I don’t know who came up with the macabre notion of recreating the concert at which Little Pattie was performing when the Battle of Lon Tân commenced fifty years ago.
I don’t know who came up with the even more macabre notion of ABC TV’s Australian Story filming the recreation.
I do know that it should be no surprise to anyone that the Vietnamese government, citing the sensitivities of the people in Lon Tân and its surrounds, have, at the last minute, baulked at the notion of Australia recreating the circumstances in which that battle took place and refused to allow planned commemorations to go ahead.
I find it difficult to imagine that Australians would permit similar commemorations being enacted in our country, had we suffered the large-scale destruction wrought upon the Vietnamese by the US and its allies in a filthy war from which we finally withdrew in so-called “honourable defeat,” leaving a napalmed, land-mined landscape behind us and the communist regime intact.
Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull and his ministers have expressed their deep disappointment in the Vietnamese government’s decision, and are particularly outraged at the last-minute nature of it. Perhaps the Little Pattie concert was too much of a stretch for the Vietnamese.
…the gala dinner, concert and the expectation of more than 1,000 Australians at the Long Tân memorial cross was seen as an insensitive celebration.
Yes. I get that. I would have expected Foreign Minister Julie Bishop to get that as well, and nip it in the bud.
However, Australia doesn’t care much for the feelings of brown people. There’s an example of this almost daily: indigenous youth in Don Dale. Asylum seekers and refugees in atrocious conditions on Manus and Nauru. The bribing of those countries and Cambodia to take refugees off our hands because they’re all brown aren’t they, so they should get on. The death of yet another indigenous woman in police custody. The conservative white male outrage over Section 18c.
The dominant Australian attitude as expressed by politicians and media would seem to be one of white entitlement: our sensitivities are paramount in the Lon Tân situation, not those of the brown people who cannot escape the repercussions of that war. We are apparently entitled to restage the entertainment of our troops, and if the Vietnamese want to stop us they are ill-willed spoil sports who will further destabilise our veterans.
Australians should never have been conscripted to fight in the Vietnam War. They were treated hideously when they returned. Successive governments have dark histories concerning their attitudes to and neglect of war veterans. Accusing the Vietnamese of destabilising them is hypocrisy.
In neighbouring Laos, the arms and legs of children and rice farmers are still blown off when they step on land mines, fifty years later. I’ve stood on the Russian airstrip in Phonsovan, Northern Laos where the CIA conducted its “secret war” and seen the napalmed jungles, and the bomb craters outside the caves to which the villagers fled when they no longer had anywhere to hide. I’ve walked the Plain of Jars on a narrow path marked by white-painted stones, on either side of which there remains uncounted numbers of active mines. This is the legacy the US and we, its allies, left in Vietnam and Laos.
So the Vietnamese government refuses to permit a gala dinner, concert and large numbers of Australians at the memorial cross? I’m OK with that. Theres nothing to prevent the veterans already in Lon Tân from holding their own ceremony of remembrance. They don’t need Australian Story to do that.
We have never been invaded.* It’s one of our deepest collective fears. The arrival of a few thousand boat people causes us to construct a fortress around ourselves, and a border force in black shirts to protect us. We spend billions on keeping invaders out. We torture them, children and all, to dissuade other potential invaders. Yet we believe are entitled to perform our ceremonies in another country where we slaughtered its people in the service of the US for seven years.
That’s privilege. That’s entitlement. That’s white male supremacy.
*Some objections have been raised to this sentence, on the grounds that it seems to imply a denial by me of European invasion of this country, and the ongoing trauma of that invasion for Indigenous people. Australia has two distinct overarching populations: Europeans who invaded and colonised and now call Australia home, and Indigenous peoples who were invaded, colonised and displaced. I’m speaking from the European position, one that has the privilege of never having experienced invasion in this country we call home.
No Place For Sheep 
It’s all about us.
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Of course, peartonblog. On another blog someone wrote that the refugees ought to learn to speak, read and write English before attempting to come to AUSTRALIA. She /he ought follow her own rules…
Please stop bombing us; I have go my English class…
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I have to go
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please wear your glasses, H, there’s yet another ‘to’ missing
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And so you should, having destroyed your own autheticity with that gratuitous correction!
