by Quentin Cockburn with help from Cecil Poole www.pcbycp.com

Germany won the world cup last Monday.  On Thursday the Abbott government repealed the carbon tax.  Two events; one sporting, the other political, both deeply symbolic.  In Germany they know how to win, because, in my opinion, they’ve twice learnt how to lose.

In Australia, we delude ourselves as the ‘lucky country’, we always win, even when we lose.  (Gallipoli, Vietnam, refugees, indigenous?)

This has something to do with the mindset.  In Germany, having lost catastrophically, disastrously and cathartically, they changed their mindset.  Rather than being set back by obstacles, and impediments upon the path to the future, they set about constructing a thinking that was resolution orientated, inclusive, secular, dynamic, and adaptable to change.

Everywhere you travel, or if you prefer, stay at home, you see evidence of Germany’s crowning achievements in technology, manufacturing and energy.  Germany, is now  geared almost 25% to renewable energy, reaching 75% at times.  They’ve done this as well as re-incorporating 20 million East Germans with all their antiquated Soviet technology and infrastructure.  Germans don’t have trouble interpreting scientific data; their adaptability and thinking puts them at the front of the pack.  They know that to stay with outmoded, and inefficient, with polluting technology is to let their team down – the people of Germany, and by example the rest of the world.  That’s why Germany is on top.  Great Britain is also following suit, it is now 20% renewable and realise, just as they did in the great armaments race leading up to World War One, that to lag, is to loose ones destiny.  And any Briton is too proud to allow for that.  It’s axiomatic, complacency is death.  Even Rupert Murdoch realises this, though he has too many vested interests to admit to the rubbery science of climate denial.  And besides Germany is a democracy.  Rupert is a self elected potentate of unquestioned power and unassailable right.  (Just ask Andy Coulson.)

Australia is different from all of the above, even different to our close neighbour New Zealand.  We’re are an island continent;  insular to be exact.  Unlike Germany (or Rupert), our industries, our energy producing and consuming industries are not adaptable to change.  That’s because, as Australians, we’d rather wobble along with last century’s technology and stuff up the planet, than ever contemplate change.  Our politicians have no stomach for it, our shareholders don’t like it.   What Germany does is because they’re German.  We’re Australians, and we’re smug, insular, complacent, and waver between getting hot under the collar about religion, muslims, refugees and aboriginals , whilst the rest of the world can got to helI in a suitcase!

Consequently, (have you noticed?) we don’t have much industry left.  We don’t like fancy ideas, but we love German cars, and machinery.  Our politicians tell us that we’re going to be big in service industries.  Fancy that.  We don’t produce anything, except what we can dig up, and are looking forward to an era when everyone will be a prison guard, a health worker, an aide, a tourism worker, a power plant operator, real estate agent, yes they’re all service industries, and I suppose it all depends on China wanting to buy more of our resources, farms and real estate.  It’ll go on for ever – for a thousand years.  Uncheckable, unchanged.

There was a bloke that spoke of a ‘Thousand Year Reich’ with such certainty, we almost believed him.  The Germans as a nation don’t believe in false promises any more.  But we Australians, and the Industry Council and the Council of Australian Manufacturers, and the Council of Australian Business, and the Australian Chamber of Commerce, and the Australian Retailers Association, we are all little suckers, and though the sky wont fall in, we are terrified of change.  We need the indomitable Angela Merkel to wander over and tell us we have nothing to be afraid of.  Perhaps she could talk to Tony Abbot and say it like this, “Kleiner Mann, was nun”?

Angela Merkel – enthused

Poetry Editor Ira Maine is back in top form.

Some time ago, whilst discussing the idea of Elysium in literature, and how poetry in particular strives towards the condition of music, I used a quote from a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem to illustrate my point. I couldn’t find the required poem so I relied on my memory. I began with;

‘I have desired to go
Where falls no hail or rain or any snow,
Nor even the wind blows loudly,

I remembered this as a Hopkins poem where he expresses his weariness with the world and his desire, his wish to sling his hook and be united in Heaven with God. (Hopkins was a 19^th Cent. English Jesuit priest)

Well, I got the first line right!  Pure Gerard Manley Hopkins, and absolutely right. It is indeed the first line of a poem called Heaven-Haven, but I got everything else hopelessly wrong!

To begin with there is a secondary title to this poem. Hopkins is not trying to express what he feels, but what a young girl, renouncing the world in favour of the veil might feel on joining an order of nuns. The additional, explanatory title is: ‘a nun takes the veil.’

Here is this short poem:

I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp or sided hail
And a few lilies blow.
And I have asked to be
where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.

She doesn’t want or need the cares of either the land or the sea. She wants the contemplative life and to share her life with God. 

There is nothing complicated about this poem. It is brief and easy to remember.

And this inevitably brings to mind the incomparable Dylan Thomas, with

his poem “Fern Hill which ends with the lines’;

“…Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea…’
sounding so like Hopkins it would take your breath away. But then Thomas takes Hopkins cadence and rhythm and turns it into something wholly original and new, as do both Tennyson and Bob Dylan.

