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It's really a ground-breaking action by the Austrialian government.
Pretty Bird Woman House has a new house!
by betson08 on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 02:15:17 PM PDT
a heart warmer in this politically subzero season here.
Here, have some pandas.
by Little on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 02:16:06 PM PDT
[ Parent ]
means - doing what is right for the right reasons with the right results.
McCain and Lobbyists; McCain on NAFTA
by ETinKC on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 03:14:01 PM PDT
This is a major step forward. It will be interesting to see what steps are taken to put these important words into action. Seems to me Australia has just set an example for the US and other countries to follow.
by G2geek on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 03:23:59 PM PDT
pretty amazing things, too.
by Little on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 03:25:11 PM PDT
but not lately. We need to do everything in our power to show Steven Harper the door.
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. - George Orwell
by kyril on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 03:47:44 PM PDT
Thanks for this diary.
On Lincoln's birthday, and on the day it became apparent who the next president of the US will be.
The movement of change all over the world which is upon us, is breathtaking to be part of.
Trust him to be president, trust him to run his campaign.
by pvlb on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 08:50:11 PM PDT
And while we were there we went to the Australian Museum's special exhibition on the indigenous peoples. The exhibit took up quite a lot of space and was quite unsparing in its treatment of the outrages perpetrated by white Australians against the aboriginal people. It was eerily reminiscent of the ugliness white European immigrants in North America visited upon not only the Native Americans, but also the Africans they imported to serve as slaves.
But the exhibit was also full of input from aboriginal people -- optimistic, hopeful, looking toward a better future. Really very Australian in outlook. It moved me nearly to tears more than once. I'm so happy this has happened. Australia is a country generally teeming with goodwill. I know that something great will come of this.
Gordon Smith must go.
by vard on Wed Feb 13, 2008 at 07:55:55 AM PDT
Australian prime minister who was all "Go BUsh!"
"A lie repeated, may be accepted as fact, but the truth repeated becomes self evident." -Elonifer Skyhawk
by Fireshadow on Wed Feb 13, 2008 at 02:43:07 PM PDT
one of his first actions was to sign Kyoto and repudiate the Howard Government's aligning with Bush's dwindling band of deniers/skeptics/delayers when it comes to dealing with catastrophic climate change.
A breath of fresh air from Australia ... in many flavors.
Striving to Get Energy Smart NOW!!! to Energize America.
by A Siegel on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 04:07:00 PM PDT
I loved the way Rudd took care of that on his very first day!
Of course like 97% of Aussies truly get it on global warming.
They are decades ahead of us going over the climate change cliff.
Cars After The Age Of Oil: EVs in 2010
by dotcommodity on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 05:11:59 PM PDT
of millions of Africans, and other indigenous peoples.
Western "civilization's" greatest crime against humanity, and one that to this day has not been properly acknowledged or atoned for. (As if it really could. But a sincere attempt would be nice.)
But I guess if torture is now "legal" in this country, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting.
by recontext on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 06:37:56 PM PDT
in Australia who kept their kids home from school to watch this live. It is hard not to tear up and be so proud of them, and this new path that they are blazing in their very diverse and multi-cultural country. So many people feel so good about Rudd, the new government and the progressive policies that can now be implemented. It's already a pretty great place.
It is hard to not pray for an echo in a year from this country with our new government and leader. Of course, we have double reparations to make: for the horrendous treatment of our native peoples, and then to African Americans for slavery. Perhaps the latter requires the joining in from other nations who benefited and hurt from the slave trade, but that might be too ambitious or too logistically or politically possible.
The arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice - MLK
by Ripeness Is All on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 05:42:01 PM PDT
and really for the world.
Good for Kevin Rudd. I have friends and colleagues from Australia and they are really, really happy about this.
Kevin Rudd is a big breath of fresh air after the Bushbot John Howard.
The Aussies rock.
On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.
by The Lighthouse Keeper on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 08:40:19 PM PDT
As a once-upon-a-time resident in Australia, I couldn't be more delighted and proud. What a great day!
-8.38, -7.49
by papercut on Wed Feb 13, 2008 at 07:05:00 AM PDT
There is another posting of this just upstream. Big news. Welcome news. Let's hope that our country follows suit! Good omen.
