Summarising Rodney Crisp's incredible worldview.

White people from Britain stole Australia from black people (which is a racist premise) and the descendents of those thieves now owe the descendents of the victims whatever compensation is necessary to ensure that the victim's descendents acquire exactly the same lifestyles as the thieves descendents. Furthermore, Rodney thinks it was sinful for the British (and their descendents) to not immediately give the stone age savages who lived in Australia immediate citizenship with all the rights and privileges that this entailed.

Well, I have a few problems with that analysis.

I accept that the British stole land from the native people (much of it was completely uninhabited), but to claim that the descendents of the British are therefore responsible, I reject entirely. I note that the descendents of the British created what is one of the best countries in the world to live in. I also submit that whatever hardships the aboriginal people suffered during early settlement, the coming of the white man began the process of alleviating the hardships of a stone age existence.

This is just another "the white man owes the black man everything" article which is a racist concept I completely reject. Rodney implies that aboriginal people should be equal to whites because their university graduation statistics prove that they are just as smart as white people. I do not accept that pure blooded aboriginal people have equal intelligence with white people. And that is the real problem of aboriginal dysfunction.

Firstly, the fact that there are blond haired and blue eyed people claiming that they are "aboriginal" is a fact. You can't even speculate as to whether they are really "aboriginal" because of people like Rodney Crisp, who find freedom of speech an impediment to their own particular racist ideology.

Second, one suspects that these "aboriginals" with their free university courses are graduating in are not Science or Engineering, but more likely Artz courses guaranteed to get you a plum non job in the government, so that the government can brag about how many aboriginals and ethnics they hire.

"Wrongs" cannot be righted 200 years later. The only aboriginals who are disadvantaged are those who voluntarily isolate themselves from mainstream Australia.

I've written (several times) over the past 15 years to the British Government...even to HM Herself, asking for an apology regarding their kicking my ancestors off their lands in Ireland & Scotland.

Same goes for my other 'lations who were removed in the 1940's & 1950's (can I say "Stolen" ?) from their homes and sent off to be buggered and raped by the church at various locations.

We've had a PM who has said sorry on behalf of ALL Australians...now let's be adults and get over it and move on !

Well, this guy certainly has no understanding of remote Australia.
His comment about rural and remote aboriginal kids losing access to higher education is way off the mark.
All reasonable sized towns in the north have high schools and TAFE facilities. The Internet has brought distance education into every small community and all children, even the most remote have access to fully qualified teachers.
Towns like Broome and Derby, Katherine and Gove and cities like Darwin and Alice Springs are producing either year 12 graduates or university graduates in the case of the cities.
Unfortunately the numbers are down compared to southern areas but this is nothing to do with lack of facilities, it's everything to do with parents not taking kids to school.
Lost in all this discussion about the educational gap is the fact that white children in these remote areas get exactly the same services as aboriginal kids yet they go on to higher education in the most part. Children of white employees in tiny communities, children living on pastoral leases,white kids living in northern towns all fall under the same educational umbrella yet no one ever talks about disadvantage for them. Yet they succeed anyway.
And just a minor whinge about the issue of not being able to afford a birth certificate. Aboriginal people receive exactly the same amount of money as white people on welfare, yet lack of money to buy a birth certificate is never given as an excuse in their case.
We really have to stop viewing aboriginal people as a different group. These days, their successes outweigh their failures.

The assumption by Rodney and his merry band of bleeding hearts is that the aboriginal populations in remote areas bear no responsibility whatsoever for the situation in which they find themselves.

Yes, the schooling and health in these remote areas is substandard, but what is glossed over is that the cost to the tax payer of providing these services is about 3x the cost of providing schooling and health in the cities partially due to the remoteness of these areas and the physical danger that teachers, nurses and doctors find themselves in discourages anyone other than the most dedicated.

Secondly, even when these services are provided, the attendance levels at school are as low as 50%, and the buildings and equipment are subject to regular theft and vandalism. The recent example of Aurukun is a prime example.

I have an idea, let's tax the net incomes of urban blacks by an additional 25% and use that money exclusively to roll out outback amenities that cater exclusively for traditional indigenous communities?

Housing, schools, hospitals and tafe colleges/universities. With the teachers doctors, nurses and tutors drawn exclusively from the urban black community, even if that requires conscription?

I'm sick of listening to the whinings of a victim mentality, whose real goal is to extract compensation from the descendants of folks like mine, brought here in chains and forced by dint of circumstance to make a go of it the best way they could!

If that impacted negatively on the indigenous population?

This is by no means a new phenomenon here or abroad, given here the first of the first Australians were driven down to tasmania, by other bloodthirsty primitive cultures who followed!?

Who practiced genocide and infanticide?

Perhaps the mainland urban black population could compensate the original Tasmanians for loss of land and sovereignty! Well?

Put a dollar value on mainland australia and pass the hat around? No? I thought not!

To busy with rank nepotism and other incorrigible corrupt practices that disadvantages the folks our generous by the literal billions, aboriginal funding has been aimed at; and in too many cases pissed against a wall!

Compensation? enough already!

Just stop the endless mindless infighting and preventing environmentally safe and sound development and thereby earn the money needed to lift remote indigenous communities out of poverty!

And ensure kids go to school rather than hunting in packs doing incomprehensible harm to the community and their own prospects!

There is only one constant in the entire universe, constant change! You/we need to change with it or just get steam rolled by it when it forces adaptation!
Compensation? Bah Humbug!
Alan B.

Certain people from Britain stole Australia, not only from black people - but from everyone (including from other people from Britain).
Granting special freedoms only to indigenous people and their descendants thus creates great injustice.

The author writes:
"it is totally unrealistic to imagine that the 250 independent aboriginal nations at the time of colonisation could possibly survive in today’s aggressive world".

Prior to British invasion, however, the continent of Australia was free from any such notions of "nation" and "sovereignty" and the above British people are among those most guilty in the first place of creating "today's aggressive world" which depends on those stupid notions.

The author continues:
"It is, however, in everybody’s best interests that we facilitate matters and do whatever we possibly can to assist those of our indigenous peoples who, of their own free will, wish to maintain their traditional cultures and life-styles, and remain as autonomous as possible in remote and very remote areas."

Yes, but why, Oh why, Mr. Crisp, should this freedom and autonomy be reserved to indigenous people alone?

As Justice Dowling correctly held:

"Until the aboriginal natives of this Country shall consent, either actually or by implication, to the interposition of our laws in the administration of justice for acts committed by themselves upon themselves, I know of no reason human, or divine, which ought to justify us in interfering with their institutions even if such interference were practicable."

Yet the same also applies not only to aboriginal natives, but nearly to everyone else because nearly none of us was ever in fact even asked for our consent for this interposition of laws: I know of no reason human, or divine, which ought to justify that British gang in interfering with our lives with their laws.

Fungible ...the exchange of perceived misdeed, for reward, (in this case)! Two fives for a ten. :-)

Rodney really shouldn't have cited Lane, everybody knows he's a dribbling idiot, utterly unreliable, with his own crazed agenda.

But does anybody seriously think that, if Britain hadn't grabbed Australia first, no other colonial power would have touched it ? The French sailed into Sydney just two weeks after Phillip. If it hadn't been the French, in time would the Dutch or Portuguese or Russians have left it alone ? Until 2016 ? We need to get real.

But fortunately, now that Indigenous people now have control of a fifth of the continent, they can return to their traditional ways of life any time.

Speaking of which: Rodney celebrates "the world’s oldest surviving human civilisation". I've never understood what that meant. All human cultures are equally 'ancient', although some have moved on a bit faster than others. And, even if that were not so, since we all came Out Of Africa, including Indigenous Australians, then surely "the world’s oldest surviving human civilisation" is currently in Africa ? All over Africa ? And, incidentally, in southern India ? And Malaya ?

We are all equally human, all equally capable of embracing change and of innovating when necessary, and I'm sure that, given Australia's changing environment over the past sixty thousand years, Indigenous people here have readily innovated, and - dare say it ? - changed some of their cultural practices, perhaps continuously. And, from the historical record, it is clear that Indigenous people changed some of their practices, or readily adopted new ones, very soon after the British arrived, and out of choice.

Joe

It always comes down to MONEY , doesn't it ?

The New Zealand and Mau Mau examples are interesting as they were both Wars , real ones involving large massed troops and in one case a Peace Treaty and the other Independence.

Actually of your four 'issues', the first three are fine, assuming that you mean ALL Australians in Issue #2.

The Issue #4 is rubbish.

"as basic as a one chorded song, with a one word lyric"...more more more more ....Amore that! I can hear the seagulls...mine mine mine mine, me me me me...squork

I completely reject the notion that black people are less intelligent than their white contemporaries! Just surviving in a hostile land requires rare intelligence!

Some of my forbears in northern NSW only survived thanks to the intervention and bush medicine of (smarter)black neighbors! And turned a blind eye therefore to the occassional jumbuck being stuffed in the tucker bag. (dilly bag) And even taught some how to shear sheep and earn an honest quid!

Which assisted peaceful cohabitation!

I'm told I have a small percentage of tasmanian aboriginal blood coursing through my veins? Never used it or relied on it for some perceived advantage, Which likely explains why, when I tan, it starts out as freckles that resembles a mottled beige brown camouflage and why when I passed my final medical exams, (ah me Medic) I managed an average of 98% pass, which broke an unassailable record that that until then stood for 70 years! And made a few young participating ("smarter") doctors STFU!

My ("well tanned") Great Grandma had a prodigious memory, (a sign of equally unusual intelligence) as had other colored folk, who needed to remember everything in light of the fact they had no written language, just the occasional message stick/possum pelt with its unique hyroglifics? I just don't buy that racist crap they are less intelligent! Given none of mine and theirs ever were!

And the best reason for them getting up off of their bulging backsides and helping themselves! Rather than pissing endless sit down money against some wall!?
Alan B.

More!...

Sung in monotone to suit the lyric....

The real first living species, living in the biosphere now called Australia by many, was factually a variety of plant life and surrounding environments, like oceans, forests and deserts for example. Animals lived within these spaces including Koalas, Kangaroos, Dolphins, Whales and a variety of bird life.

So Aboriginal people were not Australia's first settlers, yet I am told constantly the answer is yes. I do have Aboriginal relatives (Nephews and other relations), so please do accuse me of racism.

Humans, did not create Australia at all, but think they own this country regardless, feel they have the right to do whatever they want to Australia, its biosphere and to the animal species that live within it.

The program from last night on the ABC with Andrew Bolt and Linda Burney MP was excellent to watch, with many viewpoints put forward, but as usual the natural environment was left out of the program.

If I was to tear down your home (for financial reasons, like logging) or stab you with a spear (like say a turtle, and let you die in pain (for cultural reasons) does that make it right?

A lot of humans simply say, yes. That itself is very sad.

Let's say it was a family home (to be destroyed) or a family member (to be killed) a lot of humans would say no. That really is a double standard.

G'day there ALAN B...

Of course our indigenous folk are as intelligent as anyone else on this earth of ours, it's just many of them have never had the chance to receive a good education like many of their European counterparts. Many of them are as smart as a whip, but because of a variety of reasons, they can't or don't wish to articulate their case all that well when interacting with any officialdom ?

I was a relieving police sergeant in the NSW bush, and I harboured many preconceived ideas about our blacks, but after mixing with many of them, I soon realised in many matters, they were the teachers, and I, a very poor student. Their greatest weakness in my view, is drugs and alcohol, neither of these two substances are particularly well tolerated by most of them, I've found ?

To Alan B.

If you reject the premise that white Australians generally have higher intelligence than aboriginal Australians, then are you saying that in general, white Australians and black Australians have equal intelligence?

By what evidence do you come to that conclusion? I know that you have written something about aborigines helping early settlers, but that does not equate to equal intelligence, only to the superior local knowledge by aboriginal people of the skills needed for survival within their particular environment.

If a town exclusively populated by white people was known for it's widespread inter generational welfare dependency, the towns residents went on a drunken rampage every time the social security checks arrived, the government was considering a financial method to prevent the towns parents from spending all of their money on grog, ciggies, and drugs instead of feeding their kids, the towns males were noted for their extreme violence towards the town's females, the kids would not go to school, the parents did not care if their kids to school either, the town's kids had a 90% failure rate in NAPLAN testing, and even the town's 6 year old children had to be regularly screened for sexually transmitted diseases, what would you say about the inhabitants of that town?

I think that most people would say that they are all dumb white trash.

But you can't say that about aborigines, can you? It is even illegal to say it. Even though what I wrote pretty well sums up every remote aboriginal settlement where their land has not been heinously "stolen" by white people. So we have to do two things. Firstly, we must judge whites and blacks differently (which is racism). And secondly, we have to pretend that aboriginal people have equal intelligence with whites. But once that conclusion is made, then we have to think up another excuse for aboriginal dysfunction. The only possible explanation must be, that it is all the white man's fault.

Which just happens to be another racist premise. I feel "offended, insulted, intimidated and humiliated" by that.

I always laugh at those that claim that aboriginal civilization is 40 000 years old and the oldest in the world, when there are no records prior to colonization, and even then there was no sign of formal communication, government, buildings, or societal organization beyond a tribal hierarchy. The first step in civilization is generally the development of agriculture and the abandonment of the hunter gatherer lifestyle.

Rodney Crisp that was a well written article, thanks. Though I did lose track when you shifted from your initial frame to another and never returned to the first to blend them together at the end.

@Shadow Minister, you have an unusually rare myopic view of what 'civilisation' and 'government' is for the human race. This may be a result of not ever reading anything worthwhile regarding Australian anthropology, archaeology, and history. Aboriginal tribal nations of Australia had borders, national treaties, free trade, government, laws, courts, heads of state, foreign ministers, pre-colonization records, formal communication, and high levels of societal organization.

When the British arrived they also had a higher stand of living in health, nutrition, wealth, freedom and quality leisure time above all but royalty in Europe. Reading more and speaking less could be the answer.

@LEGOx2, spoken a dinky die racial bigot. You get a C for consistency. Do you perhaps dance around in the dark wearing a white pointy hat with a full face veil too? :-)
I'm curious Lego, how many blog sites, newspapers, social media sites and forums were banned from before you found a home where you belong here on OLO? 100? 200?

@o sung wu, you may be interested in this new law enforcement program
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2016/09/19/4539321.htm
I believe if you looked past the obvious re "greatest weakness in my view, is drugs and alcohol" and learn that that is a symptom and not the dis-ease nor the cause of the systemic 'challenges' that face any people subject to severe trauma, PTSD, coupled with institutionalized discrimination and generational poverty and powerlessness, and then observe the long term family based abuse, neglect, violence, alcoholism upon children across decades the reasons for the 'weakness' would be overt and obvious. What's need is sustained breaking of those family cycles.

Q&As episode touches on that especially Jimmy Barnes who may as well been black instead of Scottish. Childhood caused PTSD isn't racist, but it still lasts a lifetime and is so easily passed on to the next generation.
-

LEGO; If you want to, you can look at official education files that first and foremost, entirely disprove your racist premise on intelligence!

That said and to call a spade a spade, STD's in some indigenous communities is rife and disgraceful! This outcome is assisted by overcrowding and six to a bed sleeping arrangements? And the reason for a singularly high suicide rate and why I agreed with the intervention!

I've met a few white supremacists, one of who was a great chess champion in his own lunch box, was humbled by an aboriginal housewife, who beat him in around three moves in each of the three games he played with her!

And something he couldn't live down, given each time he entered his favorite watering hole a young wag (part of the furniture) recalled his discomfort in a native tongue song accompanied by clicked sticks, a dance of sorts and load raucous laughter!

To be fair I've met a few black supremacists and a few Chinese ones as well! I suppose each ethnicity has its share, with Serbians regarding the Croatians as hugely inferior?

Ditto the Nazis in relation to the Jews! Which reminds me of a story apparently coming out of prewar Germany, Where a timid Jew, needing to eat, tried his luck in a Chinese eatery.

Do you serve Jews here, he inquired? To which the Oriental proprietor replied Yes, what kinda Jews you want, Apple Jews, orange Jews or grape Jews?
Have a nice day.
Alan B.

@Yuyutsu, I think the issue is one of entrenched generational disadvantage. Helping one form of that in a social group is not a denial of every other groups or individuals needs. 'Chewing gum and walking' simultaneously can help grasp the nettle, imo.

@Loudmouth re "the world’s oldest surviving human civilisation".

The world's oldest continuous unbroken in situ still surviving unchanged human culture aka 'civilisation', which is still known by it's people and being practiced today as we speak.

It's the ONLY one and it is 60,000 and possibly 90,000 years old and still going strong. There fixed it for you.

If only Australia had white marble vs sandstone, things may have looked different today. <wink>

Uluru was a 'seat of government' and spirituality and art. I know, been there so I looked for myself. Why waste natural resources when nature gives you what you needed anyway?

@Aspley, is money the most important thing to you too?

@Alan B, you were going great then blew it with the stereotypical myopic insults. Very unfair, untrue distortion of reality of Australian Aboriginals "getting up off of their bulging backsides and helping themselves!" Are you a military man?

Would you tell a schizophrenic or bipolar to get off their backsides and help themselves? No. So why assume even some aboriginal people in dire straits are bludgers refusing to help themselves?

This nation is built on the notion of protecting and helping the sick, frail, young and old, the broken, lost, the lonely, the uneducated, disadvantaged in our community. That is being 'civilised'! To most human beings that's what it means.

You may be listening to the wrong media and politicians. Maybe what they said wasn't really true? Eddie Mabo and Mandawuy Yunupingu were University graduates, not bludgers, nor their kids.

I do not agree with making generalised broadside criticisms or attacks on any group of people, just because it might make those to spruik it feel better about themselves.

I much prefer if people would be specific and accurate in their complaints about others.

I know, I'm dreaming. :-)
-

Hi Thomas,

When you assert that: " .... Aboriginal tribal nations of Australia had borders, national treaties, free trade, government, laws, courts, heads of state, foreign ministers, pre-colonization records, formal communication, and high levels of societal organization..... "

You may need to provide a skerrick of evidence, that the four or five hundred language groups across Australia had:

* established borders: usually, there were no-go zones between groups, even family groups, each fearful that neighbours were ready and willing to invade at all times;

* national treaties: do you mean between neighbouring groups (evidence ?) or by national, do you mean 'nationally' ? Evidence:

* free trade: beyond trade in women ? And 'symbolic' trade, exchange of stone, flint, spear-wood, etc., mainly to keep the peace between neighbouring groups ? Evidence:

* government: do you mean beyond a council of older men to decide who had killed whom by magic ? What government did foragers need ? Evidence:

* laws: see above.

* courts: see above.

* heads of state: do you mean heads of families ? a council of older men ? Your evidence:

* foreign ministers: Your evidence:

* pre-colonization records: Your evidence:

* * formal communication: do you mean smoke signals between groups ? Your evidence:

* high levels of societal organization: complicated family relationships and between related groups and groups related by marriage (hence see above: trade in women), yes. Do you mean something more complex ?

I recommend W. H. Edwards' 'Introduction to Aboriginal Studies', that's a pretty good place to start.

Good luck, it will be a very long journey, Thomas. Some of us have been on it for decades. [Spoiler alert: it never finishes].

Cheers,

Joe

Thomas,

How on earth do you know that the culture practised by Aboriginal tribes is the same as it was 500yrs ago let alone 40 000 yrs ago? This is purely conjecture.

These "nations" we are always hearing were anything from family groups to small tribes, not nations at all.

Hello Thomas,

I suspect you're venturing into dangerous waters, I hope you can swim :)

" ... The world's oldest continuous unbroken in situ still surviving unchanged human culture .... "

Really, where ? Completely unchanged ? Still the same ? No money or ATMs, clothes, houses, Toyotas, TV, Conferences in Hawai'i ?

Uluru is a rock, a dirty big rock, a special place to some desert people, esp. Pitjantjatjara. It was unknown to the great majority of warring groups. And it's a rock, not somehow a 'seat of government'.

In your response to Alan, are you assuming that Aboriginal people are in similar situations to the mentally ill ? No more than other Australians, in my opinion. Therefore as entitled, and as obliged, to work.

As you say, " ... This nation is built on the notion of protecting and helping the sick, frail, young and old, the broken, lost, the lonely, the uneducated, disadvantaged in our community."

I totally agree, but if the cap doesn't fit ......

Why assume Aboriginal people are all those things ? Currently, there are sixteen thousand Indigenous people, maybe seventeen, enrolled at universities. There are currently around forty thousand graduates, one in every nine or ten adults, in fact one in every seven women. And those numbers grow healthily every year.

You may be in love, you may want to help, but please don't play the 'incapable' card. My dear wife was Indigenous, my kids are Indigenous, and I don't recognise them in your descriptions. Find out a bit more and get real.

Cheers,

Joe

Shadow Minister's comments on civilisation are correct. Aboriginals never had the trappings of civilization; and that is not a put down. They were Stone Age people when British settlers arrived. This talk of nations and civilisation in a unnamed land is pure nonsense. The ancients were the first to be civilised, or to create civilisation. The totally unknown peoples of an unknown and undiscovered land remained in the Stone Age until civilized people came along, no matter how long they had been here. That is a simple fact.

'afternoon to you THOMAS O'REILLY...

Things have changed somewhat since I was a relieving sergeant, whereas it appears Bourke is now the most troublesome town in Western NSW, it was Wilcannia where I spent about five weeks relieving, and they certainly had a lot of drama thereat, with most store windows boarded up in the main street.

Your comments have far more insight and gravitas than mine, I can only describe what it was that I found when dealing with young blacks in the bush as a copper. Suicide was always very high when I worked out there, especially with young blokes, with many of them had come from dysfunctional families, with Dad in boob, mum nowhere to be found, with one of the Aunties looking after the younger kids. Again I cannot overemphasis the deleterious effect booze had on many of these families, and those with a bit of spare cash, drugs as well.

Both substances had the capacity to effectively, be the complete ruination of an entire family unit, whether it was alcohol, drugs or both ! That is unless someone intervened quickly enough, before they were all completely off their heads, and you'd need to lockup the entire family for various offences, and the following morning they'd probably have little or no memory of what they'd done ?

An absolute disgrace and a national shame on this country, and those maggots who unlawfully peddled these substances to these people, knowing the destructive effect it can have on them ! Give 'em ten years first offence for 'supply' a 'proscribed substance' (alcohol in a scheduled 'dry' area & drugs) to an 'indigenous individual'.

Hi ttbn,

Yes, often even in the Bible, the word is used to mean extended families. After all, it originally meant 'those related by birth': 'natus'.

Yes, depending how far down one wants to go, there could have been ten thousand or more extended families across Australia, and still might be. Amongst the Ngarrindjeri of the lower Murray and Lakes, there were around 140 such groups, across a large area and in good country, so each group controlled a relatively small area, from ten square miles, say, up to fifty or a hundred square miles.

But it was hardly static. Some groups faded out if they had few kids. Big groups invaded the country of small groups. Larger groups split and took over new territory. Groups moved in from the dry country east to force their way to the River. Groups amalgamated. Groups migrated around the general area if there was unused space. So, constant change.

So the use of the word 'group', [or worse, 'tribe'] can mean an entire language group, one of the dialect groups within it, or extended families within one of those dialect groups. But even at the highest level, there could have been four or five hundred separate language groups.

If anybody wants to call them 'nations', okay, go for it. Let's assume people are silly enough to go down this pointless path: anticipate bitter brawls between neighbouring groups over borders, and even over who 'belongs' to which group. And for what ? There's another twenty or thirty years pissed away fighting over an empty box, a new magic bullet that delivers nothing. I'll be long gone by then.

And I think, so will be any united Indigenous entity. After all, how does such manufactured differentiation promote unity of any sort ? And every year, the percentage of Indigenous people who are urban goes up one or two %, and is currently around 75 %. i.e. people born, bred and spending their lives and careers in towns and cities, as is their right. Whatever policies are devised must suit their needs too.

Cheers,

Joe

Civilisation. Aboriginals often fed starving British Christian gun men who stole the continent to teach convicts not to steal.

Bunya festival: " As the fruit ripened, locals, who were bound by custodial obligations and rights, sent out messengers to invite people from hundreds of kilometres to meet at specific sites. The meetings involved ceremonies, dispute settlements and fights, marriage arrangements and the trading of goods. The Aborigines’ fierce protection of the trees and recognition of the value of the timber, led to colonial authorities prohibiting settlers from cutting the trees in the 1842. The resource was too valuable, and the aboriginals were driven out of the forests along with the ability to run the festivals. The forests were felled for timber and cleared to make way for cultivation.( er..civilisation).

In what was probably Australia's largest indigenous event, diverse tribes – up to thousands of people – once travelled great distances (from as far as Charleville, Dubbo, Bundaberg and Grafton) to the gatherings. They stayed for months, to celebrate and feast on the bunya nut. The bunya gatherings were an armistice accompanied by much trade exchange, and discussions and negotiations over marriage and regional issues. "

Hmmm...Mabo brand washing powder - great for the coloureds...devastating on the whites !

Thankfully the noble British benefactors were able to save the miserable natives from La Perouse and the French tyrants. The helpless tribes nearly suffered this fate:
The government's contingency plans laid down that the King would go to Chelmsford if the French landed in Essex, or to Dartford if they landed in Kent, along with the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary. Lord Cornwallis would be in command of the reserve army. The Royal Arsenal artillery and stores and the Ordnance Board's powder magazines in Purfleet, would be put on the Grand Junction canal to the new ordnance depot at Weedon, Northamptonshire. Soldiers would be paid in gold instead of paper money. The Bank of England books would be sent to the Tower of London and its treasure would be entrusted to Sir Brook Watson, the Commissary General, who would transport it in thirty wagons (guarded by a relay of twelve Volunteer escorts) across the Midlands to join the King at Worcester Cathedral. The Stock Exchange would close and the Privy Council would take charge in London. The press would be forbidden from printing troop movements and official government communiqués would be distributed. If London fell to the French, the King and his ministers would retreat to the Midlands and "use the final mainstays of sovereignty – treasure and arms – to keep up the final struggle".
God saved the king.

People ask: "How on earth do you know that ....?"

Um, I can read. I do um, research. I listen to aboriginal people, for like, um, decades. I ask questions. I have a good memory. You know, stuff like.

As to 'evidence,' I don't need to prove a damned thing here to anyone. If you're not interested in doing your own research and study then that's your problem what you believe and think. Not mine.

How many aboriginal nations are there in Australia?

Aboriginal people inhabited the whole of Australia and Torres Strait Islanders lived on the islands between Australia and Papua New Guinea, in what is now called the Torres Strait. There were over 500 different clan groups or 'nations' around the continent, many with distinctive cultures, beliefs and languages.
Our people | australia.gov.au
www.australia.gov.au/about-australia/our-country/our-people

http://aiatsis.gov.au/research

http://nationalunitygovernment.org/pdf/aboriginal-australia-map.pdf

https://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/selfdetermination/aboriginal-nations-declaring-independence#toc1

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Map_of_New_South_Wales_as_occupied_by_the_native_tribes.jpg

http://www.indigenousinstyle.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/aus_map_covered_text_lined.jpg

http://www.abc.net.au/indigenous/map/

It's not very hard to find stuff ... but you'll never never know if you never never go.

http://scholar.lmgtfy.com/?q=australian+aboriginal+studies+Torres+anthropology+archeology+history

First Australians chronicles the birth of contemporary Australia as never told before, from the perspective of its first people. First Australians explores what unfolds when the oldest living culture in the world is overrun by the world's greatest empire.
http://www.sbs.com.au/firstaustralians/

This series is an introduction to Aboriginal culture and society for upper primary and lower Secondary school students.
http://www.abc.net.au/tveducation/nations/

I had a brother-in-law called Paddy, and he didn't know nuffin' about Irish history. Being Irish didn't make him an expert on nuffin' except for drinkin' Guinness, his favourite past-time lol

Oh boy, it's not like I am really smart or better than anyone else here, you know. I just know what I know. I can't unknow it, so sorry. :-)

I'm not here to argue or debate or to prove anything. Make up your own minds.
-

Dear Thomas,

«'Chewing gum and walking'»

Rather, chewing a very old gum that has already completely softened to the point of shapelessness; along with not-as-old gum that still has a few solid spots of resistance here and there.

What sense is there in having those who have been oppressed by the regime for only 100's of years, be privileged above those who have been oppressed by the same for 1000's of years? If they alone are to be set free, then who will remember the others? Where is your compassion for the "white" oppressed?

We now have urban aboriginals which themselves have willingly joined the ranks of our oppressors (Stockholm syndrome?) to become part of the Australian regime - so many aboriginals are now on its payroll on fat government posts, shamelessly living off our stolen tax-money and a few even made it to its top to become legislators over us, aboriginal and non-aboriginal alike.

If you want special freedoms for aboriginals, then let everyone be allowed to declare themselves "aboriginal" without discrimination based on colour and ancestry!

«This nation is built on the notion of...»

Alas, you too acknowledge the concept of "nation" and feel part of it.

This nation of yours has not invented young and old age and frailty, all perfectly natural, but it has created sickness, brokenness, lostness, disadvantage and especially heaps of loneliness. As for education, it renders people "uneducated" by constantly raising the bar - what need have you for the kind of "education" that they offer if you are to live freely in the bush anyway?

I'll just address one issue. The claim that aboriginal culture is the longest living surviving culture today.
Both my sons went through full initiation in the bush. For all boys and young men, initiiation is followed by annual ceremonial events, carried out at the time a new group of boys is being initiated. The post initiates are taught about the old ways,the continuing laws and culture and all their obligations and rights within that system. It's an ongoing educational process that takes about 6 or 7 years until they reach their final stage and are declared men, and allowed to marry.
My sons attended the annual educational sessions and ceremonies for a few years but by mid teens had stopped going. As adults they attended only a few and when I asked why the lack of interest they said that the law was broken, the elders were frequently too drunk to remember what they were supposed to be teaching so just made stuff up. Every year the law was changing.
So, even if we accept that technology is going to be absorbed into aboriginal life, we also have to accept that the spiritual aspect of the culture, the ancient laws thousands of years old have been lost and will never be regained.
The culture that was living 200 years ago is well and truly dead.

Big Nana, hi. re "the longest living surviving culture today." Yes, I hear you and what you say is no doubt true. Sad but true.

When I say things like that I mean it in a grand historical sense globally compared with all other cultures ever known, emphasis on the longest ever up to the modern time, not 'today' as in right now.

From what I know you'd only need to go back 50 years or before WW2 when many of the traditions and law were still alive.

Save what good parts of value your people can Big Nana. 2,000 years after the Greeks were gone what was saved in knowledge/wisdom became really useful again.

A while ago there was some carbon dating done on art works and/or middens that indicated aboriginals here 90,000 years ago. But as a one off it was scientifically hard to be certain. There are also several sites with rock art works that have been documented really well over several decades and their locations not publicly disclosed.

"If you have story, heart, speak for it, stand for it."

(can't recall who said that, but he was an elder and wise.)

To Alan B.

The idea that different groups of human beings, who have evolved separately and in isolation to conform to particular and very different environments, must therefore be equal in every way, including physical abilities, mental abilities and personalities, appears to me to be quite absurd. In physical abilities alone, black people's skin is more evolved to survive in sunny climates, while white people's skin is more evolved to give a survival advantage in cold climates. But I am sure that people like yourself would even deny that if you could get away with it.

I think that races have different levels of intelligence, and different types of intelligences, and that seems to have been proven by the excellent scientific work by cognitive metricians summarised brilliantly in the book "The Bell Curve." It can be also be discerned through open and impartial observation. If you have any scientific evidence, or even a good argument, supporting your position (which seems to be that races are equal in every way) then please feel free to submit it.

On the subject of white supremacy, I have good reason to believe that Asians are in general, smarter than whites. Therefore, I must be an Asian supremacist.

