I only meant to highlight inequality. I can't answer the latter clearly but people immigrate to the countries oppressing them, skin lightening cream is crazy and popular in Africa, and the descendants of slaves mostly go for the religion of the slave masters.
Having lived in four African countries I cannot say I met many, if any, successful and rich black Africans who had an inferiority complex.
And when all the focus goes on anglo-european colonists, the colonisation throughout Africa by Africans is ignored. You only have to look at the tribalisation of politics in African countries to see there are different ways of colonising.
Our company in Malawi built a water treatment plant for the people in the nearest city, Karonga. When the company folded after six years, it did not take long for a powerful politician to come into town and take away the water filter/treatment materials and set up a factory producing bottled water.
So, instead of the people getting safe water which did not litter the land with plastic, the politician decided there was money to be made. Which is also why Africa is littered with broken water pumps.
A healthy ego is vital to identity. Most successful people have ego. And a survey showed that most black South Africans think that white South Africans are inferior. That opens a different problem but for the sake of this conversation, take it as argument.
South Africa is complicated e.g. we have 11 official languages. We may not know them but its to keep our tribes happy. More broadly, coloured South Africans, the Khoi, were the original. Black South Africans were migrants. Black South Africans were fighting each long before the whites came ashore. Then whites were killing the coloureds, and whites were fighting each other etc.
But I'm stopping here because we're a long way from the topic I'd meant :)
PS: Africa respects powerful men, and thus your sad water treatment plant experience feels normal.
Yes, agree, a healthy ego is vital to identity but when ego becomes a superiority complex, as it does with many humans, not just Europeans then it is not healthy.
And as to the survey, just a reminder that box ticking is always box ticking.
Yes the water treatment issue is normal in Africa and that is the problem.
Except none of that explains why African States which have been independent for 75 years are a mess and the black leaders are actually worse and more corrupt than the white ones were.
When the British left Zambia it had an economy on a par with Singapore. It was trashed in 10 years. The Angolans threw out the Portugese after 500 years and became even more corrupt. Their long-time President dos Santos became the richest man in South America because that is where he kept his money.
Sometimes I wonder if the unnecessary Western guilt over colonisation in centuries past hurts, not helps these people. Aid is patronising and not holding them to the same standards is even more patronising.
Actually a lot of Arab kids, particularly Palestinian are blue-eyed blondes and redheads. These kids are not being attacked because they are Arab, they are being attacked and nothing is being done because the Jews are doing it and Zionists, Israelis, Jews are manipulating all major media and most Governments and politicians.
I am not sure if there is a West in any such generic sense for people. Each Western nation is diverse and they are all different to each other. I do think the long campaign of propaganda painting Arabs as terrorists plays a part.
Sure, it’s about propaganda. The “others” have always been painted as inferior. The “enemy” kills babies. The West is neoliberalism, and those who fall for the ‘Hollywood’ supporting it.
I do feel that tossing Israel into the same pot as other Western nations founded through colonisation is wrong. I can think of none which were founded with a policy of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Happy to be proven wrong. The only one I know really well is Australia and that most certainly was not.
The levels of savagery inflicted by the Israelis are out there on their own.
Israel has always seen a future at war. Everything it has done has ensured more resistance and more violent resistance.
Study the treatment of children in Israeli prisons if you want to know why they are stewpots of increasingly violent resistant to a brutal occupier.
Only children under the age of eight are allowed physical contact. Which means there are prisoners under the age of eight.
Anyone who has had children does not need to imagine the psychological and emotional trauma for such kids. Eight is so little. Nine is little. Ten is little.
So, imagine your child imprisoned like this. How do you think the child and its family would feel and react? It is astonishing that any human being could do that to a child and we can only conclude the end goal is more violent resistance.
There is a level of pure evil in these regulations for child prisoners. So, those who are going to label them terrorists should at least find out how they got there. Yes, I know, Pigs might fly.