McCain: Without Issues, Without Vision, Without Integrity. --- or Obama: With Truth, With Kindness, With Endurance.
by CupofTea on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 02:30:10 PM PDT
i moved back from australia to the u.s. in late 2006 and at that time the country really looked like it could continue its rightward movement. the elections last year were an extremely positive sign that australia would like to return to a path of progressive values (which, due to the so-called "liberal" party, had been almost abandoned for the last dozen years).
this is amazing news, but there is still a long way to go. i used to work with aborigine artists and they are getting taken advantage of almost every day. aboriginal art is a huge cultural export for australia, yet the artists' take isn't nearly proportional to the amount of money their artwork generates.
a very positive step forward and really cool that peter garrett (formerly of midnight oil) is the minister for the environment. his band wore outfits that said "SORRY" during their performance at the 2000 olympics in sydney, as a reminder that australia had still not yet apologized to the aborigines at that time...
"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." - Thomas Jefferson
by Progressaurus Rex on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 03:14:14 PM PDT
I worked there from the mid 80's to mid 90's and I got pretty sick of the daily "Abo" jokes.
It was interesting too about the history of the island of Tasmania and how they wiped out 400,000 aboriginals there in the late 1800's. The silver lining if you can call it that is that Tasmanians became some of the staunchest Aboriginal rights advocates.
To go this far as they have today is really a major accomplishment.
I really like the Aussies and I'm glad that they are going in the right direction. I hope they are making progress on the way they treat women too. They need a bit a work there as well.
Of course... so do we on both counts as well, but we're getting there.
by Flint on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 03:29:39 PM PDT
They ride the Brits down there unmercifully with the "POMy bastard" jokes.
I was in a restaurant one time and a business owner was there with a Brit who worked for him. During the course of the meal their conversation was punctuated with the owners constant exclamations to his subordinate with "you Pomy bastards this" and "you pomy bastards that."
Towards the end of the meal a guy at the next table heard the owner do one of these epithets again and he leaned over and said "yeah you pomy bastards..." to the subordinate.
He didn't even have time to finish the remark before the owner was up out of his seat and grabbed the guy by the neck tie and with raised fist exclaimed, "He may be a pomy bastard, but he's MY pomy bastard and you should mind you own F@$# business."
The guy apologized and offered to buy them both a beer and the guy let him go.
You gotta love these guys... they are colorfully nuts!
by Flint on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 04:32:50 PM PDT
Funny... I never wrote it out before but since it is POME (Prisoner of Mother England)... I guess it should be spelled POME.
Trivia Harumph!
by Flint on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 04:50:13 PM PDT
the newly arriving prisoners from England wore outfits that said P.O.M. which stood for Prisoner Of (His/Her) Majesty.
and i concur about the treatment of women over there - a "POM" friend of mine and i have a saying:
what's the only thing wrong with australian women?
australian men.
by Progressaurus Rex on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 05:13:49 PM PDT
I used to go back and forth between Aus and NZ and our office folks and the customers from each used to use the "septic" as the courier of the last barb! ;-)
I miss my mates down there.
by Flint on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 06:46:53 PM PDT
apparently snopes.com doesn't believe that POM was short for either POHM or POME (the former explanation i had heard literally dozens of times over there).
apparently they think it has something to do with pomegranates. hmm.
by Progressaurus Rex on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 05:19:25 PM PDT
The best guess at this time is that "pommy" was based on the word "pomegranate" ; either because the redness of the fruit supposedly matched the typically florid British complexion, or because (like "Johnny Grant") it was used as rhyming slang for "immigrant."
Kinda' like "Limey", eh what?
-7.63, -5.90
by chimene on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 07:00:20 PM PDT
Limey I can see because they kept them on all HMS because it helped prevent scurvy.
Don't know about her majesty's ships carrying Pomegrantes around and they weren't native to Aus. Anything is possible though.
