When one celebrates one's birthday, one is celebrating life, memories, achievements, and future promise. That one's existence is due to say a broken condom might be the truth, but is not recalled at this point.

Similarly no country's existence is not founded on a river of blood, murder and injustice, so when I hear whingers like John Pilger telling us to wear sackcloth and ashes and bemoan our existence, I say "tell someone that cares."

I start by saying “I love Australia”, I was born in Australia. I live where the weather is great, most probably the best overall seasonal weather in the world.

That Australian flag, I have to tell you, is a symbolically threatening rag.
Most all world flags have images of number points and number of colours. Flags that have three colours suggest that repeated bible number three, death number. One is birth, two is life, three is death... circle of life.

Many world flags have one and or many pentagrams, five points, five wounds of Jesus. Jesus story being a threatening parable story, myself, mentioned several times before. Several country flags are predominately one pentagram star with some other defining symbolised image.

http://www.angelfire.com/id/robpurvis/pentagram.html
look down to: The Pentagram as a Christian Symbol.

The Union Jack is two crosses on a blue background, + over x. Red is the colour of blood. Blue is the colour Ancient Britons warriors supposed to colour themselves in battle, seen in the Braveheart 1995 movie “staring” Mel Gibson.
The Red Cross blood supply and medical servicing poor countries and military war campaigns. A red cross on a white background is the English flag.

All those old Knights, Kings and noble families had banners with predator birds and animals: Eagles; Hawks; Lions. King Richard the Lion Hearted had three lions on his banner, often shown when King Richard histories are expressed. Working class peasant humans are the prey, the sheep, the lambs of god.
Letter “K” first letter in the word kill. Letter K has four points. John Lennon's peace sign, a four point symbol inside a circle. During the Vietnam war, John Lennon's “Give Peace a Chance” song, I say 'grave stone' “rest in peace” was the peace message John Lennon was paid to send.

Banners and flags were meant to threaten people, imposing ideas that bulling forceful influence were to be expected.

The pope walks during ceremonies with a papal staff (Seiyaku) with a man believed to be nail to a cross. The man nailed to a cross describes what crosses mean.

Stories depicting European inquisitions and Spanish priests walking with long staffs with figurines of a dead man, guiding Spanish soldiers invading Mexico and South America.

Media documentaries are using murderous Catholic religion inquisition history to convince people, by displaying religious crosses, to persuade watchers meanings of everyday crosses.

Five seven pointed stars and one pentagram star on the Australian flag, I assume leaving out one large seven pointed star under the Union Jack, is about British repression, many gold miners dying. The battle celebrating the Southern Cross part of the flag, depicts a cross at the southern side of earth's equator. Three colours: red; white and blue, if white is considered a colour.

The Canadian flag is a red leaf, three sectors, each sector has three points.

Old Kings crowns seen on media stories, the crowns I have seen, have numbers of three points noticed as crosses. The forth point being part of the crown.

Flags were designed and flown on flag poles at a time when democracy was not an issue. Threatening people once ideas of crosses, colours and number were made known.

In all media presentations on democracy, and media story examples of rare deceases being cured; of people battling a decease, regretfully passing away.

Knowing what has been mentioned above, lets fly our country flags, in ignorance of what flags really symbolise.

January 24, 2016. SBS Sunday evening 7.30 PM documentary, entitled “Neanderthal Apocalypse”. You have heard of Zombie Apocalypse; and many other excuses of advertising an “end of time” Apocalypses.

I have mentioned how school education damagers Homo-Sapien brain development. Regardless of the documentary theories, I suggest Neanderthals are working class badly educated people. The documentary is one more persuasive memorised piece of information to gain persuasive ideas, once some radio station grabs peoples attention, filling in information mentioned symbolised ideas, then mentioning an end of time event is about to happen. Recommending selling all property in a hurry and head inland and wait until your told to head north for various mentioned reasons.

