Wednesday 17th of April 2024
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Top Enthralling Notions In Xenophobia

Whoops, another contract for Tenix... onya Reefeee...wonder how his second job out frm the Defence Ministry is going.  Maybe It's Time for Labor and the Democrats to match the current rounds of contracts to those of a couple of years back  (why didn't you mention the Kinaird Report Robert,? it was in your notes!).

Nobody seems to talk much about Tenix's job of marketing The DSTO.'s discoveries.and keeping the profits.  Did your Defence Minister also organise this job for you?  Now I can guess  what SABRENet is for... better broadband to get all of that commercially valuable military information out of town, most like on the "superhighway" that runs from Pine Gap to Sydney via Adelaide.  Supplying missile attack simulation data from Mawson Lakes (where Tenix and the DSTO are both based) to NATO will be, if Tenix gets the job as hoped,  bound to use up a fair bit of bandwith.
 

I'm amazed that the new garrison contract (announced in Adelaide during the Rumsfeld visit) fo the company that Tenix was created from, Transfield, appears in this index from six years ago 

You'd think that something planned that far ahead would be held over by the DoD till a time with less competing military publicity, and maybe not from a place that was being described as under a terrorist-threat lockdown (which it wasn't... only a couple of blocks)  expecting a national convergance of ten thousand protesters  (which there weren't... six hundred locals did it themselves).  With that much planning the timing of the publicity meant that the story didn't get a lot of interest.. better luck next time, I guess).  You had, with Rupert Mudoch running his global empire fom Adelaide that week, arguably the best P.R. expert in the world at your disposal !  Mr Murdoch probably would suggest that the garrison contract announcement would not get a much publicity in the middle of all this hullabaloo, let alone with the added media time devoted to  Rumsfeld's announcements.

Murdoch probably would say that this would be when the Transfield garrison deal would get the most minimal publicity possible at such a time, and that with all the attention on Robert Hill, nobody would be thinking about predecessor Peter Reith. 

(Aside: at the press conference, what did US Energy Minister Zoelleck mean when he warmed up for his routine at the AUSMIN Media Conference with  'Well, let me just say how pleased I am to be here with so many good friends, both the ones in the government, some that I see from outside"  Which non-government (I assume corporate) faces were in that Adelaide room that the  US Deputy Secretary Of State recognised by sight?  Did these "non-Government" folk have get to the venue three hours early for security inspections like the journalists did? End of Aside)

Now, where was I?  You see how easy diversion can be? 

Aha, remembering now... at a party a couple of years back I shared a glass of red with a Tenix bloke who was regaling us with stories of how Tenix had planned to work mostly from Sydney as the U.S. execs thought Adelaide was too lowbrow for their C.V.'s.  Times changed, and the company was forced to re-employ the SA locals it had sacked at much higher salaries than their pre-dismissal rates..  He mentioned that Tenix wasn't particularly interested in the Warship contracts, but more keen to keep missiles in the air "past their normal use-by date"

Several months later I rang the Advertiser's Craig Bildstien (not knowing a few things then) and asked him if he was doing any story about Tenix's plans for a missile refurbishment plant.  He told me it was "on the to-do list".  It must be a long list... no sign of anything yet.

Exint

Look at it this way, Richard. It's all for the good of an honourable withdrawal from the streets of Iraqi cities, leaving what was planned long ago - enhanced ability to strike deep, anywhere in the ME. There's just a few quibbles about Kurds calling down strikes on Turkmen, Shiites on Sunnis, etc etc. But with Fox in control, we won't be disturbed. 

Who is Simon Willis?  

Who is Simon Willis?

.