When I think about the story of HMS Bounty and the "Bread Fruit" trees they carried... I'm sure glad that one never caught on... no telling what those poor British seamen would have been called! ;-)
The Pomegranate (Punica granatum) is a fruit-bearing deciduous shrub or small tree growing to 5–8 m tall. The pomegranate is native to the region from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran to the Himalayas in northern India and has been cultivated and naturalized over the whole Mediterranean region and the Caucasus since ancient times. It is widely cultivated throughout Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, India, the drier parts of southeast Asia, Peninsular Malaysia, the East Indies, and tropical Africa. Introduced into Latin America and California by Spanish settlers in 1769, pomegranate is now cultivated mainly in the drier parts of California and Arizona for its fruits exploited commercially as juice products gaining in popularity since 2001[1][2]. In the global functional food industry, pomegranate is included among a novel category of exotic plant sources called superfruits[3
].
by Flint on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 07:41:29 PM PDT
there were never as many as 400,000 Tasmanian Aborigines - the largest total estimate of their population is around 10,000.
so we're quite clear, and as a Tasmanian, this absolutely doesn't even remotely excuse what was done to them
"This just can't get more disturbing!" - Willow
by myriad on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 07:29:00 PM PDT
It has been a while since I read my Australian history books and I haven't seen my copy of "Fatal Shore" for ages.
It wasn't until I read that book that I found out San Francisco was also an English penal colony. Interesting read that one.
The Tasmanian Aborigines (Aboriginal name: lutrawita or trouwunna) were the indigenous people of the island state of Tasmania, Australia. 20th century historians, scientists and anthropologists hold that they became extinct with the death of Truganini in 1876. Some members of the modern-day descendant community who claim ancestry to Tasmanian Aborigines are the result of the pre-colonisation Aboriginal population having been heavily interbred with later-arriving European settler communities (particularly those originating from the British Isles)). Much of the Indigenous Tasmanian language (which had several different dialects), and a lot of Tasmania's Aboriginal cultural heritage has been lost. [1] In the space of thirty years (1803-1833), the population of the Tasmanian Aborigines was reduced from around 5,000 to around 300, largely from diseases introduced by British settlers. Since at least 1876, historians, scientists and anthropologists have held to the consensus that they became extinct with the death of the last full-blooded woman - Truganini. Within Tasmania there is an alternative view that aspects of their culture (for example, group naming identifications) survive amongst those who are able to establish partial descent.
The Tasmanian Aborigines (Aboriginal name: lutrawita or trouwunna) were the indigenous people of the island state of Tasmania, Australia.
20th century historians, scientists and anthropologists hold that they became extinct with the death of Truganini in 1876. Some members of the modern-day descendant community who claim ancestry to Tasmanian Aborigines are the result of the pre-colonisation Aboriginal population having been heavily interbred with later-arriving European settler communities (particularly those originating from the British Isles)). Much of the Indigenous Tasmanian language (which had several different dialects), and a lot of Tasmania's Aboriginal cultural heritage has been lost. [1]
In the space of thirty years (1803-1833), the population of the Tasmanian Aborigines was reduced from around 5,000 to around 300, largely from diseases introduced by British settlers. Since at least 1876, historians, scientists and anthropologists have held to the consensus that they became extinct with the death of the last full-blooded woman - Truganini. Within Tasmania there is an alternative view that aspects of their culture (for example, group naming identifications) survive amongst those who are able to establish partial descent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
by Flint on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 07:49:42 PM PDT
I've got some reading to do myself.
by myriad on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 08:47:08 PM PDT
The time has come To say fair's fair To pay the rent To pay our share The time has come A fact's a fact It belongs to them Let's give it back How can we dance when our earth is turning How do we sleep while our beds are burning How can we dance when our earth is turning How do we sleep while our beds are burning
The time has come To say fair's fair To pay the rent To pay our share
The time has come A fact's a fact It belongs to them Let's give it back
How can we dance when our earth is turning How do we sleep while our beds are burning How can we dance when our earth is turning How do we sleep while our beds are burning
"Nice army. Nice tanks. But where are the adults?"- Stephen Fry
by waslimaike on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 08:02:51 PM PDT
Well I heard it on the radio And I saw it on the television Back in 1988 All those talking politicians Words are easy, words are cheap Much cheaper than our priceless land But promises can disappear Just like writing in the sand Treaty Yeh Treaty Now Treaty Yeh Treaty Now Nhima Djatpangarri nhima walangwalang - Nhe Djatpayatpa nhima gaya nhe- Matjini.... Yakarray - nhe Djat'pa nhe walang - Gumurrtijararrk Gutjuk - This land was never given up This land was never bought and sold The planting of the Union Jack Never changed our law at all Now two rivers run their course Separated for so long I'm dreaming of a brighter day When the waters will be one
Well I heard it on the radio And I saw it on the television Back in 1988 All those talking politicians Words are easy, words are cheap Much cheaper than our priceless land But promises can disappear Just like writing in the sand
Treaty Yeh Treaty Now Treaty Yeh Treaty Now
Nhima Djatpangarri nhima walangwalang - Nhe Djatpayatpa nhima gaya nhe- Matjini.... Yakarray - nhe Djat'pa nhe walang - Gumurrtijararrk Gutjuk -
This land was never given up This land was never bought and sold The planting of the Union Jack Never changed our law at all
Now two rivers run their course Separated for so long I'm dreaming of a brighter day When the waters will be one
by waslimaike on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 08:17:36 PM PDT
thank you for posting this video. Most excellent.