For example, When family visits are allowed, they take place once every two weeks for 45 minutes. In the visiting room, a glass window separates the visitor and the prisoner. Physical contact with the detainee is generally forbidden and communication takes place through a telephone or through holes in the glass.
Only children under the age of eight are allowed physical contact with the detainee, but strict time restrictions are imposed. Prison guards usually allow children to enter the detainee’s side of the visiting room for the last 10 or 15 minutes of the visit.
Your detailed comment, and the horror therein, stands alone without needing my input. Outside of it, my intention of my post was simpler. Unfortunately, no one has mentioned the movie.
USA is another blarring example of genocidal anti-humanity founding policies. Actually, THE contemp. example. Then again, every colonial force aka. "nation" way before, as IsraHell more recently, has been founded on genocide and ethnic cleansing of the indigenous "other". That being THE biggest a priori downfall of what we have socially constructed as "humanity" - we keep repeating history on an endless loop, but it is still only the minority that learns anything from it.
Let us dip a toe into the real world. All humans have colonised. Africans, Asians, Polynesians, Indians, Europeans, every single human has colonised.
We all started out in Africa so how did the Chinese get to China, the Indians to the Americas etc. They colonised.
Israel cannot be compared to other colonisers because none of them had a policy of exterminating or expelling the native people as Israel does, nor of denying them civil and human rights forever. Every other nation calling itself Western, founded through colonisation has given full and equal rights to the native peoples. Israel stands alone as a fascist, racist, bigoted, religiously fanatical colonial entity.
Israel could be compared, but as the most radical, and the most out of context i.e. the direct version of that era is over, and thus Israel sticks out like a crooked Mount Zion.
Anything can be compared but apples with apples works best. Any reading of the history of colonists in the Americas and Australia makes it very clear none of them started with the same policies or even attitudes that the Zionists and Jews took into Palestine. I have never read of other colonists considering the native people to be subhuman. Savages, primitive, yes, in need of assistance, of being brought into the modern world, but less than human in a literal sense, no.
If you look at other Western nations founded through colonisation it is pretty clear that ultimately they worked because the goal was to bring everyone, natives and settlers, together in one new nation.
The Israeli goal was always the exact opposite of that. I think it lets them off the hook to go on about the US colonisation, as too many do, when there is no comparison to policy or actions in any real sense.
And the evil that is colonisation is highly selective in this age and hypocritical. Everyone colonised it is just that in more primitive cultures they killed everyone apart from a few useful females. As humans developed they sought to use the labour of others, which beats having both your feet cut off and being left to bleed to death as happened in many parts of Africa.
The Israelis did have dreams of a compliant slave labour pool of subhumans but the Palestinians would not lie down and play dead which really pissed off the superior humans.
So, no, I do not agree Israel can be compared. That would be like saying cannibalism is no different to being a carnivore.
The Apartheid government saw non-whites as subhuman. Not everything is legislation. It's how people are treated and thought of. The poor remain slaves, and those of different colour and religion are treated as lesser animals e.g. lots of terrible stories from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and the replacements Israel has ordered will further that. It's the colonisation of labour, as if humans are cows and donkeys. For me, neoliberalism is the worst form of colonisation, but in the more historical definition of the practice, Israel is clearly the vilest. Does every comment have to be debated when there are so many other topics at hand. Is the acknowledgement of Zionism as an enemy to be defeated not enough? As I've said before, some of your comments should be articles. This is such.
Yes, apartheid South Africa is the one which does have some comparisons with Israel, but, even there, it was not founded on a religious belief that the natives were subhuman and needed to be exterminated or expelled.
All humans have a capacity for cruelty when they have power over others. Some choose not to use it for ill. Many do not.
I saw enough in India and Africa to know slavery and cruelty still exist and yet these cultures are never called to account. Only the anglo-europeans. And that in itself is racist because it is saying the anglo-e's are being held to a higher standard of behaviour.
Labour has always been a resource and throughout much of human history it was anglo-europeans who were the slave labour. The mills, mines and factories of England and Scotland were no different.
