Cool pix!

Same here. I only sang "we are the champions" with Team when we won the medical universities' championship in 1989.
Pretty drunk then...

 

Bernieres-sur-Mer at Juno Beach!

 

Russian Soldiers outside the Reichstag, Berlin. 1945.

 

Pictures from Australia on this friday...

Leopard shark...



Luv'n life...




Mum and bub...


Cold start to the day in Glenrowan - (Where Ned Kelly was captured)




Budgies are very social...a few mates gather...


Afternoon colours at Razorback NSW


Rainbow bee eater...


Sea doggo...



Mum and Joey...



Morning glow...



A place i've posted before...Cascade Brewery (Hobart Tasmania)




One of my favs, a Thorny Devil (eats ants)



A laugh of Kookaburras keeping warm this cold winter...



The Bungle Bungles...



A Wombat...

 

Hah!

Edward "Ned" Kelly.

Just another cop killer, bank robber, and horse thief.
He certainly got his revenge on Constable Lonnigan at Stringy Bark Creek.

The incident that touched it off was that Lonnigan had arrested "Ned" at some point prior, and had dragged Ned by his private parts down the street to the station.

Ned swore then and there..."Lonnigan, if I ever kill a man, you'll be the first. "

At Stringybark Creek that came true.

 

I don't know if you remember, but several films and television shows have attempted to tell the story.

One of the films featured none other than Mick Jagger as Edward Kelly.

Even Benny Hill, when he did his television "special" in Australia used Kelly as the subject of visual gags in his famous "sped up" style.

One of the gags was typical Benny.

Dressed as Ned, he approached a table with a bucket in hand, filling up an old style bathtub with water.
Two girls are watching Ned from the bushes. They can't see the tub because a tree blocks it. All they can see is Ned standing.
A sniper fires at Ned, hitting the tub.
From the girls point of view, a jet of water streams out of the tub, making it appear that Ned is taking a piss behind the tree.
The girls giggle.
The sniper fires again and hits the tub a second time.
A second jet of water appears...
The girls give each other amazed looks, and hold up two fingers. They have the impression that Ned has two penises.

All done in "fast" motion

 

Ned was Irish...
If you know your history you'd know that the Irish were treated as second class citizens - Add to that he was Catholic.
Catholics were treated the way Muslims were after 911...Total discrimination. Too see a "No Catholics" or "No Irish" sign was common back then...




The Kelly family were continually harassed and treated like dirt by the constabulary...Including Ned's mother. How would you feel if a cop turned up at your door and treated your Mum like shit?

Heres a quote: "To many Australians, Ned Kelly, the son of poor Irish Catholics, was a heroic anti-establishment figure who fought corrupt British colonists in the 19th Century."

Corrupt British colonists - Let that sink in before you throw Ned to the curb mate.

Edit: My heritage is Irish Catholic...So i'm never going to agree with you mate.

 

He was FAR from just another criminal...RIP

 

You don't solve problems by stealing horses, shooting police, or robbing banks.

If Kelly supporters wish to hide behind prejudice as an excuse for Ned's actions, they are deluded.

The Irish seem to specialise in killing their own folk purely on religious grounds. " The Troubles" was an open social wound based on prejudice to begin with, and taken way too far for too long.

Ned wasn't Irish. He was AUSTRALIAN.

And we don't put up with sectarian violence.

You can say what you want about his motives. I know very well that policeman like Lonnigan and Fitzpatrick were less than shining examples of Sir Robert Peels ideas of a man in uniform.

But Ned had his chance to make a go of it after his release from prison for horse thievery, and for a while, he walked the straight and narrow path.

But in the end, he still ended up swinging from a noose for stealing horses, robbing banks and killing policemen.

Hardly the sort of activity to be proud of, regardless of his motivation

 

"What makes Ned a legend is not that everyone sees him the same—it's that everyone sees him. Like a bushfire on the horizon casting its red glow into the night." - Martin Flanagan

 

Flanagan. An Irish apologist.

Bushfire on the horizon?

Meaningless word pictures. An analogy to whitewash a common criminal who got what he deserved.

This reminds me of similar stuff done to white wash Jesse and Frank James.
Jesse in particular was nothing more than a killer, starting off with a para military guerrilla group under the command of Quantrill.

To give you an idea of the length to which popular writers, musicians and others went to portray Jessie as a good man gone wrong, but fighting injustice and therefore somehow justified, here's extracts from a song by Irish band The Pogues.

Well it was Bob and Charlie Ford
Those dirty little cowards
I wonder how they feel?
For they ate of Jessie's bread..
And they slept on Jessie's bed..
And laid poor Jessie In his grave..

Now Jessie had a wife..
Been a lady all her life..
His children strong and brave..
But history does record..
That Bob and Charlie Ford..
Have laid poor Jessie In his grave..

So...

After an early career participating in massacres of civilans, then robbing banks and shooting tellers dead that were too slow or uncooperative, and at Northfield especially gunning down passers by and being run out of town by ordinary citizens with guns, their crimes are somehow justified because one of the Ford brothers gunned Jessie down whilst he straitened a picture in his living room?

Similar to Kelly. His crimes were somehow justified because of ill treatment, but killing people was what he swung for.

I'm certainly not carried away by any "legend", or analogy in prose designed to justify his crimes by comparing him to forces of nature.

He was a killer, a thief and his last stand at Glenrowen could so easily have resulted in an entire trainload of policemen being killed or seriously injured but for the brave actions of a local man to bring the train to a halt before it derailed at speed and helping to bring Edward Kelly's activities to a screeching halt before he committed mass murder.

Bolshevik

 

The police and squatters were killers and thieves too…You really need to read the history of the time and see how things were run then…These Police were not innocent lawmen as you want us to beleive…The Police were against the Irish the Magistrates were against the Irish, the British colonials were against the Irish…Please don’t compare him to others, we are not talking about them. The Kelly’s were effectively pushed into crime by not being given a chance (I refer you again to the No Irish need apply signs) and by being blamed and harassed for anything that went down in the area (whether they did it or not). Their poverty as result of their circumstances made crime a way to survive. As a lot of crime does today. You are looking at this in black and white - Which will always make a person wrong. Nothing is black and white. (Except my beloved Collingwood Magpies).
Ned was not naturally violent, yet you want people to believe he was on the way to mass murder…pfft. You make a good poster boy for the establishment…Who were Over stuffed and corrupt and well capable of murder.

 

I want people to believe he was on his way to mass murder?

That's PRECISELY what was going to happen at Glenrowen.
A derailed train...
Survivors picked off as they struggled free of the wreckage.

I have already said that local police were far from perfect, VERY far. And the Squattocracy were hardly angels either.

But the Kelly gang, assisted by friends like "Wild" Wright, were not "forced" into crime!

Edward made a good living prize fighting, and he was the supervisor at the local sawmill. His associates were blamed for much of the crime in the district for the simple reason that they WERE responsible for a good deal of it anyway.

Look at what they did to Aarron Sherrit gunning him down in his own home on the assumption of betrayal of their activities.

You were either a supporter of the gang, or you were out of the picture.

Kelly should have stuck to his job, and provided for his family as his father , "Red" Kelly had demonstrably failed to do. Remember that Constable Fitzpatrick was at the Kelly homestead as an amourous visitor seeking a date with Kate Kelly. But the Kelly's were so entrenched in their criminal activity that the idea of Kate marrying a police officer was anathema to them. And that demonstrates how entrenched their criminal activity really was.

Edward could so easily have stuck at his job, pulled his brother into line, and married Kate off. It was his role as head of the family.

But no...

It was much easier to earn quick profit. Much easier to keep on keeping on.

The best way to fight corruption is to be an insider, rather than on the outside looking in

 

Agree with most of it…

 

Times Square, looking south on Broadway from 47th Street, New York, summer 1944. by Andreas Feininger for LIFE magazine.

 

No pertinent info, but more that likely somewhere stateside.

 

Among other movies, Days of Glory was playing. War/Romance movie 1944. A year later I would be born, my dad was overseas with the U.S. Army. My mother was a registered nurse working at the Coaldale hospital, Coaldale, Pennsylvania.

 

Virginia cleaners. And it looks like he just picked up some fresh clean clothes.

 

The size of Australia…Wide brown land.

 

Even Finland got to the map! If seasons would change usually there would be a place where there is 70 cms of snow during Winter and during summer rain and thunder, mainly +18-25 C degrees. And 200,000 lakes and 3 million saunas... kph