Daily atrocities remembered, Gordon at Khartoum. Gordon; ” Hey effendi, I distinctly said, a butter knife, and YOU a man of EDUCATION!!!! This won’t do’!

Dear reader, as the smoke settles and the blood runs dry, another reflective piece from our nearer North, (‘the Paris End’) correspondent Ira Main.

‘The explosion in Paris is a bomb we have built and detonated ourselves.

When Middle Eastern despots were “our kind of people”. Nice King Farouk of Egypt before he ate his cabinet.

Daily atrocities unnoticed in Palestine.  Driving on the wrong side of the road!

Another ‘nicer kind of despot’ being treated royally. The Shah of Iran and Princess Margaret’s other sister.

We have been supporting dictators, bumping off leaders, stealing oil and murdering people throughout the Middle East for at least a hundred years. We have bombed indiscriminately, butchered innocents wholesale and all in the cause of controlling the oil supply.. These are the bare facts of the case.
To express our horror at the Paris killings is disingenuous. We have watched, every night for years and years as our drones and pinpoint bombing raids massacred people in countries all over the Middle East. Why weren’t we horrified by this and why are we so easily horrified now?
We accused the ordinary German people of turning a blind eye to the Jewish exterminations in WW2. We treated them with a dismissive contempt. We, by our TVs today, watching, aware, and doing nothing are behaving just as contemptibly.
We are all appalled at the Paris killings. That this has at last come to Paris demonstrates to me, not the psychopathic nature of a Middle Eastern people but their extraordinary courage and restraint in the face of a century of oppression and exploitation by the West. I’m amazed it hasn’t happened sooner.

Ira Maine

And this is not the final word, who said, “not the end, but the beginning of the end”, from our mid north correspondent, comes this scintillating reflection on “them and us”.

Ira,
Can you remember the reaction to Anthony Mundine (the Aboriginal boxer) when he said of 911 that they’d brought it on themselves?
And when that SBS journalist who was kidnapped in Baghdad caused apoplexy in our then Foreign Minister when he talked about the thinking of his kidnappers (as if they were human)
Society can be very unforgiving to those that speak uncomfortable truths.

Recorded daily life with ISIS. The banality of Evil.

That recent hi-tech massacre in Gaza is also never much spoken about (lest you’re accused of being pro-holocaust)
The non sequitur reigns supreme…
Goddonya Ira,
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter (Martin Luther King Jr)

Frank

Daily local atrocities recorded posthumously. Lest we Forget.

Good Ol Fashioned wars. Units of the Grande Armee (1809) seeking retribution from Spanish peasants for not wearing cockade and being out of uniform.

Fall of Constantinople 1453. Turks and Christian mercenaries working together to knock off the empire in the east. Much nicer with red and gold rather than black flags, and splendid uniforms.

Dear reader, we’re shocked by the appalling atrocities in Paris.  From the near north, an apt and justifiably emotional response from Sir Atney Emo. Please, burn a croissant in your window, or in a sign of solidarity. Stave off using ‘Defender, Slug-em, or Baysol’ on those garden snails, and put a baguette, (a long french type roll/bread thing, shaped rather like a torpedo) upon your front gate. If you live in a flat, a cockade, or stuffed poodle hung from a balcony will do. It is unspeakable what people do in the name of religion. My thoughts; ‘We were so much happier when we were polytheistic, as in ol Athens’. And not much killing with the indigenous Australians, those past 40,000 years. But these Middle Eastern religions are just “out of hand”. And who would have believed after all the atrocities committed in the twentieth century, we’d be at it again, where we left off in 1189, (Acre),1453, (Constantinople) 1529, (Vienna) or as far ago as 2003. (Iraq).

Paris 1940. ‘Crying to the music of time’. A new tide now sweeps through Europe.

Sir Atney writes:

‘This is a message I sent to my French relatives and friends…
WE STAND WITH YOU!

Everyone in Australia is appalled by the savage murders in Paris. Our sincerest thoughts are with France and demonstrations and vigils are now being held in cities right across this continent.