"26 January, one of the saddest days in human history". Rubbish: the last 10,000 years of 'civilised' human history is filled with thousands of examples of invasions that have resulted in mass deaths and profound changes to pre-existing ways of life. The 1788 settlement of Australia by the British is just one of these 'invasions' and is no more or no less sad than any of the others.
More importantly, however, Indigenous Australia pre-1788 was mostly a brutal, hand to mouth existence for most inhabitants. Read the book 'Blind Moses' about the first Aboriginal lay preacher at the Hermannsberg Lutheran Mission in central Australia and you'll see why Christianity was so quickly adopted by Aborigines: it treated women as human beings and not as objects to be sold, killed, brutalised, etc; and it stopped the meaningless internecine warfare between tribes.
Pre-1788 Australia included infacticide, child marriage and tribal warfare as normal, acceptable practices. I don't wish to celebrate these things on Australia Day, just as I don't want to celebrate the massacres of Indigenous Australian by Exdigenous Australians. Instead, I want to celebrate the present, look to the future but never forget our past.

Hi Bernie,

A review of that book by the 'Blind Moses', Tjalkabota (1927), is available on Alistair Crooks' web-site: http://www.aboriginalculture.org/index.html

I don't know that Aboriginal people adopted Christianity in any great numbers, but they certainly welcomed the services that missions (and in SA, the government) could offer such as the ration system, schooling for their kids, eventually cottages, guns, boas, and land leases.

I suspect that the attitude of many people is "Well, how else do you explain the drop in numbers except through massacres ?" The problem is, as you suggest, that there are many, many other 'explanations' for any supposed population drop (which I also suspect has been over-stated) - grog, fatal fights, beating of wives to death, sterility amongst women, neglect. I honestly don't know of any unprovoked massacre of Aboriginal people in SA. None. They may have occurred but I don't know of any. Call me ignorant.

Grog was a huge problem from the outset. The Protector was always sending people back to their home areas from the city if they were constantly drunk and had to resort to begging. Again, women especially copped it from violent drunk partners: I was just reading about one young woman who the Rev. Taplin had to patch up, with an upper arm bone protruding through the skin, after her partner had thrashed her with a fence paling. A young wife of his later died of 'chest injuries' at only sixteen. What we would call these days, a total scumbag.

From the earliest days in Adelaide, Aboriginal men were convicted of wife-killing - they seemed surprised that it was an offence. The sentence was usually a relatively short period in jail, taking into consideration their cultural sensitivities. Even though the penalty for murder was death, no Aboriginal man was ever executed for the murder of their partner.

[TBC]

[continued]

I think that traditionally, young children were not exactly highly valued - they could always be reproduced. So in some families, according to the death records, they may have had ten or twelve kids but almost all died in infancy. Perhaps this is why surnames that were around in the nineteenth century haven't survived - because their children didn't survive.

Of course, introduced diseases wiped out many people, Black and White, in those days. There was no cure for TB, 'consumption', 'phthysis', until after the War. Women became sterile from STDs. And no, no poisoned blankets etc. and all that paranoid bullsh!t.

Meanwhile, the workers were getting on with business, raising all of their kids to adulthood. My wife's great-grandparents, hard-working people, had twelve kids and they all survived to adulthood. Hence, in SA, for some ancestors, huge books of genealogies and huge numbers of descendants; for others nothing.

But I don't think that populations actually declined as much as we assume now. In 1860, at the Select Committee investigation into Aboriginal affairs, Rev. Taplin was asked (and you can imagine the committee members nodding in anticipation) if numbers were declining rapidly. No, he said, we've had more births than deaths. And that seemed to be the case on missions - and from natural growth and voluntary movement, not - ever - from any forced settlement. Not in SA, anyway.