As a young trendy lefty, I was forced to choose between two racist and classist arguments. The first racist argument was, that all races are equal, except the white race, which is the most evil race that has ever existed, and which is responsible for the dysfunctions of every other race. Added to that argument, was the one that said that "classes" of people do not exist, and that everybody in society is equal.

The second racist argument was, that people are different. Races are generally different, in physical abilities, mental abilities, and personalities. And within races, "classes" of people do exist, because differing levels of intelligence, and differing types of intelligences, creates different types of skill specialisation, and different types of status, according to the needs of any society for any particular type of skill.

I think that the second argument is far more credible.

The longest living culture is African. There are artefacts etc dating back 100 000s of years, and rock paintings in France pre date anything found in Aus.

.

Dear LEGO,

.

Unfortunately, I don’t have time to comment in detail but suggest you read the following on “The Bell Curve” :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve#Academic_reception

You might also like to read the following article on the concept of human “race” by R.C. Lewontin, Professor Emeritus of Zoology at Harvard University, which I find honest and unbiased :

http://raceandgenomics.ssrc.org/Lewontin/

I have to rush off now, back next week …

.

The UK has only been a nation for 400 years with a united crown in Captain Cook's century. Oz was separate colonies a century ago with many living in bark huts before that. The Churches had rituals quite different then and Prods didn't really exist before the first Elizabeth. Yet all these claim their ancient heritages. The Puritans were suppressed by the British and survived in a land west of British Ireland and are OK now.
Today the Bunjil and Ringbalin ceremonies continue in changed form but still real.

Hi Rodney. How's gay Pareee? Keeping out of the Muslim areas for your own safety, I hope?

I was aware of the fire storm of criticism from left wing academia at the time of the publication of "The Bell Curve." The best one was in "Scientific American." Anyone who dares to deny the infallible logic of racial equality is going to be shown the instruments of torture by the Thought Police, and told to shut up. The book was criticised in every way imaginable but one. Unlike the authors of "The Bell curve", no left wing cognitive metrician is ever going to produce data that proves that all races are equal in intelligence. They won't even try, because no matter how much they deny it, they know that the conclusions of "The Bell Curve" were correct. It's bit like the Church and Darwin. They knew he was right, but they could never admit he was right. To do so would encourage doubt in their infallible, morally ascendant, and absolutist ideology.

I have read "The Bell Curve" twice and I find the authors credible, even handed, (they even submit their opponents arguments and use logic to refute them) and their conclusions fair and reasonable.

I read through your last link and laughed out load. It is a perfect example of "baffle them with bullshiit." It basically says that races do not exist. Could you please tell the aborigines that they can not have any special treatment because their race does not exist?

Could I make an observation here? Race exists among leftists when they want it to exist, and race does not exist when it is convenient for leftists to deny it.

To any person familiar with recent history, the concept that races do not exist equates very closely to the socialist ideal that classes do not exist. But races most certainly do exist, and classes most certainly exist also. As a young man, one of the first inconsistencies I recognised in the socialist ideology was that the people claiming that classes did not exist, were very class conscious themselves.

All drivers are equal , some have Toyotas and some don't.
LEGO where are you going? The dominant race is the standard for the lesser races? Property owners control parliament excluding renters?
The monarch is top of the food chain?

There is an interesting article in today's Australian, page 3, on a DNA study of Indigenous Australians and Papua-New Guineans, in connection with their 20,000-year journey between Africa and PNG-Australia (which of course they would have been oblivious of, moving maybe a kilometre a year in all directions, back towards Africa, towards central Asia, Europe, etc., and occasionally in the general direction of India, Malaya and PNG-Australia.

The article suggests that people arrived here (i.e. on the PNG-Australian-Tasmanian island called 'Sahel') around 50,000 years ago, and separated into different groupings of people at around 37,000 years ago.

Then the ice Age hit about 30,000 years ago, sea-levels fell, the climate dried out, which means that of course people had to change their hunting and gathering techniques to account for the harsher environment. Then, after the end of the Ice Age, 12,000 or so years ago, PNG, Australian mainland and Tasmania separated as the sea-level rose higher than before the Ice Age started, and the climate changed again to something warmer and wetter. So of course, people's foraging techniques changed again: drier areas could be re-populated once more.

Probably the Indigenous population was much more numerous before that Ice Age, then fell to a fraction of that during the 20,000 years of the Ice Age, to rebound again and stabilise, more or less, at around 250,000, as it was when Europeans arrived.

The periodic droughts would have wiped out populations regionally while other areas may have been favoured. Re-population of emptied areas would have taken some time. After all, the key feature would have been the fertility of the women: their value was exploited by their exchange between groups.

I'm betting that across most of drier Australia, Indigenous men's DNA was/is very similar across each location but women's was very varied. But that might have been countered by a more equal distribution in the more productive areas, around coasts, ranges with permanent water and rivers.

Fascinating !

Joe

Joe, watching an interview with the professor involved with that study I was struck by his emphasis on how different was the DNA of aboriginal'people in the north and north west to aboriginal,people down south and east. He said the difference was as large as would occur between American Native Indigenous and Siberian Indigenous.
Given that study used DNA samples from modern people and only a few samples used, it would not be out of question surely that people along the north west coast had DNA from interacting with Malay and Indonesian who used to camp along the coast each dry season whilst fishing for trepang.
I know I have grandchildren who are the result of a Tiwi Island woman loaned to a group of Malay fishermen for a season in exchange for goods.

NNN,

When has aboriginal Aus ever been a united nation?

@Shadow Minister: "The longest living culture is African, 100,000 cave paintings."

Sorry I cannot comprehend why you do not understand the important difference between that and "the longest continuous human culture/civilisation ever to exist" which extended into the 20th century ?

There is no single identifiable 'African culture' that has existed continuously into the modern era or as long as the Aboriginals have in Oz. This isn't a trick, it's proven, so why are you saying such things? I do not get it.

SM: "When has aboriginal Aus ever been a united nation?"

What is the problem here, or you're simply trolling for effect? I have no idea which it is. Why can you not see what was said? Genuine experts over 200+ years who have done the work and published their research.

It's simple - 200 to ? separate defined territorial 'nations' with set borders, made up of different clans/tribes etc of ONE CULTURE/CIVILISATION.

eg Western civilisation is ~2,500 years old, is spread across the entire world, speaks multiple languages from Greek to Spanish, and includes ~100 (?) separate nations today from Russia to Australia and Europe to South America. This isn't hard to understand, surely?

@LEGO: "I think that the second argument is far more credible." Hypothetical thought experiments can be fun, entertaining. Pleasant way to wile away one's time. Enjoy it.

@Loudmouth, the DNA movements etc is very old news. Eventually it sometimes gets in the newspapers as 'new news.'

@Yuyutsu, @Loudmouth, @ttbn - oh if only facts were simple and could fit on a postage stamp.

Thomas said pg3 "Childhood caused PTSD isn't racist, but it still lasts a lifetime and is so easily passed on to the next generation."

It would also work better in 'communication' if people slowed down to see what others say, or assuming they have and building Strawmen Fallacies to knock down imagining they made a valid poin but didn't.

I suggest have another go, start at the beginning and read it all again (slowly/calmly) if you're actually interested.

-

@Loudmouth: "are you assuming that [all?] Aboriginal people are in similar situations to the mentally ill ?"

NO. Only those that actually are. You're generalising/assuming again, not me.

@Loudmouth: "Why assume Aboriginal people are all those things ?"

I didn't. RU assuming I did? Did you read what I said carefully?

@Loudmouth: "My dear wife was Indigenous-don't recognise them in your descriptions."

Of course not. I was not talking about your family, obviously! Assuming? Maybe, read it again?

Domestic Violence especially parental violence and verbal abuse upon their own children, alcoholism, entrenched poverty, psychopathic little-Hitlers and narcissistic parents, parental irresponsibility, bad choices, gambling addictions, drug abuse, child sexual abuse, marriage breakdown, infidelity, lying, cheating, Psychological/mental illness can all cause Trauma in life and it is not distributed upon RACIAL grounds.

These are all parts of the HUMAN CONDITION - count your blessings if you have never been touched by these in your life.

Here's some tips for anyone genuine:

Read Jimmy Barnes new autobiography and Billy Connolly's.

Read the original material on the RC into Child Sexual Abuse site.

Learn about Damien Rider's experiences as a child http://vimeo.com/141523955?from=outro-embed
and others http://youtu.be/NB0wSxdqi40 and http://www.theriderfoundation.com

One's RACE is irrelevant - many more 'Australians' are struggling with childhood caused PTSD and it's effects than Aboriginal or Military Aussies are.

Because 'Australians' is the largest identifiable 'group'!

All need help and support not matter what race, where they live, or what or who caused the original trauma - Jail is not a solution.

Screaming at people on the TV or on internet forums to "pull your bloody socks up and get on with it you bludger " is not a solution.

Here's some 'arts' to lift the tenor of this discussion, and just maybe break through some discriminatory racial blind spots and blame games?

Yolngu Mandawuy Yunupingu BA PhD A.C. 1993 Aussie of the Year
- "We don't own mother earth, the earth owns us." -

Tribal Voice http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ-hbpWlXNQ

Djäpana http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG-CNqOhO2c

Treaty http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7cbkxn4G8U

Dots on the Shell http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKWHEfwOEnc

Wiyathul http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8-YMpYbRqY

Dead Heart http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16bFBzx7I_0

Truganini http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcxdbZ5chcc

Solid Rock http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf0_m5oZW7c

Sounds Of Then http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML9h3I5Uktw
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Thomas,

Repeating a baseless assertion even in CAPITAL LETTERS does not make it any less ludicrous.

The definition of civilization - "A relatively high level of cultural and technological development; specifically : the stage of cultural development at which writing and the keeping of written records is attained." - would tend indicate that none of the aboriginal nations ever achieved a level of development that could be called civilization.

Secondly, as any anthropologist could tell you, is that writing, literature, and art are the main ways of passing culture from one generation to another, and without these mainstays of civilization, tribes and cultures develop grow and disappear to be replaced with new cultures constantly. There is no evidence that the aboriginal cultures as discovered by the settlers bore any resemblance to the cultures even a millennia ago.

So to claim that the 500 odd tribes throughout Aus whose cultures differ broadly between each other all date back unbroken to a culture 40 000 yrs ago is politically correct twaddle.

Hi Thomas,
Your suggestion that there was one Aboriginal culture which is " .... "the longest continuous human culture/civilisation ever to exist" which extended into the 20th century .... " needs some elaboration, apart from the obvious comment that all human cultures are equally long, changing or not.

No two Aboriginal groups practised/practises the same culture, but I'll defer to Big Nana on that.

' .... the longest continuous human culture .... " - do you mean the longest unchanging culture ? The most static culture in the world ? That may be true: Aboriginal foragers had the horrific misfort6une to be cut off from the rest of the world for so long, apart from the South-East Asian trepang and pearl-shell and sandalwood traders along the north coast, just in the past few hundred years.

For good or ill, the rest of the world was, for sixty of those seventy thousand years since people left Africa, still (sooner or later) in touch with any innovations derived on the African-Asian-European land mass - the agricultural revolution, the switch from stone to bronze to iron, the multifarious exchange of knowledge, much more sophisticated trading systems, etc. Aboriginal people missed out on all of these ideas.

So yes, they may been practising the world's oldest unchanging cultures (by the hundreds) anywhere in the world without any inflow of new ideas, not even from PNG. But I see that as a curse, not a blessing.

Sorry.

Cheers,

Joe

Shadow
Was Australia a united nation? No. Never was and Europe never has been. Nor north America, south America , India ( including under Britain), Asia or Africa. Greenland was but Antarctica not. Fiji has been . Ancient Greece never was except by force for 9 years.. They had city states with direct democracy. Germans were civilised but never united until 40 years before WWI which de-civilised the European tribes.

Taplin (1879, p. 34) estimates that there were eighteen territorial clans or Lakalinyeri that constituted the Ngarrindjeri ‘confederacy’ or ‘nation’. ( South Australia). Each territorial clan was administered by a group of ten to twelve men or elders, referred to as the Tendi. The Tendi from each clan collectively elected the Rupulli or the head of the entire Ngarrindjeri confederacy. [...] Thus, the Ngarrindjeri were landowners who had a centralised and hierarchical government to administer the laws of the confederacy and its eighteen independent territories. " Hunter-gatherer social complexity at Roonka Flat, South Australia"._ ( F Donald Pate 2006).

" Or, to put it another way, endemic and rampant Euro-tribalism hampers the creation of a viable European Union. There are many tribes in the EU, but there is no such thing as a European tribe. Thus, while India is composed of numerous tribes, they do come together as one Indian tribe under certain circumstances – eg a cricket match! "_ ( Forbes.com )

Thomas O...Mr Manduway Yunupingu had a nice causeway and recording studio built for his "private island"...all paid for by Rio Tinto so they could get at the Bauxite to feed the Gove Alumina plant.

Meanwhile, his brothers and sisters lived in the same conditions they were in previously...so much for equality blah blah blah. He may have done some great things, but like so many other "hoomans" (black/white/bridle) in history, the $$$ he skimmed off from royalties could have been better accounted for.

Joe, you are correct about the cultures being different between areas. There were multiple differences from whether men are circumcised or not, how many skin groups a tribe developed, art type, language, dance, etc.
For instance, the didgeridoo belongs to parts of northern Australia but not the Kimberley. Dug out canoes belonged to some places whilst others used log rafts.
You get the gist.
And I agree that the stagnant culture was a curse not a blessing. They were the only race to never evolve past the Stone Age. Even small changes, like discovery of pottery could have brought enormous benefit because that would have enabled a form of water storage. Or food preservation, like salting or smoking could have helped in times of drought and poor seasons.
Whilst anthropologists may drool over access to a culture that truly represents Stone Age the lack of innovation meant continuation of a very hard, short and sometimes painful life for most people.

Hi Nick,

Taplin was talking mainly about one dialect group of the Ngarrindjeri, the Jaralde, who occupied the regions around the Narrung Peninsula, and the lower Lakes Alexandrina and Albert. Even then, his use of the term 'lakalinyeri' [plural: 'lakalinyerar'] seems to have referred to groupings of clans, perhaps post-settlement. One grouping, east of Lake Albert, seems to have included perhaps a dozen 'clans', family groups, most with the same dingo totem.

Berndt and Berndt (1993) listed close to a hundred 'clans', including half a dozen on the southern Adelaide Plains alone which their informant, Albert Karloan, claimed as Ngarrindjeri (there would be much dispute about that). By 1860, there may have been many more, particularly north of Lake Alexandrina around Strathalbyn and along the Bremer and Angas Rivers. Those clans may have joined others nearby. Some of the Tangane (Coorong) clans may also have amalgamated.

The upshot is that there were perhaps a hundred, perhaps many more, land-holding groups amongst the Ngarrindjeri, each guarding its boundaries closely.

As for the Tendi, or older men, it met to decide who had killed whom, since death was not seen as natural except for old women and young children: men had to present their ngadungis (voodoo dolls) to see if they had been burnt recently, a sign of ill intent. Sometimes enemies exchanged ngadungis and carefully dismantled their own.

The old men in each 'clan' would have had the last word on the exchange of women between groups. That was about it. There was no Ngarrindjeri-wide council - battles between dialect groups, yes: most groups regularly fought the Coorong tribes. So 'a centralised and hierarchical structure'? There is no evidence of one: no clan would have submitted to any over-arching 'hierarchy': each was master of its own land. Sorry.

Joe

Loudmouth
Probably they didn't talk , just grunted and picked up democracy from the colonial governor. The Rupulli was nobody but the dingo with the most pups.

The Karo-Bataks of Sumatra hold that man has a tendi, a begu, and a body. The first disappears at death; the body perishes; the begu survives.
Old Javanese ( 800-1300 AD).: tendas
1. head
2. a kind of tax (per head?)
Old Javanese lewu "very, in a high degree, violent ".

Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/96 ...

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:The_Native_Tribes_of.../96
May 10, 2012 -
A seat in the tendi is called "tendi lewurmi," the judgment seat. All offenders are brought to this tribunal for trial.

Here is the Ngarandjeri term "ngarampar" meaning "secrets". Sumatra was a Buddhist centre 1000 years ago. Ngarampa means the elders' camp and an elder's title on the Darling river.

" Lun newalengk ngrattin angk nammuldi tungarar inye nganuwe ngrampar mant lu:ku kringkarir . So we learnt to hide our language and secrets from white man ."
tungarar " language " .
inye nganuwe :Our
ngrampar : secrets.

The Three Boys: And Other Buddhist Folktales from Tibet
https://books.google.com.au/books?isbn=0824830792
Yeshi Dorjee,John S. Major - 2007
;... studies, leading to the degree of Geshe Ngarampa (the Buddhist equivalent of a PhD).
Tibetan Buddhist Monks Visit to East Lansing :: The Monks
artmuseum.msu.edu/exhibitions/online/monks/monks.html
In 1995 in front of 400 Monks, he gave both the Sutra and Tantra treatise in a Debate Exam and received his first division certificate, the Ngarampa Degree, ...

Lake Eyre is Kati Thanda "meeting place of bosses".
Old Javanese kuti (Skt hut, cottage) Buddhist monastery.
tanda : headman.
tantu (Skt a succession of sacrificial performances; ) fixed order, establishment of the world order (the world = Java); established holy place

@Albie Manton, http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well I'm not going there, I'll stick with what I said thx.

@Loudmouth, Big Nana I believe you are suffering a 'Yardstick Deficit' and tunnel vision/myopia.

eg "the stage of cultural development at which writing and the keeping of written records is attained"

And who said that? Writers of course - kind of a self-fulfilling self-referencing standard yes?

re ".. writing, literature, and art are the main ways of passing culture from one generation to another, and without these mainstays of civilization"

Writing and literature are the same things - they use 'technology' to convert verbal communication language linguistics thought into something else. At there core is intelligent communication - the aboriginals had that in spades for 60,000+ years.

They also had "art" in multiple forms. I believe you are grabbing at straws. Their stories, their landscape, their art, their rituals, all handed down and down was their form of "writing" as valid as anyone else. iow they had a known "recorded history" and a recorded Law/Lore, and culture, and rules and organiations and instituions essentially the same as the Europeans, Native Americans, Incas, Egyptians etc - the significant difference is they also had profoundly wise cultural survival instincts or wisdoms in all they did and they passed those on tribe ot tribe generation to generation.

Things as obvious as secret mens and womens business is there, and spirituality, and morals and a code of life. It's in Bullroarer, and dance, and at their middens and in the landscapes that their knowledge is 'recorded' just as writing can do. They used sticks in the dirt to "write" communication, that it wasn't a carved in rock or written on paper and filed in the national archives is irrelevant, they still "wrote/drew/marked and counted things and shared that knowledge info.

Now some other yardsticks:
They did not destroy their environment

did not engage in slavery

did not trade in opium

did not send gunships up the Yellow River to hold the Emperor to ransom for making opium illegal for killing his people.

-

Aboriginal Peoples did not invade other nations/cultures.
did not rape and pillage for fun
did not have endless wars
did not create nuclear arms
did not send missionaries to convert anyone to anything
did not invade New Guinea
did not steal others gold
did not wipe out whole civilisations with small pox and the flu
did not do a single thing to add to AGW/CC
did not destroy their own land / food / shelter eg Easter Island, even if they could make large stone statues, they still starved to death or whatever.
did not build gas chambers to murder 6+ million people for 'sport' and an insane belief system.
did not use chemical weapons on their own kind
did have death rituals such as cutting out the hearts of living people to please the 'gods'

They may have fought now and then, that's human, but they maintained a respect for each other and for all Life.

Their 'initiations' are similar to Freemasonary and other Initiation wisdom ceremonies. Important Universal not racial psychological spiritual business.

They were sane rational caring responsible as a race and individually relative to all other "civilisations".

Above all - they SURVIVED and they THRIVED - they didn't merely pursue happiness, they were HAPPY and in harmony with Life, nature, spirit, love for each other for over 60,000 years until the white man cometh.

Look what has been done in "our name" in that short time - having the "internet" and a BMW does not mean we are "more civilised" than before.

The Greeks barely lasted 3 centuries!
The Chinese and Egyptians about 50+ centuries?
The Aboriginals have lasted 600 Centuries in harmony!

So who is really the more civilised culture and longest one to ever survive on this blue dot?

The Ancestors should be, must be, HONOURED. Never to be forgotten for this unique human achievement and this GIFT of WISDOM at our fingertips now.

Meanwhile the truly 'uncivilized' world continues to destroy themselves in insane wars and worse, to even to destroy all life to satisfy their Greed and their EGOS.

-

In the stone age they built "Stonehenge" or whatever the name was that the religious civilisation gave it. Who knows , there was no writing and probably no wheels.
Organisation built the Brewarrina fish traps and loads of stone from it filled many wagons for colonial farms. There is evidence of eel smoking ovens in Victoria which suggests trade . It's known that Melbourne green-stone axes were traded as far as Bourke. Today the Ringbalin ceremony is organised as in the past for people from south Qld along the river to Adelaide. That's in 4 states which is near enough to being federal.

To Thomas O'Reilly.

Your last post in which you claimed that the aboriginal race is morally superior to every other race, is not only racist, it is so off the mark it is hilarious.

The aboriginal people in Australia were unable to create a civilization because of the unique environment in Australia. In order to create a civilization, the very first prerequisite is to have a reliable food supply. The aboriginal people could never acheive this, because there are no herdable animals nor croppable flora in Australia. The aborigines were therefore condemned to live forever at the level of the hand to mouth existence.

That is the lowest level of human existence, and for you to present that as a virtue, shows how desperate you are to think up something, anything, to defend your ridiculous worldview.

Without civilization, the aboriginal people simply did not need to evolve the higher learning abilities of their brains. You don't nede to be too smart to be a hunter gatherer. You don't need a Stonehenge to define the seasons because you don't grow crops anyway.

If the Australian aborigines had had cattle, sheep, goats and chickens, as well as rice, wheat, oats, sorghum,apples, and oranges, and the rest of the world had nothing but kangaroos, emus and wombats, it would have been the aboriginal people who would have first created civilization, developed the higher learning abilities of their brain, and it would have been they who would have first creatednuclear weapons, and gone on to spread their civilisation and influence around the world

At the Stonehenge shearing shed when the sun broke through the English fog the illiterate stone age shearers ripped the wool off the elders' sheep. They learnt nothing and ate hand to mouth and drank beer the same way.

Elders Wool Market Reports
www.elders.com.au/wool/market-reports
Elders provides the latest information on the wool market prices and averages.

Finally the Aboriginal Scientific Industrial and Research Organisation built the legendary Wool Extraction
System using gum-tree gear wheels in a didjeridoo .

" David Unaipon was also an inventor. He studied aerodynamics and produced an improved mechanical sheep-shearing handpiece. He lodged ten patents for various inventions. Despite his fame, he was often refused accommodation because of his race. He died in 1967. His portrait is depicted on the Australian $50 note."

@L-EGO "Your last post in which you claimed that the aboriginal race is morally superior to every other race is not only racist, it is so off the mark it is hilarious."

Seriously L-EGO in my humble opinion, adding up all your general contributions I note your continued inability to hear accurately what others say, not only me.

Now L-EGO you might imagine you can read sometimes, but you sure cannot seem to thunk straight or compute what was said or what it means correctly.

I suspect (from long experience) you do not even care about that, or what other people might really mean or believe anyway. It's possibly too much for you to "go there" and get the facts right in the first place.

You're only here to satisfy your own EGO imo.

So believe what you wish, but if you think I care an iota about your utterances here on any subject, mine or others, then you need to get that - I do not -

I will continue to ignore everything you say on this site. (this is a one off reply)

Many others have basically said the same thing to you repeatedly on OLO, and yet it obviously passes you by like a ship in the night.

PLONK!
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Thomas,

Writing is more than just communication, it is a keeping of records and passing down of information from one generation to another, and it is a key determinate of whether a society has achieved civilization. Also literature is more than just writing, a grocery list is writing, but not literature.

Also, a virtuous society is not necessarily civilized and vice versa, and most of the virtues you ascribe to aborigines is due to their lack of capacity. A chicken is not virtuous because it cannot build a gunboat.

Secondly, there are plenty of records of inter tribal warfare amongst the aboriginals, and no record that their culture was continuous more than 100 years.

@Shadow Minister: "and no record that their culture was continuous more than 100 years."

Well of course, you are correct on that point Shadow Minister.

Simply because you intentionally choose to ignore every single piece of the thousands upon thousands of pieces of hard evidence (known as incontrovertible facts) that say otherwise.

I do not think you are necessarily a slow learner. I have no idea. But I do believe that you are incredibly indignant without any justification for it, and ignorant.

That's 'ignorant' as in 'not knowing'

-adjective - lacking knowledge or awareness in general (about this topic)

Believe what you wish. Ignore everything I say. Do not use any of the links to information I provided days ago, nor use Google Search either.

New true Information and insights about our world and other people often causes cognitive dissonance and that can 'hurt' sometimes.

For others, see the Link to another potential aid in expanding your current knowledge about being human. http://skepdic.com/cognitivedissonance.html
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"Passing down information from one generation.."
Here is some information :
Murray River - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The twin summits of Mount Misery are supposed to be the remnants of his rafts, they are known as Lalangengall or the two watercraft.
- Ngurunderi Dreaming – Hearing Ngurunderi coming, his wives just had time to build a raft of reeds and grass-trees and to escape across Lake Albert.

Javanese language: lalang "thatch".
Balinese language: lalang "grass, weeds".
enggal "quick, fast". ( Adjectives follow nouns).

The info seems to be Indonesian language so accurate that the spelling used is identical. Here's another, from India to Indonesia:

Patna "City Anthem" ; nagara gita (Sanskrit: nagaram gitam).
Tamil nakarin kitam.
Malay , Java , nagarane gita "land song"." country anthem".

William Barak - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1824 – 15 August 1903), was the last traditional ngurungaeta (elder) of Melbourne.

Billibellary - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billibellary
Billibellary (c. 1799–1846) was a song maker and ngurungaeta of Melbourne.

Gee, I must be really getting to you, Thomas O'Reilly. You submit posts directly at me and when I respond you say you won't communicate with me.

From your posts, I would guess that you are in your early twenties and you have been thoroughly indoctrinated at high school by our leftist teachers, who have filled your head with tall tales about the hobbit like existence of aboriginal people. I am sorry about giving you a reality check.

One anthropologist once famously quipped that a hand to mouth, barbarian existence was usually "hard, brutish, and short."

The aboriginal experience was no different. Inland aborigines stayed primarily on the river systems, only moving away from rivers and watercourses when good rainfall opened up new areas for hunting and gathering. When times were good, they multiplied. When droughts and other natural disasters occurred, they died. In is reasonable to say then, that with only 250-000 plus aborigines, most of Australia was uninhabited.

The Australian aboriginal tribal system was one in which the power of the old men was absolute. All of the females and were their property and the women and young men were virtually their slaves. This system was enforced by terrorism, specifically through the power of a series of painful and degrading "initiation" ceremonies where the young men in particular were tortured and raped.

That this is till going on today in can be gleaned from what happened to "Australian of the Year" Dr. Fred Hollows, who said that if "certain practices" within the aboriginal communities did not cease immediately, that with the AIDS virus, "there would soon "be no more aborigines."

That what Fred was talking about was the gang rape of young aboriginal boys by older men in "initiation" ceremonies, could be deduced by the way that the homosexual community in Australia came down lot a ton of bricks on Fred. The Australian homosexual community probably think that it is a wonderful idea for every young Australian boy to be "initiated" into adulthood by having the men screw the boys up the bum.

Excerpt from an earlier post:

When Minister B-Rough & Herr Fuhrer Howard declared that "Little Children Were Sacred" aka 'Operation Reach-Around' and marched in the troops to the accompaniment of brass bands, a phalanx of university undergraduates funded by Liberal Party think tanks doing research, DEEWR lackeys, & anthropologists, doctors, basket weavers - ad nauseum... a gravy train of epic proportions ensued.

Territory Alliance (to name one), and scores of other building companies, consultancies, and quasi government organisations set up by bureaucrats given the nod to "take leave entitlements accrued" prior to the declaration by the Fuhrer announcing the Intervention. These parasites then set up shops in Darwin, Katherine, Alice Springs and outlying Island communities - in anticipation of the Gravy Trains.

This was where the resources of NOFARCE were then diverted, into the PR exercise of 'community engagement'. Continuing from there, when the government changed with KRudds cabinet, the Liberal Party grads & research fellows were booted out of their cosy little offices and rat holes at Charles Darwin Uni to be replaced with those of a more Socialist flavour, funded by...you guessed it Labor Party think tanks, but the DEEWR lackeys, QANGO's & other parasites remained until they milked the host dry, fell off, or had been given the nod to return shortly after the mandatory 2 yrs elapsed (after getting lovely redundancies) as advisers to government agencies.

(Posted by Albie Manton in Darwin, Tuesday, 23 September 2014 12:01:08 PM)

The problems won't go away until we realise that "throwing money" at it doesn't solve anything.

All of the females and were their property and the women and young men were virtually their slaves. This system was enforced by terrorism, crucifying boomerang thieves , hanging kangaroos upside down by their toe nails, burning Uluru , forcing mothers to give their milk to the war lords, playing soccer with straight males' heads, cross-breeding crocodiles with bandicoots and singing flat.

.

Dear LEGO,

.

I am back on stream and can now take up our conversation where we left off on page 7 of this thread.

You wrote:

« Unlike the authors of "The Bell curve", no left wing cognitive metrician is ever going to produce data that proves that all races are equal in intelligence »
.

The correct title of the book you refer to is “The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life”. As the authors indicate in the preface: “This book is about differences in intellectual capacity among people and groups and what those differences mean for America's future”.

They conclude: “It is time for America once again to try living with inequality, as life is lived: as understanding that each human being has strengths and weaknesses, qualities we admire and qualities we do not admire, competencies and incompetences, assets and debits; that the success of each human life is not measured externally but internally; that of all the rewards we can confer on each other, the most precious is a place as a valued fellow citizen”.

That may be so, but it is not necessarily due to what the authors consider to be a difference in “race” but due to cultural, social and economic factors.

The book was published 22 years ago, in 1994, by a psychologist, Richard J. Herrnstein, and a political scientist, Charles Murray. They place the debate clearly in the domain of psychology and politics, not in the domain of the physical sciences. Modern genetics, in particular, has some interesting things to say on the subject. It confirms the fact that the concept of “race” is a social construct, not a biological reality.

In addition to the brief Lewontin 2006 article I indicated in my previous post (which I understand you relished with a resounding burst of joy) I am sure you will be even more thrilled to read the following synopsis of Robert Wald Sussman’s 2014 book “The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea” which appeared in Newsweek on 11 August, 2014 :

http://europe.newsweek.com/there-no-such-thing-race-283123?rm=eu

.

An interesting change position there, LEGO.

<<If the Australian aborigines had had cattle, sheep, goats and chickens, as well as rice, wheat, oats, sorghum,apples, and oranges … it would have been they who would have first creatednuclear weapons, and gone on to spread their civilisation and influence around the world>>

Even if it is to make the unfounded claim that Aborigines hadn’t evolved “higher learning abilities”: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert_Sternberg2/publication/8089268_Intelligence_Race_and_Genetics/links/09e4150d72eda62d14000000.pdf

You’re right about one thing, though: all the intelligence in the world is unlikely to mean squat if the environment is not right.

It appears your racial theories change depending on what it is that you want to argue. Your standard line has traditionally been that Aborigines remained “uncivilised” because they were just too dumb to advance:

"But you get characters ... who hate anybody who is successful, and they reflectively apologise for every dysfunctional culture that is collectively just too dumb to do what the whites and the Asians have done." (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17758#314311)

But there is not causal factor in that, so this time you switch the chicken and the egg around because, at the end of the day, it still means that Aborigines are dumb.