Tonight a giant flag will be flown from the Sydney Harbour Bridge and at 9pm the Sydney Opera House will be illuminated by the colours of the French Republic to show our strong solidarity with the nation that everyone associates with liberty and civilisation.

Tell everyone in the City of Lights that Australia, like the rest of the civilised world, is with you.

We have suffered from the Jihadist barbarians, too.

Recently in Sydney alone there was a mass shooting of innocent people in a crowded cafe and, just weeks ago, an innocent family man (Chinese background) was randomly assassinated by a 15-year-old armed jihadist.

In 2002, 88 innocent Australians (out of 202 murdered tourists) were killed in the bombing of a bar in Indonesia by Muslim fanatics.

We must stand together to defeat this scourge’!

John Howard being decorated with the order of the Rubic by George W. Tony Blair was unable to attend as he was busy at the time gratifying Rupert Murdoch. (in the intrests of decency the image has been withheld)

Good ol Fashion wars for ‘King and Country’!

Dear reader, in the interests of even-handedness, we’d like also to thank the sterling work undertaken by the three wise men, George, Tony and John, (little Johnnie to his mates) in starting up the good ol war against Islam. It must bring these three men great joy to know that after Aboukir, Kabul, Omdurman, Mesopotamia, (numerous other shitty little wars) the obscenity of Versailles, Suez, and Palestine, we’ve finally got the hundred years war we’ve been looking for. Rather than being sent to prison for the tens of thousands of innocent victims killed by their greed, ignorance and stupidity, we would like to award them the silver, Rubic’s cube medallion, with diamonds, crossed swords, oak leaves and very attractive ribbon. We were considering granting the platinum award, (the highest honour) to Donald Rumsfeld, but he tacitly informed us that; “he already has one and it’s very nice”. In due recognition from the Arms industry, (the Military industrial complex), in keeping demand up since the appalling cessation of hostilities after the end of the cold war. May they stand proud, for preserving once and for all “Civilisation”!

Good ol fashion wars for ‘Real Estate’.

Please observe a minute’s silence. (we suggest as a measure of even-handedness to our readership that facing towards Mecca or Sth Australia, in the direction of Corey Bernardii is optional).

e. e. cummings, 1931

i sing of Olaf glad and big

         XXX

i sing of Olaf glad and big
whose warmest heart recoiled at war:
a conscientious object-or

his wellbelovéd colonel(trig
westpointer most succinctly bred)
took erring Olaf soon in hand; 
but--though an host of overjoyed 
noncoms(first knocking on the head 
him)do through icy waters roll 
that helplessness which others stroke
with brushes recently employed 
anent this muddy toiletbowl, 
while kindred intellects evoke 
allegiance per blunt instruments--
Olaf(being to all intents
a corpse and wanting any rag 
upon what God unto him gave) 
responds,without getting annoyed 
"I will not kiss your fucking flag"

straightway the silver bird looked grave
(departing hurriedly to shave)

but--though all kinds of officers 
(a yearning nation's blueeyed pride) 
their passive prey did kick and curse
until for wear their clarion	 
voices and boots were much the worse, 
and egged the firstclassprivates on
his rectum wickedly to tease 
by means of skilfully applied
bayonets roasted hot with heat--
Olaf(upon what were once knees)
does almost ceaselessly repeat
"there is some shit I will not eat"

our president,being of which
assertions duly notified	 
threw the yellowsonofabitch
into a dungeon,where he died

Christ(of His mercy infinite)
i pray to see;and Olaf,too

preponderatingly because
unless statistics lie he was
more brave than me:more blond than you.

Edward Estlin Cummings is known for his radical experimentation with form, punctuation, spelling, and syntax; he abandoned traditional techniques and structures to create a new, highly idiosyncratic means of poetic expression.

Hi friends,

Often when asked how long I’ve lived in Yuendumu and I answer 43 years, I get a surprised reaction. I detect thought bubbles “he must be fucking mad”, or occasionally “how interesting”.

