Saturday 16th of November 2024
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the chosen ones .....

the chosen ones .....

how the chosen ones ended australia's sporting prowess & revealed its secret past ….

The ferries that ply the river west of Sydney Harbour bear the names of Australia's world champion sportswomen. They include the Olympic swimming gold-medalists Dawn Fraser and Shane Gould, and runners Betty Cuthbert and Majorie Jackson. As you board, there is a photograph of the athlete in her prime, and a record of her achievements.

This is vintage Australia. Often shy and never rich, sporting heroes were nourished by a society that, long before most other countries, won victories for ordinary people: the first 35-hour working week, child benefits, pensions, secret ballots and, with New Zealand, the vote for women. By the 1960s, Australians had the most equitable spread of personal income in the world. In modern-day corporate Australia, this is long forgotten. "We are the chosen ones," sang a choir promoting the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

One of the ferries is named after Evonne Goolagong, the tennis star who won Wimbledon in 1971 and 1980. She is Aboriginal, like Cathy Freeman, who won a gold medal in the 400 metres at Sydney. For all their talent, both belong to a carefully constructed facade, behind which Australia's secret indigenous history is suppressed and denied.

The late Charlie Perkins, an Aboriginal leader who played first-division football in England, told me, "There's an ambivalence that consumes many of us. I was so pleased to be back home, seeing that wonderful light, hearing the birds, seeing my mates, but I felt the racism more than ever. For one thing, no white person ever invited me home for a meal, for anything. Blacks weren't even allowed in the grandstands, not even in the blacks-only sections."

 

charlie perkins .....

 

In the 1960s, Charlie led "freedom rides" into the north-west of New South Wales, where "nigger hunts" were still not uncommon. Abused and spat at, he stood at the turnstiles of local swimming pools and sports fields and demanded that a race bar be lifted. "In South Africa, at least you knew where you stood," he said. "In Australia, you can have a friend and an enemy all in one person, especially if you're like me, of mixed blood. Someone will call you his mate one minute, then, before you know it, you feel an indifference, a coldness you can't explain. It's what drove my brother to kill himself."

Wally MacArthur was one of the "stolen generation". The victim of a eugenics-inspired campaign to "breed out the black", Wally was taken from his mother as a small boy and was destined to become a servant in white society.

 

Wally MacArthur .....

 

His gift was speed. Running without shoes, he was the Usain Bolt of his day. Wally was never selected in a state or national team.

Eddie Gilbert's story is similar. A dazzling fast bowler, he was given special permission to play outside his Queensland "reserve" and took five wickets for 65 runs against the West Indies. He later faced Donald Bradman, the world's greatest batsman, and bowled him for a duck.

 

Eddie Gilbert .....

 

Thereafter, the secretary of the Queensland Cricket Association wrote to the Protector of Aborigines: "The matter of Eddie Gilbert has been fully discussed by my executive committee and it was decided, with your concurrence, to return Gilbert to the settlement." The letter noted that his cricketing whites "should be laundered and returned". Eddie was committed to an asylum where he was mistreated, and died.

The great Aboriginal boxer, Ron Richards, died a prisoner on Palm Island off the Queensland coast.

 

Ron Richards .....

 

He had won most Australian titles, and when he became British Empire middleweight champion, the Chief Protector stepped in. "Like many other crossbreeds," he wrote, "he is unstable of character and inclined to be gullible."

On 30 July, in London, the Aboriginal light-heavyweight Damien Hooper stepped into the ring for his Olympic bout wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the Aboriginal flag: the same flag now approved to fly on public buildings in Australia.

 

Damien Hooper .....

 

The Australian Olympic Committee demanded he make a public apology - itself a profanity in keeping with the enduring humiliation of Aboriginal people. Wearing the shirt was said to have breached the Olympic Charter; Coca Cola would have been acceptable. The sports writer for the Sydney Morning Herald sneered that it was "a stunt" by an opportunist. "I'm representing my culture, not only my country," said Hooper. "I'm proud of what I did."