And now my head, cracked like Lear’s, wanders off in the direction of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, of all people. Right in the middle of his Morte D’Arthur, (the death of Arthur) the dying Arthur says:

‘The old order changeth, yielding place to new…’ and immediately you can see here where the young Bob Dylan got his ideas from.

Where Tennyson got his ideas is on show here too, a few lines later when Arthur asks:

‘…Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of…’

Which is a much more blatant bit of badly disguised plagiarism than Dylan’s trifle.

Shakespeare’s Hamlet to his mate Horatio:

‘>>>There are more things in Heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy…’

And on we go to Arthur’s farewell,(which lasts a fair while) where he tells us he is off

‘…to the island-valley of Avilion; [Wait for it!]
(Where falls not hail,or rain, or any snow,
Nor even the wind blows loudly); but it lies
Deep meadow’d, happy, fair with orchard lawns
And bowery hollows, crown’d with summer sea,
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound…’

And here you can see where my memory dredged two of Tennyson’s lines from, whacked them together with a Hopkins line and convinced me I was perfectly correct.

Oh Morte D’Arthur is terrific stuff altogether, full of knights and daze and Merlin and endless magic, and I had no right at all (at all) to confuse these two poems.

Until the next time, do accept my apologies for this unseemly error.

I must be less casual, I must be less casual…I must be…

This post was first published on 19 december 2010.  The racist Intervention continues with white Australia’s complicity.

Salve amici

I wasn’t going to do another Dispatch in 2010, but like a pair of mushrooms two vehicles appeared parked out the front of the Yuendumu Police Station, with large signs inside their windscreens:

In your face!

A moot point but the “seized” signs are legally inaccurate.
A car cannot be seized and forfeited for transporting drugs, although it can be retained as evidence, and it may be seized and forfeited if the Police establish that it was acquired in whole or in part from the proceeds of  sale of drugs.

The power of Police to seize and forfeit vehicles under the NT Liquor Act on “Restricted Areas” has been in place for decades and precedes the “No Alcohol No Pornography” provisions applying to “Prescribed Areas” of the NTER (Intervention) Federal Legislation. The NTER Legislation as far as I’m aware does not include the power of seizure.

Yuendumu is on both a “Restricted” and a “Prescribed” area.  Non Warlpiri people continue to apply for and be issued with Drinking Permits under the NT Legislation.

I doubt that there is a single adult Aboriginal person in the NT that isn’t aware of the risk of having your vehicle seized for “grog running” (a single can is sufficient).

If the purpose of this display is to act as a deterrent it’s an utter failure.

A friend sent me this: “…… the failure to understand the Yappa view of the car:  I have always been impressed at the total ‘utility’ approach to cars, as opposed to a non-Yappa ‘utility/valuable asset’ approach. If the car is only a utility item, the loss of the car is not felt as a ‘financial’ loss ….. So displaying the seized cars, crushing them or selling them etc., has virtually no deterrent effect……” Verissimum

If it’s purpose is to once again rub Yappa’s noses in it and further stigmatize Yuendumu society, it is a roaring success.

What is a visitor to Yuendumu to think when entering our town?

First there is a large sign warning “Look for People” (how bloody patronising!)

1.   Then there is the Intervention’s “No Alcohol No Prohibited Material (Pornography)” sign (the one graffitied with “F**king Racists”)

and finally making up the Trifecta of Respect and Discretion:  The mushroom cars.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn1HC2XXEF8

I do ponder, how would citizens of say country NSW react to such signage and displays on the outskirts of their towns?

I remember a sign at a Victorian Country town that said “No Skylarking”… I thought it had an old fashioned charm….. “This vehicle has been seized by Victorian Police for Skylarking”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D59ZWa8ehgI

So should we retaliate by displaying “This vehicle has NOT been seized by Police for grog/drug running” signs on all the other Yuendumu vehicles?

My Sister is a proud grandmother, her seven year old grandson wrote to Santa at his school:

Dear Santa,
How are you going?
Are you coming to my house?
How is Santa going at the North Pole?
Are you ready for the big trip?
How are the reindeer?
From
Jeremy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n12CEblpwGY

And for next month’s wedding:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWnWgQmODbs

and for those that won’t be attending:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJMW7cfNaSU

Felix nativitas Christi ad vos omnes

(Decode Google Translate from Latin),

I concluded a recent post by suggesting we may shortly answer the question of ‘why the penis is shaped like that’.  Whilst not necessarily reneging on that suggestion, I’d like first to tackle the question that has been bothering me and a large number of fellow atheists.  Why is it that the number of “believers” is growing so much faster than the number of highly rational non believers?  Well, simply put believers breed faster than non believers, and religiosity is high heritable.  I’ll let Evolutionary Psychologist Jesse Bering take up the story, a story in which Bering relies heavily on German sociologist Michael Blume’s research into reproduction and religiosity.

