Translation
La Trobe, “Bundoora Arabesque” & Aboriginal Ethnocide
“Bundoora Arabesque” is a huge 4-seasons abstract expressionist painting that represents an ecumenical and amity-promoting fusion of Islamic, Renaissance Italian and contemporary styles overlaid with abstract expressionist figurative elements reminiscent of Jackson Pollock and of 20,000 year old cave paintings from Europe and Australia. “Bundoora” is my local area and means “the country that kangaroos like” in the Aboriginal language of this region. Indeed I often see kangaroos in the early morning and evening in the local bushland (see if you can spot them as well as local bird life in this complex painting).
Bundoora is the Outer Melbourne suburb in which La Trobe University is located. La Trobe ranks about #10 among Australia’s 40 odd universities and some major scholars with international reputations have variously been associated with La Trobe. The university is named after 19th century Victorian governor Charles La Trobe, a traveler, mountaineer and author who is also notorious for setting up the Victorian Native Police who were involved in the Aboriginal Genocide in South East Australia. This ambiguity is reflected in a life-size upside-down statue of La Trobe at La Trobe University in which the head is on the ground and the plinthe in the air.
My “Bundoora Arabesque” painting was inspired by the beautiful local area through which I walked frequently some months ago when I was delivering a big theory and practical course to second year science students at La Trobe University. The painting has a quite unintended ”Aboriginal” feel to it in striking support of Australian feminist guru Germaine Greer’s idea that European Australians have become unwittingly imbued with love of land that is so intrinsic to Indigenous (Aboriginal ) Australian culture.
Unfortunately completion of this huge (1.3 x 2.9 metre) painting has coincided with the appalling MILITARY invasion of Aboriginal communities in Australia’s Northern Territory (NT) by the extreme right-wing, Bush-ite Australian Federal Government. The “excuse” was an expert NT Report “Little Children are Sacred” that detailed huge problems of alcohol, violence and poverty in NT Aboriginal communities. However the media and right-wing politicians have run with the revelations of appalling NT Aboriginal child sexual abuse that provided the climate for the Federal Government “invasion” of isolated NT aboriginal communities using soldiers in camouflage dress.
This has now culminated in passage of a 500-page Bill (with cowardly Labor Opposition support) that allows for racially-specific expropriation of NT Aboriginal land; race-based constraints on what Aborigines can read, see, drink, consume and purchase; and race-based withholding of NT Aboriginal social welfare payments.
This Bill involves breaching the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act 1975 that (among other things) stopped Federal violation of Aboriginal Australians who had suffered 2 centuries of what genocide experts call the Aboriginal Genocide. The Indigenous population dropped from about 1 million to 0,1 million in the first century of European colonization; the 20th century saw the forcible removal of 0.1 million Aboriginal children from their mothers; and indeed Aborigines were only finally “counted” as Australians after a Referendum in 1967. Their long struggle to regain Land Rights has been compounded by conservative opposition and horrendous living conditions in one of the richest countries in the world.
According to the Australian Human Rights, the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 gives effect to Australia's obligations under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Its major objectives are to (1) promote equality before the law for all persons, regardless of their race, colour or national or ethnic origin, and (2) make discrimination against people on the basis of their race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin unlawful.
The obscenely-rushed racist legislation prompted an Editorial in the liberal conservative Melbourne newspaper The Age entitled” “Legislate in haste, PM, and you may repent in leisure” (Wednesday 8th August, 2007; links to the Age.)
The militant, extremist, extreme right wing, Federal Australian Government already weeks ago sent soldiers in battle dress camouflage into NT Aboriginal communities. Now with cowardly and unprincipled Opposition support it has brought in profoundly dangerous and offensive racially-discriminatory legislation that grossly violates Australia’s Racial Discrimination Act 1975 that gave effect to Australia's obligations under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and which formally ended 2 centuries of race-based discrimination underlying the Aboriginal Genocide.
This is happening in one of the richest countries of the world because of deliberate and sustained neglect – Australian Aboriginal health services are funded at about 50% of what they should be according to the Commonwealth Grants Commission (2001) report “Report on Indigenous funding” (quoted by a recent and very detailed report on Indigenous Australian Health by N. Thomson et al: “Overview of Indigenous Health, 2004”:
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates “total per capita medical expenditure at average exchange rate ($US)” (2004) as $14 (US-UK-Australia-Occupied Afghanistan), $58 (US-UK-Australia-Occupied Iraq) versus $3,123 (Occupier Australia)
With an Indigenous population of about 0.5 million that is funded at roughly the national average (despite huge morbidity and remote location problems) the extra funding required is about US$1.5 billion annually – as compared to the US$0.4 billion now offered, and this largely for Army and bureaucratic personnel and infrastructure.