Best wishes in Iowa,

Joe

John might loathe the fact that the British and other immigrants built this country to be largely what it is today. I am thrilled that someone built the roads, hospitals, schools and shops. The Indigenous life excepctancy would be far less without the hospitals, the clean running water and electricity. Barbaric practices of young girls been given to uncles would still be wide spread. Tribes would still be at war (just like now to some degree). It was no paradise as often portrayed buy the fudges of history. Chill out, thank God for the pioneers and enjoy the benefits on Australia Day whether you are black or white. This country was not stolen by the British it was built. Get over it.

Don't listen to this Pill Jar, sunlamp codger, git.

He is but a Permanent Pom Punchy Poxed by Putin.

Pill Jar's brain is stuck in 1962, the year he left the shores of fair Austraya for the Pommy land of Greer and Edna Everage.

Although must be said Dame Edna Everage is more the intellectual than pint sized Pill Jar.

What happened when we were still a british colony is something outside of the control of all modern day AUssies. Perhaps you should take your case to the English parliament who were the overseeing authority at the time of the worst excesses, and see if you can morally blackmail them instead?

I like most Australians own my own behavior, but not that of now very distant forebears.

Moreover many of the early settlers were transported here in iron chains. And when finally free, were often given crown land.

It may not have been the crown's land to give, but most of these folk weren't to know or understand that and when the inevitable clash of cultures occurred, they defended their patch with everything they had.

Particularly when they believed women and children were in the firing line.

I'm not saying they were right, just dispossessed folks that needed to survive.

Even so, neither I or my parents were there; and my earlier forbears recount stories of friendship and owning their survival to aboriginal friends and bush medicine.

Which meant a blind eye was turned when the occasional jumbuk went missing.

We can't unsay what was said, undo what was done or unmix the racial mixing!

The only way forward is through reconciliation not entirely undeserved guilt trips or black armband wedging by activists like you, who want something very different to a peaceful resolution we can all live with.
Rhrosty.

Hi Rhosty,

Maybe we should be working towards genuine recognition and reconciliation:

* recognition of the truths of our past and recognition that, on balance, the settlement of Australia has been positive for Indigenous people,

* and reconciliation of all Australians that we are all here to stay, to intermix and intermarry, and to jointly produce a New Australia for the next centuries.

Then we can all get on with business.

Cheers,

Joe

In order to be able to look to the future we need
to face our past. Black armband history is often
distressing but it does enable us to know and
understand the incubus which burdens us all.
(Historian - Henry Reynolds, "Why Weren't We Told?").

(W)Rong Brave Sir Rhrosty

It is not too late to rename tomorrow not Austraya Day but:

White Man's Conquest Smite All Day.

Even if the sure thing Republic means First Australian President Turnbull dismisses First Muslim Prime Minister Waleed Aly, we need to get serious.

To that end and with Abject (Abbott) Apologies to Rudyard Kipling:

Take up the White Man’s burden.
Send forth your sturdy kin,
And load them down with Bibles
And cannon-balls and gin.

Throw in a few diseases
Pox, AIDS, LGB and T,
We hetero heroes
Are quite behind the times.

And don’t forget the factories.
On our benighted shores
No cheerful iron mines,
And Dick Smith shut his stores.

We no longer work eight hours a day
Poor CMFEU,
Altho they never have to pay
Bill Shorten sniffing glue.

Take up the White Man’s burden,
And teach the Timorese
What interest and taxes are
Eat boiled Missionaries.

Give them NRA assault rifles,
And prisons, too, galore,
If Donald Trump shoots em,
They spill their heathen spore.

And if you are totally confused,
By this Pete's poetry
Of gunboats rightly used
Then Rhrosty climb a tree
Like Ninja drop bears enthused.

And let us ever humbly pray
The Lord of Hosts may deign
To stir our feeble memories
Up "Austraya" beer and wine!

Your in Copyright

Poida da Great.

as I said elswhere Foxy we are to face our past just like the indigeneous need to look at their past which had ingrain rape, offering young girls to uncles, clubbing some of the disabled. Yep human nature can be barbaric. Thank God for the places that Christian teaching changed that. A fact the Christophobes hate.

