When I saw a headline about Peter “Uncle Fester” Dutton condemning the left for trying to rewrite history, I immediately thought it was the forerunner to a leadership challenge. While I personally wouldn’t call our PM leftwing, I do realise that I’m not Peter Dutton who would probably consider Albert Speer, a bleeding heart. But no, it wasn’t about Morrison’s suggestion that we didn’t have slavery in Australia, it was the actual left who keep insisting that history is subject to re-interpretation as new information comes to light, such as the idea that there were people living here before Captain Cook’s circumnavigation… Whoops, that was another one from Morrison.
Lord of Mt George, Alexander “A Real” Downer instructed us via Twitter: “Blackbirding may have been awful by today’s standards but it wasn’t slavery. Slavery abolished in the British Empire in 1833. Blackbirding began in 1863.” This is an interesting concept. Blackbirding involved kidnapping or coercing people to work for nothing (or occasionally very little), but this wasn’t slavery because… well, the British Empire had abolished it, so we couldn’t have been doing slavery, could we? Blackbirding is different from slavery in ways that escape a commoner like me, but I’m sure that the former High Commissioner will be able to explain. Whatever, the next time the police pull me over I’m using the Downer defence, and saying that I couldn’t possibly been speeding because Australia has had speed limits for over a hundred years…
Consistency is a hard thing to achieve. I know. It’s hard to establish a general set of principles that can be applied in all situations but when I look at the state of political debate, I wonder why the politicians believe that the general public have the memory of a goldfish. (Yes, before some pedantic person points out that goldfish actually do have more than three-second memory span, I do know that but I was allowing myself a little poetic licence in order to make a point.)
At least when Scomosa Morrison counted on our collective amnesia with the black lives matter protests, many were quick to point out that when people were protesting the lockdown, Bill Gates and 5G he didn’t condemn the protest but rather argued that it was a free country. The difference, argued some, was that the earlier protest only attracted a handful of people while black lives matter protests attracted thousands. This would be a reasonable argument were it not for the fact that Morrison condemned the BLM protests and urged people to stay away before they happened. It’s almost like he expected people to disobey him, rather than do what I did and follow the suggestion to stay home and protest like a good, quiet Australian…
This, of course, means that we have a very confusing scenario. Often, when a protest attracts a large crowd, a politician will try to argue that there were more people not protesting so, therefore, the majority supports the alternative position. For these protests, we were told to stay home to reduce the risk of COVID-19 so when faced with the argument that these were a mob of leftist, AntiFa anarchists intent on causing damage, one can’t immediately dismiss them as a noisy minority. Even though I support their aims, I like millions of my fellow citizens, followed the advice of the PM and stayed home to protest.
Get out of that one, Scottie!
Of course one of the terrible things about statements like “Black lives matter” is that they have people saying stupid things like “All lives matter” or “It’s OK to be white”! Why I say they’re stupid is not because they’re not true, but because they demonstrate the very lack of awareness that anti-racists are trying to combat. If we reduce this to the personal, image the following exchange between a couple:
“I feel like you don’t care about my feelings and that my views are unimportant.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“My views are important and I think you just ignore what I’m saying sometimes.”
“No, all views are important. My views are important too. By telling me about your views, I feel that you’re ignoring my views so let’s stop this silly discussion and move on because we shouldn’t dwell on the past.”
If I’ve offended anybody by that, I’ll apologise for my bourgeois oversimplification of an issue that’s much more complex than a discussion between a couple, but I’ll only apologise if someone tells me they’re offended because that’s what old, white males do. And to be fair to myself, I am trying to make things simple enough for stupid old white males to actually grasp.
I guess the thing that makes people like that have a better understanding of the whole thing is the recent response to the Cover-19 crisis by a few politicians and some of the more rational economists. (I am using “rational” in an economic sense, which means I’m using it like the “liberal” in “Liberal Party” or the “public” in IPA.) Apparently, “All Lives Matter” but not if your life is one that stands in the way of the economy.
No, if you’re old or ill, it’s just bad luck. We need to get growth happening, so while all lives matter, some just don’t matter enough to worry about.
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Thank you for clarifying the totally confusing concept of Blackbirding, that was not slavery, or kidnappping, or unlawful detention (just like the legal refugees on Manus and Nauru) or racist (because at that time the European invaders considered that only “blacks” were fit enough to work in the cane fields making profits for the English landowners (who would not work in an iron lung).
Surely your lucid explanation justifies the present Benito Duddo and COALition misgovernment policies of racial discrimination allowing refugees to enter Australia when they come by aeroplane service from North Asia but are too poor and so desperate for a better life than the war zones to which Australia has contributed troops for almost twenty (20) years at enormous expense, that they risk all by coming by (literally) leaky boats. This is obviously to protect the mollycoddled Australians of Generations X, Y, Z and Millenials who have yet to learn that life is not given to you on a plate, except when you are a foreign owned multinational corporation operating in Australia when the Liarbral & Nazional$ occupy the Treasury benches.
I notice that the lives of ordinary Australians of whatever colour do not matter when they are targeted by uber-satanic kangaroo tribunals in which psychopathic quasi-judges claim the victims are incapable of managing their own affairs. No probative evidence of incapacity is needed by these scum, a mere suggestion by a vindictive family member or a paid spotter for the official extortion racket trading as the office of the public trustee is all that is required for a person to be denied all human rights, including the right to own assets, the right to legal representation, and even the right to life. Needless to say, this racket reaps billions of dollars in revenue annually for our morally and financially bankrupt state governments.