Translation
Many Australian Aborigines live in Third World conditions; the “annual under-5 infant death rate” is over 3 times higher for Aborigines than that for White Australians; 1 in 5 Australian Aborigines have diabetes (mostly type 2 diabetes) which has huge attendant problems such as cardiovascular complications, kidney problems and blindness; the Australian Aboriginal life expectancy is 17 years less than that for White Australians; and a top Australian diabetologist has warned that Indigenous Australians may actually die out by the end of the century.
The deficient medical expenditure statistics are reflected in an “annual avoidable death rate” (annual excess death rate) of Indigenous Australians is 2.2-0.4 = 1.8% as compared to 0% for New Zealand and for White Australia, 0.4% (South Asia), 0.5% (Occupied Iraq), 1.0% (non-Arab Africa) and 1.8% (Occupied Afghanistan).
1.8% per year of 460,000 times 11 years = about 90,000 Indigenous Australians have died avoidably under the 11 year rule of the Coalition Government.
The Indigenous infant death rate is over 3 times that of Australia as whole. The difference translates to over 146 avoideble under-5 Indigenous infant deaths annually or over 146 x 11 = about 1,600 avoideble under-5 year old Indigenous infant deaths under the Coalition Government.
However to illustrate the sheer hypocrisy and dishonesty of the racist, Australian Government it is useful to examine the Northern Territory Child Sexual Abuse reality in a quantitative way.
There is no doubt from the shocking anecdotal accounts in the NT Report “Little Children are Sacred” that from a qualitative perspective Aboriginal Child Sexual Abuse is occurring and must be urgently stopped. However the Report (p57) states that “it is not possible to accurately estimate the extent of child sexual abuse in the Northern Territory” while documenting that 34% of females and 16% of males in Australia as a whole experience child sexual abuse (Dunne, M.P., Purdie, D.M., Cook, M.D., Boyle, F.M. & Najman, J.M.(2003), Is child sexual abuse declining? Evidence from a population-based survey of men and women in Australia, Child Abuse & Neglect, vol. 27 (2), pp141-152).
No doubt there is significant Aboriginal child sexual abuse and other horrendous problems that need to be addressed by urgent provision of exactly the same services that are provided to White Australians– decent infrastructure, decent housing, security, police, justice, nurses, doctors, teachers and other welfare workers. Those defaming Indigenous Australians for child sexual abuse in the absence of concrete figures are simply lying in a racially-specefic way– it is akin to the deadly anti-Jewish anti-semitic canards of past millennia (e.g. “drinking the blood of Christian children”) and indeed to the current anti-Arab anti-Semitic and Islamophobic carnards (“terrorists”, “extremists”, “fanatics”, “militants” ) that are routinely trotted out every day in the Australian and Western media. Those indulging in this race-specific propaganda have no idea as to whether the incidence of Aboriginal child sexual abuses is greater or less than the appalling figure for Australia as a whole.
Let’s be clear about what this legislation does and how it grossly violates Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 (specifically Articles 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 17, 19, 22 and 30;. NT Aboriginals will be circumscribed about what they can read, see, drink, consume and purchase in ways that do NOT apply to White Australians and their Land (Sacred to Indigenous Australians) and their Communities will be seized and controlled by the Federal Government - a contemptible, racist Government that presides over 9,000 avoidable Aboriginal deaths annually and which still refuses to say “sorry” for the past horrendous Aboriginal Genocide and Ethnocide. Indeed the Aboriginal Genocide continues – it took 90,000 lives in the last 11 years alone of rule of Australia by these racist, Bush-ite extremists.
A friend of mine from the tiny and vulnerable Lipari (Aeolian) Islands off the tip of Italy observed that the World War 2 experience instructs that we are all Jews. Just imagine the deserved national and international outcry if these obscene, racist laws were applied to Australian Jews.
My family was wiped from the face of Europe by the racist Nazis – our homes and lands are still expropriated in the Old Country. The post-Holocaust crie de coeur of “Never again” means “Never again to any people”. My wife is a Black Australian – I will make sure that the world is informed of this return to the pre-1975 Racist White Australia in gross violation of Australian anti-racism legislation and of International anti-racism Conventions.