IMO, this is highly relevant here. Using Wiki for convenience only, follow the 'source links' or Google it.

Who are Pathological Narcissists?
http://youtu.be/o7j2axIRja4?t=3m43s (Only 1m20s, or watch from the beginning)

Grandiosity refers to an unrealistic sense of superiority — a sustained view of oneself as better than others that causes the narcissist to view others with disdain or as inferior — as well as to a sense of uniqueness: the belief that few others have anything in common with oneself and that one can only be understood by a few or very special people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandiosity

Self-importance is an exaggerated estimate of one's own importance or merit, especially as manifested by the conduct or manners; self-conceit. Wikisaurus: arrogance
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/self-importance

Egotism is the drive to maintain and enhance favorable views of oneself, and generally features an inflated opinion of one's personal features and importance. It often includes intellectual, physical, social and other over-estimations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egotism

Unwarranted Self-Importance is a disease that gives you the feeling that you are actually worth something despite not having made any contributions to anything at all, and actually making the world a much shittier place, thus making yourself look like a complete douche. This concept was first best introduced to civilization in the form of Socrates.
http://encyclopediadramatica.se/Unwarranted_Self-Importance

Luckily, psychologists are at work building better trolls worldwide. When somebody claims they're big deal, use this:
http://encyclopediadramatica.se/Unwarranted_Self-Importance#The_science_of_USI

Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a long-term pattern of abnormal behavior characterized by exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, and a lack of understanding of others' feelings.
They often take advantage of the people around them on Internet Forums posting anonymously to hide their true-self.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder

Pathological Narcissism
The most important symptom of pathological narcissism is grandiosity. Grandiose fantasies (megalomaniac delusions) permeate every aspect of the narcissist's personality. The Grandiosity Gap is the abyss between the narcissist's self-image and reality.
http://samvak.tripod.com/narcissistpsychotic.html

Knowledge is Power: Forewarned is to be Forearmed. :-)

Famous Pathological Narcissists maybe Richard Nixon, Eddie O'Beid, Tony Abbott, Christopher Monckton, Kim Jong Il, "Bernie" Madoff, "Dick" Cheney, Netanyahu, David Singer.

More Info & Links:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18534&page=0#330163

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=7472&page=0#229970
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Hi LEGO & AJ,

Aboriginal people are, and always have been, as intelligent as anybody else: they would have to be in such a harsh environment as Australia's, with its devastating droughts. The great tragedy which nobody much wants to mention is that they were cut off from the rest of the world so long ago by the rising of the sea-level after the Ice Age - and precisely at the time of the beginnings of agriculture, which is often taken to mean the beginnings of civilisation proper.

I'm not saying those times were any great shakes anywhere - pre-modern societies everywhere have usually been pretty brutal, grossly mistreating their women, exterminating any enemies. But clearly, some survived, otherwise we wouldn't be here. Maybe Aboriginal people have actually been lucky, that - apart from their own enthusiastic exterminatory activities - they have survived to take advantage of modern life without having had to go through the hassles of witch-burning and slavery.

Are they taking advantages of modern life ? I think so, AND in many cases, without the irritation of having to do something for it. If I'm wrong, we should expect more and more people, on their own land, to tell every government agency to shove welfare up its arse, and to go back to foraging.

I'd like to see that.

But I'm not holding my breath.

You can humbug/fool/con other people but it takes real talent to do it to yourself.

Cheers,

Joe

@L-EGO, falsely claims:

"You submit posts directly at me and when I respond you say you won't communicate with me."

Readers here already know that only twice did my comments include a minor ref to/about L-EGO.

1)
@LEGO: "I think that the second argument is far more credible." Hypothetical thought experiments can be fun, entertaining. Pleasant way to wile away one's time. Enjoy it.

2)
@LEGOx2, spoken [like] a dinky die racial bigot. You get a C for consistency. Do you perhaps dance around in the dark wearing a white pointy hat with a full face veil too? :-)
I'm curious Lego, how many blog sites, newspapers, social media sites and forums were banned from before you found a home where you belong here on OLO? 100? 200?

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IMO, a well balanced aware individual would not see those as a reaching out to engage in any kind of discussion whatsoever, nor a sign of respect.

Instead they would recognise both comments as being the metaphorical equivalent of an extended middle finger.

Similar to pathological NPDs et al, as just mentioned, it is common to see on online forums and social media personality features presented such as:

"Grandiose fantasies (megalomaniac delusions) permeate every aspect of the narcissist's personality. The Grandiosity Gap is the abyss between the narcissist's self-image and reality."

Surprising still, some even imagine they can determine one's age and other factual data about another online based soley upon text pixels displayed on their own computer screen.

This is a remarkable claim, more akin to declaring one self proven to be a credible 'Professional Psychic', or native 'Witch doctor' skilled in investigating the entrails of a goat to make 'logical' predictions for the tribe.
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To Whom It May Concern:

What David Leyonhjelm says to The Chasers!
http://youtu.be/o2C8JbvXb2c?t=1m49s

ROFL

From the beginning:

The Chaser pranks David Leyonhjelm by making him his own Wicked Camper
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2C8JbvXb2c

Quoting David Leyonhjelm, speaking about Free Speech and 18C

"We should be able to say what we think without getting into strife (or getting suspended from OLO) because someone chooses to take offense."

CC Graham Young

(smiling - it's a Joke)

My Reference:
"A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well-defined narrative structure to make people laugh."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke
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Hi Thomas,

So that's the extent of your deliberative skills ? I suggest that you sit back, listen (or the cyber-equivalent) and learn. You might start to understand the significance and value of evidence over stance.

Hi SM,

On your observation that " ..... Secondly, there are plenty of records of inter tribal warfare amongst the aboriginals, and no record that their culture was continuous more than 100 years....."

there are many factors which could have, and probably still are, at play which go against a long memory or accurate transmission of vast amounts of cultural knowledge. A long drought, say five years, would have forced a group to scatter to the four winds, while young children and old people died off, until the group could, if was lucky, and if it could avoid being exterminated by hostile 'neighbours', get back together. A ten-year drought ? It hardly bears thinking about.

Perhaps the memories of Aboriginal old men was exceptionally precise, but there would be an inevitable gap as the old men struggled to prepare the next generation of young men before they themselves passed away.

Down this way, probably in the 1880s or 1890s, one group, the Turion (modern-day surname: Campbell) 'lent' or gave their land to a closely-related neighbouring group, the Talkundjeriorn (modern surname: Sumner) and moved to Mundoo Island. Why, I don't know. Sometimes entire groups moved up to a hundred miles to a ration station and didn't return. Sometimes they did: between Angipena and Mt Serle in the Flinders, for example. And back again. Pissed off the pastoralists who had set up storerooms, I'll bet.

[TBC]

[cont.]

Amongst the Ngarrindjeri (and probably in many places), when someone died, the living not only didn't use their name again but any word which remotely sounded similar, in English OR in Ngarrindjeri. So, especially within a family group, over, say, a hundred years, many words would have changed.

I was puzzled why the word for pelican was 'ngori' in the Jaralde dialect but 'mangaraiperi' in the Ramindjeri dialect, but that's probably why. One can imagine that it wouldn't take long before dialect groups were having trouble understanding each other, and growing apart, into completely different 'tribes', with no memory of a common ancestry. Perhaps every few hundred years.

So common stories would have been lost, or at least modified. Even now, I get the idea that Ramindjeri people from the SA south coast don't see themselves as Ngarrindjeri. [Think: being a Queenslander or, horrors ! a Victorian, AND being Australian.]

Another factor: east of the River Murray in SA, across the dry limestone country of the Tatiara, droughts would have forced them in towards the River. Perhaps it's no coincidence that, in the region east of Lake Alexandrina, the Tatiara totem was similar to that of neighbouring Ngarrindjeri family groups, dingo: perhaps the Tatiara groups were 'incorporated' over the centuries, sort of by force majeure.

Other Ngarrindjeri groups feared those groups, according to the Berndts, because they had the morals and savagery of dingos, since of course they WERE dingoes in the totemic system. I would be surprised if anyone remembers their totems now, or even their clan name, except those who have religiously studied Berndt & Berndt (1993).

So anybody who claims that Aboriginal society was unchanging really hasn't thought it all through.

Cheers,

Joe

If you claim that you do not wish to communicate with me, Thomas,OK. But if that is the case, do not make any sneery comments at me. If you attack me, I will retaliate.

There seem to some unchanging traditions. Several groups in NE of NSW have the common Bundjalung language from Grafton to Brisbane and Tenterfield. Gamilaroi language is from Dubbo to Goondiwindi.
A number of different regions went to Jagungal in Snowy mountains for ceremonies.
The codfish legend of Pundu / Ponde belongs to all along the Darling river from Qld and from halfway down the Murray. At Bourke, the river snake lives at Mt' Manarah'. In the Snowy,' manaro' is the high country where 'Munarra' and snake made the river .
Baiame is the deity from Sydney to Goondiwindi to Brewarrina. All these distant people needed to preserve a common memory to retain that.

@Loudmouth, ignoring the grandiose hubris and typical put downs from him, claims:

"So anybody who claims that Aboriginal society was UNCHANGING really hasn't thought it all through."

Great, wonderful, terrific.

Now show me the QUOTES here by anyone who ever said it was UNCHANGING

Insert Here:->

Or ADMIT ERROR HERE:->

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The man who attacks bullies insults ridicules rubbishes verbals anyone and everyone who has a different view to him says: "If you attack me, I will retaliate."

Ooooooooooooooooooh, scary

Hi Thomas,

I'm glad to be wrong when I suggest that " .... anybody who claims that Aboriginal society was UNCHANGING really hasn't thought it all through."

So, like every other culture in the world, Aboriginal culture has been changing ? Yes, I'd agree, it's most likely, given that the environment itself has changed drastically over fifty thousand years.

So what is it about Aboriginal culture that is supposed to be unique ? It's changed, people have moved around, droughts have wiped out entire populations and opened up vacant land to other groups, etc.

So you would agree that it's nonsense to claim that Aboriginal culture is the oldest in the world, but that all cultures are equally old by virtue of being human, while Aboriginal culture may well be, or may well have been, the slowest to change by virtue of the poverty of innovations available ?

So let's celebrate the wonderful diversity of human culture around the world, and the amazing creativity with which human groups have incorporated innovations from neighbouring groups. Let's celebrate the fact that Aboriginal people can now join with other human groups from around the world after fifty thousand years of isolation.

Cheers,

Joe

And if you lock your house at night you can celebrate when the neighbours take the lot and let you peer in when they eat.

@Loudmouth: "So what is it about Aboriginal culture that is supposed to be unique ?"

Now that's a great question.

I recommend Starting here:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18533&page=1 and see what may relate to your question.

Don't believe anyone. Do your own research and find your own facts, especially if you're seriously interested in finding a range of instructive answers to your question.

A few share some ideas in the different pages that may be an answer, or partial answer, to your question. Feel free to disagree of course.

Some disagree about what defines a 'civilisation' - is it stone buildings or writing or Law or agriculture or art or philosophy or a high ethical / moral culture or something else.

I suspect some would also disagree about what does or doesn't fit the term "culture" as well.

Alt go here:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=So+what+is+it+about+Aboriginal+culture+that+is+supposed+to+be+unique

Alt browse these results:
http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?q=unique+Australian+Aboriginal+culture&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5

Alt browse these other search results:
http://scholar.lmgtfy.com/?q=Unique+continuity+aboriginal+culture+oldest+on+earth

They are just few examples of how to use search boxes and get different kinds of results.

Dig deeper into the papers and books by the academic researchers mentioned in this series
http://www.sbs.com.au/firstaustralians/

Ask this lady your question, see what she says: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s2901951.htm

She'd know much more than I ever will, imho.

I have put my various views and feelings on the matter under discussion.

Take it or leave it.

Trust your own instincts and thoughtful conclusions on the matter.

I really do not think it matters what either of us "believe" or "say".
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No Thomas, I don't think anybody should trust their instincts, so much as seek for evidence. Your way is the lazy way of a spoilt snotty twelve-year-old.

As for unique+continuity+aboriginal+culture+oldest+on+earth, the naïve racism of that claim is blown out of the water by the simple (well, perhaps not to you, Thomas) realisation that, if we all came out of Africa, and there are people in Africa, then the oldest cultures in the world, the thousands upon thousands of them, are in Africa. We're all Africans. That makes me quite proud.

I've been learning up on all of this for sixty years or more. The first time I went to an Aboriginal community would have been in about 1960, Delissaville. I've lived in a couple of others since. My wife and I made the first Aboriginal Flags in 1972 [ask your grandmother]. I've put ten years voluntary labour into typing up fifteen thousand pages of old documents, around two millions words. It's all on my web-site: www.firstsources.info

It will be a long time before you come close, sonny.

Joe

Thomas,

I trawled through your links, and could not find any substance to the continuity of Aboriginal culture. Nothing to suggest that Aboriginal culture in 1788 resembled in any way the culture of 1588 let alone 40 millennia prior.

Hi Banjo/Rodney, I am now back from visiting my cousin in Beaudesert, Qld. and I can now respond to you.

You are suggesting that race is a social construct, and that it has no basis in objective reality. Objective reality says that three primary races exist, and that those races are genetically different from one another. White Scandinavians can easily be distinguished from black Zulus. They are different in appearance and physical abilities because their genetics makes them so. If they are different in physical appearance and physical abilities, there is no reason to think that they must be identical in either intelligence or personalities.

There are 40 species of brown bears throughout the world. All of them are dangerous. But one of them is particularly dangerous, and that is the Grizzly Bear. The Grizzly Bear is a brown bear. But it is bigger than other brown bears and it looks different ("grizzled" appearance) to every other brown bear. Whatever genetic difference it has to every other brown bear would be infinitesimally small. But that infinitesimally small difference means a lot.

There are four species of African buffalo. All of them are dangerous. But one of them, the Cape Buffalo, is particularly dangerous. It is so dangerous, that it forms one of the five species of "dangerous game" (Lions, Tigers, Rhino, Elephants, Cape Buffalo) hunted by "big game" hunters. Whatever infinitesimally small differences in DNA account for the difference between cape buffalo and other African buffalo, it is very significant.

Your position seems to conform to the latest leftist thinking on sex. This suggests that the differences between the sexes is also a social construct. All one has to do to accept that peculiar position, is to deny the objective reality of the existence of vaginas and penis's. Whenever leftist thinking has a problem with objective reality, the default lefty position, is to dream up some now ideology that can ignore the inconvenient facts. They then use a perverted psuedo-science or bizarre logic to make their round ideological "facts" fit the square holes of reality.

Wrong again, AJ.

My position is, (see, unlike yourself, I am not afraid to state a position I am willing to defend), that IQ is related to civilisation. The longer are race or ethnicity has to evolve their higher learning intelligences, within a civilisation which needs those intelligences, the higher the collective IQ.

But I have no idea what your position is, because you are too frightened to state it. If you come right out and state a position, it will oblige you to defend it. And that is way beyond you. So, your tactic is to be completely negative, snipe away at me, and get whatever mileage you can get from that. That is the safe way of pretending to debate. But any impartial observer would see my willingness to state a position and defend it with reasoned logic, is much more convincing.

Okay, LEGO, but that doesn’t mean I was "wrong" (let alone “again”).

<<My position is … that IQ is related to civilisation. The longer are race or ethnicity has to evolve their higher learning intelligences, within a civilisation which needs those intelligences, the higher the collective IQ.>>

It just means that your position has changed. You forget that I quoted you from an earlier post expressing a very different idea.

So where is your evidence for this, anyway? I linked you to an article effectively discredited the above in my last response.

<<But I have no idea what your position is, because you are too frightened to state it.>>

My position is that there is no evidence for your above claim.

Don’t bother starting with the “… unlike yourself, I am not afraid to state a position I am willing to defend” nonsense. I already discredited that in the last thread (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18530#330100) If your position is reasonable and grounded-in-reality enough to withstand criticism, then, “I think you’re wrong”, is the only position you need from me. Of course, I've told you this many times before, sometimes going into great detail as to why, but as Thomas O’Reilly alluded to earlier, that doesn’t mean much where you’re concerned. You just repeat the same rubbish over and over and over.

Speaking of which, I had discredited every one of your claims in your post to Banjo Paterson in our first discussion on race (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=15856#276108). Now here you are, repeating them all over again, probably in the hope that Banjo Paterson isn’t as aware of the numerous problems with your racial theories.

Good luck with that.

<<But any impartial observer would see my willingness to state a position and defend it with reasoned logic, is much more convincing.>>

I think your "impartial observers", on whom you are so narcissistically focused, would be more impressed with the need for evidence before spouting off naive assertions because they sound, to the uneducated person, like they should make sense.

Hi AJ. I wasn't going to waste another 350 word post on you until you stated your position. But this is your lucky day. Banjo Patterson (actually, Rodney Crisp) is a bit slow getting back to me, so I will waste a post.

I have no intention of debating with you until you clearly submit a position you are willing to defend. I am too experienced a debater to fall for that sneaky little ploy. Try it on a novice.

Since you have got Buckley's of debating with me until you do clearly state a position, my advice to you would be to just be what you are, a heckler. Or, perhaps you could be Rodney's advisor?

Thank you

Oh boy, LEGO. You really are slow.

<<I have no intention of debating with you until you clearly submit a position you are willing to defend.>>

I did:

“My position is that there is no evidence for your above claim.” (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18533#330327)

I even defended it preemptively by linking you to a paper demonstrating why you’re wrong on the issue of race and intelligence. A paper I'm sure you're keen to avoid ever having to read, let alone address.

Now your turn. Why is it that I need to state a position beyond the above, and what is an example of what you’re talking about? Consider what I said on the other thread carefully before answering:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18530#330100

<<Since you have got Buckley's of debating with me until you do clearly state a position …>>

You mean, until I state precisely the position that your inadequately-sophisticated reasoning and debating tactics require for the purpose of deflecting attention from the above.

It looks to me like, after all these years, you’re finally giving up on trying to 'defeat' me (as you would put it) and are simply going to indefinitely delay ever responding to me by pretending that you require a position from me (without justifying why you need it), and that you’re not getting it. So much for ever having ripped me new one. But it’s alright if you refuse to respond to me. It makes my job a lot easier and your silence would be all I needed as vindication for my rebuttals.

In the meantime, you can accuse me of "heckling" all you like. All that's ever demonstrated in the past is that you have no idea of what the word means:

Heckle:
Interrupt (a public speaker) with derisive or aggressive comments or abuse. (http://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/heckle)

.

Dear LEGO,

.

You wrote :

« White Scandinavians can easily be distinguished from black Zulus. They are different in appearance and physical abilities because their genetics makes them so. If they are different in physical appearance and physical abilities, there is no reason to think that they must be identical in either intelligence or personalities »
.

That is correct so far as appearance is concerned. But differences in physical abilities are due to different lifestyles and Zulus are neither more nor less intelligent than any other human beings. Modern Zulus have little in common with the Zulus who defeated the British at the Battle of Isandlwana in 1879. There are no longer any pure Zulus and half the population now live in urban areas. More information here :

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Zulu.aspx

What is eminently true is that there are no two persons exactly identical. We are all different. Each individual is unique. According to recent research, even though so-called “identical” or monozygotic twins supposedly share all of their DNA, they acquire hundreds of genetic changes in early development. One twin may get cancer while the other stays healthy.

The image that comes to my mind is that of Mozart’s music. There’s a myriad of variations around a central theme which remains constant and immutable. Anthropologists tell us we branched off from our common ancestor with the chimpanzees about five to seven million years ago. Then, about 200 000 years ago, as homo sapiens (we were all black originally) we migrated out of Africa in search of new pastures and colonised the planet. Melanin in the skin that protected us from the fierce African sun, decreased in colder climates to allow greater intake of sunlight so that our bodies could produce vital vitamin D and remain healthy, hence brown, yellow, white, and red skin.

This process of natural adaptation to different environments and lifestyles did not affect the central characteristics of human beings - such as intelligence, for example.

As highly sociable beings, we humans generally accept our differences – both “lefties” and “righties”. We live together harmoniously.

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Hi Banjo,
In general I agree, but I'd like to muddy the waters a little by mentioning that humans aren't just the product of natural selection, we have also selectively bred ourselves, a process that still continues.

The Jewish people, for example, have selectively bred for some forms of intelligence over at least 4 millennia and it's not surprising that they are so disproportionately represented at the top of the tree in science and other intellectual arts. Sadly, black Americans were for a time the subject of some haphazardly selective breeding for certain physical traits and once again unsurprisingly, they dominate many sporting fields.

Having said that, there is no doubt that in any given random group of people there are some who are brighter than others and that skin colour or any other physical metric is not a good way to pick which is which.

Of course, if you like to play with toys, you might prefer white blocks to black ones...

Psychologists who measure human intelligence are called "cognitive metricians", and these scientists have been testing the US population for decades. The result of this research was analysed and published in "The Bell Curve." This indicated that human intelligence with any ethnic cohort varies according to a "bell curve" graph. Very few people have very low intelligence, and at the other end of intelligence, very few people have very high intelligence. Most people are in the middle of the curve.

It was discovered that all races can have people with very low intelligence, and people with very high intelligence. But the "curves" were different in terms of median intelligence. White Americans has a mean intelligence of 103, Asian Americans 106, Hispanics 95, and African Americans 85.

Some people criticise IQ testing as being akin to witchcraft or Phrenology. But IQ testing just happens to be the most reliable indicator of human success. Whereas I concede that some black people can have high intelligence, most of them have intelligence quotients far below those of whites and Asians. Sad though this may be, this seems to me to be a much more credible explanation for black dysfunction than endlessly blaming the white race for everything that ever went wrong with the black race.

You seem to be claiming that black people in general are just as smart as white people in general. If this was true, then a Nobel Prize awaits any cognitive metrician who uses statistics to prove that the black race is just as smart as the white or Asian races. Since proving the truth should be easier than propagating a lie, every left leaning psychologist would be chasing the dream of international recognition. But none of them are. I submit, that the reason for that, is because whatever their ideology proclaims, they know that "The Bell curve" was correct.

In the Northern Territory, 66% of the education budget is spent educating aboriginal children who represent 33% of NT pupils. The end result is that aboriginal children have a 90% failure rate in NAPLAN testing

.

Dear Craig,

.

You wrote :

« In general I agree, but I'd like to muddy the waters a little by mentioning that humans aren't just the product of natural selection, we have also selectively bred ourselves, a process that still continues.

The Jewish people, for example, have selectively bred for some forms of intelligence over at least 4 millennia and it's not surprising that they are so disproportionately represented at the top of the tree in science and other intellectual arts. Sadly, black Americans were for a time the subject of some haphazardly selective breeding for certain physical traits and once again unsurprisingly, they dominate many sporting fields »
.

Don’t worry, Craig, the two examples you mention do not “muddy the waters” any more than they already are. As I’m sure you are aware, they are both highly controversial. Like belief in the existence of a god or gods, in the absence of falsifiable empirical evidence, some are inclined to believe and others are not. I, personally, am not.

Before going into the details, I must say I’m a little surprised by your figure of 4 millennia as the time frame of alleged selective breeding. As the purported higher intelligence only relates to Ashkenazi Jews, I understand that the first historical trace we have of them dates from the 8th century AD. That would give us an historical time frame of less than 1.4 millennia.

This is the time frame on which the principal proponents of the selective breeding hypothesis have based their well-documented and scientifically-argued case. Here is the link:

http://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jbiosocsci.pdf

Having read that, I think one should read the following two articles which place the subject in a slightly broader perspective:

http://www.aei.org/publication/the-2011-nobel-prize-and-the-debate-over-jewish-iq/?tfa_next=%2Fresponses%2Flast_success%26sid%3Dmpa7p9a9335jj0usr5uhuco3k2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence

As for the selective breeding of black Americans, it seems there may have been a few rare (futile) attempts for their physical traits but the chief motive was to produce slaves without having to buy them. Slavery was finally abolished in the United States in 1865, ending 246 years of transatlantic slave trade. The following articles are relevant:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_breeding_in_the_United_States

http://www.popularsocialscience.com/2013/01/21/why-blacks-are-good-at-sports/

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The long haired men and short haired women who seem to make up the Education Department heads of every state and territory in Australia, will endlessly scream that the reason for the NAPLAN disparity is a lack of funds. "More money!" "More money!" They endlessly scream. NAPLAN testing is also vehemently opposed by our leftist educators, and I submit that the reason for this, is because such testing is proof that their theories of racial equality just don't stack up to testable reality.

Throughout the western world, black people are very disproportionately represented in serious criminal behaviour. Leftist social workers have dreamed up every reason why black dysfunction is all caused by those horrible white people. Whites oppress and discriminate against black people. Such a premise I reject. Within white European societies, black people now have a privileged position. Any discrimination which blacks have from whites is usually because it is very well deserved. Black people are regarded as being lazy, violent, and untrustworthy, because so many of them are just that.

Even my most vehement critic, AJ Phillips, has admitted that low IQ is a factor in criminal behaviour. My premise is, that the reason why aboriginal people make up 25% of the prison population in Australia, is because of low collective aboriginal intelligence. In addition, it is easy to prove that genetics does make a role in criminal behaviour. Intelligence is heritable. And 95% of any nations prison population is male. Not just male, but usually young males.

As I have mentioned earlier, as a young trendy lefty, when making sense of the world, I had to choose between two racist explanations. One was, to accept that my race as the most disgusting and oppressive race on planet earth, which was responsible for everything that ever went wrong. The other is, that much of human dysfunction is simply a product of low intelligence and genetic heritability. On impartial reflection, I think that the second explanation is much more credible.

Hi Banjo, I suspect the controversy around self-selective breeding of human populations is more political/religious than scientific.

I'm basing the timeframe for Jewish self-selection on my desultory readings of the Old Testament, which clearly shows that the tribes of Israel were strongly aware of their genealogy and keen to record it. It also shows a clear reverence for cleverness over strength in leaders, presumably reflecting a broader cultural model.

The emphasis on genealogy continues with the Jewish Talmudic insistence on maternal lineage being the prime determinant of one's Jewish identity. If you don't have a Jewish Mum, you can become a Jew, but only by demonstrating a strong capacity to learn. Unlike Christianity, where professing a belief is sufficient to be accepted, a would-be Jewish convert has to go through an arduous process of teaching and examination before being presented to the community as a candidate. I'm only aware of this because a friend started the process but found it too demanding!

Interestingly, the Quran is also full of references to "men who think", or "men who reason" as being worthy role models.

It's not surprising that people from the region where animal husbandry seems to have been developed should also apply the principles to themselves.

The concept of "improving the herd" isn't a difficult one, nor is it especially confronting. We are squeamish about it because of the direction it was taken by Fascists in the 30s, which is fair enough, but even in our modern age it exists informally. "Assortative mating" in which people of similar backgrounds get together (doctors marry doctors, labourers marry labourers in simple terms) is a well understood phenomenon.

Yes LEGO, you are obviously a representative of a master race. Everyone knows white blocks are better than black ones...

Now, let's see.

Rodney Crisp is a anti racist who writes politely, although his arguments are easily countered. But good on you Rodney. You are prepared to test your beliefs against an opponent without adopting the usual arrogant evangelical presentation so believed of social justice warriors.

AJ is an anti racist who needs to adopt dirty tricks to stay in the race. He is using the old todge of taking no position himself, while only attacking my position. As an anti racist, his position must be that all races are equal. But he will never say that because he knows that this position is wrong. So the trick is, to attack my position that races are different, while never acknowledging that races therefore must be equal. This trick is known as "always imply, but when challenged, deny" ploy. It is exactly like playing poker with an opponent who says that he does not have to show his hand.

namenickname is an anti racist who writes absolute drivel and he appears to be on crack. Thank you nick. I am glad you on AJ's side. I'll bet he winces every time you submit another load of drivel. One primary reason why some people are anti racists is because they believe that "intelligent" people think that way. I congratulate you on your sterling work of proving that premise wrong.

Thomas O'Reilly is an anti racist who routinely makes insulting remarks to me while demanding that I do not direct posts at him. Nice logic, Tommy.

And now Craig Minns shows how clever anti racists are by submitting an insulting sneery one liner post directed at me. Personally, I think it would be better for Craig to submit reasoned arguments, but when you are so sure that you are infallibly right, then you do not need any of those, do you Craig?

This is why us racists are winning. We don't need to resort to tricks, mindless drivel, stonewalling, or base insults. We are prepared to argue an issue on it's merits, and let the truth be told "though the havens may fall."

LEGO,

Thanks for a fine example of the problem with your reasoning.

<<… AJ Phillips, has admitted that low IQ is a factor in criminal behaviour.>>

There is a strong correlation there, yes. But correlation does not imply causation. Usually there’s a third factor driving the two. For example, ice cream sales go up and down with murder rates. This happens consistently every year and has done so since the invention of ice cream. But it is not the ice cream driving the murder rates, it’s the seasons driving both.

<<… that the reason why aboriginal people make up 25% of the prison population in Australia, is because of low collective aboriginal intelligence.>>

So you’re saying it’s the ice cream, not the seasons? How did you rule out disadvantage as the driving factor for both?

<<In addition, it is easy to prove that genetics does make a role in criminal behaviour. Intelligence is heritable.>>

So is disadvantage.

<<And 95% of any nations prison population is male. Not just male, but usually young males.>>

Biological sex is a chromosomal difference determined at conception, not a heritable trait.

<<… when making sense of the world, I had to choose between two racist explanations. One was, to accept that my race as the most disgusting and oppressive race on planet earth, which was responsible for everything that ever went wrong. The other is, that much of human dysfunction is simply a product of low intelligence and genetic heritability.>>

This a false dichotomy.

<<AJ is an anti racist who needs to adopt dirty tricks to stay in the race.>>

Such as?

<<Thank you nick. I am glad you on AJ's side.>>

This is the Association fallacy. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy)

<<I'll bet he winces every time you submit another load of drivel.>>

Why? What nicknamenick (or anyone else for that matter) says, or how he presents himself, says nothing for the credibility of my arguments. Hence the fallaciousness of the Association fallacy.

Do you wince every time runner opens his trap? How about Constance, or our dear old MIA friend one under god?

This discussion on the intelligence of aborigines has made me wonder
about their marriage customs. Similar to the Arabs they are tribal.
Do they like the Arabs engage in cousin marriage as a matter of course.
If so the best we could do for them would be to ban the practise.
However, if like the Arabs it is a practise going back thousands of
years it will take hundreds of years to repair the genome.

Lego, I think it was tied the aboriginal criminal activity to intelligence
so perhaps we can see the correlation of criminal behaviour between
Aboriginals and moslems and their high imprisonment.
All this is very political incorrect but if it is true then throwing
all the money in the world at it will not fix it.

For how long does Rodney Crisp propose paying out to aborigines for the
sins of the past ? One thousands years ? Two thousand years ?
Should it be divided up depending on the DNA proportions ?
Otherwise some money would be going to the descendants of the British !
Horror !

It really is starting to get ridiculous.

On the contrary, AJ, I think that your last post is a wonderful example of how ideologues with your peculiar worldview will perform the most incredible mental gymnastics to deny self evident connections that most people can easily see. By doing that, you are destroying your own credibility.

Criminals generally have low intelligence compared to the general population. Therefore, low intelligence is a major factor in criminal behaviour. Any person not blinded by ideology can easily see that. That this fact straightaway demolishes your implication about environmental reasons being the only factors in criminal behaviour, causes you to go into creative overdrive. Your response is to create a scenario which our readers can see is plainly ridiculous. Whereas there is some truth that correlation does not automatically denote causation, it is obvious that in many cases statistical correlation does point to causation. If it did not, then the science of statistics would have no reason to exist. Statistics is all about finding reasons for correlations, and most people can easily understand that.

