OT: Current Affairs and Politics

[hindy111]

Some people just love an old gas bag and whinge.
Many associate it with the British and Scottish. Perhaps that is where it originated. Could just be a stereotype. Do we have anyone on here of this heritage ?

 

[hindy111]

This a race that survived 50,000 years prior to Cook n Co and (we assume) did not treat each other with such contempt with physical and psychological abuse. Since colonization we have systematically unraveled their culture and their way of life. In a way, they still suffer from PTSD and their self destructive behavior (including the use of alcohol) is the symptomology of their cultural and personal ongoing anxiety and depression.

You would need to find put how aboriginals treated each other prior to settlement. Unsure if true but I read rape was punishment to a misbehaving women and it was not uncommon for them to be beaten. Along with revenge deaths and tribal wars against other people.
I agree with that fact Australia has mistreated them. We stole their land. I feel we could of atleast given them more choices and found better ways to help them into our society. But also a choice of not having too.


Women are often sadly ill-treated by their husbands and friends…they are frequently beaten about the head , with waddies, in the most dreadful manner, or speared in the limbs for the most trivial offences…

“Few women will be found, upon examination, to be free from frightful scars upon the head, or the marks of spear wounds about the body. I have seen a young woman, who, from the number of these marks, appeared to have been almost riddled with spear wounds."[25]

 

[Gronk]

 

[Poupou Escobar]

The statue is to celebrate the good things he did. Why would we want to celebrate that? Leave it in the past.

 

[Gronk]

The statue is to celebrate the good things he did. Why would we want to celebrate that? Leave it in the past.

Who makes the decision? Sadam Hussein did good things for Iraq. Aung San Suu Kyi Did good things for Burma. Macquarie did good things for the colony.

The thing is that that whilst they did good things, they also did bad things. Removing the statutes reflects a change in mindset of who we honour and revere. In doing this, we are not turning away from history, as the history remains and cannot be rewritten. We are turning away from putting those people literally on pedestals -- and what they represent -- as models to be admired and fondly remembered.

When I was at school we were taught about Macquarie, Blaxland Wentworth Lawson and John Macarthur. I was never told about the owning of slaves. I was never told about the Appin Massacre at Camden Park. Instead they were portrayed as brave explorers. Murder and enslavery of the indigenous owners of the land must have slipped my teachers’ minds.

 

[Poupou Escobar]

Who makes the decision? Sadam Hussein did good things for Iraq. Aung San Suu Kyi Did good things for Burma. Macquarie did good things for the colony.

The thing is that that whilst they did good things, they also did bad things. Removing the statutes reflects a change in mindset of who we honour and revere. In doing this, we are not turning away from history, as the history remains and cannot be rewritten. We are turning away from putting those people literally on pedestals -- and what they represent -- as models to be admired and fondly remembered.

When I was at school we were taught about Macquarie, Blaxland Wentworth Lawson and John Macarthur. I was never told about the owning of slaves. I was never told about the Appin Massacre at Camden Park. Instead they were portrayed as brave explorers. Murder and enslavery of the indigenous owners of the land must have slipped my teachers’ minds.

When you take away the heroes all that are left are villains. Is that the world you want to live in? 'Whataboutism' is coming for everyone.

 

[Gronk]

When you take away the heroes all that are left are villains. Is that the world you want to live in? 'Whataboutism' is coming for everyone.

Well going full slippery slope on the topic will achieve nothing. All or nothing thinking road blocks progress. Don’t let the fear of change stop us from growing as a community.

Should we continue to love and revere Rolf Harris and Bill Cosby ? Or is it appropriate to change they way we feel about them now that we know more about them ?

 

[Gronk]

 

[Poupou Escobar]

Well going full slippery slope on the topic will achieve nothing. All or nothing thinking road blocks progress. Don’t let the fear of change stop us from growing as a community.

Should we continue to love and revere Rolf Harris and Bill Cosby ? Or is it appropriate to change they way we feel about them now that we know more about them ?

They both always seemed like sex offenders so nothing has changed for me. Likewise Lachlan Macquarie. He wasn't a good man, he was a great man. Why would anyone be surprised he was hostile to his out-groups?

 

[Gronk]

They both always seemed like sex offenders so nothing has changed for me. Likewise Lachlan Macquarie. He wasn't a good man, he was a great man. Why would anyone be surprised he was hostile to his out-groups?