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FG, I’ll study your posts and hopefully learn something, maybe to become more earnest, and less flippant.
Are you a white Aussie male, perchance?
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With tongue in cheek. I thought you had captured the likely expression “… I have go my English class …” quite evocatively. Pity to disown it, I thought.
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Startlingly good set of comments on something I’ve often pondered also, usually over the Galipoli commemorations.
We are like the yanks, so far distanced from reality that we can’t even grasp that subaltern nations may object to our celebrations of the killing of their people for reasons relating most often to jingoism, greed and hunger for power and control.
ABC tv was pathetic this morning in its slavish following of this issues, complete with youthful reporters dishing out propaganda filled reports about what Long Tan was about as if they had been there themselves and therefore competent to judge.
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Agree, ABC coverage is intolerable this morning.
And thanks for the praise, PW.
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I wonder what the racist dicks would say if Japan decided to hold a party in Darwin to celebrate that small victory.
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I guess we would have to get the USA military to permit it,given they have basically taken over the place ( and with a massive troop increase forecast,going fwd).
The locals had/have no say in having endless war games and being invaded.
$$$$$
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But China have a lease over Port Darwin. And the Chinese have long memories regarding the Japanese.
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(The anon icon was me 4getting to insert username)
Anyhoo, yes to China’s presence,hence even more US troops.More friction.Less state control/That changes nothing about my comment,but to expand and reinforce it.State leader flogs port,feds flog sovereignty.Locals sitting ducks.Parties rake it in.
Peace and quiet long gone.Poor old Darwin. Another paradise slowly being ruined.
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The impacts [ just on our side] are not limited to soldiers, as we know.Those ripples and emotional ricochets transcend time and generations.Multiple, in fact.
Science is now linking the inter-generational physical impacts being passed along genetically, but we are still expanding our legions of cannon fodder.
Maybe aunty can get her teeth into that story?
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I mean, what do all these commemoration mean?
That WE were the victims?
I won’t attack the troops themselves, they did well to cope with a stuff-up as to the battle itself.
But so much of Vietnam was to do with a modern day equivalent to the Indian Wars in the USA, or Isandalwana/ Rorkes Drift in South Africa; the Maori Wars or our own putting down of aboriginal resistance.
We select an isolated instance where our lot were actually under pressure to legitimise the White Man’s burden view of history through an islated act of self preservation, obscuring, relegating the truth of local resistance to invaders with bad intentions to not even a footnote in history.
As Jennifer Wilson for one would know, the ghost of Roland Barthes would roflhao in his coffin laughing at such alibiing and thinking on how the perversion of the sense of history sets up future generations for ignorant jingoism in an information vacuum.
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Perhaps(just perhaps) The Vietnamese government “decided who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come”
?.
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🙂 brilliant, Hypo.
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“How would we cope if a thousand Japanese ex-soldiers and a pop band came to Darwin to commemorate the bombing of Darwin.”
GO tweeted the above yesterday; I agree with him and Jennifer that Aussies have acted rather insensitively.
We have a tendency to glorify our war efforts.
We do the same with our Gold Medal winners, only Gold is good, and we forget about those youngsters who worked hard but came ONLY fourth of fifth… I feel sorry for them.
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Duty?
What about Duty of Care,Mr Turnbull?
In the face of knowledge that the veterans of war (our youth) are now displaying plague like proportions of PTSD, I call on the govt to withdraw all our troops from the middle east,immediately.
We don’t have a tendency to glorify war Helvi, we are perversely infatuated with it.
The whole ANZAC thing has blown out into a $$$ corporate entity.
‘Merch industry’
How does that honour the fallen? (rhetorical)
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Incredibly dopey to try to recreate a concert, as if that had anything to do with the battle.
A commemoration of a battle, respecting both sides, is what we should expect.
I doubt that it is anything to do with their being brown people. It is a matter of it being in the territory of Vietnam, noting that the Vietnamese eventually won the Vietnam War.
I’ve been trying to think of a parallel; perhaps the Germans commemorating the defeat of France (1940) and wanting to march by the Arc De Triomphe. (!!!)
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Dq, it would a fine thing if it was a commemoration, with the parties gathering together in solemn recall of all the dead, but this jingoism that has crept in since Howard and Gallipoli reeks of revisionism, alibiing for the past and present and the arousal of jingoist fervour.
