Survival Day: White Australia has a Black history

White Australia has a Black history

As often happens at this time of year, in the lead-up to January 26, commentators and activists raised the suggestion that Australia’s national day be moved to a different date.

Writing in the January 21 Sydney Morning Herald, Aboriginal MLA in the ACT legislative assembly Chris Bourke said: “Which nation celebrates its national day on the date it was invaded by a foreign power? … The answer, of course, is Australia.”

January 26 marks the day that Europeans arrived in Sydney Cove in 1788 . Aboriginal people around  the continent – especially in the North - had been receiving visitors from abroad and engaging in trade long before then. But there was something different about Captain Cook and his mob. They weren’t here to trade, they were here to stay, to build a colony on behalf of the British Empire. Aboriginal people were in the way.

Each year on January 26, there is an outpouring of national pride and nationalism. Mainstream politicians  spruik everything that is “great” about Australia.

But, while some may ignore or downplay the ugly side of Australia’s history, there is no escaping the facts: January 26 is the day Aboriginal dispossession began. It marks the beginning of a process of genocide, of land-grabbing, unpaid wages, and the smashing of traditional cultures to replace them with what we now know as Australia. 

Is that worth celebrating? If so, it reveals something of the racism deeply imbedded in Australia’s history.

In Darwin, the Aboriginal Rights Coalition will mark January 26 with a screening of Murundak: Songs of Freedom. In Australia’s north, where colonisation happened much later, many Aboriginal clan groups have been able to hold onto some, if not all, of their land, languages and cultures – although these languages face the serious threat of extinction due to lack of government investment. 

It is perhaps appropriate that in Darwin, January 26 is known as Survival Day, and will be marked with a  celebration of Aboriginal resistance through music. For, indeed, much has survived. Despite all explicit and implicit government attempts to the contrary, Aboriginal Australia remains proud and strong.

In Sydney, where the invasion began, it’s known as Invasion Day, and is commemorated with the annual Yabun festival.

In Hobart this year, the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre is organising a rally to call for a new date for Australia Day.

But whether survival or invasion is the theme, if January 26 is to remain a significant date, it should be the day we formally acknowledge that this country was – and is - built on racism.

Australia is a wealthy country because resource-rich Aboriginal land was stolen ; Aboriginal people were forced to work for little or no wages to establish a booming pastoral industry; rent was never paid and the Stolen Generations never compensated. No wonder the federal government can afford the hundreds of millions of dollars the racist Northern Territory intervention (now insultingly called “Stronger Futures”) is costing.

Bourke pointed out: “We cannot change our history, as much as we might desire it. We cannot ignore our history, because it has made us. But we can change our future.”

Changing the date of the national celebration is an easy, important first step, but there is no indication either of the mainstream parties wants to change Australia’s future, build something we could genuinely be proud of and celebrate.

Dispossession didn’t ever end – January 26 is not simply an historical anniversary, it is a painful and sobering reminder of the racism entrenched in mainstream Australian politics today. 

Aboriginal people are imprisoned at some of the highest rates in the world- rates that are rising as a result of federal and territory government policies in the NT. 

The health burden carried by Aboriginal Australians is shameful: in some communities, Aboriginal people are dying from diseases otherwise eradicated in this First World nation.

Aboriginal men and women die, respectively, 11.5 or 9.7 years younger than their non-Aboriginal  counterparts.

These appalling statistics, and many others like them, are deeply entwined with white Australia’s history: they are the result of what started in 1788 and continues today.

There is an alternative future, one that sees genuine engagement with Aboriginal communities – on their terms: treaties negotiated, reparations paid, original languages and cultures celebrated and protected. It is possible to imagine a future that brings true justice to Aboriginal people. 

But it won’t come from a society that celebrates invasion and dispossession as its national day - and that won’t change unless we, the people with the alternative vision, make it happen.

Indian women say it's time for change

When I was in India 3 months ago, I was quite confronted by the utter male domination of public space. I would often look around a busy street and think "I am the only woman in sight!". When checking into hotels, ordering food etc, I noticed that men (it's always men!) would completely ignore me, talking just to my father, even when I was the one paying, ordering etc.

People tried to assure me it was a sign of respect.

Well, it turns out, a reason Indian women may stay off the streets is because of the alarmingly high risk they face of being raped, murdered, set on fire etc etc. 

According to the all India Progressive Women's Association, while only 50% of rapes are reported, rates of rape have increased 791% since 1971. Meanwhile, conviction rapes for rape have dropped from 41% to 27%.

They have this outrageously demeaning and unscientific procedure called the "two finger test" , which defence teams use in rape cases to argue the survivor was "habituated to sex" - apparently it therefore goes without saying that she consented to the assault.

If that's not enough to dissuade someone from making a report, I don't know what is.

The recent unspeakably horrific gang rape and torture of a  young woman in Delhi, who later died as a result of her injuries, has brought women - and their male suppporters- out onto the streets in their thousands.

