Das Tagebuch Murnaus

Went to the Canada Revenue Agency website to find out where to mail our tax returns (since the tax people did not only print insufficient forms, they also dropped out the pre-addressed envelopes... my tax dollars at work, on something else obviously) and was greeted by the above jigsaw puzzle.

HMCS Regina is being removed from "anti-terrorist" duty in the Arabian Gulf (where one Canadian ship at a time been steaming in small circles for some years looking for dhows, feluccas, and xebecs up to no good), and will redeploy to an "assurance" task force in the eastern Mediterranean.

What they will assure, and how they will do it, remains to be seen.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/hmcs-regina-to-join-nato-s-ukraine-reassurance-mission-1.2627537

Wow, actual bread and circus.
It's not surprising that the Legions feel cut out of things, since they haven't exactly been following the script lately...

Afghan mission Day of Honour planning catches legion off guard

Legions across the country have had only days to prepare for May 9 commemoration event
By Leslie MacKinnon, CBC News Posted: Apr 28, 2014 11:18 AM ET| Last Updated: Apr 28, 2014 4:53 PM ET

A May 9 National Day of Honour commemorating the Afghanistan conflict will include a parade in Ottawa and a breakfast for families of soldiers and others who died during the mission, the government announced today.

But the commemoration is also supposed to be celebrated across the country at legion halls and military bases, and the Royal Canadian Legion says it has had little time to prepare.

Scott Ferris, director of marketing and membership at the legion's national branch, said in an interview, "It's just that with 10 days to plan it doesn't give anyone time to do the great justice to this day that it really needs."

A total of 40,000 veterans will be honoured, as well as the 158 soldiers, one diplomat, one journalist and several civil servants who were killed in the conflict.

Rick Hansen, the B.C. Paralympian whose Man in Motion world tour in the mid-1980s raised money for spinal cord research, and whose foundation still raises money for the cause, will emcee the event.

The government says former prime ministers and former Govenors General to attend the ceremonies.

The day will also feature a relay called Soldier On — runners will carry the last flag from Afghanistan from Trenton, Ont., to Ottawa. The flag, inside a specially built baton, will be passed on through Napanee, Kingston, Perth, Kanata and Gatineau.

The concept of a special day on May 9 to mark the Afghanistan conflict was announced by Prime Minister Stephen Harper on March 18 when the last Canadian military contingent pulled out of Afghanistan.

That's when the legion started asking questions, but Ferris said it was impossible until last week to even find out when the two minutes of silence would occur in order to co-ordinate the timing in legions across the country. (It will be at 1:30 p.m. E.T.)

"This could have been a fantastic national event with thousands of legion branches getting involved across the country, hundreds of thousands of volunteers. The best we are left with now is scrambling to make something happen," he said.

The tribute breakfast for the families of the fallen will be sponsored by the organization True Patriot Love, which raises money to support soldiers, veterans and their families, and is receiving offers of financial support from the private sector.

Although the breakfast is described as private, corporate sponsors will be able to buy tickets at $1,000 per person, or $3,500 for a group of four.

Controversy over costs

There had been some controversy over the Day of Honour when some families received notices they would be expected to pay their own costs for travel to Ottawa.

However, the government announced it will pick up costs for the families' travel, meals and accommodations while in Ottawa, if True Patriot Love can't raise enough to cover the expenses.

Ferris doesn't have any problem with corporate sponsors paying for families' expenses and says he's glad the private sector is "stepping up." He worries that if government picks up the entire cost, a precedent would be set for several other commemoration events coming up, such as the 70th anniversary of D-Day in early June.

At a news conference Monday a spokesperson for the Prime Minister's Office couldn't give even a ballpark figure for the Day of Honour's budget.

"Remembrance is fundamentally a key issue of the legion's mission statement," Ferris pointed out. "But back in 2012 we knew it was going to cost approximately $30 million to commemorate the war of 1812. We have seen nothing from the government in regards to cost."

He pointed out Remembrance Day is considered a day of honour for all veterans, and no one special ceremony was held for veterans of Bosnia or Rwanda.

Ferris continued that the government has been closing veterans affairs offices, and cutting back on some veterans services.

He said the legion's mission is split between honouring veterans and serving them. "We have to do both. But there has to be a balance."

NDP thinks government should pay families' costs

Jack Harris, the NDP's defence critic, said it is "totally inappropriate" to leave families at the mercy of voluntary donations and charities. "Are we trying to save money?" he asked. "You're left with the impression that the government is doing this without spending any money or doing it on the cheap."

