In response to my column on Anzac denial in The Australian today, I received an email from Mr H R Thomas in Queensland drawing my attention to the work of Dr Lindy Edwards.
I have since become the 42nd person to view Dr Edward’s November 2013 youtube hit, Creating a Progressive Economics. I do not recommend it.
In happier times:
Dr Lindy Edwards
It was Dr Edward’s views on soldiering, however, rather than her perplexing approach to economics, to which Mr Thomas drew my attention. In June 2013, Dr Edwards wrote in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald (where else?):
There is a long tradition of firing up fighting men by invoking their shared ability to sexually degrade women. They tap into an ideal of male sexual power to create a cocktail of ego, aggression and sexual energy that they channel into battle.
Mr Thomas was intrigued. He wrote to Dr Edwards:
I served with the RAAF in Vietnam while my father served with the RAAF in the Pacific in WWII. Neither of us encountered the phenomenon you referenced. Since leaving the RAAF I have further developed my interest in military history but, I cannot find any reference to your claim. Consequently, I would be grateful if you would provide me with examples where commanders have fired up their men using the technique you described.
Sincerely,
H R Thomas
Dr Edwards replied:
I teach at ADFA and I see it all the time.
Mr Thomas found her answer unsatisfactory, and replied in the following terms:
Dear Doctor Edwards,
I can tell you do not lecture in manners.
Here is what you wrote in The Age: ”They tap into an ideal of male sexual power to create a cocktail of ego, aggression and sexual energy that they channel into battle”.
I repeat my request: “I would be grateful if you would provide me with examples where commanders have fired up their men using the technique you described”.
“I teach at ADFA and I see it all the time” was not an answer. It was an evasion and in no way responded to my request.
Would you kindly provide me with examples which substantiate your claim.
Sincerely,
H R Thomas
At the time of going to press, no reply had been received from Dr Edwards.
I was number 43. Why would I put myself through it? Well…I also watch Q&A.
I’m guessing the good doctor is, in fact, a quack who unfortunately projects her delusions onto some of our finest.
She won’t provide any evidence for her BS because the nonsense swirling around her little mind can’t be put into coherent English.
The most appropriate ‘fix’ is to ignore her. This strategy works best with most toddlers and attention seekers.
She’d be a shoe in as a guest for Q&A. I wonder why Tony Springer-Jones hasn’t invited on the panel yet?
Teaching at ADFA?
Good Lord.
LOL. These days, that’s like saying you teach at the Ponds Institute.
So Lindy made it up and gets a gig “teaching” males she despises.
That’s some long march through the Institutions…..Institutions that actually enable her and use my tax money to reward her.
Good Lord indeed.
And when the crazed kiwis/Indos/Solomon islanders launch their invasion.. the people she has taught will be on the front lines defending us. God help us.
So she read a book or two, then presented their hypotheses whilst adding nothing of interest. Anything noteworthy is cribbed from other sources. Even her “thought-provoking” challenge to students to consider where their pens come from is pinched from I, Pencil.
God, she’s a real dummy. Her insights are repetitious paeans to the dull. For instance, she doesn’t think that there’s any benefit in Coles and Woolies squeezing their suppliers to provide cheaper, describing this “redistributing wealth along the production chain”, or exploitative profit-making. Failing to understand how competition works, she appears to assume that this redistributed wealth all ends up in the pockets of Coles and Woolies’ shareholders. Perhaps she doesn’t visit the supermarket often, as it would seem she hasn’t noticed the appearance of $2 2l milk, $1 loaves of bread and so forth. Thus she doesn’t even touch upon the benefits provided to consumers who suddenly able to purchase cheaper food as a result of “redistributing wealth along the production chain”. She implores everyone to check out her books and website. She should check out concepts of opportunity cost, competitive markets and the profit motive.
I hope she is removed from ADFA as swiftly as possible.
She’s a pet.
Put in place to meet the diversity requirements of Labor governments and harmless. Probably mocked relentlessly.
Lindy Edwards famously wrote one of the worst books about Economics, titled “How to argue with an economist” or something like that. At least Bob Ellis’ book on “economic rationalism” was funny in the unhinged bobster way.
And it was probably written quite well.
Dr. Edwards bio includes. :
It’s appears Edwards has an email address associated with the ADFA .
No doubt all that experience with The Australian Conservation Foundation has provided her with unique insights into teaching the future warrior class.
Sweet Jesus we are all doomed.
In Sharpe novels they seem to get a dose of grog to take the edge off, my impression is most went in terrified, cos you know they might die or get a limb hacked off without anaesthetic.
It doesn’t seem to take much to be an academic these days.
Oh, and my uncle told me that in New Guinea he fired up his troops by threatening a bayonet in the belly to anyone that ran the wrong way.
Any relation to Hedley Thomas, Australian investigative journalist, who’s father Hedley Robert Thomas is a former Royal Australian Air Force pilot?
I bet Dr Edwards rails against various forms of gender and ethnic stereotyping. I bet she says it is a method used to devalue the subjects of the stereotyping by depicting them as ‘the other’. But, as usual, the only reason she knows this is because she stereotypes a whole class of people to marginalise them.
… and how about Lindy’s shared ability to sexual degrade men?
I’m waiting to see the appropriate Battle Honours on the ADFA Colours.
