*** A Post-Script Preface Apology:...(nah nah, let me guess, we ain't gunna' get anywhere near the St Martins Cover-up stuff?-Ed)...yeah, sorry, and also it's been 8-9 days since the last post, again...it took me 3-4 days to put this together and was proof-reading last evening and just hit the metaphoric literal wall and had to come back to it today, and I still ain't necessarily that happy with it...(sure, it's not ya' greatest work, but it's ok, and there's much to be said for the fact that you've kept on keeping on and have produced something at all-Ed)...cheers, and that's how I choose to look at it...anyhoos, here's what I've managed to come up with, albeit not exactly what I'd set-out to cover...***
Howdy y'all dear availees in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Italy, and Ireland, and welcome to a rather disjointed post...still staggering forward in that teeth-gritted, head-down, leanin' into the perpetual gale sortta' way, know what I mean?...just last week I wrote about how counselling and/or medication can cause as many problems as they can address, and so it was that I had that exact conversation with someone who is formally medicating for issues of Depression and Anxiety, etc, and they openly stated that they'd rather not be doin' that, but that it was better than not being medicated...(three steps forward and two back?-Ed)...yeah, sortta', and we discussed how we both found Cognitive Behaviour Therapy to be fundamentally flawed and deeply problematic...(because of the inherent inference that if it doesn't work for you, then you're the problem?-Ed)...precisely, I for one completely reject the premise that if you think good thoughts everything is gunna' be peachy...(yeah, I reckon CBT's a little more complicated than that-Ed)...is it though? is is really?...(but I take your point that it's simply not gunna' help with people who either have a genuine 'chemical imbalance', or as you do, multiple genuine issues of a massively traumatic and wholly unresolved nature-Ed)...mmm, fair enough, but I also had that conversation with someone else about how counselling can drag you back into traumatic memories and how just thinkin' positive thoughts, etc, ain't never gunna' cut it...(all reasonable points, in context-Ed)...well, as we like to say here at TMGI, it's all about the context...
And today I was gunna' plow head-down into another deeply depressing dissection of the deliberate disaster that is the St Martins Lutheran School Child Abuse Cover-up, and we're sure-as-shreck goin' there, but I have noticed that there's been a recent surge in View Numbers on that exact topic on this 'ere blog...(do tell-Ed)...well I just did, seems I ain't the only one for whom the St Martins Cover-up looms large in wake of the current media shizzle-storm about the Conviction/Appeal of that charming chunck-a-humanity George Pell...I've also had feedback about certain conversations and/or incidents where the St Martins Cover-up has been front and centre...(say what?! I thought this was supposed to be all about us!-Ed)...well yes, conversations that included discourse about this 'ere blog and it's contents on the subject...(I should jolly well think so!-Ed)...and also had some feedback about how I'm a drug-f***ed self-obsessed/selfish person...(there's no pleasing some people-Ed)...whatevs, my conscience is clear, and anybody who thinks that what I do here is about big-noting myself, about self-aggrandisement, etc, then they're gettin' the cart to shove the horse just one more time...(whaaa?-Ed)...in that I take enormous pride in what I have achieved via this 'ere blog and how I've stood my ground against that aforementioned howling gale of Institutionalised Pro-Paedophile Corruption...(despite being a drug-f***ed self-absorbed person-Ed)...exactly, one doesn't exclude the other, and in that context, my faults and failings as a person only further highlight the extraordinary strength and commitment I have demonstrated time-and-again...(albeit at a massive personal cost, mentally, physically, financially, and all the other 'allys'-Ed)...absolutely, that's a defining part of it...
That Fine Line Between Committed And Should Be:...and yes, I know I've used that line before, but if the cap fits, well...(and well you're quite correct, it's sometimes a staggeringly fine line between showing commitment to an issue and being obsessed to the point that one oughtta' be committed to an institution-Ed)...and so I choose to take all that trauma and the personal baggage and pile it all into that cart and suddenly it ain't such a burden...(whaaa?-Ed)...well, as confronting and traumatising, etc, as all this has been and still is and looks set to remain, despite all that, for all the times I've stumbled and/or staggered and/or tripped and/or fallen, each-and-every time I've managed to gather myself back-up and go again...(and so here we are after 6 1/2 years of TMGI, some 17 years into the St Martins Cover-up-Ed)...indeed, and that right there is badge of honour that I've earned and proudly wear in clear view on my sleeve...(right there next to your heart-Ed)...sure...but we digress dear friend and dear availees, so here's some quick observations before we hoe into the St Martins quagmire yet again...