Dear runner,

Don't forget What's going on in Africa -
nothing to be proud of, and child sexual
abuse should also not be ignored.
Neither the bombing of abortion clinics.,
or preaching hatred from the pulpit.
Or excluding gay people from communion
and the church, and the list goes on.

thanks for proving my point Foxy with your irrational rant. I think the hundreds of thousands of baby murderers certainly outweigh the one of two who have killed the killers.

Runner, I believe one of the 10 commandments stated 'Love Thy Neighbour '?
I don't recall any that just said 'Love Thy Christian'.
You sir, are the least real 'Christian' that I know...

' Runner, I believe one of the 10 commandments stated 'Love Thy Neighbour '

as usual Susie you get it wrong. This was not one of the 10 commandments. With the horses you back Susie, I am happy not to have your approval. Now back to the topic which you followed Foxy away from

Hi Foxy
Both black and while armband historians have ideological blinkers. We should face our past honestly, and in particular acknowledge the terrible things that were done to indigenous Australians. But we should also recognise what is good and valuable about Australia, both in the past and in the present.

If you travel in Bali you’ll see many statues, trees and people adorned with black and white chequered cloth. The black and white represent good and evil. Perhaps we should start a chequered armband school of history.

Hi Suseonline
It’s not in the 10 commandments, but it is in Leviticus 19:18 and more importantly it is what Jesus call the greatest commandment (Matthew 22:36-40) along with the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4: “you shall love the lord your God… “). So Christians should take this as even more authoritative than the 10 commandments, though we often fail to live up to it

Dear runner,

The most radical aspect of Christ's teaching goes beyond even the
commandment of love, it is His insistence on forgiveness, even
of enemies. In contrast to Christianity the other
monotheistic religions, Judaism and Islam, believe in
"an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."

There are many non-violent Jews and Muslims who are
committed to peace, but Christ is the first person in history
to say that the vendetta and the desire for revenge are
totally inappropriate responses for
His followers. As the Jewish literary critic George Steiner
says in his wonderful intellectual autobiography "Errata"
the most scandalous thing about Christianity is that it
believes in forgiveness even of an enemy.

Christ's ordinance of total love, of self-offering to the
assailant, is in any strict sense an enormity.

But obviously it's something you're not familiar
with.

Hi Foxy,

Four thousand years ago, the ancient Hebrews, along with the ancient Babylonians (i.e. Hammurabi) believed in 'an eye for an eye'.

Two thousand years ago, (assuming he actually existed), Christ taught to love they neighbour, to love one another, to help even strangers and not ross over to the other side.

Fourteen hundred years go and up to the present, Islam teaches 'an eye for an eye'.

What's wrong with this picture ?

Love,

Joe

Feel free to put your morality where your mouth is, Pilger. Give up all your (Western) possessions and lifestyle and live in a hut and hunt with spears.

Maybe we could just change the date Australia Day.
To a different date, one that has no link to the arrival of the first fleet,

Change it more to a celebration of Today's Australia,
With no provocative dates attached. Inclusive for everyone.

Pick a date out of a hat.

Jesus was lovely.

His words have echoed through the centuries.

"Let those amongst you who are without sin cast the first stone.

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

I have always had trouble believing he had any connection to a God.

But I still like him for his gentleness and wisdom

Steve 101,

"Banners and flags were meant to threaten people, imposing ideas that bulling forceful influence were to be expected."

Care to comment on the flag of the Republic of Ireland?

That Orange, White and Green tri-colour, Orange for the Protestants, Green for the Catholics and White for Brotherhood between the two.

Then there is the Indian Tri-colour:
"A flag is a necessity for all nations. Millions have died for it. It is no doubt a kind of idolatry which would be a sin to destroy. For, a flag represents an Ideal The unfurling of the Union Jack evokes in the English breast sentiments whose strength it is difficult to measure. The Stars and Stripes mean a world to the Americans. The Star and the Crescent will call forth the best bravery in Islam."

