Howdy dear availees, and welcome to a very quick post about the inherent Rascism and Inequality in Australia, and how we'd all do well to get the log outta' our own collective eye before we start slingin' opinionated derision at the USofA and what's happening there at the moment...(at what's been happening for decades, even centuries-Ed)...indeed, as it has been here in Oz...(fair point-Ed)...and because I'll really only scratch the surface in this post, we will return to this topic...also, regular availees will know full well that I'm not just jumping on the Woke Wagon, with my copy of the Black Armband Historical Omnibus tucked neatly under one arm, 'cos I have many times in this 'ere blog identified my position as Privileged First Generation White Australian, who comes to enjoy that 'privilege' because I was born White and a Man in a Stolen Land...and we did steal it, by any standard, be that by the Law of Slaughter and Genocide and Disenfranchisement and Displacement, but also in many circumstances we, us White folk, we made actual Contractual Agreements with the Aboriginal peoples already living in this land, our Contracts under our Laws, and we have failed to fulfil our obligations relative to those/our Contracts...
And I'm simply going to invite y'all, if you're not already aware, to research for ya' good selves the realities of those 'Contracts'...although Wikipaedia refers to the Batman Treaty (183?) as being the sole example of such contracts, that is not strictly true, eg, early Colonists in New South Wales had 'Contracts' with Aboriginal people and in South Australia the Letters Patent that define the 'State' include a clause acknowledging Aboriginal Land Rights, but those 'Rights' have never been honoured in practice...and I'll make my opinionated observation here that the Wikipaedia 'sole example' stuff is very much in the same context as saying things like The Last of the Mohicans, or as we have here, The Last Tasmanian Aboriginal, and that these statements are a heavily legalised agenda of severing rights established by Indigenous Land Title Through Continuous Occupation, my terminology 'cos I don't know the correct legal term, but you get what I mean...(so, by declaring the group/tribe/family as 'extinct', that denies any attempt to claim ILTTCO?-Ed)...exactly, how can Tasmanian Aboriginals claim ILTTCO if it doesn't exist because neither do they, supposedly...(wow, that's some political legal bastardry right there-Ed)...indeed it is, and what's more, it's a lie, 'cos as we all know, there are many Tasmanian Aboriginals and that that ILTTCO has not been extinguished...(and that's despite the official massacres designed to officially eradicate Aboriginals in Tasmania-Ed)...well exactly, part of that process of disenfranchisement and theft was organised 'hunts'...
And like the 'Contracts/Agreements' and many other massacres, etc, this is seldom if ever discussed when we choose to celebrate how great we are as a nation, and is rarely if ever taught in Australian schools...we love to get on our high horses about Nazism and the Holocaust, or the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, or the Rwandan Genocide, or the Israeli Occupation of Palestine, or Rascism in the USofA, or Chinese Totalitarianism, etc, etc, etc, but we are far less keen to engage with our own history...(and in many instance it's out of pure ignorance, because, as you said, we just don't acknowledge this stuff and don't teach it in our schools, etc-Ed)...that's a fair point, but to what degree does ignorance excuse continuance?...(well good point, but that's a whole other rabbit hole to disappear down, and across so many issues-Ed)...and in the modern technological age where the truth about all this stuff is generally only a few clicks away, at what point does ignorance cease to be an excuse for ignorance?...(wow, now you're gettin' ya'self wedged into multiple rabbit holes-Ed)...indeed, let's return to the main focus of this 'ere post...
In that context, I will identify the appallingly disproportionate rates of Indigenous Incarceration and Deaths In Custody in Australia...but I'm not going to just trot-out a series of statistics and numbers here, because we know these figures if we want to know, and if y'all don't already know you can readily educate ya'self, and I'd politely suggest that we all re-inform ourselves right now, it's all well documented, and just those few clicks away...in fact, as a show of respect and solidarity for Aboriginal people, whether you think you know this stuff or not, I politely request that y'all temporarily discontinue with this post and spend just 30 minutes researching for ya'selves both the current realities of Indigenous Inequality in the Courts/Corrections, etc, and the mind-numbing rates of Deaths In Custody, etc, and perhaps also look at the history of Massacres, etc...and if you do not know these realities and yet choose to not look at this stuff, then that is your conscious decision to live in ignorance and denial...
Anyhoos, the Batman Treaty and similar agreements were officially over-ruled/dismissed in 1835 and 'replaced' with language about how the land was 'vacant' and 'void of life'...(and didn't that choice chunka' Right Wing Nut Jobbery, former LNP Prime Minister Tony Abbott, didn't he recently repeat that? or was it our current God-Botherer RWNJ LNP PM Scott 'Scummo' Morrison, was it him what said that?-Ed)...nah, reckon it was Tony who referred to Oz as "unsettled or partially settled" and on another occasion as "nothing but bush", "an empty land", etc, and referred to West Australian remote Indigenous communities as "lifestyle choices"...(wow-Ed)...oh yeah, and in the context where the WA government was closing some of those communities...(wow, that's a mega-wow-Ed)...yep, but he ain't exactly Robinson Crusoe is he in the LNP, they have a thinly-veiled collective hatred for Aboriginal people...(indeed, the LNP hates Aboriginals nearly as much as they hate the poor, and that's saying something-Ed)...well quite...(I reckon Scummo's attempt to reconstruct history was that he actually wanted to spend $50million plus to renovate the Cook Memorial in Sydney, and better still, do a fully sick lap of honour for ol' Cooky mate with a "re-enactment of Cook's circumnavigation of Australia", something that never actually happened-Ed)...ah yes, classic jingoistic stupidity, but we digress...
