Thank you for reading this year.
by John PilgerI remember the boys dressed in army surplus, the girls in hessian, their silhouettes framed in beach shanties, staring across an abyss. You were not meant to talk about them. They were not counted in the census, unlike the sheep, and anyway were dirty and feckless and dying off.On 4 November 2009, John Pilger received the Sydney Peace Prize, Australia’s international human rights award. A Secret Country, his best-selling history of Australia published 20 years ago, remains in print (Vintage Books).
You were not meant to disturb the surface of our great southern idyll, sun-kissed and God-blessed, in circumstances that might raise questions of race. At high school, I studied a celebrated historian, Russel Ward, who wrote: “We are civilized and they are not.” They were the first Australians. At least he mentioned them. Other text books simply left them out.
Today, almost everything has changed and has not changed. For many Aboriginal people, who value healing, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s apology last year was important. They and their white allies had worked tirelessly for the mere word to be uttered. The resistance was formidable; white supremacist politicians, journalists and academics damned the “black armband version of our history”. And when Rudd finally said it, the Sydney Morning Herald described the apology as “a piece of political wreckage” that “the Rudd government has moved quickly to clear away... in a way that responds to some of its supporters’ emotional needs”.
Australia's apartheid
There is to be no compensation for those thousands of Aborigines wrenched from their families as children, known as the stolen generation. The previous, openly racist government’s “intervention” into Aboriginal lands in the Northern Territory is being consolidated. In 2007, on the pretext that Aboriginal children were being sexually abused in “unthinkable numbers”, the government of John Howard suspended the Racial Discrimination Act and sent the army and “business managers” to take over black communities.
Within a year, barely reported statistics revealed how bogus it all was. Out of 7433 Aboriginal children examined by doctors, a maximum of four possible cases of sexual abuse were identified. The Australian Crimes Commission found no evidence of paedophile rings. What they found they already knew: poverty and sickness on the scale of Africa and India.
Since Rudd’s apology, Aboriginal poverty indicators have gone backwards. His “Closing the Gap” programme is a grim joke, having produced not a single new housing project. An undeclared agenda is straight from Australia’s colonial past: a land grab combined with an almost prurient need to control, harass and blame a people who have refused to die off, whose genius is their understanding of an ancient land that still perplexes and threatens white authority. Whenever Canberra’s politicians want to look “tough” they give the Aborigines a good kicking: it is a ritual as sacred as Don Bradman worship or Anzac Day.
The indigenous affairs minister, Jenny Macklin, has decreed that unless certain communities hand over their precious freehold leases they will be denied basic services. The Northern Territory contains abundant mineral wealth, such as uranium, and has long been eyed by multinationals as a lucrative radioactive waste dump. The blacks are in the way, yet again: so it is time for the usual feigned innocence. Rudd has said his government “doesn’t have a clear idea of what’s happening on the ground” in Aboriginal Australia. What? The reports of learned studies pour forth as if the sorcerer’s apprentice is loose. One example: the rate of incarceration of black Australians is five times that of South Africa during the last years of apartheid. The state of Western Australia imprisons Aboriginal men at eight times the apartheid figure, an Aussie world record.
On 16 November, a 12-year-old Aboriginal boy appeared in court charged with receiving a Freddo Frog chocolate bar from a friend who had allegedly taken it from a supermarket. The supermarket did not seek prosecution. Only the international headlines forced the police to drop the case. Two thirds of Aboriginal children who have contact with the police are jailed; two thirds of white children are cautioned. A young Aboriginal man was jailed for a year for stealing £12 worth of biscuits and soft drink.
A mattress in the desert
In my lifetime, Australia has become one of the most culturally diverse places on earth, and it has happened peacefully, by and large. This proud achievement fades when you drive into a country town and pass the funerals of the native people, many of them young, who take their own lives. The whispering in Antipodean hearts is race. The navy is sent against leaking boats filled with desperate refugees, Tamils, Iraqis and Afghans, and if they cannot be dumped behind razor wire somewhere in Indonesia, they are isolated on Christmas Island which, for the purpose, has been “excised” from the Australian map by a legal sleight of hand. How clever.
While I have been in Australia, Irene Khan, Amnesty’s secretary general, an experienced witness of poverty and discrimination, has been travelling through the vast outback region known as Utopia. The roads are dirt; water trickles from a single standpipe in many communities. She saw children, their eyes streaming and coughs hacking. She met Elsie, who sleeps on a mattress in the desert, yet pays rent to the government. Shocking, she says.
There is currently a liberal clarion call in Australia for a Bill of Rights, and the republican movement is stirring again. These debates are meaningless until white Australia summons the moral and political imagination to offer its first people a genuine treaty, as well as universal land rights and a proper share of the country’s resources. And respect. Only then will this fortunate society earn the respect it so often craves by other means.
A father has today written to the Minister of Health complaining about the treatment of his pregnant wife and how after their baby son died he had to search through 40 dead babies to find his child at Johannesburg's Coronation Hospital.Read the rest of the article here.
The caption to this News24 picture reads:SPEAKING OUT: A woman walks with her face partially covered during a march for International Day of (sic) the Elimination of Violence Against Women in Colombia. (Fernando Vergara, AP)Resolution 54/134 (December 17, 1999) of the UN General Assembly designates November 25 as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.
(a) Physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring in the family, including battering, sexual abuse of female children in the household, dowry-related violence, marital rape, female genital mutilation and other traditional practices harmful to women, non-spousal violence and violence related to exploitation;When South Africa held its Truth and Reconciliation hearings the issue of state sanctioned violence against women was mostly ignored.
