Your commentary on are woke society folks is very much apt and that is the very nature of our media, social-media "look at me" society. The left hunts and gathers minority groups. As an ex teacher and lecturer, I am appalled at the lack of balance in the curriculae and content deleivered to our children. This allows them to gather votes/minds to their woke party to replace the working people who used to be their core base. In this era, we need to survey as wide a range of views on important issues to ensure the best chance of getting a balanced view.

As an ex teacher and lecturer, I am appalled at the lack of balance in the curricula and content delivered to our children. and this prepares them to enter the woke society our media environments have created.

So for those who only watch/listen to the ABC, Aljazeera, CNN, FOX or only listen only to Alan Jones on 2GB, then you will only hear what you want to hear, and as such you will be easily led and remain sheltered from reality.

The author did however shoot themselves in the foot a bit, in that they are guilty of tagging on to the bushfire interest (just as Riki J warned Hollywood luvies not to), and then focused the majority of the article on wokeness etc.

PS I am not a great fan of Riki Gervais, but that clip from the GG awards you included is the best I seen from him in ages, but then as its his last gig, he must have felt free to let rip at that room full of self-opiniated, ill-informed hypocrites.

"Virtue-signalling do-gooders who are big on grandstanding and small on sincerity."

So true!

" ….. the heroism of multicultural Australia with headlines such as, "Sikh group giving free hot meals to bushfire victims hailed as legends" and "This is the Australian way: Muslims donate 36,000 bottles of water to firefighters" and "This is Australia: Muslim heroes travel to fire-ravaged Victoria to cook meals for firefighters battling the blaze".

More expected insincerity from the same people who push multiculturalism, then act surprised when multicultis do something normal. If I was a Sikh or a Muslim, I would be offended to think my religion had to be mentioned every time I farted; that if I wanted to do a good deed, I needed tobe labelled as somehow different from all other kind-hearted and thoughtful people. But, that's the smarmy Left for you.

Not sure that a permanent resident classed as Australian, though. If you don't go the full job, you shouldn't be entitled to the description.

The national emergency has seen various minorities making various donations of extraordinary unusual generosity! And so noted without upsetting anyone save folks like the serially disgruntled Author, who'd rather stay true to the arm's length racial separation and the ghettoising of various recent immigrants along religious or ethnic lines?

This is a time where we come together and are not assisted by segregationist, disgruntled commentary!

Former immigrants, Irish, Greek, Italian are proud of their origins and contributions as are most Asians, only more recent immigrants are determined to remain aloof and uninvolved

Given they clearly see themselves as the only true believers and are racially superior?

I don't agree with this divisive commentary or any need to take umbrage at the promulgation of various ethenic groups rising to the fore and being extraordinarily generous at this time when all such donations are very gratefully accepted and welcomed.

Thank you one and all for your generosity, be you a Seik Australian, a Lebanese Australian or an Egyptian Australian or any other ethnic minority!
Alan B.

I agree that advertising agencies inserting ethnics into TV advertising are doing their customers a disservice. I automatically mark down a company who's adds use ethnics of obviously not Oz extraction in their adds. If it is heavy use, they are off my shopping list. I don't mind ethnics at all, but if a company decides it is the ethnic market they desire, I can take a hint.

It can get even worse. A seller of cooked chicken had an add a couple of years back using 3 actors of obviously African extraction. Not good, but it got worse. When the people started talking it was with a pommy accent. Obviously this was a pommy ethnic aimed add, using pommy people, & the fools were too cheap to even dub Ozzie accents over the thing.

If they want my custom they should never have cheapscated by not making Oz adds in Oz with Ozzie people.

Okay I'm smelling a beat up.

From the article;

"In the past week, there has been article after article in the mainstream media about the heroism of multicultural Australia with headlines such as, "Sikh group giving free hot meals to bushfire victims hailed as legends" and "This is the Australian way: Muslims donate 36,000 bottles of water to firefighters" and "This is Australia: Muslim heroes travel to fire-ravaged Victoria to cook meals for firefighters battling the blaze"."

Well to call them Muslim heroes was a bit rich even for me and I was interested to see where the quote came from. The author gave links to the first two quote and I don't have an issue with either even if the second did come from the UK Daily Mail. But the third one about heroes does not have a reference and a google search draws a blank.

That of course is not definitive so I will hold judgement for now, but if it turns out to be concocted then the author needs to retract and apologise.

So can anyone shed some light on where the headline "This is Australia: Muslim heroes travel to fire-ravaged Victoria to cook meals for firefighters battling the blaze" is sourced?

Steel Redux I would check the ABC about 2 days ago, I recall seeing a couple of pieces on ABC news , a Sikh and a Muslim group who had come to help being interviewed re this .

Surely the fact that the media are highlighting these small contributions by ethnic groups, merely highlights the fact that it is so unusual.

