This is the second part of a dispatch that was first published on 28 Oct 2010. The first part was published last week.
“The most consistent characteristic of civilisations in decay, is a tendency towards standardisation and uniformity”
From Wikipedia (so it must be true): ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions’ is a proverb or aphorism. It is thought to have originated with Saint Bernard of Clairvaux who wrote, “L’enfer est plein de bonnes volontés et désirs” (hell is full of good wishes and desires).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPIQKHgbw7w
Somehow the resealing must be part of the “Growth Town” concept as well as the overarching “Closing the Gap” initiative. The road to marginalisation is re-sealed with good intentions…..
Early one recent morning, on my way to work, I saw a man pushing one of those measuring wheels along a Yuendumu re-sealed road. Undoubtedly he was measuring the length of re-sealing so the contractors could present an invoice to whoever within the Closing the Gap organisation chart (that someone has likened to a Spinifex bush) is responsible for paying it.
This man was wearing one of those yellow luminescent glow safety jackets, I was thus able to avoid running him over. Our CDEP gang also wear those jackets, hence(and cross the fingers) no one has run any of them over. The theme for last week’s Dispatch was the rescue of the Chilean 33. Many of the images emanating from Chile featured those yellow luminescent glow safety jackets.
Those yellow luminescent glow safety jackets have spread quicker than smallpox did in the New World.
What was it that historian Arnold Toynbee said?: “The most consistent characteristic of civilisations in decay, is a tendency towards standardisation and uniformity”.
Standardisation and uniformity, like wearing one of those yellow luminescent glow safety jackets, like destroying the bilingual programme at Yuendumu School, like “amalgamating” the Yuendumu Community Government Council into the Alice Springs run Central Desert Shire, like appropriating Yuendumu residences and re-labelling them as “housing stock” under Territory Housing.
At the beginning of the Intervention I saw then Prime Minister Howard on the news during his visit to Ntaria (Hermannsburg) say that “For Aboriginals to have any future at all they’ll have to join the mainstream” …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Jwxy4Z27-U
Yeah! Walk up the gangplank of the sinking ship. Do your bit for climate change and that house of cards that is the Global Economy.
John Howard has just written a self-congratulatory book. I’d hoped to have seen the last of John Howard since he got voted out, but there he is smug in his own aura looming out of our TV screens. What a great Australian, even if he says so himself.
“Why hadn’t he helped David Hicks to get out of Guantanamo Bay, as the British and Spaniards had done for their citizens?”, “Because if we had brought him back to Australia we would not have been able to charge him under Australian law, and would have had to let him go free”. A great Australian indeed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVKYXyRnx8w
Dyma ychydig o ganeuon ‘n glws
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG4vhm6Z29U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5CHFf0ut-4
Hyd nes y byddwn yn cwrdd unwaith eto
(decode: Google Translate- Welsh to whatever listed language you fancy)
PS- The denizens of the Porn Capital of Australia must be jealous in that they did not have an Intervention foisted upon them- nor did they get any of those lovely blue “No Alcohol, No Pornography” signs. Gwael rhai bach.
A friend who lives in Canberra has forwarded me the following:
“Another myth and a really big one is that CDEP is funded from welfare, it is not and never has been, since 1977 it has been an Indigenous specific community development and employment program, but its popularity for government was its notional welfare offset (initially unemployment benefits then also some supporting parents pension), so not only was it cheap, but participants were quite correctly classified as employed not unemployed (the ABS does some things right!) in accord with ILO conventions! Mal’s smashing of CDEP in my view was about two main things: bringing people into his IQ regime and smashing community organizations, but the ostensible reason was to create ‘real’ public service jobs! This last aim is also repeated by Macklin, we will get rid of CDEP so that the States and Territories pay proper wages to those who we pay CDEP to do proper jobs. All quite contradictory!!!”
“Contradictory” I think is rather polite, I prefer “oxymoronic” with an emphasis on the “moronic”, or just plain meshuggah.