One problem in discussing genocide is the analogy to the Nazis. If we stop thinking of the Nazis as uniquely evil or inhuman but recognise that they expanded xenophobia which, as far as I know, all of us have to some degree beyond reasonable limits.

I have heard Nazi Germany referred to as atheistic, and Hitler's Christianity denied. Since Hitler was raised as a Catholic, signed a concordat with the Vatican and was never excommunicated he died a Christian. The Christian churches in Germany in general supported Nazi Germany. This is not to condemn Christianity but to point out that what happened in Germany could have happened in any Christian or any non-Christian country given similar historical circumstances.

The Nazis were human. I believe genocide can be committed by any national or ethnic group, and any national or ethnic group can be the victim.

Instead of useless rambling about the meaning of 'genocide'and living in the past, let's get on with life the way it is now.

IMPORTANT QUESTION:

"What the heck is Moses on about?" .. er..what does he 'want'?

His last sentence:

<<but pondering the lives of others is the first step towards a less self-centered historical understanding>>

HUH? that's 'it'? all this woffle about definitions of Genocide .. just so we can be less selfish?

NOT A CHANCE..... Dirk is trying to fry a much bigger fish than just making us less selfish. He is attacking our position in history, raising our guilt levels, undermining our confidence in the present reality.. 'gutting' any sense of legitimacy in our present historical standing.. presenting "International Law" as our new messiah, and pretty much echoing most of the leftoid tripe which is regularly trotted out at 'rent-a-crowd' protests.

His message in my view is quite seditious, but not violently so. While he does not suggest people take up arms to establish 'International Socialism' and a one world government of the proletariat... he is simply doing the groundwork.

CULTURAL GENOCIDE ... and Dirk is at the forefront of trying to eliminate any sense of self worth held by the present Australian citizenry.

According to the UN definition of "Genocide" which Dirk presents:

<<(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part>>

Could one of those conditions be.... inflicting a sense of guilt and self loathing on a population to the point where people lose the desire to be or do anything significant because they are haunted by dark and gruesome ghosts of past sins?

What a pity Dirk's surname is 'MOSES'.. because his historical forebear was more of a Savior than a "Satan" type.

Notice how Dirk simply 'raises a question' at the end ?

How did Satan deceive Eve ? well...he just raised a question:

"Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"

At the risk of being accused of "me too ism", I must say that on this occasion I agree with Boaz. At the end of the day, Moses has accomplished little. What has been done, is done. We must move on, and not only that, we must encourage others who have been disadvantaged to move on, with our help. We need to have guilt. What was done in the past, was often done with the best of intentions. Often the outcomes were also good, in spite of what "Bringing them home" might suggest.

David

Yes, Boaz, I was a bit confused about what Dirk Moses was actually about.

I am not absolutely sure that DM’s message is about ‘inflicting a sense of guilt and self loathing’ but I do agree that some groups in Australia try to do exactly that. I do not believe such groups are concerned about the best interests of Australia or the Australian Aboriginal people. Their primary concern is themselves and how good it makes them feel to be so righteous. Guilt is a tool used by bullies to ‘beat’ others into submission. While I believe it is important and appropriate to acknowledge the truth about what has happened in the past I abhor the attempt by some groups to dump baggage on the current generation of white Australians. They either cannot see or do not care that what they are doing is damaging to all Australians and (ironically) racist.

Good god, why does OLO continue to publish these vile race-baiters masquerading as historians? I have a much fuller critique of the whole cabal of Communist postmodernists and their pornographic obssession with "genocide," which I will try to get published.

Kiernan bowdlerises the ancient Greek poet Hesiod and the Roman historian Livy. Kiernan then neglects to discuss the literature that IS relevant particularly Herodotus and Thucydides. The abuse of Greek and Roman historians and writers is at the core of the genocide porn merchants ideological project. Check out Curthoys and Docker's misunderstanding and misrepresentation of Herodotus and Thucydides in their <i>Is History Fiction?</i>

The abuse of Hesiod and Livy revealed a remarkably mean understanding of not only ancient writers and genre conventions but ancient history itself. It is perplexing that an academic working at Yale could have been allowed to publish such a long analysis on such a sophomoric level. One wonders if he actually gave any of his colleagues drafts to review!

