(continuedfromabove)... tapped into at a terrible cost to the world's environment by modern industrialised society, was the most appropriate for this continent. For their part the Macassans must have realised that they would not make any headway on this continent with their lifestyles, so they left the Aboriginals in peace.

Aboriginals were no more interested in adopting the ways of the supposedly more advanced European as attested to by Watkin Tench (1788, published in 1996 edited by Tim Flannery, pp253-254) and given the mess that European settlers have made in only 220 years, they judged correctly in that regard.

On intelligence Tench writes: "To offer my own opinion on the subject, I do not hesitate to declare that the natives of New South Wales possess a considerable proportion of that acumen, or sharpness of intellect, which bespeaks genius. All savages hate toil and place happiness in inaction, and neither the arts of civilised life can be practised or the advantages of it felt without the application of labour"(p253).

Our modern civilised society has been able to use our finite endowment of fossil fuels and metals to largely replace labour, but, thus far, at a terrible cost to our environment. However, when that endowmennt is exhausted, the only other way to obtain that labour, other than from our own hands, will be from forms of slave labour that was practised in past hierarchical societies, which, in most cases failed (http://candobetter.org/about).

Whatever can be critically said of Australian society as it stood before the adoption of multiculturalism as the state orthodoxy in the late 1970's, at least it stood a chance of being able to achieve harmony with this land's environment, and appeared to be heading in that direction.

Pro-immigration multiculturalism is just an ideological justification to colonize today's Australia as it was before, so that a small lazy parasitic elite within it can get its cut at our expense. The past ignorant contempt for existin Australian culture that Lines has commented upon (16oct07 http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6482#96483) has been restated by a number of equally ignorant contributors to this forum.

Privileged whites

Redneck “The concept that all races are equal is certainly a noble one…my own senses that clearly contradicts it.”

Agree, I would ask who are the consistent beneficiaries of “affirmative action programmes”?

dnicholson “Races that are failures die out.”

I guess where we to ignore the infusion of non-aboriginal genes into the koori population and look at the claims of this thread, that “whites are privileged”, one is forced to suggest maybe the “privilege” is as much “genetic” as it is societal.

By the same token, the “vibrant and energetic” ability of koori’s to sustain their genetic heritage suggests that whilst they have not “died out”, they are on the verge of extinction.

Re “40,000 years in a harsh, unforgiving land”

I would note the fate of the Tasmanian devils has been put down, in part to the very narrow / shallow gene pool on which the species exists. Hence little to no source of genetic diversity / resistance to the facial tumors which are decimating the wild population.

Would it be “racist” of me to suggest, the “genetic pool” of so few kooris, settled in Australia for all those 40,000 years, (without the benefit of infusion of “genetic diversity”, which has effected say, UK through centuries of invading Britons, Celts, Saxons, Angles, Romans, Normans etc. and mainland Europe more), leaves them in a similar perilous state to the Tassie Devil?

Btw, “harsh, unforgiving land” hardly, if it had been, kooris would not have survived at all. Antarctica and the Arctic are “harsh and unforgiving”, compared to them, Australia is a holiday camp. I would note, areas incapable of sustaining human habitation, will always remain uninhabited. The marginal habitats will always be lighter populated than those “less-harsh” environs, which provide a sustainable bounty of food etc, like the coastal fringe.

As for “without the need to ever build a prison.”

Yes, why build a prison when you can always spear someone in the leg or stone them to death, mind you, a complete absence of civil engineering skills might also contribute?.

Col, a) Kooris as a term only applies to certain NSW & Victorian tribal groups, not indigenous Australians as a whole
and b) where is the slightest evidence that Aboriginals were slowly dying out before European settlement? The commonly accepted figure for the pre-1788 population is around 750,000 - plenty big enough to sustain large amounts of genetic diversity (and quite likely considerably more genetic diversity found among European "whites" of the day).

Wizofaust

You said, “I regard it as obvious that the social mobility of people who make use of their talents is upwards.” That sure looks like you are admitting that that intelligence levels determine social position.