Survival a fall at ‘The Private Bin’, a stoush at ‘Mooseheads’ or a near miss with dehydration whilst doing the walk of shame, doesn’t count.
I highly suggest that Ms Edwards gets out and meets some real servicemen, and women, rather than making judgements based on a bunch of Uni students who are still being shaped into something useful.
Surviving
‘I see it all the time’. A lefty classic. I know a guy who works for local govt. doing environmental hippy stuff. He tells me he sees evidence for global warming ‘all the time’. Now either he has the most finely attuned senses — beyond the superhuman — combined with a brain better than the best supercomputer –or he’s just projecting his imagination onto the world.
That’s so wrong! Consumers, obviously, need much more expensive food—not cheaper—in order to accept their betters’ rebukes on global awarmism and stuff:
Natasha Stott Despoja when she led the Australian Democrats.
I’d want to conceal the details if it was my CV too.
I think Dr Edwards has been watching too many episodes of ‘Vikings’ or ‘Game of Thrones’ and is mistaking dark-age/medieval fantasy for reality.
my family’s lefty politics law uni student learned at her university that
“the anzacs weren’t heroes, the anzacs were f…..g rapists”.
Very happy to get that out she was, all a simple slogan, and all good lefties feel that the march on april 25 should just be for lefties that feel like they know what it would be like to be victims of war, [and then of course be center of attention for raising peoples awareness of this, could just hear jon faine praising this sort of anzac day as being the march he always dreamed of socially engineering australia into groupthinking as correct.]
Did you kick her out of the house?
Another bit of evidence that it’ll take a very long march to get back again.
It’s bizarre that lefties like her have saddled the forces with women in combat roles, or tried to. The question arises, how are they to be motivated to do the job? Will a shot of booze and some dehumanising of the enemy do it? Or was that equal opportunity manoeuvre just another way of undermining an institution that the left traditionally undermines anyway?
Kae might be able to speak on this, as an ex service person. No insult to women intended, but I am unconvinced about women being a good idea in front line roles, for all sorts of reasons, mostly related to the often denied “differences”.
Kate Humble has an impressive frontage.
perturbed
#1275897, posted on April 23, 2014 at 12:42 am
.
Followed very quickly by whoever hired her in the first place.
The ADFA has really lost it.
my family’s leftie politics law uni student has taught me that in todays australian university system, if you write that
‘white racist mysogynist supremicist culturally genocidal sexually inexperienced australian male anzacs, from a sexually repressed culture, went overseas just for the chance to rape brown children from far-away places as a war on the victim peoples of the world’
this will get you a high distinction. No, you don’t have to punctuate it, just mindfart it onto the page somehow, any old how.
I did try and draw a ‘conversation’, and ask her how she felt about sexually inexperienced young males from a sexually repressed culture,where women are not available for easy hook-ups,coming to australia in the 21′st century, hoping to get amongst easy sluts from a culture they didn’t respect. I asked her if it was fair to flood the bottom rung of the ‘pick-up’ ladder with young men that would only get a female partner if they won tattslotto, or acted as she alleges the anzacs acted.
the left teaches a standard answer to use whenever the debate turns to an area they don’t care for.
The thousand yard death stare comes out, and the lefty says “i don’t care about that.”
i pointed out the returned men from her own family, pointed out returned men from the local district. pointed out furniture in the room she was in, that had been made by a family member upon his return from being gassed on the somme after years in the mud, a hell of a long away from any rapable native girls.
“i don’t care about any of that’.
She’s got her stories confused. The story I heard [ from a bloke who was there] was that Australian troops up in the islands in the 40s were fired up by reports of Australian nurses raped and murdered by the Japanese in Java.
He remembered tying prisoners to trees, tearing their nuts off, and shooting them from the feet up. Something he regretted in later life.
Shorter Dr Lindy Edwards: “None of the men here want to screw me. Bastards.”
WRT getting fired up sexually, will she comment on the behaviour of athletes at the Olympic villages?
Why on earth have we got people that are anti defence force – teaching in ADFA???
I love it how these people take their freedom for granted. Fighting Nazis and fascism was not a choice. We had no option. I would have loved to have seen what the luvvies would have said in WWII when we were fighting the dictators!
Reply to johno. I think that you will find that ADFA has not employed her directly, but rely on UNSW (I believe) to supply lecturers for various subjects. And yes, like you I hope she is removed from ADFA lecturing as soon as possible.
Sounds like a maiden who never understood males from her yoof; probably has no inkling of ‘bravado’.
The root of all
evilfeminism?+1
The closest I’ve been to combat was going outside the wire in Afghanistan a number of times at different locations around the country.
Throughout this, all I ever saw was everyone being professional and intently focussed on the moment and what was going on around them. This is in fact the natural human response to the threat of being shot, mortared, RPG’d or IED’d.
What struck me most about ISAF and supporting contractor operations in Afghanistan was in fact the very opposite of what Dr Edwards supposedly observed, the complete absence of “ego, aggression and sexual energy that they channel into battle”.
Even on very large bases such as Bastion, Kandahar and Bagram there was none of this.
I think anyone who exhibited these behaviours would have been regarded as a complete wanker, seeing as the behaviours serve no purpose other than to irritate the shit out of everyone.
The Left has to be admired for its almost complete infiltration of Australian Institutions and their subsequent debasement of them.