It's All About Context:...when our illustrious Prime Minister Scott 'Scummo' Morrison holds-forth about how he's showing strength and protecting the children of Australia from a paedophile predator by having that criminal deported back to wherevs...(and the hypocritical context please-Ed)...that the self-same Scummo will happily stand next to his Pentacostal Pray-Pal Brian Houston as they praisingly wave their hands at the ceiling...(given that Brian has been exposed for covering-up the paedophile abuses of his father, the founder of said Riversong Church?-Ed)...exactly, when it suits Scummo and his agenda of demonising predominantly non-White immigrants, he's all piss-and-vinegar about protecting the kiddies, but when it's his preachy mate in the frame, all is forgiven and/or forgotten...(or at the very least very conveniently ignored-Ed)...such a convenient context...and the same for Home Affairs Minister Peter 'Spud' Dutton...when he's raging against 'illegal immigrants' like he is with the Sri Lankan family from Biloela, Queensland, currently residing in lock-up on Christmas Island, etc, he's all about Border Security and Appropriate Process, etc, etc, but if you're one of his mate's 'au-pairs' then you're in like Flynn, coupla' quick phone calls between mates, sorted...(maaate-Ed)...and most contextually for me, that family has done everything Spuddo and his mates bleat about being important...(when it suits them-Ed)...exactly, that family has integrated into the community and both the kids are Australian-born, etc, etc, but all that's conveniently ignored by Spuddo &Co...
Thar He Blows:...and whilst Spuddo and Scummo et al Co, whilst they're all screeching about 'Border Security' and 'Illegal Boat Arrivals', etc, they very conveniently ignore the many thousands of 'illegal' people arriving via plane...(I saw a report quoting 80,000-Ed)...indeed, I saw the same report, and as I understand it, the Liberal/National Party aren't refuting that claim, but whatevs, it's the broader context I'm referring to about the obsession with demonising 'Boat People', but where 'Flying People' are all okeydokes...and it's been a regular statement from Spuddo and his mates that 'We Don't Discuss On Water Matters', but then, in the middle of the furore about this Sri Lankan (Biloela) family, suddenly Spuddo's front-and-centre in the media bangin'-on about how a boat full of Sri Lankans has just been intercepted and turned back...(gee, it's almost like he was trying to distract away from the Biloela family fiasco, whilst simultaneously reinforcing the idea of what a champ he is when it comes to all things Border Security-Ed)...your biting sarcasm is duly noted, because no-one trusts him except the willingly ignorant...(and there's plenty of those-Ed)...unfortunately true, but there's many more who see this for the blatantly political opportunistic stunt that it clearly is...this is purely about demonising the vulnerable for political advantage, offering the ignorant and selfish a suitable, supposedly justifiable focus for their anger and greed...
And it's the exact same LNP Agenda of Demonisation that's evident with the current 'debate' about allegedly helping the unemployed and/or drug addicts with the Debit Card and Mandatory Drug Testing and associated Forced Rehabilitation...(this whole thing is an absolute crock of crocodile tears from Scummo and the LNP, they don't give a rat's fat clacker about these people, this is purely about identifying convenient targets and demonising and dividing, etc-Ed)...that's exactly what I'm saying...(the Debit Card is solely about targetting the unemployed and stigmatising them for political advantage, whilst simultaneously pouring money into the pockets of the 'providers', it's the same strategy evident in the Tertiary Education fiasco of recent years-Ed)...absolutely it is, exactly that and so very much more to boot, issues like piss-poor Health Provision in Rural/Regional Oz, particularly Aboriginal communities, so much more in fact that we'll have to re-visit this issue in the next post or two...but here's something that's really been grindin' my gears and is directly related to the Debit Card issue, failures of Service Provision, etc, and the abject refusal to appropriately recognise and empower Aboriginal peoples in the Australian political structure...
A Hall Of Mirrors:...if we're gunna' spend a ludicrous $50million on celebrating Captain Cook, etc, and an obscene $500million on expanding the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, largely in political glorification of the wars that Australians have served in as minions to the British and/or American Empires...(you mean like at Gallipoli in 1915 when Australians and New Zealanders and various other nationalities were sent in to distract the Turkish army so that British troops could be landed elsewhere without opposition, all as part of British Empirical aspirations in the Middle East?-Ed)...indeed, and that truth don't sound quite so grand when you put it like that...(what, you mean when it's put truthfully?-Ed)...indeed, and I say that because I had a great-grandpa who landed with the New Zealanders at Gallipoli in April 2015 and was wounded there, and both my grandfathers served in WWII, one a New Zealander who served as a pilot in the RAF during the Battle of France/Britain and then in the Pacific with the USofA, etc, and was awarded the DSO and a Military OBE, etc, and the other, a teenage Scottish immigrant who was in Australia only a few short years before he was back across the globe in the trenches of Tobruk with the AIF, and then Malta/Crete, then in New Guinea, etc, a classic larrikin-type who was frequently promoted but as often busted and demoted, etc, etc...my ancestors have given me the right nay obligation to continue their oft-stated position that war was nothing but good men lost for no good reason...so, if we're gunna' build commemorative monuments to those who fought in wars for Australia, then best we include those who have been killed in the wars fought on this ground after Europeans officially invaded this country in the late 1700s...