(b) Physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring within the general community, including rape, sexual abuse, sexual harassment and intimidation at work, in educational institutions and elsewhere, trafficking in women and forced prostitution;
(c) Physical, sexual and psychological violence perpetrated or condoned by the State, wherever it occurs.
Human Rights Watch today released a 46 page report that documents British "complicity" in the torture of "five UK citizens of Pakistani origin ..."Canada’s chief diplomat in Kandahar in 2006-07, Richard Colvin, who told a House of Commons committee on Afghanistan that Afghans arrested by Canadian military and handed over to Afghan authorities were knowingly tortured.Read the rest of the article here.
South Africa deported an Israeli airline official last week following allegations that Israel’s secret police, the Shin Bet, had infiltrated Johannesburg international airport in an effort to gather information on South African citizens, particularly black and Muslim travellers.Read the rest of Jonathan Cook's article in Dissident Voice here.
The move by the South African government followed an investigation by local TV showing an undercover reporter being illegally interrogated by an official with El Al, Israel’s national carrier, in a public area of Johannesburg’s OR Tambo airport.
The programme also featured testimony from Jonathan Garb, a former El Al guard, who claimed that the airline company had been a front for the Shin Bet in South Africa for many years.
Of the footage of the undercover reporter’s questioning, he commented: “Here is a secret service operating above the law in South Africa. We pull the wool over everyone’s eyes. We do exactly what we want. The local authorities do not know what we are doing.”
Read the rest of the article here.The Romas, a discriminated minority in Hungary, turn to Ambedkar and Buddhism in their quest for dignity and equality. Pardeep Attri journeys to Sajókaza and Budapest to find out how the Dalits and Romas connect.
Khumalo, a Zulu, goes on to argue that the practice is cruel and should not be supported simply because it is said to be a cultural right."... observed by people of Nguni stock, including Zulus, Swazis, and Ndebeles - which involves about 40 young men killing a bull with their bare hands.
There is a belief that the warriors inherit the bull's strength and power when the beast is killed. When the warriors salute the king upon completion of their mission, the power is transferred to the king and his kingdom.
Another explanation for the ritual is that, by killing the beast, the young warriors form a bond of trust and commitment to each other, a sentiment they then transfer to their other peers, creating a strong manhood in the kingdom in question."
"... during the festival of Ukweshwama, a group of youths torment and slaughter a terrified bull with their bare hands. They rip out the bull's tongue, shove handfuls of dirt into his mouth, tear out his eyes, and mutilate his genitals."The man being interviewed was indignant that non-Africans, including Indian politician Maneka Gandhi who is associated with PETA, was calling on President Zuma to condemn the practice.
Animal Rights Africa (ARA) will be going to the High Court in Pietermaritzburg on the 24th November 2009 to try and end the extremely cruel Ukweshwama ritual, which is due to take place on the 5th December in at Nongoma, KwaZulu-Natal, during the First Fruits Festival. Said ARA spokesperson Michele Pickover, "It physically pains us and is an affront to our dignity that an animal is made to suffer in such an overtly cruel and protracted way. "Read the rest of the press release here.
The combination of racism fuelled by anger produced a highly volatileJust this morning the disturbing themes contained in these two paragraphs replayed inside my head as I read an article in the Los Angeles Times by conservative commentator, Jennifer Rubin.
situation. The consequences for Japanese Americans extended outside of the interpersonal realm into the arena of business and their professional lives.
Banks in California refused to do business with Japanese Americans. Their accounts were frozen and they were not allowed to draw any money. Japanese Americans were turned away from grocery stores, convenience stores, and other basic service providers. The state of California rescinded the certification of doctors to practice medicine and of lawyers to practice law. Japanese Americans who owned businesses lost their customers and clients. The stigma of assumed betrayal was used to deprive Japanese Americans of the right to make a living and to live without fear of reprisals from angry mobs. Hardship and uncertainty grew as Japanese Americans struggled to provide basic necessities for themselves and their families.
Political leaders throughout the country joined pressure groups that were
venting anger and calling for reprisals against Japanese Americans. Senator Tom
Stewart joined congressmen John Rankin of Mississippi and Martin Dies of Texas in
a campaign of racist rhetoric that was intended to advance their beliefs in white
supremacy. Congressman Rankin, who was notoriously known for being anti-black
and anti-semitic described World War II as a “race war” that inevitable pitted the
“white man’s civilization (against) Japanese barbarism” in a duel in which “one of
them must be destroyed.” He added that the Japanese “are pagan in their
philosophy, atheistic in their beliefs, alien in their allegiance, and antagonistic to everything for which we stand.” His comments were intended to caste suspicion
onto Japanese Americans when he said: “Once a Jap always a Jap. You cannot
change him. You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.” Rankin’s comments
received ardent support from congressional leaders in Arkansas, Virginia, and West
Virginia.
YOU CANNOT SINCERELY TAKE AN OATH TO UPHOLD THE CONSTITUTION AND SIMULTANEOUSLY CLAIM TO BE AN OBSERVANT MUSLIM.This last comment scratches deep to dredge up the derogatory term "mohammedans" as opposed to Muslims.
also;
In the words of Pogo Possum: "We have met the enemy, and he is us." At the very least, he is within our own ranks. Sacrificing the hunt for fifth columnists on the altar of political correctness does not ensure anyone's liberty or due process. It's time we root out those who intend to do us harm, and call them for what they are: enemies. Those who do not wish to be counted among their ranks need to stand up and be counted among those who are not.
and;
We have seen numerous incidents of mohammedans killing their fellow soldiers in the US Army. We have seen the majority of mohammedans keep silent rather than oppose the radicals who promote this insanity in the name of religion. Perhaps it's time for the US to rethink the notion of freedom of religion.