Laurie Greenslade, whose son David was one of six soldiers killed on Easter Sunday in Afghanistan in 2007, told CBC News she and her husband planned to pay their own way to Ottawa. Then her husband's employer offered to pay "for everything."

"They wholeheartedly offered to do it, and they wanted to, and we were glad they wanted to, so we said 'yes,'" she said.

Other events for the Day of Honour will include:

■Displays of a Leopard II tank, a rigid hull inflatable boat, a military medical display and other displays from military engineers, Canadian Special Forces and the Foreign Affairs Department.
■Events across the country, in municipalities, local military bases and legion halls, some organized by MPs.
■A two-part fly-by salute. One will include a maritime patrol aircraft, a Globemaster, a Hercules, an airbus, and Griffon and Chinook helicopter, all used in Afghanistan.
■A ceremony for the families of the fallen in the Senate chamber with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the Governor General, Defence Minister Rob Nicholson and Chief of Defence Staff General Thomas Lawson.
■ A 21-gun salute, and a single gunshot followed by two minutes of silence.
The Afghanistan memorial consisting of 190 plaques within eight panels will be on display in the Hall of Honour on Parliament Hill.

The parade will include 300 Canadian Armed Forces personnel, 32 RCMP members, local police and 50 civilians who were part of the Afghanistan mission. Along the way, veterans of the Afghanistan war will join in .

***

'an that's that about that.

Mark Campbell, who was the best Platoon 2IC I ever had when I was in the Army and who later lost both his legs in Afghanistan, is one of the six plaintiffs in this lawsuit.

Veterans don't have social contract, Ottawa says in lawsuit response
Federal government responds to class-action lawsuit aimed at New Veterans Charter
By Kristen Everson, CBC News Posted: Mar 18, 2014 5:00 PM ET

The federal government is arguing it does not have a social contract with veterans in response to a class-action suit brought by veterans upset with the compensation arrangement offered to wounded soldiers under the New Veterans Charter.

The veterans' lawsuit claims the charter and the changes it brings to compensation for veterans violate the Constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

( Read more... )

God damn this government, saving a few dollars on the backs of these maimed people.
Aki has never voiced an interest in serving in the military, but if he did I would counsel him not to, not when your own government comes right out and says, you get what you get, and if that's nothing, well then you get nothing.

Triumphal arches, parades, panem et circenses.. and now it's starting to affect things that really matter.

Commemorations of historic military events could put current force at risk, internal documents say
By Lee Berthiaume, Postmedia News January 10, 2014

OTTAWA — The federal Conservative government’s plan to commemorate a large number of military battles and accomplishments in the coming years poses a threat to the Canadian Force’s ability to do its job, according to internal Defence Department documents.

The Conservative government has come under fire in the past for emphasizing Canada’s military past at the expense of other social, technological and cultural achievements.

But this is the first time anyone has indicated that celebrating Canada’s past military contributions could actually undermine the Canadian Forces today, which opens a whole new avenue of questioning for the government.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced this week that the government will be holding cross-country consultations in advance of celebrations over the next four years to mark a large number “defining moments” in Canada’s history.

While these moments will include some non-military milestones such as Canada’s 150th birthday in 2017, the majority will center on the 100th anniversary of the First World War and the Second World War’s 75th anniversary.
( Read more... )

I really have to question commemoration of some of these events. Fenian Raids, Second Ypres, The Somme, the Halifax Explosion, Hong Kong, these were comical non-events (well, just the Fenian Raids) or Canadian disasters. And again, why observe the beginnings of wars?

I know I kind of slacked off with the 30 days of writing meme but eh, I got busy.
I'll get back to it.

Meanwhile, a reading meme nicked from the excellent emmabovary:

Which book has been on your shelf the longest? Coup d'etat: A Practical Handbook by Edward Luttwak. Had this around since my teens, nicked from my father's bookshelf (no idea why he had it).

What is your current read, your last read and the book you'll read next?
Current read: Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla by David Kilcullen (actually, it should be subtitled The Return of the Urban Guerrilla, and They Mean It This Time, but that's another story).
Last read: The Soldier: His Daily Life Through The Ages by Philip warner (little portraits of soldiers a few centuries apart, from Bronze Age to Ww II, all of them vaguely related to each other).
Next Read: Either Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Algeria by Alf Heggoy (a 1972 work I never heard of and found by chance) or The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters by Frances Saunders.

What book did everyone like and you hated? Catcher In the Rye. What the hell was that all about?