There have been various 'Contracts' or 'Agreements' or 'Statutes', whatevs, for use of the lands that Aboriginals lived in and as a part there-of, and we do not teach our kids about this stuff, and rarely do we educate or even acknowledge the Massacres and the Rapes and the Slavery and the Poisonings and the deliberate Infections, etc, etc, etc...and then we have the Stolen Generations, and only recently, the Howard government Intervention, an Intervention 'justified' by the untruthful denigration of Epidemic Paedophilia and Neglect, etc, but actually motivated by a political desire to literally remove Aboriginal people from those lands so as to make those lands available for Mining Development...(and that's how we continue to treat Aboriginal people in the 21st Century, abuse and denigration and disenfranchisement and seemingly endless suffering-Ed)...and not least of all in the name of White Profit...and I can think of no better example of that than self-congratulating smug shyster and thug, Andrew Forrester, who continuously talks himself up as a great mate of Indigenous people and what great things he's done for them, etc, but the reality is a litany of actions to manipulate and defraud Indigenous landowners...and just this week, actually in Reconciliation Week, Rio Tinto blew-up a stunningly beautiful 46,000 year old sacred site in the Pilbara region of WA...(and with the approval of LNP Minister for Indigenous Affairs Ken Wyatt, himself an Aboriginal man-Ed)...indeed, and then after blowing it all to hell, Rio Tinto apologised...across the board, it's unbe-shreckin'-lievable...
I maintain that any ANZAC War Memorial should acknowledge the bravery and sacrifice of the many Aboriginal warriors who resisted the invasion of their lands and the massacres and enslavement of their people, etc, and especially the National War Museum in Canberra should have an entrance section dedicated to a factually accurate account of these 'wars', an entrance that literally forces people to either be educated and made aware, etc, or to willingly walk past the realities of our collective past...(so, make it impossible to ignore/dismiss/walk past, unless you make a conscious decision to do so?-Ed)...exactly, and no 'memorial' to the sacrifice and suffering of war, no such memorial in this country should be solely dedicated to the subliminal glorification of Empire and/or Nationalism, 'cos that's exactly what we do now...(well certainly at a political level, not all individuals are like that-Ed)...nah, fair call, but you know what I mean, pathological liars and manipulators like Scummo trotting out the ANZAC label to suit his political agenda and ramp-up the jingoistic Nationalism and guilt people into supporting whatevs political bastardry he's trying to promote...(oh absolutely, he's a classic case in point, a soulless manipulating liar who wantonly and continuously acts against the well-being of millions of Australians, routinely using 'ANZAC' to try and give his agenda credibility, and, as you say, simultaneously try to use Nationalism Guilt to force people to support him, that is, if you disagree with him and/or don't support what he's saying/doing, then you're a bad Australian and you insult the memory of our ANZAC descendants, etc-Ed)...
I remind dear availees that Aboriginal men were serving in Australian Armed Services, including at Gallipoli in 2015, and World War II, etc, at a time when they were not legally recognised back here in Oz, and returned from service often to the same bias and discrimination, etc...(and that under Terra Nullius Aboriginals were not even acknowledged as human beings until 1966, they were considered part of the natural flauna-Ed)...indeed, they were good enough as 'men' to go to distant lands and die for good ol' King and Country, but in their own country they weren't even legally human...(and Scummo has used that specific 'ANZAC' manipulation multiple times-Ed)...especially during the COVID19 Pandemic, and coupled it with increasingly militaristic language like "we're at war with an invisible enemy", and "we all have to put our weapons down", etc, and of course all of this under the umbrella term, his pet phrase, "Team Australia"...(and also of course, this militaristic language and Nationalistic jingoism, etc, these are also critical identifiers/agents of Fascism-Ed)...excellent observation Ed, and a great place to conclude today's post, and segue directly into...
Tomorrow: More Scummo/LNP Fascism
Despite their vacuous bleating to the opposite, Scummo and the LNP are definably absolutely hell-bent on dragging us ever further into a USofA-styled quagmire of Racial and Fiscal Inequality and Institutionalised Corruption and Official Political Fascism...and we must resist, that is our one true ANZAC legacy and obligation, our one true act of remembrance and recognition and respect...can't remember who said it first, but it sure-as-shreck bears repeating, 'when your government are the criminals, then it is incumbent of the citizenry to resist and oppose'...(solidarity brother!-Ed)...well quite, I appreciate the sarcasm inferred in your reference to that hilarious scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian, but in my defence, I am only spruiking support for what I've been doing for many years now, and for which I have consequently suffered the Pro-Paedophile Political Retribution of my definably corrupt "bizarre trial"...(yeah, fair call, you've certainly walked the walk-Ed)...indeed, and with my 'case' back in Court in a month, that walk is a long ways from being over...
I am Nick Fletcher and this is my blog, cheers and laters...
PS:...for me, the lasting image I will take from what's all over Twitter and Social Media at the moment, from all of the historic footage of USofA police viciously assaulting black people, and the current stuff about peaceful protestors getting assaulted and the predominantly un-associated riots and looting, often by White men who are coming in from other towns, etc, there is a photo of a lone White cop cornered in a shop front, and the only thing between him and 'the mob' is a line of half a dozen young black men with arms linked, with their backs to the cop, protecting the cop by staring-down 'the mob'...I'll just finish there...
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