“Begatting” with ones cousins may have been popular with royal families in Europe (also noted for their prevalence of genetically inherited diseases) but to the best of my knowledge it was never a common practice among general populations.

As for criticising ones own civilisation, you do agree that civilisations rise and fall? Self criticism can be a virtue, and it is probably the reason why western society advanced over all others while those civilisations which never criticised their own culture stagnated. But what we see today among young, educated and supposedly intelligence people is an expectation that they must always criticise their own successful community while studiously avoiding any criticism of failed ones, and they do this merely as a means of indicating their social aspirations. As such, this criticism is merely a ritual where social position is being indicated by aspirants who embrace devotions to fashionable causes with the same enthusiasm as they peruse a clothing catalogue.

The portents that such “internationalist” ideology is already placing their own civilisation in danger were written in the blood of the victims of the bombings in Madrid and London. It is written in the ever spiralling crime statistics in western societies where the importation of crime prone minorities have resulted in the creation of ghettoes where crime rates have reached levels undreamed of when those suburbs were populated by white people.

Thank you for contradicting your previous post and now admitting that civilisation is preferable to barbarism. But if you imply that aboriginal people are as smart as whites, then the onus is upon you to explain away the total failure of aboriginals and other black races to ever create successful communities in the modern age, despite oceans of cash and other aid constantly flowing into their begging bowls, while Asian races, with little or no help at all, did it all by themselves.

How is "who make use of their talents" the same as "intelligence"?
Successful sports professional make use of their physical talents. Successful salesmen make use of their talents of persuasion. Successful enterpreneurs make use of their ambition and determination etc. etc. A high "IQ" (which has I have repeatedly state, only measures a very narrow view of what "intelligence" is) is fairly irrelevant in succeeding in a large number of possible careers.
I'm afraid the best of your knowledge isn't good enough, redneck. If you are going to make claims about Muslims inbreeding, you need to demonstrate that they did so at higher rates than Westerners. And explain Japan, which has always had relatively high rates of cousin intermarriage.
And redneck, it's what *you* apparently see among "young, educated and supposedly intelligence people" as far "studiously avoiding any criticism of failed [communities]" goes. No doubt there is often an unspoken taboo that makes criticising aspects of one's own culture *more acceptable* than those of other cultures, but you only have to look at the reaction to the Danish cartoons of Mohammed to understand one of the reasons this might be the case.

And I did not contradict my previous post, as I never made a judgment call between "civilisation" and, as you call it, "barbarism". All I have ever claimed is that they both have their advantages, and that I personally wouldn't fair very well living a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

As far as being "smart" goes - again, I don't accept that intelligence can be reduced to a single factor. It may well be that Aboriginals are genetically predisposed to particular types of intelligence that are not valued or rewarded in modern civilisation, however, there is no reason to believe that, with sufficient education and support, the majority of them are somehow fundamentally incapable of enjoying a fulfilling existence in 21st century Australia.

Dnicholson “plenty big enough to sustain large amounts of genetic diversity (and quite likely considerably more genetic diversity found among European "whites" of the day).’

If we were to make two observations about the European “Whites”,

1 The population base was significantly larger than 750,000

2 The accessibility of Europe from Asia and Africa (compared to remoteness of Australia, an island) and the waves of different invaders both to and from Europe, ensured the extended gene pool of European “Whites” was significantly broader than what aboriginies had going for them.

Considering those two glaringly obvious observations, I cannot see how anyone but a moron would argue the “genetic diversity” of aborigines could possibly be “considerably more genetically diverse” than “European Whites”

However, morons do exist, often but not exclusively, as a result of parental genetic contributions coming from a pool lacking in diversity, as in brother and sister.

Wizofaus the range of skills sets is reckoned to be represented largely by the following

Intellect (working memory and processing speed)
Dexterity
Listening / Attention
self control
self confidence
the ability to communicate / Social interaction skills
problem resolution

(the exact range and definitions may vary from different sources).

“IQ” is a quotient of the first in the list.

Anyone would agree that despite a significant intellectual gift, Stephen Hawkins would have not scored well on the dexterity scale and John Nash was not exactly endowed with “socially interactive skills” .