Which book do you keep telling yourself you'll read, but you probably won't? I dunno - ever since I got a house to live in, the number of books I own but haven't read seems to be greater every year. I look at them when I go to fetch something else, and reflect there may be a few I will never ever get to.

Last page: read it first or wait till the end? Wait to the end, always..

Acknowledgements: Usually a waste of time.

Which book character would you switch places with? None; a book character has to live out the same plot over and over again, and I get to move on.

Do you have a book that reminds you of something specific in your life (a person, a place, a time)? Moby Dick reminds me of my time in Japan, when I actually had time to read the whole damn thing. Though my recall of it isn't great.

Which book has been with you to the most places? I've dragged a few books with me hither and yon. I have a copy of Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis I took to Japan and back.

Used or brand new? Either.

Have you ever seen a movie you liked better than the book? Mmmm, no. Though the film of 1984 (the one with Richard Burton) was pretty much how I had pictured the book in my head.

day 17 - your highs and lows of this past year.


Highs:
- Aki finishing his first year of college, having done quite well.
- Big Trip to Montreal as GOH for a gaming convention.
- Making a presentation at a virtual conference.
- Big Trip to London to present at the first Connections-UK conference.
- A Distant Plain (Afghanistan game) coming out.
- Monthly DJ gigs at Circuit Breaker - it's a fun night, sorry I have been remiss about posting set lists but I built a website for the event at http://circuitbreakerclub.org .


Lows:
- Getting dicked around by a publishing company that finally dropped two of my games that were contracted for publication, after I had spent a LOT of time revising one of them IAW their nebulous direction (I don't think they even looked seriously at the second one).
- Not being able to attend a promising-looking professional conference on Professional Gaming as a design facilitator, after it was first postponed by US government sequestration then by the outright shutdown.
- Having only five people attend the previously mentioned virtual conference presentation, only one of whom knew what I was talking about.
- Dental troubles - I don't know if I will ever get my choppers to fit together properly. But at least I had money to get them fixed.

So, I think on balance it's been a pretty good year!

Day 1 - your current relationship
Day 2 - where you’d like to be in 10 years
day 3 - your views on drugs and alcohol.
day 4 - your views on religion.
day 5 - a time you thought about ending your own life.
day 6 - write 30 interesting facts about yourself.
day 7 - your zodiac sign and if you think it fits your personality.
day 8 - a moment you felt the most satisfied with your life.
day 9 - how you hope your future will be like.
day 10 - discuss your first love and first kiss.
day 11 - put your ipod on shuffle and write 10 songs that pop up.
day 12 - bullet your whole day.
day 13 - somewhere you’d like to move or visit.
day 14 - your earliest memory.
day 15 - your favourite tumblrs.
day 16 - your views on mainstream music.
day 17 - your highs and lows of this past year.
day 18 - your beliefs.
day 19 - disrespecting your parents.
day 20 - how important you think education is.
day 21 - one of your favourite shows.
day 22 - how have you changed in the past 2 years?
day 23 - give pictures of 5 guys who are famous who you find attractive.
day 24 - your favourite movie and what it’s about.
day 25 - someone who fascinates you and why.
day 26 - what kind of person attracts you.
day 27 - a problem that you have had.
day 28 - something that you miss.
day 29 - goals for the next 30 days.
day 30 - your highs and lows of this month

Uh, what's a Tumblr?
[looks it up]
Oh.
140 million little blogs and I don't know any of them.
Nor they me.
Okay, so - none.

See you tomorrow!

In other news, I'm 49 today! Started the day with cough syrup for breakfast then an 0820 visit to the dentist to get a crown put in. The cough syrup was so I didn't cough the crown out back at them (had a terrible cold the last 10 days, about gone now). When I was in the chair, I joked that since today was my birthday, I was King For A Day... and the first act for a king is to be crowned! Heh, little dental humour there... OK, well, they liked it.