"It will be necessary for us Indians Muslims, Christians Jews, Parsis, and all others to whom India is their home-to recognize a common flag to live and to die for."

- Mahatma Gandhi"

Great article
The lack of art,,film and books depicting the conquest of this land is damning and it does us whites harm too.
This void only continues the dispossession into present day - it's an active denial
It's this same denial which underpins the continuous patronizing and emasculating failed policies directed at indigenous people for the last two centuries.

It is unfortunate you felt it was necessary to use the Adam Goodes saga during the last football season to augment your article when i believe it undermines your point and confuses the issue with something which is essentially counter productive to your purpose.

We increasingly live in a culture incapable of discussing uncomfortable topics. The initial purpose of political correctness was to fast track a cultural change by censoring language. This was done with an honest and noble purpose but it was for a noble end by ignoble means - censorship.

This censorship has become toxic and has morphed in ways no one could have imagined.

Rather than fast track change it has hidden racism behind the symbols of equality - namely censored language.

It is not ironic but inevitable that indigenous films are shunned - censored -
Because a culture of symbolic politeness is fully ingrained -'I'm sure the rejection to show the film was done with impeccable courtesy

Well meaning political correctness has frozen underlying prejudices underneath a rubble of superior inoffensive language. Those who once may have acted to progress this and many other injustices no longer take strategic action to change policy, reveal corruption, challenge beliefs, expose practices and risk ridicule or arrest.

No, today, political correctness enables its proponent to feel they have acheived something simply via Discipline of words. Whilst the PC prefects feel superior to the transgressors purely by virtue of publicly policing verbal discipline.

The western skill par excellence is to put our heads in the sand. Politeness, correctness and censorship enables us to pretend everything is ok.

Thank you for that clarification on 'Love Thy Neighbour ' Rhian,
It has been a long time since I read the bible, but I always remember reading that quote.
Maybe if more people followed that thought then the world wouldn't be in such a mess.

Mind you, I was listening to a radio program on Australia Day today and they said how we were the most successful multicultural country in the world, and that made me more proud than anything else I heard about Australia.

I was also pleased to see former Army chief David Morrison named '...the 2016 Australian of the Year for his commitment to gender equality, diversity and inclusion."
(abc.com.au).
A truly worthy recipient for tackling gender disparity issues in the army and making a difference to the lives of females, homosexuals and others in the military.

This article is littered with the usual 'Pilgerisms' such as
"....This was the moment the only island continent on earth was taken from its inhabitants;...."

Clearly inaccurate as only the East was claimed by Britain, they were content to leave the West to the French.
The British brought with them their Law, hence the Mabo decision so many years later.

Happy Australia (Always Mention Aborigine) Day all

With the New Australian of the Year, David Morrison, out goes main cause Domestic Violence (ad nauseum) and in comes Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals and Transgeneder (LGBT).

LGBT and Same Sex Marriage again and again all 2016!

Bugger!!

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/australian-of-the-year-david-morrison-delivers-turnbull-slapdown-in-first-speech-20160125-gmdsck.html

John Pilger we must move on. All the hand wringing on the planet will not correct the injustices. There are very few Aborigines left with even 50% of their genetics in tack and thus we have some that are not recognizable as Aborigines getting the financial benefits.Don't forget also that Aboriginal tribes were fighting and killing each other.We are a murderous species that continues this genocide today with wars all over the planet promulgated under the lie of terrorism.

I don't like Aust Day as it is being used to demonise Muslims and justify more wars.

The Viking and the Romans invaded Britain but now a new culture exists,so will it be here with hundreds of nationalities coming here on a yearly basis.

Arjay "The Viking and the Romans invaded Britain but now a new culture exists,so will it be here with hundreds of nationalities coming here on a yearly basis."

