Posted by John, April 6th, 2011 - under Uncategorised.

Tags: Afghanistan, Army cadets, Duntroon

Duntroon is not too far from where I live. It may as well be on another planet.

The Australian Defence Force Academy is an officer training centre where young people, men and women, gather for a few years of military education. On graduation these trainees are army officers, ready to lead men and women into battle against ‘the enemy’.

The place is basically a re-education camp, designed to dehumanise those there into killing other people and mobilising subordinate ranks to kill for them. That’s why it has a long long history of bastardisation and now sexual predation.

ADFA is not unique. As recent events show the navy is a ship of male fools at sea with women as sex objects. These fools run billions of dollars of hardware that can kill thousands.

I am willing to go out on a limb. I bet more stories will emerge in the coming days of the shocking treatment the defence forces mete out to female members. This is because that shocking treatment is systemic. It arises from the nature of the job – to kill people – and the training required to get recruits to accept that.

Part of the brutality of war involves treating women as inferior, often as objects of male desire and satisfaction. In this it mirrors currents in developed Western capitalist countries and the role of women in them as both mother and worker.

Duntroon breeds an intense loyalty to nation and fellow officers – well, at least among the men.

It can only do that through routine, regimentation and repetition and uncritical acceptance of the unwritten norms of Australian society – white is better than black, male is superior to female, Australia is better than most other countries, white Australian male officers are the creme de la creme of society.

Kate is an 18 year cadet. She had consensual sex with another cadet. He filmed it, unbeknown to her. Six of his officer in training mates watched them. She found out and went to Channel 10 with the story, because the hierarchy would have done very little about it.

She was physically sick when military police explained what had happened. So the next day her hearing on an unrelated matter – being AWOL and drinking alcohol last month – goes ahead.

The fact that this unrelated hearing went ahead must be deliberate. Not even a moron could fail to see that having such a hearing when Kate was likely to be upset in the extreme about what was going on would be a denial of justice.

It looks like the timing of this unrelated hearing is part of the attempt to destroy Kate for having the guts to expose the sexual degradation of women that pervades Duntroon in the name of training.

On Wednesday morning, according to Sky News, there was shaving cream on her door. None of our brave cadets would sit with her at breakfast. Some news agencies have reported she was told by superiors to apologise, although the Defence Minister has denied this. Her request for compassionate leave was rejected. The victimisation continues.

Remember that these soldier sickos are supposedly going to free Afghanistan, all of course in ‘our’ name. They’re not there to liberate but to subjugate.

If this is how they treat a fellow cadet who is female and Australian, imagine how they treat Afghan women.