Nothing needs to be debated. I merely offer a different perspective and reply out of courtesy and interest when people say things which prompt insights to mind.
* Australia, just as the USA, also tops the genocidal-ethnic-cleansing-policy chart. IsraHell just upped all their game because, well, the socio-genetically ingrained stockholm syndrome turned incurable social psychopathology. Basically, the same MO as the US and the rest of the genocidal supremacist settler-colonial Anglo-pack, which the former wishes so desperately to get in front of.
I would humbly suggest you study original records for Australian history from 1788 onwards and stop when you get to 1950. Australia never had a genocidal ethnic cleansing policy. It would have been very easy to let aborigines die out if that was their policy. they would have done nothing.
do not set up hundreds of ration depots to follow and feed aborigines.
do not take abandoned babies into care when infanticide was still a norm
do not provide medical care and particularly do not build hospitals to treat Sexually Transmitted Diseases in aborigines which, if not treated would either kill them or leave them sterile.
do not provide blankets to help them survive the Winter
do not provide education to help them join the then modern world
do not make them citizens very quickly when like everyone else, genocide and murder would be a crime punished in law.
do not work to end inter-clan warfare which led to the deaths of not just men but all women and children.
do not work to end cannibalism
do not work to end aboriginal women as slaves
so not set up Aboriginal Protectors to protect aboriginal peoples
I could go on but if the British and later Australian Governments had not done any of the above then the native peoples would have died out. It is farcical to talk about genocidal ethnic cleansing when the historical facts show they did everything to keep them alive and to live healthy lives.
Neither of your links are reliable historical sources. I suggest you do some real research. If you did have the facts you would have immediately recognised the many errors in the two sites you have linked.
And you would know that Terra Nullius did not arrive with the First Fleet but was first recorded as one reference, in documents in 1864 and then was revived and re-invented in the 1970's as part of a highly subjective campaign.
Do you even know what Terra Nullius means? Clearly not. It does not mention ethnic cleansing or settler-colonialism but was an aspect of English law where efforts were made to establish ownership. As I said Terra Nullius did not become a part of the conversation until the 1970's. I can give you some reading links if you like.
Terra Nullius simply meant, 'nobody's land' or 'land belonging to nobody. ' In legal jargon, terra nullius means 'land over which no previous sovereignty has been exercised.'
No doubt similar views regarding ownership, applied of course when the Romans invaded and colonised Britain so it is not wise to retrofit modern values to the past.
Since there were 350 to 500 different groups of peoples in Australia in 1788, bit of guessing I am sure given the capacity to know in the times, who were not united, had no common language and who were often no more than family clans, it was deemed in the times, that there was no sovereignty, because by the laws of the times there was no sovereignty.
The British first called them Indians, then Natives and finally settled for Aborigines, more Latin, meaning in essence there when the British arrived.
This is why aborigines were never a nation either. They had no common language and were not united. This is why no Treaty was ever done as happened in New Zealand. They would have needed as many as 500 Treaties.
The biggest tribes were in Queensland because this area is rich and fertile. But they were also mostly at war with each other and smaller groups, clans, would camp next to the settlers for protection.
Hahaha a link to the archive of historically-scientifically affirmed texts is not a valid source (the same goes for the rest)? Your perceived logical incoherence is ingrained, Roslyn. Ergo the same mindset as that of the (Israeli) Zionist zealots. Ergo you have fun monologuing in your terra nullius echo-chamber. ✌🏼
No, the link does not go to historically-scientifically affirmed texts. It goes to a list of revised history trying to make various cases for genocide which was never policy. And none of the cited sources relate to Terra Nullius.
The second link is to a website, with no historical or archaeological credibility . Neither provides data, historical facts, relevant to our conversation.
Let us deal in facts, historically proven, recorded, documented facts.