I never thought of it that way before Arjay, but I can see you are correct.
I would like to think we will continue on with a culture roughly like the one we have today, given that Australia has been a successful multicultural country for over 200 years now.

We are certainly the lucky country.

I am a Australian of European bloodlines and in no way feel as if we should apologise for what the British did over 200 years ago.For one thing if they hadn't colonised the continent then we would now be all speaking French as they had designs on New Holland as it was known then for themselves.As for the Aborigines they were a nomadic race who never established cities or towns or any real civilisation as we in the West recognise.The modern PC world and multiculturalism is an invention of the so called social left and the adgenda put forward by liberals and bleeding hearts who believe that we should all live together in harmony and get along.You only need to look at countries like the USA,the problems they are having in many European countries right now to see this abhorrent policy does not work.In Australia like many other Western nations this has been forced upon us by the limpwristed so called leaders without any say at all in a so called democracy to what we really would like.Most people I know agree that there are far to many foreigners here and we are being overrun.However they are a to apathetic and worried about there own lives to really rebel against it.This exactly what these bleeding hearts and lefties want for the silent majority to stay silent and allow the vocal minority to have there views and beliefs put forward as what the average Australian thinks and believes when in reality it couldn't be further from the truth.We need to wake up before it is to late if it isn't already.

On this the Australia Day of even non-Aboriginal Australians I to can make the claim that I have Convicts in My Family.

Few can make this proud claim. My Convicts are:

- Aunty Shaggher still doing time for GBH (glassing in a Kings Cross strip club). Yes she's a stripper and pro and I'm proud of it. And

- my cousin Cody is in Goulburn Supermum for paedophilia and murder.

There you have it. Nya! Nya!

Anyone got better convicts?

Hi Pete,

Yeah, I can top that: [curse you, Ancestry.com ! ] I had a gr-gr-gr-grandfather, John Stanton, who got pinged for theft in 1789, came out in the Third Fleet on the 'Active', did his time, went back to England and got pinged again for theft, sentenced to death, reprieved, came out here again, did his time, and married another convict, Frances Hoggard, who had been brought out here in 1797 for theft [she was later tried for pinching a blanket in Parramatta]. Their daughter Jane (b. 1810) married another convict, Thomas Plows, had seventeen children and died in childbirth at 37.

A couple of other ancestors actually came out on the same ship, the 'Admiral Gambier'. One married the daughter of a female convict, but when she died he married the daughter of another convict. There were two or three others - all thieves, nothing serious, there were a lot of loaves of bread in Britain at the time - but I don't want to brag. Actually, from the court cases, they all seemed to pinch a hell of a lot more than the odd loaf of bread. I suspect one pinched a flock of sheep, and another a bolt of very expensive cloth - she was pinged trying to sell it up the same street. Not too bright. It figures: the apple doesn't roll far from the tree.

Joe

Hi Joe

Yes, well. You have some very old British convicts in your family, I'll give you that. But theft is way down on the convict pecking order. Unbecoming.

Mine are a superior class of convict: current, Aussie through and through and Hey! they revel in ultra-violence

(a la Clockwork Orange https://youtu.be/oWLByMshYIU )

Thankyou for your convict audition and interest :)

Next!!

The British needed cheap labour to develop the colonies. I have convict ancestry on both sides going back to 1798 and 1820.On my father's side James was arrested in England at the age of 12 for grand theft and larceny for stealing a handkerchief and a rein of silk.He and his accomplice of 9, were jailed for several years before being sent to Australia as slaves.

Plantagenet you owe David Morrison a big apology. He has pledged to carry on the good work started by Rosie Baty, so check your facts chum.

Runner, I don't always agree with you but your several posts on this are right on the money.

Pilger as usual is out of his tree. Most of his facts are wrong. Loudmouth is the expert on the subject. Take notice of what this man writes.

David

Here's another example of Pilger's selective use of words,

"With remarkable ingenuity and without guns, they fought an epic resistance that remains almost a national secret."