Sanctions and boycotts worked against racist Apartheid régime in South Africa which had an “annual avoidable death rate” of 0.4% (1993) as compared to 2.0% for Northern Territory Aborigines in Racist White Australia today. The Racist White Australians – on a bi-partisan basis – are now imposing human rights-abusing racial discrimination on these vulnerable people in addition to this ongoing carnage.
The World needs to act urgently to stop the egregious racism of Racist White Australia and to stop the ongoing Aboriginal Genocide and Aboriginal Ethnocide – there must be zero tolerance for racism.
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Dr Gideon Polya, MWC News Chief political editor, published some 130 works in a 4 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 2003), and is currently writing a book on global mortality --- 
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To use (twice)the description of soldiers in battle dree camouflage overlooks the basic commensense that every one away from the sanctum of inner city Melbourne knows is just day to day standard military working outfit. Soldiers actually find this attire practical and has nothing to do with the dramatic picture you try to scaremonger with by suggesting camouflage the way you have.
Maybe you think that they should be wearing skivies and loavers like the Melbourne university scene but then I suppose we could see you wearing that as your way of camouflaging yourself amongst the other skivie wearing loafers. :(
Northern Territory Aborigines will be subject to race-specific laws; will be punished if they read, see, buy or consume certain things Whites can; their property will be expropriated (potentially permanently); and if they don't like it they can leave their homeland (like my family members who fled Europe or Palestinians fleeing Racist Zionist Occupation of THEIR Homeland).
The last time the BLACK members of my family were subject to race-specific FEDERAL laws in Australia was over 30 years ago BEFORE the passage of the 1975 Race Discrimination Act that is NOW being over-ridden with BI-PARTISAN SUPPORT from both the racist, Bush-ite Government and the racist, cowardly labor Opposition.
I have just spoken over breakfast to a Black Australian who simply said "Race-specific laws are wrong".
Race-specific legislation is RACISM and racismm is wrong. Do it to Aborigines (the most vulnerable and oppressed community in Australia)and BOTH the anti-racist decent human beings and the racists will ask: WHO IS NEXT?
The Arabs and the Muslims? (it has already happened - 15 years in prison in Australia if the charity (zakat) of a Palestinian Muslim for medical services in Gaza gets into the hands of the democratically elected Government.
Asians and non-Europeans in general? It has already happened with race-based visa regulations distinguishing (in effect) between Whites & Honoarary Whites VERSUS the Rest (including Indians, Chinese, Arabs, most South Americans, most eastern Europeans = honorary non-whites).
The Jews? - possible because Racist White Australians have traditionally hated Jews almost as much as they hated and feared Asians and despised Indigenous Australians. The first song I learnt at primary school in Australia circa 1950 after the National Anthem (God save the Queen back then) was an obscene, explicitly anti-Jewish anti-Semitic song "Balls to Mr Finkelstein".
The thing about racism and racists is that this OBSCENITY is always lurking there - it is probably hard-wired through natural selection of particular GENES and is only been held down by MEMES (non-genetically transmitted IDEAS ideas such as "love they neighbour" and "all men are created equal").
The shocking BI-partisan support for this racist legislation (and virtually sight unseen - no doubt most if not all of the Labor Opposition voted for it without even reading the 500 pages of the Bill in the day or so available)
Places like Melbourne University are indeed the big hope - that's where devoted academics TEACH anti-racist MEMES - and they are full of smart, extremely bright, hard-working young Australians who (apart from a Racist Bush-ite and Racist Zionist minority) are ANTI-RACIST.
The WORLD must take resolute action against Racist White Australia - indeed the Head of the Australian Human Rights Commisson has said that there will be an International Backlash.
MWC News readers should tell all their friends and associates to take action (Sanctions, Boycotts?) against Racist White Australia. Racist Apartheid South Africa was banned from the Olympic Games and so should ALL explicitly racist countries such as Racist White Australia.
I deplore the government, and Labor\'s response to the report \"Little Children Are Sacred\" - in which they ignore recommendations, to bring in a heavy-handed land-grabbing, inappropriate response
As for the invasion of the NT, I don’t know much about that. In truth I thought that words like “military” and “invasion” were media hype. All I know (or thought I knew) about it is that the government has decided to finally do something about the injustice done to aboriginals and the military was moved in merely to assist the local police.