If it isn't particularly unusual, why highlight it compared to other similar contributions.

what is the big deal.

Such stories show that people of different faiths and cultures can also care about disasters.

It also provides coverage of a community act to others in their culture.

i agree we should be wary of cultural issues that can divide us, but we also need to celebrate behaviour that unites us.

Found it.

It was the UK Daily Mail.

So we have a disreputable British tabloid rag running sensationalising headlines and it is us Australians who are the issue? Even the reporter isn't Australian.

All rubbish. The other reference provided was from SBS, an organisation whose charter is to report on multicultural stories.

Wow. Pretty flimsy material for any piece.

There's a reason more and more are turning away from traditional news sources.

The author said; then why make a habit of singling out race at all?
Islam is not a race it is a religion. Be careful using the race tag.

I read an article recently by a ex moslem atheist.
He said most moslems gradually, without realising it, are gradually
moving away from Islam. So those bringing gifts to the field almost
certainly are doing it out of no more than goodwill & sympathy.

'The author said; then why make a habit of singling out race at all?
Islam is not a race it is a religion. Be careful using the race tag.'

you beat me to it Bazz. Problem like so many leftist lies repeated often enough people believe them. Islam is not a race.

Islam is not a race
runner,
No but it is the # 1 competitor in a Race of achieving annihilation of sense !

So keen are Lefties to be politically correct and inclusive, they infantilize these minority groups like an overprotective mother
Vanessa,
These Labor/Green voting helicopter Citizens are rapidly becoming plague-like!

Q:
When the fuel load is tinder dry from years of drought, when is it safe to backburn?
A: never ever!

Q: when the bush is tinder dry from years of drought, when is it safe to cell graze it to reduce/completely remove the fuel load?
A: 24/7 365 days of the year!

About fires, there are some new robotic machine on the market that'll take on a fire head-on. Have a jet of water over a hundred yards long and a huge turbofan that delivers volumetric mist that tackles ember storms. And should be deployed in ranks so when an if the
first rank runs out of water, the second rank can move forward to replace them, then the third rank.

If this sounds like warfare, it's because we are fighting on many fronts with piddling hoses and from tanks on utes or backpacks!

And demonstrably ineffective against towering firestorms a hundred feet high an advancing at thirty kilometres an hour sounding like a herd of stampeding wild horses, being driven by a thousand riders cracking monstrous whips.

Behind these remotely controlled machines, there'd need to be refill tankers and they would need to be a quick turnaround convoy!

After that, there'd need to be guaranteed water and power surety! water an pumps to recharge tankers! An only able to be AFFORDABLY guaranteed with deionisation dialysis desalination an MSR thorium. And pipelines.

And consider my earlier comment on saturating the landscape when he rains do return.

We've watered the sea far too well and the current firestorm devouring the bush is the all too obvious asinine consequence of asinine activism that to date has destroyed over three million acres burnt down around three hundred homes, millions of native animals and taken twenty lives and counting.

This is war and this is what war looks like in the aftermath! TBC.
Alan B.

This post highlights a regular aspect of society - the habit. of stressing our differences, either in a critical or praising sense.
It is not the key part of a news report to specify the nationality, religion, or any group membership of a person whose actions are the story.
Rather, such usage is a convenient tool for expressing a personal attitude, such as implying a higher or lower status to the persons being described.
It allows for the use of cliched terms such as “valiant firefighters”, “ suspect ethnics” and so on.
The point I’m making is that there ought to be a valid reason to highlight any demographic difference, otherwise those absorbing the report are likely to have their attitudes shaped by the author.

"Q: when the bush is tinder dry from years of drought, when is it safe to cell graze it to reduce/completely remove the fuel load?
A: 24/7 365 days of the year!" [and 366 in a Leap Year].

Where can I get some of these grazing animals that eat dead, dry sticks?

Dead dry sticks, are a consequence of not having them grazed to ground level when they were just emerging green shoots, by grazing animals and you all know it! Intensive cell grazing is not ever limited to a few weeks in June and July but every month of the year even every fourth leap year and you all know it! Only ideologically driven firebugs would argue now, today, that fire is superior as land management to intensive cell grazing!

After that, we need a different water management plan. A plan that absolutely saturates the landscape with a much as possible with stormwater that currently races out to sea. This was what happened before white settlement. Then we came along and drained the wetlands and clear-felled whole forests.

Indigenous populations have selectively cleared their native forests for millennia without harming flora and fauna or forests, Selectively cleared forests have forest trails that act as fire breaks and alow mobile traffic to get into areas normally too thick for anything other than foot traffic.

Truth is, trees store carbon whether horizontal or vertical! And younger more vigorous trees store much more of it than elderly old-growth forests.

Green idealogues created the conditions for this year's firestorm by making green dependant politicians too timid to stand up to a vote casting idiotic minority!