Quote: Terra nullius came to Australia from Algeria, not England. An obscure term, confusingly defined, it was not the legal doctrine behind the 18th Century British occupation of Australia. An argument of modern racial politics, it is not the basis of national sovereignty. In 1977 Paul Coe of the Redfern Legal Service introduced terra nullius into a case he was arguing before Justice Mason of the High Court. Before then few Australians had ever heard the term. Coe, claiming restitution and compensation for Aborigines, argued Australia had not been terra nullius at the time of European settlement. No-one in the 18th Century had said it was.
Coe had not found terra nullius in the Historical Records of Australia, but in the International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinion on Western Sahara, on the 1975 dispute between Algeria and Morocco over Western Sahara. The Algerian lawyers defined terra nullius as a “territory belonging to no-one”. Seldom reported is the Moroccan lawyer’s comment on Algeria’s arguments as a “real piece of intellectual conjuring”.6
Coe rightly sensed the usefulness of terra nullius for the emerging political arguments in favour of Aboriginal land rights. Today it scarcely seems possible that in the mid-1970s Senator Neville Bonner argued in the Senate for recognition of the Aborigines’ prior ownership of the land without using the term. If terra nullius were accepted as the basis of British settlement, the opportunities for eternal legal battles over land were alluring, but Coe’s arguments went nowhere. His case was dismissed by Justice Mason, and two years later, in 1979, his appeal was heard by four High Court Justices. Returning to the courtroom, Coe argued both terra nullius and that Australia had been conquered by the British. His case was disorganised and badly prepared. In dealing with it Justice Gibbs called it “embarrassing”, while recognising “that some of the allegations hint at the existence of questions that might be regarded as arguable”.7
It was the dissenting opinion of Justice Lionel Murphy which moved terra nullius into modern Australian politics. Summing up Coe’s case, he made terra nullius – which appeared in no dictionaries or history books, and very few texts on international law – seem to be the accepted legal and historical explanation of Australian sovereignty.
The term moved from the High Court to the historians, seemingly as something that had always been firmly imbedded in the 18th Century.
In 1980 Professor Alan Frost wrote an article, New South Wales as Terra Nullius: the British Denial of Aboriginal Land Rights”.8 He defined it as “ ‘no person’s land’, that is, belonging to no-one”. Perhaps it could have been made clearer that terra nullius was something to do with international law. Frost gave it historical reality when he wrote that James Cook, on seeing Australia, had to ask two questions:
“Had a population established a right to possess the territory ; or, was it a terra nullius? [I]f it were a terra nullius, was he the first European discoverer of it?”.9
This is supposition, speculation, imagination, but it reads as if it actually happened on the Endeavour.
The phrase was unknown to 18th and 19th Century Australian colonists; it was not referred to in colonial courts or the Privy Council; it was never used by the British government to explain their appropriation of New Holland. It was so new that it didn’t appear in the first edition of the Macquarie Dictionary in 1981. It isn’t in the Oxford English Dictionary. If terra nullius had been sitting in the dictionaries all the time, perhaps it would not so effectively have been able to colonise modern minds.
In 1970 Charles Rowley’s The Destruction of Aboriginal Society put forward a modern tragic version of Australian history, and did not mention terra nullius. Building on Rowley’s work, Henry Reynolds rapidly became the best known and most trusted historian on Aboriginal and white conflict. He was prolific; he dealt with the media skilfully, and his books were quickly accepted into schools and universities. Admitting he had never heard of terra nullius as late as the 1960s, by the late-1980s it was the theoretical underpinning for his best-selling narratives of racial conflict.10
In 1987 Reynolds published The Law of the Land. A book called The Law of the Land should never have been written by an historian. A lawyer, a judge should have done it – and preferably a dull, boring, conscientious creature seriously concerned to do justice to the topic.
Thank you for sharing this. We Americans do not see this. It provides perspective of what the faces of war look like. people just see the missiles going off like a video game. Now we see the results in our face.
The horrifying thing is the Syrians have been suffering in this way for years and the US has played a major part in fuelling the civil war in Syria because they want to unseat Assad. The great power game play when the pieces are real people.