“. . . Blume’s research . . . shows quite vividly that secular, nonreligious people are being dramatically out reproduced by religious people of any faith.  Across a broad swath of demographic data relating to religiosity, the godly are gaining traction in offspring produced.  For example there’s a global-level correlation between frequency of parental worship attendance and number of offspring.  Those who “never” attend religious services bear on a worldwide average, 1.67 children per lifetime; “once per month (worshipers)” and the average goes up to 2.01 children; “more than once a week (worshipers)” 2.5 children.  Those numbers add up – and quickly.

Some of the strongest data from Blume’s analysis, however, come from a Swiss Statistical Office poll conducted in the year 2000.  These data are especially valuable because nearly the entire Swiss population answered this questionnaire – (95.67%) – which included a question about religious denomination.  “The results are highly significant,” writes Blume: “Women among all denominational categories give birth to far more children than the non-affiliated.  And this remains true even among those (Jewish and Christian) communities who combine nearly double as much births with higher percentages of academics and higher income classes as their non-affiliated Swiss contemporaries.”

In other words, it’s not just that “educated” or “upperclass” people have fewer children and tend also to be less religious, but even when you control for such things statistically, religiosity independently predicts the number of offspring born to mothers.  Even flailing religious denominations that place their emphasis on converting outsiders, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, are out reproducing nonreligious mothers.  Hindus (2.79 births per woman), Muslims (2.44), and Jews (2.06), meanwhile, are prolific producers of human beings.  Nonreligious Swiss mothers bear a measly 1.11 children.

Blume recognises, of course, the limits of inferring too much from these data.  It’s not entirely clear whether being religious causes people to have more children, or whether – as is somewhat less plausible but also possible – the link is being driven in the opposite direction (with people who have more children becoming more religious).  Most likely it’s both.  Nevertheless Blume speculates on some intriguing causal pathways tied to the fact that religious people have more children.  We know from twin studies, for example, that the emotional components of religiosity are heritable.  “Religiosity” refers to the intensity of feelings about religion, not the propositional content of particular beliefs.  (In other words, one identical twin might be a screaming atheist, while the other is an evangelical pastor, but they’re both hot and bothered by God.)  So Blume surmises that any offspring born to religious parents are not only dyed in the wool of their faith through their culture but also genetically more susceptible to indoctrination than are children born to nonreligious parents.

The whole situation doesn’t bode well for secularist movements, in any event.  Evolutionary biology works by a law of numbers, not rational sentiments.  Blume, who doesn’t try to hide his own religious beliefs, sees the cruel irony in this as well: “Some naturalists are trying to get rid of our evolved abilities of religiosity by quoting biology.  But from an evolutionary as well as philosophic perspective, it may seem rather odd to try to defeat nature with naturalistic arguments.”

As a childless gay atheistic soul born to a limply interfaith couple, I suspect, perhaps for the better, that my own genes have a very mortal future ahead.  As for the rest of you godless heterosexual couples reading this, toss your contraceptives and get busy in the bedroom.  Either that or, perish the thought, God isn’t going away any time soon.

From “God’s little rabbits” in ‘Why is the penis shaped like that?’ by Jesse Bering, Corgi Books, London 2012

This article was written by the Guardian’s Paul Daley, published 15 July 2014

Why the number of Indigenous deaths in the frontier wars matters

If new research is right, Australia should be poised for a new debate about its bloody colonial genesis and the near eradication of one of the world’s oldest peoples

Blood on the Spinifex, by Timmy Timms. The Mistake Creek Massacre; ochres on linen.

Precisely how many Indigenous Australians died in the frontier wars that raged across the continent after European occupation in 1788?

When writing about the issue, I have consistently used the figure of 20,000 Indigenous Australians and about 2,000 colonial soldiers, police and settlers. I’ve said this a conservative estimate, based largely on the academic research of Henry Reynolds, John Connor and others.

That figure – translating to about 10 Indigenous deaths for each European killed – has been hotly contested by conservative historians, but new collaborative academic research credibly suggests that the real frontier war fatality figure could be at least three times greater, and that the ratio of black to white deaths could be 44 to one.

We will never know for certain. The documentation needed to determine an exact figure – be it 100,000, 60,000, 20,000 or, as many conservative historians insist, far fewer – either never existed or has been destroyed, wilfully or accidentally.

Certainly the stories of massacres of Indigenous Australians are everywhere in the archives of the major cultural institutions of Australia and Great Britain. The diaries, letters, journals and memoirs of colonial and postcolonial officials, troops, police, farmers, frontiersmen and women are replete with accounts of fights against – and massacres of – the “marauding blacks”.

Early newspapers also offer remarkably detailed concurrent and retrospective accounts of frontier violence. Such stories are so often defined by a chilling, deeply disturbing candour, so detached are the killers from the humanity of their victims. But read, as I have, enough of them (such as the reminiscences of Korah Halcomb Wills) and you’ll be impressed with an overwhelming sense that the orchestrated violence was very widespread, well-orchestrated and committed continent-wide from occupation until far into the 20^th century.

