This dispatch is from 26 April 2014.
Saudações novamente meus amigos,
Things continue to get curiouser and curiouser. If only they were getting better….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqIrsIAecZg
When those in authority can convincingly assert that we definitely should do nothing to try and save the planet lest it “hurt the economy”, and large section of the public fail to see that the Emperor has no clothes and lives in a house of cards, the inmates are in charge of the asylum. Like MH370, the plot is lost, but unlike MH370 there is no serious effort to find it.
The cart is firmly placed in front of the horse, and the road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l482T0yNkeo
Eduardo Galeano in “El Fútbol (A Sol y Sombra)” quotes historian Arnold Toynbee: “La más consistente característica de las civilizaciones en decadencia es la tendencia a la estandarización y la uniformidad”. (“The most consistent characteristic of civilizations in decay, is a tendency towards standardization and uniformity”). Galeano was writing about football (or as it is known in Australia: soccer), as metaphor.
Australian Governments are intent on ‘Closing the Gap’, a massive failing effort at uniformity. Making ‘them’ more like ‘us’. Little consideration is given to Bridging the Gap, appreciating and celebrating and encouraging cultural and linguistic diversity. In Yuendumu, Alice Springs contractors are erecting a $4M ‘Family Centre’ which will compliment the already existing $2M Centrelink building that arrived a few years ago on the back of semi-trailers hailing from Bendigo in Victoria. All of this for a population of less than 1,000 Warlpiri, who have virtually no say in all of this.
In Australia, the right to be a bigot (in the name of Free Speech) eclipses the right of children to be taught to read and write in a language they understand. Yet another example of the plot having been lost.
Japaljarri sent me a book “Debt- The first 5,000 years”. It is written by an anthropologist, not by one of those crew-cutted, pencil tied sages one sees at the end of TV news bulletins sprouting such nonsense as “Stocks were jittery today” or “commodities were bullish” or “oil took a dive” or “The Aussie Dollar is firm” (like a tomato) and “the markets were flat” (as once was the earth).
At the beginning of Chapter Two, David Graeber quotes H.L.Mencken*: “For every subtle and complicated question, there is a perfectly simple and straightforward answer, which is wrong”
I don’t know the context in which H.L.Mencken uttered those words, but they describe in a nutshell what remote Aboriginal society has been and continues to be subjected to.
The Northern Territory Emergency Response (the Intervention)’s Government Business Managers (GBMs or Ginger Bread Men) have been rebadged GECs (Government Engagement Co-ordinators) under the Stronger Futures (Intervention Mark II) legislation. Engagement has replaced Consultation. When you Consult you ask Subtle and Complicated questions, when you Engage you provide perfectly Simple and Straightforward answers…… which are wrong.
When I read these words out to Nangala, without hesitation she came up with the same example I first thought of: School Attendance.
Not long ago the current Minister for Indigenous Affairs did a “whistle-stop” tour of remote communities to cajole Aboriginal Australia into sending their children to school.
He saw the question as to why Aboriginal children were “performing below the standards” as having a Simple and Straightforward answer: “Send them to School”
One of the Northern Territory’s claims to fame is that the rate of incarceration of black people exceeds the rate of incarceration of black people in South Africa during the Apartheid era. The two prisons in the NT are filled to capacity. To the question of what should be done about it the NT Governments had and have a Simple and Straightforward answer: “Build another gaol”
During the Whitlam/Fraser era (1970’s early 80’s) a baby was born. They named it Self Determination. The baby ‘failed to thrive’, it was given few opportunities to do so.
When the question as to what should be done about this situation was posed a Simple and Straightforward answer emerged: “Throw the baby out with the bath water”
Stolen Futures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyMeA8CfnGo
Não se desespere, apreciar a música!
Franklin.
A change is gonna come…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6YCxXQ6Scw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwS8H-ZjlB4
Type text or a website address or translate a document.
* Mecken is also credited with this quote: “We must respect the other fellows religion, but only in the sense, and to the extent (that) we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children (are) smart”