On my soapbox

Sharing the Love #2

by frogpondsrock on November 24, 2010

in blogging,friendship,Hope,On my soapbox,politics

It is time to give a shout out to a member of the Australian blogging community.

Again I have chosen a blog that is sometimes difficult to read, next month I will direct you towards something a bit lighter.

Australia is a very racist country and anyone that says it isn’t, needs to come down from their ivory tower and have a stint in the real world.

I grew up in a rough and ready working class suburb full of immigrants. My father was casually racist and his language was the language of his peers. I was taught to be wary of wogs, wops, krauts and coons. As kids we were disdainful of those that were different, we were taught British history in school and were confident of our superiority.

Of course when I grew up I moved out of my small suburb and ventured into the wider world. I shed my racist skin and discovered that people were just people.

The media and the political spin doctors would have you believe that Australia has also shed her racist skin, that we are a tolerant country dedicated to the ideal of a fair go and mateship. That she truly will be right and that it is all apples mate. Scratch the surface of working class Australia and you will find men like my father, all too ready to believe that all Arabs are terrorists, that boat people are queue jumpers intent upon stealing their jobs and that the only good Abo is a dead Abo.

Mark “Backchos” Mullins is a human rights advocate and member of the Stolen generation and using his blog Blak and Black, Mark will tell you a story of a different Australia. He writes of an Australia that we try to pretend isn’t real and some people will find it easier to attack Mark and attempt to discredit him rather than hold a mirror to their own faces and see the racist reflected there.

The three posts that I recommend you start your reading with are

A day in the life of an Aborigine,

The subtleties of genocide

Men are respectable only as they respect

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A throw away state of mind.

by frogpondsrock on October 19, 2010

in Animal cruelty,arseholiness,headfuck,On my soapbox,real life,social justice

I drove past the local tip the other day and noticed that the flock of roosters foraging in the paddock below it had grown. I had just assumed that some of the nearby farmer’s chooks had decided that there was better forage at the tip and that last season his girls had hatched out lots of roosters.

I was appalled to discover that people have been dumping the roosters there. I knew that people dumped kittens at the tip but the thought of going to all the trouble of catching a rooster and then just throwing it away shocked me.

There have been a lot of new people move here in the past ten years or so, city people looking for a treechange, mainlanders mostly, attracted to the cheap land and easy commute to the city.

I can wholly appreciate the excitement of finally having a bit of land with space for a few chickens, mmm think of all the lovely fresh eggs. And it seems to be all fine and dandy until the novelty wears off and the bloody chickens scratch your garden to pieces or a hen goes broody and hatches out a clutch of roosters. What do you do then?

Apparently you just throw the fucking roosters away. Aaargh!

It is the waste of all that good meat that does my head in, as well as the casual cruelty.

There are a number of tangents that I could spin off into here, I could pull out my soapbox and have a little rant about ethical treatment of animals and our responsibilities to our livestock.

I could blather on about the environmental damage that wild chickens do to the fragile landscape.

Or I could lead into a discussion about throw away roosters being the least of our problems in this 21st century, when we already have a well established tradition of throwing away the most vulnerable of all in this society of ours. Our elderly and our disabled, our mentally ill and our useless are all thrown away.

Not to the tip, like the roosters but our broken ones are marginalised and pushed to the very edges of society. Our elderly are packed off to sub standard and under funded nursing homes. Our indigenous are demonised and our leaders shame themselves and us as a nation, by loudly trying to “Stop the Boats”, when that tiny percentage of desperate people is the least of our problems.

Now I have run out of steam and the early morning daylight is filling the sky with interesting colours. I will gather up the camera and see if the play of light through the gum trees chases away these dark thoughts of mine.

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It is time to grow up, Australia.

by frogpondsrock on September 17, 2010

in On my soapbox,politics,real life,social justice

When former Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd apologised to the Aboriginal people of Australia, I cried. I was, in that moment so very proud to be Australian and I felt that there was hope for the future of this country.

During the recent election campaign, Tony Abbots sloganism and simplistic chanting of “Stop the Boats” and “No Big New Taxes” brought me back to earth with a thud.

Scratch the surface of white Australia and you will find racism in all walks of life. From the milkman who mutters,”bloody Abos,” to the white school boy at Cronulla with the crude slogan on his t-shirt, We grew here, You flew here to a Prime Ministerial wannabe with his appalling catch cry of, “Stop the Boats.”

And it makes me tired.