In his 1995 book, Obstacle Race, Professor Colin Tatz, who has charted Australia's genocidal history, says that of the 1,200 Aboriginal sportsmen and women he studied, only six - 0.5% - had access to the same opportunities and sporting facilities as whites. I asked him what had changed. "A few things are better." he wrote, "The figure now is about one per cent."

On the day Damien Hooper was forced to apologise, Australian swimmer Nick D'Arcy failed to make the final of the 200 metres butterfly. Few in the crowd were aware that this "chosen one" was a convicted thug who smashed the face of fellow swimmer Simon Cowley in an unprovoked assault in 2008. Ordered to pay his victim A$180,000 in damages, D'Arcy declared himself bankrupt and paid not a cent, nor showed any remorse. Yet, the Australian swimming authorities duly lifted his ban and allowed him to compete in London. After all, said a Liberal MP, "Nick has paid a terrible price for his indiscretions".

Josh Booth rowed in Australia's eight that came last in the final. To a Chosen One, last is unacceptable, so Booth went on a rampage in Egham in Surrey, smashing windows. He later described it as an "emotional outburst". The Sydney Morning Herald shed a tear for "the pain of a young man who lost in an event that comes along every four years".

Unlike those original Australians forced to defend their basic human rights and apologise for their distinctiveness, both D'Arcy and Booth have enjoyed every advantage and privilege. Their "indiscretions" and victimhood are accompanied by a sense of entitlement that has shredded the national myth of "fair go", not to mention an Olympic prowess of which we all were once proud.

John Pilger

 

ikea in aurukun...

 

THERE are a couple of ways to get things done in Aboriginal Australia.

The first and most traditional is to apply for a government grant and then wait while the slow wheels of bureaucracy turn.

The other is to roll the sleeves up and put shoulder to the shovel, which is what a handful of C-suite executives found themselves doing in searing heat in the dusty indigenous township of Aurukun yesterday.

Fortescue chief executive Neville Power, Wesfarmers chief executive Richard Goyder, Westpac executive Elizabeth Henderson and ANZ's deputy chief, Graham Hodges, painted a library, planted trees and - most daunting of all - put flat-pack furniture together for 210 barefoot, indigenous children who attend the Cape York Aboriginal Academy in Aurukun.


http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/indigenous/bosses-roll-up-for-tony-abbotts-working-bee/story-fn9hm1pm-1226447875028

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My eyes are full of tears...

What a lot of good people... What a turn-around...

Imagine that many of their older mates in the Liberal (conservative) Party of past times would have been god-willing participant in a eugenics-inspired campaign to "breed out the black", in which Aboriginal kids were destined to become a servant in white society. Or "whited out"...

I have studies this in some detail and can give you names of prominent Liberal (conservative) families but I won't... In the 1980s, I had real fist fights with Liberal (conservative) party members who advocated the "Tasmanian solution" for the mainland Aborigines... For those who don't know, the Tasmanian solution was basically the wiping out of most of "them" with diseases, and rounding the rest into isolated places such as some of Bass Strait Islands... Now we have the leader of the opposition, the one Liberal (conservative) party that organised that very controversial intervention in the Northern Territory... For those who don't know most business people are members or supporters of the Liberal (conservative) party in Australia...

One person named Gus thus could appear to be a cynic here when "conservative" people are doing "good things"... but why are the cameras there now, when the same thing has happened for years with different people other than "with the leader of the opposition" and why are they doing the work, when they should provide the teaching mechanism for the locals to do it for themselves, which the government is doing as well... I know It's charity plus... Stunts from the heart... not social justice... Social justice is hard left yakka... The plane tickets and the expenditure like food and lodgings in situ (I hope) of these good Samaritans would be tax deductible...

Get this old cynic out of here... Give Gus another glass of red ned!...

And between you, me and an Obeid lamppost, there are more than two ways to get things done in Aboriginal Australia... But then this is Merde-och press reporting...