Day 1 - your current relationship
Day 2 - where you’d like to be in 10 years
day 3 - your views on drugs and alcohol.
day 4 - your views on religion.
day 5 - a time you thought about ending your own life.
day 6 - write 30 interesting facts about yourself.
day 7 - your zodiac sign and if you think it fits your personality.
day 8 - a moment you felt the most satisfied with your life.
day 9 - how you hope your future will be like.
day 10 - discuss your first love and first kiss.
day 11 - put your ipod on shuffle and write 10 songs that pop up.
day 12 - bullet your whole day.
day 13 - somewhere you’d like to move or visit.
day 14 - your earliest memory.
day 15 - your favourite tumblrs.
day 16 - your views on mainstream music.
day 17 - your highs and lows of this past year.
day 18 - your beliefs.
day 19 - disrespecting your parents.
day 20 - how important you think education is.
day 21 - one of your favourite shows.
day 22 - how have you changed in the past 2 years?
day 23 - give pictures of 5 guys who are famous who you find attractive.
day 24 - your favourite movie and what it’s about.
day 25 - someone who fascinates you and why.
day 26 - what kind of person attracts you.
day 27 - a problem that you have had.
day 28 - something that you miss.
day 29 - goals for the next 30 days.
day 30 - your highs and lows of this month

Well, I don't have an iPod but here are the 10 that show up on the MP3 player I am using most right now, written in the time during the song played.

Wire - Kidney Bingos: I liked Wire from back when I got into music. One of the best "art students with guitars" bands, they had a nice clear sound and semi-surrealistic lyrics that I liked; the tunes stuck in my head too. "Kidney Bingos" is one of my favourites and the album from which it comes, A Bell Is A Cup Until It Is Struck, is my favourite Wire album. They released a new one, Object 47 a few years ago and it was as if they had never been away.

Tommy James - The Commies Are Coming: This is something I found from Atomic Platters, a record of 1950s era music featuring Atomic Age paranoia and Civil Defense PSAs from various celebrities. This is one of the weirder ones, a genteel sounding country singer with a subdued guitar and autoharp in the background sings and then goes into this a cappella denunciation of America as it then was.... "we must stand firm for the sake of our beloved country with which God has so blessed us...." and crush Communism under the American heel, under "the few strong and able leaders who can rise up unite us against this threat".

Dick Dale - Surf Beat: I really got into surf music a while ago, not a collector or aficionado but I have a few disks lying around. Dick Dale was and is an amazing guy, I think he got robbed as he was just starting to make it big when those stupid Beatles came along and derailed American popular music, or shoved it onto a tack I liked a lot less. If you have ever seen film of Dick Dale or even better live playing, you can understand what a shreddin' maniac he was. His big hit "Misirilou", which reanimated his career when it was featured in the movie Pulp Fiction, is actually very Middle Eastern (Dale was half Lebanese) and you can hear this influence in his playing. An earlier version of the song even has violin in it.

PiL - Careering: I found out about John Lydon the same way everyone else did, as he was Johnny Rotten, leader of the Sex Pistols... but what came after Never Mind the Bollocks was much more interesting. The whole album Second Edition is quite something, and this song is one of the stand-outs... also very good is "Poptones". Lydon's nasal singing over this weird dub-style bass and odd electronic tones and warbles, telling fragments of an odd story you really would rather not listen to.

Nash the Slash - Glass Eye: Just a short bit from his hit album Children of the Night. Nash was and is an amazing character, a guy with a weird persona who played with his face wrapped in bandages and dark glasses on stage like the Invisible Man.... one of Toronto's finest and another guy who never got his lasting due. Crazed strings, mutated electronic violin producing sounds you had never heard before or since. He recently quit music entirely, citing music piracy as the last nail in his professional coffin, but I dunno - his output needed to be a lot higher to claim this I think. Still, I will miss this mad perfectionist, who played and mixed everything by himself until he thought it was perfect and he was right.

Front 242 - Operating Tracks: Great early Electronic Body Music (EBM), I play this sometimes at Circuit Breaker. I like early EBM/industrial at least partly because it took so much work, there were no computers or sequencers or samplers, or what was available was pretty crude. This forced the better acts (and there was lots of dull derivative crap back then, just as there is now) to put more thought into what they did and how they did it... this song is a good example, at its base it is a pretty basic beat laid over a tape of some radio chatter (about you don't know what but it sounds official) but it makes your feet start moving in those improbably tall and ornate Goth booties.

Gary Numan - Metal: Second track off The Pleasure Principle, the first album that came out under his own name (before he was co-credited with Tubeway Army). Another artist i liked from the beginning, icy cold SF inspired lyrics and remote-sounding synthesizers, it fitted perfectly the kind of alienation and separation I felt when I was in my late teens... it did not surprise me at all when i found out later that he also has Asperger's Syndrome. "I'm still confusing love with need...."