Check out her timeline @Dr_L_Edwards
Yep, I was right: https://twitter.com/margokingston1/status/430549131744907265
Maybe this is a plot by Lindy, Margot and Michelle to turn all men gay.
I am assuming they and their fellow travellers in the unions would have sought to undermine the war effort.
Would be an interesting thought bubble to see how academics such as the above would do if Australia were actually occupied by a power whose soldiers did in fact behave in the way she suggests Australia’s finest do (say by imperial Japan).
Hiw many “Genders” are in her ADFA classes?much more than two?
No-one here will be surprised she’s a Fabian.
She thinks mainstream politics is too focus-group driven and wants a more ideological base for policies. Ok, fair enough.
Per usual lefty reasoning, however, conservative or other ideologies don’t count. Only the correct sort of ideology is allowed.
Dr Edwards:
She’s getting mixed up – this belongs in her study on gay saunas.
Edwards’ subversive teaching at the ADFA points to the extent to which the Left has insinuated its tentacles into our educational institutions. Every single one of them.
What kind of Defence Force curriculum even needs to be talking about politically loaded ideology such as this? Her work is in direct conflict with the task of training armed forces personnel and can only undermine their sense of legitimate purpose.
Fire her. Fire the person her hired her. Above all, fire the person who trained them both.
abolish ADFA
john constantine – no, mindfarting that worte-learned drivel will only get you a Distinction – to get the High Distinction you have to work in a mention on how frightfully warm the weather is.
Shouldn’t laugh, Indos are quite militarily capable these days, at least relative to us.
Those that, can, do………
https://twitter.com/OMGTheMess/status/458730896334413824
They really do get rum sorts teaching at ADFA.
Mind you, I did have a history lecturer at another place who did see that behaviour, but it was in Phnom Penh (his wife was a Reuters correspondent) and the Khmer Rouge were overrunning the place.
She was appointed in the term of which defense minister? Was Kaifer on suspension when the appointment was made?
The colonisation and coring out of ADFA by the left seems to be on track.
How long before the class of nancy beta boys graduate after spending 4 years of studying how they are rapists of wymmynses & homophobes?
I will bet that this Edwards entity is one of that hypocritical species that does not hesitate to make authoritative pronouncements regarding how men’s minds work (even telling us of its working’s that men themselves are not aware of), and yet insist that womanhood is almost mystical, certainly beyond the ken of males who have no experience if it.
And certainly, mentioning abortion while not having a womb is a kind of rape.
You can bet the Indo armed forces would never allow themselves to be in a situation where they have no working landing craft or tanks.
Token, most Indonesian military kit is u/s. Modern weaponry is bought purely for the financial benefit of hose involved in the purchase. Any thoughts of operational use and value are way down the list of reasons why equipment is bought. Maximising of commissions is the number one consideration.
None
#1276294, posted on April 23, 2014 at 7:45 am
Maybe this is a plot by Lindy, Margot and Michelle to turn all men gay.
There is no bitterness like that of those raddled ‘leathery bacchantes’( Gore Vidal’s term, so even he thought them drek) who ‘don’t get no respect’. Grumpy old women cracks me up; all those feminazi anapatriarchists of the ’60s biting down on sour grapes, realizing now how they’ve marginalized themselves to irrelevance, and that no one actually cares what they think, still blaming men.
Germaine Greer’s solemn assertion on that programme ‘You should never ever lie to children’, murdering them in their mothers’ wombs is OK, but never ever lie to them. Confusion, much?
Having Edwards teaching at the ADFA is like the Brits paying Lord Haw Haw in the ’40s. Demoralizing the troops used to be a punishable offence.
Does anyone know if this idiot is teaching? Also how and where did she get a Phd?
Teaching is too and exact word. I meant standing in front of a classroom and uttering gibberish.
They have a surprising amount of modern kit from Europe.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_Army
My grandfather served in New Guinea and he would have cut off his hand before he raised it toward a woman. As a lad, I spent a bit of time around him and his returned mates on ANZAC day and remember them as men of quiet dignity and honour. He would never speak of what happened to him during the war.
People like this Edwards thing disgust me.
For some reason, the image of the eminent Dr. Edwards has ended up as the icon for the Catallaxy link in my bookmarks.
…….Help.
“Any relation to Hedley Thomas, Australian investigative journalist, who’s father Hedley Robert Thomas is a former Royal Australian Air Force pilot?”
Unlikely that Hedley would admit to any relationship!
I’d like to see Edwards stand in front of a group of muslim men and lecture them on the topic.
Creating a Progressive Economics?
It means destroying opportunity for all except for public servants.
This woman will be on the public tit until someone smashes these NGOs. As I wrote in an email to the Taxpayer’s Alliance once regarding PPL:
I have read her book. Her understanding of economics is “worse than undergraduate”.
“She’s got her stories confused. The story I heard [ from a bloke who was there] was that Australian troops up in the islands in the 40s were fired up by reports of Australian nurses raped and murdered by the Japanese in Java.”
Evidence of Japanese cannibalism of Australian troops on the Kokoda Track didn’t do much to soothe feelings either.
Her classes are likely unofficially coined Leftard Indoctrination 101/Camp ”Tolerance’
ADFA afaik doesn’t have any say as to its academic staff, who are all employed by UNSW. The separation of military and academic functions goes back to the late 1960′s when UNSW established the Faculty of Military Studies at RMC Duntroon. The Faculty effectively transferred to ADFA when the new combined forces college was established on the opposite side of the slopes of Mt Pleasant (i.e. “over the hill”).