That's the tragedy, one moment in the news all the time, and then forgotten as if that never happened. Syria was in my to do lists, and I never got to them. Shame on me. On the other hand, if I did Syria, then shame on me for not doing Congo etc. These are bloody times.
Wishing to be white for safety, sure, but would they really want to be the same colour as those who oppress them?
I only meant to highlight inequality. I can't answer the latter clearly but people immigrate to the countries oppressing them, skin lightening cream is crazy and popular in Africa, and the descendants of slaves mostly go for the religion of the slave masters.
So sad, Mike. I wish people would take pride in who they are. Internalized oppression is no friend to anyone, and I say that from experience.
Brainwashed into inferiority. Hollywood played its part for decade.
But there will always be people proud of who they are.
Having lived in four African countries I cannot say I met many, if any, successful and rich black Africans who had an inferiority complex.
And when all the focus goes on anglo-european colonists, the colonisation throughout Africa by Africans is ignored. You only have to look at the tribalisation of politics in African countries to see there are different ways of colonising.
Our company in Malawi built a water treatment plant for the people in the nearest city, Karonga. When the company folded after six years, it did not take long for a powerful politician to come into town and take away the water filter/treatment materials and set up a factory producing bottled water.
So, instead of the people getting safe water which did not litter the land with plastic, the politician decided there was money to be made. Which is also why Africa is littered with broken water pumps.
A healthy ego is vital to identity. Most successful people have ego. And a survey showed that most black South Africans think that white South Africans are inferior. That opens a different problem but for the sake of this conversation, take it as argument.
South Africa is complicated e.g. we have 11 official languages. We may not know them but its to keep our tribes happy. More broadly, coloured South Africans, the Khoi, were the original. Black South Africans were migrants. Black South Africans were fighting each long before the whites came ashore. Then whites were killing the coloureds, and whites were fighting each other etc.
But I'm stopping here because we're a long way from the topic I'd meant :)
PS: Africa respects powerful men, and thus your sad water treatment plant experience feels normal.
Yes, agree, a healthy ego is vital to identity but when ego becomes a superiority complex, as it does with many humans, not just Europeans then it is not healthy.
And as to the survey, just a reminder that box ticking is always box ticking.
Yes the water treatment issue is normal in Africa and that is the problem.
Except none of that explains why African States which have been independent for 75 years are a mess and the black leaders are actually worse and more corrupt than the white ones were.
When the British left Zambia it had an economy on a par with Singapore. It was trashed in 10 years. The Angolans threw out the Portugese after 500 years and became even more corrupt. Their long-time President dos Santos became the richest man in South America because that is where he kept his money.
Sometimes I wonder if the unnecessary Western guilt over colonisation in centuries past hurts, not helps these people. Aid is patronising and not holding them to the same standards is even more patronising.
Aid controls...
Aid destroys. Not in the moment crisis aid but ongoing aid.
USAID etc.
A lot of Israelis are brown or black. As are a lot of Americans, particularly in the military.
Actually a lot of Arab kids, particularly Palestinian are blue-eyed blondes and redheads. These kids are not being attacked because they are Arab, they are being attacked and nothing is being done because the Jews are doing it and Zionists, Israelis, Jews are manipulating all major media and most Governments and politicians.
I believe my argument, as generalisation, is correct. Not enough people of the West treat the people of the Middle East as if they are also human.
I am not sure if there is a West in any such generic sense for people. Each Western nation is diverse and they are all different to each other. I do think the long campaign of propaganda painting Arabs as terrorists plays a part.
Sure, it’s about propaganda. The “others” have always been painted as inferior. The “enemy” kills babies. The West is neoliberalism, and those who fall for the ‘Hollywood’ supporting it.
I think there was a time when the Western world did promote civilized values. But that is long gone and people seem not to understand that.