DOA - World War 3: sometimes I like raucous punk, and these guys were some of the best Vancouver produced. A couple of years ago I saw a double bill of them with Dayglo Abortions, a Victoria punk group that's also stuck together over the last 30+ years. They capped off their set with "General Strike", one of their best songs, and looking at the people my age in the audience, i thought how so much had changed in the province since that song came out (when there was about to be a genuine general strike against the right-wing government), but also how nothing had changed (as the strike was averted at the last moment by a Grand Bargain between organized labour and government that we're all still paying for). Joey "Shithead" Keithley ran for office in the last election, unfortunately did not get elected. I would have been pleased to serve Minister Shithead.

B-52s - Mesopotamia: I loved the B-52s from the get-go, they were fun. Fred Schneider's honking vocals are unmistakeable, and even though lately he's been getting a little annoying with novelty projects ("Who Threw That Ham At Me?") he made a lot of the fun. But Kate Pierson was/is wonderful too.

Polyphonic Size - Winston and Julia: A genuinely weird little nugget of Belgian post-punk synthpop I found only recently, though they are from the early 80s. Hard to find them, even in this era of Youtube and sharing blogs. I first heard their "Nagasaki Mon Amour" on some compilation album and that's where you're likely to encounter them too. "Oceania Oceania... no place to live, no place to love.... Eastasia, Eurasia.... Winston and Julia...in this world of no-no-no...."

Aw, that's ten already? Gee, that was fun.

On the slate:
Day 1 - your current relationship
Day 2 - where you’d like to be in 10 years
day 3 - your views on drugs and alcohol.
day 4 - your views on religion.
day 5 - a time you thought about ending your own life.
day 6 - write 30 interesting facts about yourself.
day 7 - your zodiac sign and if you think it fits your personality.
day 8 - a moment you felt the most satisfied with your life.
day 9 - how you hope your future will be like.
day 10 - discuss your first love and first kiss.
day 11 - put your ipod on shuffle and write 10 songs that pop up.
day 12 - bullet your whole day.
day 13 - somewhere you’d like to move or visit.
day 14 - your earliest memory.
day 15 - your favourite tumblrs.
day 16 - your views on mainstream music.
day 17 - your highs and lows of this past year.
day 18 - your beliefs.
day 19 - disrespecting your parents.
day 20 - how important you think education is.
day 21 - one of your favourite shows.
day 22 - how have you changed in the past 2 years?
day 23 - give pictures of 5 guys who are famous who you find attractive.
day 24 - your favourite movie and what it’s about.
day 25 - someone who fascinates you and why.
day 26 - what kind of person attracts you.
day 27 - a problem that you have had.
day 28 - something that you miss.
day 29 - goals for the next 30 days.
day 30 - your highs and lows of this month

So, pips and crowns and "Fusilier Bloggins" again.
(see below the cut if you don't know what I'm talking about)

Er-hr-h'rm... colour me unimpressed.

This is class-A pandering.
A symbolic act from a government that understands well, but really doesn't care, about the large power of small symbols that some people hold very dearly and never relinquished.
It's precisely to placate the grouchy 60+ year olds, exactly those who consider the last 46 years of the Canadian military to be an embarrassment and aberration, that this is being done - I thought the same thing when the RCN and RCAF got renamed, rebadged, what have you a year or two ago.
The Army just got to do this last.
Do you have to think very long about the dominant political power base of this constituency, or their voting behaviour?
Like the emigres who returned after Napoleon, they have forgotten nothing and learned nothing.

So, it's 1966 or less again - why stop there - red serge and tricorner hats, powdered wigs for Change of Command parades, or even further and return to Decuriones, Centuriones and phalerae worn on the cuirass?

I served too; wore pips on my mess kit and patrols, in fact - that part never went away.
And if I were serving today, I'd be putting up a grey square on my shoulder as well ("3rd Canadian Division" is more evocative than "Land Forces Western Area", but it doesn't give the Army any more actual divisions).
I understand military traditions, more deeply than Stephen Harper does (was he ever even in Wolf Cubs?) but I don't need to look like a photograph of my grandfather to be reminded that I am his grandson.
I recognize window-dressing when I see it, having taken part in many "dog-and-pony shows" in my time served, and this is one of those empty gestures.
The past is past, and while you may admire it or study it, frankly it's infantile and magical thinking to suppose that you can return to it (or rather, your coloured imagination of it) by adopting its trappings.

I'd sooner see the veterans of Canada's longest war taken care of properly, no matter what's on their slip-ons or whether they're addressed as "Rifleman" or not.
I understand it's not an either-or proposition, there's enough money to do both, but to see what's acted upon first betrays the priorities really in play.

( Read more... )