The fact that all several hundred people over 44 years old that have lived here all their lives can beat that, isn’t part of the thought process. The ‘them and us’ paradigm kicks in and indeed there are no white-fellows (other than Wendy) that have been here that long.

The comment “you must like it here” crops up fairly frequently, to which I invariably answer “Yes I do” and depending on who asks it and how it is asked and what mood I’m in, I may expand on that.

One of Yuendumu’s main attractions to Wendy and I is that you get to meet and interact with many interesting and worthwhile people, not least the Warlpiri locals.

One such interesting and worthwhile person was Japanangka Langdon whose funeral is being held in Yuendumu next Saturday.  Perry died in Darwin hours after being locked up under the NT’s “paperless” arrest laws. In 1975 Japanangka worked at Yuendumu School, in the heady optimistic days when so called ‘bilingual education’ had been first introduced to Yuendumu.  An example of his work :

Ngangkayikirli
Story by Robin Japanangka Granites.
Illustrated by Perry Japanangka Langdon.

On request I’ll send you a copy of the 18 page booklet from CDU’s ‘Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages’ which includes 9 remarkable drawings by the then 18 year old Perry (2MB)

Other such interesting and worthwhile persons were Richard and Carolyn Green. Richard, Carolyn and their filmmaker friend John Davis died in a helicopter crash in the Watagans National Park (NSW) last Saturday.

Richard and Carolyn first refuelled their helicopter in Yuendumu in 2002. There were to be twelve subsequent visits (one by road). On all occasions Richard and Carolyn showed that admirable quality which is expressed in colloquial Australian as “they had no tickets on themselves”. Curious children and others that came to look at their helicopter were greeted with warmth and friendship. Richard and Carolyn were both interesting and interested.

On one occasion Carolyn fell in love with a small dog at Yuendumu airstrip. Subsequently through Warlukurlangu Artists adoption of Millie was arranged.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6AZNywvF-s

Richard and Carolyn were Dispatchees and provided feedback on several occasions. Their commitment to the environment prompted Richard to extract and comment on a paragraph from a Dispatch that he found to his liking:

“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”

Richard and Carolyn never lost the plot.

Richard and Carolyn quickly grasped the extent of the grave injustice that is the forced assimilation and denial of rights affecting Aboriginal Australia.

They were good people, and will be missed by the many people they ‘touched’ on their epic journeys through remote and wild Australia.

Their legacy is an incredibly beautiful collection of photographs. http://www.richardgreen.net.au/pages/text_spread/ and the book “Remote and Wild”

(Below is) an example of his work. A photo taken in the Yarunganyi Hills just out of Yuendumu in 2010.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne!
Chorus.-For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
We twa hae run about the braes,
And pou’d the gowans fine;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit,
Sin’ auld lang syne.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPnhaGWBnys

See ya’s
Frank

Privatisation. profits and profligacy.

Power Couple; Rudd and Rein. Inspecting new unemployed training facility at Fukushima.

Privatisation is still seen as good by government. It’s when a state sells publicly owned assets like electricity, water and transport. It’s a windfall for shareholders, and like electricity the costs just go up and up. Bit like council rates. How else can we pay for that army of highly paid middle managers and senior executives. In the old days it was just a mayor, a town clerk and an engineer. No wonder people were happy then.  But it’s not about happiness. It’s about distribution of wealth. To take a public asset owned by all of us, and give it to a few. And as the experience goes make those few exceedingly wealthy. My favourite example being Mrs Rudd, (Therese Rein) who made a fortune out of turning the dole office into a multi million training scheme to train and train and train for jobs that weren’t there. Both Mr and Mrs Rudd, have made a huge contribution to this country that way. We should thank them for their enterprise.

And the requirement to pay taxes nonexistent!!!

