The Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, today said that we are in Afghanistan for the long haul in spite of having lost another of our soldiers. She says that we are having great success in getting rid of terrorists and that all these deaths of our soldiers are worth the sacrifice. Why? Well , because we will prevent the terrorists from establishing themselves in that country. Go ahead, Julia, tell that to their grieving families.

How can anyone believe this propaganda? As soon as we call it quits, and we must inevitably leave one day, the Taliban or whoever else is ambitious there will creep back in, raise their ugly heads and cheer as the infidels retreat.

I read today that five U.S soldiers were killed in Iraq. This is a fiasco. The only people who can get rid of terrorists in Iraq or Afghanistan are the locals themselves. It seems to me that if some of those Afghan soldiers are actually shooting our soldiers, we are not very welcome there.

This is a lost cause. Let us not add to it with further losses of our brave young men and women.

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Today two more Aussie soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan. One of them was killed by an Afghan soldier he was mentoring. What a sick joke this is!

So far 26 of our soldiers have been sacrificed in a war that cannot be won. Nor is it worth it. We should leave Afghanistan immediately because the cause is a waste of time. Even if we are successful, what does success mean?

There will always be Taliban types in that part of the world. These people are totally tribal and don’t really want to change the way they live. We should leave them to their fate.

And if we think that 26 are too many then how must the Americans feel when they have lost thousands, not to mention the poor invalided ones (157 Aussies wounded) whose lives will always be blighted?

I weep for them all.

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I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not an expert on international affairs, but I do understand the realities of life.

What has finally prompted me to write again is the devastation that I have been watching on TV. The Midwest and the South in the U.S are being flooded. On top of that there have been tornadoes that have killed over one hundred people as well as destroying entire towns. Many people are still missing.

My heart goes out to those people who will need fathomless aid to rebuild their lives.

Quite simply, they will need lots of cash. And it’s up to the government to supply it to them.

I understand that money is a finite resource and that the U.S has just suffered from the GFC. Indeed, it is still trying to recover from it.

At the same time it keeps on spending billions on a futile war in Afghanistan. It is wasting money trying to win over hearts and minds among the local population of Afghanistan. Meanwhile, American and our Australian soldiers are returning home in body bags.

For what? Is it worth it? Will it prevent further terrorist attacks against us? I seriously doubt it. Vigilant intelligence is better than body bags.

Why should the U.S have to sacrifice itself in the hope of bringing civilisation to those parts of the world which are still living under some primitive code? It’s not as if these countries are going to be grateful to the U.S and its allies. They hate our guts. Blowing us up is not a Welcome Mat.

Don’t the U.S states such as Missouri, Minneapolis and Oklahoma which are suffering all these catastrophes deserve help from their own government? And how about the victims of Hurricane Katrina who are still waiting to come home?

I’ve heard the saying that charity begins at home, but in my opinion, taking care of your own people is not charity. It is the primary duty of all governments. That is why they are elected.

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I haven’t written for a whole month because my friend’s husband was seriously ill and I was very distressed at their plight. She and her husband had been living in a small Australian town, population 3000. They both loved country life. Neither of them wanted to return to the big smoke.

But he became ill as older people do. His knees gave out and he had to wait a year to have a replacement. Once that was done, there were the melanomas followed by all sorts of horrid symptoms.

This bush town has only one doctor who is not popular with the residents so that some choose to travel to the next town for medical attention.

Specialist treatment is unavailable and my friend had to go to a medical centre, three hours drive away or Sydney (6 hours) for surgery for his melanomas. The waiting list is long and something went terrible wrong for my friend’s husband.

He stopped talking, he couldn’t hear, his body was covered in all sorts of weeping lesions. My friend begged the local GP to visit her husband but this fellow refused to come unless the patient requested it personally.

It was going to take months before the dermatologist could see him. Finally, he was driven to Sydney by his desperate family. The medicos admitted him immediately and wondered why it had taken so long for him to get proper attention.

He lingered for six long weeks at St Vincent’s Hospital and then he died. There is an autopsy going on right now.

I have no idea why the poor man died but a major contributing factor was the handicap that he lived in the bush. Away from proper medical treatment, a victim of the long waiting list in the N.S.W hospital system.

My friend and her husband dreamed of retiring happily in the country. They were tree changers but the country is no country for old men.

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As if reports about the potential threat of a nuclear meltdown in Japan aren’t enough to drive me to despair, enter The Experts.

Every news bulletin unearths its own expert on the situation at Fukushima. He is usually from some obscure university such as the School of Miscellaneous Panic Studies in Antarctica. The interviewer asks him for his considered opinion based on his considerable knowledge of nuclear power only to hear:- “Well, it’s too soon to tell.”

The desperate interviewer prods Dr Mumbles for an atom of information, a sound byte perhaps? but no, the expert pleads ambivalence. “We don’t have enough information as yet,” he explains. “I would be loathe to predict the outcome of this situation.”

“But the situation looks pretty grim, doesn’t it, Dr Mumbles?” prods the interviewer.

“Well, yes… and no, although it’s too soon to tell,” Dr Mumbles responds. “It all depends on…”

“Thank you, Dr Mumbles,” interrupts the interviewer before going back to shots of the steaming nuclear reactor.

“That was Dr Mortimer Mumbles from the University of Antarctica expressing concern over the extremely grim situation at Fukushima.”

What was all that about? I ask myself. They could have interviewed me, and I would have said “Dunno, but it ain’t lookin’ good.” But I wasn’t asked because I don’t have the cachet, the info, the insight, the expertise. My dunno would lack credibility, I guess. However, it is comforting to know that I’m not alone.