There is another rich source that supports the colonial and postcolonial white evidence. It is a source that the deniers have long rejected and sought to discredit; the rich oral histories in Indigenous communities of the massacres that reverberate as ongoing trauma through the generations.

Many of the stories have transmuted into songs and visual artwork, such as the controversial painting Mistake Creek Massacre (depicting the murder of eight Indigenous men, women and children in 1915), by the Kimberley artist Queenie McKenzie.

The Mistake Creek Massacre, an indigenous painting at the crux of Australia’s culturewars. Photograph: Queenie Mckenzie estate

When considering the cultural resonance of frontier war it helps to remember that the last widely-accepted massacre, at Coniston in the Northern Territory in 1928, is considerably closer to the living memory of the communities it affected than the invasion of Gallipoli in 1915 – the first act in a war that would kill about 62,000 Australians and, contestably, define the nationhood of the new federation (incidentally, one of the main perpetrators of the Coniston Massacre was a Gallipoli veteran, George Murray, who would later boast in an interview about killing territorial Aboriginals.)

There is no denying the profound social, political and cultural impact of Australia’s world war one losses. From a population of about five million more than 416,000 men enlisted, some 62,000 died, another 155,000 were wounded. The hole was vast and profound.

But is it relevant when discussing the number of Indigenous Australians killed in frontier war?

Yes. Two historians, Raymond Evans and Robert Ørsted-Jensen, have concluded that in Queensland alone – the epicentre of frontier war in the mid-19^th century Australia – at least 65,180 Aboriginal Australians were killed from the 1820s until the early 1900s.

Considering that their research focuses on Queensland alone, their findings are freighted with a disturbing implication about the number of Indigenous Australians killed continent-wide. Australian deaths in world war one would pale in comparison.

If Evans and Ørsted-Jensen are to be taken seriously (and, on the basis of a paper they delivered at a conference in Queensland last week, their research deserves to be pored over and discussed widely) then Australia should be poised for a new debate about its bloody colonial genesis and the near eradication of one of the world’s oldest peoples.

Evans is a respected historian who has been researching Australian frontier violence since the 1960s, and Ørsted-Jensen a Danish master of social science and doctoral candidate at the University of Queensland. They have scoured the remaining records of the Queensland Native Police Force and studied the prevalence of “black police” barracks across the colony’s frontier from 1859 to 1898 to determine the approximate number of patrols, contacts and killings based on reported body counts. Their paper, Assessing Violent Mortality on the Queensland Frontier, reads:

We arrive at the total of 41, 040 Aborigines killed during 3,420 official frontier dispersals across almost 40 years of conflict. This mortality figure is a statistical projection, produced by cautiously sampling fragmentary evidence from the long project of land dispossession. It is not and can never be a precisely accurate figure. That number will never be known.

Let us be clear about what we are claiming here. The 41,000 death rate does not represent the full quotient of killings. It is merely a Native Police statistic that does not cover official dispersal activities across the prior decade of 1849-59. These may have accounted for another 3,000-4,000 deaths.

Neither does their figure include vigilante actions against Indigenous people by settlers and raiding parties. Based on a sample of 644 frontier clashes, Ørsted-Jensen found 57% involved Native Police and the remaining 43% settlers.

Given there were 3,420 official dispersals across 40 years, the historians argue “the settlers’ 43% must approximate to another 2,580 attacks”. “Together, our totals for settlers and Native Police amount to no less than 61,680 in 6,000 attacks,” they conclude. Evans and Ørsted-Jensen add “an estimated minimum of 3,500 kills associated with Native Police activity and 1,500 European deaths to “arrive at an aggregate 66,800 killed” between the 1820s and early 1900s. They write:

We are aware that we have been incrementally conducting this research during a time when conscientious historians have been pilloried for even suggesting that a range of serious massacres once occurred in Australia. We are acutely sensitive to the wider denialist mood in some sectors of Australian society and its mainstream media. And so we proceed with caution and conservative assessment.

The frontier war, they say, was “our Great War – a war for both the defense and conquest of Australia”.

In the countdown to the centenary of Anzac this proposition might pose troubling questions for those who view this country’s contribution to world war one as an expression of uniquely Australian values. Such as: what did the other war say about the real genesis of Australian nationhood?

Gavin Jones, founder of the Deadly Awards, Deadly Vibe and celebrations of indigenous peoples, died recently.  Fairfax Media’s Rick Feneley penned this piece.

The Aboriginal founder of the Deadly Awards, the annual celebration of indigenous achievement, was shattered last month when he learnt that he would lose federal funding worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Gavin Jones, 47, was found dead on his farm at Goulburn on Saturday. While his family did not want to discuss the nature of his death, they and his friends were aware of his devastation at the loss of funding affecting his ventures, which had spawned radio and television productions, the national Deadly Vibe magazine, the annual Deadly Awards, sport, dance and hip-hop events, and much more.