You can claim that ice cream sales have a correlation with murder rates, and our readers will agree with you that if ice cream sales did correlate to homicide rates, it is simply a coincidence. In that case, statistical correlation most definitely does not denote causation. But my information is that homicide rates in the USA have been found to rise during periods of well publicised prize fights. In such a case, our readers would agree that there is probably a connection between the two factors.

My position on criminal behaviour is based around the fact that in general, criminals have low intelligence. And low intelligence is heritable. This is a fact our readers can understand and appreciate. (Like father, like son) If you wish to claim that low intelligence is not a factor in criminal behaviour, by dismissing my premise with the trite phrase "correlation does not denote causation", my opinion is, that you are treating our readers like fools. They would see my argument as very strong, and your "explanation" as very weak.

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Dear LEGO,

.

You wrote:

« It was discovered that all races can have people with very low intelligence, and people with very high intelligence. But the "curves" were different in terms of median intelligence. White Americans has a mean intelligence of 103, Asian Americans 106, Hispanics 95, and African Americans 85 … You seem to be claiming that black people in general are just as smart as white people in general … "The Bell curve" was correct »
.

You did not indicate in your post, LEGO, to whom you were referring as “you”. I presume you mean everybody other than yourself. So as I feel included, I offer the following reply.

Personally, I see no reason to believe that the human faculty of intelligence varies according to biological factors such as genetics. I understand that we all dispose of the same intellectual faculties but that our different lifestyles, languages and cultures have developed these same faculties differently and to different degrees.

I take as example, our Australian Aboriginal peoples. Their lifestyles, languages and culture hardly evolved for 60 000 years until British colonisation almost wiped them out. If they had taken IQ tests at the time, I suspect they would have failed miserably.

But, lo and behold, one of those black native savages by the name of Charlie Perkins graduated from Sydney university, just 178 years later, with a Batchelor of Arts degree. While at university, he worked for the City of South Sydney cleaning toilettes. He was the very first Aboriginal university graduate.

Joe Lane estimates that there will probably be 2 400 university graduates this year, making a total of around 40-44 000.

I don’t think that would be possible in such a short time-frame, after 60 000 long years of hunter-gatherer lifestyle with its corresponding limited literacy and numeracy possibilities, if the Australian Aboriginal peoples were not equipped with intellectual faculties similar to those of the invading white British colonisers. Here are two articles that tend to validate this impression :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#Genetics_of_race_and_intelligence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Race_and_intelligence

But don’t worry, LEGO, it’s not written in stone !

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LEGO,

I could see how anything beyond oversimplifications and a black and white view of the world would seem like mental gymnastics to you. But the fact that correlation does not imply causation is a basic truism in statistics. One you appear to have grudgingly conceded.

<<Criminals generally have low intelligence compared to the general population.>>

Where conventional crimes are concerned, yes.

<<Therefore, low intelligence is a major factor in criminal behaviour.>>

It’s bound to play some role for some individuals in some instances of their criminal behaviour. No factors exist in isolation. But there is not enough evidence to say that it is a “major” factor. That will vary from individual to individual. The interplay between the various factors that contribute to criminal behaviour are far too complex for such a sweeping statement as this.

<<That this fact straightaway demolishes your implication about environmental reasons being the only factors in criminal behaviour …>>

I have not said that environmental factors are the only causes of offending behaviour.

Speaking of which, how have your dodgy theories accounted for factors such as poor nutrition, poor education, poor parenting, low socioeconomic status, postcode and the resulting high stress levels during the developmental years, for criminal behaviour and low IQ?

<<Whereas there is some truth that correlation does not automatically denote causation, it is obvious that in many cases statistical correlation does point to causation.>>

Yes, but most of the time that’s not the case.

<<If [correlation] did not [imply causation], then the science of statistics would have no reason to exist.>>

How do you figure that? Correlations are still useful for identifying the driving factor(s).

<<... low intelligence is heritable.>>

Yes, there are other factors that play a role too, though. Co-incidentally, these can also contribute to an individual's chances of offending. So how do you know what's influencing what and where? You don't. You just make it up as you go.

Incidentally, where do white-collar criminals fit into your simplistic view of the world? They’re usually very intelligent, after all. How does LEGO’s dodgy criminology account for that?

Dear Rodney.

Physical appearances are caused by genetics. The different physical appearances between a Scandinavian and a Zulu are caused by genetic variability in which genetics selects those physical characteristics most suitable for survival within particular types of environments.

Your premise, that all humans are born with equal intelligence, and it is just environmental factors which cause the differences in intelligence, simply does not stack up. Firstly, within the animal world, certain breeds of dogs, cats, and horses are noted for their differences in temperament and intelligence. Any brochure advertising the differences between animal breeds can tell you that. These differences must be genetic, as animal breeds do not have different culture, language, or lifestyles.

I am certain that the homosexual community would be outraged if you told them that their disgusting behaviour was all learned behaviour caused by their culture, language and lifestyles. Even children from very religious families where homosexuality is most definitely frowned upon can be homosexual. So culture is not a factor in homosexual dysfunction, nor can it be caused by "language" or lifestyle. What is left is genetics. And most homosexuals will claim that their mixed up sexual feelings are intrinsic to themselves.

Smart parents generally produce smart children, and dumb parents almost always produce dumb children. The idea that any child can be an Einstein with enough nutrition, education, and parental guidance, was once a cherished goal of the Socialist "Behavioural" School of Psychology. Attempts were made by the "Behaviourists" to turn disadvantaged class children into brainiacs but they failed miserably. Nobody but you and AJ still believe that a London flower girl can be passed off as a Bohemian princes with a few elocution lessons from Rex Harrison. It's a nice Cinderella story, but you must not take it seriously.

Charlie Perkins was a half caste aboriginal person who once tried to start an "aboriginal only" club in Sydney, in which he said that half caste "yeller fellers" (like himself) would not be welcome. He was therefore a racist, one whom you apparently admire.

To AJ

If fifty years of IQ testing in US prisons has revealed that most US prisoners have below average IQ's, so how can you possibly claim that low intelligence is not a major factor in criminal behaviour? Have you spent some time in a US clink yourself? 95% of people in jail are males. That fact by itself is a very powerful argument that genetics and crime are linked. Especially when Australia's own Australian Institute of Criminology's own white paper (Trends and Issues, Number 263, asked the question 'Is there a genetic susceptability to engage in criminal acts?") To which the AIC's publication reluctently answered "yes."

Although, the publication qualified their answer with "Many criminologists are understandably concerned about the potential misuse of this research given the historical experiences with the Eugenic use of biological explanations of crime, and genetic explanations in particular."

That's politically correct criminologist Newspeak for "The racists were right, but we can't let the public know." First Watergate, then Climategate, now Criminalgate.

I might not know much about statistical analysis, but when I go outside and it starts raining, I correlate the presence of big, black clouds with the causation of rain. I correlate the presence of large numbers of Muslims within a suburb, with the causation that most whites have fled to anywhere that there are no Muslims. So correlation can obviously denote causation. "Correlation does not denote causation" is simply a statistical principle, like the legal principle of "innocent until proven guilty." But if the legal fraternity really believed that, then every suspect would be free prior to trial.

White collar criminals may be intelligent, but whereas intelligence is a very important factor, it is not the only important factor. And , surprise, surprise, African American white collar criminals are disproportionately represented in white collar crime. Here in Australia, the supposedly "intelligent", sometimes university educated leaders of aboriginal communities seem to have very sticky fingers. ATSIC was closed down because of the kleptomaniac behaviour of some aboriginal leaders, some of whom were also accused of rape and spousal abuse by numerous aboriginal women.

Because correlation doesn't necessitate causation, LEGO.

<<... US prisoners have below average IQ's, so how can you possibly claim that low intelligence is not a major factor in criminal behaviour?>>

However, I would be willing to say that low intelligence is indirectly a major risk factor. Those with low intelligence are more likely to offend because they generally have less opportunities, not just because they're too dumb to understand right from wrong or consequences. If that's all you meant, then I agree.

<<[Male criminality] by itself is a very powerful argument that genetics and crime are linked.>>

“Biological sex is a chromosomal difference determined at conception, not a heritable trait.” (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18533#330402)

Otherwise, I agree there is a link.

“A genetic disposition for aggressive behaviour, for example, can help one to become a good soldier, a good rugby league player or a good wife beater. How the genetic disposition to aggression manifests, however, depends on one’s current environment and their environment throughout the various stages of their development.” (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17092#301805)

<<That's politically correct criminologist Newspeak for "The racists were right, but we can't let the public know.">>

Rubbish. Just because there is a link between crime and genetics, that doesn't mean that some races are more genetically prone to crime. We've already been through this (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=15856#276108)

There is no one 'crime' gene and an individual can be more genetically similar to someone of a different race than to another of their own race. You know nothing about genetics.

<<"Correlation does not denote causation" is simply a statistical principle ...>>

And it's also the case in the vast majority of instances.

<<... African American[s] are disproportionately represented in white collar crime.>>

Only in low-level white-collar crimes (something as simple as stealing stationery is classed as a white-collar crime). Whites are disproportionately represented in high-level white-collar crimes.

<<... some of whom were also accused of rape and spousal abuse by numerous aboriginal women>>

So how did you rule out socio-cultural factors to arrive at the conclusion that racial genetics play a role? You never seem to explain this, funnily enough.

.

Dear LEGO,

.

You wrote:

« Physical appearances are caused by genetics … »

Agreed.
.

« Your premise, that all humans are born with equal intelligence, and it is just environmental factors which cause the differences in intelligence, simply does not stack up … »

I’m sorry if I gave you the impression that it was my premise. I am no expert. I was simply basing my comments on the results of recent biological research. To cite the American Scientist of March-April 2012:

« The consensus among Western researchers today is that human races are sociocultural constructs. Still, the concept of human race as an objective biological reality persists in science and in society. It is high time that policy makers, educators and those in the medical-industrial complex rid themselves of the misconception of race as type or as genetic population »
.

« I am certain that the homosexual community would be outraged if you told them that their disgusting behaviour was all learned behaviour caused by their culture, language and lifestyles … »

I do not interfere with or moralise on other people’s lifestyles as long as they are freely consented to. I have enough difficulty respecting my own moral values. Homosexuality is as much a natural phenomenon as heterosexuality. As Petter Boeckman, a zoologist at the Norwegian Natural History Museum of the University of Oslo, pointed out:

« No species has been found in which homosexual behaviour has not been shown to exist, ... a part of the animal kingdom is hermaphroditic, truly bisexual. For them, homosexuality is not an issue »:

http://pactiss.org/2011/11/17/1500-animal-species-practice-homosexuality/
.

« Smart parents generally produce smart children … »

Agreed.
.

« Charlie Perkins … was … a racist … »

Some of the worst examples of racism I have encountered during my business trips has been in black Africa – not only in respect of myself as a white Australian. I have witnessed even worse acts of racism between individuals of different black ethnic groups. Apparently, it has nothing to do with the colour of their skin.

.

Hi Banjo, I think that may be oversimplifying a little too much. While there may not be gross genetic differences in most cases, where populations have been isolated there are definitely differences emerging. Sociological constructs can they linger long enough for a particular model or series of similar models to impact human evolution. Our Law is still based on a Roman construct, for example, which has influenced a great deal of our history for several thousand years. That has conceivably been a long enough time for some of the social effects to be genetically influential through influencing breeding patterns. The Pax Romanus and it's modern equivalents allowed the mixing together of people from different regions on a scale that had never previously occurred. Similar things occurred in the Far East, with Chinese traders and then Mongol invaders spreading far and wide. The Abrahamic religions then continued the trend, proselytising all over the world and bringing different local populations into contact.

That's actually a really important series of genetic mixing events, which wouldn't have happened if the social construct wasn't in place to allow it.

Aboriginal populations have been much more isolated. I recently read an article, which I haven't been able to find on short notice, that says latest research shows greater genetic variance between Aborigines of the South West and the North East than Siberians and Native Americans.

That post was a bit disjointed, I posted before editing and my second cup of coffee...

The point was, that if a social construct, wherever it arises, can linger for a long enough time, say 30 generations or 600 years, the chances are good that it will have some influence on the genetics of the population. If mixing occurs, that does too, etc. I'm not sure what defines a "race", but it's beyond doubt that local evolution occurs.

If correlation never denotes causation, AJ, then the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere must have nothing to do with Human Induced Global Warming, right? I'll bet you don't accept that. For lefties, correlation does not denote causation when you want it to, but it does denote causation when it is convenient.

If low intelligence "is a major risk factor" then low intelligence is major factor in criminal behaviour. I love the way you always unsuccessfully try and rationalise around plain, inconvenient facts. Human behaviour is a product of nature and nurture. Nature provides the underlying personality, ("hard" babies and "easy" babies) and nurture does the rest. But nature is no egalitarian. People are born with different physical attributes, different levels of physical beauty, different underlying personalities, and different levels (and types) of intelligence. Just because Mozart played the piano at aged 5 does not mean that everyone can do it.

Now you are trying to claim that sexual differences have nothing to do with genetics. Oh Christ, AJ. Don't you realise how stupid that premise is? Genetic differences explain hair colour, skin colour, eye colour, physical attributes, but not sex. Apparently, sexual differences do not equate to physical differences. You once stereotyped Creationists as stupid because of the way that they could think up the most bizarre explanations to deny evolutionary reality, and here you are doing exactly the same thing denying that genetics has anything to do with sexual differences. If you listen real hard, you can hear our readers laughing their heads off at that one.

If you admit that there is a link between crime and genetics, and different races have different genetics, and some races have measurably low intelligence, and those races are very disproportionately represented in criminal behaviour, and low intelligence is a factor in criminal behaviour, then only a person who thinks like a Creationist can not see the obvious connection.

I don't rule out socio-economic factors. But dumb people have dumb cultures. Just listen to the misogynistic, violence glorifying, drug glamourising, rap "music", of African blacks, so popular among other dysfunctional minorities.

Dear Rodney.

To a very a large extent, Science is about classifying concepts, and working out what properties those classifications have. We classify, rocks, molecules, animals, stars, trees, diseases, and even people.

Human beings have always been classified by race, because racial differences are so glaringly obvious. The Roman historian Plutarch remarked that in Anatolia (eastern Turkey), the Celtic race and the "Asian" race were mixing and producing an interesting mixed breed with interesting characteristics.

But we are living in an age where some people are using the stature of science to support their bizarre Socialist social theories. From the beginning of the 20th Century, Socialists claimed that the "social construct" of "class" did not exist. Later in the century, they claimed that "race" was a "social construct", and it did not exist. Today they are going so far as to claim that "sex" is a "social construct" and it does not exist, either.

Now on one level, they are right, because all classifications are the result of the human perceptions of reality. But the Socialist ideal of creating a "classless society" fell flat on it's face. Classes do exist because in any population over about 200 souls, different skill specialisation involving different levels of intelligences, and types of intelligences, always creates a layered society.

Next came "race." the Socialist Egalitarians pointed out that not every ethnicity could conveniently fit within the narrow concepts of "black", "white" and "Asian" races. Therefore the concept of race was invalid. But "race" is simply a classification, and within the scientific world, it is rare but still valid, that some phenomena do not neatly fit scientific classifications. The idea of a furry, warm blooded, duck billed creature which laid eggs was so bizarre, that many scientists in the 19th century proclaimed the Platypus a hoax.

"Class" may be a "social construct" but it exists as a valid classification. "Race" may be a "social construct" but it also exists as a valid classification. Nobel Laureate Francis Crick ( co-discoverer of the double helix) was recently ostracised for simply saying that African blacks had low intelligence.

LEGO,

Your problem is that you think that correlation proves causation. It doesn't. You need additional evidence for a causal relationship.

<<If correlation never denotes causation, AJ, then the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere must have nothing to do with Human Induced Global Warming, right?>>

Climate scientists do not make the same mistake, and are not relying on correlation to prove causation.

<<Now you are trying to claim that sexual differences have nothing to do with genetics.>>

Now? No, I’ve always pointed out to you that people don’t inherit sex, it’s determined by chromosomes and hormones at conception.

<<Genetic differences explain hair colour, skin colour, eye colour, physical attributes, but not sex.>>

Correct, sex is chromosomal.

<<Apparently, sexual differences do not equate to physical differences.>>

This is the deductive fallacy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deductive_fallacy). That makes two fallacies now.

<<If you admit that there is a link between crime and genetics …>>

I always have. Why you’ve been trying to prove it with biological sex, I’ll never know.

<<… and different races have different genetics …>>

Skin colour is only determined by ten genes out of 24,000. Humans have one of the smallest gene pools on the planet. Furthermore,

“… an individual can be more genetically similar to someone of a different race than to another of their own race.” (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18533#330445)

<<… and some races have measurably low intelligence …>>

“… how have your dodgy theories accounted for factors such as poor nutrition, poor education, poor parenting, low socioeconomic status, postcode and the resulting high stress levels during the developmental years, for criminal behaviour and low IQ?” (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18533#330439)

<<I don't rule out socio-economic factors. But dumb people have dumb cultures.>>

So how have you controlled for them then? If you haven’t ruled them out, then how do you know that it’s not impossible to attribute genetics across large populations (Hint: it is)? After all,

“… an individual can be more genetically similar to someone of a different race than to another of their own race.” (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18533#330445)

And the genetic combinations for personality propensity are far more complex than, say, skin colour.

As we are still on the subject of race and genetics can someone
answer the question I asked earlier;
Does aboriginal custom allow cousin marriage ?
Indeed did aborigines in previous generations permit cousin marriage
and do they have a marriage custom as we know it ?
Do they allow uncle niece marriage ?
In view of the discussion here these are important questions.

Errrr, no AJ. Correlation does not always denote causation. But quite often, it does. And that is a simple, provable premise. Rain and dark clouds are co related.

Now you are trying to claim that climate alarmists do not co-relate CO2 emissions with global warming. Our readers must be shaking their collective heads in wonder at that doozy. Thank you for saying something so ridiculous that even your most ardent supporters must be looking askance at you.

I don't know why you would be so stupid as to claim that male and female sex has nothing to do with genetics. But thank you for that one too. Your "reasoning", is that the male and female sex is determined by "chromosomes." Well, last I heard, chromosomes were the nucleic structures that carry genetic information within each cell. Males XX and females XY. Different chromosomes, different genetics. Honestly, AJ, I think you should concede failure now while you are still well behind, before you become the laughing stock of OLO.

Now you are going back to the old ploy of saying that criminal behaviour is primarily a product of environmental factors. Nature means little, nurture is everything. You have the little problem of explaining how in the animal world, where no language, culture, postcodes, bad parenting, and any other red herring you can think up exists, that sub species of mammals exist which differ markedly in intelligence and personality from others within the same species. The only plausible explanation is genetic difference. Some breeds of dogs in NSW are banned because they are so dangerous. Other breeds are required by law to be muzzled in public because of their unpredictable behaviour. Other breeds, "Labradors" are noted for their intelligence, devotion, and placid natures, which make them ideal companions for blind people. The dogs natures are artificially bred into them by breeders.

Human beings are mammals. I now expect you to write a 350 word article explaining how the genetic differences in mammalian animals that plainly determines their intelligence and personality can not possibly work in human mammals.

Not by itself, it doesn't LEGO.

<<Correlation does not always denote causation. But quite often, it does.>>

Which is the mistake you always make and are now desperately trying to avoid conceding.

<<Now you are trying to claim that climate alarmists do not co-relate CO2 emissions with global warming.>>

That's not what I said. I said that they do not rely on the correlation to prove the link:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=OJ6Z04VJDco

<<Well, last I heard, chromosomes were the nucleic structures that carry genetic information within each cell.>>

Yes, with the operative word being “carry”. Sex is still not inherited. Either way, we both agree on the point you were trying to make, but your schtick is so rehearsed that you don't even think anymore, which is why you demand a particular position from me.

<<Honestly, AJ, I think you should concede failure now while you are still well behind, before you become the laughing stock of OLO.>>

Oh, you'd love that, wouldn't you? That way, you get to run around claiming victory like the textbook narcissist that you are. Sorry, I'm not going anywhere. We've been through this before and we both know how it ends: you repeat that same arguments God-knows-how-many times, then claim victory and slink of after accusing me of dirty tricks because you're incapable of admitting when you're wrong.

You're a lot of fun, LEGO. Not very bright, but a lot of fun.

<<Now you are going back to the old ploy of saying that criminal behaviour is primarily a product of environmental factors.>>

Old ploy? No, I've never said that, just as I have never said that all creationists are stupid. You're lying again. Criminal behaviour is the result of a complex interplay between both nature and nurture.

<<Human beings are mammals. I now expect you to write a 350 word article explaining how the genetic differences in mammalian animals that plainly determines their intelligence and personality can not possibly work in human mammals.>>

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=15856#275039

And even within dog breeds, personalities can vary a lot

.

Dear Bazz,

.

You ask :

« Does aboriginal custom allow cousin marriage ?
Indeed did aborigines in previous generations permit cousin marriage and do they have a marriage custom as we know it ?
Do they allow uncle niece marriage ? »
.

As I only had a very vague idea of the subjects you mention, I did some research on the internet. Unfortunately, most of the relevant articles are written in technical language which is difficult for common mortals such as myself to understand. Here is what I’ve been able to glean:

Aboriginal tribes had marriage rules. From what I can gather, these rules were designed to avoid marriages between blood relations. In principle, I don’t see any difference between their system and ours. But, in practice, some tribes seem to have been more flexible in the application of their rules in respect of first cousin marriage depending on the availability or scarcity of potential partners and food. Naturally, the rules were designed to favour marriage outside the tribe.

According to my main source of information, endogamy (inbreeding) for a reproductively closed small population (such as a tribe) will eventually lead to extinction. However, we know that our indigenous peoples have thrived in Australia for about 60 000 years. Also :

« … static closed populations with prescriptive first-cousin marriage would entail the highest frequency of autosomal recessive disorders outside of strictly incestuous relations, yielding potentially high levels of inbreeding depression and correspondingly elevated mortality rates. We see little or no evidence to support these predictions » (page 37) :

http://eclectic.ss.uci.edu/~drwhite/pub/Paradox07b.pdf

As regards a marriage custom, “There was, in most groups, no single marriage ceremony, although particular acts or events (e.g., sharing a campfire) would result in the recognition of the marriage by the community” :

http://www.alrc.gov.au/publications/12.%20Aboriginal%20Marriages%20and%20Family%20Structures/marriage-traditional-aboriginal-societie

You might like to read “The Last of the Nomads” by W.J. Peasley, published by Freemantle Press. I bought the French translation here in Paris. It contains a detailed description of the marriage rules of the Mandildjara nomad tribes in the Gibson Desert in central Western Australia.

.

The mistake you made, was dismissing an easily understood relationship with the trite phrase "Correlation does not denote causation." Any person with high school level mathematics can understand that graphs and statistics are all about understanding the relationships between two factors. And while they know that there can be relationships which appear linked, but they are not, there are others in which the relationship is real and obvious. In addition, your premise is a two edged sword. If you dismiss easily understood relationships between two factors with a trite phrase, then your opponents can do the same thing to you.

You are still trying to claim that sexual differences are all about chromosomes, and therefore they have nothing to do with genetics. AJ, you are telling me that the sky is green again. Even Rodney Crisp would think you are nuts. Of course, if you want to destroy your own credibility, go right ahead. Any person who is trying to decide which of us is correct will straightaway know that there is something fundamentally wrong with your ability to reason.

It's pretty hard to pin you down on any position, but I know that if I keep you writing long enough, you will eventually write something I can focus on.

OK, you have now made a statement which I can cut and paste in my "AJ positions" file. You are now saying that, "Criminal behaviour is the result of a complex interplay between both nature and nurture." Well, gee whiz AJ, isn't that what I have been trying to bash into your head for ages? Criminal behaviour is a factor of nature and nurture. Nature provides the underlying personality and nurture moulds that personality to either conform to or reject, societal expectations.

A person who is born genetically prone to low intelligence, violent behaviour, impulsiveness, and attention seeking behaviour, may, if given good parenting, and living within a society where pro social values are constantly reinforced, skirt the criminal abyss. Expose such a person to bad parenting, and a culture which glorifies criminal behaviour, and they will become criminal.

Not talking to me Rodney? Oh, well, I guess I am a bit of a handful.

It was common for aboriginal tribes to exchange (or abduct) young females to prevent inbreeding.

But aboriginals did not "marry", nor did they have traditional "families."

The power structure of an aboriginal tribe was in the primacy of the old men. The rest of the tribe were essentially the old men's slaves who did all of the hunting (males), or all of the gathering "females). Old women were just killed off. Ceremonies would be held where an old man would present a very young female to the tribe and announce that all female children born of this young female would belong to a male tribal member. That man may already be in his 20's, 30's of 40's. it was common for the old men to have harems of young females while the young men were kept separate from the females altogether.

At the age of around 11 or 12, young males were taken from their mothers (stolen?) and kept in barracks like conditions where the older boys taught them the skills of hunting and tracking. From that day on, they belonged to whichever "lodge" they were sent to, and they were not allowed to speak to their mothers or sisters again. In some tribes, even speaking to the owner of your sister or mother was forbidden.

This system was enforced through an ongoing system of painful and degrading ceremonies in which various tortures and rapes were committed on the young males, by the old males, to enforce unquestioned obedience.

This was the primary reason why in Australia, frontier wars like those in the USA were not protracted. The young aboriginal males and females, saw in the coming of the white man, a chance of a better life. They walked away from the tribal system in droves. On the frontier, they were needed. They became exceptional stockmen and stockwomen. Young females became cooks and domestic helps on isolated properties. And for some young aboriginal women, the real wives of pioneering Australian men.

.

Dear LEGO,

.

You wrote :

« "Class" may be a "social construct" but it exists as a valid classification. "Race" may be a "social construct" but it also exists as a valid classification »
.

That’s correct LEGO but there are some words that have become offensive to most people. Race is one.

It is offensive because it evokes the horrors of genocide. Genocides committed on the Jews by the Nazis, on the Armenians by the Turks, on the Tutsis by the Hutus, on the Yazidis by the so-called Islamic State, etc. The word “race” has become a symbol of the extermination of certain human beings for no reason other than the fact that they belong to a particular class of people. It is offensive to the survivors of those genocides, their families and friends and to the rest of humanity, because genocides are crimes against humanity.

To ignore this or, worse, treat it with contempt and reject it, would be simply inhuman. It would be the expression of a profound desire to dissociate oneself from humanity - a form of self denial or auto-flagellation.

Anybody capable of comprehension and a minimum of empathy and compassion for his fellow human beings would prefer to use the terms “populations, people(s), ethnic groups, or communities”.

Most of us are capable of that but some of us are not and, in my view, it is not a question of politics, of left and right. It is just a question of sensitivity to the hurt we may cause others. Either we are at peace with ourselves and accept our own humanity and that of others - all others - or we are not and do not.

If we are not and do not, then there is no doubt where the real problem lies. Happily, there is always the possibility, and should I say hope, that those of us who recognise this will somehow manage to fix it.

.

Dear Rodney.

You seem to be suggesting that certain existing words in the English language should be completely expunged, because somebody, somewhere, may find them offensive. "Race" is simply a classification of people, and it has been around in European languages for at least as long as Plutarch, because he uses it in one of his books ("The Life of Caesar"). Since you are a person of education, Rodney, I find it surprising that you are advocating 1984 Newspeak, where human concepts can be expunged from the human mind by simply controlling language.

Human beings are tribal and territorial, Rodney. I know that 55 million people died in WW2, and I don't oppose you trying to find some sort of philosophy which will allow everybody to live in peace. But the philosophy which you and your peers have invented is simply socialism by another name. Socialism failed everywhere it was tried. It was the most efficient form of totalitarianism ever invented since Islam. And the reason it failed, was because it treated human being like robots, who could be simply reprogrammed to deny their national, cultural, religious, familial, and class associations, and embrace some fuzzy concept of absolute equality. But blood is thicker than ideology, and no amount of politically correct hammering is going to make square people fit round ideological holes.

Your own statement that "most of us are capable of that" is an expression of your own tribal identity. To you, and people who think like you, there are the stupid people like me, and the enlightened people like yourself. "Them and us." You are affirming your loyalty to your own chosen peer group by conforming to their orthodoxy.

And that is where your egalitarian philosophy falls flat on it's face. Suddenly there are two classes of people. The rooly, rooly smart and morally superior, anti racist Internationalists, to whom Open Borders is the fave cause of our time , and the dumb bogans, rednecks, nationalists, One Nation voters, suburbanites and white people in general, who are responsible for buggering up the world with their old fashioned ideals.

.

Dear LEGO,

.

You wrote:

« You seem to be suggesting that certain existing words in the English language should be completely expunged, … "Race" … has been around in European languages for at least as long as Plutarch, because he uses it in one of his books ("The Life of Caesar"). Since you are a person of education, Rodney, I find it surprising that you are advocating 1984 Newspeak, where human concepts can be expunged from the human mind by simply controlling language. »
.

You flatter me, LEGO, but I’m afraid I am a bit of a dunce. I just waded painstakingly through two different English translations of Plutarch’s Caesar but found no trace of the word “race” in either of them. Would you be so kind as to post the paragraph you refer to so that I can compare it with the two translations I have ?

The OED indicates as the first meaning of the noun “race”:

« A competition between runners, horses, vehicles, etc. to see which is the fastest in covering a set course »

It indicates as a second meaning:

« Each of the major divisions of humankind, having distinct physical characteristics », subject to the following two caveats :

1. « Usage: In recent years, the associations of race with the ideologies and theories that grew out of the work of 19th-century anthropologists and physiologists has led to the use of the word race itself becoming problematic. Although still used in general contexts, it is now often replaced by other words which are less emotionally charged, such as people(s) or community »

2. « Origin: Early 16th century (denoting a group with common features): via French from Italian razza, of unknown ultimate origin »

As you can see, I am not responsible for “expunging” the word race “from the human mind by simply controlling language” as you suggest. The OED merits that honour, not me.

Also, if Plutarch (46-120 AD) employed the word “race” in the second sense of the noun, the OED obviously ignores it too.

.

My apologies, it was Plutarch's "Fall of the Republic." I did try to check before I wrote, but probably like yourself, I have far too many books because I hate throwing books out. I will have to get back to you on that one as I am about to go off to work. (but I have the book beside me now.) But I remember the quote all right, because some lefty fool had claimed on TV that "white people had invented racism in the 19th century", and he had even written a book on it. The quote from Plutarch proved that this was not true.

You seem to worry about words being offensive to certain races. As a former trendy lefty like yourself, I became offended that the people who I considered the leaders of my chosen ideology used words to blame my race for everything that ever went wrong on planet Earth. This was one reason that began the process of me examining my chosen leftist ideology using critical thinking. The claim that white people invented racism was a perfect example. White people invented nearly everything, but if you really despise your own race, then it is easy to portray to the befuddled that the scientific classification of everything, including people, can be considered a crime against humanity. It became obvious to me, that the so called "anti racist" leftist brigade simply hated white people.

Everybody uses race to denote certain groups of people. You did it yourself when you wrote this article directed at "my aboriginal compatriots." That is funny from a person who considers "race" to be (to quote from Harry Potter) "the evil who's name must not be mentioned" You compounded your double standard when you further wrote of "aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders." It is plain that those who insist that race does not exist can see it plainly enough when it suits them. And the fact that aborigines and Islanders see themselves as completely different races puts paid to any claims that they might have that race does not matter.

.

Dear LEGO,

.