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ín the end Pearton blog has it. Its all about us.
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Context, Doug. Right up until the firing commenced the Delta Company troops could hear the concert they were missing out on carrying relatively clearly to their not-very-distant location in the Long Tan rubber plantation. A potent memory for many, perhaps as one of war’s absurdities, whether in the rubber, or back at the base when the music got drowned out by the intensifying thumping on the gun line.
Reminds me of the reminiscences of a German sailor of the sinking of the Bismarck, whose most distinct memory, for all that was then going on, was of the haunting music played continuously over the ship’s PA system until it slid beneath the waves.
Also, Little Pattie has been a strong proponent of ‘on deployment’ entertainment tours for Australian service personnel in the 50 years (to the day) since the battle of Long Tan. All Australians attending the planned memorial would have known that. Perhaps not so much ‘entertainment’, as intended recognition for service?
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That is a helpful take.
Lest we forget.
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Yes, Lest We Forget.
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A footnote to Little Pattie’s involvement with the original concert was that her party, and the crew of the helicopter that evacuated them to Vung Tau as the battle of Long Tan commenced, were the sole eyewitnesses to the scope of that battle.
That helicopter’s very next job was the urgent resupply of small arms ammunition to what remained of Delta Company fast running out on the ground at Long Tan, in gathering darkness and pouring rain.
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Didn’t the release of docs (30 YO?) from the VN war, claim that the very guns used against allies, (by mainly Viet Cong) originated originally (somehow) from the CIA?
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News to me, Hypo. Absent some credible reference, I’d have to regard that as wild rumour, perhaps one generated for no other purpose than that of diverting a discussion. To my knowledge, most weapons used by VC and NVA during the period of Australian involvement in the war were of predominantly Russian origin.
Are you suggesting that the CIA bought weapons from the Soviets and gave them to the NVA?
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I have a just a flickering memory of a news story sometime over the last two years.
(Would probably have been ABC radio,if at all)
Related to FOI or 30 year release.Maybe I misheard.I recall I had a reaction of that’d be right.
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DQ & PW, this makes me remember my dear blogging friend, Chris Hunter. I wonder what he would say about all this.
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Chris….always straight from the heart, best attempt at reasoning. One or two looked down in him a bit, but I think he was from the heart. I wonder why a few more didn’t make it across here, would have been ideal for many of them.
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Ha! He’s probably over there right now. He fought over there (for the NZ bit of Anzac) and is a past president of the RSL.
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I never had the impression that he was anything but honest rank and file Labor. I believe people do blogs like this and Table Talk to contribute, also to learn and improve their own reasoning and debating skills.
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I don’t think anything I wrote and anything you wrote are mutually exclusive, paul. The RSL is seen as a rightist organisation, but there are exceptions. My mate Chris Hunter is one of the exceptions.
🙂
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I seem to recall the RSL refused membership to Vietnam vets for quite some time. On the grounds Vietnam wasn’t a real war or some such.
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Yes, the WWII vets dominated the RSL and Vietnam vets were . . . well, young, and just a bit radical – especially the conscripts.
As for the “not a real war” argument, any port in a storm will do. They threatened the status quo.
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A parochial, even jingoistic approach to war commemoration is a universal thing. It has nothing to do with Australia or racism or white male privilege. It is universal. It’s all about natural group preferencing. Unfortunately, it tends to be ugly because of it. We ought not flatter ourselves in our analysis of it.
A properly sombre and respectful commemoration would have been fine – especially one recognising the far greater loss for the local population – but this approach was always going to be in poor taste, regardless of whether the concert proceeds were going to a local charity. Vietnamese officials did entirely the right thing as far as I’m concerned.
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Oh, and I swear I hadn’t seen PWs post when I wrote that. 🙂
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Dont worry, I need all the affirmation I can get. By your post, you smell the same dead cat as me.
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Never got into the celebration of the war thing. Possibly because my father, a war vet himself, refused to have anything to do with the RSL or Anzac Day. As a family we never really made it a full frontal ritual.
At home, we talked a little. But not very much, on weekends dad was drunk by noon and on weekdays, he went to his bowling club where he could drink as much as he wanted. Mum always kept a meal warm for him on a plate on a simmering saucepan. That’s what mums did then.