“Yes, it was a huge blow to him,” said his long-time friend Shelley Reys, who shared offices in Darlinghurst with Mr Jones when they were establishing their indigenous consulting businesses in the 1990s.

“He was very disappointed by the lack of support, not just to the business but to what the business provided to young people.”

On Monday night, Vibe Australia, which runs the Deadly Awards, revealed this year’s event had been cancelled because of the funding cuts. The awards had been due to take place on September 30.

Vibe Australia said it had been informed in June that funds for the Vibe Project would be redirected to federal government programs that deliver “frontline” services from July 1.

There was no confirmation of a suggestion by some of Mr Jones’ friends that he had been forced to lay off staff as a result of federal cuts worth as much as $400,000.

However, Vibe Australia confirmed the federal funding cuts brought to an end the entire Vibe Project, which Mr Jones spent two decades building – including the Deadlys, Deadly Vibe and InVibe magazines, Deadly Sounds radio, Move It Mob Style TV and deadlyvibe.com.au.

But in a statemtn on its website it said “our commitment to Vibe and our belief in the work we do on behalf of the community remains firm”. Fairfax Media understands Vibe Australia is not sure how it will secure its future.

Mr Jones started the Deadly Sounds music and culture radio show at Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative in Redfern in 1993. That spawned the Deadly Awards – the 20^th celebration of which, at the Opera House, was to be screened on SBS and watched by as many as seven in 10 indigenous Australians.

The awards celebrate music, sport, entertainment and community achievement and have put the spotlight on performers including Yothu Yindi, Archie Roach, Jessica Mauboy and Dan Sultan.

Mr Jones established the Deadly Vibe Group and Gavin Jones Communications. Much of his work, including on government programs, focused on healthy lifestyles and anti-drug messages.

Do you know more? Contact Rick Feneley at rfeneley@fairfaxmedia.com.au

In indigenous patter, “deadly” means great or wonderful. “Back then [in 1993],” Mr Jones said recently, “about the only Indigenous band people recognised were Yothu Yindi, and I knew there was so much more. So I bit the bullet and started the radio show Deadly Sounds.”

Still executive producer of the awards, he was proud they attracted a record 95,000 votes last year and were watched by about 500,000 people.

“He was a visionary,” said Ms Reys. “He was a huge personality. He was larger than life. He did everything with style and flair.

“There was an exuberance that was contagious to the people who spent time with him and were swept up in that exuberance. Many have said to me ‘It’s hard to imagine a world without Gavin Jones.’

“He inspired young indigenous people before we even really knew what that meant. He was building and inspiring, connecting young Aboriginal people with one and other and the wider community.”

Some friends understood Mr Jones learned of the funding cuts in the middle of last month, despite a recent audit which had given his ventures a glowing report.

While Ms Reys did not know the details of the funding cuts, she said:  “He was devastated.”

Mr Jones’s ventures also included The Vibe 3on3, a national music and sporting event to promote health, wellbeing, identity and sportsmanship and Move it Mob Style, a dance-based health program screened on the indigenous channel NITV and ABC.

In 1995 he launched Deadly Vibe magazine, which delivered positive Indigenous stories and health messages directly to schools and communities. At the time of his death it had reached its 209th issue and had a monthly national distribution of 55,000, mostly students.

Mr Jones wrote in the editorial for the 200th issue last year: “Overly negative media was the reason why we started Deadly Vibe magazine. To put something positive in the hands of our young people; something of a high professional quality that could be read and handed around at home or school that told a different story. A story we could be proud of. A magazine that was ours. Something that had blackfellas achieving and breaking stereotypes – achieving in music, sport, at a community level, in the health sector, at school and in the work force. Something our young people can get excited about, and be justifiably proud.”

InVibe magazine, an insert into Deadly Vibe, was produced specifically for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in prison and juvenile detention centers and focused on mental health, sexual health, information on substance abuse, and promoting pride and self-worth.

Actor and cultural leader Rhoda Roberts worked closely with Mr Jones as the host of Deadly Sounds and as co-artistic director of the Deadlys for several years, among many other projects.

“What a blessing, when 21 years ago Gavin and I sat in a coffee shop and talked about how great it would be to have a national radio program, our own AFIs, and a magazine, and look what he did with his wisdom, passion and love for all our mob,” she said.

“So many seedlings have been produced across the industry because of this one man and his passion. He really was a pioneer, and I thank you deadly brother. Rest, then dance well with our mob because you will always be in our hearts and are one of greatest shining stars.”

Vibe Australia last night issued a statement hailing its leader as “a true pioneer”.

Mr Jones was born on the traditional lands of the Ngunnawal and Gundungurra peoples at Goulburn. While he grew up in the provincial town between Sydney and Canberra, the family’s roots were in Bigga, Binda, Crookwell and Tuena. He was raised by his mother, father and grandmother, along with his three sisters.