There are two institutions on the ADFA campus.
There is the Defence Force Academy, run by the ADF, and there is University College of UNSW, an arm of UNSW, for which Defence pays a huge annual contract fee, but (certainly in the 1990s) had little actual control over.
egg_ likely has a point. The purpose of her class is likely to assess restraint when provoked. You pass if you sit through the course without belting the living shit out of her.
Judging from the photo I am afraid not everyone passes.
Try clearing your cache then opening a non-illustrated Cat page such as http://catallaxyfiles.com/2014/04/21/monday-forum-april-21-2014/comment-page-4/#comments
should get you back to the big blue C. You might have to delete the current bookmark and bookmark it again.
24 years an Infantry soldier and Officer in the British Army. Like many others I served and fought in a number of operations. Different places and unique circumstances but they all had one thing in common. When the shit and the shot of battle are flying you have no thought of sex or women or football or politics or anything else. Your mind is narrowly focused with no peripheral view of the world. You learn to over-come fear. You are driven to get the job done. Many times in war fighting and in peacekeeping I have saved civilians. I, and the men I have served with have not looked upon women and children with sex in mind. Your overwhelming consideration is showing humanity. I’ve seen soldier openly weeping carrying injured women and children to safety, under fire.
I am appalled that a Senior Lecturer at our ADF Academy is incapable of witnessing sexual crimes by a small number of cadets without believing that behaviour is common to all men and all soldiers. If she genuinely believes what she has written then is she not herself complicit in its continuance by remaining under their employment?
I know that the desire to emasculate the defence forces is a shared passion of the Left throughout the West, but I confess it deeply distresses me when I come across it.
The military has always stood as the bulwark of community safety at our most basic form of grouping. Its ethos commonly expressed the most valued of virtues – courage, selflessness, sacrifice for the weaker members of the community (including women!) as well as the ferocity needed for its survival.
Its astonishing that the Left doesn’t grasp the nature and function of this ancient arm of society.
That’s the nub of it. If they’re so frightful, and the rot is so endemic, why stay? Nah…the motivation is to assume faux heroine status – brazenly create a problem that isn’t there, then ‘fix’ it, with the help of compliant media. Stuff any reputations that get trampled along the way.
Does wonders for the resume.
Didn’t the Hun pay Lord Haw Haw in the 40s?
FMD I am sick of the likes of this feminazi who have never served, hectoring those that do. I am tired of being told I belong to a hyper masculine and misogynist organization, told that we must abandon our warrior culture. Being told that our honoured dead were booze addled rapists.
The time has to come when these “academics” should be ignored, if not outright shunned, humiliated and removed from their cosy sinecures.
Can someone tell me what Dr Edwards teaches that could be of any value to members of the ADF?
Maybe it is a case of alllowing the students to see what a load of shite left-wing ideas can be. My expereince from talking to members of the ADF is that the left-wingers amongst them are as rare as fingers on a leper’s hand.
Because the leadership of the ADF are lefties who love that sort of shit. They are far more concerned with
emasculatingfeminizing the ADF than the ancient concept of fighting and winning wars.On Feb 11 the Vice (and next) Chief of the ADF launched a paper titled Conflict-related Sexual and Gender-based Violence. I can’t get the link function to work so if you want to read what is foremost in the mind of Air Marshall Binskin go to this web page:
http://acmc.gov.au/civil-military-occasional-paper-012014-conflict-related-sexual-and-gender-based-violence/
Yeah. poor deluded progressive woman. Ate her own crap and it makes her sick.
But the rest of the comments are spot on- we have let the left take control of theories EVERYWHERE. The Cat’s have been saying it for as long as I have been reading here. Years.
We should crap or get off the pot. What are we going to do about it and how?
I’m somewhat miffed. All my years of service and I never got to hear about the Rape and Pillage squad, let alone be posted to it.
We Vets have to put up with this shit every April as the media, historians and second rate leftie academics gain coverage for pointing out how terrible us warrior type blokes are.
Maybe if we hadn’t spent a part of our youth being nasty to communists we would get better press today.
Do I care? No – I did my bit and don’t need anyone’s accolades – sufficient to know in myself that I did it.
Is someone able to enumerate the actual benefits of having a separate tertiary training institute for officers cadets, as opposed to simply recruiting graduates (if graduates are actually needed) from civilian universities like most other sectors (including police).
ADFA appears to me to be expensive and to generate, or be subject to, particular cultural problems and pressures that the ADF could do without – Canberra is rife with tales – which may or may not be fair – about ill-disciplined, promiscuous and arrogant cadets of both genders. As for issues of building any sort of separate esprit de corps, well, with lecturers like Edwards it would seem to have little advantage over ordinary universities.
De-funding unproductive spending like this example would go a long way to returning the budget to surplus and reducing the top marginal tax rate to 15%.
Perhaps being in constant close contact with all those fit young men is causing her imagination and fantasies to run riot.Menopause certainly has strange effects on some people.
Col. Jessup, A Few Good Men:
“Son, we live in a world that has walls. And those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom…And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives…You don’t want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall.
We use words like honor, code, loyalty…we use these words as the backbone to a life spent defending something. You use ‘em as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it! I’d rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you’re entitled to!”