Here in Tasmania, the Aboriginal people are a marginalised people trying to save their shattered culture. The enduring myth in Tasmanian society is that there aren’t any Tasmanian Aboriginals left at all, that the line stopped when Truganini died. The differences in our society are highlighted very clearly by the treatment of two groups of protesters at the hands of the Police here in Tasmania.

Aboriginal protester Sara Maynard was arrested for trespass while protesting at the Brighton bypass construction site last year,

Ms Maynard said it took her a long time to recover from the trauma of being strip-searched before facing the Hobart Magistrates Court.

“I was told that if I refused they would hold me down and take my clothes off for me,” Ms Maynard said yesterday.

“When you’ve got five men standing around and I’m the only female there … it was quite terrifying.”

She refused to be strip-searched in a cell with cameras, so was forced to undergo the procedure in a toilet by a female officer.

Gardening guru Peter Cundall was also arrested last year for protesting on the steps of Parliament house in Hobart. Mr Cundall is quoted as saying he was appalled by the treatment meted out to Ms Maynard. Mr Cundall also said that he and his fellow protesters were treated like royalty, with the police making it very clear that they didn’t want to arrest the 58 anti pulp mill protesters and treating them with the utmost courtesy.

Sigh, and there you have it in a nutshell.

Until we the ordinary people of Australia stand up and say this is wrong, this sort of appalling behaviour will continue on through the generations.

My friend has started a blog and I would highly recommend that you read this post, A day in the life of an Aborigine.

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“Another invasion”— A press release by Mick Dodson, former Australian of the Year

by frogpondsrock on September 9, 2010

in environmental stuff,good causes,headfuck,On my soapbox,politics

This is a press release by Mick Dodson, former Australian of the year, this comes courtesy of the Tasmanian Times Website.

It beggars belief that this is even legal in Australia. Aboriginal land in one of our most fragile ecosystems has just been earmarked for compulsory acquisition by the Western Australian Government.

The reason? Energy giants including BP, Woodside, Chevron and Shell want to build a gas pipeline, and they don’t want to wait for Indigenous consultation. Some traditional owners are in favour of the pipeline, others disagree. But one thing is clear: compulsory acquisition means no genuine consultation, and far less compensation if the project goes ahead.

We need to respond quickly and make sure Premier Barnett’s announcement is met with national outrage. Locals are delivering a petition to the Premier’s office next week. Can you back them up by adding your name today, and asking your friends to do the same? Go to link http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/nocompulsoryacquisition

The nation is talking about hung parliament negotiations in the marble halls of Parliament House. But far away, in the red dirt of James Price Point, 400km from Broome on the Dampier Peninsula, there is another power struggle going on; pitting the profits of BP, Shell, Woodside and Chevron against the rights of Indigenous Australians. You can help shift the balance.

There are numerous registered Aboriginal heritage sites in the vicinity of James Price Point (Walmadan). Locals tell of Indigenous burial sites and ancient rock art; in some areas you can actually see the footprints of prehistoric birds, long extinct. But the Western Australian Premier wants to bypass Aboriginal elders in what’s been called “colonialism all over again” by Wayne Bergmann, Kimberly Land Council CEO. And what’s more, the project hasn’t even received environmental approvals required by State or Federal law.

This is about more than one site, or one gas pipeline. Compulsory acquisition in WA would put the profits of multinationals above the rights of traditional owners—and threatens decades of progress on land rights. Can you stand with traditional owners behind a campaign to stop compulsory acquisition? Colin Barnett’s decision could set back the Indigenous Rights movement by 30 years or more. Together we have the opportunity to ensure this doesn’t happen.

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“Gobsmacked” was the word I was searching for.

by frogpondsrock on July 25, 2010

in addiction,food,headfuck,On my soapbox,real life

Though the words stunned, amazed, horrified and saddened would have worked equally as well.

What am I babbling on about?

I was watching the telly the other night when up popped Jamie Oliver and I found myself being sucked in to the vortex that was, Jamie Oliver’s food revolution. I was totally horrified to see that a whole classroom full of six or seven year old American children couldn’t identify a potato, a tomato, a cauliflower or any other fresh vegetable you cared to mention.

I was sitting there with my mouth wide open, totally gobsmacked.

Now I knew that some children thought that eggs came from the carton and milk came from the supermarket but to be faced with this scale of food ignorance just blew my mind. It is easy as an Australian to dismiss this as just an American thing but as we all know, where America goes the rest of the world follows.

What are we doing to our children?