As for Lon Tân, good call Vietnam. Although I understand, that Vietnam has since permitted 100 of the actual soldiers who fought there for a quiet commemoration. Very generous indeed.
We still need to talk about the ripple effect of war. We should do that instead of spending a fortune flying off to Gallipoli. I do hope Turkey is at least making a dollar out of the big love fest.
We have only, belatedly, started actually acknowledging the nurses who cared for the soldiers at the point end of war. Maybe, this will bring on more thought about consequences. Not holding my breath for acknowledgement of generational consequences. I do know that people under stress and/or trauma – their actual genes can change. Maybe I have drifted off topic…
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I’ve come to despise analyses like this. That isn’t to say that I disagree with the Vietnamese that the event should be cancelled. There was certainly cultural insensitivity on display, and I likewise cringe at Australia’s need to celebrate our defeats rather than mourn them. However, the conclusion that this is “white male supremacy” just reeks of bigotry to me. If you think that there is something specific that “white males” are adding here, then you seem to be agreeing with the premise you are trying to reject. Namely that if it was anybody but “white males” were involved, something like this not only wouldn’t happen, but couldn’t happen. That implies there is something unique about “white males” (and therefore, ironically, a justifiable reason to be supremacist). Surely the history of relationships between countries where no “white males” were anywhere to be found should dispel that idea entirely. Japan’s relationships with Korea and Japan comes to mind. It’s part of the human condition to put our own interests first and take advantage of other’s weaknesses.
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No quarrels here this expands the conversation out a little.
For my part it my comments were sceptical, I had a sense that the thing was being exploited, that like Gallipoli it had stopped being a focus for starke contemplation and scrounged back into cultural reification, to recreate the sort of jingoistic emotional states that led to the gruesome wars and depressions of last century.
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The whole war tourism thing is massive.Gallipoli,Thailand Borneo, everywhere.ANZAC is branded and copyrighted.And yet many soldiers are still broken.The sacrifices have become cash cows for many a parasite.
Pretty sure white males dominate the decision makers who sent and send us to war.The illegitimate wars in the middle east are not supported by any survivor of WW2 I have ever spoken to.
The war tourism industry would easily rival smoking as far as income to to govt.
With perhaps a milestone ANZAC Day ceremony for relatives and those involved.I think personal pilgrimages and quiet contemplation are more respectful.
And the conclusion is quickly reaches in that mode, as well.
I don’t like the odour of the way this story is being spun.Especially by rancid opportunistic scum like Bolt .Maybe the locals were happy to NOT go back 50 years?
Their country,their rules.
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EDIT
And the conclusion is quickly *reached* in that mode, as well.
(Conclusion being >what a waste of life)
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The *white male* descriptor emerged a few months ago in reaction to privileged white men claiming oppression when confronted with demands for equality from people of colour and women.
No doubt Korea and Japan have their equivalent, however I was referring specifically to the west.
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Just a thought. Little Patty migrating from early sixties surfie chick to committed entertainer for the digs found a home in 1972 with Whitlam’s campaign.
Winds of Change.
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https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=youtube%ee%80%81+eric+%ee%80%80burdon+winds+of+change&&view=detail&mid=C6F814DE5B53F79B578BC6F814DE5B53F79B578B&FORM=VRDGAR
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Should not have conflicted her, as the Viet Nam involvement had been terminated in 1971. Whitlam’s campaign took place over the months preceeding December 1972. In any event, that time was at the outset of what was to become a long-term interest for her.
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Ahem – Australia has been invaded – and that was by white male supremacists … and why ‘Australia Day’ is not celebrated by those invaded
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My point was *we* (the white invaders) have never experienced invasion in Australia, only perpetrated it.
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oh, OK – that wasn’t clear to me in this piece …
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Yes, no white women were ever involved.
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Not involved in the decision to invade, but certainly women, although few, were among those in the first fleet – sent for their misdemeanors or wives of ‘officials’ – here’s an interesting bit of history about the role of women in the colony http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/24/230.html
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That is as simplistic as the claim that we are somehow victms of an invasion by the greenie left.
Of course women were complicit, given their own circumstances.