Dirk Moses conveniently omits Kiernan's section on the Bathurst Plains of NSW. It is a scandal, and Kiernan showed no awareness that post-Windschuttle, even Henry Reynolds now concedes that Tasmania would not qualify as a “genocide” even by today’s standards.

It is almost canonical among these academics that there is a direct line from the 8th century BC fields of Attica to the ovens of Auschwitz and that the nadir of human civilisation was 18th century England and its export of evil liberalism!

The silence that screams from all these Commie genocide porn merchants is that "genocide" is much more a product of Marxist ideology than is - the revolting argument of Culture Stdies leftist John Docker - British liberal democracy! The stuff these people pump out is obscene and is like a cancer in the universities.

When Moses, Kiernan and their Commie mates - Ann Curthoys, John Docker, Tony Barta, Lyndall Ryan, blah - start a campaign to arrest and try the leaders of Hamas for “conspiracy to commit genocide” maybe THEN they will have some credibility.

The attempt to wipe out the Australian Aborigines was not the result of some racist mindset on the part of unenlightened individuals in positions of authority. It was spawned out of the requirements of establishing private ownership in property, initially in grabbing the land: And the axis – the murderous removal of any present and future aboriginal claimants. Genocide emerged out of the need of the emerging Australian squattocracy to “clear the land”. And the appalling conditions faced by the majority of Aborigines today similarly derive from the requirements of the “market”.
“Reconciliation” accepts the private profit system, which remains utterly incompatible with the rights of Australia's indigenous population to justice, equality and basic human dignity. Indeed, one of the primary purposes of the “reconciliation” campaign is to help cement relations between mining companies, agricultural combines and Aboriginal entrepreneurs to facilitate planned large-scale mining projects and farming of Aboriginal land. Billions of dollars are at stake, with a small share destined for a select few Aboriginal leaders, while the living conditions of most Aboriginal people deteriorate further. The attacks PRESENTLY taking place in the Northern Territory continue in a different but similar form of the ongoing genocide and brutal oppression of aboriginals. What is really required is not another "report" but the only genuine alternative socialism.

All he did was put up the legally adopted definition of genocide and the right loose their marbles as usual.

Do any of you ever read these articles or do you see the headline and scream out "how dare he"?

Heduanna "amen"

John Greefield.. grateful thanx for you efforts of exposing the selective nature of the 'Anti-Moses' types, like DM and cronies.

Such deliberate promulgation of imbalance and white anting of our historic self esteem by DM and ilk is vulgar, vile and dare I say 'demonic'.

If you have a white page with a small black dot on the middle and ask people what they "see" most will say 'a black dot'... rather than the bigger white page.
History is littered with such dots, but there is also the bigger PAGE which should be considered.

Bravo for Dirk and Marilyn's comment.

Meanwhile five other authors which in one way or another write about the genocidal and eco-cidal impulse at the root of the Western Imperial project.

Beyond Geography by Frederick W Turner

Endgame by Derrick Jensen http://www.derrickjensen.org

Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian Hating & Empire Builiding by Richard Drinnon

American Holocaust by David Stannard.

Against the Megamachine by David Watsom

John Greenfield,

While I agree with the thrust of your comments I baulk at your somewhat onesidedness in the mid east. You point the finger at an Hamas conspiracy but you overlook the actual genocide being carried out by the Israelis. How about some balance.

Dirk you'd have to agree with that comment too.

Dirk the occupation of Eastern Europe by the Communist USSR fits within your definition ... does your support and lack of criticism of those communist totalitarian regimes and their underlying philosophy mean you are guilty of supporting genocide?

Do you accept your belief in and subscription to communism indicates support for the communist desire to change, with violence, the beliefs of all those who subscribe to the culture that underpins Western Liberal Democracies? That's support for genocide and it fits into the UN definition.

The use of the term genocide, in application to Australia, is pure pot-boiling history that benefits the careers and bank accounts of grasping and dishonest historians and opportunistic lobbyists.

Contrary to the impressions they like to create, there are very adequate records which prove otherwise. The true colours of these dispicable fabricators was demonstrated in the way they ganged up so hysterically on Windschuttle, instead of responding with established and measured process.

