The Garden of Grubs & God Botherers

Scomo is not the first politician to have made a show of going to church, so why did we all get excited and start making fun of his Heilsong moment? So much fun, in fact, that he cracked the darks and called us “grubs”.

His arm’s length transaction was, quite simply, far too big a display of emotion for the average settler – a stereotype to be sure, but on this occasion an amusing one that led many to refer to this photo as a picture of his “O Face”.

Those of us who are usually mind-yer-own-bizness-ists have little cause to like god botherers lately: the sort that keep promoting fundo causes like gay conversion therapy, religious seminaries or talking up the good character of convicted paedophile cardinals.

 Those quick to contrast our leftie response to Scomo’s O face with our outrage in the face of vague vilifications of people like Muslims miss the most important point:

There can be no freedom OF belief

Without freedom FROM belief

What Scott-free is happy for anyone to exploit is fear based on mere rumours of what Islam stands for. That he is offended anyone then seeks answers about how his own faith would affect our welfare is astonishing. If he really has so little insight into human nature, perhaps he is not the right person to lead anyone anywhere.

Most well established churches in Australia, especially Christian churches, are progressive. The Hillsong website claims they are affiliated with ACC but wiki tells us they left last year. Several non-wiki sources tell us Hillsong promotes a toxic form of christianity.

 There is something dangerously arrogant, if not narcissistic, about a prosperity gospel, the idea a supreme being measures virtue by material success rather than seeing material success as a reward that follows and is as a result of virtue.

A key assumption of Western Culture is that material success often requires a sense of personal responsibility and willingness to create opportunities. I am happy to allow as much. But we must never forget that not everyone gets a lot of opportunities to create opportunities.

 Trying different can be helpful, but the try harder mantra of neocons is patently absurd. And belief must never be an excuse for unkind behaviour.
Equally important as our need for leaders who treat life – all life – with respect, is our need for leaders who will act now to steer us away from the tipping points of climate change.

Whether a candidate believes in God or not is irrelevant to me, but I would prefer a candidate who will do the right thing for no other reason than it is the right thing to do, than one whose prime motivation is material reward.

A real GRUB, on the other hand, is someone who is silent in the face of hate speech, sends asylum seekers to indefinite detention, allows systemic racism to keep killing Indigenous Australians, and thinks if you need help it’s your own fault.

2019 Pre Election Roundup

The Economy

Easily summed up:

aka The Tricky Down Effect

 



Social Trends

What better place to look than social media?

Hilarious, despite the rather broad swipe at one of my boxes (by which I do not mean cunt, this is a ref to #notallboomers. Keep up!)

Lots of people dislike the idea of using a word for female body bits in a pejorative tone. How can a cunt be worse than a dick? and more in that vein.

My own position on the cunt conundrum has been, for the last 40 years, that women must reclaim the word, just as the W word and the N word have been reclaimed (quite rightly) by their respective communities.

How can we use this word correctly in a sentence?

"A cunt is a fine thing, while Scott-free Morrison is a stronzo."

This, of course, begs the question for non-Italian speakers of the meaning of the word "stronzo". You could look it up in your Funk N Wagnalls, but like many good words, it possibly loses something in the translation, and will mean different things to different people. Here's more or less how it was explained to me by a native:

*"Picture it, the foot of the Gran Sasso, during the War. The snow is so bad if you have to shit you can't go outside, you just try and push it out a window. But one night you know you really gotta shit but if you shit it's gonna be really, really runny. Now that's a useless, a really useless shit. That's a stronze."

All we can do is reclaim the cunt word. It has the K sound in it. Just replace it with something else when you are looking for a pejorative.

Just Plain Rude

Any number of things are ruder and far more obscene than a fine sounding word like cunt.

Ms Day's death was just one of far, far too many no one in politics gives a shit about. The royal commission into deaths in custody recommended abolition of the crime of public drunkenness in 1991 and it is still and offence in Victoria April 2019.

White drunks not arrested.

The crime of public drunkenness is part of the system. The system does not require all drunks to be locked up, just some. If this simple fact does not explain systemic racism, what will?

Not white - not drunk - arrested for being drunk - died in custody

And thank you Labor for extending the fucking Indue card - what Mr Forrest WA Premier descendant of a long line of white premiers makes money out of.

Adani - well, bullshit approvals for a bullshit coal mine that maybe half a dozen people in Australia want.

Parliament is full of Not-cunts: of Stronzes.

One last recommendation before I leave in search of something to laugh at.

Moo Hoo

On Monday 8 April, animal rights activists engaged in co-ordinated, peaceful, protests around Australia.

Unelected PM (that’s almost a tautology in Australia) Scummo had more outrage for people who invaded farms or blocked traffick than for the murderous white supremacist Australian who went to New Zealand last month and murdered 50 innocent people while they were at prayer.

Shameful, he sez. Un-Australian.
"This is just another form of activism that I think runs against the national interest, and the national interest is [farmers] being able to farm their own land," he told radio station 2GB. (Does this mean he was chatting with Alan Jones, Moral Compass of the South? Is Alan a Pitt St Farmer?)

Never mind Scummo blew a cool $185 million re-opening Christmas Island for a photo shoot – obviously people who care about non-European humans or other animals instead of money just don’t have his respect at all.

But Scummo is in election mode and was really just doing what he and his kind do best – harvesting resentment. (Hmm, seems to be a recurring theme, here at the Clarion.) He wants to tap into the outrage of all offended omnivores, carnivores and barbecuerians across the land.

Every nook and cranny of the internet (or the internOt, as I like to call it after Malcolm’s effort) was abuzz with lively discussions of the ins and outs of veganism. Such fun.
------------
Eavesdropping, I did hope to learn what “white veganism” might mean.
Don’t know if this is true, but it more or less somes (late edit "somes"? good grief, Maude!) sums up the spirit of the expression, I guess:

So much of what we do is directed by blinkered thinking – whether those are the blinkers of selfishness or just plain stupidity is often hard to say.

