to international disputes. We understand the imperatives of collective action against tyrannies and evil regimes.
And we understand that when all other options have been exhausted, principled words must often be backed by principled action. We are proud of our Kiwi tradition of standing up for what is right and for doing what is right.
At times like this, with 10 New Zealand soldiers having lost their lives in Afghanistan – five in a matter of weeks – it is natural that we question why we are there. In a democracy, it is right that we can and should ask questions.
The three young soldiers we mourn today knew well the risks of service in Afghanistan. It is a place where safety can never be guaranteed, and it has a tortured history of conflict that stretches back many centuries.
They also knew of the positive contribution the Provincial Reconstruction Team is making to the lives of the people of Bamyan province. They have rebuilt hospitals and roads. They have helped deliver education and health programmes. They have helped the local people rebuild their provincial government and establish their own security. They have helped them rebuild their lives.
It is easy to talk of a positive contribution from afar. Those who have served in Bamyan have seen it. They have seen it in the faces of the Afghan people they meet every day. They have seen it in the bright eyes of the children they meet, the boys and girls who play in the street, who can go to school and who can look to the future. The three we mourn today saw and knew the good that they were making to the lives of others, both as a team and as individuals. . .
I now turn to the families: Sarah Erb, Luke’s partner, and Lynn McSweeny, Luke’s mother and their wider families; Geoffrey Fosbender, Jacinda’s partner and Joyce Baker, Jacinda’s mother, and their wider families; Sandra Harris, Richard’s mother and the wider Harris family.
There is nothing I can say that can replace your loved ones. There is nothing I can say that will erase the painful grief that burns in your hearts for those whose lives were tragically cut short.
What I can say is that those you lost served with great honour. They demonstrated at the highest level courage, comradeship, commitment and integrity, which are the values the New Zealand Defence Force holds as central to underpinning its ethos.
They are fine examples of ordinary New Zealanders who answered the call of service. They were, as the late Sir Leonard Thornton, Chief of Defence Staff in the 1960s and 1970s noted, in the tradition and character “of the Kiwi solder at all levels—responsible, resourceful, compassionate and professionally competent.” . . .
The speech is worth reading in whole. I chose to highlight this portion because in the past week there has been a lot of ill-informed comment about the worth of the work the PRT is doing.
This extract shows those serving in it are making a positive difference, albeit at a very high price.
Saturday’s smiles
25/08/2012As a young boy enters a barber shop the barber whispers to his customer, “This is the dumbest kid in the world. Watch while I prove it to you.”
The barber puts a two dollar coin in one hand and three fifty cent coins in the other, then calls the boy over and asks, “Which do you want, son?”
The boy takes the $1.50 and leaves.
“What did I tell you?” said the barber. “That kid never learns!”
Later, when the customer leaves, he sees the same young boy coming out of a dairy with an ice cream. “Hey, son! May I ask you a question? Why did you take the three fifty cent coins instead of the two dollars?”
The boy licks his ice cream and replies, “Because the day I take the two dollars, the game is over!”
Consumer wins 2nd Bent Spoon
25/08/2012Consumer magazine has the dubious honour of winning its second Bent Spoon award from the NZ Skeptics for continuing to promote homeopathic products as a viable alternative to evidence-based medical treatments.
In its September 11 2011 review of anti-snoring products, Consumer consulted a medical herbalist who was quoted as saying that “all homeopathic remedies may work wonders for one person and do nothing for another” and that “homeopathy is best prescribed on an individual basis, after extensive consultation”.
Homeopathy is known to exploit the well-recognised placebo effect where the body heals itself in many cases. Any “wonders” worked can be attributed to that effect, as homeopathic solutions are made up solely of water – a fact not known by 94% of New Zealanders purchasing such products.
“Yet again Consumer has failed to point out that there are no active ingredients in a standard homeopathic product,” says Skeptics media spokesperson Vicki Hyde. “Surely this should raise consumer protection alarm bells, akin to someone buying a microwave and receiving a cardboard box which they´re told will heat food via the cosmic power of the universe if you think hard enough…”
Consumer did note that another expert had pointed out that “the efficacy of homeopathic remedies had not been demonstrated convincingly in evidence-based medicine.” This caveat was not adequate as far as the NZ Skeptics were concerned, particularly as the homeopathic products had a prominent place at the head of the list.