 [excerpt ]

Major General
Simon Willis CSC, an Infantry officer and graduate of RMC, has seen
active service in South Vietnam and served as an ADC to the Governor
General, instructor and operations officer as well as Commandant of
RMC. MAJGEN Willis worked on Joint Exercise Planning Staff for two years
and, in the rank of Colonel, raised the new Training Branch of Land
Headquarters. A graduate of the US Army War College, MAJGEN Willis has
also served as a Military Attache within Defence Staff, Washington.
In March 1999, MAJGEN Willis was posted to Bougainville as the Commander,
Peace Monitoring Group, and was promoted to his current rank as Head,
Joint Education and Training, last October.

Simon Willis was, in 2000, the ADF's head of Joint Training, which I'm assuming would have involved interaction with U.S. activities on Australian soil, as anything 'joint' referring to the Australian military seems  to inolve other armies on our turf.

 He then becomes Head of Personell, and in this capacity is described as an "ex-officio" director of the Defence Housing Authority (right at the end of this)

At the time of hs holding this position, an inquiry into the nature of postgraduate education for ADF personell is conducted, no doubt affecting activities at the Adelaide DSTO campus today.

Willis then heads back to Washington, where he has previously served as an attache,  to become the the head of ADF staff in Washington, organising Australian observers\ attending of U.S. pre-Iraq exercises.

In March 2002 Willis appeared (along with military representatives of 26 other countires) beside Donald Rumsfeld as the "face" of Australian military involvement in the Coalition of the Willing, stating that " Central Command" was pleased with Australia"s contribution".   In 2003  he was a guest speaker at a West Point Academy seminar on "Defending Alliance Against Divisive Influences and Impulses"

In May 2004 Willis discussed Australian involvementt with the Coalition at U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, telling the Yanks that "Australia has a track record second to none as a reliabe ally, securtiy partner and friend of the United States.

WIllis went on to say that :

We give a very high priority to interoperability with U.S. forces,
when making capability and doctrinal decisions across the board.

The Australian government has made a major commitment to increase funding for
defense, and has embarked on major upgrades in modernization, which include
U.S.-source A, W and C aircraft and (inaudible) [M1 Abrahams] tank.

Our ability to integrate at all levels with U.S. forces is essential to our
capacity to fight together, and this is built on considerable interoperability.

 

no

simonwillis@starpower.net 

“

Effable

I know nothing about Simon Willis. He has the mien of an earnest lay preacher, though. Not the happy clappy type, either. Calvinist. Probably as familiar with the streets of Arlington VA as Robt Gerard is with the streets of Adelaide. 

I imagine Mr Willis to have been approving of the putdown of Julia Irwin, by The Australian mouthpiece:

IF Julia Irwin is a firm friend of Islamic Australians, she will shut up. Because the federal Labor MP for the Sydney seat of Fowler only makes a fool of herself when she speaks out on religious issues. On Monday, Ms Irwin made a speech in parliament in which she said religious Muslims felt unfairly targeted under laws targeting terrorists. Fair enough – and if Ms Irwin had made only this point, nobody much would have objected. But she went on to say that, compared with the Koran, violence in the Bible is "hard to beat" and that there are Christian fundamentalists who are bloodthirsty bigots. ...

But, maybe, the above propagandist is trying to say something else, with:
... Anybody who invokes God's name today as a sanction for slaughter is motivated by mental illness, insane bigotry or ineffable greed. ...

Offering a range of 3 choices is unlike Rupert's Organ. Is that passage, perhaps,  a coded clue to look at Cheney 'may be guilty of war crime'?

... Mr Wilkerson told the Associated Press that the vice-president must have sincerely believed Iraq could be a spawning ground for terrorism because "otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard". ...

More Simon Willis, Tenix, SABRENet

I looked up starpower.net, where Mr Willis resides on the net, and came to a private broadband facilities company. I conclude from putting together the bio above and the nature of the company he now works for that Mr Willis may be cutting out the middle-man (Tenix) and flogging the technology that the DSTO have developed  as a service for middle America. 

However, it might be the other way around, and he's selling services to the DSTO,

Either way, it makes SABRENet look all the more interestingly nepotistic.