Perhaps white veganism is a more kindly meant version of what happened in Europe precipitating many revolutions in 1848; but especially what happened in Ireland, where an early version of neo-liberal economics exacerbated the impact of the potato blight and caused not revolution but the starvation of millions. And, well, not vegan but certainly Anglo and Male and Patronising thinking.

Exports were not the cause of starvation
It was really ideological drivel of the sort we've had from Labor and the LNP for the last 20 years

Or, during the green revolution of the 1950s and 60s, when western companies casually made deals with males in power in Third world countries to buy great tracts of land, lift GDP, create jobs. Oops - exposed those living at subsistence level (often from a woman's /women's garden) to – yep, more man-made famine.

Capitalism is indifference. White veganism, at its worst, is insufferable igrigance*,
I suppose, because it presumes no matter what people’s circumstances, traditions or beliefs, that which privileged westerners currently assert as morally correct is what ought now be the rule.

*Arrogance with more than a soupcon of ignorance

But back to food and the idea of eating morally.

ClaireGColeman (who most of the time seems quite with it) got into a bunfight with someone and, I suspect, deserves a point:

Somewhere in there I think the “whitesplaining” comment implied “you can’t have an opinion cos you are white” which is sorta not really the definition of whitesplaining. And if that (me) sounds like semantics, then Claire's  “lacto-vegetarianism is not the same thing as veganism” is not semantics; just a clarification.

And, lest we need a reminder:

Race is a social invention; a caste system –
though some try to pretend it’s science.

As Nature does not choose our socioeconomic class for us

and is thus not obsessed about our children conforming to some visual “type”,

we must allow those who live with colour to know who they are and what they live.

                                                                                                               (Maude Nificent)

But mostly I’ve just gotta hand it to Ruby Hamad for cutting through most of it.

 



That second point sort of turns the Aussie saying "if you don't eat you don't shit" on its head very politely.
TBH when I see people on TV or in pubs or wherever eating a giant slab of meat I ALWAYS a) wonder why? and b) look to see if they eat any grass with it. What American entertainment serves up at a barbecue always looks like a roast meant for a family of 20 to me.

In 2019 Australia, people have different incomes, opportunities and living arrangements.
As a single pensioner I’m gobsmacked every time I go to a supermarket. With veg I can usually have a truck full of something, or none of it at all, because of the way it is packed to facilitate transport.

As a child with a rather unsettled existence, I often found myself living in various parts of rural Australia in the 1950s and 60s. Growing up, I’ve herded cows to a large milking shed, and also milked a house cow. I’ve killed and dressed chooks (rarely, cos it was never a common food item) and pitched in when sheep were killed and dressed. I know all about how other animals are treated, and where black pudding comes from. I’ve made pocket money by trapping and selling rabbits. But in all that time and with all the adult figures in my early life, I never met one with a cavalier attitude to the treatment of animals (except two apprentice jockeys in stables at Newmarket).

What I was always taught is that every animal deserves a decent life and a clean death. Even when calves were taken from their mothers, I was aware that it was hard on the cows, and I always saw people spending time with them (tho I suppose that made the hoomans feel better, not the cows).

As time has marched on, our relationship with animals in this country, as a people who eat them, has shifted dramatically. Many of us have no notion of where our food comes from, or how animals are farmed.
Where I once never had qualms about being omnivorous, I’m increasingly uneasy but only because of the way animals are treated. A few years ago, in response to consumer pressure to clearly show which eggs are free range, the RSPCA so radically downgraded the definition so that eggs that are labelled free range are more likely than ever to come from birds that are not treated well.
I have to drive miles to find eggs that are from birds kept in a low population density, that haven’t been debeaked, and must say I usually just go without.
It’s a good job I’m lazy cos protein from all sources is shrinking, all the time, as a portion of my diet. Sometimes I eat tuna but if anyone tells me they are poled instead of caught in a seine net, it’s still not good – both options are horrible for marine life and for the environment.

The sight of a sheep with fly strike is just woeful, but mulesing is cruel. Even without our shift away from dependence on wool, there is no need for mulesing to continue – the government just dicks around on the issue cos primary industry is the teat on which government suckles. And there are other breeds of sheep than merino we could be farming; breeds that shed around the tail area. (Though sheep have done so much damage to the environment it's a whole other thing.)
On and on and on.

Governments could do more about the food industry or for all sentient creatures without turning us all vegan – heaps more that I’ve not touched on at all. But the bottom line is the top end of town – totally unaffected by what happened in Christchurch - don’t want the inconvenience of helping us eat more ethically.

It's almost as if, since we moved away from a mixed economy into a neo-liberal outpost of fanta-land, ministers are no longer supposed to help the sector flourish, but are rather lobbyists with the title Minister for this that and the other vested* interest.

*(From the old English, Vestey, once owner of a large Australian cattle station.)

--------------------
In case you think I'm wrong about "neo liberal economics" - the prequel - in the 1840s:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/10/neoliberalism-freedom-control-privatisation-state?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=soc_568&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1554879920

(ideological fervour+pure laissez faire theory) = fundamental perversion

If this is all in the TLDR or head scratching category, you'll understand why I've tried to introduce some of this stuff in a simpler way, in useful contexts or in the contexts of familiar stories in my Dramatic Reviews blog. The least you need to know about free market theories is this:

"You can't pretend apples are oranges without hurting people".

Nice Is For Idiots

So – there we were, AFTER a white Australian supremacist had gone to New Zealand and murdered 50 innocent Muslims at prayer, and it was time for New South Wales to have a state election.