He started a journalism cadetship at the Goulburn Post before completing a communications degree at the University of Canberra in 1989. He worked in journalism across various government departments.

The company he founded in 1993, Deadly Vibe, had a mission to: “Support all Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islander people in reaching their full potential by providing positive imagery, identifiable role models and quality media to improve community and quality of life.”

“Deadly Vibe launched a series of unique and successful products, all reinforcing the importance of self-worth and self-esteem to the overall health of the Indigenous community by the promotion of positive Indigenous stories, and focussing upon the achievements of Indigenous Australians across all aspects of society, along with targeted health messaging,” the Vibe Australia statement said.

“Importantly, this approach came at a time when the national media cycle served only to reinforce negative stereotypes and negative depictions of Indigenous Australians. It was this negative and ‘unhealthy’ imbalance in the reporting of Indigenous peoples and communities that spurred Gavin to launch Deadly Vibe.”

In a 2012 interview, Mr Jones said of the Deadly Awards, commonly known as the Deadlys: “Like the whole Vibe organisation, I see the Deadlys as a vehicle to empower our people. Indigenous health is a disgrace, but I see our work as a way of improving this. If people are proud of who they are and where they come from, then that will lift their self-esteem. And that can only lead to better health.”

In 2008, Mr Jones launched Vibe TV, which produced the programs Living Strong and Move it Mob Style, which is broadcast on NITV and ABC3. It was nominated for a Logie award in the children’s entertainment category this year.

“Gavin leaves behind an impressive legacy, and will be remembered as a man who made a huge contribution to his community, and helped to change the fabric of Australian society, providing successful and impactful nationwide platforms for Indigenous Australians to celebrate their achievements, survival, pride and culture,” the Vibe Australia statement said.

Former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner Tom Calma said: “Gavin Jones is a true hero of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. He was selfless and he dedicated his life to celebrating our achievements and inspiring our youth in particular to develop the resilience they need to face their future. RIP Gav.”

Film, stage and television star Luke Carroll, a long-time host of the Deadly Awards, said: “The Australian community, not only the Aboriginal and Torres Strait community, has lost a genuine leader of people.

“Gavin Jones was a mentor, brother, father figure, and great confidant, not only to me, but to so many within the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander entertainment, sporting, and grass roots community.

“His ambition and drive in promoting our people on the biggest and brightest stage possible was his passion, and he did this without any thought of personal gain, he was the most giving and generous person I have ever known and his legacy and the ramifications of his death will be felt for many generations to come.

“There is a massive void that is left from his absence, and we must never, ever forget the contribution he has made. I will love him and continue to love him. We all miss you Gav, and we’ll see you in the Dreamtime.”
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/deadly-awards-founder-gavin-jones-dies-after-funding-cut-20140714-zt78p.html#ixzz37UJ1mVXy

The sexual revolution that started with the ‘pill’ in the 1960’s seems to have been reacted to with some success by conservative elements within our society.  The strong promotion of ill defined ‘Family Values’ by conservative politicians and religious leaders is part of this reaction.

Recently I’ve been reading around the subject of love, sex, monogamy, ‘family’  and ‘community’ in books with title like “Make love, not war, the sexual revolution: an unfettered history” (David Allyn,  Little, Brown and Co, New York 2000), “Why is the penis sharped like that? and other reflections on being human” (Jesse Bering, Corgi Books, London 2012), and “The ethical Slut” (Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy, Celestial Arts Berkely, 2nd Ed. 2009).

It is the third of these, sub titled ‘A practical guide to polyamory, open relationships and other adventures’ that today’s extract is from.  Despite the salacious title the book explores the tricky issues of where intimacy, fidelity and sex intersect.

“Love and sex are the End, not the Means.

Our monogamy-centrist culture tends to assume that the purpose and ultimate goal of all relationships – and all sex – is lifelong pair bonding, and that any relationship that falls short of that goal has failed.

We, on the other hand, think sexual pleasure can certainly contribute to love, commitment, and long term stability, if that’s what you want.  But those are hardly the only good reasons for having sex.  We believe in valuing relationships for what we value in them, a seeming tautology that is wiser than it sounds.

A relationship may be valuable simply because it affords seal pleasure to those involved; there is nothing wrong with sex for sex’s sake.  Or it might involve sex as a pathway too there lovely things – intimacy, connection, companionship, even romantic love – which in no way changes the basic goodness of the pleasurable sex.

a sexual relationship may last for an hour or two.  it’s still a relationship: the participants have related to one another – as sex partners, companions, lovers – for the duration of their interaction. Longevity is not a good criterion by which to judge the success or failure of a relationship.

One-night stands can be intense, life-enhancing, and fulfilling; so can lifetime love affairs.  While ethical sluts may choose to have some kinds of relationships and not others, we believe that all relationships have potential to teach us, move us, and above all give us pleasure. . . . 

Jane Austen wrote “it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”  While we think jane probably had her tongue firmly planted in her cheek, a great many people do believe that to be single is to ve somehow incomplete and that they need to find their ‘other half’.  A lot of myths . . . are based on that belief.