But I think the thread is heading in the right direction with Jennifer Wilson’s as to her last couple of comments.
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There is simplistic,there is lies,there is patronising,there is blame,there is ignorance.It all feeds into the worn thin white guilt myth culture.
You only have to see some of the reactions to Long Tan and Vietnams decision, and the real truth to know ‘we’ don’t like facing alternative versions.Especially when the alternative is truth.As has been suppressed till the last few days, there were people who wanted to make this bigger than Ben Hur, and make Vietnam cave in to an unacceptable level of activity.The outcome will have a sanitised version designed for public consumption,Bishop will dodge and weave, and cling to her permanent fence etc.Meanwhile the broken soldiers will feel betrayed again, like sandwich meat,and many of their families will have to deal with the pain.Again..
Pretty sure the last thing the host country EVER wanted was to rekindle any pain, hence the desire for low key.And they also have a duty to consider the pain of the people whose home this all occurred to.
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As usual, politicians saw an opportunity and leapt at it, entirely uncaring of anything other than their own aspirations.
Is there anything this government doesn’t fuck up?
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We’ve not been invaded!
26 January 1788 and the anniversary is regarded by many as Invasion Day. Sad that on the anniversary of Wave Hill walk-off you would write a piece that repeats this Eurocentric myth.
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I think you should take the author to task on the basis of 18C.
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Spoken like a true Lesionhornster.
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I am not an aggrieved person, so have no standing to take a complaint under 18C.
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Ian, I’m sick of explaining this. *We* (non indigenous Australians) have never been invaded. I can’t see how that isn’t obvious in the piece. *Australia* did not exist before white invasion & there’s a paragraph in the piece on how white Australians have little regard for brown people including our own indigenous people.
It is totally eurocentric to claim that anyone other than indigenous people have experienced an invasion of this country. We haven’t.
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Um, well this country was invaded actually – over 200 years ago. Dreadful consequences for the true owners of this country and ongoing. That’s why I reckon the descendants of the invaders are so afraid of the unscheduled arrival of boats bearing foreign folk – so very scared of what might happen after what they themselves perpetrated on the unprepared folks going about their own business in their own land – still their land as sovereignty was never ceded. Also – arrogance feeding mind numbing racism still exists here…
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This country was. It wasn’t Australia, and white people did not live here: we were the invaders. The only people who have experienced invasion in this country are its indigenous people.
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It’s funny how Aboriginal Australian history doesn’t speak about the tribal and linguistic diversity of Australians Iindigenes and their own inter-tribal conquests. Oops, no it’s only bad if white men do it.
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Wow, ignorant racism on display.
Funny how ‘indigenous history has had 200 years of genocide distracting its recording of 50K years or more of sustainable science..
You do know that ‘Australia’ is a name given to a conquered land don’t you?
It is impossible to NOT get canned for getting personal from hereon in, because your intent is so obvious.
Why did you not save readers time and admit you were a Lesionhorn clone (trolling) from the getgo.
You’re on your own ‘white fellla’ (go on sue me,hit 18c.)
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What a moronic clown – ever seen the rock art going back thousands of years which tell the dreaming stories and tribal histories
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Dan, Ummmmmm wot????
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Sorry, am very very disappointed ( If I have read the last few comments correctly) that none of you have grasped what Dan Rowden has actually said re the richness of adaptability, initiative and resultant succesful diversity throughout regions over many centuries involving indigenous people.
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I missed something PW? It’s entirely possible.
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You have a benign outlook, really, ultimately an innocent at large.
I am presuming still that the sequence of comments following Dan Rowden’s comment re diversity and acumen mistakenly see him as”racist” for some reason, for the comment?
Please explain?
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I can’t. I didn’t see him as racist. I’m not sure what his last comment meant.
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http://www.tvtonight.com.au/2014/06/qas-compelling-speech-dont-call-me-a-problem.html
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Thank you PW.
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http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinnimvivi18.html
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Now I get it. You were having a shot at Ian Law, not Dan Rowden..sometimes the threads seem to get out of sequence.
Hypo, Howard Zinn is how I read it. I grew up during that era and it defined my politics, the shocking discovery that our lot told lies and the other side actually some serious points make as to the basic underpinnings of neo colonial wars and Western dislocation from reality.