The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same." Carlos Castaneda
by FireCrow on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 08:26:30 PM PDT
That brought tears to my eyes. Well done, Australia!
by kyril on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 03:47:07 PM PDT
Something this cool and right HAS to threaten us, right?
Greetings from Deep Space!
by xxdr zombiexx on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 04:17:59 PM PDT
how long??????????
Some Lakota Sioux have withdrawn from the US and declared their own Nation. Let's see if our indigenous people will be recognized as Australia did its indigenous people. One determining factor will be that the Lakota are making territorial claims. This will raise many issues.
If all do not join now to save the good old ship of the Union this voyage nobody will have a chance to pilot her on another voyage. Abraham Lincoln
by 4Freedom on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 05:23:36 PM PDT
We have a BLM and BIA that STILL owes our Native Americans a Gabazillion dollars but they wont give em a "red" cent! In fact I think every treaty we've had with them has been broken by our government!!!
by Fireshadow on Wed Feb 13, 2008 at 03:01:47 PM PDT
Rule Number Four - No mistreating the Abos
-Monty Python
by bernardpliers on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 05:30:21 PM PDT
African-Americans (for enslaving them) and Japanese-Americans (for interning them) real soon?
Sadly, no. Because once again, the U.S. is behind the curve.
"Mom, did you hurt yourself, or are you yelling at the TV again?
by litigatormom on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 05:54:50 PM PDT
the Native Americans for taking their land and breaking treaties and forcing them to move to worse places and discriminating against them, right?
Sadly, no.
by litigatormom on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 05:58:46 PM PDT
Didn't Reagan apologize to the Japanese interred here? Maybe I just dreamed it...
It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds - Samuel Adams
by Red no more on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 06:22:11 PM PDT
From Asian Week:
Hasty generalizations produced during conflict have gravely hurt Asian Americans, as evidenced by Executive Order 9066, which mandated the Japanese American internment. In that case, what finally brought some ease from the despair that Japanese Americans felt was a formal 1988 apology by President Ronald Reagan.
by Red no more on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 06:26:39 PM PDT
Congress issued an official apology and paid compensation to the Japanese who were interned.
the shane life
by Shane Hensinger on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 06:29:46 PM PDT
But we still haven't apologized for slavery, have we?
by litigatormom on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 06:34:24 PM PDT
My family wasn't here when slavery took place. I'm uncomfortable for an apology to be issued in the name of all Americans when a lot of us had nothing to do with it. And I'm totally against any idea of reparations - which would inevitably follow any sort of official "apology."
by Shane Hensinger on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 06:45:59 PM PDT
and are going to elect a black man as our next president. Maybe that's not reparations, but it's a pretty good sign the times have changed!
by Red no more on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 07:14:06 PM PDT
If (when! when!) Obama is elected, if Congress passed such a resolution, he'd be responsible for apologizing to African Americans for slavery. That makes my head hurt. :)
Let me ask you this--is ye white? As long as we're benefitting from a system which has its roots in injustice, we're benefiting from injustice. My dad's family came to this country nearly 100 years ago, well post-slavery. That matters not at all to the fact that I'll never be pulled over for Driving While Black.
Reparations would be hard to pull off--for Japanese internment, we could recompense those who had been interned, or their direct descendants. The least we could do, though, is acknowledge officially the Native genocide and the evils of slavery.
Because for Zen surrealism, you can't beat living in the Bible Belt...
by salvador dalai llama on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 07:16:53 PM PDT
But my family came here from Ireland in the 60's. I'd say any residual "injustice" had worked itself out by the time they arrived here.
