Syria
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IF THERE are calls from authorities for ‘boots on the ground in Syria,’ let them be ‘politicians boots on the ground in Syria.’
After all, it is they, who start wars.
— MRS E. VERHOEFF, Latrobe.
Rain
SEEING as we have had rain forecast for some time now, wouldn't it be nice if we actually got some.
Readers of The Examiner have been promised every day for some time now a possible shower or a shower or two will occur on any given day, Friday was a classic I got 15 spots of liquid on my windscreen.
Was that an early shower?
Sounds like the dart throwers are right off target these days.
— D.PITHAM, Beauty Point.
Bank
ON January 18 my husband and I both received mail from our bank.
It was a glossy card to keep us informed and inspired.
A short paragraph about Mike Munro and one about James White, whom we had never heard of and a website to keep us up to date and inspired.
We would be better inspired if the bank in which we have dealt with for over 45 years saved the money for postage and printing and passed more interest on to their loyal customers.
— R. RIGBY, Riverside.
Oil
ONCE again the bottom’s fallen out of oil, with retailers lining their pockets with unheard profit margins and that toothless tiger, the A.A.A.C does absolutely zilch about how we motorists continue to be shafte.
And nary a murmur from the famous apathetic Australian public, which is exactly what they count upon and exactly how they will continue to steal from us.
A perfect example of how people need to be starving and or rendered homeless before they dare revolt.
— DON DAVEY, Launceston.
Arsonists
JUST as things start heating up, Chris Clarke’s story (The Examiner, January 19) throws a dampener on the subject of arson as a blanket of smoke covers the state.
When was the last time you heard of someone getting 21 years jail for arson?
With half the state on fire I’m after a bit more “fire survival” information.
At time of writing there are hundreds, possibly thousands of different animals fleeing the fires.
Please spare a thought.
Please prepare and be ready for an influx of animals on our roads or in paddocks.
One of the most moving photographs I’ve ever seen was of a firefighter sharing a bottle of water with a koala following a bushfire.
— A.R. TROUNSON, Needles.
Let Down
I BELIEVE our university is attempting to sell the North a ‘pup’.
Even with relocation, which I support, we will not have any level of equality, but instead an emphasis on a sub-degree education culture.
Few professors, little research and major courses located in Hobart, which is reverting to the 1970 higher education model with little scope for Launceston or Burnie to have significance apart from feeder courses for the Hobart campus.
University administration has totally let down the North and repudiated the goodwill and agreements which followed amalgamation of the TSIT and the university in 1990. An “amalgamation”, please note, not “take-over”, which was requested by the university to help it survive.
Thank goodness our successful Maritime College cannot be further subsumed by Hobart.
Where are the professors, undergraduate and post-graduate studies, including research, promised in 1990?
Who is to hold university administrators to account?
What is the role of the state government and/or the federal parliamentarians?
Do they not understand the issues?
Many of us in the North are angry.
— DICK JAMES, Launceston.
Sky-high incomes
MY husband (DR Jeff Mount) and I were sufficiently struck by your stunning editorial opinion (January 14) to take the time to write and urge you to continue to expose this gross rip within the “hallowed” halls of Tasmanian Government and public service bureaucrats.
The statistics are damning; one departmental public servant for every Tasmanians, one council for 18,000 Tasmanians and eight government departments for 513,000 people versus Victoria with one public servant for every 210 Victorians, one council for every 73,000 Victorians and nine government departments for a population of almost six million.
This is corrupt, inexcusable and without precedent in Australia.
Adding insult to injury, the fact that top public servants in Tasmania earn packages in excess of America’s President and the British Prime Minister, and our Governor earns more than the Governor General of Australia, is surely sufficient evidence to force an urgent shake-up and shut-down of unprincipled practices within these patently greedy halls of government.
Your question at conclusion should be repeated over and over to the general public until they rise up in unstoppable numbers.
— SHIRLEY MCLAUGHLIN and JEFF MOUNT, Prospect.
Burning
WHILE Bob Brown and his supporters protest at the 40 Ha regrowth approved logging coup at Lapoinya, thousands of hectares of Tasmanian World Heritage, National Parks and forest areas are burning.
If the anti forestry and environmental activists are so concerned about protecting these areas why are they not out at the fire areas supporting our incredible fire crews instead of wasting police resources protesting.
Even the Greens should now realise that if you lock up large areas of Australian bush
and provide no access they will eventually be exposed to catastrophic fire damage.
Could this be a case of the well known saying “use it or lose it”.
— LINDSAY MILLAR, Hillwood.
C-130H’s
AS AUSTRALIA burns we find we do not have enough fire-bombers to help stop fires across Australia, with fires getting bigger by the year.
Even writing about not giving the four surplus C-130H aircraft to Indonesia when Julia Gillard was in government.
How much these fires have cost in destruction is lots of pain suffering and destruction to ourselves, environment, and wildlife.
2000 litres of fire retardant per aircraft, with four or more dumping water would quickly control fires giving fire-fighters the much needed break to help fight fires.
What we have today is not enough and need to have these aircraft under the air-force fire-brigade control to help Australia, as many as 10.
— WALTER CHRISTY, Shearwater.
Flag
I DON’T believe I’ve ever seen published in The Examiner a letter that was so historically vague and offensive to Aboriginal people than the one by Steve Rogers (Letters, January 24).
His reference to there being virtually nothing here of significance when the ‘Poms’ arrived in 1788 echoed the now discredited doctrine of Terra Nullius.
It completely ignores the 60,000 years of human history this nation is home to and the complex cultures (up to 700+ of them) with languages, laws, religions and intricate social structures that existed.
That is not ‘nothing’.
The arrival of the ‘Poms’ started approximately 150 years of Frontier Wars that resulted in massacres, rapes, land thefts and cultural destruction to the extent that those 700+ language/cultural groups have been reduced to around 150.
That is not progress; it is genocide.
As to the flag, it never became the official Australian flag until the passing of the Flags Act of 1953.
So much for the oft-made claim that our ‘Diggers’ fought and died under the flag in two world wars.
And the current flag, with its offensive Union Jack, stands as a constant reminder of the genocidal practices undertaken by the invading ‘Poms’ for at least 150 years beginning in 1788.
That’s nothing to be proud of.
— GEOFF McLEAN, Launceston.
Islamic jihadists
ZONA Black’s suggestions and comments in respect to Islamic jihadists (The Examiner, January 23) lack an apparent understanding of what is written within the Islamic Holy Book, The Qur’an.
Surah 2, verse 190 states that it is a mandate on all Muslims to participate in jihad in order to make Islam the superior religion globally.
There are many such verses that support jihad and the killing of disbelievers and infidels.
There is one simple solution to Islamic jihadists, as well as to many of the world’s growing woes, and that is to direct spiritually lost individuals to following the teachings of Jesus, based on love. Muslims are instructed in verses such as Surah 3:55 to be obedient to Jesus.
And because Jesus instructed all of mankind in the first century to honour and obey the one Almighty God and to love one another, without this happening, jihadists will continue to create havoc globally.
— SUE CARLYON, Longford.