You wrote:

« My apologies, it was Plutarch's "Fall of the Republic." I did try to check before I wrote, but … I remember the quote all right, because some lefty fool had claimed on TV that "white people had invented racism in the 19th century", and he had even written a book on it. The quote from Plutarch proved that this was not true »
.
Thanks, LEGO, I found three or four mentions of the word “race” in Rex Warner’s English translation of Plutarch’s “Fall of the Roman Republic”, published by Penguin Books. However, I see that the first translation was published in 1958. There was a revised edition in 1972 and a revised and expanded edition in 2005.

Unfortunately, that does not prove that the word “race”, or its equivalent in Ancient Greek (9th century BC to 6th century AD) existed. It simply means that Rex Warner, the English translator in the 1950s, chose to translate into modern-day English, Plutarch’s reference to a particular group of people, by the modern-day word “race”. Plutarch could not possibly have used that word because it did not exist at the time he was writing, in the 1st century AD.

Consequently,it is incorrect to say that the word race “has been around in European languages for at least as long as Plutarch” as you affirmed in your previous post. As indicated by the OED, it only exists since the early 16th century.

Whilst writing, please note that I have no interest whatsoever in party politics, nor in the so-called left-right divide. I consider that to be politicians’ politics. The politics that interests me is what I describe as “the tenets and praxis of contemporary society”. I judge ideas on their merits, irrespective of who expresses them. I have no political allegiances and always try to keep an open mind, whatever the topic under discussion.

I thought I should mention this because you seem to presume otherwise.

No doubt some of your criticisms of me are valid but, naturally, I am not the best judge of that.

.

Your premise, that words from one language may not equate to those of another, is a fair point. My favourite example of that was the Coca-Cola company's insistence that their advertising jingle should be used world wide. The jingle was, "Coke adds life." The closest the Germans language could get to that was, "Return from the dead with Coke."

But in the case of Roman recognition of races, I think you are wrong on four points.

1. In my copy of Plutarch, the translation talks of the extent to which the "Celtic" people had occupied so much European land.. Plutarch was obviously referring to a large linguistic and cultural group which can reasonably be equated to a "race". Even the word "ethnicity" can be used interchangeably with "race."

2. I am a bit of a Rome buff, and in one of my other books on Rome, came a similar statement to Plutarch's. In this (from memory), the Roman writer wrote something like "Above the Rhine River, lives a race of men who are madly fond of war." Sounds like a good description of the Germans.

3. On a TV program about Roman architecture, it was revealed that archaeologists had uncovered racist jokes about Roman soldiers chiselled into the foundations of a Roman temple in Libya. (I wish I knew what they were!)

4. Lastly, was the recent discovery of the racist Roman name for the British. A perfectly preserved Roman wax message was unearthed in which a Roman Centurion had written to somebody about the latest Roman military exercises. In this message, the Centurion wrote that the "Britanculli" (wretched little Brits) contingent had buggered everything up, "as usual."

People who advocate certain causes, usually advocate other causes from the same political divide. Those that favour a Republic, usually support the other two "R''s. (anti Racism and aboriginal Recognition.) You seem to conform to at least two of those notorious left wing causes. So, if you are not a chardonnay sucking, social climbing Socialist, you can hardly blame me for getting it wrong if you keep the wrong company.

I'd just like to offer my congratulations to Banjo P and LEGO for a couple of very interesting posts. I'd especially like to congratulate LEGO. The change from your usual posting style is refreshing.

On the topic, I wonder whether the discussion about "race" is a bit of a red herring? In the terms we use it today in Australia and other Western countries it's incredibly politically and socially charged, as are many other once-innocuous terms. It seems unlikely that ancient Romans, even those as erudite as Plutarch, would have had anything like a similar set of connotations associated with it, just as the translators of Plutarch a generation or two ago would not have thought in the same terms we do.

I'm very sure they must have had names for groups of people who shared certain characteristics or came from a particular region, such as Celts, or the "Germanic tribes" and so on. I doubt they had much use for "racism" in the sense we think of it today: Rome was the thing, not the individual groups within its borders, no matter how extended those became.

.

Dear LEGO,

.

You wrote:

« But in the case of Roman recognition of races, I think you are wrong on four points. »
.

I didn’t say anything on the four points you mention. But I don’t have any problem with them. If that’s how it was, then that’s fine with me.

The discussion I was having with you was only about the modern use of the word “race”. I quoted various authoritative sources which indicated that the word had lost its significance due to recent scientific development.

In particular, Prof. Lewontin of the Harvard University pointed out in 2006 that “over the last thirty-five years a major change has taken place in our biological understanding of the concept of human “race,” largely as a consequence of an immense increase in our knowledge of human genetics. As a biological rather than a social construct, “race” has ceased to be seen as a fundamental reality characterizing the human species.

And the OED adds: “Although still used in general contexts, it is now often replaced by other words which are less emotionally charged, such as people(s) or community”

It is just the modern usage of the word “race” that we need to adapt to our new scientific knowledge. Nothing else. We do not need to rewrite history or even reinterpret it.

In Ancient Greece, a “barbarian” was originally anybody who did not speak Greek. It was not a pejorative term. Its meaning later evolved to mean “foreign, strange, ignorant”. Then the Romans adopted it and extended it to include “rude, wild, savagely cruel person”. Today it designates a rugby union team composed of players from different clubs and nations.

When I was a child, we were taught at school to refer to foreign migrants as “New Australians”. Then, one day I was invited by a mate of mine to afternoon tea with one of his aunts who had just returned from an overseas trip. When he politely asked her how she liked it, she replied: “Oh, it was delightful but it was full of New Australians”.

.

.

Dear Craig,

.

Thank you for your kind words.

This is what the historian, Dante A. Puzzo, has to say on the subject of “Racism and the Western Tradition” in his book of that title, published in 1964 :

« Racism rests on two basic assumptions: that a correlation exists between physical characteristics and moral qualities; that mankind is divisible into superior and inferior stocks.

Racism, thus defined, is a modern conception, for prior to the XV1th century there was virtually nothing in the life and thought of the West that can be described as racist. To prevent misunderstanding a clear distinction must be made between racism and ethnocentrism. The term ethnocentrism – of comparatively recent coinage – is derived from the Greek. While “ethnos” meaning race or nation and “ethos” meaning character or tradition are related words, ethnocentrism serves to describe the identification of oneself with one’s own people as against the rest of mankind, indiscriminately.

The ancient Hebrews, in referring to all who were not Hebrews as Gentiles, were indulging in ethnocentrism, not in racism. For there was nothing in their attitude to suggest that they believed that a relationship existed between physical characteristics and moral qualities.

So it was with the Hellenes who denominated all non-Hellenes – whether the wild Scythians or the Egyptians whom they acknowledged as their mentors in the arts if civilization – Barbarians, the term denoting that which was strange or foreign. »

The consequences of racism became dramatically evident with the horrific genocides of the 20th century. As a result, the word "race" took on a very different connotation.

.

Dear Rodney.

Orwell's book "1984" warned of the control of language to control human thought. Leftists have attempted to deny self evident reality by first claiming that class did not exist, which has fallen flat on it's face by virtue of the fact that the Lefties are the biggest class conscious snobs around. Today, they are even trying to deny sexual differences in order to keep promoting their ridiculous Egalitarian philosophy. Now they are trying to even expunge the word "race" from human consciousness, which is pretty funny because the charge of "racism!" is their favourite explanation for everything.

Human conflict has occurred throughout history and groups of people regard each other as either potential enemies or allies. The racist joke is a cultural universal and it always have been.

The word "racism" itself has evolved. It is the catch all explanation by leftists to explain any inter group human hostility. But your explanation that racism rests on two basic assumptions: that a correlation exists between physical characteristics and moral qualities; that mankind is divisible into superior and inferior stocks", is a good one. You claim that this is not true, while I claim it is essentially true. Our difference of opinion is caused by a kumbaya philosophy opposed by a stubborn reality.

The latest leftist tactic, is to claim that science is on their side. My information, is that this is complete bunkum. After the completion of the historic Human Genome Project, the HGP scientists attempted to initiate another project called "Genetic Factors in Crime." Not surprisingly, the alarmed US NAACP lobbied the US congress to deny funding for this project, and to any US scientist who dared to examine the obvious connection to genetics and crime. When the head of the HGP, Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, (co-discoverer of the double helix) let slip that Africans were not intelligent, the NAACP tried to have him burned at the stake. It is now the norm for International conferences on genetics to be held in camera, because of the furor that would erupt if the very inconvenient truth were known.

.

Dear LEGO,

.
You wrote :

« … your explanation that racism rests on two basic assumptions: that a correlation exists between physical characteristics and moral qualities; that mankind is divisible into superior and inferior stocks", is a good one. You claim that this is not true, while I claim it is essentially true. Our difference of opinion is caused by a kumbaya philosophy opposed by a stubborn reality »
.

That’s an excellent résumé of our points of view, LEGO. And, if I may, allow me to add that each is free to attribute the “stubborn reality” to his own point of view and the “kumbaya philosophy” to that of the other … and vice-versa.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo9AH4vG2wA

From both our points of view, I think it is well worth reflecting on what Barack Obama has to say on the question :

« If we could just see ourselves in one another, the walls of Jericho would come tumbling down »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9ArfGYbkic

All the best, LEGO

.

All human males much prefer beautiful females to ugly ones. Since all human males connect physical beauty with the beauty of a females personality, then all human males must be guilty of "Beautyism." After you have "cured" racism, that could be another Quixotic cause for the Left to embrace.

"Ugly and size 20 women of the world unite!"

LEGO, would you mind answering a question? It's genuine.

What does your ideal world look like? Can you describe the sorts of social and economic structures you think would be in it and perhaps give a brief explanation of why you made those particular choices?

The reason I'm asking is that a large part of your posting seems to be reflexive "lefty" bashing, which tends to confuse the issue.

If anyone else would like to have a go at the question as well, that would be great.

I am not a philosopher, Craig. I am not pushing any ideology except secular democracy, freedom of speech, and the concept that the Australian government realise, that it is in power to look after the interests of Australians. Not the interests of Costa Ricans, Sudanese, Afghans, Nigerians, Tamils, or anybody else.

My country and my entire European civilisation is going to hell in a hand basket because of left wing multicultural idiocy, and it is my job to stop it. I have long warned against the idea of culturally dividing my country, and I have lived long enough to see that I was right. I have always wondered at how many Germans, Russians, North Koreans and Cambodians saw catastrophe coming in their own societies because of socialists, and spoke out about it, but were ignored by their own apathetic populations? The situation in Europe was predictable and avoidable, and it will now take a civil war to sort it out. That is a civil war that the Euros may well lose, the longer they deny reality and put it off.

This is a job that I did not choose. I simply woke up one morning and picked up a newspaper, to find that our socialist enemies were blaming gun owners like myself for the Port Arthur massacre. Since I knew it was all crap, I started hitting back at my tormentors, and my people's enemies, and I have become very good at it.

I think that things are changing, in that the Left is now in retreat. Rather amusingly, far from being Progressives, they have become the new Conservatives and Establishment, desperate to defend a failing status quo ante with censorship and legal Inquisitions, The success of Brexit, Trump, Le Pen, and the anti immigration forces in Europe, which are primarily being led by young European intellectuals, confirms this premise that the pendulum has swung.

Those who defend multiculturalism are now being perceived as old Baby Boomers who never lived out of their 1960's flower child philosophies.

Hi LEGO, I think that you are a philosopher, but because you associate that term with some viewpoints you find uncongenial, you disclaim it. There are very few people who aren't. I do appreciate your taking my question seriously, thank you.

I hope you don't mind if I summarise your post a little, in the interests of clarity. Please correct me if I have your meaning wrong.

1. You feel that you, as an Australian, have first claim on the resources of this country.
2. You feel that successive Governments, influenced by "lefties" have made decisions that are at odds with 1.
3. You feel that because of the influence of "lefties", Government decision-making has become disconnected from the pragmatic realities you perceive.
4. You feel that the influence of "lefties" is so pervasive that it must be fought and that there are few willing to do so.
5. You feel that good data is being (mis)used to support bad conclusions.
6. You feel that there are fundamental qualitative differences between people from different regions that make people from some regions incapable of being part of the secular democracy that you would like to see implemented in Australia.
7. You feel that those who you identify as being of the "left" are driven by a misguided ideological urge to self-abnegation.
8. You feel that the current political model is not an exemplar of the secular democracy you would like to live within.
9. You are of the view that addressing these problems is a matter of urgency and so you are compelled to act as you can to try to make that happen.

Is that a fair summation? Please add to it if you think it's missing anything.

To Craig.

I could probably write 5000 words on what I think is wrong with Australia today, asking me to explain everything is a bit much.

As a child I lived in extreme poverty and I saw with my own eyes the Australian (Liberal) governments give priority to well off immigrants over my own family. The male members of my family were in the worst of it during WW1 and WW2, and that is all the thanks we got. You can bet that this fact had a very marked impression on my present social and political attitudes. Things have not improved today. The Left needs dysfunctional people to be dependent upon government largesse, and then vote for them, and these they import.

Our democratic system has become corrupted, just look at the way the "Labor" and "Greens" are actually opposing a plebiscite on homosexual "marriage." This is aided by a left wing "Liberal" prime Minister who supports homosexual "marriage."

I think that there are good people in all races, but that some ethnicities just happen to be generally not very intelligent and genetically very prone to violent behaviour. Crime statistics prove that this is true. The only explanation that the Leftist Egalitarians offer is that "it is all the white man's fault." This racist excuse has been used for too long.

Leftists are primarily motivated by a puritanical compulsive need to think that they are intellectually and morally superior to everybody else. Their self image is more important to them than the survival of their own white civilisation which they despise but choose to live in.

The tide is beginning to turn against Leftism. They have become the new Establishment, and they have become so arrogant and incompetent that they are stuffing everything up. The white peasant bogans are revolting, and they are being led by people who are sometimes young and obviously very intelligent. Mark Steyn, Nigel Farage, Paul Joseph Watson, Gert Weelders, Hirsan Ali, Pat Condell, and Douglas Murray. These people are powerful writers and speakers and they make the politically correct look like the idiots they are.

Hi LEGO,
Thanks for your reply to my quite personal question. I am sure some variant of your views has been part of human social behaviour for as long as humans have existed. In other words, I suspect they may be based on an instinctual response.

The modern version is based around continental scale differences; you say "my European race", where people from PNG with less exposure to the wider world talk of "wantoks", who share a common "ples tok" (place talk) but the basic model is to distrust those who look or act sufficiently dissimilar. If they make us feel uncomfortable through possessing some form of advanced technology: bronze weapons when ours are stone; a different form of social organisation (look at the old testament and you'll see the worst of God's punishments to the enemies of the Israelites are reserved for those who have different ways of arranging society); esoteric knowledge of any kind.

I think that those people you mention who are manipulating that fear of the other in people who are less capable of arguing articulately are self-serving and very destructive. They aren't alone, the same thing occurs on the other side of politics. Divide and conquer is the standard way of doing political business

I think we really need to move to a way of doing politics that is about cooperation and seeking common ground in the face of genuinely existential threats to our species.

We live in an intimately connected, global world. Putting up walls, whether literal, legal or metaphorical can't be a long-term solution. We have to work out better ways of thinking about differences.

No, LEGO, I’m not making any mistakes.

<<The mistake you made, was dismissing an easily understood relationship with the trite phrase "Correlation does not denote causation.">>

Once again, the relationship needs to be proven independently of the correlation, and in most cases, it’s a third factor or multiple totally unrelated factors causing the two.

http://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

<<Any person with high school level mathematics can understand that graphs and statistics are all about understanding the relationships between two factors.>>

Yes, and there’s a relationship between ice cream sales and murder rates. What matters is the causal factor.

<<In addition, your premise is a two edged sword. If you dismiss easily understood relationships between two factors with a trite phrase, then your opponents can do the same thing to you.>>

Of course they can. Which is why I avoid ever doing that.

<<It's pretty hard to pin you down on any position, but I know that if I keep you writing long enough, you will eventually write something I can focus on.>>

For the seventeenth time now, why do you need to? The only explanation is that you need something to distract from the flaws in your arguments by attacking mine. Not to mention the fact that I’ve stated my position on many topics many times before, you just don’t like them because they’re not the ones you need.

<<You are now saying that, "Criminal behaviour is the result of a complex interplay between both nature and nurture.">>

Now? No, I’ve said that plenty of times before:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17092#301780
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17534#310646

I just love how you have this ability to phrase your sentences in a way that makes it appear as though your opponents are getting their arses kick when it's actually the other way around.

<<Well, gee whiz AJ, isn't that what I have been trying to bash into your head for ages?>>

No. In fact, I was the one who had to tell you that:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=15856&page=0

<<Leftists are primarily motivated by ...>>

Leftist: because you can make anything sound like a crazy ideology if you just as an -ist or an -ism.

Some more fun and games while I was waiting for the narcissistic ‘victory dance’ that unfortunately didn’t happen this time...

At least not where I was concerned, anyway:

"Not talking to me Rodney? Oh, well, I guess I am a bit of a handful." (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18533#330490)

Or a tamed-down version of it at least.

<<Our democratic system has become corrupted, just look at the way the "Labor" and "Greens" are actually opposing a plebiscite on homosexual "marriage.">>

Quotation marks: because it can’t REALLY be marriage now, can it?

That topic has been done to death on OLO now and the reasons against a plebiscite have been cited many times. They’re all sound. I don’t hear you complaining about all the other changes parliament makes without asking us first. What about when the Howard government changed it in the first place?

The ‘anti-democratic’ accusations are unfounded.

<<I think that there are good people in all races, but that some ethnicities just happen to be generally not very intelligent and genetically very prone to violent behaviour. Crime statistics prove that this is true.>>

You still won’t say how you have controlled for environmental factors. That’s because you haven’t. It is simply imperative to your worldview that some races be inferior. Nothing more.

<<The only explanation that the Leftist Egalitarians offer is that "it is all the white man's fault.">>

Fault has nothing to do with it.

<<This racist excuse has been used for too long.>>

There’s nothing racist about it, because it has nothing to do with race and everything to do with majority status. I’ve mentioned this many times before but, of course, that makes no difference to you now does it?

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17092#301897

You just repeat the same old shonky half-truths and hope no-one notices.

<<The tide is beginning to turn against Leftism.>>

Leftism: because you can make anything sound like a crazy ideology if you just add an -ist or an -ism.

Human beings are tribal and territorial, Craig. That is part of our DNA. The desire to live among ones own people, people with whom you feel kinship, and with whom you feel safe with, is a cultural universal. Just look at how Australian suburbs are being ghettoised right now to see the truth of that.

There is not a race, religion, or culture on planet Earth which wishes to become a minority within its own claimed territory by people from another race, religion or culture. That too is a cultural universal. It is not just limited to “racist” redneck white people.

After WW2, educated people sought a philosophy which would spare humankind from any more serious wars like WW2, which killed 55 million people. Their "solution" was simply Socialism by another name. It was based upon a fallacy, that all humans are created equal and that social inequalities results only from the exercise of unjust privilege.

The reality is that Mother Nature is no egalitarian. People are unequal in intelligence. And they are born that way. Just as they are born with different potentials for height, physical attractiveness, artistic flair, athletic prowess, musical talents, and other traits. Although subsequent experience shapes this material, no amount of political correctness can make individuals with widely divergent mental aptitudes into intellectual equals.

The educated elites idea to Save The World entailed mixing up white civilisation with wholesale immigration from Third world societies. The Asians are smarter and more racist than white people, and they never bought that stupid idea. Fifty years of multiculturalism and it has been nothing but a catastrophe for white society. With Europe now necessarily becoming ever more racist, paratroopers patrolling their streets, journalists and scores of ordinary people being gunned down, run over, and blown up, how you can still believe in this fairyland fantasy is beyond me

There was very little that was socialist in post WW2. There was a shortage of labour and huge demand for goods and services, both here and elsewhere in the world. Socialism was regarded with deep suspicion due to its association with both the Fascists and the Communists.

There was a generally egalitarian model within the Western world, although the fear of facing another war and even worse, another Great Depression, made State control of much of the economic activity something that was seen as essential. I guess having an adult male population that had spent several years in the military made that a lot easier.

The rise of Western Fabianism started in the late 50s and early sixties, as a reaction to the lifting of the stringently controlled economic conditions of the preceding couple of decades and to the sense of impending doom that was a part of the Cold War. The people who'd been to war now had kids and they wanted to give them a chance at a life they hadn't had.

I was born in 63 and it was still a part of my early life, even up in PNG.

You're right to say that Mother Nature isn't egalitarian, but the human species is a group species. We have only been successful to the extent that we cooperate. Every time we have let self-interest be the main guiding principle for social organisation it's ended badly. Have a think about it for yourself.

The other thing about humans is that we are excellent adapters. We have colonised every part of the globe and we did it with the same basic technology for a million years. Our ability to adapt those basic tools to new applications in new environments is what made us the dominant mammalian species and arguably the dominant species period.

The problems in Europe are a short-term thing. They will not last and overreacting to short-term problems isn't adaptive.

LEGO, you might enjoy this.

https://youtu.be/bILldpGbVf0

It's Milton Friedman on the roots of the welfare state.

Hi AJ.

I "phrase my sentences like I am kicking your arse" because I am doing just that. While ever you persist in your dishonest "debating" tactics of never submitting a position you need to defend, then I know that you know your position is wrong. And you know and that my position is right. You are not debating, you are desperately trying to stifle debate.

You have criticised the obvious connection between low intelligence and criminal behaviour with the trite phrase "correlation does not denote causation", as if this is as immutable as the Law Of Gravity, and it is always the case. Most people can understand that correlation can denote causation and I have given two examples of that. Keep it up. You are on a hiding to nothing on that one.

You have stated that "Criminal behaviour is the result of a complex interplay between both nature and nurture." Oh? Exactly what do you mean by "nature"? Is the "nature" you are talking about "genetics"? If so, are you finally admitting that genetics and crime are linked? If not, then what the hell do you mean by "nature"?

I have never used the word "inferior" when describing other races. Please do not put words in my mouth.

Leftist humanitarians like yourself blame white people for the social dysfunctions of every other race. Your excuse for this obvious racism is that "it has everything to do with majority status." Excuse me? Are you suggesting that the white race is always responsible for minority dysfunction in European societies, just because the whites are in the majority? Well, at least you suggesting that racism can be justified. But if you can justify racism towards white people for any reason, how are you not a racist yourself?

Is it OK to be a racist if you have a good reason?

To Craig Minns.

Your premise appears to be, that humans must adapt their thinking to consider themselves as all equals and brothers to create world peace. This is almost identical to the old Socialist promise that if we built world wide, classless, Socialist states where everybody was equal, there would be no war because "workers would not kill workers." Crime would disappear, and there would be no need of police forces, because everybody would be equal, and therefore everybody would only take "according to their needs".

It was a nice theory, but it did not work in practice. Human beings are tribal and territorial, and that is in our DNA. You can no more use "rational" arguments to make human beings "adapt" to thinking that everybody is their brother, than you can use rational arguments to convince teenagers to refrain from sex to prevent overpopulation.

The reason that Socialism failed, was because it thought that it could dispense with the deep instinctive drives which powers much of human behaviour, and replace it with pure rationalism. It treated human being as if they were robots who could simply be reprogrammed to conform to whatever rationale a non elected committee thought should be the new standard of human behaviour. What is "rational" anyway? There is nothing "irrational" about robbing a bank if you need money.

If humans were rational beings, there would be no wars, obesity, diabetes, music, poetry, beauty pageants, drug addiction, sport, or overpopulation. Hardly anybody would be killed on our roads because everybody would obey the road rules.

That is just one reason why your premise is wrong. Another is that the human race has doubled in my lifetime, and competition for resources is the prime reason for human group hostility. Consider the South China Sea or Kuwait. Another is that, your ideology is an exclusive white protestant/atheist European academic ideal. Most of humanity considers it utterly ridiculous, and the Euros are beginning to think twice about it also. Lastly, the idea that everybody is equal has taken a real bettering lately, especially in white European countries. Reality bites.

LEGO, I did you the favour of trying to understand your position without putting words in your mouth.

The point is this: humans are highly social creatures, notwithstanding the high proportion of antisocial types on this site.In order for humans as a species to prosper, there must be a way found to overcome the irrationality of racism and separatism. If no such way can be found, then the human species will not prosper.

And you're right, I am suggesting that if people can work out new ways of interacting, then the positive consequences are immense.

It doesn't require everyone to be rational all the time, quite the opposite - humans aren't Vulcans, we have intense emotional drives. The problem is that sometimes, we allow our emotions to be the sole means of evaluating choices.

We no longer live in a paleolithic world, or a Bronze Age world, or an Iron Age world, or a medieval world, or a steam age world. We no longer live in nomadic tribes of around 100-200 people. Our human population has increased in 2000 years (just 100 generations) from a few million to nearly 9 billion; in just 100 years (5 generations) it has gone from 1 billion to nearly 9 billion because people who did live in those worlds were able to imagine better ways of doing things and to cope with the changes that occurred. Our own country, in just over 200 years has gone from a ragtag bunch of convicted felons and their guards to a modern nation of over 24 million that people from all over the world want to live in.

Why do you think we in the modern world are so much less competent than our ancestors?

The human race is not going to prosper, Craig. Population growth is so alarming that the only things that can reduce our populations are the traditional factors of war, disease, and starvation. Racism is not "irrational." Human beings lack armour, teeth, claws, or horns. What made us the top of the food chain is that humans evolved very early in our existence the deep psychological need to form self protecting groups. The tribal social structure combined with the territorial imperative is an essential survival tool hard wired into our consciousness. You are not going to change that just because Westerners have lived for so long in prosperity that we have forgotten that you may have to get blood on your hands if you wish for you and your people to survive.

Other races from other parts of the world don't think like that. They come from dog eat dog worlds and their tolerance for other tribes is rudimentary or non existent. It is hardly surprising that if you mix together two different races with two different attitudes about the need for tribal loyalty, you are going to end up with a civil war, with my money on the more socially cohesive tribe.

So, what is your "solution", Craig. With 100 million people being added to the world's population every year, we just let every one of them immigrate to a western country and the problem is solved? Or we simply let the UN redistribute the world's wealth from the rich countries who created it to the poor countries? If we can't make everybody rich, we can sure make everybody poor. But at least we will be equal and so there will be no more war, right?

Wrong.

In a world where the only expanding resource is human beings, human life is becoming cheaper, not more valuable. Racism will increase as competition for resources increases. Separatism will increase as more and more people see their tribal identity as crucial to their survival from other tribes who are also increasing, in a world of shrinking resources.

May the strongest tribe win.

Conflict is not a given, there are many examples of groups living together peacefully for long periods of time. Conflict occurs for a few main reasons: shortage of resources leading to resentment and fear (which is your personal motivation from what you said earlier); selfish grabs for personal power by individuals in authority (Napoleon for example); misunderstandings caused by poor information flows (which is why there are hotlines between the leaders of various countries). Conflicts are rarely driven by ideology or religion, although they may be used as a pretext for one of the reasons above.

Shortage of resources is not going to be a problem into the future unless we continue to breed in an uncontrolled manner. That's possible, but unlikely. Further to that, the rise of automated manufacture and additive manufacturing is going to make consumption goods so cheap as to make conflict over things that are currently seen as signs of wealth completely meaningless. Work as we know it will disappear and with that there will need to be changes to our financial models.

Human life has always been cheap.

How many other countries have you lived in? I've only lived here in Oz and in PNG where I grew up. My experience among those "savages" was that I was able to freely roam about as a child with absolutely no fear and with confidence that if I found myself in trouble someone would help me out.

To be honest and I hope you don't take this the wrong way, I get the sense that you are struggling to cope with the rapid pace of social change and you're looking for reasons to justify slowing it down. I don't mean that pejoratively, it's an entirely normal response for people to become more cautious as they age. The danger is that if we allow such fear of change to be our guiding principle then we will be left at the mercy of forces we can't manage.

The history of the world
Follows a simple plan
He takes who has the power
He holds, who can.

The indisputable point about groups living together peacefully within the same territory is a factor of the minority groups unquestioning acceptance the primacy of the majority group. No two cultural or religious groups with widely differing concepts of acceptable behaviour can ever live peacefully within any territory where immigration or birth rate differentials threaten the primacy of the majority group The result is always, serious social strife, demands for separatism, and eventually, civil war. I hold this to be self evident and as immutable as The Law of Gravity.

In the past seventy years we have seen civil wars, coups, or national separations in Lebanon, Fiji, Cyprus, Georgia, Afghanistan, Biafra, Rhodesia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Liberia, Kashmir, Punjab, Sudan, Nigeria, Bougainville, East Timor, Yugoslavia, Kurdistan, New Zealand, Bhutan, Angola, Burma, Yemen, Pakistan, Chechnya, Guadalcanal, Aden, Malaya, Oman, Congo, Northern Ireland, Palestine/Israel, Czechoslovakia, Mexico, East Timor, Thailand and recently, Ukraine.

Multiculturalism is just like Socialism, Craig, how many times does it need to fail before you can figure out it can never work?

Every attempt throughout history to create an all encompassing group identity has failed. The Romans tried it and they failed. The Christians broke up into three main sects and a score of smaller sects. The Muslims broke up into two main sects and a handful of smaller sects. The Soviet Union tried to destroy national and cultural identity within the USSR by deporting Lithuanians, Chechens, Uzbecks, Tadjics, Mongolians, Siberians, Ukrainians, and every other minority by the tens of millions at bayonet point, and mixing them up together. They failed. The USSR even tried to destroy class identity, and they failed.

There can be no all encompassing group identity because people are not just different, they like being different. And there can be no common identity on a planet where some people have a high standard of living and others live on $2 dollars a day.

LEGO, I'm sorry, I really thought there was a chance at a proper discussion.

Enforced cultural homogeneity is doomed to fail. Cultural heterogeneity, as is found across the world, can work well, provided there are measures in place to ameliorate the impact of rabble-rousers and would-be demagogues spreading fear and playing the politics of resentment.

I have no idea what you mean by "cultural homogeneity." Or how this will Save The World.

Enforced cultural homogeneity can be expressed in 2 simple lines

Ein Volk
Ein Reich

Its effects can be seen in the former Yugoslavia and more recently in Rwanda, in Mao-era China, in Kampuchea under the Khmer Rouge. It can be seen in the US, especially in States where there is significant poverty and fear has become dominant over reason.

It is the concept that everyone within a border should look and think the same and that differences cannot be tolerated.

It is always the product of lazy thinking and leads to stagnation and ultimately the death of the system that practises it.

The thing is, it's never a problem in prosperous nations where everyone is doing well, it's always the product of a dysfunctional society in which those people who aren't doing well look for things to blame for their own conditions. It's always driven by resentment and selfishness.

To the extent that States which practise it prosper, they can only do so by forceful suppression of dissent and that is a very costly thing to implement.

LEGO,
Just to put our discussion into its proper perspective, this is the late and sorely missed Warren Zevon. When he sang this he had not long before been diagnosed with lung cancer and died all too soon thereafter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbhYqV17CoQ

Life's too short...

To Craig.

OK, I think I have finally worked out what you are trying to say.

You are saying that monoculturalism (which you have named "homogeneity") is doomed to fail, and multiculturalism (which you call "heterogeneity") "can work well, provided there are measures in place to ameliorate the impact of rabble-rousers and would-be demagogues spreading fear and playing the politics of resentment."

Sorry mate, I disagree with that premise entirely. There are five continents on planet earth and four of them you could say are "multicultural" and for the last 200 years, they have all been rent apart by very serious wars The exception was Australia. Why? Because the continent of Australia was one nation, one language, one culture and one people. The western experiment with multiculturalism has been a catastrophe. Europe is coming apart at the seams and both French and German officials are making statements about the dangers of civil war. The leaders of Germany, Spain, Britain, Austria, and Italy have all made public statements to the effect that multiculturalism has failed.

I have always been amazed at how ideologues can dismiss self evident reality and continue to believe in a Quixotic ideal which is plainly leading to disaster.