And our leader needed to spend three weeks on a hill than tree weeks on foreign sand! That one piece of salient information tells you just how much this P.M. cares about us and what happens to us! He can trot out all the excuses and mouthpieces as much as h likes, that won't change who he really is, nor any of his vociferous fellow travellers.
Alan B.

Alan B: You say, "And our leader needed to spend three weeks on a hill than tree weeks on foreign sand! That one piece of salient information tells you just how much this P.M. cares about us and what happens to us! He can trot out all the excuses and mouthpieces as much as h likes, that won't change who he really is, .."

Nope! If you ever bothered to read the constitution then you would know that it does NOT mention fighting bushfires as being a federal commonwealth responsibility. The ONLY powers that the commonwealth has are those that are specifically granted it in the constitution or those that the states have given/lent to it since the drafting of the constitution, however the states can at any time take back powers that the commonwealth are yielding on their behalf. Never has the states transferred the fighting of bush-fires to the federal government. I don't think it has ever even being suggested.

This is why the rural fire serivces have names such as: QFS = Queensland Rural Fire Service or the NSWRFS = New South Wales Rural Fire Service.

However, I will grant that the federal government is responsible for the land it owns/controls- which is some of the land currently burnt/burning and thus are responsible for its fuel loading. But never-the-less the federal executive, under the current arrangements in place, is certainly NOT meant to be controlling/managing the fire fighting effort. This is purely a state matter! Anyone who says that the federal government has been slaking off the job simply doesn't understand the foundational governing structures of the society that they live in.

(PS: by-the-way: The constitution has no concept of "leader". The PM is not our leader as you seem to think. If I remember correctly the constitution doesn't even mention the PM's role but rather it's a traditional position. The Queen or the Governor-General would have as much right be called the "leader" as the PM- in fact, the GG probably has more right since the GG is a constitutionally defined position.)

Don't worry thinkabit, we all know this is simply Alan, like a few others, trying to use the fire emergency to push his far left leanings.

As the greenies said, never waste a good emergency.

AlanB,

Which grazing animals do you suggest?
Having spent many a back-breaking day digging out gum seedlings in country where there were thousands of sheep and hundreds of goats I'm interested.

Then there is serrated tussock, a grass that burns intensely but which is eaten by nothing.

"Seedlings of this weed are difficult to pull out of the soil. Dense infestations of this weed can pose a serious fire hazard with a recorded burn intensity of up to seven times greater than native grasslands.

Seed heads create additional hazards where they build up against housing, sheds, roadsides and fence-lines, particularly in the rural and urban areas of outer west Melbourne.

Serrated tussock takes only seven years from establishment to dominate a pasture or native grassland, threatening rare native plant species and resulting in a loss of flora biodiversity. The plant is unpalatable and infestations commonly expand as other species are selectively grazed out. This excludes other ground flora and eventually reduces habitat for native fauna."
http://agriculture.vic.gov.au/agriculture/pests-diseases-and-weeds/weeds/a-z-of-weeds/serrated-tussock

Digging out ST is also a back-breaking exercise once it spreads a bit, vigilance saves a lot of work but once it gets among native tussock grasses it is really only identifiable by feel as the eye tires easily because looking for distinctions is hard where the native grass is similar.

"Nassella trichotoma, the serrated tussock, is a type of bunchgrass plant, native in Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, and Peru. It is on the list of Weeds of National Significance in Australia, reducing the productivity of pasture and creating a fire hazard. Wikipedia"

Now there we are someone who seems to know more about it than any of us.
The been there done that brigade.
I am afraid that we are being inundated with the "Pile on Brigade".
They seem to have their sites on the PM at present.
I wonder what they want him to do that is not already been done.
The money is there, the army was there almost from the start, the navy
is there, helicopters galore, anything the RFS etc want it is there,
and still they complain ! Has anyone asked them what more do they want ?
Instant houses probably, it is all so b$%^&y stupid !

Bazz,
You're dealing with the stupid, nothing will make sense to them, just let them run their course which is unfortunately a long one.

Ise, correct mate, only grubbing it out by hand works and it does need to be gotten rid of by the only means available. Don't know if any animals graze on the stuff or if the fibre is useful for anything?

Perhaps it can be used as fuel in alternative power plants and perhaps something could be invented by some clever bloke who can perhaps adapt a drome or something to go in and find every plant.

Perhaps a bounty or some such or work for the dole scheme with a quota attached to your weekly payroll or some such?

While we are discussing plants suggest you look up hempcrete for fireproof building material for those that need to rebuild with a material likely to last for up to 500 years.