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Sorry, sometimes I forget to put a name to a comment. PW. 🙂
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No, it’s ok, I’m just a racist. I hate black people. They’re so dark. The fact that you can’t see them at night scares the shit out of me. You need expensive night vision equipment to be able to shoot them.
I was, frankly, pissed that people chose to make an issue of “Invasion Day” regarding this article. So, the author forgot to acknowledge the original “owners” of the land. I say we shoot her for it.
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I made an observation about an important historical fact. Your hyperbolic responses are just ridiculous. I get what Jennifer has said she intended, but it was not clear from her wording as can be seen by responses in this thread and in others.
I really liked the article, other than the sentence I commented on. I shared it in 4 places on Facebook.
I think the language of that sentence is unfortunate. It is exclusive, in what the author says was her intention. It is otherwise well written, making some great observations. However, in writing about Australia and invasions, I believe writers should be precise, acknowledging that Australia was invaded, and that the mistreatment of First Nations’ people continues today. Any ambiguity can only cause further angst, especially for those whose lives continue to be affected by the Invasion.
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Europeans who live in Australia have never experienced invasion in this country. I didn’t realise that needed to be spelled out, I thought it was obvious. It never occurred to me that anyone here would assume I was ignorant of or ignoring the European invasion of indigenous country.
This country, Australia, has never been invaded. Australia didn’t exist until white invasion created it.
It’s necessary to speak exclusively in this instance because Europeans were the invaders, indigenous people were invaded and colonised. There is no inclusive *we* in such a situation.
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I don’t think you need to spell it out,JW.
Methinks more Australians need to join the dots .
As a starting point they should stop denying the core racism here in an invaded landscape..And that the ultra core is anti indigenous racism.
Of course the place was invaded, and of course you and most ppl here on this blog know.
Perverse how the same ppl can forget the first invasion,and then paint every other boat with non whites in it as a ‘real’ invasion.Apparently the plane arrival >invaders<can be any quality scum.Must be the smell of salt.
This country has buckleys of ever looking inwards.Keep shining your light in the dark corners,though JW.Just in case.
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Actually, Ian, to be really precise, Europeans writing about or discussing the invasion ought to say “We invaded and colonised” rather than the passive “the country was invaded.”
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Don’t be silly. Only Nazis and Russians do that.
We came to rescue them, not obliterate them. We even brought them Jesus.
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Missionaries are the fluffers of rampant capitalism.And many a church was built with the blood and local landscape of the indigenous people.
Some of Australia’s most beautiful paradises were plied and then ploughed to a massive detriment.
While many of the conquered ‘peoples’ have sped backwards and away from kinship,connection and culture,the churches have now evolved into society sapping parasites crossing the frontier into govt, and destroying our constitutional rights as they raze the next village.
Too many [global] indigenous people have lost too much ‘thanks’ to religion.
It’s out turn now, via the back-door or parliament
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‘our turn now’ ^
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Missionaries of all sorts, not just Christians. The Islamists are only the latest to say “convert or die.”
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http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-20/vietnam-vet-rides-to-raise-awareness-of-ptsd/7769516
Hopefully some of the money goes towards finding a speaker among returned soldiers who can articulate that sending people to wars, as we do these days,for;
subservience
and protection of corporations and their profits,
to ‘keep the eye in’ of the armed forces,
or to keep the war machine warm and wealthy.
So many people are willing to raise funds for the damaged.But nowhere near enough are speaking out against the known cause and or championing prevention.
Peace is not a weakness.Nor is it cowardice.
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EDIT
(Housekeeping) Post above should have gone to the bottom,not here midstream.(sorry)
Typo (continuity) from said post,
“….or to keep the war machine warm and wealthy, are all the known key drivers of PTSD.”
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I didn’t forget, Dan.
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“acknowledging that Australia was invaded, and that the mistreatment of First Nations’ people continues today. Any ambiguity can only cause further angst, especially for those whose lives continue to be affected by the Invasion.”
Plus one.^
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War is passed. We don’t forget but we let the pain go. Now, our people are focusing on making life better and our country development in peace. It’s proud that my business has a little contribution to our country. We are making best efforts to attract travelers not only for earning but also sending a message from our kind people and beautiful country to the world.
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