“We´ve seen the homeopathic industry use selective quotes as part of their marketing and advertising strategy to get unwitting customers to pay $10 for a teaspoon of water. No doubt Consumer´s inclusion of homeopathic products will be used to boost business, despite the admission by the NZ Homeopathic Council that homeopathic products have no active ingredients. Disturbingly, Consumer´s expert doesn´t seem to be aware of this admission, stating that `extra´ active ingredients could help.”
A number of people had raised concerns about Consumer´s willingness to feature such dubious products, with one nominator saying that the article had “destroyed Consumer NZ’s reputation as a organisation New Zealanders can trust”. . .
Skeptics also awarded a couple of bouquets:
* Margo White, for her health columns in the New Zealand Listener
“It´s great to see informed writing on health issues, based on research and evidence, rather than the large amount of low-grade items we usually get based on press releases and thinly disguised advertorial material,” says Hyde. . .
* Whanganui District Health Board member Clive Solomon, for supporting evidence-based medicine as the core focus for hospital care . . .
Skeptics’ website is here.
Soldiers can’t hide
25/08/2012Soldiers serve countries, Assange only himself, Jim Hopkins writes :
Soldiers can’t hide in embassies – though they can be ordered to rescue hostages from them, as the SAS was in Kabul last August. Soldiers can’t make grand speeches from the balcony, safe from capture or attack. They can’t claim diplomatic immunity when it suits or seek the protection of their enemy’s enemy to avoid being brought to book. They can’t recklessly publish whatever they choose, heedless of whom it may harm or betray, then join “the club of the persecuted”. . .
. . . Soldiers just do what soldiers have always done. They go where they’re sent. And fight when they must. They obey orders, do their duty, as it is given to them, and serve their country’s interests, in wars great and small, sometimes popular, sometimes not.
Because soldiers cannot choose their battlefields, any more than they can hide in embassies. They cannot tell their governments or their commanders they’d rather fight in Florida than in Bamiyan province. They can’t claim diplomatic immunity halfway through a battle or ask their enemies to “renounce” the “witch-hunt”.
What they must do, unlike those who hide in embassies, is confront the very essence of themselves. They must discover every ounce of fear in them and every skerrick of courage too. Because soldiers in Bamiyan, like soldiers on the Somme or on the island of Crete, know they are doing the most dangerous thing that anyone can.
For which they are not well paid. Not when compared with those who run websites and hide in embassies. But there is something every soldier can claim that those who pursue the protection of presidents or seek the sanctity of victimhood will never understand. More clearly than those who choose to hide, soldiers have the measure of themselves. They understand the consequence of choice, the meaning of duty and the character of courage.
Those are not fashionable things in this WikiLeaks age. Better to build a pedestal and put yourself upon it than defend a charge of rape. Better to claim “protection from oppression” than face the music. Better to hide than risk the battle. Better to blame everybody else for your circumstance than confront a lack of courage. . .
Apropos of this, Keeping Stock wonders if there’s a link between Wikileaks and recent action from the Taliban in Afghanistan.
HIgh country farmers can irrigate
25/08/2012High country farmers have had their right to irrigate upheld by the High Court:
Royal Forest & Bird Protection Society took corporate farmer Five Farms and the Waitaki District Council to court for a judicial review of the council’s granting “conditional certificates of compliance” to high country farming operations.
The practice allows farmers to avoid requiring a resource consent to develop their land, but with restrictions on native vegetation clearance. The WDC case involves farmland also designated as part of the WDC’s scenic rural zone.
Forest & Bird was successful on other issues, getting the conditional certificates declared “illegal” and established “at the least the possibility of vast tracts of indigenous vegetation in areas where the proposed activities were to be undertaken.”
