John Passant would have us weep and bewail the Australia of today.

Most of what is today world wide is built on bloodshed from the past. Australia's probably the least of all.

The celebration is not forgetting the crimes of the past, but celebrating the achievements that built a great nation.

You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. Pissant would do well to see that the glass is more than half full.

Democritus (or should that be hypocritus?)

People who hide behind a nickname should not childishly attack another through corrupting their last name. Calling John a Pissant is typical of the level of the intellect of the reactionaries in our society. It is the sort of bastardry the real Democritus would have railed against.

John is not weeping or bewailing, or urging us to do the same. He makes a valid point that our country was built on the genocide - a deliberately chosen and correct word I am sure - of Indigenous people.

I am pleased to see that Democritus recognises, like Marx, that the history of capitalism is written in blood. Marx however saw the possibility of a new world in which this barbarism did not occur.

Reconciliation with reparations for genocide is but one small step to address the barbarism of our past and present and heal ourselves. A nation that enslaves others can never itself be free.

Dear Mr/Mrs/Miss/Mz Foxy, the trouble is, I do know something about Australia's history and also about aboriginal culture, so I wonder where you got your information?

At the time of the First Fleet, Australia was not a nation or even an idea of a nation. The British never intended to wipe out the natives, they believed that they were creating a new nation that was an outpost of European civilisation in which the native people would be an integral part.

Confirmation of that occured within a week of the colony being founded, when Governer Phillip was seriously wounded by a spear thrown by an aboriginal man. When the governer's marines attemted to return fire, Governeor Phillip ordered his marines to lower their guns. He knew that the aboriginal man was frightened and that he did not know that the whites meant him no harm.

Hardly the actions of an official who was intent upon genocide.

What you have to understand, my dear Foxy, is that there are people who live in this country who despise white European civilisation, even though they choose to live in it. Most of them are still crying about the demise of Socialism.

They genuinely believe that the only way to prevent war is to destroy white nationalism because they sincerly believe that white nationalism is the primary reason for war. So, any excuse to kick the whites and portray them as oppressors is gleefully embraced.

I did not read "The Fabrication of Aboriginal History", but I did read the series of exchanges between Windshuttle and the black armband historians who he exposed as liars in "The Australian" newspaper.

My objective conclusion is that Windshuttle decisively beat his opponents in those exchanges, simply by dispassionately recounting facts and giving references. His opponents returned fire with emotionally charged arguments which denounced Windshuttle's character and denounced his fitness to be regarded as a credible historian.

It was obvious who was telling the truth.

Passy,

You are right it was childish, but some mods are just too tempting to pass up especially when they are so simple and so on target.

I have no issue with someone pointing to the errors of the past, but Australia day is a celebration of who we are, and while some of paths we have taken to get here are less than honourable, most have been forged in sweat and tears.

It is easy to look at the past with 20/20 hindsight and modern day morality and poke holes at what was done. Most of the atrocities were committed by a very tiny proportion of the population whose actions were unknown to the majority.

I also said that the world today is built on bloodshed, some of the worst of it was caused by socialists in their crusade against non believers. No Marxist state was ever maintained without purging the non conformists, and most have collapsed when they lost the stomach for brutality.

The term genocide has been so abused that John can be forgiven for his misuse of the word. Unless I am mistaken, no action was taken to exterminate an entire people. Having had grandparents on both sides in concentration camps I would love reparations for past injustices, but I also recognise that the generations of today that would have to pay, are not the ones that committed the crimes or even support them.

Help needs to be given to those suffering directly from the effects of recent stupidities, but reparations for distant crimes are both impractical and unreasonable.

Democritus

The childish misuse of John's last name was not on target.

There is much debate about what is genocide. It is not just Auschwitz-style concentration camps.

It includes for example stealing kids from their parents with the intention to eventually assimilate (ie destroy) Aborigines as Aborigines. The Bringing Them Home Report on the Stolen Generations clearly recognises the actions of the Australian State - actions which are still having consequences today - as genocide. But so too in my view (and John's) and the view of a range of historians and others was the establishment of the settler state in Australia itself an act of genocide.

These are issues that cannot be answered with glib and in some cases racist responses.

Dear Passy, Redneck and Doc Holliday,

Firstly to you Passy, Thanks for your input. You summed it up beautifully. The information is freely available for those that want to read it.

To you Redneck and Doc Holliday,

" It might help if we non-Aboriginal Australians imagined ourselves
dispossessed of the land we lived in for 50,000 years, and then imagined ourselves told that it had never been ours.

Imagine if ours was the oldest culture in the world and we were told that it was worthless. Imagine if we had resisted this settlement, suffered and died in the defence of our land, and then were told in history books that we had given it up without a fight.

Imagine if non-Aboriginal Australians had served their country in peace and war and were then ignored in history books. Imagine if our feats on the sporting field has inspired admiration and patriotism and yet did nothing to diminish prejudice.

Imagine if our spiritual life was denied and ridiculed. Imagine if we had suffered the injustice and then were blamed for it."
Extract from the speech by Mr Paul Keating,
Prime Minister of Australia,
Redfern Park, 10 Dec. 1993
at the launch of Australia's Celebration of the
International Year of the World's Indigenous People.

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn tell us in the Preface, to his book, "The Gulag Archipelago," about an old Russian proverb that says,
"No, don't! Don't dig up the past!
Dwell on the past and you'll lose an eye."

But the proverb goes on to say: "Forget the past and you'll lose both eyes!"