The State Labor Leader, Michael Daley was caught on film making the following observation:



He reckoned his comment about “foreigners” wasn’t xenophobic.

------------oo0oo------------------

The Liberal National Party LNP has been guilty by miles of not only saying nothing about white supremacist hate, but using it to garner votes.

But boy, show me a politician who wouldn't sell their mother to a foreigner if there is a dollar to be made?
The LNP has sold Australia’s water and ecosystems repeatedly to foreign interests for the last 20 years.

 

 

Cubbie station diverts entire rivers, the Culgoa and Balonne, into its dams. This foreign owned firm has water storages 28 kilometres long capturing 460 billion litres of Murray-Darling headwaters. Meanwhile, farmers downriver can have a BBQ on the Darling.




The LNP has not yet decriminalised Abortion in NSW.

It was the LNP which last year passed a law making it legal to pass children directly from State Wardship up for adoption – enforcing the stolen generations all over again and speeding up the process to boot.

There are so many reasons – including the awful lack of leadership from our current un-elected PM, Scott Morrison – that Labor should have won the state election by default, but they lost badly.

I suspect Daley’s inexcusable comment about Asians with PhDs had a lot to do with it.

This country is fucked. I could say we get what we deserve, but those who are not settler stock do not deserve what we settlers have done to this country.

---------------oo0oo-------------------

This week I went to Wodonga with a friend who is thinking of moving up there. Personally I’m something of a hermit, because I am over being disappointed by people. I am especially over feeling complicit in all the shit that happens in this country. While friend dropped in on her friends and relos, I stayed behind in the accommodation, cos they all just give me the shits.
Later, we went to the stooper market.

Friend:
“Kev said the Medical Centre is behind the burger shop on the corner, but it’s full of foreigners.”
Me:
“How is that relevant?”
Friend:
“It’s not. It’s just what he said.”
Me:
“So why are you repeating it to me? I mean, I know that you know that there are anglo doctors who are total dicks, and anglo doctors who are good. And you know there are foreign doctors who are total dicks, and foreign doctors who are good. And you know how I feel so why are you repeating this shit to me?
I stay away from these good catholic friends of yours cos I know I’m not going to change them and in return I just want people to leave me the fuck alone, so why do I still have to hear this shit?”
Friend:
“It’s not xenophobic!”

How is not going to a local doctor just cos they are foreign not xenophobic?
In fact how is it not actually even STUPID?
How is it not nice to use words like "shit" or "fuck" but okay to be racist?
How is it okay to be politically incorrect, but not okay to call this shit out?
Why am I the one who is considered anti-social here?

Are these the fucking “nice” idiots voting for the idiots destroying this country?

And by the way, Labor is fucked.

I have some questions for you, Michael Daley.

WHAT fucking jobs? The unemployment in this country is structural and deliberate - there is 1 job for every 8 jobseekers. And it's not like jobs are homogenous or labour is interchangeable or even what economists would call responsive to Demand. It's not like a job seeker with an employed spouse, 3 kids and a mortgage can just piss off interstate to work 30 hours at a shit job that doesn't guarantee permanent employment. How was it okay for a Labor PM (Gillard) to bag people who "did not work hard"? (Let alone lock asylum seekers up offshore. What a punt!)

Do you even understand what is meant by the expression "casualisation of labour" or the term "precariat"?
Do you understand the increasing meaninglessness of "GDP= Gross National Income" when income is not distributed fairly, if at all? Not even distributed within, or even taxed within, Australia in many instances. Gee, thanks a lot, Labor.

What fucking jobs have been stolen that actually require a PhD, and if they have gone to someone with residence or a work visa, how is their race relevant????

What, did One Notion knock you back for membership?

Your Party, when in power, helped create this mess. When in opposition, your party at both state and federal levels continued to support this mess, but are so busy sucking up to voters you just keep pushing the right further and further to the right.

Fuck You Very Much, Labor.

Straya, Mate!

If you want to understand Settler Australia’s culture you need look no further than a sports-field.

Tennis

Let’s start with Indigenous Australian tennis champion, Evonne Goolagong. Her entry in the tennis hall of fame mentions the poor living conditions of her childhood, acknowledges the stolen generations and then… and then… can’t help but be cute:

During the 1970s, Evonne Goolagong was a household name and face – attractive, carefree, and admittedly prone to lapses in concentration that caused folks to say “Evonne’s gone walkabout.”

Other players might lack a killer instinct, or be given the benefit of 100 white failings, but Evonne’s bad days were put down to her “going walkabout”.

Indigenous Australians are many different peoples. These many peoples traditionally lived purposeful and spiritually rich semi-nomadic or nomadic lives. “Walkabout” was not necessarily as Hollywood would have it, about “vision quests”. On large outback cattle stations, “Walkabout” was often the explanation given to white managers when Indigenous labourers warned they were heading off for a while – often to tend to spiritual or community obligations. The priorities of Indigenous Australians were perfectly reasonable but, from the white viewpoint of those who exploited their labour, the word “Walkabout” became equated with unreliability and weak character.

But hey, if white people did not know any better in 1970, what’s the fucking excuse for the way the entry reads now?

Football –Biggest Religion After Christianity

“Look at the boy go,” says the commentator in the clip. One week before Michael’s 24th birthday. He does this all the way through my DVD of the complete 1993 Grand Final match between Essendon and Carlton. Michael Long was a brilliant player; he was everywhere the ball was this day, and won the Norm Smith Medal (Best on the Ground in a Grand Final Match.)

One day in 1993, Nicky Winmar decided he'd had a gutful of being told to go back to where he came from and sniff petrol, and all the other usual stuff:

The Winmar “incident” prompted the AFL to try and get its act together and stamp out racial vilification on the field. Of course, it didn’t change much. Racism and sexism are deeply entrenched values in football because they are deeply entrenched values in Settler Australia generally.