I have no idea what actually happened because after a week of constant “the little children are scared” the news finally changed subject and completely forgot about it.
If the Australian government was on a “land grab” expedition, why would they even want land in the northern territory? Have they found uranium or something? If the military was on the move it would be STUPID to do it for primarily racist reasons.
The race specific laws are wrong and I find the lack of information about the issue infuriating.
The circumstances of Indigenous Australians are appalling and are reflected in horrendous 9,000 avoidable Indigenous deaths each year out of a population of about 500,000.
There is clearly an urgent need for Indigenous Australians to have the SAME local/state/Federal government-supplied services enjoyed by all other Australians i.e. adequate police, security, law, justice, education, zero school truancy, no public drunkenness control, nurses, docotrs, clinics, schools etc.
The Government has NOT supplied ANY of these so far except for 500 General Practioner health checks for 500 Indigenous children - and in return has expropriated Indigenous land for 5 years (may be permanently), suspended Land Claims for this period, taken over scores of remote Indigenous communities, vilified these same communities WITHOUT NUMERICAL DATA and used attendant hysteria to justify race-specific aboliton of human rights and breaching of the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act.
There must be zero tolerance for racism. The world is watching. The world applied sanctions and boycotts against racist Apartheid South Africa (racist Apartheid laws; Government controlled bantustans and townships; avoidable national death rate 0.4% in 1993) and may well do the same against racist white Australia (suspension of Racial Discrimination Act for NT Aborigines in violation of Internationally-agreed Conventions; annual death rate of NT Indigenous Australians 2.0%).
I used to work at Melbourne Airport Operations, in a technical capacity, and once a year had to do some system checks, that could only be done on the grave yard shift. One year my assistant on this job was a Tamil, and the job lasted for about 6 weeks, we used to head for home at about 4 am in the morning, he kept grumbling about how he had been pulled over by the police several times during that 6 weeks for a license check. As for me, in 10 years not once.
Pulling up once in the town of Ceduna at roadhouse for refreshment on a murderously hot evening. We had a light snack i.e. meat pies or something and fruit drinks in air conditioned
comfort. When we drove off my wife said to me, \"did you notice the Aboriginals were in that hot front room\", realize that both counters served the same snacks.
The truth was I was too weary and hot to have noticed, but it dawned on me she was right, she then said it was just like apartheid, again she was right.That was in the 1990\'s.
And so on and so on.
When it comes to Howard, he never does things without a hidden agenda.
A final note, my wife just asked me what I was doing, I said I was commenting on racism in Australia, \"hu\" she said, \"its got to be the most racist country in the World\".
Mike
However as a scientist currently researching "avoidable death" the hard realities of racism in Australia are the avoidable deaths of Indigenous Australians, currently 9,000 annually and about 90,000 such avoidable deaths under the 11 years of rule by the racist, Bush-ite Coalition Government (noting that the Indigenous population totals about 500,000). Compare this with the avoidable deaths (admittedly many horribly violent) of 200,000 Hungarian Jews out of a population of 700,000 in Nazi-occupied Hungary in the period 1944-1945.
Australia is complicit in horrendous excess deaths in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories where the post-invasion excess deaths now (March 2007 data) total 1.0 million and 2.4 million, respectively.
Yet most Australians would vigorously and honestly deny being racists. I call this political correctness coupled with resolute ignoring of racist realities (e.g. huge excess deaths of Australia's Indigenous, Iraqi and Afghan subjects) "politically correct racism" or "PC racism".
That being said of course there are a hell of a lot of racist yobbos in Australia, but the same amount as everywhere else (which obviously isn\'t a good thing). And yes the government is a collection of backwards old men, but the opposition looks set to win the next election. They did support the legislation too, but not blindly or without objections. The fact is though that the legislation is overwhelming positive and needed to be passed yesterday.
And as for the NT intervention, two more things. The military are there for transport and communication purposes- trying to use the troops there as evidence of some sort of over-zealousness is incredibly dishonest. As well as this page I have read some other articles from the international press, including an idiotic editorial in The Guardian, criticising the legislation. This editorial says that the Aboriginal communities need the same infrastructure and opportunities that the rest of Australia has, and I don\'t know anybody who wouldn\'t agree. But that will take years, and in the meantime there are thousands of women and children being beaten and abused.