Kavita Krishnan, from the All India Progressive Women's Association (AIPWA) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), recently posted on Facebook:

"What will be the touchstone for women's rights in this country? In the vocabulary of some of the media, those for death penalty/castration for rape are pro-women, and those against death penalty/castration for rape are anti-women! That makes the vast majority of women's movement organisations in the country, working amongst thousands of affected women, 'anti-women' by definition, while the BJP which nurtures goon gangs to police the morality of women wearing jeans or celebrating Valentine's Day become 'pro-women'! 
Gender justice needs to be brought and kept in the centre stage of the debate - not 'death penalty vs no death penalty.' To begin with, as Pratiksha Baxi suggests, let us demand that the govt pass an order to get rid of the obnoxious 'two-finger test' that is common in medical examination of a rape survivor, to establish whether or not she is 'habituated to sex'! Get the institutionalised gender bias out of the laws and the investigation mechanisms, and expand the laws to recognise the wide variety of crimes and sexual violence that women face, and usher in stringent punishment for each of those crimes - these will go a much longer way to ensuring justice in every case of rape and sexual assault."

The AIPWA blog has some incredibly beautiful and inspiring photos, posters, placards and poems from the string of protests and vigils that continue to take place across the country.

To all the Indian sisters, thank you for your bravery, strength and fighting spirit. Your struggle is our struggle.

So much is wrong with this world...

... For example, a dentist in Iowa, US, fired his assistant on the basis she was a threat to his marriage.

The woman took him to court on the basis of sex discrimination. The basic question in the case was: ""whether an employee who has not engaged in flirtatious conduct may be lawfully terminated simply because the boss views the employee as an irresistible attraction".

The all-male panel of judges found that bosses can legally fire employees they find "too attractive".

This in the country that has also had 62 mass shootings since 1982. While so much media is focused on tightening restrictions on gun ownership, there is almost no discussion about the links between these killings (always portrayed as "random acts of senseless killing") and the culture in which they happen, the government that tortures innocent people (such as whistle blower Bradley Manning) in Guantanamo and elsewhere, illegally invades other countries and carries out systematic killings of civilians ...

Hypocrisy much,  Obama?

Language, society, disability: thought-provoking article

Today is International Day of People with Disability, and to mark it I wanted to share this article I read a while back which I think might just have swayed my opinion on the issue of "disabled people" vs "people with disability".

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-11-15/young-reporting-it-right/4371912

Well, no, actually, I just cringed when I wrote "disabled people", so possibly I am still equivocating, but Stella young makes a compelling case for the social model of disability - society disables us, we are disabled by a society so focused on physical perfection.

"To say that a person "has a disability" is to say that these barriers are our responsibility. My disability exists not because I use a wheelchair, but because the broader environment isn't accessible.

In my own home, where I've been able to create an environment that works for me, I'm hardly disabled at all. I still have an impairment, and there are obviously some very restrictive things about that, but the impact of disability is less."

I must give it more thought...

Happy reading!

Islamophobia: alive and well in the Top End

Earlier this year, I went to a fancy dress party dressed as a ninja. 

I drove us there, so I guess through the window all people would've seen was a head veiled in black with a slot for the eyes. In the 15-minute drive through Darwin suburb

s, I had a carload of young white men swear at me and give me the finger, another man in another car yell "go home", and third car speed past us while throwing a beer can out the window, which came flying back in our direction. 

Anyone who thinks Australia is not a racist country need only try out this experiment (at the time I wasn't even consciously undertaking an "experiment" but it sure was a wake-up call).

I was pretty shaken by the time I got to the party. This is the daily reality for women who wear the veil in Australia.

Bundi, Rajasthan

The whole point of  going to India was for the 60th birthday of our friend/second godfather Brad, who spends many months each year in India and  wanted to bring his Australian and Indian friends together. The actual party, a completely over the top affair with Maharaja-esque shades, will have to be another post.

Brad suggested we stay at  the Elephant Stables in Bundi, run by a really lovely family. So my dad and I, and Penny and Philip (First godfather), spent a week at this  incredibly ancient, beautiful establishment that felt like a farm oasis in the middle of a town- set just below the palace walls, it indeed was the Maharaja's elephant stable. Whenever this  was mentioned I assumed people were talking about centuries ago (it certainly is an old building), until our host Raj talked about coming there as a boy when his father was the elephant keeper.

The yard was  filled with monkeys, squirrels and birds. It  was beautiful to get up at dawn and watch all the monkeys heading down the hill into town, for a day of whatever it is monkeys do, then practise yoga while my dad went out for his morning chai.

Here are some photos from the Elephant Stables.

Letter from the US: Petraeus sex scandal covers more shocking story

Sick of salacious "scandals" in the mainstream media? Try a reality check from Green Left Weekly

* * *

Sunday, November 25, 2012

By Barry Sheppard, San Francisco

US soldiers in Afghanistan.

The capitalist press has been overloaded with the sex scandal of General David Petraeus, former commander US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and his resignation as head of the CIA.

The story has morphed into something wider, drawing in other high officers.

I’ll return to the saga of the “Real Housewives of the High Command” below, but first I want to discuss a story that has received only scant attention, about one of the grunts who was on the ground in Afghanistan.