At the end of this brief clip is the moment in 1993 when Adam Goodes had a 13 year old girl evicted from the ground for calling him an ape in 2013. Adam pointed to the person who abused him before he realised she was so young, but says he was still right to evict her.

Goodes said that Victoria Police asked if he would like to press charges but he declined, reiterating that the girl needs to learn why her abuse was hurtful. The young girl was quick to ring Adam and apologise.

"It's not her fault, she's 13, she's still so innocent, I don't put any blame on her," he said.

"Unfortunately it's what she hears, in the environment she's grown up in that has made her think that it's OK to call people names."

"I guarantee she has no idea right now how it makes people feel to call them an ape."

Two years later, the girl’s grandmother complained that Goodes should be the one apologising – he only had himself to blame if people did not like him. (Guess there is no chance the young lady learned anything, despite having to apologise.)

Then the pot started bubbling again when Goodes called Australia Day “Invasion Day”. (I wrote my second post about Australia Day in 2017.  With a lot of campaigning from more important people than me, things have improved, and the movement to have the date or day changed is actually growing.)

Round 9, 2015 Adam Goodes does a war cry, created from the traditions of several tribes by a group of Indigenous teenagers called the Flying Boomerangs. Goodes’ on-field cry was more for the benefit of those teens than to get up white noses, but of course we settler lot always just assume everything is all about us.

 

Greg Inglis (who plays rugby rather than Aussie Rules) is feted in Sydney for his goanna run. Why does Rugby have no problem with Indigenous people, but the AFL does?

After the initial commentary this clip provides clear examples of what opinion leaders in this country really think:

You’ve gotta wonda Y, at this point, McGuire and Bolt’s opinions get so much airtime and carry so much weight. Short answer is this country has, for a long time, been the exclusive property of older, sexist, racist, white males – at least in their minds. People like them DO consume more than their fair share of oxygen. And, as I always say "if you wanna understand the bizarre behaviour of humans just follow the money" the real answer lies with the people what own the media.

When you see the sort of leadership we have/ tolerate/ still endorse, no wonder the grandmother of a 13 year old girl could still be comfortably unrepentant 2 years after she was called out for racism.

Back to 2015: Soon after Goodes’ performance, Lewis Jetta repeated the cry in response to all the flak Goodes was taking.

There are one or two sane pundits in Australia – no surprise most pundits are white, but at least someone tries to represent decency.

The Weekly is often a source of sane responses to rubbish ideas.

One of the greatest ironies is that Australian Football, while seemingly a mish mash of other western styles of football, was actually based on an Indigenous Game, Marn Grook.

If Greg Inglis can celebrate his culture openly, it’s really because he hasn’t broken the number one rule yet. “If you don’t like living in a racist sexist culture, don't complain, just fuck off somewhere else.“

Women’s Football

Did you see what happened there? I’ve followed the lead of the dominant settler culture – “football” means men. Women’s football is a deviation from the real deal.

As a youngster I quite enjoyed football, but back in those medieval days I had no idea how sexist the world was, nor how racist. The last time I had a season pass to Essendon, it cost 10/- (ten shillings) and the club still played at Windy Hill. The clubs were community based, players were loyal to their teams, and the game was not all about money. Now, it does my head in if I try to work out why any female in her right mind would pay one cent to see a match. Why would I want to join a club that doesn’t really want me as a member?

In 2017, no doubt because there was a dollar in it, the AFL began a women’s league.

In 2019, some truly sexist and foul comments were left online after a TV station posted a photo of Tayla Harris kicking the ball. The station, rather than challenge the sexism, took the photo down. This doesn’t surprise me, because this station and others propagate racism and sexism as if it was some kind of righteous obligation. Tayla quite reasonably said the comments were sexual abuse, because they were repulsive and made her feel uncomfortable.

The public was annoyed with the station’s decision to take the photo down, and there was an outcry and a social media feeding frenzy.

Tayla went on twitter and launched a challenge for people to send in photos of their best kick. You can check out the public response at #TAYLAKICKCHALLENGE

NEW ZEALAND TERRORIST ATTACK

On the ides of March, 2019, an AUSTRALIAN white supremacist organised an assault on 2 Christchurch mosques, murdering 50 people and injuring dozens more. Make no mistake, the racist shit that drove this coalhole festered in Australia, and was promoted by Australian Settler Culture.

 

 

In 1998, 4 Australian Prime Ministers – Liberal and Labor - put their names to a public letter saying there is no room for racism in Australia. Since then, the decay in leadership has been drastic on many fronts. Australia’s “leadership”, cross bench, has had no shame.

 

The 1998 letter is in marked contrast to what has been happening since. We now detain asylum seekers indefinitely in appalling and subhuman conditions. The rate at which Indigenous Australians are locked up, the reasons they are locked up and the way they die in custody are just obscene. And the mentality behind the so called war on terror is fanned constantly.

 

Senator McGrath posted this photo of Young LNP members online:

 

 

We are supposed to believe the white power gesture is just a joke designed to get left wing morons like me in a frenzy. Sadly, even the most innocent jokes often end in tears.

Here is a professional Australian Nazi having a laugh with a  mate:

 

And here is the arsehole that murdered 50 innocent people in Christchurch:

Australia's so called leaders have responded atrociously to the murders. By now, you are probably familiar with the story of Senator Anning being egged, for effectively saying the Muslims in Christchurch deserved it. Anning is a mate of Cottrell, the Nazi above doing the white power thing for a joke. Chuffed that egg boy did what he did, but certain if a person of colour had done the same they would not have lived, let alone be released without charges.