China is arguably "homogenous" and it is doing very well. South Korea is homogenous and it is the fourth largest economy in the world. Japan is homogenous and prosperous and they like it that way. They don't have any race riots or "no go" zones where Japanese fear to tread. No bombs, No Muslim terrorists, no ethnic crime, no demands for separatism.

My prediction is that unless the Euros drive the Muslims back to whatever hell holes they have created in their own countries, Europe will fall to the Muslims. Islamic takeover is already well advanced in Sweden where everybody apparently once thought like you do. The Swedes are now reconsidering their position and realising how stupid they were. The "homogeneous" Asians will be pre-eminent in the next century because they are much more racist than white people, and they do not want a bar of multiculturalism

.

Dear LEGO,

.

You certainly paint a bleak picture of humanity and its future prospects. Perhaps it’s because you are painting it in black and white. A little colour might highlight a few important nuances and would probably brighten things up a little.

That said, prophets of doom can and do play a useful role in alerting to unforeseen pitfalls and dangers intrinsic in certain social developments. Happily, their doomsday prophesies have so far failed to materialise.

Allow me to nuance some of the facts on which you base your prophesies:

« Population growth is so alarming that the only things that can reduce our populations are the traditional factors of war, disease, and starvation »

The annual growth rate reached its peak in 1963 at 2.3%. It has declined to about 1.13% in 2016 and is estimated to become less than 1% by 2020 and less than 0.5% by 2050.
.

« There are five continents on planet earth and four of them you could say are “multicultural” … »

In fact, there are seven continents on planet earth: North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and Antarctica.
.

« In the past seventy years we have seen civil wars, coups, or national separations in … [ you cite 40 countries commencing with Lebanon and finishing with Ukraine] … »

That represents 20% of the countries in the world and less than 15% of the world population. This means that 80% of the countries and more than 85% of the world population have not experienced the civil strife you mention.
.

« … the continent of Australia was one nation, one language, one culture and one people »

Really? Prior to British colonisation there were 250 different Aboriginal “nations” (and languages). The “gold rush” of 1850 brought migrants from China and the Pacific Islands as well as from North America, Germany, France, Poland, Italy and Hungary. In addition, the end of the White Australia policy in 1975 saw a constant flow of immigrants arrive here from around the world.

(Continued ...)

.

.

(Continued ...)

.

Today, Australians identify with some 300 ancestries and practise a range of religions. We speak about 300 languages including indigenous languages. After English, the most common languages spoken are Mandarin, Italian, Arabic, Cantonese and Greek. See the final paragraph on the following link:

http://www.border.gov.au/about/corporate/information/fact-sheets/08abolition
.

« Europe will fall to the Muslims … The "homogeneous" Asians … do not want a bar of multiculturalism »

What about our close neighbour, Indonesia, with its Muslim population of 262 million? Prior to the introduction of Islam, it was mostly Hindu and Buddhist.

Asia is not as “homogenous” as you imagine. Languages are good indicators of different cultures:

http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/asian_languages.htm
.

« Multiculturalism is just like Socialism … how many times does it need to fail before you can figure out it can never work? »

There appears to be no consensus on the most multicultural countries in the world but I have found no evidence that socialist countries (or “lefties” as you call them) are more multicultural than non-socialist countries (or “righties”). In fact, the contrary seems to be true.

James D. Fearon, professor of political science at Stanford University, rates PNG, India, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Malaysia, Fiji, Canada, Switzerland, Belgium, Pakistan, Burma, Spain, USA, Laos, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Singapore and New Zealand, above Russia, for example. China ranks slightly above Australia a little further down on the list.

Here is the link to Fearson’s list, commencing on page 215 of his paper on “Ethnic and Cultural Diversity by Country”:

http://web.stanford.edu/group/fearon-research/cgi-bin/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Ethnic-and-Cultural-Diversity-by-Country.pdf

.

Dear Rodney.

The degree to which people from ANY culture will accept people from another race, religion or culture as “one of them” depends upon many different factors.

The bottom line is, that there is not a race, religion or culture on planet Earth which wishes to be destroyed or subjugated in its own claimed territory by people from another race, religion or culture. That is a cultural universal. It is not just limited to “racist” redneck white people.

The degree to which any race, religion or culture will accept others depends upon

1. Prosperity. People living on the edge of starvation are not noted for their tolerance of outsiders who trespass upon their territories to help themselves to the resources which the primary group considers vital for their own communal survival.

One example of that was displayed in the brilliant David Lean movie “Lawrence of Arabia” where “Howeitat” “Sherif Ali” played by Omar Sharif shot dead Lawrence’s “Hazim” guide for drinking at a “Howeitat” well. Sharif tells Lawrence.

"He was nothing. The well is everything. The Hazim may not drink at our wells. He knew that."

2. The degree of difference between the cultural values of the different cultures. Where cultural differences are mutually exclusive, one culture must dominate the other. Provided that the minority culture accepts that some of their treasured cultural beliefs are considered wrong and does not attempt to practice them surreptitiously, then a high degree of acceptance can be obtained.

3. The degree to which any minority group steadfastly maintains its own cultural identity and maintains almost exclusive social connections within their own race, culture and religion, reduces the degree of acceptance and tolerance from the primary culture.

4. The group behaviour of the minority race, religion or culture is another very strong indicator of whether tolerance or acceptance can be achieved. Where members of any minority culture display vastly greater propensity towards criminal behaviour and welfare dependency than the primary culture, it is unlikely whether acceptance or tolerance can ever be obtained.

continued

continued

5. Population birth rate differentials. Where population differentials between minorities and majorities are changing, either through birth rate differentials or immigration, there is not a majority race, religion or culture on planet Earth who would not be very concerned about this.

Intelligence differentials. All communities layer their social strata according to intelligence, with the more intelligent usually inhabiting the upper classes. Even within close knit communities, little social interaction occurs between the different classes due to the differing intelligence levels and different types of intelligences. Birds of a feather just keep flocking together regardless of how much Rodney thinks it is wrong.

If social division exists even within close knit communities based upon intelligence. How much do you think any race, religion or culture will ignore the fact that another, less successful and not too bright minority does not measure up to their social standards? Could I submit that whites and Asians generally get along OK because people from these groups have generally identical intelligence levels?

Europeans are bringing people into their countries at such a rate that I understand that our unique and successful European culture is going to be swamped unless I disregard my inclination to be tolerant and become intolerant. I don’t think that it is either noble or smart to be so tolerant that it becomes a vehicle for social extinction.

Furthermore, Europeans are bringing people into their countries who’s consider their racial, religious and cultural identity to be uppermost, who’s cultural values we consider reprehensible, who’s group behaviour based upon those cultural values is unacceptable, and rather incredibly, under our new state sponsored religion of Multiculturalism, they are being encouraged to maintain them.

I apologise for my tardy responses, LEGO. I’ve been frightfully busy in the last week or so. Besides, given that you slink off after the one-month mark, making the mistake of thinking that no one is reading anymore, I figure I can ‘win’ with less effort by spacing my posts out given that you also assume that the person who gets the last word in must necessarily be the winner.

<<I "phrase my sentences like I am kicking your arse" because I am doing just that.>>

So the fact that they're worded dishonestly is not of any concern to you? Why am I not surprised?

But let’s see now. You have committed two fallacies so far (three, if you include your appeal to nature in your posts to Craig Minns), while I have committed none. You have lied twice about what I have said, while I have not yet lied about anything you have said. And you have twice used the word “now” to dishonestly give the impression that I am improvising and conceded little by little.

Looks to me like there’s only one person getting their arse kicked here, and it’s not me.

<<While ever you persist in your dishonest "debating" tactics of never submitting a position you need to defend, then I know that you know your position is wrong.>>

Oh, this is another thing. Firstly, I ask you why my opinion that you are wrong is not enough, and you never answer. Secondly, I state my position all the time and yet you’re quite happy to pretend that I don’t because it’s not the position you need.

Looks to me like there’s only one person getting their arse kicked here, and it’s not me.

<<And you know and that my position is right. You are not debating, you are desperately trying to stifle debate.>>

Do I? Am I? Could you give an example of this? Of course you can’t, and there's yet another example of who here is getting their arse kicked: the one who cannot provide examples of their accusations when asked. Not one.

Continued…

…Continued

<<You have criticised the obvious connection between low intelligence and criminal behaviour with the trite phrase "correlation does not denote causation"…>>

No, I’ve said that the correlation itself is not evidence. I’ve also been saying “imply” rather than "denote", but you’ve changed this because it helps your argument. There’s another one for you. Only one of us here is having to misquote the other. You're a master of deceit, but not much else.

Looks to me like there’s only one person getting their arse kicked here, and it’s not me.

<<…as if this is as immutable as the Law Of Gravity, and it is always the case.>>

Yes, it is always the case that correlation does not imply causation.

<< Oh? Exactly what do you mean by "nature"? Is the "nature" you are talking about "genetics"?>>

Yes, and physiology. That sort of thing.

<<If so, are you finally admitting that genetics and crime are linked?>>

“Finally”? There’s that dishonest wording again. And here’s those links to me saying that before, again:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17092#301780
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17534#310646

<<I have never used the word "inferior" when describing other races. Please do not put words in my mouth.>>

Oh, that’s rich given that I’ve never said “denote”. How about you desist from putting words in my mouth?

<<Leftist humanitarians like yourself blame white people for the social dysfunctions of every other race.>>

Leftist: because you can make anything sound like a crazy ideology if you just add an -ist or an -ism.

<<Your excuse for this obvious racism…>>

It’s not racism because it has nothing to do with race. I’ve already explained that.

<<Are you suggesting that the white race is always responsible for minority dysfunction in European societies, just because the whites are in the majority?>>

No.

<<Is it OK to be a racist if you have a good reason?>>

If the good reasons outweigh the bad, yes. Unfortunately for you, they don’t. It’s just your rightistism that leads you to think you can.

Rightistism: because you can make an ideology sound twice as crazy if you add both an -ist and an -ism.

.

Dear LEGO,

.

I understand what you are saying and I think there is a lot of truth in what you are saying but I also have a difference of appreciation of some of it.

You write, for example:

« All communities layer their social strata according to intelligence, with the more intelligent usually inhabiting the upper classes »

That is not my impression. People like Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Pierre and Marie Curie, and other great scientists, artists and musicians, Nobel prize winners etc. are generally not considered as belonging to the so-called “upper classes”. In Europe there are still numerous aristocratic families living in their castles and “chateaux” or stately private residences, sending their children to the best private schools in the US or Switzerland or wherever. Together with the immensely rich in every country in the world (without exception), they make-up what I should call the “upper class”. Apart from people like Donald Trump, they are usually well groomed and well educated (socially) but not necessarily what one would normally consider “the more intelligent”.

The “upper class”, of course, is at home wherever they go. They always have the best of everything in every country and every culture, in every airline, private jet, yacht or limousine.

They don’t have to migrate anywhere. They live wherever they like as long as they like and they are always welcome, irrespective of their culture and religion. They come and go as they please.

Migrants are not part of the “upper class”. As I see it, there are two major categories of migrants. There are those who migrate out of interest or curiosity or, should I say, free choice, and those who migrate out of necessity. I am one of the former.

The problem arises with those who migrate out of necessity. They are generally the victims of war, political, religious or racial persecution, severe economic conditions or dramatic and persistant climate change.

.

(Continued …)

.

.

(Continued …)

.

We can ignore them just as we ignore the homeless and beggars on the street or we can try to help them. For every single one who manages to reach our shores or country borders there are thousands more who do not have the courage, the strength and the determination or simply the means to risk their lives and make the perilous journey. As I wrote in a previous article, the ones that do “are worth their salt so far as I am concerned”:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=18477&page=0

Migration, in their case, is not some light-hearted whim or a simple choice taken out of interest or curiosity but the impelling quest of a safe and decent life for themselves and their families. They are not bludgers seeking to live off the dole or invading the “rich” countries in order to “submerge” them, and take them over. They are people who flee their own countries and their own cultures to go to other countries and integrate other cultures.

We are living out a human drama of a planetary dimension and, in my opinion we should do our best to stick to our values. By that, I mean that we should do whatever we can to help them without driving our “rich” countries into “social extinction” syndrome (to employ your expression). Nobody wants that and it wouldn’t be of any help to the migrants.

.

.

Dear All,

.

There is an interesting article in today’s Australian edition of The Guardian by Peter Lewis, an executive director of Essential, a strategic communications and research company based in Melbourne and Sydney that conducts a weekly poll, The Essential Report, on the national public mood.

The title of The Guardian article is “False perceptions: what lies behind our attitudes to Muslim Immigration”. It follows this week’s joint commitment by Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten to reject One Nation’s call for a discriminatory immigration policy and highlights recent Census figures which indicate that only 2.2% of the Australian population identifies as Muslim. Here is the link to the article:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/12/rejecting-one-nations-immigration-policy-is-more-than-symbolism-it-can-change-the-nation?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Politics+AUS&utm_term=194548&subid=10045778&CMP=ema_792

.

The three tickets into the upper classes are high intelligence, money, and (especially women) physical beauty. Beautiful girls from Gunnedah marry billionaires and Hollywood stars and get on the A-list, which is why rich people are often called "the beautiful people."

People with high intelligence are usually upwardly mobile. People with low intelligence stay on the bottom rung. In western democracies, it is not hard for a person with average intelligence in the disadvantaged class to climb a rung into the working class. Upper class twits are the subject of endless mirth but they can maintain their positions in the upper classes by virtue of inherited wealth and family connections. One advantage of secular democracies is their abilities to allow intelligent people from the lower classes to rise to whatever level is appropriate to their intelligence.

Black people generally have low intelligence and that is why they mostly inhabit the lowest class. The importation of black people into western countries has been a social catastrophe. Even in countries like Britain and France where there was no tradition of slavery within those countries, imported black people are very disproportionately represented in serious crime and welfare dependency.

The usual excuse is to "blame the white guy", but that excuse is getting rather lame. The first duty of governments is the protection of their people. The second, is to create prosperous and peaceful societies. Importing people who are a crime, welfare, and terrorism risk is not only stupid, it is morally wrong. One Greek philosopher (I forget which one) once wrote that, "the highest morality is the protection of one's own people."

Your position, is that the way to world peace is to mix up the races within the western secular democracies and eventually, some sort of fair and successful society will result. But the reality is that this model is just not working. As a resident of France, I am surprised that you do not consider the recent mass murders of French citizens by people from an imported and idiotic medieval foreign culture to clearly display the error of your muddled thinking.

Nothing to say in response, LEGO? I’m not surprised. Although, I'm sure that won’t stop you repeating the same rubbish in the future. Speaking of repeating rubbish…

<<Black people generally have low intelligence and that is why they mostly inhabit the lowest class.>>

What part of ‘correlation does not imply causation’ do you not understand? (Who exactly are you referring to when you say “black”, by the way? There are various shades of black. How black is black? Does intelligence follow ‘blackness’ on a sliding scale, or is there a sharp cutoff point?)

The problem for you here is two-fold. Firstly, you haven’t controlled for environmental factors, so you can’t know to what degree genetics plays a role (if any at all) on a macro level. Secondly, your scientifically debunked 19th century racial theories don’t address the problem of which came first: low intelligence or disadvantage.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18533#330439

These are two problems that you will not address, and they are fatal to your racial theories.

But no, somehow it’s me getting my arse kicked. Isn’t that right, LEGO?

<<The usual excuse is to "blame the white guy", but that excuse is getting rather lame.>>

Here you go, LEGO. Three instances of me correcting this sulky, petulant claim of yours:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=15856#274724
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=15856#274737
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17092#301897

And that’s just what I could find. You’ve had it explained to you over and over again that it has nothing to do with race (northern European minorities in southern Europe are discriminated against, and both groups there are white (although, you may insist on classifying the latter as ‘woggy’ and, therefore, slightly inferior)), nor is it about blame or fault. Some hippies might want to wallow in self-loathing, but that’s their problem and it solves nothing - just as denying the role that majorities play in the disadvantage of minorities solves nothing.

It’s not about who’s to blame, it’s about the majority doing what they can to avoid marginalising minorities. But that can’t be done until the marginalisation is acknowledged first.

Hi AJ.

Sorry to be so tardy in getting back to you, but I was once again immersed in Medieval Total War. (just one more turn!)

I hope you have been reading "The Australian" newspaper this week, AJ. Three items might have interested you.

Friday, October 14, 2016, page 5. "I Have Never Seen Crime So Bad Says Ex-Cop."

Ian Riddles, secretary of the Victorian Police Union, has warned that the streets of Melbourne are experiencing the worst criminal offending in 40 years. "We have regular car jacking, we have regular home invasions, assaults are up on our members, and then you have the threat of terrorism." "With the youth crime and the Apex gang and all that, it is a total lack of respect, but it also becomes a competition to see who can break into more houses or steal the most cars."

Assault in Victoria is up 11.1% this year. Robberies have increased 14.2%. Dangerous acts endangering persons increased 23.1%, Burglary up 12.6%. Crime in Dandenong and Latrobe up by 16% and 8.6% respectively. Small business owner Joe Risoli (burgled six times) blamed politicians "focusing on political correctness over law and order."

Translating from media Newspeak, what this means is that black African crime in Melbourne is now out of control within those Melbourne suburbs most infested with them, exactly as predicted by LEGO. Of course, we can't say that because "correlation does not denote causation." We can't say the observable truth, because reality is racism.

Next comes the news that 75% of aboriginal apprentices are failing WA drug and alcohol testing in safety sensitive employment. "The Australian") Oct. 13. The public servant who's job it is to keep aboriginal kids in a job, a bloke named Scott Osborne from the "Fit4duty" quango, says that aboriginal apprentices should not be treated differently from others in suffering the consequences of turning up drunk and stoned at work. But he insisted that employers should only instigate "culturally respectful" drug and alcohol testing for aboriginal apprentices, or the governments vaunted "Closing the Gap" strategy would be endangered.

Continued

Continued

Translating from public service Newspeak, this means that unless aboriginal apprentices are treated completely differently from everybody else, there won't be any aboriginal apprentices, and it will be all the white guys fault.

"The Australian, 14th Oct.

Finally Dr Vic Peddermores, who apparently has a cushy job in the NSW Shark Research Section of the CSIRO, responsible for squandering $16 million dollars a year protecting sharks from humans, warned of the danger that people posed to sharks. Dismissing the significant rise in shark attacks in the last 12 months including four fatalities, Dr Vic insisted that sharks were "timid" beings, and that while humans were not on the shark menu, sharks were on the human menu. Dr Vic said that people should not be worried about shark attacks, because "35 people drowned in the same period." Well, I would probably say the same thing as Dr Vic if my job consisted of sailing around in government supplied motor boats with bikini clad undergraduates tagging sharks. Red sails in the sunset. Picnics on the beach. Making love in the sand dunes. Nice job if you can get it. Somebody has to do it.

Looks like Dr Vic went to the same politically correct university that you did, AJ. Don't you just love it when some stupid academic says something which everybody knows is a heap of bovine excretia?

Look nobody believes your politically correct crap anymore, AJ. That's why people are voting for Trump, Farage, Hanson, Le Pen, and Weelders. If you think that simply parroting the party line is what "intelligent" people do, then you are going down the wrong track. People are beginning to laugh at you.

Hi LEGO,

To struggle against the rip to get back somewhere near the topic: compensation for Aboriginal people for the act of declaring British sovereignty over Australia: apart from the eventual explicit recognition (in the 1840s-1850s) of the Indigenous right to hunt, fish, gather, camp on, etc., their land, what actual right did the British take from Indigenous people here ? Answer: the right to exclude.

In return, colonial authorities provided rations, at first for all Aboriginal people, then only for all but able-bodied people, who were expected to either exercise their right to hunt, fish and gather, or to work for somebody for wages. In SA, how much rations ? A pound of flour per day (enough for a loaf of bread each day), and a pound of meat per day, plus tea, sugar, tobacco, etc.

By 1900 in SA, around seventy ration stations were providing supplies to around three thousand Aboriginal people. In fact, rations were still being issued into the 1960s.

The current welfare system for Indigenous people is costing some billions of dollars each year. People unable to work, or to find work, are of course entitled to welfare. But, despite popular stereotypes, working Indigenous people don't get anything extra from governments, apart maybe from lower-interest housing loans. So we come to Rodney's question: should governments provide compensation to Indigenous people, and for how long ?

Or not at all, nothing special ? I think that needs to be discussed.

Joe

The problem is how to provide people with the means of sustaining a worthwhile life while retaining their desire to improve upon it.

I think that part of the solution is to look at new ways to define how we frame our narratives of success. At the present, success is all too often defined in extrinsic terms. That is, by how well they manage to fit into an economic model which is defined by a limited range of possible outcomes, all of which are assumed to be perfectly rational responses to a limited range of possible stimuli.

The problem is that people have intrinsic motivations which are not always rational and are driven by a huge range of stimuli, some of which are themselves the unpredictable product of circumstance.

As long as we insist on trying to fit people into "little boxes", we're going to continue to need to have this conversation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUoXtddNPAM

.

Dear LEGO,

.

You wrote :

« Your position, is that the way to world peace is to mix up the races within the western secular democracies and eventually, some sort of fair and successful society will result. But the reality is that this model is just not working. As a resident of France, I am surprised that you do not consider the recent mass murders of French citizens by people from an imported and idiotic medieval foreign culture to clearly display the error of your muddled thinking »
.

I’m afraid your imagination is playing games with you there, LEGO. I have never stated that to be my position. Nor has anybody written anything here about “the way to world peace”.

Also, “the recent mass murders of French citizens” were not carried out, as you indicate, “by people from an imported and idiotic medieval foreign culture”. They were carried out by other French citizens.

Have a nice weekend, LEGO, and, if you like, we’ll get together again sometime next week after the break.

.

Hi Banjo,

You may have unintentionally missed LEGO's point: perhaps he meant that terrorist acts in France (and Belgium) (and Germany) were carried out by “by people from an imported and idiotic medieval foreign culture” AND were carried out by French citizens.

Precisely.

Joe

.

Dear Loudmouth & Craig,

.

It’s nice to see you both back on this thread.

Loudmouth, my gut feeling is that we should continue to provide compensation to Indigenous people until we can find a better solution to their problem … and the sooner we find a better solution the better. I see that as a moral obligation.

As for LEGO's last post, We'll see what he means after he's had a nice rest.
.

Craig, thank you for those deep philosophical reflections on Malvina Reynolds’ “Little Boxes”. Very inspiring …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5ApYxkU-U

.

Joe, murders are always carried out by people who are in some way deranged. They might look for justifications in all sorts of things. The fact that some might use Islam is simply irrelevant to the reality that their actions are driven by their mental illness, not by the words of the Quran.

The same can be said of those who kill in the name of the Christian or Jewish God.

I wouldn't suggest that Christianity is an inherently evil religion because Jim Jones existed, or David Koresh, or Henry VIII, or any of the paedophile priests who've caused so much destruction of people's lives. Their actions weren't driven by the Bible, they just used it as a justification for abhorrent actions. We see the same here with people like runner, who loudly trumpet the most hideously unChristian things from the haven of anonymity, while piously intoning the words of the bible.

You're normally pretty good at avoiding the simplistic, I'm not sure why you fall so easily into a simplistic response in this case.

Hi Craig,

Yes, it's possible that all murders are carried out by people who may be insane, and just as possible that, if they carry them out in the name of some ideology, say Pol Pot's communism or ISIS' Islam, those murders are carried out be people who are perfectly sane. Utter bastards, but perfectly sane.

The three hundred or so Australians killed by Islamist terrorists since 9/11, i.e. in the name of 'Allah Akbar' probably outnumber those killed by Christian fanatics, both crazy and sane - in fact, they probably outnumber all those killed by Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Scientologist and Calluthumpian fanatics put together. Don't you think ?

Islamist fascism encompasses a range of ideologies with roots in Islam, i.e. in the Koran. Not all Islamic ideologies move in that fascist direction, but some do. Adherents to those ideologies kill, and at random, under the impression that, by definition, whoever they kill deserves to be killed, as kafirs, apostates or some other heinous category.

When Amish go on a similar rampage, butchering non-Amish, raping non-Amish girls and women and burning them alive in cages, throwing gays off tall buildings, then I'll take any talk of the equivalence of various religious fascisms seriously. Until then, I'll keep a rough count of which adherents kill whom and how, at least until I lose count. That shouldn't take too long.

Joe

Joe,
Yes, some may just be "bastards", but it doesn't change my point.

How many Muslims have been killed by non-Muslim Australians since 2001 do you reckon? Of course, the vast majority of those have been killed in their own country by Australians wearing a uniform, so that makes it OK...

The boys who were arrested "on their way to behead someone" (except that the police had been watching them, which shows how few people there are like them) were explicit that their motivation was revenge for the killing of Afghanis by Australian troops. In other words, it had nothing at all to do with Islam and everything to do with the screwed up management of geopolitics that has been such a feature of the last 30 years.

I'm disappointed in you Joe, you're capable of thinking in much more nuanced terms. This is beneath you.

To Rodney Crisp.

If you support the already failed concept of multiculturalism ( publically renounced by the leaders of France, Germany, Austria, Britain, Italy, and Spain), then there must be a reason for that. For 15 years I have sparred online with lefties like yourself who support multiculturalism, and without exception, they believe that multiculturalism is the only way to create world peace and create a just society. When it is pointed out that multiculturalism has failed and it is catastrophic to white society, they adopt the three monkey approach. They stick their fingers in their ears, and say "na, na, na, na". They don't want to know. Whatever problems multiculturalism causes in their own white societies, they think that the supreme goal of world peace justifies the means. If you support multiculturalism for another reason, I would love to hear it.

Your latest article "An open letter to my aboriginal compatriots" was written to maintain the fiction that aboriginal dysfunction is all a product of ,racism, intolerance, and discrimination caused by "unjust" white society. Your article went on to list "historical" injustices in regards to voting and obtaining drivers licences, which a person from my perspective would understand as practical and reasonable, given that even in the 1930's there were still aboriginal people in Australia who had never seen a white person, and they were still living stone age existences.

Your article goes on to suggest that white Australians should abase ourselves and grovel to aboriginals for whatever perceived injustices our forefathers committed which has created the sorry state which aboriginals find themselves in today. You talk of treaties, and proportional representation of aborigines in parliament.

I reject your opinion in it's entirety.

The coming of the British was the best thing that ever happened to the aboriginal people in 50,000 years. Aboriginal stone age society was brutal and extremely unjust towards aboriginal women and young people. The aboriginal people were trapped on the first stage of human development (hand to mouth) and because of the unique flora and fauna of Australia they were destined to stay there.

Continued

Continued

Australia was colonised by the British who were arguably the most advanced civilisation of the time. Fifty years after colonisation, they would be the world's first civilisation to recognise the injustice of slavery, and would openly send it's armed forces to fight against it. My understanding of Australian history was that the British tried to create an Australian society inclusive of aborigines, but that this was impossible. It was impossible because the few aboriginal people that the British encountered after the smallpox pandemic had killed off 75-90% of them, obviously had very low intelligence.

The "injustices" you wrote about were simply the recognition by the British, and later Australian governments that aborigines are different. They are different because they have low intelligence and are prone to very violent behaviour. That is why the Australian government put aboriginals on reserves and appointed "protectors" to supervise them. They began the process of trying to educate aboriginals into advanced society and protect them from rapacious whites who would sexually exploit the aboriginal girls. If Australian government s ever wanted to "breed out the black" , all they had to do was to let the rapacious whites continue to sexually exploit aboriginal females.

For the most part this worked. On remote aboriginal communities today, it is the older aboriginals who were mission schooled who are the ones who can read and write. Social control was maintained by insisting that aboriginal people were forbidden to drink alcohol. It was the social crusading lefties like yourself who pointed out that this was "racism" and who insisted that aborigines be given the right to drink. The Left therefore bears the responsibility for the social catastrophe caused to aboriginal society by allowing aborigines to drink alcohol.

Thinking up novel ways to depict white people as responsible for aboriginal dysfunction was best displayed by the so called "stolen generations." The idea to take mostly part aboriginal children away from the toxic influences of tribal life and give them a life skill that would make them employable was actually a program demanded by the Leftist social crusaders.

LEGO,

It doesn’t matter what the crime rate is with “blacks” (you still haven’t defined “black”, by the way) compared to whites. I don’t care if the disparity is double what those newspapers suggest. Your simplistic assumptions don’t become right once the disparity reaches a certain point. You still need evidence.

<<Of course, we can't say that because "correlation does not denote causation.">>

Correlation can ‘denote’ causation, but it’s a bit much to say that it can ‘imply’ it.

Imply:
Indicate the truth … of (something) by suggestion rather than explicit reference. (http://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/imply)

Denote:
Be a sign of; indicate. (http://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/denote)

A subtle difference, but enough for you to insist on using the slightly broader term ‘denote’ when no one else does.

<<… this means that unless aboriginal apprentices are treated completely differently from everybody else, there won't be any aboriginal apprentices, and it will be all the white guys fault.>>

Not even in your description did I see anything about it being the white guy’s fault. You’re just digging your heels in now. I like how you say “white guy”, though. It gives the impression that white people are to blame right down the level of the individual. Dishonest, but a nice rhetorical device.

<<Looks like Dr Vic went to the same politically correct university that you did, AJ.>>

Another attempt at the Association fallacy. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy)

<<Look nobody believes your politically correct crap anymore, AJ. That's why people are voting for Trump …>>

And now the Argumentum ad populum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum). That makes four fallacies now:

-The Association fallacy
-The Deductive fallacy
-The Appeal to Nature
-The Argumentum ad populum

A record for you, LEGO. Congratulations!

Did you know there was once a time when most people thought the world was flat? That didn’t make them right, though. Fear and ignorance are not evidence for anything.

<<The Left therefore bears the responsibility for …>>

It’s always about the simplistic false dichotomy of so-called Left-wingers versus Rightismists (with their blind faith and adherence to the doctrines and dogmas of Rightistism!). But thanks for yet another fine example of the Association fallacy.

Hi Rodney,
Thanks for that, it's a wonderful song by one of the great poets of the age, backed up by some of the most emotive musicianship. Roger's work has been a constant source of inspiration for me over the years. He's lived out his personal journey of self-discovery very much in the public spotlight and has never backed away from taking stands on things that he feels are important. Another guy in the same mould is the great Pete Townsend, who was also fortunate to find a great bunch of friends to work his magic with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfuWXRZe9yA

I don't know if you're familiar with Roger Waters' solo work, but if you're not, I strongly recommend it. You might not have heard his most recent song in particular. This version is performed with the men and women of Musicorps, the organisation that gives wounded ex-service personnel the gift of music, which he devotes a great deal of time to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ihuNGjomkE

He shows us all that growing old doesn't necessarily lead to cynicism, bitterness and miserating.

To AJ

The Leftist establishment uses racist arguments to explain why certain ethnicities are always very overly represented in criminal behaviour, welfare dependency, and general social dysfunction. Whatever arguments they use, they all boil down to "blame the white guy."

Unlike yourself, I am not frightened of stating my position. My equally racist argument is that certain ethnicities just happen to have generally low intelligence, and a genetic predisposition to violent, attention seeking, and irresponsible behaviour. Of course it is illegal under section 18C to say that, because those who use the equally racist argument that it is "all the white guys fault", do not want their own racist argument analysed and shown up to be the complete BS that it is.

My premise is backed up by self evident realities which even ordinary people can understand and relate too. Almost everybody today recognises that even within racially homogenous communities, wide differences of intelligence levels and intelligence talents (also called "gifts") occur. Those with low intelligence usually occupy the lowest rung of society, and the smartest and most talented usually occupy the top. The biggest population demographic, working class people, have average intelligence. Most people can relate to and agree to that.