The reality is, settlement and contact began in 1710, by 15,000 Macassan Indonesians, and the first diseases that were primarily responsible for Aboriginal morbidity were transmitted then, with later pandemics of small pox, influenza, mumps, measles and STDs; eliminating two thirds of the population in a very short period. This was always going to happen.

But back to the ramblings of Dirk Moses, his assertions of forced breeding out of NT Aborigines are absolute urban myth. As far as I know, I was the first to serially investigate the circumstances of part Aboriginal children becoming wards of the state, as part of my occasional role as case reviewer (an annual event, by the way). Many veteran case workers were deeply offended by the depth of my investigations, with some justification because not one file indicated unreasonable intervention.

It was during the bitter discourse that followed that a fellow welfare worker, then Barbara Cummings, told me about her perspective as a result of being a Rita Dixon 'dormitary kid'. She later wrote the book the Stolen Generation, so cynically hijacked by HREOC.

Some time mid-century, removal of half-European children gave way to a more universal assessment criterion and, by 1977, even the issue of promised husbands demanding their wives give up mixed race children, was resolved by Aborigines themselves.

This was the epic clash of very disparate cultures; the story of humanity in almost every part of the world, and it continues today. Learn from the past and manage the future. This will not happen if people futiley impose contemporary values on history.

Well..Tony Ryan has said it all.

Thanx cobber.. if ever we needed a first hand account with balance..you have provided it.

Nothing more to say really.
cheers all

Dirk Moses

I have to smile at your timid reference to "totalitarian regimes of Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot." No Mao? Dirk the word is not "totalitarian." The word you are searching for is "socialist." You see, all 20th centuries mass killings and genocide have only one thing in common. Not any of this rubbish about "cult of antiquity" "fetish for agriculture." That common thread is SOCIALISM.

It is no surprise that all the genocide porn merchants are socialists and communists. What they are doing is trying to revitalise Marxism; except this time they are far more savvy and do it using the patois of mid-twentieth century Parisienne posseurs, So rather than "class conflict between the proletariat and bourgeois" we get "the Other" "orientalism" "subaltern" "discursive creations," "epistemolgical violence," and now "genocide."

If you people had any integrity you would be scouring the world looking for evidence of recrudescence of SOCIALISM because that is the surest predictor of genocide. You people should be jumping up and down about events in Nepal for example.

Oh and on Australian historians not equating The Holocaust with Australia, you once more lie. You know you are lying and have been caught out before. Why do you continue to misinform Australians in popular forums like these? Shall we start dragging out quotes from you and your pals?

Keith

Oh don't worry, comrade Moses and his genocide porn merchant pals spend 24/7 hissing and fuming the usual socialist hate of Israel. In fact when you read their less public articles it is quite clear that part of their agenda is to "Palestinianise" Australia's aborigines.But imagine them fuming and running to the UN nover the central document in Palestinian government; the Hamas Charter

Don't hold your breath! ;)

CHALLENGE TO DIRK MOSES.

John G.. glad you mentioned the HAMAS charter mate..its a favorite of mine too.

DIRK.. will you publically denounce the HAMAS charter, specially Part III article elevel which is

a) A confession of former violent conquest and theft of land by Muslims
b) A justification of that.
c) A virtual call for total ethnic cleansing and/or genocide in terms of the meaning of the UN document.

SO... will you?

<<the land of Palestine has been an Islamic Waqf throughout the generations and until the Day of Resurrection, no one can renounce it or part of it, or abandon it or part of it. No Arab country nor the aggregate of all Arab countries, and no Arab King or President nor all of them in the aggregate, have that right, nor has that right any organization or the aggregate of all organizations, be they Palestinian or Arab, because Palestine is an Islamic Waqf throughout all generations and to the Day of Resurrection. Who can presume to speak for all Islamic Generations to the Day of Resurrection? This is the status [of the land] in Islamic Shari’a, and it is similar to all lands conquered by Islam by force, and made thereby Waqf lands upon their conquest, for all generations of Muslims until the Day of Resurrection. This [norm] has prevailed since the commanders of the Muslim armies completed the conquest of Syria and Iraq,>>

Do my eyes mislead me?

Did I just read that Hamas is on the list of genocidal regimes?

And why is not the US included on this list, considering its calculated torture and killing of tens of thousands of civilians in Panama, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Nicaragua and Iraq. And since when is the US a socialist regime?