The absolute best we got from our (latest unelected) PM was that his party accommodates a range of different viewpoints, and a denial he suggested years ago that his party exploit anti-Muslim sentiment. Not gonna post more about him cause - stuff him.


The bizarre thing is that amongst the general population, Australia’s response to the NZ attack has been almost commendable. There are lots of decent, sane people in this country. We are and have always been especially happy to cheer whenever we see a Haka performed. No rugby match between Australia and New Zealand ever starts without one. Is that what makes it okay? That the celebration of Indigenous Culture has the approval of a sporting code?

One of many significant differences between Australia and New Zealand is that Britain made a treaty with the Maori people in 1840. Naturally the terms and spirit of the treaty have been broken repeatedly, and there are “problems” in New Zealand, but of all the many white Kiwis I’ve met, I’ve never met one that did not have some familiarity with that country’s true history, and Maori culture.

White people have adopted aspects of Maori culture as their own, and nothing shows this more than the Haka. I think this has only happened because the treaty, despite it’s failures, approved in theory the notion that Maori are people and as deserving of respect as any other.

Australia, on the other hand, was built on theft, and the lie of terra nullius. Like blackface, which helped subjugate black Americans after 1865, Settler Australia has justified its existence with a culture that dehumanises Indigenous Australians, lies about resistance to occupation, pre-1788 achievements and so on. To permit AFL players to show any kind of war cry would create too much cognitive dissonance in too many feeble white minds.

What Reproductive Rights?

Our (current) PM, SCOMO, recently announced "We want to see women rise. But we don't want to see women rise only on the basis of others doing worse."

Only in Australia, one of the most undemocratic democracies on earth, would a "leader" feel the need to qualify a concept like "equality".

"Benevolent sexism"... positions men as protectors of women,

while keeping women in non-threatening roles where they need the protection of men.

SCOMO also let us down in the area of reproductive rights.

You can find this SBS article here:

This article mentioned SCOMO's disapproval of "abortion". His attitude is disappointing on many levels, not just because abortion has never been decriminalised in NSW.

(In NSW, the "Levine ruling" allows doctors to approve an abortion if a woman’s physical or mental health is in danger, and taking into account social, economic or other medical factors.
As The Guardian recently reminded us, unlawful abortion is still a criminal offence in the state, and is punishable by up to 10 years jail under the state’s Crimes Act. Unlawfully supplying a drug or instrument for an abortion is also punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment.)

The following comment popped up in my social media feed:

“Abortion is killing an unborn child that does not get any choice if they live or not. So how is abortion good?”

This is my response:

The full expression used in the UN motion, is “safe abortion and reproductive rights”. To immediately rule out "reproductive rights" and focus on abortion when you believe abortion is wrong assumes women are only interested in abortions, and this is counterproductive. If you would prefer women have access to contraception, then please make your support of this public.

Like many important issues that often divide communities, the issue of abortion cannot be reduced at a community level to a SIMPLE choice of “good or bad” because the very word “abortion” is associated with different assumptions in different people’s minds.

For example, you say “Abortion is killing an unborn child”. That implies a moral obligation for us all to observe some kind of reverence for all foetuses. At what age does a foetus become “a child” worthy of reverence? Is it from the moment of conception? Fertilised ova are spontaneously aborted by female bodies the world over weeks or months after “the act” but the spotting /waste that results from this is not treated with reverence – rather it is seen as part of the life cycle by many.

Would you allow for safe abortion if a foetus was not yet viable? Is the morning after pill (effectively a termination) okay?

Now let us turn to the request that abortions be “safe”: Hopefully we are not just assuming that all abortions are a matter of convenience for someone too careless to plan ahead. Would you say, if a pregnancy threatened the life of the mother (e.g. in a case of pre-eclampsia), that we must choose the foetus over the mother? Could we, perhaps, choose on the basis of who was most likely to survive the threat? Should the father of the foetus or the mother of the foetus have greatest right or equal right to choose? Let's not assume that if the mother dies there are no other children or dependents who will be deprived of her care.

Recently I saw that in the state of Arkansas a rape victim, if she wants an abortion, must have permission from the rapist who impregnated her. Is this a case in which the rights of the child (as assessed by the father) should be greater than the rights of the mother? And no, you don't get to dismiss this question just because you claim rape is "rare". One woman is murdered in this country every week (more if you agree Indigenous Women dying in custody are just as important as the white victims the media actually gives a shit about.)

Would you prefer that women have access to safe contraception? It’s difficult for me to imagine a totally abortion free world even if contraception is readily available, because contraception sometimes fails, men and women each sometimes fail, and sometimes nature steps in to make a pregnancy dangerous.

Until “safe” abortion was legalised in most Australian states, women still had to contend with two major problems (amongst others). The first was that contraception was not then freely available because of National Security Regulations (Contraceptives & Venereal Diseases) 1942.

Secondly, even when the pill finally became “available” the assumption still prevailed that single women were chaste and that married women required the permission of husbands before a doctor would prescribe the pill.

Sadly, there are places in the west where the gains made in giving women access to contraception are being clawed back – the US is a good example (which makes me fearful for Australia). Further, many of the other social reforms that made pregnancy less frightening have also been clawed back. On the one hand, we may be told constantly by governments that taxpayers should not have the burden of supporting single parents, but on the other, we must again be careful what assumptions we make about why parents may be single. Many of the social reforms now criticised as irresponsible, unaffordable and so on are reforms fought for by men who knew what it was like to be raised in poverty – perhaps because a father had died, or their mother had left a violent spouse.

If we must show reverence for unborn children

why do we have no reverence for life once a child is born?