We believe, on the other hand, that the fundamental sexual unit it one person; adding more people to that unit may be intimate, fun, and companionable but does not complete anybody.  the only thing in this world that you can control is yourself – your own reactions, desires and behaviours.  Thus, a fundamental step in ethical sluthood is to bring your locus of control into yourself, to recognise the difference between your ‘stuff’ and other people’s; when you do this, you become able to complete yourself – that’s why we call this “integrity.”

When you have built a satisfying relationship with yourself, then you have something of great worth to share with others.”

Maybe our next post will answer the question of ‘why the penis is shaped like that.’

Today’s post comes from The New York Times Roger Cohen, first published 8 July 2014.  In it he talks about the loss the French feel they have suffered in adopting our new world.  Much of it relates to Tarquin’s ‘Man as Machine’ series, to the loss of the familiar, but more than that the loss of that sense of knowing what is what.  It seems to me that in large part the ‘local food movement’, so strong in parts of the US, is countering this loss; it is re-connecting us with the land, with our succour, with nature.

LONDON — The Tour de France bicycle race kicked off in England this year, in Yorkshire to be precise, and ended its third stage on the Mall outside Buckingham Palace. Next pigs will fly.

In fact they’ve already flown, given that this quintessentially French event has started in Britain once before, but still it must be asked if anything is sacred anymore. Perhaps the horse racing at Ascot will soon move to Toulouse.

I was in Paris last week. It was beautiful. Tourists lolled on the bridges enjoying picnics of cheese, baguettes and bad red wine. They were happy. The weather was perfect. The French were grumpy, of course. I did not notice any grumbling about the weird displacement of the Tour across the Channel, but encountered complaints over just about everything else.

A former conservative president, Nicolas Sarkozy, had been hauled into police custody for 15 hours for questioning over alleged corruption. The current Socialist president, François Hollande, had plumbed new depths of unpopularity. The presidency of the Fifth Republic, once the apex of ceremonial glory and near-monarchical power, had all the luster of a damp rag.

That the French are unhappy has become a commonplace. A nation that loves ideas is living in an ideological void. If that void is filled by anyone it is the rightist leader Marine Le Pen with her cleverly dosed venom about Europe, immigrants, crime, globalization and the other supposed culprits behind French national decline.

Unemployment in France is at about double the German level. Growth is at zero. Investment is at new lows. If the European economy is stirring, the French has shown an exceptional capacity to resist signs of life.

Manuel Valls, the centrist prime minister hated by many in his own Socialist Party, is trying to cut public-sector spending, loosen labor-market laws, slash payroll taxes, and generally spur job creation and growth by liberalizing a state-heavy economy. Many have tried before him. Many have failed. Such reform in France is a Sisyphean task.

France is a modern country as well as a beautiful one. Its attributes, from its health system to its rail system (when not on strike), are well known. But the French dislike modernity. They mistrust modernity. That is the nub of the problem. They dislike and mistrust it for two reasons. Modernity has redefined space and relegated the state. This is intolerable.

The redefinition of space has involved the technology-driven elimination of distance. As Michel Serres, a prominent French philosopher, put it in alecture last year at the Sorbonne on the digital world, “Boeing shortens distances; new technologies annul them.”

This is troubling in France because nowhere else is the particularity of place and the singularity of a person’s attachment to it more important. That bond is expressed in the word “terroir,” at once the land, its special characteristics, the nature of its soil, its climate, and the unique human relationship to it. A great Burgundy and an indifferent one may come from properties a hundred yards apart. The soil is not the same, nor the slope of the land. Distance matters. Yet modernity has contempt for it. It even places the Tour de France in England. As Serres put it, “We live in a new space.”

Humanity has also changed its relationship to the state. The French place deep faith in the state. It is the righter of wrongs, the mediator of human affairs, the source of social justice, the object of duty, and the repository of power. The very word deregulation is odious to the French.

But technology has shifted power from the state to stateless individuals living in a borderless cyberworld. An e-mail address is now more important and more relevant to the conduct of existence than a physical address. A revolution in communication is underway, not seen since the invention of the printing press, but it is not a French revolution. It is in fact an anti-French revolution. It challenges fundamental French values, the French sense of self, and the French attachment to the state.

Valls, the prime minister, appears to be confronting French labor unions in his efforts at reform. What he is really facing is a fundamental objection to modernity.

Serres, in his lecture, tells the story of Saint Denis, the Christian martyr decapitated around 250 A.D. Denis is said to have picked up his head and walked several kilometers preaching a sermon. Serres objected as a child, when his mother told him the story, that Denis could not possibly have found his head without his eyes. She rebuked him for failing to understand miracles.

Today, Serres says, everyone’s head is on the table in the form of their computers. “You have been decapitated!” he tells his French audience.

That is often how the French feel. I fear there is not much to be done about it, short of miracles.