Planned arable cropping in the area did constitute native vegetation clearance, Justice Christine French ruled.
She agreed, as did all counsel, that native vegetation in the dry Waitaki Valley environment would disappear within a year or two, if not months, once an area became irrigated.
But the WDC’s rules did not specifically nominate irrigation as a cause of native vegetation clearance.
Whether irrigated or not farming will have an impact on the land. But what would happen if the area wasn’t farmed at all?
Nature isn’t static. Not far from this area is the Linids Pass scenic reserve. The glorious golden tussocks thrived there when the land owned by farmers who grazed and top dressed it. Now it is under DOC control and has no stock or fertiliser the tussock is disappearing.
It might be replaced by whatever was there before it was farmed in time – but at the moment it looks like the only thing growing is hieracium.
August 25 in history
25/08/20121248 The Dutch city of Ommen received city rights and fortification rights from Otto III, the Archbishop of Utrecht.
1530 Tsar Ivan IV of Russia – Ivan the Terrible – was born (d. 1584)
1537 The Honourable Artillery Company, the oldest surviving regiment in the British Army and the second most senior, was formed.
1580 Battle of Alcântara. Spain defeated Portugal.
1609 Galileo Galilei demonstrated his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers.
1724 George Stubbs, British painter, was born (d. 1806).
1758 Seven Years’ War: Frederick II of Prussia defeated the Russian army at the Battle of Zorndorf.
1768 James Cook began his first voyage.
1825 Uruguay declared its independence from Brazil.
1830 The Belgian Revolution began.
1835 The New York Sun perpetrated the Great Moon Hoax.
1894 Shibasaburo Kitasato discoversedthe infectious agent of the bubonic plague and published his findings in The Lancet.
1898 700 Greeks and 15 Englishmen are killed by the Turks in Heraklion, Greece.
1900 Hans Adolf Krebs, German physician and biochemist; Nobel Prize laureate, was born (d. 1981).
1910 Yellow Cab was founded.
1912 The Kuomintang, the Chinese nationalist party, was founded.
1916 The United States National Park Service is created.
1918 Leonard Bernstein, American conductor and composer, was born (d. 1990).
1920 Polish-Soviet War: Battle of Warsaw, ended.
1921 The first skirmishes of the Battle of Blair Mountain.
1930 Sean Connery, Scottish actor, was born.
1930 Bruce Allpress, New Zealand actor, was born.
1933 The Diexi earthquake struck Mao County, Sichuan, China and killed 9,000 people.
1938 Frederick Forsyth, English author, was born.
1942 World War II: Battle of Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea.
1944 Paris was liberated by the Allies.
1945 Supporters of the Communist Party of China killed Baptist missionary John Birch, regarded by some of the American right as the first victim of the Cold War.
1946 Charles Ghigna (Father Goose), American poet and children’s author, was born.
1948 Three people died and 80 injured when a tornado hit Frankton on the outskirts of Hamilton.
1948 – The House Un-American Activities Committee held its first-ever televised congressional hearing: “Confrontation Day” between Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss.
1949 Martin Amis, English novelist, was born.
1949 Gene Simmons, Israeli-born musician (Kiss), was born.
1950 President Harry Truman ordered the US Army to seize control of the nation’s railroads to avert a strike.
1954 Elvis Costello, English musician, was born.
1961 Billy Ray Cyrus, American singer and actor, was born.
1970 Claudia Schiffer, German model, was born.
198 Tadeusz Mazowiecki was chosen as the first non-communist Prime Minister in Central and Eastern Europe.
1989 Voyager 2 spacecraft made its closest approach to Neptune, the outermost planet in the Solar System.
1989 Mayumi Moriyama became Japan’s first female cabinet secretary.
1991 Belarus declared its independence from the Soviet Union.
1991 – The Battle of Vukovar began.
1997 Egon Krenz, the former East German leader, was convicted of a shoot-to-kill policy at the Berlin Wall.
2003 The Tli Cho land claims agreement was signed between the Dogrib First Nations and the Canadian federal government in Rae-Edzo (now called Behchoko).
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia