In the 23 January edition of The Australian, Brendan Nicholson reported that the Minister for Defence, Senator Faulkner, had ordered the removal of biblical messages etched into US-manufactured gunsights in use by Australian special forces in Afghanistan (see article here). The ADF has several hundred of the gunsights, which are also in use by US, British and New Zealand forces.
The previous day, Nicholson had broken the story that the American manufacturer Trijicon had undertaken to stop adding the references to gunsights for Australian use (see here).
According to Nicholson’s report, the gunsights
… triggered an international uproar when US soldiers in Afghanistan discovered that letters and figures they thought were simply stock or model numbers referred to passages from the Bible.
One example was JN8:12 which turned out to be a reference to chapter eight, verse 12 in the Book of John: “When Jesus spoke again to the people he said ‘I am the light of the world’.”
According to the family-owned, Michigan-based company that manufactures the sights:
As part of our faith and our belief in service to our country, Trijicon has put scripture references on our products for more than two decades.
As long as we have men and women in danger, we will continue to do everything we can to provide them with both state-of-the-art technology and the never-ending support and prayers of a grateful nation.
Nicholson reports that the ADF had stated on 21 January that it had been unaware of the meaning of the inscription when the sights were issued to the troops.
Some observations, comments and questions:
(1) From the moment it was decided to invade Afghanistan in 2001, in response to a jihadist attack on the World Trade Centre, there was a danger that the so-called War on Terror could be represented as a war against Islam. Representing it in this way is of course of enormous benefit to al-Qaeda and jihadists generally. It is unfortunate, therefore, that the Howard Government did not take adequate steps to ensure that there was no flavour of this in relation to any aspect of Australia’s participation in the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.
(2) We are invited to believe that in as faith-based a society as the United States, even after the practice had been going on for more than two decades, no-one had any idea what the inscriptions meant until US troops in Afghanistan “discovered” what they meant. I don’t believe a word of it. Are we really expected to believe that after more than twenty years no-one in the US Army had any idea? Are we really expected to believe that the family that manufactures the sights has been protecting US troops with the power of prayer all this time, but never thought to mention it to anyone? The Christian Science Monitor reported here on 22 January that the Biblical references have been an open secret among US soldiers, some of whom refer to their weapon as a ‘Jesus gun’.
(3) Given that the matter was an ‘open secret’ (surely a euphemism for generally known) amongst US soldiers, it is reasonable to suppose that it was also generally known within the Australian Army, which is in constant contact with the US Army at every level (including joint exercises and joint operations).
(4) This leads me to believe that we have something of a procurement problem. Did the Defence Materiel Organisation not know about the inscriptions, or did it not realise their significance, or didn’t it care?
(5) By what means and when did this information first become known to Senator Faulkner?
(6) Why don’t we manufacture our own high-tech gunsights?
Former Labor Member for the Federal seat of Kingston, Gordon Bilney, has an op-ed piece in today’s Australian Financial Review in which he outlines the challenges facing the Rudd Government in the year ahead.
One of these is tackling “the monstrous waste and inefficiency” at Russell Hill.
It is remarkable how many people seem to “know” that there is monstrous waste and inefficiency in the Australian Defence Organisation. Equally remarkable is how few people seem to be able actually to identify where this waste is and how it can be eliminated without impacting upon the capacity of the ADF to fight and win. Many of the solutions I see bandied about sound to me a bit like attempts to repeal the Second Law of Thermodynamics (the one which explains why only about a quarter of the energy in the petrol we buy is actually used to propel the car).
The Department of Defence, a complex organisation that consists of both its civilian staff and its “members in uniform”, receives an almost uniformly bad press. Yet somehow the civilian and military leaders of the Department manage, when requested by Government, to put into the field the right people, with the right kit and the right training, who have performed outstandingly on every deployment. Someone must be doing something right.
Waste is inevitable in every large organisation. No-one should be complacent about that: every organisation should have in place effective continuous improvement programs that seek to find better and more cost effective ways of performing all of the organisation’s functions. But as I have commented previously, the notion on which the Government’s defence capability development plans depend, that there is an annual $2 billion of waste sloshing around the corridors of Russell just waiting for someone to harvest it, is an absolute fantasy – see Defence savings: the impossible dream and More on the Defence Savings Program for reasons why the savings are not there.
I do, however, have one very constructive suggestion for markedly reducing our defence expenditure: leave Afghanistan. No-one can articulate a convincing reason why the allied forces are there or what outcome we are looking for, and the way it has developed it has just turned out to be a very expensive way of destabilising Pakistan, a country which has never needed much help from outsiders in order to mess up its present or its future.
There is no good outcome on the horizon for the Afghanistan adventure. The most likely scenarios are a Pashtun-dominated regime led by the Taliban, or a Pashtun-dominated regime led by the Pakistani Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence’s (ISI) warlord of choice, someone like the appalling Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
Anyone who thinks that there is a third outcome should think very carefully about the probability and sustainability of that. If history is any guide, any non-Taliban leader in Kabul who is not ISI’s preferred option will be systematically undermined by ISI, using diverted US military assistance funds to do it, in the interests of their fantasy of becoming the dominant power in Central Asia.
Withdrawing gracefully would be a tricky business. It must be done in a manner that does not make a bad situation worse for our allies, and that does no harm to the alliance with the United States.
That suggests that the preferred option would be to seek to persuade the United States that it is high time for everyone to recognise the realities and withdraw sooner rather than later, in as decent and orderly a manner as we can – just the topic to enliven the forthcoming Ausmin talks between our Defence and Foreign Ministers and the US Defense Secretary and Secretary of State.
The bottom line would have to be that we are going sooner rather than later whatever the US decides to do: while we can seek to negotiate a decent and orderly withdrawal, we cannot be held hostage by our allies – and everyone understands that. If we think it is a bad idea, we have to act on that assessment, subject to decent management of the process of implementation.
The principal obstacle to moving in this direction is probably the fact that the Prime Minister has said that the war in Afghanistan is the right war, the war we have to win, and as recently as his surprise visit to the troops in Afghanistan in November declared that Australia “would remain in the conflict for the long haul”.
So the Prime Minister would have to admit that he got that one wrong, and our Prime Minister is not a person who has ever been renowned for his willingness to admit error.
Then he would have to try to convince his very good mate Barack Obama that he too had got it wrong, and we have not yet seen many signs that our Prime Minister is prepared to burn up political capital in Washington telling President Obama that he is mistaken about anything.
But how long should we tolerate having young Australians put in harm’s way in the interests of politicians’ vanity?
A piece by defence writer John Kerin in The Australian Financial Review’s Thursday 3 December Special Report on Defence throws some interesting light on the current thinking within Defence concerning the acquisition strategy for the future submarine which is to replace the Collins Class from about 2025, with the build to commence in 2016.
The key paragraphs are:
The government weapons purchaser, the Defence Materiel Organisation, has already embarked on a global search for designs, propulsion, weapons and sensor systems, talking to Spanish submarine builder Navantia, German builder HDW, US builder Electric Boat, Swedish builder Kockums and British builder BAE Systems.
Adelaide-based government-owned submarine builder ASC has a head start in terms of the project given its existing expertise. But government sources suggest that how big a slice of the build ASC gets will depend upon whether it can improve the efficiency of its maintenance of the Collins-class submarines.
Only two Collins-class submarines are now available, although the Defence Materiel Organisation, the navy and ASC are now working jointly to try to improve submarine availability.
The South Australian and federal governments have ensured there is a common user facility and vacant land near ASC at Port Adelaide which could be made available to a private sector rival.
The DMO has not yet recommended to the government how the acquisition strategy for the submarines should be handled.
DMO chief executive Stephen Gumley has warned that the project is simply too big for any one prime contractor.
The project may follow the alliance approach used with the $8 billion air warfare destroyer project, in which Raytheon, the Defence Materiel Organisation and ASC have formed a partnership to build three vessels for the navy.
The destroyer project is at this stage running to budget and on schedule.
There is still vigorous debate within the federal government and the defence community about an Australian-built submarine as the better option or whether an off-the-shelf solution may provide better value for money for taxpayers.
Some observations about the above:
(1) The suggestion from “government sources” that how big a slice of the build ASC gets “will depend on whether it can improve the efficiency of its maintenance of the Collins-class submarines” betrays extraordinarily muddled thinking, and suggests ongoing failure in the relationship between the two Government-owned entities the Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO) and ASC Pty Ltd. The Government owns ASC: if it has a sustainable case for dissatisfaction with ASC’s performance on the through-life support of the Collins class submarines, then it should address that question directly and resolve it. The industrial support of our platforms is a fundamental component of our defence capability, and problems in that regard must be resolved promptly, not simply used as an excuse to withhold future work on other projects.
(2) The odium being heaped upon ASC in relation to the through-life support of the Collins class seems to be a good example of the ancient principle of bureaucratic warfare that propinquity is power. The George Pappas-led Defence Budget Audit makes it quite clear that there are three organisations, DMO, Navy and ASC contributing to the current low level of submarine availability and long maintenance turn-around times, and it is no coincidence that the organisation furthest from the Minister’s ear is taking almost all of the public flak.
On page 114 the recently-released Defence Budget Audit says:
There are substantial systemic issues across the support landscape for the Collins Class (including Defence, ASC and its suppliers)), which are interacting to drive increased observed cost and low levels of availability. Frequent design modifications and upgrades (including significant legacy issues arising from the build phase), along with overlapping docking periods, drive higher demands upon finite resources. In turn, this leads to further extension in docking periods and causes further instability in the master maintenance schedule (exacerbated by lack of contingency built into the schedules to absorb emergent work). Schedule instability makes the planning of spares provisioning inaccurate, which further exacerbates productivity issues, extends repair turnaround times and increases docking periods. This cycle is further compounded when low submarine availability compromises training of seamen, which exacerbates crew shortages. These crew shortages can lead to submarines docking early, further disrupting the schedule. It will be impossible to break this cycle without coherent action at all levels – to the commercial arrangements between Defence and the ASC; in the repair facilities themselves; and in the end-to-end enabling system, including Defence.
Later in the Audit (page 118):
Maintenance efficiency is exacerbated by: low spare parts availability, currently at a 66% demand satisfaction rate, mainly due to the lack of a pool of repairable items ‘on the shelf’; very long turnaround times from many industry suppliers; increasing obsolescence; and schedule instability. As a result of Defence budget constraints in fulfilling the current ‘bow wave’ of maintenance, there are continual changes to the master maintenance schedule. This reduces the available forward planning time which, in turn, exacerbates the issues of parts availability and low labour productivity.
So it is quite explicit: budget constraints, maintenance schedule instability and crew shortages all contribute to the current problems and it will take ASC, DMO and Navy working together to fix them. It is a pity that our conventional media do not take the trouble to join up these dots.
(3) The crew shortages reflect well on neither the Navy nor the civilian Defence establishment including a succession of Ministers and Secretaries. It is the responsibility of the Chief of Navy to raise, train and sustain the Navy (in plain English that means that he is required to have trained sailors available to man all platforms) and he is the Capability Manager for all naval platforms. It is the job of the Minister, advised by the Secretary, to ensure that the Chief of Navy gets the resources he needs to perform his statutory functions – or accept political responsibility for deciding that the capability should be unavailable. Ships without crews are not capability, they are very expensive pieces of rusting metal and deteriorating systems.
To his credit, the current CN (Vice Admiral Russ Crane) is attempting to rectify this situation (see Managing the submarine workforce), but it is not going to happen any time soon, and the shortage of crew is itself contributing to the inability to train sufficient crew to put submarine manning on a sustainable basis.
(4) It is extraordinary that the South Australian and Commonwealth Governments have invested taxpayers’ money to ensure that “there is a common user facility and vacant land near ASC at Port Adelaide which could be made available to a private sector rival”. Why would a government want to do that when it already owns the necessary facilities and a company which is the national repository of submarine design and building expertise? Is this to be yet another very Australian story of investing billions of dollars in establishing a national capability and then insouciantly shredding it?
(5) The suggestion attributed to DMO chief Stephen Gumley that the future submarine project “is simply too big for any one prime contractor” is ridiculous. Leaving aside ASC’s claims for the moment, too big for Navantia? Too big for HDW? Electric Boat? Kockum? BAE Systems? Why would it be too big for any of the above? Surely someone is to be in charge of this complex project, and able to be held to account by the Commonwealth as client? Or is this code for DMO setting itself up to be the effective prime for this massive project, or indicative of a desire on the part of DMO, as implied by the AFR piece quoted above, to tilt the playing field in favour of another excursion into alliance contracting.
(6) In relation to alliance contracting, the article notes approvingly that the Air Warfare Destroyer (AWD) project is at this stage running to budget and on schedule. They always do at this stage; the hard part is the systems integration phase that comes at the end, as the Airborne Early Warning and Control project (Wedgetail) has demonstrated so abundantly. Yesterday Defence Materiel Minister Greg Combet put out a media release marking the achievement of another milestone in this project, the completion of testing of the Aegis Combat System equipment destined for HMAS Hobart. This is a step along the road, to be sure, but it doesn’t tell us much about the virtues of alliance contracting: the Aegis system is in service on nearly 100 warships in a number of navies, so we should expect that step to be completed without great problems.
(7) On 28 November 2001 the Australian Government Solicitor published some Commercial Notes that identified some substantial issues to be considered by Government agencies in considering whether to enter into an alliance contract (see Alliance contracting in Defence). In short, the key problems identified include the facts that it is difficult to select alliance partners fairly, there can be no meaningful sense that costs are fixed, and most compellingly in my view, the Commonwealth could be estopped from holding the contractor responsible for decisions in which it (the Commonwealth) participates.
(8) An “off-the-shelf solution”, as proposed by some, is not a solution if it does not do what we need it to do. The future submarine will inevitably be an evolution of the Collins class submarine which we currently have in service. No-one starts designing a submarine with a clean sheet of paper, and neither will we.
On the basis of the Defence Budget Audit led by George Pappas the Government has charged the Department of Defence with finding $20 billion over the next ten years to help fund the ambitious capital program set out in the Defence White Paper. Defence has cheerfully acquiesced in this, and earlier in the year the former Secretary gave everyone a “shape up or ship out” message.
Somewhere in the system there is someone who struggles with numbers, and concepts like lead times and lags.
To start with, what the Defence Budget Audit found was an estimated savings range of $1.3 billion to $1.8 billion per annum. This suggests savings over a full decade of $13 billion to $18 billion. So where did the $20 billion number come from?
The best answer seems to be by a simple summation of two numbers to be found in George Pappas’s letter to the Minister covering the submission of his report:
...Defence has committed to find the operational cost savings identified in the Defence Budget Audit, which will total $15 billion across the decade. Prior to the Audit, Defence had identified operational cost savings from individual groups and services, worth $5 billion over the decade from 2009/10 to 2018/19. These savings have been effectively integrated with or replaced by the Audit savings.
There seems to be a substantial element of double counting here: the $5 billion which had been found by Defence has been “effectively integrated with or replaced by” the savings found by Pappas’s review. We don’t know how much of the savings found by Defence were replaced by the Audit savings, but I would hazard that it is a large proportion.
Also, that $15 billion requires closer scrutiny. It sounds like a nice round number in between the upper and lower estimates, but when you take lead times into account it is right at the upper limit of what is achievable. The reason for this is:
- The Audit identifies annual savings of $1.3 billion to $1.8 billion, with a one-off saving of $218 to $398 million.
- It states (page 12) that the amount of reform required to capture these savings will take 3 to 5 years.
- If we postulate the most successful end of the range of possibilities, Defence could in three years make the reforms required to achieve the maximum annual savings of $1.8 billion per annum. If we assume that the efficiency gains from reform can be gained uniformly day by day over the three year period, the total recurrent savings in the ten year period are $15.3 billion. Add the maximum one-off saving of $400 million and we have an estimated maximum achievable amount of $15.7 billion.
- At the bottom end of the envelope of possibilities, Defence would take five years to achieve recurrent savings of $1.3 billion per annum. On that basis, again assuming uniform (straight line) progress towards the target, recurrent savings would be $9.75 billion. Add to that the minimum one-off saving of $218 million and the savings could be as little as $9.87 billion.
- It is worth bearing in mind that the achievable savings is the sum of savings identified in a large number of areas, which are stated in the form “savings of up to $x million”. For each of those components there is only a slight (indeed infinitesimal) probability of reaching the maximum number, because the assessment is that there is zero possibility of achieving more.
- To give an example, if it is estimated that a proposed series of measures would yield savings of $40-50 million, there will be a probability distribution of achieving any given sum across that range, probably highest at or near the centre of the range. Provided the measures are implemented, the assessment is that the savings would be at least $40 million – zero probability that it would be only $40 million, rising to maximum probability at around $45 million, declining to zero again at $50 million.
- What this means is that when we add a range of programs that will yield savings of “up to $x million” it is heroic indeed to postulate that the achievable savings are the sum of the maxima. It is much more likely to be the sum of the middle of each range: some programs will go close to realising their potential, others will fall substantially short.
I remain of the view expressed earlier, and from a different analysis, that finding anything like $20 billion from the Defence budget in the next ten years is an impossible dream.
The Minister for Defence, Senator the Hon. John Faulkner, has announced the makeup of the Defence Reform Strategic Advisory Board that he has appointed to oversight Defence’s Strategic Reform Program, the program that is to realise savings of $20 billion over the next decade to help fund the upgraded capabilities foreshadowed in the Defence White Paper (see here for the item by Patrick Walters in The Weekend Australian, 24-25 October 2009.)
The Advisory Board, which will report to Senator Faulkner quarterly, will consist of:
- Management consultant George Pappas (Chair)
- John Fletcher, CEO of Brambles and Coles Myer
- Linda Nicholls, ex-Chairwoman of Australia Post, now Chairman of Healthscope
- Paul Rizzo, former executive of Telstra and the Commonwealth Bank
- David Mortimer, Chairman of Australia Post and Leighton Holdings
- Jennifer Clark, company director and former investment banker
- Terry Moran, Secretary, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet
- Ken Henry, Secretary to the Treasury
- David Tune, Secretary to the Department of Finance
- Air Chief Marshall Angus Houston, Chief of the Defence Force
- Ian Watt, Secretary, Department of Defence
- Stephen Gumley, Head, Defence Materiel Organisation.
I wonder how long it will take this high-powered team to give the Government the one piece of strategic advice it really needs – that savings on anything like the required scale simply are not there (see Defence savings: the impossible dream). Who ever dreamed up the fantasy that after making allowance for the capital spend, essential maintenance of defence materiel, the salaries and allowances of uniformed personnel, training costs, estate management costs and defence research and development, there was a cool $2 billion per annum sloshing around waiting to be harvested from whatever out of the rest might be considered non-essential expenditure?
The Australian Observer blog seeks to contribute to public debate on a variety of themes – Defence, the Middle East, especially the triangular relationship between Iran, the United States and Israel, nuclear proliferation, climate change, trade and investment and public administration. From time to time it lightens up a bit and points readers in the direction of some of the things that make life worth living – the arts, recorded music, and interesting places to see.
Here is a roundup of recent posts, and some thematic material that might be of interest to readers.
Public administration issues, and issues that go to the integrity of our decision-making processes, have loomed large in the last few weeks.
Most important are those issues which go to how we come to commit Australian forces to military action. In Iraq War: Advice should have been offered I suggested that Secretaries of the relevant departments had a duty to proffer advice in relation to the invasion of Iraq, whether it was sought by Ministers or not. In Paul Kelly on East Timor I contest from first-hand involvement the account given by Kelly in his March of Patriots as to how we came to be deploying troops to East Timor.
Equally important is the process by which the decision to go to war is taken. In War Powers Bill I describe the Private Member’s Bill that was introduced into the Senate in February 2008 by Western Australian Greens Senator Scott Ludlam.In War Powers Bill: Senate Inquiry I note that the Bill has been referred to a Senate Committee for inquiry and report by 19 November 2009, and in War Powers: what the PM said I address a number of issues raised by a letter from the Prime Minister’s foreign policy adviser in response to a letter from Dr Kristine Klugman, President, Civil Liberties Australia. Finally on this topic, War Powers Bill: Pre-emptive self-defence analyses the international customary law on the right of pre-emptive self defence to see whether this poses any problems for the idea of transferring the war-making power from the Executive to the Parliament.
With my colleagues Andrew Farran and Garry Woodard I lodged a submission to the Senate Inquiry into this topic, and War Powers Submission provides a link to where it can be downloaded from the Parliament House website.
Sadly, the question of how to treat asylum seekers arriving by boat has reared its ugly head again. In Asylum seekers: all aboard the bad ship Bigotry I rehearse some of the issues and express the hope that the government will do, not the tough thing or the media savvy thing, but the right thing. Faint hope, I fear. In Manon needs another update I suggest that perhaps we need some movies on the asylum seeker experience of the kind that we saw from Henri-Georges Clouzot in 1949, and in Refugee boats: what about innocent passage? I ask some questions about how the Government’s wish to have the Indonesians intercept asylum seeker boats bound for Australia fits with the right of innocent passage enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
In the defence field, the key article is Defence savings: the impossible dream which demonstrates that the $20 billion of savings that Defence is to achieve over the next ten years is simply not achievable.Other posts include DMO: What was all the fuss about?, which notes that most of the reasons for cost increases and schedule slip are beyond the Defence Materiel Organisation’s control, and in any event 83% of the over 200 defence projects closed over the last ten years came in on or under budget, and Defence: off-the-shelf is not just about jobs uses the example of the Australian designed and built Bushmaster Infantry Mobility Vehicle to make the point that off-the-shelf equipment might at times be less expensive, but at what cost?
Boring old public administration gets a run, because issues of public administration affect us all – the choices that government makes about its expenditure priorities, the effectiveness and efficiency with which it goes about its work.Politicians’ promises: “We’ll never forget you” cautions that when politicians promise the earth it is time to start counting the silver.
Some ideas for the public sector revamp offers some observations in a constructive vein regarding the Prime Minister’s reported intention to “shake up the Public Service”. Beware of centralised funding cautions against the siren song of a Commonwealth takeover of responsibility for funding (of just about anything).
Million dollar men hints at the possibility that some people in the public sector might be somewhat fortunate in the remuneration they receive when they are benchmarked against the three most highly remunerated Secretaries of Commonwealth Departments – Prime Minister and Cabinet< style=""> Australia Post results wonders just how dependant Australia Post is on the maintenance of the letter monopoly, and how good it is in the areas where it competes with the private sector.
Commonwealth grant for Carlton Football Club asks what on earth the national government is doing concerning itself with redevelopment of facilities by a private sporting organisation.
Advisory panels or accountability? makes the point that there is an important choice to be made between holding public servants accountable, which governments never tire of telling us that they do, and dotting the landscape with unaccountable amateur advisory bodies.
Further on the subject of accountability, AWB: No criminal charges for Iraq sanctions-bustingnotes that no criminal charges are to be laid against any of the AWB people involved in the kickbacks of $300 million to Saddam Hussein in violation of United Nations sanctions, and offers some views as to why this outcome, though not surprising, is a national disgrace.
Success fees: something doesn’t add up raises a question about how “success fees” for former Ministers and other government insiders, of whatever political stripe, fit with the notion that all government procurement in Australia is conducted on the basis of open competitive tendering.
Iran too is never far from our minds, nor is the question of sanctions.Bani-Sadr on events in Iran points to an important opinion piece in the New York Times by the first President of Iran following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. This article by a highly educated Iranian- and French-trained modernist is well worth reading for anyone who wants to understand what is at stake in Iran.
On the question of the U.S. approach to Iran there is a series of posts on how U.S. policy is being made and the question of enhanced sanctions.Iran: Sanctions are in the air is my first attempt to explain why sanctions against Iran is a seriously bad idea.Making U.S. Iran policy describes some of the machinations going on within the U.S. policy-making machinery to achieve primacy on Iran policy.
Iran: sanctions still on the agenda provides some further reasons for refraining from sanctions against Iran, offered by Hossein Askari, Professor of International Business and International affairs at the George Washington University, and Trita Parsi, President of the National Iranian American Council and author of Treacherous Alliance — The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States.
In Iran: One cheer for Vlad the Lad I expressed relief that Vladimir Putin was not favourably disposed towards sanctions against Iran.
In the world of recorded music there is Narciso Yepes and the Concierto de Aranjuez, introducing both the guitarist and the concerto. The Vivaldi Edition tells of an ambitious project to record all the 450 works of Vivaldi that are preserved in the massive collection of autograph manuscripts held in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Turin.
In the popular music domain, Turkish pop on iTunes gives some background on the wonderful world of modern Turkish popular music, identifies some leading lights, and suggests a couple of downloads to sample.
Persian classical music in Melbourne gives an account of a performance at Melba Hall by the Mehr Ensemble, and also gives some insight into the strength of this ancient tradition in Melbourne.
From the same overseas trip, World Heritage Site: Qal'at al-Bahrain provides some photographs of the old Portuguese fortress on Bahrain, plus some background about it.
A sudden and unusual dump of snow in Paris in early February gave rise to Paris under snow.
And when you have been through all that it must be time to switch on the telly. Try the best crime drama ever put to air: Ørnen (The Eagle): A Crime Odyssey.