 

the challenges of rent-seeking .....

The kindest tweet I have seen about Channel Nein's coverage of the Olympics has suggested that every single person involved and their families should be doused in cat urine and thrown down a well; except for Eddie McGuire, who should be sent somewhere for 12 years or so to learn how to speak English, then never be allowed to speak again.

It is August in an Olympic year, so a couple of Australia's favourite First Class Business Lounge habitués (insert Coates, Gosper, etc.) have asked us for some more money; in 2008, it was because Australian athletes did so well, this time around it's because they haven't.

They have come with an interesting new tack on "it's all the government's fault", saying that school sport should be compulsory in order to build future Olympians.

Don't forget that Mr Coates squealed like a mining magnate when the 2009 Crawford Review suggested that some of the hundreds of millions of dollars that state and federal governments contribute to sport should be diverted away from the elite and into local sports and, yes, schools.

Someone connected with an Olympic sport has complained, as usually happens during an Olympics, that the AIS has a smaller budget than an AFL club.

This conveniently neglects the inconvenient fact that AFL clubs have so much money because the public, not the government, chooses to send money in that direction because Australian Rules (and both rugbies, while we're at it) are sports that many of us actually want to watch six months of the year and are happy to part with our hard-earned in order to do so.

Australian swimmers and many other athletes have behaved, on the whole, with a sense of entitlement on a par with Georgie the idiot Prince Regent in Blackadder The Third.

Their failures, such as they are, are nothing to do with not being good enough on the day, but caused by lack of money, bad administration and of course the internet. Several retired athletes and coaches have opined that things were better in their day, which is hilarious in the case of swimming, since we were the only nation that took it seriously for a long while there.

Speaking of swimming, the men who run Swimming Australia were smart enough to vote themselves six-figure salaries and five-year extensions on their contracts well before their management was shown up by a lack of results.

The government of Great Britain has behaved like every other government finding itself at the business end of the IOC's extortion racket, enacting and enforcing whatever legislation is required to stay in the good books (for a few weeks at least until the money is safely in the Swiss bank accounts) of the largest parasite in the sporting world.

Coverage of Women's Beach Volleyball has been absolutely nothing to do with close-up slo-mos of some of the world's finest buttocks. (Only joking, this is of course in line with the gusset-focused nature of all coverage of all women's sports - by the way, I'm sure it's possible to publish a front page photograph of Sally Pearson in a position other than mid-hurdle?).

Huge swathes of seats have been vacant (despite the apparent demand from the public), reserved as they are for sponsors and other extremely valuable-to-humanity members of the "Olympic Family" who haven't bothered to show up, because for them the Olympics isn't about the sport, it's about the baksheesh.

Thankfully, there are enough British soldiers not required to cover the G4S security screw-up lazing around, eager to put on an official T-shirt and watch some handball and not think about the horrors they've just come back from in the Middle East.

Back to swimming: from a 7.30 story this week, "Swimmers with disabilities were asked to race during television ad breaks", and when they and their supporters started to complain, they were threatened by Swimming Australia with legal action. What a charming bunch of administrators.

The relative failure of our swimming team, at least in terms of gold medals, will be addressed by an inquiry led by a coach who is believed to be on a lucrative contract with Swimming Australia.

The men at SA who just voted themselves back into their jobs until the next Olympics say that this is "not a time for blame and scapegoating", so the outcome is pretty much set: the government isn't doing enough for us.

And the government?

Well, it will be only too eager to cough up, trapped as it is in the misapprehension that good-looking young people on Weet-Bix boxes with gold around their necks somehow translate to votes.

As I said five months ago, keep one hand on your wallet and one eye on the bullshit-o-meter, because Coates and Gospar and Neil and Urquhart and other, even less visible, nabobs will be reaching into your pocket to take your money and sell you a bill of goods from their First Class seats as they jet around the world to gorge themselves in the IOC trough.

Justin Shaw is Deputy Editor of The King's Tribune. Read his full profile here.