It is the lowest class in society which disproportionately produces the most serious violent criminals. Certain ethnicities are very disproportionately represented in the lowest class. According to IQ tests, these same ethnicities also have the lowest collective intelligences. Surprise, surprise, these very same ethnicities are also very disproportionately represented in recidivist criminal behaviour. That certain crime prone ethnicities have low intelligence can easily be verified by any person who strikes up a conversation with a Pacific Islander. The Australian Institute of Criminology has admitted that crime and genetics are linked. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that race and crime are linked.

This is confirmed by crime statistics which clearly the display the enormous disparity in crime rates between races.

My argument is simple, because the cold hard truth is often simple. It's premises cross connect, and they are backed with self evident facts which anyone can understand.

I’ve already countered this, LEGO.

<<The Leftist establishment uses racist arguments to explain why certain ethnicities are always very overly represented in criminal behaviour, welfare dependency, and general social dysfunction. Whatever arguments they use, they all boil down to "blame the white guy.">>

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=15856#274724
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=15856#274737
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17092#301897
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18533#330972

Simply repeating yourself achieves nothing.

Leftist establishment: because you make make an ideology sound both crazy and threatening if you add an -ist and call it an "establishment".

<<Unlike yourself, I am not frightened of stating my position.>>

You see what I meant by repeating yourself earlier?

<<My equally racist argument …>>

Your argument is more racist because the differences you highlight are done on the assumption that they are inherent to race.

<<… is that certain ethnicities just happen to have generally low intelligence, and a genetic predisposition to violent, attention seeking, and irresponsible behaviour.>>

“Firstly, you haven’t controlled for environmental factors, so you can’t know to what degree genetics plays a role (if any at all) on a macro level.” (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18533#330972)

<<My premise is backed up by self evident realities which even ordinary people can understand and relate too.>>

No, it’s backed up by confusing correlation with causation.

<<Those with low intelligence usually occupy the lowest rung of society, and the smartest and most talented usually occupy the top.>>

“Secondly, your scientifically debunked 19th century racial theories don’t address the problem of which came first: low intelligence or disadvantage.” (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18533#330972)

<<The Australian Institute of Criminology has admitted that crime and genetics are linked.>>

“Admitted”, as if it were done reluctantly.

<<Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that race and crime are linked.>>

“Firstly, you haven’t controlled for environmental factors, so you can’t know to what degree genetics plays a role (if any at all) on a macro level.” (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18533#330972)

<<This is confirmed by crime statistics which clearly the display the enormous disparity in crime rates between races.>>

Correlation does not imply causation.

Have you got any new material for me to play with, LEGO, or are we just going to go around in this circle until one of us gets bored?

LEGO,

Your argument is based entirely on the assumption that there is intentional discrimination against white people on the basis of their skin colour.

That's simply not true and so it renders everything that comes after it invalid.

Some people with light skin experience bad outcomes, but it has nothing to do with their skin colour. Some people with dark skin experience bad outcomes too but unfortunately it is often because of their skin colour, which you seem to find a desirable state of affairs.

Whatever your own circumstances might be, to the extent that they are not to your liking, your skin colour has nothing to do with it. However, to the extent that they might be more comfortable than average, then your skin colour is a contributing factor, given that you are apparently an older gentleman who would have benefited from being a white man in a culture that was based on antiquated ideas of race that went back to the British Empire. The fact that some special consideration has been extended over the years to people in poor circumstances who happen to have a different skin colour to yours is not discrimination against people with light skins, it is a common sense approach to the problem of helping people to become self-sufficient.

Hi Craig,

Back to work :)

You suggest: "How many Muslims have been killed by non-Muslim Australians since 2001 do you reckon? Of course, the vast majority of those have been killed in their own country by Australians wearing a uniform, so that makes it OK..."

Yes: they are Taliban and Al Qa'ida terrorists, on the whole, who are being killed by, and who are killing, Australian soldiers. Yes, that makes it okay, on the whole: I don't know enough about this recent case of cold-blooded killing to comment.

"The boys who were arrested "on their way to behead someone" (except that the police had been watching them, which shows how few people there are like them) .... "

The little bastards were out to kill someone, it didn't matter who. It doesn't necessarily mean that there are very few of them. We'll see.

" .... were explicit that their motivation was revenge for the killing of Afghanis by Australian troops. In other words, it had nothing at all to do with Islam .... "

No. They are common-or-garden thrill-killers, certainly justifying their simple desire to kill someone with the precepts of the Koran. Now why's that ? But undeniably they were using Islam as their sanction, believing that they would either survive (they're young and stupid, after all) or pretty soon get their hands on those 72 white-breasted raisins.

As for " .... everything to do with the screwed up management of geopolitics that has been such a feature of the last 30 years", do you mean since the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and the religious-zealot opposition to that ? No, I don't agree that Russia should have invaded Afghanistan, and I'm not surprised that the resistance to it inevitably turned reactionary and religious, 'cultural' if you like. After all, Russia also represented the outside world, just as the US did later after the 9/11 provocation.

Beneath me ? I don't think so. I yam what I yam.

Joe

Hi Joe,
Let's face it, if Australia was occupied by an invading army for years, regardless of the pretext, there would inevitably be some people who took action against the invaders and just as inevitably they would be regarded as heroes by a large part of the Australian population.

I think it's a tribute to the pacific nature of the people who have come here from Afghanistan and Iraq that so few problems have occurred.

Hi Craig,

Occupied, do you mean before 9/11 ? When the Taliban was sheltering Al Qa'ida ?

The refugees from Afghanistan to Australia are, after all, refugees from the Taliban, isn't that so ? If they were so afraid of or wild with Australians, why didn't they simply seek refuge in Pakistan ? Why Australia ? Because Australia is where the Taliban isn't, and they are happy to be wherever the Taliban isn't. Most Afghan refugees, it seems to me, are Hazara, Shi'ites persecuted brutally by the Sunni Taliban, and protected by Australian and other troops.

A high proportion of Iraqi refugees are either Christian (Chaldean and Assyrian), Yazidis, Mandean, Baha'i or from some other brutally persecuted minority.

I'm very happy to welcome Hazaras, Iraqi Christians, Yazidis, Mandeans, Baha'i and other persecuted minorities to Australia. I'm confident that they will make a wonderful contribution to Australian life. Sunni, with their notion of rightful hegemony over all Muslims and therefore the world, I'm not so sure about.

Cheers,

Joe

Hi Joe,
As I said, regardless of the pretext.

The Afghani people have been resisting invaders for centuries. They have a culture of resistance fighting.

If the Taliban had stayed around and tried to impose a regime that didn't suit the people they would have soon found themselves booted out. Instead, they have been able to leverage resentment at the Western forceful imposition of a puppet regime. the same thing can be said of Iraq.

Sure, there are people who are happy with the changes, but there will inevitably be those who aren't.

We have invited these people into our country and to a very large extent we've not lived up to the promise of a much better life. They have been cut off from their native cultural support structures and they are sexperiencing genuine discrimination - not the version that lives in the imagination of people like LEGO. If he and those like him can become so resentful at what they perceive as a failure of the social model in this country, how much worse must it be for those who are never allowed to forget they are strangers and unwelcome?

We ordinary people need to become willing and enthusiastic participants in this great social experiment. We need to make our new arrivals feel welcome, in a nutshell. If we don't we are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of tragedy.

Hi AJ

I did re write my original argument because it is so good. What I have is a very strong, cohesive argument, whose various components cross connect, makes perfect sense, and conforms to observable reality which ordinary people can relate to. That is why you are losing badly. People can not even consider your argument because you refuse to even post one up, and that is a big negative so far as gaining audience support. All you want to do is to oppose everything I say, and most people can see that is a very weak position. I have the initiative, you are entirely defensive.

You stated previously that I did not explain to what degree environmental factors were more important than genetic factors in crime. Hey, that's your job, mate, not mine. I thought that you might at least have tried to write 350 words on your implication that imported ethnic crime is the result of bad post codes, bad parenting, and bad nutrition. But if you had, I would have easily countered it by saying that dumb people live in bad postcodes, are bad parents, and eat rubbish. And most of our audience would have nodded in agreement.

Your reply was the usual gibberish where you chopped up parts of my post and tried to get some mileage out of the bits. There were the usual hot button "links" which nobody bothers to click on. Very weak. (yawn) Next, you stood on your dignity about me using the word "denote" in the trite saying "correlation does not denote causation" which just happens to be the way the saying is usually expressed. Another collective yawn. Next came "definitions" and the audience was starting to nod off. 10+ for obfuscation and red herrings, and 0 for reasoned argument. Perhaps you think that if you manage to write 350 words on any rubbish it counts as an argument?

I have submitted a reasoned argument which makes perfect sense. Unless you can do the same thing, then your opinion has no credibility.

.

Dear LEGO,

.

Welcome back. I hope you had a pleasant weekend and managed to rest up a bit.

Thank you for your recent posts though I think I have already replied to most of the points you raised, during the course of our previous lengthy discussions. There is not much point in repeating that all over again but let me know if I have overlooked anything or if something is not clear.

A major element of our divergence of opinion seems to be the chromatic signs of intelligence you claim to be capable of perceiving in human beings. You have not mentioned other animal species but they too are intelligent. Can you recognize their different degrees of intelligence from those chromatic signs too?

Take for example black crows compared to, say, white doves. If we follow your logic, white doves should be more intelligent that black crows.

In fact, it seems that the contrary is true. A scientific study carried out by Nathan J Emery entitled “Cognitive ornithology: the evolution of avian intelligence”, published in 2006 by The Royal Society, found that “in reviewing the evidence for avian intelligence, corvids (crows) and parrots appear to be cognitively superior to other birds and in many cases even apes”:

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/361/1465/23

The UK Daily Mail reported in 2014 that another study revealed that crows are even as clever as a seven-year-old human:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2590046/Crows-intelligent-CHILDREN-Study-reveals-birds-intelligence-seven-year-old.html

Another major element of our divergence of opinion is the infinite amount of confidence you place in IQ tests as a valid means of measuring intelligence. Not only are IQ tests inoperative in the case of other animal species, they are also highly contentious in relation to cultures that are different from those for which they were intended.

Consider, for example, the 10-item Original Australian Intelligence Test based on the culture of the Edward River Australian Aboriginal community in North Queensland. To understand the cultural difficulty of IQ tests one should compare the questions with the answers:

Questions: http://wilderdom.com/personality/intelligenceOriginalAustralian.html

Answers : http://wilderdom.com/personality/intelligenceOriginalAustralianAnswers.html
.

Have you ever noticed, LEGO, people with great IQs sometimes make really stupid decisions?

.

.

Dear Craig,

.

Thanks for introducing me to Roger Waters. I’ll investigate a little further …

.

No, LEGO, you confuse correlation with causation.

<<What I have is a very strong, cohesive argument, whose various components cross connect, makes perfect sense, and conforms to observable reality which ordinary people can relate to.>>

Ordinary people could also observe and relate to a flat earth.

<<That is why you are losing badly.>>

Says the only one here committing fallacy after fallacy.

<<People [cannot] even consider your argument because you refuse to even post one up …>>

“The problem for you here is two-fold. Firstly, you haven’t controlled for environmental factors, so you can’t know to what degree genetics plays a role (if any at all) on a macro level. Secondly, your scientifically debunked 19th century racial theories don’t address the problem of which came first: low intelligence or disadvantage.” (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18533#330972)

<<You stated previously that I did not explain to what degree environmental factors were more important than genetic factors in crime.>>

Not quite. I asked how you had controlled for environmental factors, and then pointed out the fact that you hadn’t when you avoided answering the question a few times.

<<Hey, that's your job, mate, not mine.>>

No, it’s the job of anyone who wants to assert that genetics plays a role across large populations. This is the Shifting of the Burden of Proof fallacy (http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof). That’s five fallacies now. You’re on a roll.

<<I thought that you might at least have tried to write 350 words on your implication that imported ethnic crime is the result of bad post codes, bad parenting, and bad nutrition.>>

Why bother when there are thousands of papers spanning more than 100 years demonstrating this. You’re just trying to waste my time. Although, I will be generous enough to do your Googling for you. Here you go, 50,800 results for you to choose from:

http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?start=10&q=%22crime%22+socio-economic+factors+determinants&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5

<<But if you had, I would have easily countered it by saying that dumb people live in bad postcodes, are bad parents, and eat rubbish.>>

“Secondly, your scientifically debunked 19th century racial theories don’t address the problem of which came first: low intelligence or disadvantage.” (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18533#330972)

Continued…

…Continued

<<There were the usual hot button "links" which nobody bothers to click on [in your response].>>

Yes, and I’m sure you rely on that to get away with repeating yourself. No one has to click on them, though. They do their job just being there.

<<Next, you stood on your dignity about me using the word "denote" in the trite saying "correlation does not denote causation" which just happens to be the way the saying is usually expressed.>>

No, I pointed out the fact that you altered to wording for deceitful reasons. I don’t know what that has to do with my dignity though.

<<I have submitted a reasoned argument which makes perfect sense. Unless you can do the same thing, then your opinion has no credibility.>>

Not quite, LEGO. You still have these two little problems:

“Firstly, you haven’t controlled for environmental factors, so you can’t know to what degree genetics plays a role (if any at all) on a macro level. Secondly, your scientifically debunked 19th century racial theories don’t address the problem of which came first: low intelligence or disadvantage.” (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18533#330972)

So you still haven’t addressed anything I’ve said, and that which you have addressed, deliberately missed the point. Five fallacies and zero rational arguments.

Try again, LEGO.

G'day Craig,

I respectfully disagree with your comment that " ..... If the Taliban had stayed around and tried to impose a regime that didn't suit the people they would have soon found themselves booted out."

Afghanistan under the Taliban was not really a democracy, you know. Yes, it was far more like one back in the days of the monarchy, when girls could go to school and women could freely (or maybe more freely) go to university, the keystones of progress. Then, in around 1976, the communists overthrew the monarchy, in an effort to replace the relatively good by the relatively perfect, and it was on for all and sundry.

Anyway, back to topic: [I'm amazed how discussion so often moves from 'topic' in all sorts of directions; fascinating]. On balance, what is owed to Indigenous people ? How guilty should every white person feel for whatever may have happened in the past ?

I was talking with a friend about the ration system in early South Australia: Indigenous people's right to hunt, fish, gather, etc., etc. was implicitly recognised from 1836, and explicitly in legislation from 1851 in all pastoral leases. i.e. people could use the land as they always had done. Actually, they still can in law.

The problem with a ration system, equivalent to a loaf of bread each day per person, a pound of meat per day per person, sugar, tea, two ounces of tobacco each week, medical care, blankets, fishing gear and boats and guns, free education, etc., is that people don't go out and hunt and fish and gather as much as they used to. Or at all. (There were up to seventy ration stations, usually on pastoral stations, around South Australia by 1900.)

But more than that: in traditional conditions, droughts would

[TBC]

[continued]

droughts would decimate groups: young children and old women would be left to die as the groups scattered in search of sustaining food and water. A five-year drought would put a ten-year hole in the demographics. Old men would die off before they could gather the young men together for initiations and instruction. A longer drought could be catastrophic to the existence of a group. One drought in around 1200 lasted for thirty years in much of Australia.

Maybe as a rough guide, populations would have declined at 3-5 % per year for each year of drought, mainly from the complete absence of births.

BUT with the ration system, everybody got rations for the entire duration of a drought. People would all be assured of survival, congregating near ration stations, where old men could prepare the young men, women could be assured of raising their children, old women would be cared for. And when the drought broke, the young men could go back out and work.

So the SA ration system probably strengthened Aboriginal culture. It's quite a shock to realise this. Didn't pastoralists drive people off their leases ? No, no evidence of it, they would have voided their leases. Didn't missionaries herd people onto missions ? No, no evidence, especially since Aboriginal people have never been sheep or puppets. There's never been a people-fence around any mission to keep them in.

Hmmmm, what other atrocity can whites be blamed for ? Massacres ? No unequivocal evidence in SA, except the 'Maria' massacre in 1840. Missionaries forcing people to speak English ? Quite the contrary: it was the missionaries who learnt and taught in the local languages.

Yeah, but whites are all bastards, we all know that. There must be something. Still working on it :)

Cheers,

Joe

To Rodney.

Intelligence testing of human beings has been around for 100 years, and it began the science of Psychology. Intelligence testing is taken very seriously for recruitment by many organisations, including the US Armed Forces. It is also used in the US for university entrance qualification, (SAT scores) because of the propensity of the politically correct US education system to produce students who may have racially integrated, pro LGBTXFWQUAL, and politically left wing orientated, it's just that they can't actually read, write, spell, or do bloody sums.

100 years of intensive intelligence testing by thousands of qualified cognitive metricians in the USA, has revealed interesting things about racial IQ. Put simply, the most common IQ among US Asians is 106, whites 103, Hispanics 97, and African blacks 85. If it is true that 100 years of testing is wrong, and that all races are equal in intelligence, then a Nobel Prize awaits any cognitive metrician who can simply design a test to prove it. But although there are many lefties who claim that these IQ tests are wrong, they know that there is no way that they can fiddle the historical IQ figures like the East Anglia Climate Research guys did with the climate change figures. They got caught anyway.

It is perfectly routine for animal breeders to refer to different breeds (actually, sub-species) of dogs, cats, horses and birds as being particularly intelligent breeds. If genetically heritable intelligence can be naturally or artificially bred into animals, it can be done with humans. Human intelligence is heritable. You have already admitted that.

If you really think that all races are equal in intelligence, my advice to you is to strike up a conversation with a group of Pacific Islanders. That should give you a reality check. Like aborigines, Pacific Islanders are very disproportionately represented in serious criminal behaviour. From memory, they make up almost 70% of the incarcerated juvenile delinquents from the Campbelltown area of Sydney.

Race and crime are linked, Rodney. I wish it were not so. But "may the truth be told, though the heavens may fall."

Hi Aj.

I know that you are too frightened to submit a reasoned argument yourself. But you are not going to con me into doing that job for you.

Genetics and crime are linked, and the link is very strong. 95% of the people in jail are males. There is a very convincing argument supporting that premise, right there. If you can dream up any argument involving environmental factors which explains the very wide disparity between male and female offending, then let's hear it.

And please don't try that "it's not genetics, it's hormones" crap, unless you can explain to us how genetics does not control hormone production. On second thought, please do just that. Our readers will wonder if you are really that stupid, or just trying to be funny.

Oh but I already have, LEGO.

<<I know that you are too frightened to submit a reasoned argument yourself.>>

“The problem for you here is two-fold. Firstly, you haven’t controlled for environmental factors, so you can’t know to what degree genetics plays a role (if any at all) on a macro level. Secondly, your scientifically debunked 19th century racial theories don’t address the problem of which came first: low intelligence or disadvantage.” (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18533#330972)

You're delusional.

<<But you are not going to con me into doing that job for you.>>

How on earth do you come to the conclusion that that’s what I've been trying to do? I can't even imagine what doing that would look like.

<<Genetics and crime are linked, and the link is very strong.>>

Agreed, although how strong is still debated.

<<95% of the people in jail are males. There is a very convincing argument supporting that premise, right there.>>

Sex is not the same as race. Gender is a far more reliable predictor of behavioural traits.

<<If you can dream up any argument involving environmental factors which explains the very wide disparity between male and female offending, then let's hear it.>>

Thanks for pointing out another way that another way biological sex is different. Males and females respond differently to the same environments, while different races don't. Your analogy is invalid.

<<And please don't try that "it's not genetics, it's hormones" crap, unless you can explain to us how genetics does not control hormone production.>>

I've put it in simpler terms for you above. You're welcome.

Rodney raises an interesting point that your racial theories don't account for. There's been talk recently about how intelligence and common sense don't seem to be linked at all.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/11232300/Why-do-geniuses-lack-common-sense.html

There's yet another hurdle for your debunked 19th century worldview.

.

Dear LEGO,

.

You wrote :

« Intelligence testing of human beings has been around for 100 years, and it began the science of Psychology »

That is incorrect, LEGO. A Venetian of Croatian extraction by the name of Marko Maruli&#263; (1450-1524) was the first to define and use the notion of psychology as we know it today. He published “Psichiologia de ratione animae humanae” containing the earliest known literary reference to psychology (in Latin).

It was more than 400 years later, in 1912, that the German psychologist, William Stern, invented “intelligenzquotient” as a scoring method of intelligence.

You also wrote :

« If it is true that 100 years of testing is wrong, and that all races are equal in intelligence, then a Nobel Prize awaits any cognitive metrician who can simply design a test to prove it »

You are putting the cart before the horse, there, LEGO, geneticists have never found any evidence that so-called “race” determines intelligence or has any influence on it whatsoever. Some geneticists, however, do not rule out the idea that future research may, perhaps, reveal some connection between the two. That has not yet materialised:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#Genetics_of_race_and_intelligence

In the meantime, the current state of the art of genetics is that there is no connection between so-called “race” and intelligence. Nevertheless, as you rightly point out, IQ tests reveal that there is an “intelligence gap” between some so-called “races”.

As there is no evidence of biological difference of intelligence among different so-called “races” it is considered that the apparent “intelligence gap” is due, not to a difference in intelligence, per se, but to cultural, environmental or “external” factors which restrict its exercise.

These cultural, environmental or “external” factors act like a mechanical speed limiter on a motor vehicle that prevents it from exceeding a pre-determined speed limit. They do not reduce the intellectual capacity of the individual, they simply prevent him from exercising his full intellectual capacity.

The problem, LEGO, is not how to prove that the IQ tests are wrong. The problem is how to remove the “speed limiter”.

.

.

Oops, it seems the OLO forum does not recognize certain foreign letters !

The Venitian of Croation extraction’s name was Marko Marulic :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marko_Maruli%C4%87

.

Dear Rodney

The first investigation of psychological thought processes was probably begun with the Greek philosophers. But modern Psychology grew out of the scientific investigation of IQ.

Your claim that scientists can not find a link between race and crime, I would counter by saying that in western societies today, it is dangerous and illegal to do so. When the Director of the US National Institute for Mental Health, Dr Frederick Goodwin, publically declared a link between race and crime, he was sacked. The black vote is more important than science. When Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, co discoverer of the double helix, and head of the prestigious Human Genome Project, said that Africans had low intelligence, he was sacked. When the Human Genome Project team tried to begin a project called "Genetic factors in Crime", the US NAACP lobbied the US Congress to withhold funds and shut it down.

100 years of intelligence testing has conclusively proven that incarcerated prisoners generally have below average intelligence. Even AJ concedes that. Black prisoners are very disproportionately represented in incarceration rates. 1+1 equals 2.

The concept of race as a generalized human classification exists as a self evident fact.

You don't need a PhD in genetics to figure out that some ethnicities are generally not too bright. All you have to do is to socialise with them. Low intelligence and crime is linked. Intelligence is heritable. Genetics and crime are linked. And if genetics, low intelligence, and crime are linked, and some ethnicities are very disproportionately represented in criminal behaviour, then race and crime must be linked. It all fits, doesn't it Rodney?

Your claim that intellectual capacity can be limited has merit. The reason why Asians are generally smarter than every other race has probably got something to do with the fact that continuous Asian civilisations have been around for thousands of years. Given time, all races have the capacity to evolve and increase their intelligence levels through constantly being forced to exercise their higher learning skills. But at this point in time, racial IQ bell curves are different.

No, I haven’t conceded that, LEGO.

<<Even AJ concedes that [prison populations have generally lower IQs].>>

For “concede” implies that I had once denied it, and I have never denied that.

You’re all about empty rhetoric: “Now you are saying [this]”, “Now you are saying [that]”, when I had never said anything different. It’s all about effect over substance with you when you’re on the back foot.

Questions getting too difficult?

No problem, just talk narcissistically about those who may be reading this, and how they are all supporting you and laughing at me when you are the only one being evasive and committing multiple fallacies. Argumentum ad populum. I would expect that, anyway, on a forum that was overrun by Rightistismists. What matters is what the evidence says, not what a bunch of uneducated oldies think.

Rightistismist: because you can make an ideology sound three times as crazy if you add two -ists and an -ism.

Speaking of difficult questions, your post to Rodney still avoids addressing the problems with your racial theories which I’ve pointed to.

<<100 years of intelligence testing has conclusively proven that incarcerated prisoners generally have below average intelligence ... Black prisoners are very disproportionately represented in incarceration rates. 1+1 equals 2.>>

Except that you’re still forgetting these two all-important points:

“Firstly, you haven’t controlled for environmental factors, so you can’t know to what degree genetics plays a role (if any at all) on a macro level. Secondly, your scientifically debunked 19th century racial theories don’t address the problem of which came first: low intelligence or disadvantage.” (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18533#330972)

As for East-Asian IQs, how have you controlled for their culture of emphasis on academic achievement?

Finally, as someone who incorrectly believes that common sense trumps evidence,

“… when "peer reviewed scientific evidence" contravenes plain common sense, a thinking person becomes sceptical … I think I will go with common sense when it comes to the death penalty …” (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17144&page=0)

you’ve remained mighty quite on Rodney’s point about intelligence and common sense not always going hand in hand. How does the disconnect there sit with your theories?

Hi AJ, LEGO & Rodney,

Just to try to steer this vehicle back vaguely towards the topic, environmental and - dare I say it ? - cultural factors may play a huge part in what appear to be differences in intelligence: very few Indigenous people that I know, including graduates, read much, even newspapers, etc., only important-looking letters and bills.

Up on the settlement where we lived, people would watch TV all day (even when it was 'snowing') until the News, then go and do something more useful. A friend used to see me reading the paper and ask, "Anything there ? Same old, same old ?" He used to get pissed off when I said, "Oh yeah, there's always something different." Which, of course, there is.

The upshot is that that lack of curiosity about, or antipathy towards, the world outside of themselves, is bound to have effects on any sense of general knowledge: as if the outside world just didn't, or shouldn't, matter. [On the other hand, a geological friend heard a couple of Aboriginal work-mates talking about the possible dangers of re-starting the Hadron Collider].

Lack of curiosity, self-absorption, irritation with any need to know the 'other', may dampen any performance on IQ tests, and it may give the impression that people are not too bright. In that way, their very strong sense of agency works against them. Just saying.

Rodney,

I'm a bit uneasy about some things you suggest: let's remember that Aboriginal people are, on the whole, much freer agents than you may think: they have never been puppets, sheep or lacking in a sense of agency. So, perhaps inadvertently, your approach can come across and condescending, a sort of generous gesture of power to the down-trodden, because you can. I suggest that you get hold of Pascal Bruckner's 'Tyrannie de la Penitence' (2006) and find holes in his argument if you can. Brilliant. The same with BHL and Houllebecq. I think Bruckner has a much more recent book that advances his ideas further.

Regards,

Joe

.

Dear LEGO,

.

You wrote :

« Your claim that scientists can not find a link between race and crime, … when Dr Frederick Goodwin, publically declared a link between race and crime, he was sacked … when Nobel Laureate Francis Crick … said that Africans had low intelligence, he was sacked … When the Human Genome Project team tried to begin a project called "Genetic factors in Crime" … the US Congress to withhold funds and shut it down »
.

I did not write anything on that subject, LEGO. Your imagination is playing games with you once again. I’m sorry to have to say this but your mind seems to derail occasionally. Could you please try to get it back on track? You are imagining a discussion we have never had together.

It’s nothing serious and I am happy to continue discussing with you, but it’s not possible if you keep wandering off the subject like that.

Apparently, the problem is not all that uncommon :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derailment_(thought_disorder)

.

.

Sorry, the link only seems to work when you copy it and paste it into your browser search bar. Here it is again :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derailment_(thought_disorder)

.

.

Dear Joe,

.

I am pleased to see that we are on the same wavelength so far as “cultural factors playing a huge part in what appear to be differences in intelligence” is concerned.

Your point on what could, perhaps, be qualified as “the historical guilt complex” in citing Pascal Bruckner's 'Tyrannie de la Penitence', is well taken.

Bruckner is a well-known figure of the French intelligentsia. His father was a violent anti-Semite, pro-Nazi who regularly brutalised his wife and son, which probably explains why the son, Pascal, became an extreme left-wing activist before swinging back, later in life, to a more politically moderate centre-right position. He is now a member of one of France’s most elite think tanks, Le Siècle (The Century) whose members include some of France’s top political leaders, capitalists, business leaders, media magnates, etc. – not exactly left-wing!

I have not read the book you mention, “Tyrannie de la Penitence” (Tyranny of Guilt), but I have read a brief summary of it as well as the odd article – enough to know what you mean. It seems to be a counter reaction to the left-wing ideology of his youth.

My focus is not on the “tyranny of guilt” (for past injustices) but on how to re-instore the self-esteem, dignity and well-being of our present-day Aboriginal compatriots. To achieve this, it is first of all necessary to understand the prime cause of their disarray. It is then relatively simple to devise the most appropriate solution to repair, restore and reconcile. I see this as a positive, responsible attitude.

I see as totally unconscious those who say “That’s history. It’s their problem, not ours. I don’t give a damn”. And I see as foolhardy and irresponsible those who content themselves in declaring “These people live off tax payers’ money. We waste billions on them. They squander it on booze and drugs, beat their women, abuse their kids and end up in jail”.

That, to me, is the quintessence of immobility, irresponsibility, cupidity and stupidity. We should not stop spending but spend more effectively.

.

To AJ

You may notice that I am having a polite and civilised debate with Rodney Crisp. That is because Rodney is intelligent, debates in good faith, and he enjoys testing his attitudes against mine.

Since you persist in debating dishonestly in order to derail the debate, there is no point in trying to debate directly with you. So I have switched tactics and now put my premises to the audience who can judge for themselves who is trying to debate, and who is just trying to stifle debate.

I have said all along that human behaviour is a result of nature and nurture. And I have given five examples that clearly display that genetics is a crucial component in animal and human behaviour. Put simply, nature provides the underlying personality, and nurture builds on that. These are.

1. That sub species of animals exist that are genetically much more violent than other sub species within the species.

2. That 95% of incarcerated criminals are males.

3. That the AIC agrees that genetics and crime are linked.

4. That IQ testing has revealed that incarcerated criminals generally have low intelligence, and intelligence is heritable.

5. That even babies have personalities.

If you wish submit an argument supporting your implication that genetics plays little or no part in human behaviour, go right ahead. But you won't, because you know my position makes perfect sense and you can't think of anything credible to refute it. Your demand for me to explain how environmental factors are more important than genetics, is to ask me to do your job and argue against my own stated position. Like hell I will, AJ.

If low intelligence is a product of poverty, and not inherited genetics, can you please explain how South Korea, a seriously poverty stricken Asian country 70 years ago, is now the fourth largest economy in the world? And how every single black country, from Africa, to the Caribbean, to Oceania, despite endless UN aid for decades, are in a far worse states today than when they were run by white colonial administrations?

And you have no evidence of that at all, LEGO.

<<Since you persist in debating dishonestly in order to derail the debate …>>

Otherwise, you’d give an example. You had to know I’d challenge you to give an example by now, yet you still don’t because you can’t. Such a pity.

<<So I have switched tactics and now put my premises to the audience who can judge for themselves who is trying to debate, and who is just trying to stifle debate.>>

Really now? And just how exactly has anything I’ve done stifled debate?

*Crickets chirping*

<<I have said all along that human behaviour is a result of nature and nurture.>>

No, three years ago you suggested that it was pure ‘nature’ (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=15856&page=0). You've since had to concede that ‘nurture’ plays a role.

<<And I have given five examples that clearly display that genetics is a crucial component in animal and human behaviour.>>

Invalid examples using gender, yes. But examples nonetheless.

<<1. That sub species of animals exist that are genetically much more violent than other sub species within the species.>>

Races aren’t subspecies. Rodney has already explained to you that race is not a valid scientific concept, just as I had explained this at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=15856&page=0.