There has been other criticisms calling the legislation unnecessary and paternalistic. One of Australia\'s most well known and respected Aboriginal spokespeople, Noel Pearson, had a great reply to this, which I will paraphrase: \"The kids crying in the corner don\'t care about paternalism\". Indeed it shouldn\'t matter whose feelings get hurt, it should matter that abuse stops. This should have been done earlier.
Comparing the intervention to Nazism is dishonest and disgraceful. To even mention the two in the same editorial is offensive not only to Aboriginals and Australians but to the millions of Jews, Gypsies and others who were killed in circumstance with zero relation to the current situation.
(A) Go to the latest medical statistics and you will discover 90,000 avoidable Indigenous Australians deaths over the 11 years of the racist Coalition Government (current Indigenous population 500,000) (for source data see MWC News article entitled \"Aboriginal Genocide. Racist White Australian Child Abuse & Passive Mass Murder\" via the link below).
(B) By way of comparison the excess deaths of Hungarian Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary in 1944-1945 totalled 200,000 out of a population of 700,000 (see:
Gilbert, M. (1969), Jewish History Atlas (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London). Many died from deprivation in custody, many died from appalling violence (see:
Gilbert, M. (1982), Atlas of the Holocaust (Michael Joseph, London)).
You can\'t pick and choose and say that (A) doesn\'t matter because White Australian didn\'t \"mean to\" whereas (B) matters because the Nazis DID. The cowardly, dishonest, Racist White Australians actually DID mean to - the circumstances have been known for decades, decent folk have been protesting these circumstances for decades and yet STILL Racist White Australian Governments - Coaltion Conservatives or Labor, State and Federal - FAILED to act. They are guilty of passive mass murder and passive genocide - that are STILL CONTINUING.
Medical experts, Aboriginal welfare experts and Human Rights experts have slammed the bi-partisan failure to address ANY of the 97 recommendations of the NT Report that provided the Australian Government with the excuse to intervene with troops and authoritarian invasion.
If any one wants to read what the experts have said in detailed submissions see details of the Australian Senate Inquiry Inquiry into the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Bill 2007 & Related Bills on the Web (154 submissions; mine was #35).
And as for \"child abuse\" both the Government AND the cowardly, irresponsible and RACIST Labor Opposition are LYING about claimimg to know the \"extent\" of what is clearly an extremely serious problem requiring URGENT action - as recommended by Recommendation #1 of the NT Reoprt (that has been comprehensively VIOLATED in this bi-partisan fashion).
The NT Report was \"UNABLE\" to determine the \"extent\" of the problem while giving documented evidence that 34% of Australian women as a whole are sexually abused as children. The Government and Opposition are LYING for politically gain - they don\'t actually KNOW; in PRETENDING TO KNOW they are simply LYING.
Aboriginal, legal, and medical experts, the Greens, the Democrats and the head of the Human Rights Commission have condemned the RACISM implicit in breaching the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act (and the UN Convemtions on which it is based) - that breach being made in a racially-specific way.
If the racist Bush-ite Australian Government and the yellow, racist Opposition were to have passed similar legislation in relation to JEWS they would be internationally condemned as proto-Nazi, anti-Jewish anti-Semitic, RACISTS. Whether it is in relation to Jews, Aborigines or Calathumpians, there is no call for racism - there should be ZERO TOLERANCE FOR RACISM OF ANY KIND.
The World should institute Sanctions and Boycotts against Racist White Australia - now a worse racist pariah that Apartheid South Africa .
What the NT Aborigines URGENTLY NEED are the SAME services and security obtaining for ALL OTHER AUSTRALIANS - they will NOT receive this under the racists who currently are merely giving them legislated racism, bullying and land theft.
Sound familiar?
I know the Aboriginals, might be able to handle the heat better than some white Australians.
But if you asked those fellas. "Hey! Do you want to sit in a room at 30C or one at 50C", (it was that hot), what do you think they would say? I had traveled that route for nearly thirty years and found similar behavior along the Eyre Highway.
Look maybe this behavior, is a result of a cultural cringe, but the result is the same.
As for the opposition supporting this NT venture, the opposition want the racist yobbo vote as much as any other, they dare not rock the boat. As for whether this legislation being overwhelming positive, let's see what a year will bring.
Is this bill racially specific,
and is there some 'temporary' land grabbing?
Mike
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