THE MEANING OF OZ - All you need to know!

I think the only Australia Day tradition I can stand is the next Sam Kekovich lamb ad - here's this years

That first lot really are a great contribution to our society, aren't they? Gives you cause to wonder about the national IQ.

Sam is a bit of a hoot, though...as long as he's in small doses!

On another note, I was wished Merry Christmas, on Christmas Day, by our own Guantanamo prisoner, David Hicks, who apparently lives around here. Nice of him, considering he's not Christian.

Aghhh.

Happy Australia Day, boys & girls!
Hope you've all enjoyed a good sleep-in & are now feeling bright eyed & bushy-tailed.
Feels rather odd having a public holiday on a Wednesday, doesn't it?

I think we need a counter to those bigoted boguns, hinge. (god, their shocking, aren't they? )

So here's the Silver Bodgie's Australia day speech from 1988, courtesy of today's Crikey.:

http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/01/25/bob-hawke-1988/

Ignorant yobs. (Boo, hiss!!!)
Kinda depressing, though.


Amazing who one can just bump into, on the streets of one's suburb around Christmas, margo!

Olgs and Margo - it does depress me that that element of Australia is prevalent, and that our pollies who know better kowtow to it. So I whipped out photoshop and got that **** off my liver:

Feel better now, hinge?

And on a more upbeat note - what I do like about my country (a pity it took the genius of an expat kiwi to make it happen)

Which is a somewhat depressing sight.

Thanks hinge. Your Christian doppleganger is making an exhibition of himself there you know.

Yes indeed.
Opportunistic populist politicians.
Anything to avoid the ire of the bigots at the ballot box.
Cowards.

Erm...it's crude but I do think it's satirizing the thing of which it speaketh.

I remember that, hinge.
Wonderful work, John Clarke!
The John Howard we should have had!
And the apology that John Howard (the PM, rather than the actor) should have delivered!
(Silly me, that bunch of comedians just brought tears to my eyes. )

It's a nod and wink - that satire is so friendly as to be indistinguishable from the sentiments of what it is satirizing - easily co-opted by the close-minded as a manifesto for their bigotries, I feel - and the comments seem to bear that out.

It always makes me tear up - even better than the actual K.Rudd apology. And it was much more timely.

Yea, I agree with you, hinge.
Very moving & very eloquent.

(And I'm glad I wasn't the only one who needed a hanky! )

Don't you just hate it when you read back over a thread & discover that you've written ....:



.. and it's way too late to fix it with a quick edit.

It will remain "their shocking" forever & ever .....

I watched the clip with the actor John Howard. The prolonged apology was well-phrased for the most part, but ultimately sappy and misplaced. I finished with two questions bothering me:
(1) Why John Howard? Why not Kevin Rudd or the current PM? Was it just the actors name? .
(2) Why an apology directed to a world that itself, from Han China and its periphery to Central Asia and Europe, Africa and the Americas has seen nothing but (usually very destructive) competition among cultures, tribes and states; the suppression of one people by another and endless warfare? This apology consisted of merely the recitation of the usual facts repeated many times in human history - from the Celts to the Franks and Teutons in Western Europe; to Celts, then Angles & Saxons and Normans in Britain; Levantines then Greeks, Visigoths and Arabs in Northern Africa and so on. The entire history of the world consists of very little but the competitive struggle between cultures and civilizations. In view of all that, it seems very odd to try to imagine just to whom the apology is directed.

Finally I recalled the settlement of Australia itself with the cast offs of Britain and Irish political prisioners in a system whose last elements dissappeared little more than just a centtury ago. Did those people do wrong?

I found the whole thing very strange.

Why John Howard, George?

Because Howard made a very big deal indeed at the time about there being absolutely no good reason for Australians to apologize to the "the stolen generations" (of Australian aborigines). He derisively characterized those many Australians who wanted our government to apologize to the aboriginal people as having a "back arm band view of history". His attitude was deeply offensive to many Australians, particularly aboriginal Australians, as you might appreciate.

When the (new) Rudd government was elected, one of Rudd's first acts was to make that apology ... to a huge collective sigh of relief, right across the nation.


Federation Square, Melbourne.

Of course, the public apology was largely a symbolic act, but a hugely important one for our aboriginal people. And for our country. Make no mistake, it mattered. Particularly in the light of Howard's denials, trivialization & politicization of the issue for his own purposes.

I'm not clear what you're actually asking here.
Could you clarify, please?

You lack cultural context George. The clip is taken from a 'sit-com' in the late 1990s about the administration of the then upcoming 2000 Olympic Games. At the time John Howard, the then PM, was refusing an apology, to the chagrin of real Australians, and in the sit com this refusal was going to lead to a boycott by African nations, which gave a pretext to the shows writers to show how powerful an apology could be - an ersatz apology was the best we could hope for another eight years.

I'll clarify whatever you want when you explain or respond to the main point - to whom in "the world" the actor was apologizing. The Han Chinese who imposed their culture on peoples throughout continental asia and continue even today on the periphery from Tibet to Central Asia? ; the Russians who are extending their rule over peoples of different languages, cultures and tradition in the Caucasus in conquests that began under the Tsars two centuries ago; the inhabitants of the nations of the Americas (north and South) who themselves had analogous histories with indigenous people of their own; the Europeans who have bloodied their continent with wars, oppression, revolution and strife for milennia; a Muslim world in the grip of authoritarian rule and increasingly violent attacks on Christian and Jewish minorities and so far unable to escape its own intolerance; South Asia which has been racked by tribal and sectarian intolerance from Pakistan to Sri Lanks?

The entire history of the world consists of very little but the competitive struggle between cultures and civilizations. Indeed most of what we complacently regard as the greatest achievements of human civilization in fact arose from these struggles. In view of all that, it seems very odd to try to imagine just to whom the apology was - or should be - directed.

Perhaps the real John Howard had a point.

The apology was directed to the very people who were displaced by the formation of modern Australia. A people who continue to be disadvantaged, who weren't counted in censuses, and couldn't even vote until the late 1960s. Who have much lower life expectancies and literacy rates than the average Australian - the ones who suffered most and gained least by the birth of modern Australia. Your mentality might be to say if the Han Chinese didn't apologise then why should we. However I prefer an Australia that strives to be better than average.