Our Piggery Manager, the P M, the Perverted Mentality, Piltdown Man, Primordial Midget, Penissimo Magnifico, leads a huge overfull sty of porkers, snorkers, talkers, untruth borkers, lying corkers, corruption and donation forkers, bowling propaganda yorkers, filth hawkers, and pussy stalkers (B Joyce). What a raving ratbag rotting, rusting rum-beer-plonk-bunctious blathering boofheads they are. Putrid Mutton, our answer to Heydrich (but uglier) is a desert of nutrition intellectually, an arid anuslike attitudinal oaf of no mind or soul. The policies of the British Empire, among others who were little different, were theft, murder, acquisition, exploitation, conquest, humiliation, slavery, base serfdom, all itself a monstrous savagery. Pox heads like the Manly Masturbator, only exist to embellish their own stupidity. The right wing self deception of these lower forms of platyhelminthic prossyslutty excuses for humans is a constant reminder of the need for proper education, honesty in research, scupulous investigation, undiluted media work in finding all this. Forget our leached ABC. In a nation shitstained by Murdochery, media maggotry, general malaise and laziness, what is the future!
Lovely, Rossleigh. Thank you. Now I understand. I think.
It always amuses me that conservatives and the likes of Downer like to say that we should not judge people of those past eras by today’s standards. And it seems they are Christian, just like the slavers were. So, did the teaching of Jesus Christ vary over the centuries? When after Christ was it OK to steal, to lie, to kidnap, to force to work for no pay etc… and when did that Christian morality change? The slavers were Christians….what part of the 10 commandments did they not understand or ignore? Christian morality has not changed in 2000 years. The slavers and their ilk were immoral then and would be immoral today. So cut that defensive and justifying f’ing bullshit!!!!
That’s a damn good read, Rossleigh. Damn good.
The white man’s burden is to be an individual unless we are not lnp. but left or black unless we are not lnp or yellow unless we are not lnp.
Love the ‘rational’ to me it fits the use of man in mankind or he as in god or policeman, soldier sailor tinkerman spy???
ps
The right wing pommie thugs, whose posts the police share, dress themselves in black hoodies to attack the police and confuse the media
This fewer and fewer will stay home this time the loonies will be ignored this time albo will reveal the better government.
Oh fck daryl just told me’ I’m dreaming’
Phil Pryor you certainly have a way with words. Australia was built on slavery. What other description is there for the beginnings of the convict system? Transported half way around the world then forced to work for nil pay with the occasional flogging to go along with it. One difference I suppose was the carrot of the chance of being granted a ticket of leave and eventually a pardon so you could eventually become a free person and then again slave owners could grant freedom to one of their possessions if it took their fancy.
Please Australia, vote these morons out at the next election.
Fake news! FAKE NEWS?
The Guardian, today, reports that close to 70 journalists on The Age have alleged that they are being instructed to angle their political reporting in a certain way, and an example of a report on the protests shows that ‘facts’ have been falsified.
We’ve been here before – Murdoch ordered anti-Whitlam articles in the 1972-75 interregnum. I let us not scoff at Trumps ‘fake news’ rants. We had it before the US did.
Today’s news about ALP branch-stacking is just another early election stunt. I have no doubt it’s true, but Scummo can teach us ALL about stacking branches and falsifying news…
Jack, I rarely read msm and only saw only the promo for 60 Minutes last night. My first thought was which Party do they intend sabotage in the lead up to the next election? I don’t care much for Trump but on the topic of ‘fake news’ he is right. One recent example of how msm distorts facts was the hydroxychloroquine flip-flop by the WHO, the CDC and Lancet. Msm coverage, with their lack of research into background science, was a roundabout way of discrediting Trump and making him appear a naive fool – and it worked for the majority. Apparently, if you read between the lines of the msm story-telling, we were supposed to believe that Trumps doctors were deliberately out to poison a sitting President. Media does the dirty work for Big Pharma and their push to introduce 120 vaccines onto the adult population going forward rather than a cheap treatment as first option. But now an increasing number of people disbelieve the msm medical narrative in the US (38% in a survey last week). If it comes from msm the opposite is most likely true. Msm, the best derailers of facts money can buy.
Before it gets banned for being totally appropriate.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2hwqn9
It’s only the details which need to be inserted for any given incident.
@Bert: Uhm … Technically, for the record, Austraia did NOT have “slavery” because Arthur Phillip, the first Governor, refused to take “slaves” to New Holland. Even so, the conditions of the convicts in early Australia, working usually for bed & board only, was little better than slavery. Certainly with a cruel Master, say the Very unChristian Reverend Samuel Marsden, life for convicts could be hell on Earth.
The situation at Port Arthur, Tasmania, was little different. The convicts were “trained” in boat building skills until their whaling skiffs proved so popular and economical compared to those produced by free-men in Hobart that the government ceased production and eventually closed Port Arthur. The seventh sea-going vessel produced on Maria Island, Port Arthur, and completed after the closure, was sailed by convicts to Valparaiso, Chile where they were jailed for mutiny, and when that failed, because the “ship” was not registered and so mutiny was not possible, they were hung for stealing a pile of timber.
However, compared to England, convicts in Australia had more rights, as shown by the trial and conviction of the sea captain of one of the First Fleet vessels who was found guilty of stealing the chattels of a convict couple.
I know what you mean Cocky but slavery is slavery no matter how they dress it up.