It was announced this week that Chevron’s Australian subsidiary made the handy profit of 1.7 billlion dollars. And paid just $248.00 to the Australian Government. Now that’s just plain silly. Even straight living individuals like our readership would suggest that such action might be considered a little provocative. But provocative or not, Chevron can do it, because they have all sorts of offsets and profit sharing devices that put the money all over the place. Like the increasingly super wealthy, they can really pay whatever tax they like, which is invariably none, and know that on both sides of parliament they will be described not as robbers, cheats usurers or extortionists, but “lifters’ and fine examples of venture, and entrepreneurial wit. We need more like them, because it’s the ‘trickle down effect’ that keeps the rest of us going. It’s a sort of feudalism tempered by greed and a disinterest in what the rest, (the poor) do,  amongst themselves.

Frederico de Montelfeltro. Condottieri (mercenary) Prince. Not the first but one of the more celebrated to convert public assets to private gain. Unofficially known as thug, zealot, and as painting suggests now learned and pious.

The rest are the PAYE workers, those salaried individuals who must survive on what’s left after taxes are removed from their package, They are the people who pay ultimately for the hospitals, infrastructure and education that keeps society functioning. They are the folk who pay Royal Commissioners handsomely to investigate on our behalf, and like the condottieri, ensure that the investigation goes on and on and on. But the simple fact remains, there is an increasing burden falling upon the middle income earners, and the poor. To his credit Malcolm Turnbull is enjoying an “open discussion”. There are two strategies, change the laws that allow kickbacks, sinecures and incentives for the wealthier to pay less tax by socking away their finds into super schemes, wind back the inequities and corruption found in negative gearing, re- calibrate the tax system so the burden is more evenly spread. Or up the GST and ensure that the lowest rung get hung out to dry. My guess is that’s precisely what will happen. We’re a bit like Russia in the 90’s, the “upper echelon” of our society is fast resembling a kleptocracy, and this is early days. Great for fancy car sales, and a boom time for the real drivers of the economy, Real Estate Agents.

Mathew Guy. ‘For the best planning outcomes that BIG money can buy’.

It’s a bit like planning, you now get the planning outcome you can best afford, and with the lowest rungs unable to afford the hefty 1500 dollars a day to defend in VCAT, the big end of town invariably wins. Both sides of politics like this arrangement, because it means they get windfalls from the development industry, and it maintains the status quo. And besides, in case you hadn’t noticed Real Estate is the name of the game in this country. So why worry about stinking profits going offshore, Why worry about the bent money used to fund egregiously ugly and overpriced apartments, and why worry about such preposterous terms as “safety net” and ‘social services’. It’s the flip side of globalism and the lesson should be well learnt by now. It’s the twenty first century mate, and capital has triumphed over labour. And what can you do about it? Go to your local member?. Better still,  talk to your Real Estate Agent, they’re always happy to listen, and at least they don’t pretend to have your interests at heart.

Happy Days in Toytown. Tram conductors unbridled by contemporary public health and safety guidelines demonstrating acceptable forms of ticketing in both winter and summer uniforms.

You see folks the criminalisation of society is like global warming… It’s incipient. You don’t notice much until your feet get wet. The latest modelling indicates that those who live along our expensive shoreline will get quite wet, if they live for another fifty years. The same applies to public transport. The point is, you don’t notice the potential for criminalisation until it’s all over you.

I’ll start at the beginning. B.P (Before privatisation), we had conductors. Excuse me, (for those under forty) a conductor was, (and excuse my bias), a generally cheerful person who would help old ladies get off and on the tram, pull the cord, and possessed a large bag, bit like the ones bookies used to have at picnic races, (another explanation pending) and within the bag they dispensed coins and tickets. The tickets were of paper, and you paid the conductor and when asked, showed him/her the ticket to prove that the transaction had been done. Some conductors were a bit snarly whereas other revelled in the public engagement. Our favourite being ‘’ziggy’, the germanic conductor who would amuse us with tricks, yo yo’s plastic spiders and laughter. He was not a paedophile, and mothers and their children thought it was all good fun.

