Pilger’s polemic fails Australia and Aborigines
"..The film cannot rightly be called ‘documentary’ or ‘journalism’ if those words are still to have any standards attached to them. It does not ask questions, other than ones Pilger thinks he knows the answers to and to which he can lead his interviewee. It does not seek out or fairly treat a single dissenting point of view. It does not recognise complexity. It has all the irksome smugness – and the sing-song voice to boot – of a man in a pulpit who is quite sure of being right.

Aboriginal Australians are represented overwhelmingly as victims, none more so than the residents of the Utopia homelands in the Northern Territory. We see only the worst of their humpies and shelters, and they are allowed to take on representative status, standing in for other remote communities at a time when there has been an unprecedented government effort, however flawed, in remote housing provision. The only Aboriginal resident of Utopia asked to speak is shamelessly led to give the answers Pilger wants.

We see none of the recent investment in the area – for example, the multi-million dollar middle school. We are told nothing of household incomes (Indigenous households in Utopia – average size 5.6 persons – have a median income of $749 per week, according to 2011 Census data). We hear a lot about ill health and the threats to health from a health professional, but get no enquiry into why many Aboriginal people have not adopted the domestic and personal hygiene practices required for living in houses (it’s a little more complicated than having the hardware perfectly set up). We also do not hear at all about the health research that showed people from the Utopia homelands to be doing rather better than their NT remote community peers, with, for example, an adult mortality rate from all causes consistently lower by about 40%. This kind of information would be far too confounding for Pilger’s victim model...."

An article worth reading. Here is the link,
http://www.alicespringsnews.com.au/2014/01/27/pilgers-polemic-wide-of-the-mark-on-australia-and-aborigines/

Thanks Foxy for the Peter Costello comments, Costello does a good job of stating the obvious, peering through the window and telling us of the good that he sees. be it through football, but good never the less. Costello then goes on to speak of "Engaging the Indigenous people in the economic mainstream, giving them the opportunity to join..." fine sentiments as well, and a most desirable ambition, to me the failure for some, seems to be that despite all the good intentions of the past, which have produced some spectacular successes, too many have fallen through the cracks. I am a firm believer in education as the key to the future success of people, I must add here how sometimes I am astounded at how well "educated" some people are, people who can't basically read and write. Adam Goodes, a fine Australian, and I was most interested to read the link you posted.

Jay, I can't agree with the cynical line that there are all these political and journalistic people out there who <<subscribe to a set of values which run directly counter to the interests of the majority.>>, there may well be some, but all, and what is exactly the interest of the majority. You refer to the "leadership group" in Australia, which incidentally is very much from the moderate right of politics. At times you vehemently attack the left on this. and other issues, but from the above you seem to be attacking the moderate right, politically I think you are, and I may well be dead wrong on this, from the ultra extreme right. Who is saying <<(Aboriginal) "genocide" was worse than the events in Europe during WW2>>?

cont'

cont'

SteeleRedux, I know where you are coming from and what you are saying about others is 100% correct. My advice is simply put forward your line of argument in the way you do, which is both accurate and forceful, remembering a strong attack is always the best defense. Then simply apply the 'armadillo' defense, if they can't get through they can hurt you, metaphorically speaking.

Beach, a nice read from Kieran FIinnane in the Alice Springs News, but that's all it is. Kieran, and by default you, are applying the 'plane crash' defense. Where a plane has crashed killing 247 passengers, Kieran and you then chime in with "This is wonderful
news, just wonderful, 3 people have survived unscathed." Highlighting the good in no way diminishes the bad. Nor is highlighting the good a legitimate reason to ignore the bad.

Steele,
World War Two wouldn't even be a part of this discussion if not for the attitudes of the Left, their whole argument here is built around Soviet propaganda.
Do you regard people like Stalin,Lavrenti Beria, Vassily Grossman and the like as credible sources of information?
The stories of twenty million people (yes twenty was the original soviet claim) being poisoned with insecticide and diesel exhaust are not true so we're left with the truth of the what the Nazis did.
They and their allies enslaved, deported, brutalised and maltreated millions of their captives and they murdered possibly hundreds of thousands of people, there were people working in those camps who were so depraved and corrupt that they were actually arrested and executed by the SS.
We know what happens in prison camps during wartime and we know the types of men and women who either gravitate to that field of work or who are assigned to such places. Remember this?
http://www.democratic-republicans.us/images/abu-ghraib-lyndie-english.jpg
Nothing like the Nazi Lebensraum projects occurred in Australia, White settlement bears no relationship to events under the Third Reich and to say otherwise is a disgusting and what's more counterproductive racial slur upon my ethnic group.
The opposite of "Racism" isn't "Anti Racism", it's honesty and integrity

"Why Weren't We told?
Foxy,
I have heard about that book & didn't get simply because it was written by Reynolds. Never mind,
Do the relevations include how much Reynolds made out of the guilt industry over the decades ? It'd be very interesting to the indigenous I magine.

Rubbish.
steelereedux,
Well, you might call the destructive manipulation of indigenous communities as rubbish, I dont !
What's Wilson the Turkey got to do with the sincerety of Nelson's speech ?

Some people understand & appreciate the difference between integrity & sincerety. Some are just led by their warm'n fozzy feeling of believing they're doing good by marching.
Meanwhile the Labor voting bureaucrats are systematically ruining all chances of indigenous communities to make progress.