You say the unborn child does not get any choice if they live or not. I say the unborn child does not get any choice about what the quality of their life will be for far too many of their early years. Birth is a lottery, and too often becomes a life sentence. Shouldn’t a child’s lack of choice continue to matter to us after they are born?

Is the race of a child a significant factor in determining the worth of a life? Is age a significant factor? Gender? A child’s citizenship status? At what point do a community’s or an individual’s rights begin and end?

The greatest tragedy is that all of these questions are being decided by a predominantly male parliament, while the most immediate impact, when there are no safe abortion of reproductive rights, falls on women and children.

These decisions are being made by people whose deeds, with respect to far too many parliamentary matters, show their respect for life is limited and selective at best.

---------------------------

Reproductive Rights in Post-Invasion Oz

Yes, it’s usually the woman’s fault. In December 1942, National Security Regulations gave Health Reps and Cops power to force a “person” to have a test for VD. The same regulations also made it mandatory to provide the names of any soldier who had been infected.

(Can’t imagine for the life of me that any soldier would, in 1942, admit to being infected by a male “person”.)

 

 

The same regulations also effectively made contraceptives unavailable in states where their promotion had not already been banned. Rather ironic, no? The thinking was that the best way to use contraceptive protection was to make contraceptives unavailable. All the women who were currently so keen to have sex with soldiers would give up, and no one would get none. In the minds of some government genius, a ban on contraception was pretty much a ban on sexing.

Victoria jumped the gun in 1942 and introduced a Liquor Control Order, raising the drinking age for women to 21, and making it illegal to serve women alcohol in a public bar. It goes without saying – but what the heck, I’ll just say it – female drunkenness is a pox upon society.

Prevention of VD was one of the prime reasons usually given to justify control of prostitution.

One last fun fact – in 1915 when a VD Bill was under debate in NSW, a clause was proposed requiring doctors to tell a woman if her husband had VD. This proposal was rejected on the grounds it would undermine a wife’s trust in her husband, and threaten the stability of the family.

 

A Long Fall From Grace

Today Chief Judge Peter Kidd finally outlined the sentence Cardinal George Pell would receive for sexually abusing two boys at St Patrick's Cathedral in the 1990s.

The sentencing report was lengthy, because Judge Kidd was legally required to outline his reasoning when handing down the custodial sentence of 6 years (3 years and 8 months non parole).

Key highlights of Judge Kidd's remarks include phrases like "breathtaking arrogance" to describe Pell's behaviour. The sentence assumes Pell has not re-offended and has therefore "reformed" in the last 22 years because we have a legal system based on the concept of innocent til proven guilty. I do not have a problem with this concept.

Judge Kidd felt that the community is also protected from any future assaults by Pell because in addition to a custodial sentence he is required to register as a serious sex offender and will not have further opportunities to offend against children.

No legal system is perfect, and ours is flawed in that many other complaints did not make it to trial, but Judge Kidd's remarks suggest that the sentence was reasonable in terms of what the law allows.

Other factors included Pell's advanced age and the possibility of him being released before he dies, the state of Pell's health, and the fact that Pell is now subject to a great deal of public scorn.

I am particularly chuffed that the fall from Grace has been spectacular. Pell's life and all that he once believed he achieved now counts for less than zero. Financial Controller for the Vatican, good mates with Pope Francis, and so close to being Pope Himself he must have been able to taste it. History will not forget him, but will remember him unkindly - itself one hell of a sentence.

Most galling about the sentencing business - aside from the appalling public suggestion from Pell's QC that the offences were "vanilla" - was the enormous media support given to Pell after the verdict of guilty was delivered.

More than one former PM sprang to his defence claiming he was of good character, and several right wing pundits funded by a media moghul also went to town. All of them have been in the habit of showing no concern for others, but in this instance shat on the memory of all victims of assault everywhere.

A Guardian report offers more info on the charges and sentencing comments.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/mar/13/cardinal-george-pell-to-spend-nearly-four-years-in-jail-for-child-sexual-assault

---------------

For posterity, I would like to share here the comments of Clare Linane, a Ballarat woman whose response to the right wing mouthpiece Andrew Bolt went viral.

It makes for brilliant and informative reading on the topic of child sexual abuse generally.
 
Clare is a hero.

Clare Kathleen is with Peter Blenkiron.

March 2 at 9:50 PM ·

An Open Response to Andrew Bolt

*******
Dear Mr Bolt,

My name is Clare Linane. As you know, I am a Ballarat local who has been living with the aftermath of child sexual abuse for many years. My husband, Peter Blenkiron, is a survivor of clergy abuse at 11 years old. You met him whilst in Rome three years ago.
I am compelled to write to you after you expressed your opinion that George Pell has been falsely convicted (27 & 28 Feb, Herald Sun).
You are entitled to your opinion.
What concerns me, however, is your statement that your opinion is based on “overwhelming evidence”. I believe this is misleading, irresponsible and ignorant. Your lack of genuine insight into the issue of sexual child abuse makes a mockery of survivors and all they have endured.
The “overwhelming evidence” you mention includes some of the following points (*), which I would like to respond to in an attempt to help educate you about this issue:

* “One of the boys, now dead, denied he’d been abused”

To provide context for readers, when the mother of the now deceased victim asked him, more than once, if he had been sexually assaulted - he denied it.
Among survivors of clergy (and non-clergy) childhood sexual abuse, it is common for them to deny the abuse occurred. As vulnerable children, they are incredibly embarrassed, confused, and ashamed. They do not understand what has happened to them, and their shame is magnified by the revered status of their abuser. According to the rigorous Report for the Royal Commission into The Impact of Delayed Reporting on the Prosecution and Outcomes of Child Sexual Abuse Cases….“children have also been found to be less likely to disclose and more likely to delay if the perpetrator is a parent or parent figure, or a person in a position of trust and authority”
I asked my own husband about this. Although Brother Edward Dowlan had molested and raped him in 1974, when his parents asked him in 1975 if anything had happened to him, his response was to vehemently deny it. He states, “You deny it because you don’t want them to feel guilty. You don’t want them to carry the guilt of having sent you to this wonderful school, within their wonderful Church….only for you to be abused. So you just deny it, to protect them”.
The piece of important evidence you do fail to point out, is that the deceased victim began using heroin at 14 years of age, after enduring the abuse at 13. He abandoned a scholarship at St Kevins, spiraled into drug abuse, and died of a heroin overdose at 30.
This pathway is sadly all too common for sexual abuse victims.

