Hi Paul,

Ah, projection ! What a wonderful antidote for reality.

No, I've rarely used such a childish tactic, Paul, I haven't found it necessary. I don't know who Shoebridge is, and I don't think I've ever called Bob Brown, Brown-eye. Still, live in your world if it's more comforting than the one outside your room.

So far, Senate results for the greens:

* total votes 1,023,024

* share of vote 8.3%

* swing against -0.3%

I stand corrected: I thought that the greens won around 13 % of the votes in the 2013 election, and only 8 % in this one. Maybe I'm comparing votes for one house against votes for the other.

So the greens have lost only 3.6 of their previous vote. Point taken.

I regard myself, by the way, as belonging to a small band that one could call "the Thinking Left", or "Critical Left". Yes, I handed out stuff and letterboxed for the greens, over about eight years. No, I'm too old to smoke pot. Yes, political lunacy it may have been, to associate with the greens, you're right there, but I do have shortcomings. No, that's just false modesty.

As for my obsession with Indigenous welfare (in the broadest sense), friends criticise friends: if you don't like someone, you leave them to their delusions and mistakes, but not if you're a true friend.

Any other trolling you want to do ? Ad hominems ? Focussing on digging up dirt ? Or do you want to stick to the issues ?

Joe

Paul,

You ponder: "Your web site and the motivation behind it puzzles me. Why does a member of the rabid right host a web site on aboriginals. What is the purpose, what message is it attempting to convey? Interesting."

Sometimes, as Freud and Groucho Marx suggest, a cigar is just a cigar. There's not necessarily ulterior motives behind everything. Ah, you'll now say in your paranoid delusion, that 'excuse' PROVES that there IS something behind everything. Oy.

I don't 'host' a web-site, strictly speaking: I type interesting material up from its original shape and put it on the web-site. I've enjoyed finding documents to type for over twenty years, but I've exhausted the sites that I wanted to cover. I suppose there's vastly more available, but I'm taking a break. No, probably not, there's the higher education data for 2015 coming out in a couple of weeks, and I'm very excited about that: new records. Then there's the 2016 Census data coming out in a year's time, which should be fascinating.

But you unwittingly raise an intriguing point: I've never once been contacted by anyone in Indigenous education, or higher education, about those data. I've never read anything by an Indigenous person who has the data right, it is always under-played, down-cried, out of date, or plain rubbish, such as the data in Larissa Behrendt's Review a few years ago of Indigenous Higher Education. God knows were they got their data from, but it was worthless. The "nothing has changed" mantra is such bullsh!t in relation to Indigenous higher education - when commencements, enrolments AND graduations have doubled in ten years (and will again, in the next ten years) - but it still rules amongst the incestuous Indigenous elites.

And I'll keep criticising the bullsh!t-artists until I drop, I don't care who the hell they are.

Joe

Joe, I was not referring to you, and I did not say you said Brown Eye Bob or Dave Sabdalplank, I just didn;t catch any criticism from you, you probably missed the reference at the time. Politicians of all persuasions are fair game and so what. I did once say to David Shoebridge that he was called Dave Sandalplank on the forum. Without surprise, and with a laugh, Dave said "I hope they spelt it correctly". Politicians tend to have a thick hide, and a bit of jocularity is harmless on a forum where other than some of the participants no one is taking themselves seriously, I don't think too many others are all that interested, a bit like your web site, but there could be unseen interest and you could have a secret counter etc installed, I don't know.

The small band, sounds rather elitist, "the Thinking Left", or "Critical Left", as opposed to the "rabid right" or "fanatical right". I am glad you tag yourself as a "critical thinker", better than tagging oneself as a "dill brained dodo".Are there any well known people who might fall into that small band of yours.It could be likened to The Australia First Party which scored only about 3,000 votes Australia wide, also a small band of elitists, one should never get too big, then one can no longer pride themselves on that degree of elitism. I'm just in that rather big band of over 1,300,000 who vote Green.

Paul,

Yes, it's true: sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Your suspicions about an " .... unseen interest" and " .... a secret counter" really do border on paranoia. Every web-site has a way of counting hits, pages, down-loads, etc., but mine doesn't identify any hitters or people or sites accessing pages. Such web-site systems probably don't exist, not for normal web-site producers anyway. But you won't believe me, even more so now that I deny that such things happen. That's the nature of paranoia. Wow, even more so, now that I deny THAT. Try to stick to the issues.

I don't know if there are any other "Thinking Left" or "Critical Left", and I'm really too old to give a stuff. If they're there, fine. If not, what am I supposed to do ? Become a Trot ? Not bloody likely. As an atheist, I try to think for myself. You should try it.

Joe

Joe, non visible or "secret" counters are not unusual on web sites, often for no other purpose that to gauge the number of hits the site receives, nothing sinister, just a measure. I am also an atheists, something in common then. How do you know how I think, I may think for myself, I don't believe you would have a monopoly on thinking for yourself, there could well be others who do likewise, I could even be one. Rather presumptuous of you to tell me how to think, in this case "for myself", saying "I (Joe) try to think for myself. You should try it." Pray tell how does one become a "Trot", what exactly is a "Trot"? Something you obviously feel strongly about not becoming, gave it plenty of critical thinking before coming to that conclusion did you. For me its a bit like becoming a 'Jehovah's Witness' it has not figured largely in my thinking, should it?

Hi Paul,

I suppose everybody with a web-site is interested in knowing how many hits, or views, or pages, or downloads, or whatever, their site is getting: nothing secret about it. I get about 400 'pages' looked at each day.

You ask " .... How do you know how I think, I may think for myself," but you haven't really provided any evidence that you do (well, except for some paranoid bits). I hope you do eventually, although it can be a lonely path. Nobody has a monopoly on thinking, everyone can do it, and the glory of modern thinking is that we might all be slightly wrong.

I use the term 'Trotskyism' in an extremely pejorative way, to suggest a form of religion, a dead perversion of an unchanging version of Marxism, in which, what was supposed to work in the 1870s and/or the 1920s, should work now and forever, and in which one does not learn from experience: theory is seen as superior to practice.

Always hold everything up to the light, Paul: does it really work like it's supposed to ? Are the stats a bit dodgy ? Is the Grand Principle behind everything actually fool-proof, God-like ? No ? Then you are becoming an atheist: wonderful.

Joe