I don't know what good an apology does. In the Australian case there are people alive that had been taken from their families. In the case of blacks there's no one alive who can point to real damages from being enslaved.
And the South, if any part if this country, should be the ones to pay reparations. California never had slaves - why should they have to pay?
The best thing we can do is keep working towards equality and electing Obama is a major step in that direction. I would, however, be in favor of an apology to native Americans because they've had a raw-ass deal.
by Shane Hensinger on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 07:39:22 PM PDT
The Irish themselves are no strangers to being "black." (see How the Irish Became White)
As a compromise, then, how about we apologize for Jim Crow? It fits the "living memory" criterion for you, and for me it serves as a bridge to the peculiar institution. And it was evil.
And don't get me started on the South. If you think that the South was the only region that depended on slavery economically, or that drew economic or social/racist benefits from slavery (and later from Jim Crown and racism), you've got another think coming. The whole damn country was dirty. It's just that, now, everywhere else gets to console itself that "Hey, at least we're not the South" because they didn't have plantations. They then get to feel good about themselves and ignore their own racism. Observe the racial utopia that is Boston, and then tell me it's a lot better than Atlanta.
by salvador dalai llama on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 09:03:25 PM PDT
were discriminatory laws enacted by Southern states to disenfranchise blacks - so they should apologize. But fat chance of the South apologizing for anything - ever.
This country went through a terrible civil war to end slavery. Hundreds of thousands of men, the vast majority of them white men, died to end that scourge. It seems to me that's an adequate substitute for an apology.
And I disagree that the "whole damned country" is dirty. Hawaii and Alaska definitely didn't benefit from slavery. The direct benefits of slavery were in states which allowed it - and most of the West, North and Midwest of the United States never did.
And yes, Irish were once treated badly when we arrived here. Just as most immigrants were including Jews and Chinese and Greeks. And so it goes, but there's something here that makes people love this place despite the adversity they have to go through. I love that about this country.
by Shane Hensinger on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 09:29:07 PM PDT
I don't disagree with you about the promise of America. We're actually much better about integrating immigrant populations than, say, Europe seems to be. (Ask an Algerian! Or a Turk!)
Have you seen Gangs of New York? The New York Draft Riots? Not all the hundreds of thousands of men really wanted to be there to end slavery... And its not like their descendants lined up in droves to extend the helping hand of brotherhood for the next, oh, 100 years or so.
Touche on Alaska and Hawaii. But haven't you been paying attention to Senator Clinton? Those states don't count anyway. :)
And then there's Complicity , a book by a couple of reporters for the Hartford Courant, which examines the economic benefits to New York and New England of the slave trade and slave economies. It's based on a series they did for the paper.
I'd suspect, also, that cheap cotton, etc. was good to Ohio and other places in the West and Midwest, as long as slavery, and then sharecropping, lasted. So I stand by the assertion that the whole country was dirty. With the exception of our colonial forays into Alaska and Hawaii. They had their own problems to deal with. (And the Philipines, and Puerto Rico, and... Oh, I'll shut up now. :) )
by salvador dalai llama on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 10:18:53 PM PDT
in the country are places like Milwaukee, Chicago, Cleveland, St. Louis -- most of them in states that never formally allowed slavery.
I'd invite anyone who wants to see "residual injustice" working itself out to take a stroll around 27th and Center in Milwaukee at, say, 11 o'clock on a Saturday night...
Yes, We Can
by litho on Wed Feb 13, 2008 at 06:19:52 AM PDT
isn't what you'd expect from Nebraska either...
This message has not been approved by the corporate media.
by jre2k8 on Wed Feb 13, 2008 at 06:23:40 AM PDT
the reasoning of John Howard, former PM of Australia & fellow Bush Co. Warmonger, for NOT apologizing years ago, thought you'd like to know...