<<2. That 95% of incarcerated criminals are males.>>

92% actually. But who’s counting?

<<3. That the AIC agrees that genetics and crime are linked.>>

Correct.

<<4. That IQ testing has revealed that incarcerated criminals generally have low intelligence …>>

Correct.

<<… and intelligence is heritable. >>

Correct.

<<5. That even babies have personalities.>>

Yeah, not sure what that’s got to do with anything though.

<<If you wish submit an argument supporting your implication that genetics plays little or no part in human behaviour, go right ahead.>>

I haven’t said that. I have said, however, that one cannot know for sure the role they play on a macro level:

“… so you can’t know to what degree genetics plays a role (if any at all) on a macro level.” (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18533#330972)

Continued...

...Continued

But I was being generous. We can be quite certain that they genetics mean nothing on a macro scale, so far as the scientifically invalid concept of “race” is concerned.

<<But you won't, because you know my position makes perfect sense and you can't think of anything credible to refute it.>>

Really? We had an entire discussion based on this:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18533&page=0

<<Your demand for me to explain how environmental factors are more important than genetics …>>

I have never asked that. There goes that Thought Disorder Rodney mentioned earlier. Or is it just plain dishonesty? We’ll leave that for your readers to decide, I guess. I'm not as generous as Rodney, though. I think you're just a dishonest schmuck out to narcissistically impress an overly-conservative OLO readership filled with stupid and uneducated old farts that are disgruntled because their outdated worldviews are no longer valid.

<<If low intelligence is a product of poverty, and not inherited genetics …>>

I haven’t claimed that it was. I’ve only asked how you’ve controlled for environmental factors.

Try again, LEGO. Looks like we’re gonna be here for a long time, eh?

Hi AJ,

I'm a little hurt by your characterisations of " .... an overly-conservative OLO readership filled with stupid and uneducated old farts that are disgruntled because their outdated worldviews are no longer valid."

I'm not all that old.

Hi Rodney,

You suggest that " .... My focus is not on the “tyranny of guilt” (for past injustices) but on how to re-instore the self-esteem, dignity and well-being of our present-day Aboriginal compatriots."

But this is the point I'm trying to make: that Aboriginal people themselves have to be front and centre in re-building self-esteem, etc., while others can only provide secondary support. Self-determination surely means that people themselves determine and negotiate their own futures, mainly (if not exclusively) through their own efforts ?

Of course, very many are doing just that: the equivalent of around 20 % of a young age-group now graduate from universities each year, through their own efforts: it's possible. Many others are gaining skills, and altogether the majority are searching for, or gaining, employment. Bill Leak would be happy to point that out, while quite properly criticising those who make no effort, who blow all their kids' money, and mothers' money, and aunties' money - and yes, they ARE out there, total dip-sticks.

I apologise for my poorly-worded comment about massacres a couple of days ago: "Hmmmm, what other atrocity can whites be blamed for ? Massacres ? No unequivocal evidence in SA, except the 'Maria' massacre in 1840."

I should have had the courage to put responsibility for that massacre where it belonged: in 1840, the 'Maria' was wrecked on the SA coast near the Coorong; all 28 passengers and crew survived but were massacred by the local Aboriginal group, supposedly the Milmenroora/Milmendjura. Two men were hanged later for this, and Governor Gawler was recalled for over-stepping his authority and treating British subjects as if they were outlaws.

Still,

[TBC]

[continued]

Still, the question remains: what atrocities can whites be blamed for, for which there is some evidence ? Massacres out beyond the official remit, especially in NSW and Queensland ? Of tens of thousands ? i.e. at perhaps thousands of massacre sites ? Of which there would still be evidence ? Is anybody looking for it ?

Horrible thought: if no massacres, no driving off land, no herding onto missions, no 'stolen generations', but ration systems, free medical treatment, free schooling (at a time when it wasn't free for white kids), issue of boats and fishing gear and guns - then what ?

On that point about free schooling: in 1870, before the Education Act, a Review found that more than half of all kids in South Australia couldn't read and write: farm kids, after all, didn't have to go to school and poor kids couldn't afford to. BUT all Aboriginal kids on Missions could read and write. In Victoria in 1877, one Mission, Ramahyuck, had the highest pass rates of any school in the colony [see www.firstsources.info on Victoria page: Appendix I].

Is it possible that - to use a hackneyed term - the 'clash of civilizations', of mind-sets, world-views, cosmologies, notions of how the world works - was (and still is in remote settlements) so profound and any resolutions so far-reaching and traumatic, so liable to complete misunderstanding, that we've barely scratched the surface of what the issues are and what participants need to do about them ?

Just saying :)

Cheers,

Joe

Dear AJ

You claimed that I have no evidence of your dishonesty. Then you accused me of saying that only nature (genetics) was responsible for human behaviour. You posted a hot button link to "prove" your claim. Since I knew your claim was complete and utter crap, I clicked on the hot button and scrolled down. And gee whiz AJ, what did I find? Me saying that both nature and nurture were responsible for human behaviour. What did you do, AJ? Did you think that you could just say any lie and nobody would bother to check?

I have submitted five examples of genetics controlling both animal and human behaviour. All of these concepts I have explained to you before, in depth. But you are not going to let the facts get in the way of your politically correct, neo-Marxist, anti white racist ideology. Now, I know that reasoning with you is like talking to a brick wall, but I am writing this for the audience and hoping that their minds are much more permeable to reasoned thought.

1. Human races and ethnicities quite obviously do equate to sub species of animals. And if sub species of animals self evidently differ in personality, then the only reasonable explanation is their genetic difference.

2. That males are much more prone to violent and criminal behaviour than females. This is a very strong argument that genetics and behaviour are linked. I was disappointed that you did not try your pathetic explanation of the difference in gender behaviour, by claiming that it was hormonally induced behaviour and therefore not genetic. But I suppose you realised that you have made a complete fool of yourself on that one, and you don't want to go there again. Neither will you admit that since you now have no credible non genetic explanation for gender behaviour differences, then this is strong proof that my premise is correct. Better to lay low and hope that everybody forgets how stupid you were.

continued

continued

3. That the AIC cites "recent twin studies show persuasive evidence that both genetic and environmental factors contribute to anti social behaviour." Gee, AJ. Why don't you challenge the AIC and tell them they must be wrong about the genetic part, unless they can quantify exactly how much genetics causes crime "on a macro level."

4. Thank you for agreeing that incarcerated criminals have low intelligence, and that intelligence is heritable. That must have had you squirming trying to figure out a way to deny that.

5. If babies have personalities, then this is once again strong evidence that genetics and personality are linked.

Now we add 1+2+3+4+5 together and we get what? Human and animal behaviour is a product of nurture and nature. I have always said that. You have agreed with that. Nature provides the underlying personality and nurture does the rest.

Now, no matter where they reside, certain dysfunctional ethnicities are very disproportionately represented in criminal behaviour. The racist, politically correct, neo Marxist explanation for that fact is that it is all the white guys fault. Anything from colonialism, native dispossession, racism, and discrimination. But my particular racist explanation is different. Different races have generally different levels of intelligence. Low intelligence has a causal link with criminal behaviour. The very ethnicities with the lowest IQ scores are unsurprisingly, very disproportionately represented in criminal behaviour.

This is exacerbated by culture. Those ethnicities with the lowest measured IQ's, who are disproportionately represented in criminal behaviour, usually make lousy parents, eat crap, turn their "postcodes" into dysfunctional ghettoes, have cultural or even religious values which praise personnel violence, criminality, misogyny, illegal drug consumption, and resentment of responsible authority. They are discriminated against because so many of them are violent and untrustworthy. So, intelligent and productive people shun them.

But their numbers keep expanding through immigration and high birth rates, so they have become a growing political force. Crooked politicians tell them they are the victims of the responsible and the productive, stoke their resentments, and buy their votes with welfare payments

.

Dear Joe,

.

You wrote :

« … Aboriginal people themselves have to be front and centre in re-building self-esteem, etc., while others can only provide secondary support. Self-determination surely means that people themselves determine and negotiate their own futures, mainly (if not exclusively) through their own efforts ?

Of course, very many are doing just that: the equivalent of around 20 % of a young age-group now graduate from universities each year, through their own efforts: it's possible. Many others are gaining skills, and altogether the majority are searching for, or gaining, employment »
.

I find it quite remarkable that so many are managing to assimilate modern civilisation after such a brief transition from their hunter-gatherer way of life. I shudder to think of the effect it would have on me if I suddenly found myself having to adapt to an alien culture that was 60 000 years in advance compared to my own. I doubt that I could handle it alone – not at my age. Perhaps if I was a toddler brought up like one of them, in a warm, affectionate atmosphere, with somebody to guide and teach me …

The words of Bob Randall, elder of the Yankunytjatjara Nation, are ringing in my ears:

« Now we’re stuck between two cultures, two worlds; we can’t go back to the old way because the natural environment has been destroyed. Nothing is there in its natural state anymore. We can’t get into your system because many of us don’t understand it »

I understand the disarray and feeling of helplessness that must deprive many of them of a credible role in their own care and life decisions, particularly for those who live in the outback. How could it possibly be otherwise?

I don’t pretend to know how best to help but I do know that many of them are continuing to suffer from our brutal intrusion into their worldly environment. I simply indicated four major issues I think we need to address in an attempt to somewhat attenuate the negative effects of that unwanted intrusion.

.

Hi Rpodney,

You suggest: " ..... I find it quite remarkable that so many are managing to assimilate modern civilisation after such a brief transition from their hunter-gatherer way of life. "

Not really, it seems that in the early days in SA, people's curiosity about this strange new world (and rapid acceptance of the ration system) worked together to help people make the break from a foraging society to one which, as the margins, quickly began to get involved in the money/agricultural/horse-and-cart economy. After all, once people started to get involved in the new economy - everywhere - they rarely went back to a foraging one. So after perhaps a single generation, many people had put their knowledge of a foraging economy on the back-burner, and had thrown themselves as much as possible into this new type of society.

And let's face it, nobody, NOBODY, in remote 'communities' is now totally living a foraging lifestyle. Everybody has access to vehicles, money, grog, TV, [even helicopters], etc., etc., which have been part of their lives, often, for their entire lives.

Culture is not genetic: people either live it or not. Down this way, many, many Aboriginal people were living a pretty-much fully 'Western' way of life, literate, speaking English as their first language, etc., well before 1900.

But draw that line between agricultural and pastoral country (esp. cattle vs. sheep) and yes, people 'over the line' certainly missed out on the opportunities available to people further south and east. And that's been their problem, the 'problem' which has given rise to so many others afflicting 'communities' now.

Cheers,

Joe

Yes, I do, LEGO.

<<You claimed that I have no evidence of your dishonesty.>>

Try giving one example of it.

<<Then you accused me of saying that only nature (genetics) was responsible for human behaviour. You posted a hot button link to "prove" your claim. Since I knew your claim was complete and utter crap, I clicked on the hot button and scrolled down. And gee whiz AJ, what did I find?>>

Oh, really? Where was that? You can’t provide a quote, can you LEGO? What was that I was saying about you relying on your readers to not click on my links?

<<Me saying that both nature and nurture were responsible for human behaviour. What did you do, AJ? Did you think that you could just say any lie and nobody would bother to check?>>

No quotes, I notice.

<<I have submitted five examples of genetics controlling both animal and human behaviour.>>

No, you’ve only used biological sex to prove your point, and I’ve already disproved that.

<<All of these concepts I have explained to you before, in depth.>>

When? How about you provide a “hot button” link to it then? Can’t? I’m not surprised.

<<But you are not going to let the facts get in the way of your politically correct, neo-Marxist, anti white racist ideology.>>

LOL, “Marxist”. That’s cute.

<<1. Human races and ethnicities quite obviously do equate to sub species of animals.>>

Not they don’t. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization))

<<2. That males are much more prone to violent and criminal behaviour than females.>>

“Sex is not the same as race. Gender is a far more reliable predictor of behavioural traits.” (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18533#331140)

<<This is a very strong argument that genetics and behaviour are linked.>>

No, it’s not, and you haven’t yet addressed my rebuttal.

<<I was disappointed that you did not try your pathetic explanation of the difference in gender behaviour, by claiming that it was hormonally induced behaviour and therefore not genetic.>>

I never said anything about hormones.

Continued…

…Continued

<<But I suppose you realised that you have made a complete fool of yourself on that one…>>

Yeah, you’re not very smart, are you?

<<Neither will you admit that since you now have no credible non genetic explanation for gender behaviour differences…>>

http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?q=gender+behavior+definition&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwibqtXx-uvPAhUDyGMKHeGxDE8QgQMIGTAA

Whoops.

<<3. That the AIC cites "recent twin studies show persuasive evidence that both genetic and environmental factors contribute to anti social behaviour." Gee, AJ. Why don't you challenge the AIC and tell them they must be wrong about the genetic part, unless they can quantify exactly how much genetics causes crime "on a macro level.">>

“No. In fact, I was the one who had to tell you that:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=15856&page=0”

<<4. Thank you for agreeing that incarcerated criminals have low intelligence…>>

As if it were the first time. More dishonest rhetoric. You schmuck.

<<…and that intelligence is heritable.>>

As if it were the first time. You’re a bit slow, aren’t you ol’ LEGO. Is it the ealy onset Alzheimer’s you told me about? That would probably explain the Thought Disorder symptoms.

<<That must have had you squirming trying to figure out a way to deny that.>>

Yeah, “squirming”.

Try again, LEGO. You’ve failed once again.

.

Dear Joe,

.

You wrote :

« … it seems that in the early days in SA, people's curiosity about this strange new world (and rapid acceptance of the ration system) worked together to help people make the break from a foraging society to one which, as the margins, quickly began to get involved in the money/agricultural/horse-and-cart economy »
.

That’s what I find quite amazing.

According to the most recent anthropological estimates, the Australian aboriginals were among the first to leave Africa (probably due to major climate shifts) about 100 000 years ago, in search of new pastures, and migrated to Australia about 40 000 years later. Prior to British colonisation of Australia in 1788, their hunter-gatherer life style had practically not evolved since they left Africa. One hundred thousand years, that’s 4 000 generations.

Another group migrated from Africa and headed north, arriving in Europe about 50 000 years ago:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/oldest-bones-from-modern-humans-in-asia-discovered/

The cold European winters obliged the black Africans to clothe themselves and store food like many other animal species. This led to the invention of animal husbandry and agriculture and a drastic change of diet. The combination of all these factors reduced the melanin content in their skin in order to allow greater bodily intake of ultra violet rays of the sun to produce the amount of vitamin D they needed to remain healthy - resulting in the genetic change that ultimately produced white skin.

Farming and animal husbandry led to the invention of more sophisticated tools allowing improved methods of production and storage which, in turn, stimulated the development of science and industry, etc., etc.

While all this was going on, Australia’s Aboriginal peoples continued to perpetuate their hunter-gatherer way of life, isolated from the rest of the world, in a vast island-continent where there were ample natural food supplies and no need for clothes or shelter from the cold winter climate – until the future suddenly caught up with them – in 1788.

.

(Continued ...)

.

.

(Continued ...)

.

I could never have imagined it would be possible for any of them to bridge the evolutionary gap of 50 000 years (2 000 generations) of human achievement in less than 10 generations - from 1788 to the present day - which has seen over 40 000 of them having graduated from university and, as you say, the number continues to increase by a healthy 7-8% per year.

I can’t see how that would be possible if they were intellectually inferior to us (as LEGO adamantly claims, based on IQ tests). Given that incredible performance, I, personally, am inclined to think that many of them are perhaps, if anything, more intelligent than many of us.

I don't know, if the roles were inversed, if we would perform as well as they have. In my opinion, they have to be admired.

.

Hi Rodney,

Culture is not genetic. Culture is not genetic. Culture is not genetic.

Culture is learnt. It therefore depends on experience. From the earliest days, the experience of Aboriginal kids, at least in SA, has been of buildings, horses, schools, rations, ships, etc., and NOT of foraging, etc. So, in a single generation, much of traditional culture would have simply fallen into disuse, and got put on the back-burner. Nobody forced it, people made choices within constraints.

Once, we were all Africans. Once we were all foragers, only fifteen thousand years ago. There's nothing particularly wonderful about a foraging life, it was hard, brutal and (on average) short. I don't see too many Aboriginal people flocking to go back to that sort of life, even though it is perfectly possible even now - but of course, there is much flapping of lips advocating it.

Cheers,

Joe

Hi Rodney,

You've made me think through many issues with your posts :)

For example: a simple thing like rubbish. In many 'communities', rubbish is everywhere. A friend has pointed out that, since it wasn't actually created BY Aboriginal people, but by packaging companies, white fellas, therefore they should come and clean it up. Kimbies, fast food packaging, anything, it's not their problem. And after all, as far as many Aboriginal people can see, in white fellas' towns, obviously somebody cleans up there, maybe fairies each night, so why not in Aboriginal 'communities' ? Isn't it racist to clean up white towns but not Aboriginal communities' ?

Seriously, is it possible that Aboriginal people have an incredibly distorted understanding of how everything works ? White people get houses, with nice gardens, so why not Aboriginal people ? White fellas get cars, so why not Aboriginal people ? Somebody comes in and looks after white babies and kids, so why not Aboriginal people ? Why should Aboriginal people have to look after their own kids, feed them, clothe them and find beds for them, when white people don't have to ?

Question: do Aboriginal people think that everything should be done for them ? That's what it means to have 'self-determination' ? If they want another house, bingo, it should be provided ? Toyotas ? Yeah, when are we getting a new one ? Some social worker to wipe their kids' arses ?

Let's get something else straight: in 'communities', Aboriginal people have money, they are not in some sort of dire poverty. They get everything they are entitled to, plus royalties. There's no shortage of actual cash.

Thirty-odd years ago,

[TBC]

[continued]

Thirty-odd years ago, I did an income study of a community I had lived in and thought I knew. I found that the average (mean) income there was equal to the Australian median income. One large family was pulling in four times the weekly wage. I checked my figures over and over. It was so traumatic that I thought of topping myself. I chucked in my studies and studied for a taxi licence. I've since understood that I confused poverty with squalor. I won't be doing that again in a hurry.

Joe

.

Dear Loudmouth,

.

You wrote :

« Culture is not genetic … Culture is learnt … From the earliest days, the experience of Aboriginal kids, at least in SA, has been of buildings, horses, schools, rations, ships, etc., and NOT of foraging, etc. »

Yes, of course. What amazes me is that over 40 000 Aboriginal people (university graduates) have achieved in 228 years (since 1788) and less than 10 generations what it took us 50 000 years (since the arrival of the first Africans in Europe) and 2 000 generations to achieve.

It seems to me that that is a remarkable performance which could not have been possible if, as LEGO affirms, Aboriginal peoples were of inferior intelligence to Europeans.

But then, as you rightly point out with your examples of rubbish, domestic help, Toyotas, financial income, and the difference between poverty and squalor - intelligence is one thing and culture another. It is not sufficient to be intelligent to bridge the gap of 50 000 years and 2 000 generations of achievements. There is also a huge cultural gap.

It is a characteristic of most human beings to wish to respect and perpetuate their traditional culture. Aboriginal peoples are no exception to the rule. I am no expert on such matters, but I suspect that it is something that is deeply imbedded in the psyche of each individual. We are the product of our ancestors and the bond to our lineage is indestructible.

Some of us manage to assimilate more than one culture - if we have parents of different cultures, for example. Children of those parents are the products of both cultures and assimilate both. In my case, it has been a little more difficult. I was born and bred in Australia but lived half my life in France. Assimilation of French culture has been a long and difficult process. I came here of my own free will and, despite all the difficulties, I have always avoided the facility of living in a cultural ghetto with the British community in Paris.

.

(Continued ...)

.

.

(Continued ...)

.

I have assimilated French culture to the best of my ability while conserving my Australian culture and nationality.

As a European culture, French culture is not all that different from British culture, the language being the principal difference. I can imagine the huge difficulty Aboriginal peoples must have assimilating European culture, particularly since it is not something they have chosen of their own free will and it is so vastly different from their own traditional culture.

Of course, they should be free to perpetuate, cherish and honour their own traditional culture exclusively if they so wish, just as the members of the British community in Paris perpetuate, cherish and honour theirs living in their ghetto. Our Aboriginal peoples have every right to do so. They are not living in a foreign country. They are living in their own country. They have been here for about 60 000 years.

We are the foreigners who have come to live with them. We should try to assimilate their culture and adjust to theirs, not the other way around. That includes adjusting our products and services – everything, including our financial services. It’s a question of marketing. We have to do our homework.

Your friend is on the right track in pointing out “that, since it wasn't actually created BY Aboriginal people, but by packaging companies … they should come and clean it up”. But perhaps that is not the most appropriate solution. We have to make an effort of intelligence in marketing our products and services to the Aboriginal community that is compatible with their culture.

That and the whole question of adapting our European culture to traditional Aboriginal culture is a matter of foremost importance that needs to be investigated and implemented by our federal government in co-ordination with our state governments.

It is a vast program that involves prior consultation with the Aboriginal communities and all other parties concerned, manufacturers and service providers etc. (including education), the promulgation of quality standards and relevant rules and regulations and the subsequent monitoring of their effective implementation and respect.

.

Hi Rodney,

1. My friend was not suggesting for a second that whites should come and clean up Indigenous 'communities': of course, if they used something with packaging, regardless of where it was packaged, they should clean it up. Their community, their responsibility to keep it clean, or not. No ifs, no buts.

2. If you had moved to France with a one-year-old child, by the time he/she was ten, my bet is that he/she would speak perfect French and be fully integrated into both your value system AND the local French one. He/she wouldn't have to wait fifty thousand years. So it has been with Indigenous people: you learn from what you see around you.

In that connection, what do people in remote 'communities' see around them ? No production, no factories, nobody actually having to produce anything - and when it does appear dimly over the horizon, it can be said that only whitefellas do that, Blackfellas don't have to.

3. You suggest that ' .... What amazes me is that over 40 000 Aboriginal people (university graduates) have achieved in 228 years (since 1788) and less than 10 generations what it took us 50 000 years (since the arrival of the first Africans in Europe) and 2 000 generations to achieve.'

Actually, it's more like 39,500 graduates over the past thirty five years (overwhelmingly in the cities) :) We may not be aware of how recent mass university education has been for anybody in Australia: there are probably more Indigenous university students today than there were non-Indigenous students across Australia in 1950. [Those figures are on the Dept. of Ed. web-site].

Again, none of us walks around with a 50,000-year-old mind-set, we all learn from birth from what's around us, like it or not, Black or white: a twenty-year-old is thus only twenty years from outright barbarism. We're all only a couple of generations from utter barbarism, after all [see (2) above]. He/she has learnt otherwise since birth.

There are simple and clear reasons why

[TBC]

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There are simple and clear reasons [well, clear, ex post facto] why Indigenous higher education numbers have risen as they’ve done: After the War, with the multitude of infrastructure programs driving the economy: dams, reservoirs, water supply, electrification, railways, roads, there was plenty of work for Aboriginal people looking for it and many did, moving from settlements and small towns to larger towns, eventually to the cities, where their kids could get a fuller education. But that took a generation or more to bed in.

Support programs at universities from 1978 or so massively boosted Indigenous higher ed numbers, and from about the year 2000, the numbers of Indigenous kids finishing Year 12 has quadrupled and the numbers of those going onto uni has doubled.

Yes, it takes some time to reach mass higher education, 40-45 % of an age-group, but it was inevitable sooner or later. Of course, now, the vast majority of Indigenous uni students are from the cities, enrolling in mainstream, degree-level and post-graduate courses. The poor buggers ‘over the line’, may have missed out and that mediating and educating social force, work, is more remote now than it was fifty years ago.

Incidentally, my grand-dad claimed to have served under Banjo Paterson, in Palestine in the Second Remounts, looking after and breaking in both horses and camels. Supposedly, they came to blows once. My grand-dad also told me that I was born under a cabbage, so his word is suspect: I was at an age of curiosity about girls, and that put me back a couple of years.

Cheers,

Joe

“Yooooooo Hooooo!, [LEGO]. Where arrrrrrrre Youuuuuuuu?

Damn.

That is the seventh time [LEGO] locked horns with me on racism, and the [seventh] time he has done the runner.” (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=15856#275017)

Sorry, LEGO. But I just couldn’t resist doing the victory dance you usually do. Or perhaps this next one is better..?

“Bye bye [LEGO]. Don't bother crossing swords with me again until you have done your homework and have a bit of a clue what you are talking about. Of course, if you did just that instead of just parroting [racist] slogans, you wouldn't need me to [straighten] you out.” (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=148#17718)

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Joe,

I’m sorry if I offended you. What I simply cannot understand, however, is why you allow toxic pigs like LEGO to go around claiming that your late wife was “dumb”, or that any level of intelligence that she possessed was only because she had “a dose of white genes injected into [her] mother[‘]s womb.” (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4490#43534)

You recently accused me of racism because I compared the objection to interracial marriage with the objection to same-sex marriage, and yet you’re fine with LEGO slagging off at your late wife’s people the way he does. Something's not right there. It’s utterly baffling to me, and just goes to show how important political alliances are to people if they're willing to let a politically ally get away with the most absurd and offensive remarks towards a deceased beloved one who is no longer around to defend their people, so long as the offensive remarks com from someone with whom one is politically aligned.

Unreal!

Hi AJ,

I don't think you offended me, I'm not that wussy :) I don't take much notice of LEGO either when he goes off into the 'race' wilderness. Boringly irrelevant, especially since, as you point out, there are so many confounding factors around 'race'. How many times do you think I've gone through all that in my lifetime ? Too ridiculous to respond to.

My concern with your comment was the inappropriateness of comparing inter-racial marriages - which have always been legal (at least, in South Australia), since they are, after all, unions of a man and woman - with homosexual marriages - which are not.

Until the massive increase in inter-marriage rates involving Aboriginal people, more or less the only relations they would have interacted with closely would have been other Aboriginal people. The joke used to be, "Hold a family re-union: invite your white relations.' That would have got hollow laughs.

Certainly, my wife didn't know any of her white relations, most of them long-gone. But of course, even as the only Aboriginal kid in her class, she would have known all of her schoolmates at Yankalilla Area School well: they all held a reunion a couple of years before she left us. In a sense, that was her community, a sort of arm's-length community, after leaving the settlement at three years old. Of course, their 'house' hosted scores of Aboriginal relations from the mission over the years.

But thanks for your concern.

Cheers,

Joe

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Dear Loudmouth,

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You wrote :

« 2. If you had moved to France with a one-year-old child, by the time he/she was ten, my bet is that he/she would speak perfect French and be fully integrated into both your value system AND the local French one. He/she wouldn't have to wait fifty thousand years. So it has been with Indigenous people: you learn from what you see around you »

That’s true, but I didn’t. The example you indicate is incomparable to the 50 000-year leap into the future that the aboriginal peoples have had to make since British colonisation in 1788. It was not just a question of learning a new language or adjusting from an Australian life style to a French life style.

A better comparison would be to try to imagine that you are a sort of “Rip Van Winkle” and you wander up the mountain as he did in the famous story and drank some Dutch gin and fell asleep, not just for 20 years as “Rip Van Winkle” did, but for 50 000 years. On waking up you find that Australia has been invaded by people from another planet. They speak a strange language. They do not wear clothes. Their skin changes to accommodate climatic conditions. They have no need for houses or buildings. There are no towns, cities or parks and gardens. No bicycles, motorbikes, cars, buses, trains or aeroplanes. They move by telepathy from one point to another in a flash. There are no schools. No books. No television. No cinema. They plug into a computer programme and learn everything they need to know in an instant. Etc., etc., …

I’m afraid my imagination is a bit weak. It will probably be vastly different from that in 50 000 years’ time – inimaginable ! – but I hope you get the message.

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Wouldn’t you feel thrown off balance, destabilised, lost, disoriented, insecure, with nowhere to turn, not knowing what to do, or how to earn your living ? Wouldn’t you feel that you had lost your bearings, completely useless in this new environment ? Perhaps if you had a one-year-old child (to come back to your example) he might fare a little better than you do – but, unfortunately, his father would not be able to guide and assist him as fathers usually do.

There is no way you could bridge that gap of 50 000 years that separated you from a future for which you had no preparation whatsoever and which you could not understand.

You would be of no use to yourself nor to anyone else – just a burden on society – a hopeless bludger for the rest of your life.

Sad, isn't it ? Perhaps society might be kind to you and treat you with respect and dignity and not discriminate against you, treat you as some inferior species and take your country away from you without any form of compensation, or even say "thank you".

That would be nice, wouldn't it ?

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Hi Rodney,

Yes, but what I wrote and what you wrote are quite compatible: I readily agree that it would be difficult for anyone over the age of, say, ten, dropped into a totally different world - difficult but not impossible - to become familiar enough with that new world. But under that age, to an increasing degree at a younger age, that world would be simply the one in which one was growing up, and not much more difficult to operate in than for anybody else. We all learn from what we see around us.

From the earliest, this has not been a problem for many 'southern' aboriginal people, who see a changing world around them, and often the ONLY world they know. People may be told about legends, relationships, names, etc., but as these become less relevant to their daily world, they get politely put on the back-burner. So people down this way have long ago forgotten the names of their clans (Talkundjeriorn, Turiorn, Manangka, Piltindjeri, etc.) and, ironically, are unaware that their current European surnames accurately reflect those origins. As well, few people could connect clan to country, the cornerstone of Ngarrindjeri culture.

So, no, it doesn't take fifty thousand years, it takes no longer for many people than it does for white kids.

BUT of course, of course, of course, if people are living remote from towns, if they never see people actually working and producing anything, if everything seems to just drop out of the sky, houses, cars, ATMs, fast food, then of course there would a sort of arrested development in people's perceptions of how anything actually works. Of course, there would still be a respect for the old men and their magic which can make whitefellas give it all to them: smart old fellas, those elders. So there is absolutely no perception of the need for work - and therefore, for kids, for any need for education.

And since whitefellas' role is seen as doing more and more for people,

[TBC]

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Dear AJ & LEGO,

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As I understand it, the extraordinarily high crime rate among indigenous peoples is a world-wide phenomenon, though it is possible that our Australian Aboriginal compatriots may well hold the world record in this domain.

Is it, as LEGO suggests, because certain so-called human “race” groups’ IQs are inferior to those of Caucasians and Mongoloids ? I have not found any evidence of that – quite the contrary. As I indicated in a previous post to LEGO :

The current state of the art of genetics is that there is no connection between so-called “race” and intelligence. Nevertheless, as LEGO rightly points out, IQ tests reveal that there is an “intelligence gap” between some so-called “races”.

It is generally considered that the apparent “intelligence gap” is due, not to a difference in intelligence, per se, but to cultural, environmental or “external” factors which restrict its exercise.

These cultural, environmental or “external” factors act like a mechanical speed limiter on a motor vehicle that prevents it from exceeding a pre-determined speed limit. They do not reduce the intellectual capacity of the individual; they simply prevent him from exercising his full intellectual capacity.

As there is no biological evidence of any intellectual differential among so-called “races”, the best explanation for the high crime rates of the world’s indigenous peoples is that they are due to a cultural differential.

Here are the key crime statistics for Australia in 2016 :

http://www.acpc.org.au/index.php/crime-prevention-information/key-crime-statistics-2016

Numerous studies on the question have been carried out, based on official statistics and other sources. Here is one of the most comprehensive :

http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/law/aboriginal-prison-rates

Nevertheless, Dr. Rick Sarre of the University of South Australia observes:

« There has been a deliberate drive to recruit Indigenous police officers, a policy in keeping with the spirit of the recommendations of the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (Johnston, 1991; Kamira, 2001, pp.79–81), and Indigenous police women especially (Fleming, Prenzler & Ransley, 2013). There has also been widespread implementation of training in cross-cultural sensitivities in police academies, in concert,

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