In the 90’s, the trams and train were privatised. The conductors were killed off. Jeff Kennett, ex premier and until recently chairman of “Beyond Blue” decided that conductors were expensive, and incidentally “unionised”. Unfortunately I cannot talk about the crime of flogging off public assets to corporations, that’ll have to wait till the next instalment. But with the sale, the culture on our public transport system changed. It was no more “Public”, but client placed. And I add, somewhere between serfdom and indentured slave. No more helping the old ladies, no conversation with the conductors on finer points of weather, and footy, and literature. You see some of them were quite well read. But I suppose being, functionaries, and bereft of management qualification they had to go.

Similarly trains had Station Masters. A Station Master was up there in our suburb as a lower caste bank manager. He’d have flags, and toot the whistle, and his office, adjoining the ticket booth always smelt of tobacco, and the form guide. Though you can’t smell the form guide it was pungent, like the front page of the ‘Truth’ in it’s presence of just “being there’. They also, like the conductors wore uniforms, Over-worn uniforms which made me think that perhaps that’s why you didn’t see Station Masters uniforms in the op shop. They just “passed them on” until they were all used up,

The Gestapo, precursor to the PSO. In pursuit of an ‘alleged’ invalid ticket holder. An excellent record on law and order, and public safety.

For a couple of decades we had various forms of ticketing, and the standard was the Metcard, a simple paper ticket that gave you all day or a couple of hours. You could buy one on the tram. Then, came MIKEY. Mikey was our very own system, and it was high tech. So incidentally must have been the salaries of it’s designers. It cost billions, and still aint a patch on the Oyster, But we can proudly claim it as our very own. The trams are now, not so cheerful, Apart from the fact that everyone is looking at their phones, the trams are reminiscent of a forties war movie. The new era “ inspectors”, (that’s ‘Commisar’ in Deutsch) board en masse, and very much in the tradition of the ‘ol Gestapo’, say “ ticket inspection”. Armed with scanners, intercom and very shiny badge, (not quite so nice as the border force, but similar) they scan your ticket. All of this is performed in a uniform of sorts with “authorised officer” emblazoned on the back. It must be boring work, but there are rewards, hence the excitement when they find a ticketless, or expired passenger. Then they are commandeered and led off at the next stop, assumedly for interrogation.

Yuendumu down south. Keeping us all SAFE! Three armed PSO’s interrogating ‘alleged’ passenger for being male and poor.

The much more theatrical officers on the train look just like Gestapo, and walk en masse, like a posse or a gang. They are a bit scarier, but not half as scary as the armed paramilitary PSO’s who man the station at twilight, and look like extras from an Arnold Schwarzenegger film. It’s a happy public transport dystopia. It’s all full of fear, and if you step outta line, rather than being asked to get off the tram, or the next station, it’s punishment, and more hefty fines.

If you are well enough off to have a card – credit or debit – that allows you to pay a fine ‘On the Spot’ you only pay around $70, if you are unable to pay on the spot then the cost goes to around $225. And if you can’t pay that… you’ll end up in Chokey. There’s also an absence of laughter. And many new rules that you get fined for. So watch out. Ticketing enforcement is good for the shareholder, and I’d tell you more, but that’s funny business and we know that’s not allowed. And we also know that it must be employing almost, if not more people that used to be occupied by conductors and their ilk. It’s a union of sorts, but happily, union free. And isn’t that the point of it all.

The old Yuendumu Police Station. Almost quaint in hindsight.

Dear reader , welcome to part two of “Crime”.

Department of Infrastructure heads, (Justice Division) examining a model of the new seven million dollar police facility at Yuendumu.

As you may well know, the catalyst for this blog, was a journey made to Yuendumu way back in 2013. It really was a journey into the heart of darkness. It revealed that being a male aboriginal, post “the intervention” implied frequent, and unremitting bouts of incarceration. Indeed to our thinking, (and our northern correspondent will corroborate) with the new seven million dollar police facility at Yuendumu, we now have a bold and brave new stronger future, in which the entire male population can rest assured with some certainty that at some stage in their brief lives they will be incarcerated, once, twice, or as many times as you like. And the process is breathtakingly efficient. It’s just an index of how efficient things get when you’ve got a wonderful merger between the public institutions of justice, and investment in private prisons. It’s a growth industry that’s unstoppable, and the reason why? The general (crime-fearing) public seem to like it, and It’s good for business.