Hostile to out-groups ? They entered onto traditional land, seized it for farming, and strung up anyone who had the audacity to challenge them.

https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/appin_massacre

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/empire/g2/cs2/background.htm

I know you are probably philosophical to the notion of nations conquering others and that the tranistion of control of land will inevitably bring some suffering, however many do not share your flippancy.

The invasion of Australia by the British, both convict and free, has tragic dimensions to it pertinent to the title of this book. On the one hand there were the convicts who were forcibly removed, uprooted and exiled from their homeland and, on the other, their presence in Australia, together with that of the free migrants, brought about the displacement of the Indigenous peoples of Australia. Worse than that, in time the Indigenous peoples were to find themselves exiled from their homeland and embroiled in a cultural dislocation, brought about by British and colonial intervention against their peoples, the evidence of which remains only too strongly with us today. Genocide went hand in hand with the policy of eugenics which in turn led to the forced removal of half- caste children from their families, bringing about an exile upon exile. Indigenous peoples were exiled from their lands and taken into missions and then their children, often the product of rape, though also of long/short standing relationships with the white man, were dragged away from their mothers and taken thousands of miles away to be “educated”, thereby becoming doubly exiled from their familial roots. The stories that emerged from what has become known as “The Stolen Generation” are harrowing.

http://www.ub.edu/dpfilsa/2ballyn.pdf

 

[hindy111]

Well going full slippery slope on the topic will achieve nothing. All or nothing thinking road blocks progress. Don’t let the fear of change stop us from growing as a community.

Should we continue to love and revere Rolf Harris and Bill Cosby ? Or is it appropriate to change they way we feel about them now that we know more about them ?

Bill Cosby made me laugh

 

[Gronk]

Bill Cosby made me laugh

100% I loved this shit as a kid. Interestingly, @Poupou Escobar suspected that he was a sex offender way back then. Miss Marple like intuition that.

 

[Twizzle]

I wonder if they put up notices like that in the Libyan slave markets that exist right now? You know, where Africans are selling other Africans as literal slaves right out in the open.

Maybe we should ask the left. After all, they are responsible for the invasion that created the chaos...

not every debate is about left versus right, you seem to have an obsession with it

well for most people anyway

 

[Bandwagon]

I wonder if they put up notices like that in the Libyan slave markets that exist right now? You know, where Africans are selling other Africans as literal slaves right out in the open.

Maybe we should ask the left. After all, they are responsible for the invasion that created the chaos...

,

Mate, I know you love a good "but but the left", but I really shouldn't have to tell you, the Hawks in the US are not "the left"..

And secondly, the US relationship with Gadaffi and Libya hasn't been exactly a bed of roses since well before Obama. That Hillary's a Hawk hardly makes her unique amongst the American political elite.

But yeah I know mate - Benghazi!

 

[Poupou Escobar]

100% I loved this shit as a kid. Interestingly, @Poupou Escobar suspected that he was a sex offender way back then. Miss Marple like intuition that.

View attachment 39664

I never suspected anything. I said they both seemed like sex offenders, as so many people do. It doesn't mean I suspect them of an offence, just that I'm not surprised if that's what they turn out to be. Back when I was a kid I didn't think in those terms. Harris and Cosby just seemed weird.

 

[Gronk]

 

[Gronk]

I never suspected anything. I said they both seemed like sex offenders, as so many people do. It doesn't mean I suspect them of an offence, just that I'm not surprised if that's what they turn out to be. Back when I was a kid I didn't think in those terms. Harris and Cosby just seemed weird.

Don't got to water now mate. You said that they both seemed like sex offenders in the 1970/80s. That's a fair dinkum gift. Who else ? What about that bloke from Hey Dad! ? Did you pick up on his creepy vibe too ?

 

[I'm a loser baby...]

You have to admit they're kinda similar. Too good to be true.

 

[strider]

I never suspected anything. I said they both seemed like sex offenders, as so many people do. It doesn't mean I suspect them of an offence, just that I'm not surprised if that's what they turn out to be. Back when I was a kid I didn't think in those terms. Harris and Cosby just seemed weird.

It was a no brainer .... one had "an extra leg" ... the other was a gyno

 

[Hollywood Jesus]

not every debate is about left versus right, you seem to have an obsession with it

well for most people anyway

I think that for those at the top there actually isn't really a left vs. right, actually. It's just the Hegelian dialectic. So those responsible for Libya weren't really leftoids, they were just corrupt arseholes.

For us there is, but half of it is the fun of poking the other side. Don't deny it, Twiz. It's fun.