The men who went to war suffered horribly, both at the time and for years afterwards. On Friday I will take time to reflect upon that. Dr. Edwards should do likewise.
There’s a misogynist under every bed no doubt
I recall some of the lecturers at ADFA were exposed as problematic by Quadrant some two or three years ago. Obviously no lessons learned.
Contrast the panty-waist AFDA with the words of VADM Ray Griggs at the NEOC 45 graduation parade, HMAS Creswell, December 2011:
dr lindy edwards is one but many anti-ANZAC/military types sucking their livelihood from the tac-payer and bludging at ADFA and/or Australian War Memorial. Check out latest Quadrant for a few names fitting this category, led by the biggest cheerleader of them all brendon nelson.
Typical of the headless chook mentality of cooky cut academics that infect our places of higher education these days. Making unwarrented, unsubstantiated and in some case out and out BS statements to get their 15 min of fame or in this case 2 secs of moronic gobbley gook!
The Role of the Infantry: “To seek out and close with the enemy, to kill or capture him, to seize and hold ground and to repel attack by day or night, regardless of season weather or terrain.” What soft leftists can never understand when they cannot see the difference between tough training and bullying is that training a soldier requires preparing them for the most extreme form of bullying known, war. The whole point of war is to intimidate, overwhelm and destroy your enemy before he can do the same to you. It is violent and horrific but it needs to be done.
Never did serve with much great distinction – the words “conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline still arouse painful memories, and I always preferred any partners willing and obliging, not terrified and trembling, but a spot of pillage might have been a different matter.
I look forward to Dr Edwards balanced views on our enemy in Afganistan and their approach to women. There is no doubt that there are issues within the ADF that need to be sorted out but this is incomparable with our enemy where the status and treatment of women is extreme and systemic. Why does Dr Edwards hate our own military so that she considers them all misoginists and in doing so suggests it will never change.
At least in WW1 the good doctor has the story precisely arse-about.
Thousands of lurid propaganda posters were used to persuade men into joining up using themes of rape, murder and mutilation, not as invaders, but as defenders of women and children at home from the bestial ‘Hun’.
Women would even harass and try to shame fit-looking strangers in the street into joining up.
WW2 was almost universally recognised as a war of national survival, except perhaps for the warfies.
Ex-servicemen attest to the fact their motivation in war was to protect their mates above all else!
Nevertheless disgust at the words of this silly woman shouldn’t blind us to the ugly realities of rape in war as a means of literally sticking it to the enemy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_rape
The last large scale rape and pillage was done by the Soviet soldiers when they overrunning Germany. This was done on the express orders of Stalin himself. Very little was done by the western allies. Of course there was a lot of fraternising between the German women and the western troops but that was done for economic reasons. Perhaps the lefties are a little ashamed of the behaviour of the Communist troops and want to blacken all and sundry to make up for the atrocities committed by the people they feel kinship with
Women would even harass and try to shame fit-looking strangers in the street into joining up.
These type of people never went away. Now they’re called environmental activists.
An outrageous slur. Put up or shut up ‘Dr’.
I know a ‘Dr’ , a Professor in fact after a meteoric rise up the uni feminist path, of Psychology who never studied a Psych degree in her entire student career. And what a ‘career’ it was. She lived off her husband – a military officer- for 20 years while full-time studying and put huge claims to work experiences that never took place. Such academics are a disgrace. And dangerous to mental and intellectual health.
People like her degrade the memory of our fathers and grandfathers who put there lives on the line , sure some guys turned tail in the face of the enemy, and often with good cause , some carried on with criminal acts as they might have done in civilian life,but many more held there ground and fought to the last, and remember that these days the military have a long training period , our forebears often did not , take the Kokoda trail as one example, many went into action against a vicious , and victorious enemy , sometimes for the first time, my dad was a Normandy veteran , and reading the history of his unit , the Battalion losses were 70% against the Wehrmacht, some lasted just a few hours, just ordinary men who had been mill workers , farm workers, builders, drivers, office workers, just ordinary men and sometimes women, many scarred for life , and for what, to protect the hides of people like her, these lefty academics make me sick, another gutless whinger in the lucky country. Peter Adelaide.
WW2 was almost universally recognised as a war of national survival, except perhaps for the warfies.
Wharfies union, seamans union, ships painters and dockers union, tugboat operators….Those at these chokepoints were fighting a different war.
..coal miners union…
Fine words by the admiral.
Too bad he is also at the forefront of ‘
emasculatingevolving defence culture’. He wants greater diversity and more women in leadership positions. He hasn’t yet explained how affirmative action is going to help ‘fight and win at sea’.Perhaps it has blinded some of us to the un reliability of Wikipedia as an authoritative source, and the cultural and disciplinary differences between the various combatants.
Holding all soldiers guilty for rape is about as fair and just as holding all women guilty for prostitution.
The soldiery most guilty of using rape as a weapon in contemporary times has been that deployed by the United Nations.
In Saudi Arabia.
Did we really need a picture for this story?
Looks like the good doctor goes to the Kerry-Ann Walsh School of Hairdressing for Loony Lefties.
fidel castro is the icon of the lefties.
When it comes to rape in war, the left have gone blind to the way castro’s cubans raped and pillaged the whole length of africa. No conflict too small for castro’s true believers to show their cajones by machine-gunning the villagers and romancing the survivors.