Artists impression of the new Police and Community Justice law Enforcement Facility almost completed at Yuendumu. Apparently, (Architects design response) this structure is also ‘visible from the moon’. And features unique, ” Australia is open for business” rooftop signage.

And that’s why you can be criminalised nowadays, quite readily for all sorts of things that legislators never thought about only a few decades ago. There are so many new ways to end up in chokey. You can do it generally speaking for non payment of fines. There are so many new categories for fining the citizenry. Up north it’s just banal. Parking, unroadwothy, passenger behaviour, dirty windscreen, etc, etc.. indeed all the things that the white folks, “on the other side of the fence” (pastoralists) wont get pinged for, because their unroadworthy vehicles are legitimately assisting in ‘opening up the north’ to agriculture. The favourite being DWB, “Driving whilst Black”. It’s a banality of non-evil. Almost a banality of banality itself.

Governments like being tough on crime. I wont bore you with the offences that’ll end you up in chokey, but like our North American allies, we seem to be catching up and surpassing them in our criminalisation of “natives”. And who said justice was “colour-blind’?

Troublemakers and malcontents who don’t want to make Australia ‘SAFE’!!

So flummoxed, gob-smacked, and incredulous at the stupidity of using such a blunt instrument of “control” we felt that if we didn’t do something about this proliferation of the criminalisation of society, these measures unchecked, (because they’re great for business) would be meted out to us folks down south. Indeed, they, (the police) are fining people for the heinous crime of “jaywalking” in Melbourne right now. That is already happening, and it was with some chagrin that we missed the random “herding”, and incarceration of “offenders” during the much anticipated and cancelled attempt by “Border Force” to make us ‘SAFE’.

Though we missed “the great roundup” in Melbourne, we can thankfully say that no such hindrance is encountered in our northern outpost, (not Darwin silly) Nauru. There we have a braver new world. We have all these “illegals”, branded such by the fact that there’s quite a few people (we’re not keen on) with no MONEY who would like to come here. No such restrictions apply if you’ve got tons of the stuff. Crime and poverty are axiomatic.   And the government, (of both persuasions) would like to demonstrate that our policy of meting out punishment to those whose crime is poverty and hope is a message that rings loud and clear. Australia is incidentally “OPEN FOR BUSINESS”!!

Impecunious ‘Illegals’ who just don’t understand the “Open for Business” model. And incidentally should be punished for poor grammar. (Ed.)

Coupled with this is the recent decision to incarcerate these “illegals” with real criminals. Now this is a new highpoint for efficiencies. We, (the ordinary citizenry) have been hearing about the consequences of “hardened criminals” going on the rampage. We are not told about what is going on, because the government and the private operators, remind us that it’s not really in our interests to know what is happening on “Devils Island” because they’re all “illegals”, and ‘non-citizens’. That’s code for ‘non-people’.

Apparently this may damage our prospects in gaining a foothold with the U.N on a nebulous committee of some sort. It’s very confusing. Because we’re keen to let the world know that we hold a strong position on “Human Rights”. And that’s the problem with the rest of the world. They just don’t understand “crime” in Australia. And quite frankly it’s none of their BUSINESS!!

My friend tells me that good art explores ambiguity.

Twenty-seven

A good walker leaves no tracks;
A good speaker makes no sips;
A good reckoner needs no tally.
A good door needs no lock,
Yet no one can open it.
Good binding requires no knots,
Yet no one can loosen it.

Therefor the sage takes care of all men
And abandons no one.
He takes care of all things
And abandons nothing.

This is called “following the light”

What is a good man?
A teacher of a bad man.
What is a bad man?
A good man’s charge.
If the teacher is not respected,
And the student not cared for,
Confusion will arise, however clever one is.
This is the crux of mystery.