* “The other (alleged victim) whose identity and testimony remain secret, didn’t speak of it for many years”

According to the same report, “Boys and adolescent males are less likely than their female counterparts to disclose child sexual abuse at the time of the abuse. When they do disclose, they take longer to do so….For example…in a 2008 study…for nearly half the men (45 per cent), it took at least 20 years for them to discuss their abuse”.
Additionally, The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse Final Report (2017) found that the average time it took for men to disclose was 25.7 years. The surviving choirboy disclosed 19 years after his abuse – earlier than average. The other choirboy died 18 years after his abuse, so was also well inside the average.
Given this evidence, the fact that one of the complainants didn’t speak of his abuse for many years is, it would seem, indicative of a genuine abuse survivor; not a reason to doubt, as you imply.

* “It allegedly happened in the sacristy, normally a very busy room”

You state in your article that you are not a Catholic. I am curious to know why you believe the sacristy is normally a very busy room?
I was raised a Catholic, and have asked my extensive network of Catholic friends and family about the sacristy. I’m yet to find one who tells me the sacristy was, or is, ‘normally’ very busy. The adjectives used have included “quiet…weird…uncomfortable…scary…silent…solemn”.

* “.where Pell would have known people were almost certain to walk in”

The prospect of discovery did not deter clergy abusers. Children were raped with their parents in the next room. In St Alipius, Ballarat, one child I know of was physically carried away from the playground by Ridsdale and Best, screaming for his life, in front of the other children. At St Patricks College, boys were physically punished at the back of the classroom then molested while the rest of the class faced forward.
To use your words, at any stage all of these abusers would have known “people were almost certain to walk in”. And yet they proceeded. Their revered status as ‘next to God’, and their knowledge that the organisation for which they worked was not about to hold them accountable, meant the risk of discovery was not a deterrent.

* “There is no history or pattern of similar abuse by Pell, unlike with real Church pedophiles such as Gerard Ridsdale”.

This point is totally irrelevant to Pell’s guilt or otherwise.
Sexual abuse of children is a crime. You don’t have to do it to (at least) 65 children like Ridsdale; just the once.
Furthermore, it is incorrect. There is a pattern in the allegations about Pell. The fifth count relates to Pell pushing one of the choirboys and grabbing his genitals. The Southwell inquiry in 2002 saw a complainant making an allegation of Pell “getting a good handful” of his genitals in the water at Phillip Island. In that internal Church Inquiry Justice Southwell found that he believed both the complainant and Pell. Similar claims were made by the Eureka Pool complainants, one of whom died, another of whom was to be the complainant in the so-called “swimming pool trial”. That trial was dropped because of the evidence of another complainant was ruled inadmissible. The judge did NOT rule out the evidence of the complainant who made the grabbing allegations.

* ”the man I know seems not just incapable of such abuse, but so intelligent and cautious that he would never risk his brilliant career or good name on such a mad assault in such a public place”.

I’ve never met George Pell so I cannot give a personal opinion of what he is capable of. Even if I could, it would be totally irrelevant to his likely guilt or innocence and would most certainly not be ‘overwhelming evidence’.
Pedophiles can be otherwise lovely, intelligent, charismatic people. We know from history they include extremely successful politicians, celebrities, judges, teachers, priests….they are from all walks of life and run the whole gamut from stupid to brilliant, charming to repulsive.

* “Maybe they misremembered. Maybe they had the wrong guy”

Please spend some time listening to survivors recount their experiences. You’ll notice that whilst they might be blurry with exact dates and times, the details of the perpetrator they sadly cannot get out of their head. My husband struggles to wear aftershave because Dowlan wore it whilst he abused him. He remembers looking at the shaving nicks on his abusers neck as the molestation took place, and the scent of what came to be, to him, the sickening smell of cologne. Another survivor I know gets physically ill when someone smokes Alpine cigarettes around him, because one of his abusers smoked them.
Furthermore, these boys were 13, not 3. Their brain development at that age makes them well and truly capable of facial recognition. George Pell has always had a very distinctive physical presence and had been Archbishop for several months at the time. He was extremely well-known, not just in the cathedral but also in the media and society more generally. The victim in this case is unlikely to have mixed Pell up with another 6 foot 4 archbishop.

* “I would, and did, read the transcripts of the trial”.

No Andrew, you may have read a partial transcript. The full transcript is not available to you or any of us. Only the survivor, the police, the lawyers, the judge, the jury and Pell have heard all the evidence. So please stop implying that you know all the facts: you do not, and nor do I.

* “Could this attack have happened when not a single witness corroborated a single one of the accuser’s’ claims?”

Yes, it could. I am yet to meet a survivor who had a witness to the crime committed against them. And yet these crimes occurred.
To conclude, Andrew, I reiterate that you are certainly entitled to your opinion. But please don't make the irresponsible claim that it is based on "overwhelming evidence"

This week, I’ve been asked my opinion many, many times. My response?
“Any opinion I have is irrelevant and ill-informed, because I am not privy to all the facts of the case.”

How about everyone stops trying to convince people of Pell’s innocence or guilt; it is not the most important issue here.

