Tuesday 24th of December 2024
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men, women and children were hunted down and slaughtered....

There was a time when Netanyahu’s tactics would go unquestioned. That time helps explain those who continue to give Israel unqualified and unquestioning support and ties in with the “hard man” image Peter Dutton wants to own, writes Michael Pascoe.

Cullin-la-Ringo, near Springsure in central Queensland, is the site of Australia’s biggest single massacre of colonists in the Frontier War – also known as the Wills tragedy. Gayiri warriors armed with nulla nullas killed 19 men, women and children camped in preparation for establishing a station on 260 square kilometres of Gayiri land.x

In the way of such things, the attack was in revenge for the murder of Gayiri men by a neighbouring squatter who falsely accused them of stealing cattle.

And, in the further way of such things, more than 300 and perhaps as many as 370 Gayiri men, women and children were subsequently hunted down and slaughtered.

Taking the higher number – “dispersals” were routinely underreported, if reported at all – the revenge kill ratio was 19.5 to one. There was no questioning of such murder, of genocide, only praise. It used to be so easy, even easier, if a coloniser had been attacked. Wiping out the blacks was policy.

That was 1863. Two decades later, Peter Dutton’s great-great-grandfather became the local member for the Springsure area and was Queensland’s Secretary for Lands as the bloody colonisation, the massacres, rolled on in north Queensland.

The Frontier Wars

The Frontier War across northern Australia, the genocide, continued at least into the 1930s – or to 1981 if you count a mass poisoning in Alice Springs that killed two people and hospitalised another six.

The last officially approved killings were in 1928, a series of raids west of Alice Springs led by Constable William George Murray. Collectively called the Coniston massacre, they followed the murder of a white dingo trapper by a Walpiri man. A hasty board of inquiry tasked with whitewashing Coniston found that 31 Aboriginal people had been killed, each justifiably so. The Walpiri put the figure at 200, so a revenge kill ratio of somewhere between 31 and 200 to one. And the man who killed the dingo trapper was not among the dead.

The nobbled inquiry’s chairman subsequently regretted his involvement, saying that if the same circumstances happened again, someone would be hanged for the killings. Massacring blackfellas had become less politically popular.

Historians Tony Roberts and Henry Reynolds have documented the role of colonial politicians, including Alexander Downer’s grandfather, John Downer, in masterminding, condoning or concealing mass murder in the late 19th century. It was popular policy with electors in the north – Aboriginal people were not electors – but became steadily less so in the cities and internationally.

Israel kill ratios

A century later, Israel is finding lavish kill ratios and large-scale “collateral damage” losses, to use the euphemism, are increasingly unacceptable internationally, too.

Bibi Netanyahu’s Gaza kill ratio is running at more than 34 to one based on the toll of identified war dead, with an overwhelming percentage of non-combatant women and children. A Lancet article has reported a conservative estimate of the indirect death toll of such a war – from disease, starvation, and destroyed health infrastructure – would be four times the present count, a kill ratio of some 140 to one, nearly eight per cent of Gaza’s pre-war population.

Such percentages would not have been a problem in northern Australia a century or so ago, especially given the provocation of the October 7 attacks by Hamas, a Cullin-la-ringo. The percentage of some Aboriginal nations killed by colonisers was closer to 100 per cent than eight. I can find no current mention of Gayiri people.

The prelude to the sparks for the Cullin-la-Ringo, Coniston and other massacres during the Frontier War was universal – dispossession, oppression and desperation in the face of colonisation.

It is no accident that among the democracies most outspoken in their criticism of Israel’s Gaza war are those with strong memories of their own colonisation – South Africa and Ireland.

Our colonial story

Australia’s colonial story is more recessed, history is written by the victors, the standard fare for most of us a sanitised version of the white man’s triumph against the odds, blackfellas barely recorded in school texts – and then dismissively – until relatively recently. The impact of the colonisers’ claims of terra nullius was not considered, not a concern.

Having failed to accept the invitation of the Uluru statement, “our” history remains that of the colonisers, not the Australians. To the extent it was ever mentioned, the Frontier Wars were portrayed as “treacherous blacks”, never Australians fighting invaders stealing their land and murdering its owners, wholesale rape and pillage.

The psychology of denial runs deep, the creeds and attitudes handed down through generations, if only subconsciously. Not all or always, but often enough,resulting in the inability of much of the conservative base to come to terms with our heritage, with families’ pasts, with the source of our wealth.

It is little wonder then that the side of our polity labelled “conservative” unreservedly backs the Netanyahu government and its actions and has no criticism of the kill ratio, the fatal collateral damage of tens of thousands of children, the broader damage of hundreds of thousands. To the victor, the spoils.

Peter Dutton’s stance

If Peter Dutton has expressed any sympathy for those tens of thousands of innocents killed and the greater number maimed in Gaza or voiced any support for a ceasefire, I’ve missed it. Maybe at some point in the future, he will say he said something to someone, like his apology for attacking Lebanese migrants.

Total unconditional support for Netanyahu and casting shade on all Palestinians also works well as an Islamophobic dog whistle, the immediate political aim, but the underlying culture is one of being on the colonisers’ side, backing the perceived superior race/religion/culture against those treacherous inferior natives.

It’s the same conservative culture that supported apartheid South Africa until it was no more, that more recently would preference white South African farmers as our humanitarian intake, that would prefer to have no Palestinians here or, for that matter, Lebanese. Well, not Muslim Lebanese, anyway. It is the culture seeking the comfort and cosseting of the white Anglosphere in Asia.

And going hard, going brutal, “playing tackle, not touch”, seeing the world only in black and white, is the strong man image Dutton is consciously promoting in support of what is becoming the LNP’s must regular chorus: “Albanese is weak.”

In the way of conservative thinking and some electorates’ voting, the “strong man” appeals even to people who may disagree with the policies espoused.

Cue the magnificent Paul North cartoon of a wolf politician’s billboard promising “I will eat you” and sheep saying, “He tells it like it is”.

The hard man image

There is a hard man image but no nuance in backing the colonisers’ version of history without quibble. Our own preferred coloniser history – begone you traitorous black armband types – resonates with the story offered by the Netanyahu extremists. They, too, believe the land is theirs by right for the taking and making fruitful, that no apology is required.

A century after Coniston, it is not that simple anymore. Despite the journalists killed and excluded, a world mainly without coloniser sympathies watches and is discomforted. In light of Gaza, Norway, Spain, and Ireland joined 143 other nations this year in recognising the state of Palestine. France, Japan, South Korea and Slovenia were among the Security Council members to support full Palestinian membership of the UN. Only the US voted against it, using its veto power.

The world has changed. The percentage of the “native” population Netanyahu would need to kill to achieve Queensland’s Frontier War victory would not be countenanced, even while nothing more than “concern” is voiced as the percentage rises.

The mutual intractability of the combatants ensures the disaster continues and will be reborn in the survivors. Of course, Hamas are terrorists – what else could they be against the power and might of US-backed Israel when they are offered no hope of improvement?

Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.

       Peter Ustinov.

 

In the eyes of the coloniser culture, as demonstrated by the Murdoch press, IRA letter bombs were appalling terrorism, but thousands of exploding pagers were admirable Israeli genius no matter who they killed or maimed.

In the eyes of the coloniser culture, bombing multiple families to kill one Hamas or Hezbollah target is acceptable. Collateral damage is irrelevant when you believe you are fighting a total war – there are no innocents.

The Israeli extremists can point to Dresden and Hiroshima and Cambodia and Vietnam and Iraq and wonder why they should be criticised for killing civilians. It is a fair question.

But theirs is a colonialist’s war in a mainly post-colonial world.

A century after Coniston – minor massacres unless you were Walpiri – peace can no longer be won by extermination.

 

Republished from Michael West Media, October 05, 2024

 

https://johnmenadue.com/hardman-netanyahu-a-century-out-of-date-feeding-duttons-colonial-narrative/

 

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

 

vs israhell.....

 

Uncle Robbie Thorpe vs the State of Israel    By Constantine Pakavakis 

I find it offensive that this country that committed genocide against us is now allowing our country to be used as a base to advocate genocide against Palestinian people.”

This was the last thing that Krautungalung elder Uncle Robbie Thorpe (uncle of Senator Lidia Thorpe) said to the supporters waiting with him outside the Melbourne Magistrates Court before the start of the hearing on Wednesday, 9 October.

Thorpe and lawyer Daniel Taylor were at the Court to hear opening statements at their private prosecution of Mark Regev, Benjamin Netanyahu’s former Senior Advisor for Foreign Affairs and Communication. Regev has joint Australian and Israeli citizenship and is also the former Israeli Ambassador to the UK.

Regev is being charged with Advocacy for Genocide, section 80.2D of the Australian Criminal Code, for public comments advocating for Genocide of the Palestinian people in the Australian Media. He was served in Israel a few weeks ago with the charge sheet and summons.

Appearing for Regev, lawyer Dennis Moralis stated to Deputy Chief Magistrate Bourke that the State of Israel had sent a formal diplomatic note to the Australian Government about the case, and had contacted the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, seeking her intervention to quash the case, and that the DPP is aware of the case. Magistrate Bourke set the next hearing for the 10th December, subject to any issues of extra-territoriality or DPP.

The case is based on comments allegedly inciting genocide by advocating starvation to be inflicted on the people of Gaza made by Regev on ABC Radio National on 10th of October, 2023.

A copy of the transcript is included below:

10 Oct 2023

Netanyahu: Israel’s offensive has “only started”

Mark Regev on ABC radio program Lateline – Broadcast Tue 10 Oct 2023 at 4:06pm

[07:19] Presenter: Mark Regev is here – he is an Australian born former Israeli diplomat and he is Netanyahu’s senior advisor for foreign affairs and international communications.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Galant has ordered a complete siege on Gaza saying authorities would cut electricity and block the entry of food and fuel, those sorts of necessities were already drastically limited say Palestinians. Is that a proportionate response punishing more than two million people some of whom of course are civilians for the actions of Hamas.

Mark Regev: Well I’ll ask you the following question, can you give me a situation where a neighbouring territory attacked a country murdered its people, took dozens hostage and then the other country says ‘… trade borders are open, electricity flows, water is supplied’? They declared war on us. They declared war on us through their actions, they declared war on us through the fact that they came across the border and murdered our people and I think we’re responding in a way that any other country would do in a similar situation.

 

What will the court decide?

https://johnmenadue.com/uncle-robbie-thorpe-vs-the-state-of-israel/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

SEE ALSO: https://johnmenadue.com/dutton-and-netanyahus-projection-of-good-and-evil/

pete and teals....

They may be short on detail, but Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is charging ahead with two flagship policies that may serve Labor and ensure Albanese’s second term as PM. It may well come down to the Teals, reports Michael Pascoe.

The scenario: a minority government after the next election, as various polls forecast.

The question: in a close-run thing, to whom would the “Teals” give the keys to the Lodge?

The hypothesis: there are two Dutton policies that should force the genuine independents to select Albanese as Prime Minister.

The perversity: neither of those policies could be expected to appeal much to voters who weren’t already in the LNP camp.

May election likely

Slipping by without much attention last week was the government changing Budget Night to March 25, effectively confirming the early May election that has always been most likely. So seven months to win any hearts and minds that are not already committed.

The makeup of the crossbench will be different. Not all the community independents – to give Teals their official name – from the Class of ’22 may be returned (for starters, vale the scratched seat of North Sydney and, therefore, Kylea Tink) and there could be newbies. From here, though, it still looks likely that Teals will have the final say on who forms government. More on that later.

Enter stage right the two key LNP policies that should make it impossible for Teals to give Dutton the nod: nuclear power and housing.

The key common issues of the Teal wave in 2022 were climate, integrity, gender, and not being Scott Morrison, all based on a pledge of listening to and reflecting their communities’ concerns.

The nuclear “concept” of a plan

Dutton’s “concept of a plan” to build multiple nuclear reactors somewhere between a distant tomorrow and eternity – an excuse for extending fossil fuel burning and reducing investment in renewables – won’t and can’t wash with any Teal genuinely concerned about climate policy.

That will be underlined by the parliamentary inquiry into nuclear power, also announced by the government last week,

perhaps Labor’s smartest political move since improving the stage three tax cuts.

With the LNP still trying to make up some numbers to justify their policy and preferring to leave revealing them until just before the election to minimise analysis, the inquiry should bring forward their exposure. That could blunt the Trumpy tactic of flooding the zone with claims in the midst of the election campaign.

The committee, of course, will be dominated by Labor members tasked with validating the maxim: never hold an inquiry unless you already know the answers. The cross-bench also will be represented on the committee with LNP members a distinct minority running interference.

As Phil Coorey reported in the AFR ($):

“The move by the government is a ploy to expose on multiple fronts what it believes to be the unviability of nuclear power.

“If they’re not going to release the detail, we’ll do it for them,” a government member said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“The terms of reference include an examination of how soon a nuclear power plant could be operational; the cost of building and maintaining them, the storage and transportation of fuel and waste; the feasibility of using existing coal-fired power station sites and their power lines; federal, state, territory and local government legal and policy frameworks; and the impact of power prices.”

Generally forgotten is that we had a parliamentary inquiry into nuclear power only five years ago, chaired by the LNP’s Ted O’Brien, now the shadow energy spokesman tasked with selling Dutton’s nuclear gambit. 

With the Coalition dominating that inquiry, the most O’Brien could come up with was that “nuclear energy should be on the table for consideration as part of our future energy mix”, not that we should go for it.

Then, like now, O’Brien was hoping small modular reactors might become a thing and other new large reactor technologies could be the economical go.

They respectively haven’t and are not, as subsequently demonstrated.

The only certainty about the LNP’s energy/climate policy is that it would delay efforts to reduce Australia’s carbon emissions. With climate denial strong in the party, the procrastinator’s golden rule rules: Put off to tomorrow what you don’t have to do today because you might get away with not doing it tomorrow.

There is no way Teals, in conscience, could choose such a policy. Climate 2000’s Simon Holmes à Court doesn’t call the Teals’ shots, but they couldn’t expect his support if they went with the deniers and sceptics.

The LNP housing “policy”

The second policy bridge too far is what might loosely be called the LNP’s housing policy – scrapping the Housing Australia Future Fund and increasing demand and prices by allowing the fortunate few to put $50,000 or $90,000 of their superannuation towards buying a home.

Housing wasn’t a central issue in the 2022 election. It is now. The Teals, like Labor and the LNP, are still trying to get a handle on the extent of the crisis and what might be done about it.

They are yet to grasp the essential reality of needing large-scale direct government involvement in providing housing in a broken market, specifically in reversing the decline in social housing availability, but there can be no appetite for Dutton’s promise to scrap the HAFF and the 30,000 community housing homes it will deliver.

The LNP’s opposition to everything other than private home ownership for those well-off enough to achieve it would guarantee the crisis worsens, inequality deepens, and our social cohesion deteriorates.

Labor’s existing housing policies aren’t enough, but halting the slide in public housing at least doesn’t exacerbate the problem.

Again, the Teals couldn’t be true to themselves and their communities by giving Dutton’s LNP the nod.

The minority government scenario?

The post-election negotiations will test the integrity of cross-bench members. The Teals of Liberal heritage – most obviously Allegra Spender in Wentworth and Kate Chaney in Curtin – might have to hold their noses to appoint a Labor government, but they would forfeit all personal credibility if they empowered fraudulent nuclear and housing policies. 

The others – Monique Ryan, Zali Steggall, Helen Haines, Zoe Daniel, Sophie Scamps and, possibly post-May, Nicolette Boele in Bradfield – have their own professed standards to live up to. If they do, they won’t be empowering a minority LNP government. 

Dutton’s own policies would make Albanese Prime Minister.

We may also assume that Bob Katter, Rebekha Sharkie ($) and Andrew Gee (if he is returned in Calare after quitting the Nationals over the Voice referendum) go LNP, while the Greens and Andrew Wilkie prefer Labor.

The self-declared opposite of a Teal, the former Liberal Dai Le ($) in the former Labor seat of Fowler, has never pledged herself on climate or anything else for that matter, winning by being an involved local and not the parachuted-in Labor candidate, Kristina Keneally.

Her gaffe in ignorantly suggesting the Lucas Heights research facility could generate electricity indicates she would not have a problem with the Dutton nuclear fantasy – unless the parliamentary inquiry convinces her otherwise.

 

Michael Pascoe is an independent journalist and commentator with five decades of experience here and abroad in print, broadcast and online journalism. His book, The Summertime of Our Dreams, is published by Ultimo Press.

 

https://michaelwest.com.au/peter-duttons-policies-may-swing-teals-to-labor-in-election/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.