As soon as they got their hands on guns they used them and with remarkable ingenuity adapted pistol cartridges to fire in rifles that were not chambered for them.
There is no secret about this at all.

"This truth has no place in the (Pilger) consciousness.,,,"

Hi Is Mise,

Down here in SA, there seemed to be a common pattern:

* groups would come down out of their country and raid sheep and cattle, occasionally killing shepherds, hut-keepers and squatters and their families;

* the Protector would set up a ration station near or in their country;

* end of raids.

The men from Lake Hope, east of Lake Eyre, used to come down to the Flinders for ochre, raiding huts and pinching or maiming sheep on the way to and fro. The Protector ordered a couple of tons of ochre to be sent up there each year. End of.

Rifles: well into the 1840s, they were muzzle-loaders, which took a minute or so to re-load. Single-shot of course. How many spears can a bloke throw in a minute ? The new breech-loaded rifles were also single-shot: repeater rifles were not invented until the 1870s in the US.

But why spoil a good story ? I read of an Aboriginal bloke this year or last year, talking about a battle south of Perth in 1829 or 1830, where soldiers used repeating rifles. Make it up as you go.

And of course, by order of the Colonial Government in London, all pastoral leases after 1851 - before then the right had been implied in King George's 1837 Letters Patent - had to have a clause inserted recognising Aboriginal rights to use the land as they always had done. Still the law. And yes, that clause was observed.

Joe

Hi Arjay

"Slave labor" was only relevant up to a point. Most convicts were freed a few years (on average) after transportation to Australia. Those freed (ticket of leave then pardoned) frequently become wealthier, higher standard of living, than many smallholders and most farm labourers back in Britain

________________________________________________________________

VK3AUU

I regret to inform you that David Morrison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Morrison is a veritable industry Man For All Causes under the grab bag term "Diversity (D) Man".

LGBT, women generally, woman in the military, bastardisation in the military, domestic violence, Aborigines, The Republic, and any other cause that springs to Turnbull's mind, are all represented by "D Man".

My Irish ancestor was sent out to Western Australia as a convict after he was convicted of burning down the haystack of a Protestant English landowner in Southern Ireland.

He worked on farms as a laborer for his full seven year term, then had his family emigrate to Bunbury from Ireland to join him. Later, someone else apparently owned up to the arson crimes and my ancestor was pardoned and given a parcel of land to farm on. He did very well then.

I have old letters from some of his descendants which talk about their interactions with the 'local natives'. It certainly seemed more acrimonious than friendly, with the husband of one ancestor being speared to death on his farm.
If you have old letters from back in those days, as there are in the Batty Library in Perth, WA, you can read first hand what happened in those early days of the colonies.

John Pilger is not out of tree in most cases. He he spot on in what's happening in the Middle East.

We have murdered most of the Aborigines in the past and now kill off what remains with social security benefits and a plethora of deceptions that gives them victim status to do nothing. They call it "sit down money." They are now represented % wise in our jails higher than another race because of these do good policies.

Make people responsible for their actions and this includes our criminal pollies and our criminal central bankers.

Hi Arjay,

Perhaps you're right, we're soooooo powerful, but sooooooo bad, we can push people around at will, and there's nothing too evil for us. I suppose one could call your approach 'triumphalist negativism', or 'negative triumphalism', the gist of which is that our innocent victims are utterly powerless like sheep, and we are utterly all-powerful. A bit like Voldemort, an entire race of Voldemorts. God, we're such bastards. And Aboriginal people were such puppets. We were, and are, so superior in every way; they were and are, so inferior. Charming people, lovely culture, but a bit thick, between you and me.

On the other hand .....

You suggest, " .... We have murdered most of the Aborigines in the past .... ". Prove it. Find evidence. It's so easy to flap one's lips so airily. Get some back-up. He who asserts must prove, demonstrate. Otherwise it's all just air out of your backside, Arjay.