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In June of last year we decided to replace our nine year old Series 5 BMW. It had been an excellent car and so we were confident that the 2010 release of the Series 5 would be as good if not better than what we had.

Mistake No I.
We made an assumption because of BMW’s elite reputation. The new model was released in June and in fact we bought it from the showroom before we could test drive it. Quite honestly, had we test driven it we would not have bought it. Our mistake.

Mistake No2.
We had test driven a Lexus and were very impressed by its performance. I have personal experience with a Lexus and love it and yet we thought that we should stick to BMW since it had given my husband many years of happy driving.

So there you are. It was all on the toss of a coin really. From the minute we began to drive the BMW, the Professional Navigation System got on our nerves. Please refer to a post of mine in December 2010 which explains what was annoying about it.

The car was noisy and bumped a lot in the streets of Melbourne. BMW told us that the streets of Melbourne with the tram lines are responsible for this problem. The passenger seat headrest was uncomfortable and when we returned to BMW they told us that unfortunately nothing could be done about it.

What really decided things for us is our recent trip to Sydney from Melbourne and back again. The BMW was easy to drive. It has power and we can’t fault that.

But I had to place a travel cushion behind my head so that the headrest would not annoy me. I never had this problem in the previous BMW. The Navigation System informed us that we off the highway when we obviously were on it. Plainly, the maps were out of date.

Anyhow, when we arrived back home after doing 2000kms, we finally concluded that we had been wrong to buy this latest model BMW. We could not tolerate the stupid navigation system that informs you of the latitude, altitude and longitude but does not tell you which suburb you are in.

And yes, we had complained to BMW about the headrest, the navigation and the bumpiness. We even wrote to BMW Australia.

Conclusion:-

We traded in this nine months old car and bought a Lexus GS 300. Life’s too short to have to persist with a poor decision. The Lexus has a great and informative navigation system, the headrest is perfect and I even have a lumbar support for me in the passenger seat.

And guess what? For some mysterious reason the streets of Melbourne have become less bumpy and noisy. Amazing…

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I’m beginning to wonder if a voodoo guy has it in for Australia and is sticking pins into an effigy of our glorious country. And that’s why I haven’t written lately. I’ve just been overwhelmed. Too much has happened in the last two months and so far 2011 has been pretty miserable.

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If you ever wonder whether life is worth living then don’t ask British film director, Mike Leigh. He’ll tell you that you might as well give up on life and just drift along till you die.

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I’ve just finished watching a programme about Abba and found myself wondering what else Sweden is known for. It took me a while but I thought of Ikea. Whether that’s good or not is debatable, but I had problems with coming up with more than Stockholm Syndrome, and unsurprisingly, Seasonally Affected Disorder. And then there are the high taxes, which lead to a mass exodus of high-earning Swedes.

Some deeper reflection on the subject and I remembered Coleslaw and Smorgasbords. And that just about summed up Sweden for me. Oh yes, there’s also its policy of neutrality during the Two World Wars, similar to Switzerland’s.

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This morning I decided I wanted to reread some of O.Henry’s short stories. I reached for my copy of his Complete Works and found it was heavy to hold. So heavy that I had to sit down with the hardcover copy I own because my hands were straining under its weight. As were my eyes because the print was so tiny it was uncomfortable to read. I usually have no problem with seeing normal print but this collection was impossible to enjoy.

So I went online to Amazon.com, downloaded “The Complete Works of O.Henry” for $1.99 to my Kindle electronic reader (E-Reader for short) and now I have no problems with the bothersome weight of hardcover books or microscopic fonts.

I am surprised by how I much I enjoy my Kindle because I’m not a naturally technical person. But I had to make the decision to give it a go when I found that the paperback edition of Dickens’ “Little Dorrit” was too awkward to manage. Holding it was a drag and turning the pages was cumbersome if you were trying to read in bed.

The Kindle is easy to use, easy to hold and can store a great number of books. Holding it in bed with one hand is a cinch, turning the pages is effortless and you can make the font as large or small as you wish. It is also marvellous for travelling or when you are sitting somewhere and waiting for an appointment.

I could go on forever about its virtues, but what I really want to say is that books cannot compete with the E-reader. No printing expenses, no transporting of books, no storage in bookshops and how about the price?

Books in Australia are ridiculously expensive and have always been dearer than overseas because of some arrangement with publishers. The end result of that arrangement is that the public has been ripped off for years. I used to go wild in the U.S and buy as many books as I could fit into my luggage because they were half the price that they cost in Australia.

Buying books online was the next step for me and I indulged in it. Did I want to support Australian publishers? Not for one minute, since they were quite prepared to charge us the Earth.

When E-Readers were introduced I did not rush out and buy one immediately. I thought about them for a while. Finally, I decided that the time had come to try one. And I haven’t been sorry. Now I can get all the famous literature for free because it’s out of copyright. I even pay for some books e.g “The Finkler Question” which won the Booker Prize this year. It cost $5.75. Wow!

There are several brands of E-Readers on the market and some have more features than the Kindle. I just happen to have chosen the Kindle for the time being. But even better E-Readers are coming and when they do I will not hesitate to invest in one. It’s still much cheaper then paying for the hard copy.

I imagine that the smaller I-Pad with illustrations and internet would be worth considering. At the moment the I-Pad is a bit too heavy, but if Apple can make it smaller and lighter as they have been suggesting I would be keen to get one.

Meanwhile, I will cuddle my Kindle in comfort.

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