Today, Aborigines number about 450,000 among Australia's population of 21 million and are the country's poorest group and are most likely to be jailed, unemployed and illiterate. Their life expectancy is 17 years shorter than other Australians. From 1910 until the 1970s, about 100,000 children were taken from their parents under state and federal laws based on a premise that Aborigines were dying out, and saving the children was a humane alternative. The issue of apologizing was divisive for years, with many people supporting former Prime Minister John Howard's contention that while the policies were wrong, the present generation should not be made to feel guilty for mistakes of the past. But an apology steadily gained support, and Howard's party now supports Rudd's proposal.
and I wonder when the US will apologize for its acts of genocide and other crimes, slavery, native americans, the colonization of the Pacific Islands, the 3 million SE Asian lives taken in Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia... but hey, at least we have a Holocaust museum, that's got to count for something, right? Here we have a museum to a crime we did not commit... I guess Germany will pick up the slack and have an exhibit on Wounded Knee, right?
and there's that current, ongoing devastation of West Asia (aka the middle East), and therein lies many an example of imperial hubris and denial; Israel still cannot take any responsibility for the destruction of Palestine, even while it plans to assault refugee camps (yet again) in Gaza, Turks still cannot face their nation/government's past acts against the Armenians, and Pro-US dictatorships get to continue to police their own people on the behalf of stockholders and other elite interests abroad that they are in bed with...
man, I gotta crash, too much to take in at once!
by jon the antizionist jew on Wed Feb 13, 2008 at 01:10:45 AM PDT
There's so much hyperbole in there I can't even begin to answer.
RIP - Imad Mughniyeh. One less terrorist whose hands drip with Israeli, American and French blood.
by Shane Hensinger on Wed Feb 13, 2008 at 10:44:29 AM PDT
of course you won't even try to answer; instead you simply rejoice in yet another war crime committed by the state of Israel;
The more Israeli propaganda enlarges the proportions of Mughniyeh, the more young Shiites will be inspired to follow his example... All the past "liquidations" of this kind have brought with them dire consequences... I suspect that the real reason is both political and psychological. Political, because it is always popular. After every "liquidation", there is much jubilation. When the revenge arrives, the public (and the media) do not see the connection between the"liquidation" and the response. Each is seen separately. Few people have the time and the inclination to think about it, when everybody is burning with fury about the latest murderous attack. In the present situation, there is an additional political motivation: the army has no answer to the Qassams, nor has it any desire to get enmeshed in the re-occupation of the Gaza Strip, with all the expected casualties. A sensational "liquidation" is a simple alternative. The psychological reason is also clear: it is satisfying. True, the "liquidation" - as the word shows - is more appropriate for the underworld than for the security organs of a state. But it is a challenging and complex task, as in a Mafia film, which gives much satisfaction to the "liquidators". Ehud Barak, for example, was a liquidator from the start of his military career. When the "liquidation" ends in success, the executioners can raise glasses of champagne. A mixture of blood, champagne and folly is an intoxicating but toxic cocktail.
The more Israeli propaganda enlarges the proportions of Mughniyeh, the more young Shiites will be inspired to follow his example... All the past "liquidations" of this kind have brought with them dire consequences...
I suspect that the real reason is both political and psychological. Political, because it is always popular. After every "liquidation", there is much jubilation. When the revenge arrives, the public (and the media) do not see the connection between the"liquidation" and the response. Each is seen separately. Few people have the time and the inclination to think about it, when everybody is burning with fury about the latest murderous attack. In the present situation, there is an additional political motivation: the army has no answer to the Qassams, nor has it any desire to get enmeshed in the re-occupation of the Gaza Strip, with all the expected casualties. A sensational "liquidation" is a simple alternative.
The psychological reason is also clear: it is satisfying. True, the "liquidation" - as the word shows - is more appropriate for the underworld than for the security organs of a state. But it is a challenging and complex task, as in a Mafia film, which gives much satisfaction to the "liquidators". Ehud Barak, for example, was a liquidator from the start of his military career. When the "liquidation" ends in success, the executioners can raise glasses of champagne. A mixture of blood, champagne and folly is an intoxicating but toxic cocktail.
by jon the antizionist jew on Tue Feb 19, 2008 at 11:21:02 PM PDT
Particularly as the "Stolen Generation" may very well be a fiction. It seems that there are not all that many cases that removal was for reasons that would have applied to any race.
Yes, this isn't politically correct, but I suggest you examine the both cases presented and their number before you jump to conclusions.
Best Wishes, Demena Economic Left/Right: -8.38 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.36
by Demena on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 09:44:15 PM PDT
So what's the evidence that the Stolen Generations was a fiction?
by salvador dalai llama on Tue Feb 12, 2008 at 10:34:40 PM PDT
wide narrow
View Story | 341 comments