Well, let me be the first to say...

Welcome back, redneck!
(http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/user.asp?id=6232&show=history)

I knew I'd heard the term "trendies" somewhere before.

Sorry, that contributed nothing to the discussion, but it was in reading this line that it all came together...

<<And if nobody had done so, Australia would be just another dysfunctional black country holding out the begging bowl and being a problem to the rest of the world.>>

LEGO,

What makes you think that Australia would have simply been a "begging bowl" that was "a problem to the rest of the world" if no-one ever settled here?

Wouldn't Aborigines have simply continued living the way they'd been living for 40,000 years prior to British settlement had they no contact with the civilised world?

"Wouldn't Aborigines have simply continued living the way they'd been living for 40,000 years prior to British settlement had they no contact with the civilised world?" As Lego pointed out, someone else would have "invaded" if the British hadn't. If the nirvana you propose had occurred, of course Aboriginals would be happily wiping out megafauna and burning the countryside. That nirvana doesn't exist, and the reality is that a majority (not all) aboriginals are lazy and disfuctional. The history of the world is chockablock ful of displaced people. Are Turks native to the Anatolian peninsula? No. Are the Celts native to Britain? Most likely not. The opinion of Canberrans on Muslims and Aboriginals (despite the crassness of the questions) might possibly be as a result of contact with these cultures? I've lived in or near both, and never want to repeat the experience. Individual Muslims can be wonderful people (in spite of Islam, not because of it), but en masse, the quality of life for an Anglo goes right down, and I'm tired of their permanent victimhood and demands for special treatment- when the majoity aren't special people, not to mention their entrenched mysogyny and Jew-hatred.

Erm... viking13, had you read the sentence before the one you responded to, you’d see that I was actually responding to LEGO/redneck’s “And if nobody had [colonised Australia]...” scenario.

I agree with you Graham Cooke, Soccer is a truly awesome international game. As a world game it has surface and true depth.

'What the figures really mean,' does not delve into issues of culture and difference. It does not discuss the degree of tolerance or empathy required to promote greater human understanding. It fails to consider the emotional intelligence or how to overcome defensive responses toward others who sit outside the square. Nor does it list the innovation and creativity possible if we were to look mindfully at the meaning of "Multiculturalism" here with the city of Canberra.

As a newbie, I find Canberra delightful in some ways and socially hostile in others. The dimension I probe is the zone where 'racism' is seen not just to be about color. That stigma and discrimination are more often about perceptions, judgmental behaviors, projection and fear modes [of production]. It is about sector experiences as much as class. It includes the difference between exclusion and inclusion. The core finding I question here is connectivity as opposed to cultures that act-out, in ways perhaps unintended that result in placing barriers of disconnectivity. This is a side of Canberra not many like to talk about. Robyn Archer described this trait at the Time to Talk 2030 Canberra forum as " Canbarrians are shy."

Given you are a well meaning journalist, I ask that you write an article that tackles the need to develop greater understanding through strategies that build and generate new cultural ["Ding an sich"]. Cultural cohesive pathways that embody the ideologies of the individual cultures and the relationships between people, We do need to address "connectivity" and a renewal between sectors here in Canberra.

I dream for an open, transparent and inclusive society where strangers are not treated with ignorance, and those with visible difference who struggle to stay connected are not left standing cold by the various inner circles.

As with light rays of reflection, the phase may be retained or inverted depending on the indices of refraction. I say let us spread the light.

Thank You,

http://www.miacat.com/

Dear Mr Phillips.

You appear to be a person who believes that aboriginal people lived Edenic lives prior to those nasty white people turning up and wrecking paradise. But even Jared Diamond’s book “Guns, Germs and Steel” admitted that the population of aboriginal people at European arrival was only around 300,000 people, and this after 40,000 years of occupancy of this continent. Their mortality rate therefore must have been horrendous, underlying the generally accepted truism that the lives of barbarian people are typically “hard, brutish, and short”.

Confirmation of this comes from First Fleeter Lieutenant Watkins Tench, who noted that when the cold weather came to Sydney Town, “all that the aboriginal people could do was sit in their caves and shivver.” Tench also noted in his renowned accounts the extreme brutality which aboriginal men visited on their women, and that Governor Phillip himself intervened to prevent an aboriginal man from beating to death a young aboriginal girl. I repeat, the best thing that ever happened to aboriginal people is the coming of the British, especially if you were an aboriginal female.

As to why Australia would have been a “begging bowl”, it is because every single black governed country on planet Earth is dysfunctional. I used to believe that this was because of colonialism, because the only excuse that people who believe in racial equality can come up with to explain this phenomenon, is “Blame the White Guys” for Everything". Which, as I have noted in my previous posts, is a racist argument submitted by people who claim that they are not racists.

It took me a few years of being an anti racist to see through this doublethink. When I did, I began to think objectively instead of simply parroting the slogans of the educated, inner city elites.

So, what I was faced with to explain the reasons for black dysfunction, were two racist arguments. “Blame the White Guys", or the realization that in general, black people are not very intelligent. The concept that all races are equal is simply a sacred humanitarian belief peddled by evangelical humanitarians.