This Dispatch is titled “Chutzpah” and was written February 18 2017
האַלאָ מיין קאַמראַדז
The little boy who murders his parents and then pleads for mercy from the Court because he is an orphan, defines the Yiddish word טשוטזפּאַה Chutzpah.
When Kevin 007 defeated John Howard we were all ecstatic, little did we know we were witnesses to the beginning of yet another betrayal of Indigenous Australia.
The Apology which many of us were emotionally touched by (a nice way of saying ‘were sucked in by’) turned out to be nothing but a political stunt aimed at showing up his recalcitrant predecessor. John Howard never pretended he was other than an ethnocentric assimilationist. Kevin Rudd gave us hope that at last the ethnocidal Colonial imperative had been lifted off the shoulders of our Nation. A New Horizon, a Bran Nue Dae…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiShXMojKfY
One of the first initiatives of the Rudd Government was to set up the ‘2020 Summit’. Nungarrayi and Jangala from Yuendumu attended. Before leaving for Canberra Nungarrayi (who sadly is no longer with us) canvassed Yuendumu organisations and collected a folder of one pagers to take to the Summit. On her return she was over the moon, she told me that she ended up sitting next to Kevin Rudd, and her husband next to Jenny Macklin. She handed the folder to Kevin Rudd who promised he’d look into it and was going to do something about the Intervention. He did nothing of the sort.
….you’ve got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_1-SsnebFk
So you can imagine how thoroughly pissed off I was when Kevin Rudd on the 8th anniversary of his Apology had the gall (the chutzpah) to warn against a second Stolen Generation…. I was pondering how to weave my anger into a Dispatch, when I chanced on an article on the Passive Complicity by Cockburn and Poole blog site which epitomized my feelings.
Cockburn and Poole (not their real names) are two friends who visited us in Yuendumu. When they did visit they weren’t wearing blinkers. I strongly recommend you visit their site http://www.pcbycp.com/ . Their Irish poet friend Ira Maine (also not his real name) also makes some brilliant contributions.
Anyway here is their Article on Kevin Rudd’s latest contribution to Australian Society:
Kev’s worthy opinion.
Posted on February 14, 2017
Kevin Rudd closes the gap
Kev 07. Loves dressing up. Craves RECOGNITION!
You’ve gotta hand it to Kev, welched on climate change, carbon taxes, grotesque inequality and reform of any significant type and stood back as theIntervention wiped a swathe of incarceration across indigenous communities. Kev you posturing sanctimonious wanker .You are at one with Tony Abbott on this. Your ignorance is so profound. You let the incarceration, the disfunction, the entropy happen and did nothing. In actual fact by your hand alone you made it worse.
Could we please keep politicians, and ex Prime Ministers out of the indigenous equation. They always have an axe to grind, a legacy to nurture, and they never ever listen. You and Jenny Macklin made the ‘second stolen generation’ happen. It’s your baby Kev. And it’s you who must bear some major responsibility for the lives of people rotting on Manus and Nauru. You posturing wanker!!
Goodonya Kev!
Hmmm, another case of workplace bullying?
So the world pissed you off from the U.N top job where you thought you’d find a cosy sinecure. Now you’re back for whatever brief interval to sermonise on the “ second stolen generation”. Yet your policies, unchecked and rampant, did more to alienate communities than your predecessor John “intervention” Howard ever did. By your hand alone you ensured that the militarisation of the NT was complete and whilst you pranced around talking of the ‘biggest moral dilemma of our time’ you walked away. You offered an apology because it made you feel good, but you never backed it up. You allowed the mass incarceration to continue as the only function of governance and ignored all the indices of communities riven by police and do gooders (a little like your self) who all had strong opinions on what needed to be done to repair the confected crisis you inherited from your predecessor.
You’ve never once tried to understand the complexity of issues they face and your solutions come as the facile musings of someone who always has a simple solution to complex problems. And they’re usually wrong. Funny, you never listened to members of your own cabinet either. So what motivates you to posture once again upon the lives of people you are so thoroughly and profoundly removed from.
And you assume the electorate hasn’t got a memory. On that you’re probably right.
Remember how you were big on homelessness before you came to power? You actually visited the odd shelter and pronounced, a bit like the apology, that you’d do something about it. Homelessness is off the scale now, because you did nothing. Nothing on tax reform, nothing on negative gearing and nothing on the yawning abyss between haves and have nots. And the reason? You have benefitted by the divide, and had no intention of doing anything about it. As another ambitious Queenslander you balance your convictions between righteous indignation and a holier than though assumption that your views are shared by others whom you never listen to. You are the echo chamber of your own convictions. And mostly you’re wrong. Like the other ex PM who believed he knew first Australians, Tony Abbott, you have a self belief that is purely delusional.
Please Kev, go back to wherever you came from and find a sinecure in a university somewhere , where you can make pronouncements on all manner of things and pretend to be worthy. And we’ll pretend to listen.
“You are the echo chamber of your own convictions.” I can’t beat that!
Drishat Shalom LaMishpacha
Frank
A luta continua! The struggle goes on… ¡Venceremos!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mtl62-6pY_I