Staff Sergeant Dwight L Smith was on Christmas leave last year, and returned home to his family for the holidays. He went out jogging, when he says “something clicked”.

He went back home and got into his Hummer. He decided to kill someone, he later told police. He ran down a 65-year-old woman, Marsha Lee, at random. Witnesses saw him get out of his vehicle, and pick up Lee, injured and screaming, and threw her into the back seat.

Her naked body was found discarded in a wooded area half a mile away. Her head was bashed in with a heavy object. She had been raped.

Then he returned home. His mother said he seemed relatively normal, and they went Christmas shopping that afternoon. He was arrested that evening after police found his bloody Hummer.

Smith’s parents did previously notice his outbursts of anger, throwing laptops, and punching holes in the walls. “I know my child,” his father said. “This isn’t my kid. He was a goofy kid. This isn’t the same man that I sent over.”

What transformed this “goofy kid” into a monster? Two related things.

One was that he suffered a severe concussion in the war. Estimates are that 500,000 US soldiers have suffered concussions and other brain injuries in the wars of aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan.

Stephen Xenakis, a psychiatrtist and retired brigadier general told a New York Times reporter that the army has failed to treat soldiers who have been exposed to blasts. He compares the situation to the runaround soldiers were given for decades about damage from Agent Orange in Vietnam.

The capitalist politicians and military brass do not want to admit the scope of the problem. They want to keep a sanitised image of these wars before the public.

They are fearful that if the public knew the full truth, these wars would become even more unpopular than they already are. That is why they do not help returning soldiers with brain injuries, post-traumatic stress disorder, unemployment, and other problems, to anywhere near the extent of the problems these soldiers face needed.

The result is soldiers running amok (Smith is far from the only one), suicides, depression and other mental problems going untreated. The soldiers are cannon fodder, to use an old expression.

The other thing that transformed Smith is expressed in a letter to his father: “I’m going to be honest with you dad. I have killed a lot of men and children. Some that didn’t even do anything for me to kill them. Also some that begged for mercy.

“I have a problem. I think I got addicted to killing people. I could kill someone go to sleep wake up and forget that it ever happened. It got normal for me to be that way. I never wanted to be this way. I just took my job way too serious. I took things to the extreme.

“Anyone can tell you that I changed. It’s like being a completely different person.”

He did not mention the women he killed, probably out of shame. It is significant that he chose a woman to murder.

His story, while an extreme example, illustrates a truth about wars of occupation. Even if the US soldiers are greeted as “liberators” from an oppressive regime at first (and the idea that they were to be greeted in Iraq and Afghanistan by hugs and kisses and flowers was always a fantasy), the reality soon sets in.

The occupiers become hated by the occupied. The war becomes a war against a people. Resistance grows within the people. They begin to fight the occupiers. The occupiers cannot trust the people, and soon must start kicking down doors to find the “enemy”.

As the “enemy” increasingly is the people, it includes not only men but women and children too. Soon the occupiers are taking part in atrocities. Some go to extremes, while others are just part of regular “search and destroy” missions.

I am reminded of what a soldier told me in 1968 in Vietnam. I accompanied the Socialist Workers Party presidential candidate, Fred Halstead, to Vietnam to talk to the soldiers on the ground about the war.

One soldier, who was fiercely against the war, was anguished. He said when he was in firefights, sometimes women and even children would pull out weapons and open fire on US soldiers. They shot the women and children.

Killing ordinary Iraqis and Afghans, including women and children, and other acts of oppression, affects the mental health of the soldiers.

The politicians and the brass do not want these truths to get out, either.

The fact that Smith suffered a bad concussion and had become inured to killing men, women and children are related.

The resistance fighters do not have tanks, helicopters and jet bombers. They have small arms, including mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and homemade bombs (IEDs in army-speak). In other words, with explosives at short range, that cause concussions.

To turn to the opposite end of the military hierarchy, what do we learn from the Petraeus scandal?

A not-so-minor point is that the whole thing began with what is called a “socialite”, Jill Kelley, who is a friend of Petraeus and others in the high command, informing a friend in the FBI that a woman who turned out to be Petraeus’s mistress, had sent her emails she found to be harassing.

That the FBI agent could then launch highly invasive surveillance of Petraeus’ emails raises the obvious question: if such could be done to the head of the CIA, what about us mere mortals?

I will leave aside the salacious use the media have made of the affair, including the innuendo that the mistress used her wiles to bring down the poor honorable general, a tale that goes back to Adam and Eve.

No one in the media talks about Petraeus’s part in carrying out the huge war crimes of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

What has been exposed is that for years, the Kelleys have been regularly throwing lavish parties not only for Petraeus, but many other top generals. Champagne, caviar, cavorting with socialites — that is how the high command amuses itself while the Sergeant Smiths get blasted by mortars and kill Iraqi and Afghan men, women and children.

[Barry Sheppard was a long-time leader of the US Socialist Workers Party and the Fourth International. He recounts his experience in the SWP in a two-volume book, The Party — the Socialist Workers Party 1960-1988, available from Resistance Books. Read more of Sheppard's articles.]