From Lao Tsu “Tao Te Ching” translated by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English.  Vintage books 1972

This Dispatch was originally distributed 25 January 2013.  The post has been edited.

In David Hill’s book ‘The Great Race’ (The Race Between the English and the French to Complete the Map of Australia), the French explorer Baudin is quoted in a letter to his friend Governor Phillip (who apparently was fluent in French) as follows:

“…I have never been able to conceive that there was justice or even fairness on the part of Europeans in seizing, in the name of their governments, a land seen for the first time, when it is inhabited by men who have not always deserved the title of savages or cannibals that has freely been given them; whereas they were still only children of nature and just as your Scotch Highlanders or our Breton peasants, etc. who, if they do not eat their fellow men, are just as objectionable.

From this it appears to me that it would be infinitely more glorious for your nation, as for mine, to mould for society the inhabitants of its own country over whom it has rights, rather than wishing to occupy itself with the improvement of those who are far removed from it (my emphasis) by beginning with seizing the soil which belongs to them and which saw their birth…” (Nov. 1802)

Two hundred and ten years later Dr. Gary Johns, former president of the now defunct Bennelong Society (a right wing assimilationist think tank) wrote an article in which he seeks to occupy himself with the improvement of those who are far removed from him.

Things can only get better….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIj-6fr2SlI

Dr. Johns’ article reviews Stephanie Jarrett’s soon to be released book ‘Liberating Aboriginal People from Violence’. Some shocking statistics are presented which lead Ms. Jarrett to the conclusion that the best option for Australian Aborigines to avoid or reduce violence is to move to the metropolitan areas and join the mainstream.

Living in the mainstream…..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Jwxy4Z27-U

Using the same logic … non sequitur cause and effect… I conclude from the statistics presented in the article that non Indigenous Australians would also improve their safety by returning to the cities. Remote Australia would once again become ‘Terra Nullius’.

I furthermore conclude that an even better option for Indigenous Australians is to all move to Afghanistan where to the best of my knowledge not a single Australian Aborigine has been hospitalised as a result of violence.

All of this of course is nonsense. I don’t know what Gary Johns’ doctorate is in (basket weaving?) but statistics and logic certainly seem to have been lacking in his education. Both Gary & Stephanie appear to have a poor grasp of the principles of… cause and effect… and of justice and fairness.

Blind eyes of justice,
Deaf ears of power
Dumb moves of money
Left us in a desperate hour
Is this the final solution?

Revolution by Dr. John….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TW-nECJYqQ

Oops wrong Doctor!

European ‘culture’ in fairly recent times gave us the Holocaust, two world wars and many other calamities. It will be a sad day when the multi-faceted European Culture that gave us so many wonders, is judged solely by its abominations.

Equally sad is the day when remote Aboriginal Australia is judged solely on stereotypes and stigmatisation derived from politically opportunistic spin and the dishonest or incompetent use of statistics and from general ignorance.

That day is already here.

As observed by us in Yuendumu, most of the lateral violence, hospitalisations, homicides etc. occur in places like Alice Springs. Attention is focused on the violence per se; not enough serious effort goes into researching the causes of violence. I suspect that disempowerment and dispossession has a fair bit to do with it. Pushing people away from the bush is definitely not the answer, the reverse is probably true. Blaming all anti-social behaviour to alleged inherent violence in an unchanging 40,000 year old culture is simplistic and false. As  Baudin said all that time ago  “…I have never been able to conceive that there was justice or even fairness on the part Europeans…” about the then land grab. His words are applicable to the treatment of Aborigines today. We are seeing the final stages of the land grab.

As Rosalie Kunoth-Monks said: “There is no Aboriginal Problem in Australia, only a ‘white-fellow’ problem”

A good friend of mine sends me books by Eduardo Galeano, who has become my favourite Latin-American writer. He specializes in vignettes.

One such has a small list of graffiti:

The words of the prophets are written on the subway wall…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VflKiZzb4h4 

“ ¡ Basta de hechos! … ¡ Queremos promesas ! “
(No more deeds!, we want promises!)

A bientot!

François