Aids rates in cuba are hard to find reliably, but the anecdotal stories suggest cuban mercenaries returning from africa brought home some trophies for life in their bloodstream.
the north koreans had a rape and pillage brigade they trained and supported [and advised] operating in zimbabwe, supporting mugabwe. The lefties go blind to this rape and pillage brigade, because they weren’t the ‘right type to blame’. close enough to genocide for everyone except the lefties, easier to blame the anzacs.
—Should we have a look at the rape and pillage activities of australians operating in syria right now?. If we are holding anzacs from 1914 to todays standards, why not hold australians in syria to todays standards? [oh wait, they are only supporting their culture, so that is alright then..]
Numbers is very quiet this morning.
Well, he’s never going to defend his comrades and it may be too close to Friday to start attacking them.
Shhhh, if you say his name three times he’ll appear.
Hence the need of the feminazi to denigrate.
They cannot aspire to this level of moral or physical virtue, so they must pull the brave and the virtuous down lest the comparison be detrimental.
I have long suspected that. There are other cabalistic words that have the same effect, also, like ‘Vietnam’ and ‘teacher’.
But this entire post consists of related cabalistic words – distinctly Numerological, one might almost say – and has failed to raise him.
Numbers!
There. Hopefully your wish to see him here will come true, although why on earth you would want that remains a mystery to civilized folk.
By the pricking of my thumbs …
I sense a stirring in the vasty deep…
There are two types of doctors, those that try to make you well, and those that make you sick without even trying. Doctor Lindy Edwards is outstanding in the latter category.
The only place I’ve heard raping and pillaging used to fire up men before battle is in Game of Thrones. I suppose it takes a PHd to confuse a hyper-sexualised medieval fantasy with modern warfare.
You would not be surprised to hear the left are very willing to employ “intimidate, overwhelm and destroy your enemy” via institutions, specially selected committees & don’t forget secondary boycotts.
When it comes to protests any and all violence is allowed as committed cadres from the left will provide legal representation probono & sympatheic judges will dismiss charges.
They know also very well about sacrificing individuals (0r millions) as examples for “the greater good”.
This is just not a problem with professional armies in the post conscript age.
The conscript armies of the authoritarians regimes (e.g. the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe) used these tactics to humiliate and keep the population terrified.
This is just another case of projection by the left.
Spud the beta male will be in absolute agreement with Dr. Lindy ‘a dingo stole my clitoris’ Edwards .
Reminds me of 1960s ANZAC Day stories.
The communists fear the army and police ,they are the institutions that can destroy a socialic/communist takeover. Just look at the ole soviets,pampering the KGB,MVD Militsia and the Red Armed Forces,keep them sweet and they will prevent the People from getting rid of us.These socialist muppets have “feminised ” Vic Police ,a shadow of its former self after Comrades nixon and underland stuffed it .nixon was good at stuffing ,she stuffed the police and stuffed her face during the bushfire crisis.
Here’s her blurb off the ADFA website:
Professional and Teaching Experience
Dr Lindy Edwards has worked as an economic adviser in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, a press gallery journalist for the Sydney Morning Herald and has been a senior policy adviser to an Australian political party leader. After extensive experience in the Australia political system she returned to academia to complete her PhD at the Australian National University.
Dr Edwards is a Fellow of the Australian Prime Ministers Centre, the Centre for Policy Development and is a board member of the think-tank Catalyst. She is on the Economic Advisory Board of the Australian Conservation Foundation. She has a fortnightly column in The Age newspaper and she is a regular media commentator who has appeared in The Times, The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, Radio National, SBS radio, the Malaysia Straits Times, The Monthly, The New Matilda as well Sky News, Compass and most commercial television stations.
Research Interests
Dr Edwards specializes on the role of ideas and ideology in politics. Her early work focused on economic ideas and neoliberalism and the way they impact on political decision making and democratic practice. Her later work has expanded out to include the history of ideology in Australian politics and future directions in ideological debate.
Consulting / Professional Activities
Dr Edwards has considerable experience in advising organisations (Government and non-government) in how to approach and engage with the federal government on issues that encounter difficulties with the current ‘economic rationalist’ policy outlook. She also has extensive experience in advising organisations on policy issues, lobbying and media strategy.
Publications
Her publications include the well known book How to Argue with an Economist: Re-opening Political Debate in Australia(Cambridge University Press 2003, 2007) as well as an extensive list of journal articles and book chapters.
Courses Taught
Politics of Globalization
Global Governance 1B
World Politics Ideology in Australian Politics
Areas of Potential Postgraudate Supervision
Australian political history
The role of political ideas
Political Economy and economic ideas
Shorter blurb:
Did economics – it all went over her head. Went to PM&C. Failed there but got the political bug. Tried journalism. Failed. Worked for the political fairies at the bottom of the garden (Australian Democrats? hahahahahaha). Political ambitions failed there as there were bigger garden-fairies than her. Only academia on the usual left-oriented path was left if she was ever to get a middle-class lifestyle so she took it. PhD at ANU. Still so embarrassed by her dissertation that there’s no mention of it anywhere. Writes the usual guff for the usual left-oriented audience. Loathes the ADF while taking their coin.
Did I miss anything?
You’re right. It’s not even listed in ANU’s library collection under ‘ANU Theses’.