This post was first published on 27 November 2010.  The racist Intervention continues with white Australia’s complicity.

Բարի երեկո իմ ընկերները
A friend sent me this link:
http://www.3news.co.nz/Home/News/Display/tabid/209/articleID/187954/Default.aspx?src=email
Please take the time to watch and listen to it.

Two years ago the Northern Territory Government Department of Education and Training sent around a circular:
GUIDELINE
COMPULSORY TEACHING IN ENGLISH FOR THE FIRST FOUR HOURS OF EACH SCHOOL DAY

This policy was the final nail in the coffin of the already long sabotaged and underfunded bilingual education programmes, of which only nine remained in the Northern Territory.

From Wikipedia: Contrast refers to a type of distinction made between two (sometimes more) concepts —either as a simple or as a distinction with some quantifiable (often sharp) degree of difference

Furthermore: “describing the difference(s) between two or more entities”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQLUygS0IAQ

Another friend found a reference to something I wrote in 1976. I’d forgotten all about it, and luckily another friend had kept a copy. (See Below) A third of a century has passed, judge for yourself how much has changed. To quote our present Prime Minister: how much we have “moved forward”. Another excuse for us Australians to be proud of our leaders and smug about how much better we are than our cousins across the Tasman.

And here is another excuse to put on some great music: today (27 November) is Jimmy Hendrix’s Birthday.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hSW67ySCio
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3K8t6wKjdg

Պահպանեք նաեւ մինչեւ հաջորդ արտառոց կատարվում
(Decode: Google Translate: Armenian to whatever)

by quentin cockburn

In 1842, five thousand turned up, (that‘s a quarter of the Victorian population) to watch the execution of two, ‘Bloodthirsty Outlaws”.  They were aboriginals, Tunnerminnerwait, and Maulboyheener.  They were hanged for the murder of two whalers, whilst resisting white settlement.  In their defense, a young barrister named Edmund Barry, (who was later to hang Kelly) asked the Crown whether, ‘the British government had legal authority over the aborigines?’  He need not have asked; the doctrine of ‘Terra Nullius’ gave the Government the only right they required.

The hangmen botched the job.  On that day, January 20th 1842 it took Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheener over half an hour to die.  Their bodies convulsed on the scaffold as the slowly strangled to death.

The hangmen, redeemed themselves at the next public hanging for ‘Roger the Russian’ on 5th September 1842.  Roger; ‘an aboriginal from Port Fairy was publicly executed for the murder of Patrick Codd, a white settler who was known to take liberties with Aboriginal women and who was not adverse to the occasional massacre of aboriginal women and children.  Unfortunately the authorities hanged the wrong man as Roger could not have committed the murder as he was over 100 kilometres from where Codd was killed.*

We do not know if the crowd cheered when the condemned fell through the trapdoor, or remained transfixed by a combination of the blood-lust and spectacle.  Public Executions were guaranteed hugely popular crowd pullers.  Of course there were other executions taking place all over the colony then, but they were much less formal and conducted in a more secretive manner.  The people being massacred were denied the dignity conferred by formal war.

The dates are important, like 25th April 1915 they should be seared into our national conscience.  The fact that they are not is a shame we are obliged to share.  These Aborigines are the ones we know.  The Melbourne City Council acknowledged their existence this year with a memorial.  This is the only one I can think of.  In Canberra, we have many commemorating other wars.  It’s big business.

We killed them.  We identified them.  We acknowledged their native names – well, at least with two of the three.  But we treat our former enemies with more respect.  We grace the Turks with the sobriquet, ‘Johnnie Turk’, the Japanese, the Germans, the Boers, the Mujahadeen, are given respect through war.  Not so for the first Australians since the violent invasion of their homeland.

The recent royal tour cements in our memory the proscribed version of our history.  All good stories need re-telling.  Every generation must learn the ‘truth about us’.  It is instructive to read the Murdoch tabloids.  At random I chose one; the Daily Mail.  here are a couple of extracts from the commentary, they make illuminating reading;

‘Former liberal Sophie Mirabella and her young daughters were among the crowd lining the path to see the couple.  They held a sign which read, “Wangaratta honours their service”.  Her daughter Kitty, 3 and a half yelled out to Kate who later told Dr Nelson that the little girl was very beautiful’.

Shortly after the couple arrived at the Australian War memorial, (AWM).  A young servicewoman reminded those present that the names and faces of the soldiers killed in Afghanistan were being displayed on the memorial, to add to those killed in previous wars.  The Afghanistan conflict, the royal couple were told, is Australia’s longest and most recent war, and as well as the fallen, more than 260 were wounded.

Lest we forget.  Well of course we can.  As the historical record is concerned, the other war, the frontier war, never really happened.

*(Extract from 1842. The Public Executions at Melbourne.  The full story of the capture, trial and hanging of Bushrangers and Aborigines as disclosed in official documents never before published. Book review by Joe Toscano, (Troublemaker. Ed): the Anarchist Age Weekly Review)