Burble is so easy, isn't it ?

Joe

The aboriginals were extremely LUCKY that the British decided to colonise Australia. Not only should they be celebrating Oz Day but they should give thanks to whichever deity their tribe worships.

In the late 18th century. Australia was going to be colonised. It wasn't a question of if, only a question of when and who. The aboriginals were fortunate that it was Britain that did it.

It could have been the Spanish. Whatever happened to the Incas and the Aztecs? That would've been the aboriginal's fate as well.

It could have been the Belgians. Have you heard of the Congo?

Portuguese in Lanka?

Germans in Africa?

It probably wouldn't have been the Chinese since they were too weak by then and besides their only interest in Australia for the previous few centuries was buying aboriginal women to become concubines back in Peking. (yes despite the fairytales that aboriginal women had equal rights with men they were in fact chattels that were sold to traders for centuries and later to sealers in Tasmania).

The British arrived with intructions to respect as much as possible the local peoples and their customs. It didn't go perfectly (what does?) but the aboriginals were far better treated than had any other colonisers arrived.

Indeed, we only have an aboriginal problem/issue because the British came. Anyone else and the natives, so backward as compared to their occupiers would have suffered the fate of the Incas or the Haitians and ceased to exist.

So they should be celebrating Philip's arrival....but I won't be holding my breathe.

Hi mhaze

Tut, tut! So politicly incorrect but so accurate.

That the Aborigines did not experience Catholism by the Sword (like the Philippines and East Timor) means that there are many Aborigines to complain today.

To any observer who was unaware that January 26 used to be Australia Day for all Australians the Day it is now "Aboriginal Day" an empty political gesture to make Lefties happy.

Regards

Hi Joe, Suse and Arjay

I can't claim the badge of convict ancestors transported.

Just a Scottish ship's captain and an Irish girl meeting and marrying in Adelaide in the 1870s.

See CAPTAIN WILLIAM BEGG. "Captain Begg was awarded a silver medal by the Italian Government for rescuing the crew of an Italian sailing ship on fire in mid-ocean.

On one occasion, during a storm, he had his legs and ribs broken and two steersmen were washed overboard.

He later owned steam launches and started the S.A. Tug Company. With Captain Legoe he also started the S.A. Stevedoring Coy., which is still operating in Port Adelaide. He had a large family." http://users.olis.net.au/penta/pages.htm

He and she rapidly became pillars of the Protestant (Anglo-Irish) Establishment of that fair city. A Jewish great-grandmother later added ideas and a less staid family culture.

Cheers

Pete

Good onya, Pete :)

Lying is the sine qua non of Pilger’s work, but he particularly likes lying about aborigines.
He avoids historical truth, and treats works of fiction as reference books.
The aboriginal culture is a stone age culture, and it had no social structure which could not recognise, much less organise their community against an outside threat, such as the settlement of part of the country that they inhabited, or to even assert ownership over it. They had no concept of nation, or of any community past a tribe.
They were not a civilised people, but existed as tribal, nomadic hunter gatherers.
Pilger says:” , mass murder was ordained. In 1838, theSydney Monitor reported: "It was resolved to exterminate the whole race of blacks in that quarter.". No doubt the “Sydney Monitor” exists only in the turgid imagination of Pilger, and the” report” is a lie from the same disreputable source.
A shameful article, for which he should receive universal condemnation

I suggest some of you here should read pilger's - a secret country
It s often difficult to see exactly how our Aussie culture puts its head in the sand
On so many statistics our treatment of indigenous Australians not only in the past it in the entire world is the worst in the world.

They are an amazing people and culture which we have systemically patronized and denied any dignity too. I am ashamed of myself and us.

Yebiga. If you believe a lying clown like Pilger, you would believe anything.
As I said, above, he particularly likes lying about aborigines.
If you are out of dunny-paper, a copy of "a secret country" might be handy.