I’m a former officer in the Royal Australian Navy, I also have a long and successful business career and a couple of post graduate degrees, so I think I would be able to recognise if I had ever been exposed to or observed ” firing up fighting men by invoking their shared ability to sexually degrade women.”
I would also add Dr Edwards’ claim that she has observed the practice while teaching at ADFA lacks credibility as in the time Edwards have been at the ADFA there would have always been male and female students and there would have been no ‘firing up’ for fights done on campus.
Ah – here’s a reference:
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Gawd.
Lindy needs to either make her case with evidence or suffer the size 10 up the backside. Fire her!
You’re right. It’s not even listed in ANU’s library collection under ‘ANU Theses’.
May be filed under ‘ANU Faeces’ Phillipa.
Though that may be less unpleasant to trawl through.
One who aggressively runs into battle with sexual energy trips over their hard on and spills all the ego out of their cocktail.
And here is another deluded victim of the gender wars who needs to re-engage with reality.
She and Dr Edwards have a lot in common, mostly the attitude of ‘Why should I be accountable for what I say in public?’
Six years in the RAR and I never experienced anything like that. Did I miss out? Just my rotten luck, probably.
Didn’t get around to any raping or pillaging. A pity, really. Too busy. (Army and RAAF WW2)
I don’t know what her course is officially called but I suspect those attending know it as “getting to know your enemy, an insight into the non military tactics of non military combatants”
Does anyone want to check the University Roll at ANU to confirm the award of doctorate in philosophy to Ms. Edwards.?
“ADFA appears to me to be expensive ”
Des:
In the mid-1990s, ADFA was estimated to cost around $100,000 per annum per student.
For a fraction of that in a tax-free commitment bonus, say for 7 years commissioned service, you could attract a lot of the higher quality graduates from the better universities.
Yeah sure, Tallyrand. Here’s the list but it only goes back to 2002. Can’t see her there. Perhaps she went under a different name.
“She lived off her husband – a military officer- for 20 years while full-time studying and put huge claims to work experiences that never took place. Such academics are a disgrace. And dangerous to mental and intellectual health.”
Suggests that the husband had some issues with judgement, I hope he wasn’t in a combat arm!
ADFA could close after they confirm that graduates would take military careers without the incentive of Hecs free tuition. That would depend on the labour market.
There must be lots of journalism graduates out there who can’t get a job
Hold on … I think this could be her:
Belinda Marie Edwards Doctor of Philosophy
Democratic Decline, Social Capital and Neo-Liberalism 12/07/2006
Maybe this confused Dr. Edwards is a friend of Sarah Hansen Young who bases her life
experiences on TV shows. God spare us from these fools. The soldiers should show her up in class and send her running back to where she came from. What respect is she showing towards the thousands of our heroic soldiers who gave their lives so that we may be free? She is trashing their sacrifices without even knowing it. I guess you can thank the left wing academics who have been teaching our young people this leftie trash.
So she’s heavily into labels, then.
Token, compare this with the state of readiness of China’s PLA:
This is Dr Edward’s ultimate aim- an endoctrinated, feminised “Defence Force” unable to operate beyond Nanny’s apron strings.
What a load of nonsense. Hand back your useless degree, Princess.
My experience was that the UNSW drones deliberately sent these folks to work at ADFA because the saw a need to ‘balance’ the appalling doctrine of the military with right thinking views – and of cause the skill of critical analysis. Forgetting of cause that military officer training is focused exclusively on the skill of critical analysis.
Most competent cadets ignored them, found it simple to regurgitate their nonsense to obtain a soft degree without too much interference with their preferred leisure pursuits.
Less capable cadets went for it in a big way as a compensation for their inability to perform well in their their military roles.
After graduation, many of the less successful officers utilised the generous but ungoverned ADF support for further studies to pursue PhD’s in this sort of crap. They are the ones we see today excoriating ANZAC Day. It is a payback for the ADF failing to recognise their obvious talents.
cold hands, I think the saying is “the more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat” IIRC what David Hackworth used to say.
hackworth was simply quoting Josephus about the Legions of Vespasian during The Great Revolt:
Shorter Australian version in wide use in the arms Corps;
“Train hard, fight easy”.
Bons has nailed it.
This stupid cow “Loathes the ADF while taking their coin” (Mk50 of Brisbane at 2:36 pm) because Barrie, Cosgrove, Houston and Hurley and their predecessors let her and enemies like her in the door.
One can forget the very forgettable Ministers of Defence as any sort of defenders of what the defence forces used be – the last one who enlisted in the military in WWII, and who therefore had a clue, was Jim Killen who left the job 35 years ago, and Fairbairn and Gorton before him (both of whom served long term in shooting wars).
For this reason the heads of Defence are to blame for approving the dreadful erosion, dismantling and destruction we see now. They each did their job appallingly, woefully and left a feeble, hollow, meaningless, purposeless shell as their legacy.
I see Kev Gillett (a retired regular army bloke) at 10:07 am says of what this bitch is up to:
That’s pretty much how my father responded about his time at Gallipoli and in the following desert campaign with the Light Horse, up into the Holy Lands; as would the WWII fathers in our street where we grew up as families of returned men. No-one peddled disgraceful distortions about their service back then because they were still present, strong and able to growl, with authority, “pull your head in sport.”