Graphic Content Warning:...every person has every right to celebrate and commemorate their family and friends or their comrades-at-arms, and to acknowledge their service and their sacrifice and everything else that is a part of this experience...I have discussed this before, but if I may, my AIF grandpa, at Tobruk, his best mate was killed on their first night when they got lost and strayed right into German lines...the rest of his unit managed to scrap their way back to the Aussie positions, then spent 3 days fighting their way back again to their fallen comrade to retrieve his body...Pops grabbed the body by the feet to drag back into the ditch where his mates were providing covering fire, but the decaying feet came away in his hands, and they were forced to gather his remains in a blanket, etc, all while under fire...the man's body was repatriated to Australia and that man's family wrote to my grandpa after the war and thanked him for returning their son to them...just stop and think about that for a moment, the man's family wrote to say thank you...I've lived with that story all my life and it still floors me just to think about it...my father was named after that man, and my father and I share the same middle name of another of Pop's fallen comrades...that sort of extraordinary courage should be commemorated and never forgotten, and in that context, we as British and Europeans and Chinese and Whoevs else, we came to this land and attacked and killed those peoples living here, we waged war against those peoples in their lands, those peoples we call Aboriginal...
And so it is absolutely appropriate that any monument to acknowledge and commemorate War should have an entrance area that literally forces people to enter the building through a chamber dedicated to the unpleasant realities of what has happened right here in Australia...when it suits them, our politicians cynically manipulate the service of Australian men and women, upto and including the Darwin bombings of WWII...(and the attack on Sydney-Ed)...yeah, that too, but especially Gallipoli Kokoda, etc, etc, etc...we've all heard it, we've all seen it...and they'll even go as far as to praise the service of Aboriginal people, even identifying that up until the mid-1960s Aboriginal people were serving a country that didn't legally recognise them as humans, all this when it's politically expedient, but when it comes to empowering and respecting Aboriginal people in a genuine political and/or Constitutional manner, not a bloody chance...(and we do a lovely thing where we trot-out Aboriginal heritage when it suits us at sporting finals, etc, but again, no genuine acknowledgement of Aboriginal peoples' situation in communities, etc, or action to politically empower them, etc, etc-Ed)...indeed, and regular availees will be well aware of my personal position on all of this stuff, namely, I acknowledge the life of relative privilege and luxury that I live simply for being born White and a Man in this Stolen Land...(hear hear!-Ed)...
And so I genuinely believe that, given we're spending that $500m, that we should incorporate an entrance that clearly and effectively educates people as to the realities of the occupation of Australia, then covers the role of Aboriginal peoples in the Armed Services, etc, and then moves onto other issues of service and sacrifice, etc...(would you include education of the many massacres of Aboriginal peoples?-Ed)...absolutely, war is war and any loss of life in that context is worthy of acknowledgement, eg, would you not consider the multiple organised massacres in Tasmania to be acts of war?...(mmm, fair enough-Ed)...and any similar deaths of settlers, etc, identify it all and educate our kids, and quite a few adults I'm sure, educate everyone as to these realities of our very recent 'White' history in Australia, an Aboriginal history that dates back thousands of generations...as confronting and unpleasant as some of those realities surely are, owning this part of our collective history can only benefit everyone involved...
