Author: Jin

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Sorry day tomorrow

It’s been a long time coming, yet finally the big word that caught in little Johnny’s throat may ameloriate some of the hurt inflicted on Australian indigenous people tomorrow and allow healing for some members of the Stolen Generation.

Kevvie wants to get his speech just right, with good reason – firstly to say it right, without inflicting guilt on everyone, and secondly to avoid any loopholes, and a flurry of personal financial compensation claims which might clog up the federal courts. Due to 200 years of exploitation, things won’t change overnight – but more government money for health, education and policing will go a long way toward creating a better future for aboriginals generally. Can the positive aspects of a tribal culture which treasured living at one with the environment be rescued at this late juncture after years of patronisation, scorn and neglect?

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Bush to visit apartheid state

Bush’s upcoming visit to Israel is unlikely to stimulate any relief for the collectively punished, long-suffering Palestinians, despite vague waffle by Olmert on illegal settlement evacuations. Israel has a political half nelson on the US, who are blinkered by pro-Israeli propaganda, who do not realise or do not care that they are co-conspirators in war crimes and heinous human rights abuses. For the uneducated, the Israelis are always the good guys and the Palestinians the bad. Nor do any of the Democrat presidential candidates offer any hope for change. The Israel First Zionist lobby is too strong – to speak of justice for Palestine would be electoral suicide. Why the presidential hopefuls speak of Israel as a democracy is mystifying – perhaps it is a reflection of the lack of real democracy in a country primarily driven and controlled by big money lobbies and corporations.

Jonathan Cook analyses the Barak Oslo offers and makes some chilling conclusions about Olmert’s present political plans toward those hapless people the apartheid State of Israel currently occupies and from whom it blithely and cynically continues to steal land:

In truth, Israel’s need for recognition as a Jewish state is proof that it is not a democratic state, but rather an ethnic state that needs to defend racist privilege through the gerrymandering of borders and population. But in practice Olmert may yet use the recognition test to back Abbas, a weak and unrepresentative Palestinian leader, into the very corner that Arafat avoided.

Before Annapolis, Livni declared: “It must be clear to everyone that the State of Israel is a national homeland for the Jewish people,” adding that Israel’s Palestinian citizens would have to abandon their claim for equality the moment the Palestinian leadership agreed to statehood on Israel’s terms.

Olmert framed the Annapolis negotiations in much the same way. It was about creating two nations, he said: “the State of Israel — the nation of the Jewish people; and the Palestinian state — the nation of the Palestinian people.”

The great fear, Olmert has repeatedly pointed out, is that the Palestinians may wake up one day and realize that, after the disappointments of Oslo and Camp David, Israel will never concede to them viable statehood. The better course, they may decide, is a South African-style struggle for one-person, one-vote in a single democratic state.

Olmert warned of this threat on another recent occasion: “The choice … is between a Jewish state on part of the Land of Israel, and a binational state on all of the Land of Israel.”

Faced with this danger, Olmert, like Sharon and Barak before him, has come to appreciate that Israel urgently needs to persuade Abbas to sign up to the two-state option. Not, of course, for two democratic, or even viable, states, but for a racist Jewish state alongside a Palestinian ghetto-state.

With Bush also wanting a two state solution by the end of his disastrous term of office, the future of Palestinians looks as usual, bleak.

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Spinning

Spinning Girl
In which direction is the girl spinning, anti-clockwise or clockwise?

Can you make her spin in both directions?

Find out more here.

This dichotomous animation seems analogous to the shameful assassination of Benazir Bhutto yesterday. Depending on the observer, she either died from banging her head on the car sunroof, or she was shot, whilst depending on the mouthpiece, her assassins were either Al Qaeda fanatics or Musharraf supporters.

Pakistan is certainly reeling at present. Benazir’s calm resolute attitude and determination to steer the country toward democracy in the midst of impoverishment and ignorance was an inspiration. Her sainthood just might do the trick.

Addendum:

Bilawal takes up the cudgels on behalf of his mum – ‘democracy is the best revenge’. Take that, you dictator Musharraf. Yet in a country with minimal availability of decent education unsoaked in religious twaddle, democracy has poor soil in which to flourish. Religious madrassahs are often the only option for non-city Pakistani youth to obtain any education whatsoever. The other essential components for democracy … a free parliament and judiciary are lacking, whilst the last, a free press, like education, is limited to city areas. Musharraf has kept an iron lid on the god botherers whilst benefiting from their implementation of primitive teachings to keep the people ignorant and impotent, and the country destabilised.

“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”

– Stephen Roberts

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First Woman PM of Oz

The poised, dry-witted Julia Gillard has made history, becoming the first woman in our country’s top job. She will be Acting PM for two whole days whilst Kevvie is at the Bali climate change conference.

Julia’s achievements represent a triumph of reason against far right losers who have in the past projected their perverted mental and social retardation in criticising Julia for being barren and single, i.e. an ‘unnatural’ being.

Taking their idiocies with a grain of salt, Julia says:

“I think that one of the problems for women is that historically there’s been no right answer – if you don’t have kids, then people say you can’t understand everyone else’s life experience, and if you do have kids, then people say who’s looking after the kids while you’re doing all of this.

I think what we’ve got to recognise is that whether it’s men or whether it’s women going into politics it brings a lifestyle strain … I’ve had people literally screech to a halt next to me in their car when I’ve been wandering along the street, women winding down windows screaming out of their car, ‘If you want some kids you can have mine’, and I’m not sure they were talking about a short-term lend.”

She has taken on the combined portfolio, Employment and Workplace Relations and Education in addition to her acting PM and Deputy PM roles.

We wouldn’t be at all surprised if Julia became the next Labor PM, she has the goods, and in our opinion would make a better job of it than anyone else with her down to earth common sense, decency and honesty.

After more than a century of determined effort by the first women suffragists and following activists, feminists and supporters working to elevate women’s opportunities in Oz, we can all pat ourselves on the back – and there’s no going back now. You’ve come a long way, baby!