Compared to the Dawn Services and Anzac Day marches I recall as a child from the ’50s onwards what we see today has been stolen from the men who did the job and reinvented by people who know only what they’ve read in books by people whose perverted opinion they prefer. On the plan for 2015 in Turkey, for an Easter Show / Ekka / AFL Grand Final Big Event Big Day Out, featuring uncontrolled weeping from the 14 year old schoolgirl choir, I say the authorities have got it terribly wrong.
The 12th, 35th, 72nd and hundredth anniversary ought to be observed and dedicated exactly the same, with the same solemnity and understated recognition and reflection. From my earliest memory of the Dawn Service at about 10 years old … as the columns entered Martin Place the band ceased playing and one could hear only the sound of the thousands of marching feet of the men who served – only the men who served – echoing off the Post Office and the other buildings. It was a real and beautiful representation.
That had far more profound effect than Home and Away’s Braxton Brothers belting out a rap version of “I was only thirteen, bru” followed by the retiring Governor General because she’s a wymminses, the incoming Governor General because he’s a soldier, the Prime Minister because he cares, the Defence Minister who no-one has ever heard of and Brendan Nelson doing a promo for his Keating inspired Australian War Crimes Memorial.
Well said, Mick – well said.
Blogstrop 6:05am
I was in the ARES aged 17-20 (1975-78). I remember having to march into Green Hills on a weekend bivouac with everyone else in the company, men and women. I was the only female of four (I think) who did the whole lot, without all my kit – I had to carry my own sleeping bag, which was awkward. I was 17 and wanted to walk in there under my own steam no matter what, I didn’t want the men to think that I was soft. I think I was respected for that, as well as the fact that I wasn’t in the ARES to be a groundsheet – there were one or two women in the ARES who were there for the men (like footie groupies who put out).
There are some women who would do well in combat, but I don’t think I’m one of them. I’m more of a support personnel person.
We did have a CO at the company who was useless. He used to get the OR staff on bivouac* to try to make him furniture by lashing saplings together. He was an imbecile of the first water.
In the ARES I met a few people who had served in Vietnam. The stories they told were heartbreaking – having to kill pets because you weren’t allowed to have pets. How the body of someone machine-gunned wasn’t decoratively sprayed by little holes (as portrayed in the movies) but torn in half. (Certainly ruined my movie viewing because I was unable to suspend my disbelief.) A couple of them had served in Rhodesia, one was nearly killed. These were people I respected, they were kind and respectful to me and treated me like their sister.
As for rape in war, well, I’m sure it happens though I’m also sure that no one in the Australian military at any time has condoned it, and nor have any western military forces. Unlike the book of rules for jihadists, the koran, which says rape is fine as a weapon and to convert the women and breed more jihadists, it also says that you can rape virgins** before you murder them. I’m sure that Nilk can give us the exact quotes for this.
Perhaps she’s getting her rule books mixed up.
As for ANZAC Day, to me the morning is for sombre remembrance of all Australia’s war dead, from every battle in every war. Lest We Forget. The afternoon is for celebrating life and those who came back, and for celebration that we are Australian. It’s a time for ex-service men and women to tell tall stories.
I have heard that there are ex-service men and women who want to end ANZAC Day because they think it is an anachronism and they, being ex-service men and women, have found that the military organisations for which they served (Army, Navy, Airforce), have deserted them when they’ve returned after traumatic tours. I don’t think ANZAC Day is the time for these complaints to be made. It’s not about the Government, it’s not about the branches of the military – the authorities – it’s about the people who serve.
*because there was no real OR on bivouac and it wasn’t worth setting one up for Friday night to Sunday lunch, he had to find make-work rubbish for us to do.
**or women/girls you think may be virgins so that they don’t go to their death innocent.
During the time I served my Country, worked with the UN and deployed with organisations which contract to them [still do], I’ve only come across one credible allegation of rape made against an ADF Infrantryman deployed into a conflict zone. The ADF prefers these things to be solved with an ex gratia payment and no admission of guilt. An investigator will be tasked to meet the complainant but in my experience victims often become fearful of retribution and don’t pursue the matter when the investigator makes contact. Looting is another matter and some of our people sell their trophies to collectors and through army surplus stores.
Rather than setting up a straw man, Ms Edwards’ concern would be more usefully employed shifting the focus to future ADF leadership roles in UN Missions and ensuring a zero tolerance policy towards looting, sexual assault and corruption, instead of turning a blind eye for the sake of International harmony.
From what I know of the teaching staff provided by UNSW to ADFA, Professor Lindy Edward’s world view is a minority.
From what I have read of Mervyn Bendle, I have determined that he is an embittered and obsessive crank. I think Quadrant would be better off without him in the same sense that ADFA would be well shot of Professor Edwards.
The truth, as usual, lies somewhere in between.
Bob Hall for example has done more than anyone to a) increase the lethality of the Australian Infantryman while b) done more to seek reconciliation in very practical ways with his former enemies.
Craig Stockings, one of Bendle’s ADFA targets, is an ex 3RAR Para officer. Something Bendle cannot claim. Stockings has the irritable habit of being right all of the time.
I am told that John Reeve’s is the best in the world at that sailing ship fighting stuff.
I think ADF is generally going OK.
Appropos of nothing, was not the last ADFA Cadet who got a bit rapey from Singapore?
That’s the same thing muzzies say about terrorists.
Has anyone else written or emailed ADFA regarding this matter?