DILLIGAF:...in most cultures this is an amusing anagram based on a premise of selfishness and disinterest, namely, Do I Look Like I Give A F***...(nice one man-Ed)...well it ain't actually mine...(it's right up there with FIG JAM, F*** I'm Good, Just Ask Me-Ed)...well quite, but here in good ol' Oz we've completely re-defined DILLIGAF to mean how we have completely screwed-up our own highly illegal efforts to use our 'Security Services', at the behest of our Foreign Minister, misused those Services to spy on the Parliament of a supposed close ally, so that the aforementioned Minister could get commercially advantageous information on behalf of a global corporation he was basically working for, and indeed did work for immediately post-politics...(well I know exactly what you're talking about, and actually that's quite clever, but you may have to explain it a bit for the dear availees playing along at home-Ed)...absolutely, and the game we're playing? it's called The Fascism Of the Corrupt LNP Government...(oh I love this game-Ed)...well you oughta' 'cos you're standing in it mate...confused dear availees? please bear with me...this of course refers to our recent discussion about that Prize Piece of Political Pomposity, former Liberal Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and how he used Australian security personnel to bug the East Timorese Parliament in the capital Dili during deliberations about mining rights in the Timor Sea, etc, etc, and did so basically on behalf of Woodside Petroleum, the company that Downsie mate went to work for when he hissy-fitted his way out of Federal politics...(what a guy-Ed)...indeed...
And that absolute and illegal bastardry was of course exposed by Witness K, a former security official/agent, and duly denounced in the Hague, etc, etc...(and then Witness K and his lawyer were raided and charged by the AFP, etc, etc, the LNP's rankly Fascist retaliation for having their corruption publicly exposed-Ed)...indeed, all the whilst doubling-down on that initial bastardry by trying to justify that persecution with empty and definably false claims of 'breaching national security', etc, etc, and, dare I say it, etcetera...it's an unmitigated screw-up of global proportions, a multi-levelled internationally embarrassing indictment of the insular, institutionalised corruption and increasing Fascism of the LNP, and that's why this incident/situation is exactly our very own version of, wait for it, the Dili Gaffe...(phew, that was hard work, but we got there eventually, the Dili Gaffe, nice one man-Ed)...yes, as embarrassed as I am as an Australian that we, or rather Downsie mate, did that to Timor, and that we then persecute those who exposed that rank corruption, despite all of that, I'm quite proud of that appalling pun...
Tomorrow: The St Martins Cover-up Review
Apologies, I had genuinely intended to get to this St Martins stuff today, but I've had a lotta' stuff on my chest and once I got to venting, well, you've just read the result...(nah, it's all good mate, you make some really valid points that, quite frankly, unfortunately need to be made-Ed)...cheers, but I got just one more thing to address...(go for it mate-Ed)...well, Mt Gambier City Councillor Ben Hood was recently appointed to a very senior and influential position with the South Australian Liberal Party...(Vice-President I believe-Ed)...indeed, responsible for things like candidate selection, etc...this puts paid to any notion that Local Government, and particularly MCGG, is a non-partisan environment acting in the best interests of local Ratepayers...(well MGCC has always been a corruption-riddled, Liberal-controlled cluster-f*** of Nepotistic self-interest, we all know that-Ed)...well sure, even when there were card-carrying Labor members like Jim Maher and Penny Richardson, it's always been about the Liberals and their mates and agendas, etc...(yeah, it's one thing to be a member, but surely as a paid employee of the Liberal Party, and I'm assuming there's a degree of remuneration for that position, surely that requires Ben Hood to remove himself from a paid position with MGCC-Ed)...fair point but never gunna' happen...
And no-one's surprised about Ben's promotion to a senior Liberal position, after all, he's been flagrantly flogging his indisputable credentials all over social media...(oh you mean where he was openly defending the Liberal agenda playing-out in MGCC by bullying, abusing, and denigrating an elected female Councillor on his Facebook page-Ed)...ahahahaaaahaha haaaaaa, nice one man, commenting on the LNPs relentless conduct of bullying and harassing and intimidating female colleagues and members of the Party, and relating that to Benno mates' actual deplorable conduct...this was of course part of that recent blizzard of official MGCC Councillor complaints to the Ombudsman/Office of Public Integrity, complaints that were bounced back to MGCC...(what a pathetic joke-Ed)...indeed...anyhoos, what's abundantly clear, defined by his own words, actions, and associations, is that Councillor Hood, mate, is just another nasty li'l Right Wing bully who's a big man when it comes to harassing and abusing women...(future candidate material for sure-Ed)...seems almost inevitable really...
Ahhhh, that feels better...(ya' know, if I didn't know you better, I'd reckon it's almost like you're trying to get Benno, mate, to come after you, like former Councillor Josh Lynagh used to do, so that you can then fundamentally literally eviscerate him blog-style the way you did li'l Joshy-Ed)...I can see how you might think that mate, and I'm not saying that it won't happen or that I wouldn't warmly welcome that discourse, etc, but this is purely about holding him to account for what he's actually done...(and fair enough-Ed)...
I am Nick Fletcher and this is my blog, cheers and laters...
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