We have hundreds, potentially thousands of survivors throughout Australia who have not yet come forward. And when the likes of yourself, and other commentators, use your public profile to cast doubt over the outcome of a trial, you make these people even less likely to come forward and get the assistance they so desperately need.
If you want to support Pell, go and visit him in jail. Help fund his appeal. Take Miranda Devine with you.
In the meantime, here in Ballarat we are going to continue to try to deal with the fact that our suicide rate among males is twice that of Melbourne and 65 percent greater than the Victorian average.
We are going to keep helping women, children, mothers, fathers, and siblings pick up the pieces as their husbands, fathers, sons and brothers prematurely end their lives.
We are going to keep lobbying for the redress scheme that the Royal Commission recommended, so that our survivors get the practical and emotional assistance they need.
We are going to keep trying to figure out how to reverse what has now become a cultural problem whereby males in our community resort to suicide instead of seeking help.

Honestly, the fact that our most senior Catholic has been jailed is the least of our worries right now.

 

Another Race Bait Election

Mark Latham proposes we test the DNA of those claiming Indigenous Blood.

This is meant to IMPLY Indigenous Australians enjoy privileges over and above those enjoyed by the non-Indigenous majority, though nothing could be further from the truth. Funny how genetic testing was never required when taking stuff from Indigenous Peoples in the first place, like land, way of life, children and – let’s face it – lives, in fact.

This is just blatant race-bait electioneering which, sadly, will probably be rewarded. Let us add this tool and his proposal to Australia’s growing shame file.

Okay, point 1
the human genome project is not yet complete and is inadequate, and won’t correctly identify the true genetic ancestry of many of those tested at all.

Point 2
cultural identity in this country is not based on DNA. To change this basis of identification would involve some sort of retrospective legislation – a dangerous thing for any nation to play with.

I am a white, anglo-celtic Australian – although only 6% Irish genetically, I was raised 100% Irish Catholic. Does this make me some kind of con merchant? Can anyone presume to dictate or know another person’s cultural identity based on appearance or bloodlines?

Point 3
race is a social construct, not a biological one. It is a real construct, but not necessarily a moral one. The whole point of race always has been and probably always will be to assess a person’s socioeconomic and political class.

As for the notion Indigenous Australians are somehow privileged – I beg to differ: Karma is rarely instant but it is on its way.

Here’s something that should concern any white citizen of Australia.
Section 51 of our constitution is a shameful pox on our history.

Seriously. I am not just taking the piss now, I really want to know - in how many other countries on earth is there a constitutional provision giving the government the right to make laws with respect to:

"The people of any race

for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws".

Every time someone tells me the government gives a free Rolls Royce and other special treatment to Indigenous Australians I wonder in what fucking sane universe they imagine everyone who is Indigenous even ticks the box on forms? I know one shire where I used to have some workmates who were Indigenous yet the Census figures said there were none in the area at all. Obama granted amnesty to some “illegal immigrants” in America, for example, and his successor is using the list of those who registered to round them up and deport them.

Latham’s proposal is a good example of why, given S51 of the Constitution, we should all be afraid. The Constitution does refer to “any race”.

Yes, there have been and sometimes still are one or two schemes that did not apply to whitefellas.
The earliest of these focused on rounding Indigenous People up and murdering or torturing them. In more recent times, some of them were kinder schemes or even favoured Indigenous People.

There have been and sometimes still are one or two schemes that do not apply to blackfellas, such as when rich private schools get money to build things like auditoriums or pools. Just a few years ago this happened in my old electorate while the local public schools - also attended mostly by whites - only got a tied grant to fix their toilets. Okay, the grants were not made using the race powers of our constitution, but it's not hard to look at the colour of the students as they walk through the gates. Financial favouritism always has been and always will be practised by politicians - it's how they buy votes or feather their own nests.
Should we blame the rich white schoolkids who attend classy schools? Should we vilify them simply because some politician chose to favour them? Assault them? Hate them for these policies?

Just look at Latham's face in the photo above - he seems inordinately proud of how pissed off he appears.

This would just be more "special treatment" using a Constitution that would have made Hitler dance.

Often today, though not always, benefits paid to Indigenous and white people are the same but simply have different names - this is usually an accounting thing with some government advertising thrown in. "Aren't we wonderful we paid income to Indigenous People and can claim we are trying to close the gap".

To our shame, there are also negative programs deliberately aimed at Indigenous Australians. There are also "non-racist" government programs aimed at "all" Australians that are only ever tested in areas where huge numbers of Indigenous people rely on benefits, like the Indue Card program. And "tested" repeatedly.

https://theconversation.com/the-cashless-debit-card-causes-social-and-economic-harm-so-why-trial-it-again-74985

We have such a deficiency of provisions in our constitution for anything that matters, but s51(xxvi) this gobsmackingly blatant piece of racist engineering, survives! It could be used for good...

In Australia our Systemic Racism is sometimes subtle but if we look it's not really hidden or hard to find - for starters our Systemic Racism is right there in black and white in our Constitution and laws as much as in the outcomes these laws deliver. What is most telling is that most of us can't see what is under our noses or don't care enough to look.

But the whole of Section 51 of our Constitution is not just about making laws with respect to Indigenous Australians - this section is so bad on so many levels it's hard to know where to begin - it certainly gives an enormous amount of power to a handful of undemocratically elected people who rarely do anything to inspire trust.

What checks and balances? "Tradition" you say? Excuse me while I go to the bathroom so you won't notice I just PMSL.

--oo0oo--

(This is an edited version of a larger post on my other blog, where I discuss what systemic racism is and what we need to do to fix it.

https://maudesdramaticreviews.blogspot.com/2018/12/sets-systems-race-other-isms.html