Another great week for Passive and not so passive Complicity. Lets start, as always with a quote, this time from our new Australian of the Year.
“Australia Day to me – it’s not a great day for me, to be honest. It’s a day that I have turned into a bit of a celebration – Aboriginal people are still here, we’ve adapted, we’ve moved on, we’re not focused on all of the bad things that have happened to our people but we’re celebrating our culture … and, you know, we are not going anywhere. That, to me, is what Australia Day means – it’s a celebration that us as Indigenous people are still here, the longest surviving culture in the world, and that should be celebrated.”
Australian of the Year, Adam Goodes, Indigenous Sportsman.
Read more about what Australia Day really means here
In our first post for the week Ken Boston argued that that the Australian Education Minister’s Curriculum Review is really an attempt to shore-up an education system that entrenches inequality. Read even more on the dangers posed by this growing inequality here
We followed this with two consecutive episodes of our drama “Endette Hall” by Ira Maine. Ira, himself, appears to be suffering a drug induced psychosis, yet overcomes this in his autobiographical writings. It is not only Nurse Birch, nor the Window Man (Sash and Casements to the Gentry) Bodium Flint who are left hanging. We, as readers, feel suspended too. See if you can make head or tail of things here and here. (No Refunds)
There followed Tarquin O’Flaherty, our resident Economic and Social Historian (and PC values our historians) used his vehicle “Man as Machine” to explain in one thousand words or less how Unions arose. Educate yourself here
Friday brought us our first post of American Author Joe Bageant, the author of “Deer Hunting with Jesus” and “Rainbow Pie”, works that do much to explain the current polity of America. The piece posted is title Whiskey, Snakes and Voltaire and starts: “I called the old man Grandpap. But most of my mother’s family called him a son of a bitch.”
Our dispatchee, with 40 years experience living within an Indigenous Community, again illustrates the paucity of our Governments Assimilationist, disrespectful and in many cases idiotic policies. He quotes late politician Kim Beazely Senior who said “In Australia, our ways have mostly produced disaster for the Aboriginal people. I suspect that only when their right to be distinctive is accepted, will policy become creative” Read the full dispatch here
For Poetry Sunday Ira Maine brought us Robert Herricks “Delight in Disorder”, with wonderful commentary. Read this post to lift you spirits
Good reading, join the conversation.
Cheers
Cecil Poole