Today’s dispatch is Overshadowed. Originally dispatched on 18 October 2015
bom Dia meus amigos
I’ve just spent a fortnight in Alice Springs Hospital, and I’m fine.
It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good.
I took the opportunity to finish reading a fascinating book by Eduardo Galeano- ‘Las Venas Abiertas de America Latina’ (The open veins of Latin America)
…let it bleed…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xoCaVKfRPw
The book tells the history of how it came to pass that half a continent endowed with fabulous riches was exploited and was to remain poor and underdeveloped to this day.
Any inkling I may have had that I may have been wrong when ages ago I jumped to the conclusion that such economic myths as ‘the trickle-down effect’ and ‘the level playing field’ were nothing but the Global Economy’s beads and mirrors, were soon dispelled as I read further.
The Methuen Treaty of 1703, was a military and commercial partnership agreement between England and Portugal. A so called free trade agreement. Duties on Portuguese wine exported to England were to be one third less than those applied to French wine, textiles from England were to enter Portugal duty free. Portuguese Port wine thrived. England’s industrial development was way ahead of Portugal’s. Portuguese industry could not compete. The Portuguese textile mills were silenced, and three centuries later, remain silent.
…The sound of silence… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zLfCnGVeL4
The resulting trade deficit was paid for by gold exploited from Portugal’s colony Brazil using slave labour.
In the second half of the book, Galeano refers to “Industrial Infanticide”.
Successive Australian Governments have committed industrial infanticide on Aboriginal owned enterprises born during the brief enlightenment that was the policy of Self Determination.
In 1947 oil in Devonian reefs was discovered near Edmonton. After a few false starts the Alberta Basin oil exploration boom was well and truly on its way following the drilling of Imperial Oil’s ‘Wildcat #134’ subsequently renamed Leduc #1. This oil boom attracted Jim Cundill, who had studied geology in Western Australia on his return from a stint as an interpreter in post-war occupied Japan. When Jim returned to Australia from Canada, he was joined by his Canadian friend, Nelson Meyers, and they formed a firm of geological consultants. They were amongst the very few geologists in Australia who at the time had oil exploration well-site experience. Well-site geologists “sit” wells and in the ‘oil-patch’ are known as “gravel pickers” or “rock doctors” (pronounced in a pronounced North-American accent: “ rhaaak daaahckters “). On completion of my studies I joined the thriving firm of Cundill Meyers and Associates.
Jim and Nels quickly trained an Australian team of gravel pickers, and the rest as they say is history.
….oil to the world https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgzMZSmCDfs
On a well-site in Queensland Nels was approached by a character bearing a black box with dials. The fellow claimed the black box to be an oil detecting device that he’d invented. The fellow was waxing lyrical about the virtues of the black box that he intended to sell, and Nels expressed an interest in buying it. Could he look inside the box and have it explained to him how it worked, was Nelson’s modest request. “Absolutely not!” was the character’s response. Nels didn’t buy the black box, and never found out if he’d missed out on a once in a century opportunity.
The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) has been touted as a once in a century opportunity. If ratified it will be the largest free trade agreement in human history. Recently Australia signed up to the TPP. New Australian Greens leader Senator Richard Di Natale was asked for his opinion on the TPP. “It has been negotiated in secret, and we have very little information on it, how could I possibly have an opinion on it?” Richard hasn’t been allowed to look inside the black box.
Many black boxes have and continue to be sold to or be imposed on Aboriginal Australia.
The Food Security black box results in an ever tightening grip on income and expenditure and external control of the local economies in remote Aboriginal communities by a Government owned monopoly. Under the guise of “food security” Outback Stores is taking over and/or putting locally owned businesses out of business by selling unhealthy take away foods, fuel, videos, mobile phones, toys, trinkets, beads and mirrors. Anything that makes money.
The Indigenous Protection Areas black box yields an ever tightening grip on management of huge tracts of Aboriginal land by Government funded and controlled external hierarchical bureaucracies.
The Housing black box was sold with a promise of “cultural sensitivity”. A non-core promise since replaced by an autocratic ‘three strikes and you’re out’ policy. Homes have been converted to ‘housing stock’. Management (tenancy, repairs and maintenance) of housing is subjected to an ever tightening grip by imposed external hierarchical Government funded and controlled bureaucracies and external contractors.
What is inside these black boxes? The colonial assimilationist imperative.
In the Hospital, on one occasion when the doctors did their round, a doctor peeled down the pressure sock on my leg and remarked “your leg is looking much better!”
A Hansel and Gretel moment…. It was the wrong leg!
…you put your right foot in ….. you put your left foot out…. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_P9PU5FcMQ
obrigado
até a próxima vez
FDB