Cost-effective desal,i.e. deionisation dialysis desalination powered by CHEAPER THAN COAL MSR thorium, could have put potable water where there is none. Any mug can bag what they don't fully understand or have an ideological imperative or vested interest that makes it verboten

How many firefighters have lost their lives for a lack of water? Surely we need here on the driest inhabited continent on earth to consider all viable options not just those politically palatable to this or that political ideology!

Or worse, a rank invested interest in maintaining high priced irrigation water?
Cheers, Alan B.

Alan,

Yes, hempcrete is one way to go and is an excellent insulating/building material but there is no great monetary profit in its use compared to the usual building materials, the middlemen miss out.
I'm an advocate for mud brick and rammed earth (pise) buildings, combined with earth covered roofs that are well turfed.

One such building that I trod a few mud-brick mixes for was eventually two-story and there was a manually operated lift to hoist the goat up to roof level when the grass got a bit long.
He would bleat when he wanted to come down.
The gutters were timber and filled with stones and the "downpipes" were steel chains.

a few mud-brick mixes for was eventually two-story
is Mise,
That sounds quaint however, when planning for future towns & suburbs we must take actual practicality into serious consideration. The fewer storeys, the more land is required. The more infrastructure re services etc. It is the urban spread that really needs to be kept to as much of a minimum as practical.
So, we really only have less than a handful of choices. More multi storey, more area occupied or the most sensible but most objected to option, fewer people !
It is my most fervent believe that a workable balance can be achieved if people can be convinced that the only way of achieving this is via discipline & responsibility from the people of a Nation !
Step 1 is a National Service Scheme for want of a better & more appealing description.
Controlling natural disasters such as Bush fires & Floods would negate the heavy dependence of "Volunteers" as is presently the case were we to have such a scheme.
A National Service would instil a mentality that would offer us a better society & way of life !
A mentality that would enable us to shake off the welfare mentality !

Individual, how do you define your ideal National Service ?
Is it part of the armed forces or something completely separate ?
Would they be conscripted or voluntary ?
What activity or work types would they undertake.
Will it be a skills development program ?
Define that and we may start agreeing with you.

Bazz,
thanks for showing an interest.
To begin with, the service should not be military & only 18-20 year old unemployed should be required to participate.
No service, no welfare if the person is physically or mentally fit to participate.
The activities should be from various fields for which the participant shows either interest and/or aptitude with the focus on further development to succeed in entering the work force.
Exposure to skill development is highly desirable along with creating a sense of belonging, responsibility & respect for others. Many so-called Street Kids would find it far more interesting if they were spending their day hours with others & the night hours sleeping instead of being exposed to nonsensical boredom & peer pressure.
I have spoken with many youngsters about such a service & almost all would welcome to get out of the dreadful Centrelink humiliation !
Many of those homeless would much rather get a decent feed & a warm bed instead of the alternative. My prediction is that within a mere two or three lots of participants we'd see a definite decline in the hopelessness presently experienced by young people not finding something worthwhile to do.
I'm certain that as soon as some participants complete such a service, their experiences would encourage others to participate also.
The main focus must be to give young people more hope & purpose in their life.
A National Service scheme must not become another Centrelink where the focus is on the careers of Public Servants instead of the people needing help !

Individual; sounds interesting. It would look like a military barracks
almost inevitably if mealtimes already prepared by staff or perhaps
like a boarding school.
Do you anticipate however they would go home every night ?

Your donation may be tax deductible depending on your local laws and your personal circumstances. Please seek professional tax advice.

I just got the above message from PayPal. This is something I so strongly disagree with. If people donate it should be just that, a donation. The moment it becomes Tax deductible, it's not the person donating, it's all of us making up the shortfall in Tax revenue.
I encourage people to donate as much as they can afford but please, refrain from writing it off from tax. Because it will not be a donation !

Military barracks
Bazz,
This is exactly the mindset that prevents good progress . Perception, rather than actual substance. One could say sporting arenas look like battlefields which in actual fact they are.
Be it sport or the daily strive to out-do the other, it's still competition ! And, it's competition that removes that vital sense of working together for a better outcome for all, not just one side.
This mentality will take a long time to breed out but it'd be good if we could even just get some way towards it.
Do not make the age-old mistake of expecting instant success, it can't happen overnight but it will happen once the starting gun has been fired.
The mentality to work for the common good will snowball, guarateed ! The participants could be part of the meal preparation at times, simply to just get the exposure.
Going home at night would be a great idea for those participating close to home but the homeless unemployed would surely appreciate having somewhere safe to bunk down, most would not be the least concerned about a 'military' perception.
The participants who excel in various fields could be offered jobs in any sector & instead of wasting billions on Centrelink bureaucracy they could use the funding to enable small business to take on apprentices etc.
The one most important & vatal point is to make a start with such a sercive. perhaps some can come up with a more apt name for the service which is definitely not military. It should merely help young unemployed people to find their way in life because Centrelink & friction with the Law certainly does not !