And why the references to Israel? The mahatma Mohandas Gandhi refused to recognise Israel for very good reason; reasons that are even more applicable today. Less than 3% of Israelis are Semites; that is, Judeans by ancestry. The rest are Europeans, Russians and Ashkenazim whose only connection to Judeans is religion, which their forebears adopted for one reason or another. As Gandhi pointed out, no one has the right to invade and occupy the land of another people for religious purposes.

In fact, the Israeli military and earlier terrorists have killed some 10,000 innocent civilians; which I am sure both the pacifist Gandhi, and myself, would regard as pure genocide, also with published intent.

I have clearly stumbled into Wackyville here. And just as wacky are Israelis and their hegemonic supporters, who accuse their critics of being antisemetic, when most Jews are not Semites at all; merely religious fanatics. And if we want to find a common link in genocide, I know of two: centralised power and religion. In my book both are mankind's worst enemies.

Dear Tony

"This was the epic clash of very disparate cultures; the story of humanity in almost every part of the world, and it continues today. Learn from the past and manage the future. This will not happen if people futiley impose contemporary values on history."

These are wise words indeed. Actually I would be a little stronger and say that imposing contemporary values on history is an act of arrogance.

It is also worth noting that at the same time that the indigenous people of other continents were being captured and sent away from their homelands as slaves the 18th century British government had sent not a slave trader but Governor Phillip to the continent of Australia. Governor Phillip's attitude to the native inhabitants was quite different from the slave traders because according to his diary he was determined to ‘bring even the native inhabitants of New South Wales into a voluntary subjection; or at least to establish with them a strict amity and alliance. Induced also by motives of humanity, it was his determination from his first landing, to treat them with the utmost kindness: and he was firmly resolved, that, whatever differences might arise, nothing less than the most absolute necessity should ever compel him to fire upon them. In this resolution, by good fortune, and by his own great address, he has happily been enabled to persevere. But notwithstanding this, his intentions of establishing a friendly intercourse have hitherto been frustrated. M. De la Peyrouse,* while he remained in Botany Bay, had some quarrel with the inhabitants, which unfortunately obliged him to use his fire-arms against them: this affair, joined to the ill behaviour of some of the convicts, who in spite of all prohibitions, and at the risque of all consequences, have wandered out among them, has produced a shyness on their parts which it has not yet been possible to remove, though the properest means have been taken to regain their confidence.’

(M. De la Peyrouse was in charge of the French ships on a voyage of discovery in the area.)

Dr. Moses waves his bossy finger at us, sermonising "The definition is very precise and focuses on the “biological” fate of groups." Yet, if it is "so precise" why is there so much disagreement over it? He continues, ""The UN definition is not some arcane matter of academic debate. It is the law." So why has there never been even a whiff of any international legal tribunal showing even the slightest interest in Australia? Could it be because the convention is - as Dr. Moses insists "so precise" - in excluding events prior to the Convention? Could it also be because to associate the concept of 'genocide' with Australia is obscene? I suggest both.

Also, what "biological group" was threatned by the removal of part-aboriginal children? Recall, even more part-aboriginal children are being removed TODAY. In te 1930s, those children were at least as much Irish anyway, and as full-bloods were not removed how was any "biological group" threatened?

And whom does Dr. Moses rely on for his understanding of "international law?" And which jurist sage does Dr. Moses opt for? Why Robert Manne, who has neither training as a lawyer nor as an Historian, nor indeed a Ph.D of any sort. There is nothing wrong with this of course as some of the finest historians who have ever lived did not have formal training as an historian.

But Dr. Moses snorts at Gerard Henderson a mere "commentator." Never mind that Henderson actually has a Ph.D in History and Australian History at that!

Elsewhere Dr. Moses invokes the authority of a Mr. Ward Churchill, a disgraced former Socialist Race-Baiter and university teacher of "Ethnic Studies" fired for "academic misconduct, specifically plagiarism, fabrication, and falsification." Again no formal academic training.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill

Dr. Moses would do well to learn that a very good source for the status of international laws are the actual judgements of the relevant deliberative bodies.

Once more we see here a persuasive argument for a return to respect for objective empirical historiography, rather than half-baked Marxist polemic tarted up with Frech pomo.

Dirk Moses

Are you really John Passant?

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7266&page=0