I thought you might find this interesting.
https://www.stoneageherbalist.com/p/book-review-infantilised-how-our?utm_source=substack&publication_id=436322&post_id=149801452&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&utm_campaign=email-share&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=true&r=ppxvi&triedRedirect=true
Hyper-conformity i.e. integral to hypernormalisation. Excellent review, and I’ve put the book on my 2025 reading list. Thank you.
As follow-on, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-elite-college-students-who-cant-read-books/679945/
I do feel that tossing Israel into the same pot as other Western nations founded through colonisation is wrong. I can think of none which were founded with a policy of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Happy to be proven wrong. The only one I know really well is Australia and that most certainly was not.
The levels of savagery inflicted by the Israelis are out there on their own.
Israel has always seen a future at war. Everything it has done has ensured more resistance and more violent resistance.
Study the treatment of children in Israeli prisons if you want to know why they are stewpots of increasingly violent resistant to a brutal occupier.
Only children under the age of eight are allowed physical contact. Which means there are prisoners under the age of eight.
Anyone who has had children does not need to imagine the psychological and emotional trauma for such kids. Eight is so little. Nine is little. Ten is little.
So, imagine your child imprisoned like this. How do you think the child and its family would feel and react? It is astonishing that any human being could do that to a child and we can only conclude the end goal is more violent resistance.
There is a level of pure evil in these regulations for child prisoners. So, those who are going to label them terrorists should at least find out how they got there. Yes, I know, Pigs might fly.
For example, When family visits are allowed, they take place once every two weeks for 45 minutes. In the visiting room, a glass window separates the visitor and the prisoner. Physical contact with the detainee is generally forbidden and communication takes place through a telephone or through holes in the glass.
Only children under the age of eight are allowed physical contact with the detainee, but strict time restrictions are imposed. Prison guards usually allow children to enter the detainee’s side of the visiting room for the last 10 or 15 minutes of the visit.
ddameer.org/key_issues/family_visit#:~:text=Physical%20contact%20with%20the%20detainee,strict%20time%20restrictions%20are%20imposed.
Your detailed comment, and the horror therein, stands alone without needing my input. Outside of it, my intention of my post was simpler. Unfortunately, no one has mentioned the movie.
I watched a bit of it but need time for videos. Will see if I can find a link and share it though.
USA is another blarring example of genocidal anti-humanity founding policies. Actually, THE contemp. example. Then again, every colonial force aka. "nation" way before, as IsraHell more recently, has been founded on genocide and ethnic cleansing of the indigenous "other". That being THE biggest a priori downfall of what we have socially constructed as "humanity" - we keep repeating history on an endless loop, but it is still only the minority that learns anything from it.
There’s cold friendship and generations between us frustrated minority.
Let us dip a toe into the real world. All humans have colonised. Africans, Asians, Polynesians, Indians, Europeans, every single human has colonised.
We all started out in Africa so how did the Chinese get to China, the Indians to the Americas etc. They colonised.
Israel cannot be compared to other colonisers because none of them had a policy of exterminating or expelling the native people as Israel does, nor of denying them civil and human rights forever. Every other nation calling itself Western, founded through colonisation has given full and equal rights to the native peoples. Israel stands alone as a fascist, racist, bigoted, religiously fanatical colonial entity.
Israel could be compared, but as the most radical, and the most out of context i.e. the direct version of that era is over, and thus Israel sticks out like a crooked Mount Zion.
Anything can be compared but apples with apples works best. Any reading of the history of colonists in the Americas and Australia makes it very clear none of them started with the same policies or even attitudes that the Zionists and Jews took into Palestine. I have never read of other colonists considering the native people to be subhuman. Savages, primitive, yes, in need of assistance, of being brought into the modern world, but less than human in a literal sense, no.
If you look at other Western nations founded through colonisation it is pretty clear that ultimately they worked because the goal was to bring everyone, natives and settlers, together in one new nation.
The Israeli goal was always the exact opposite of that. I think it lets them off the hook to go on about the US colonisation, as too many do, when there is no comparison to policy or actions in any real sense.
And the evil that is colonisation is highly selective in this age and hypocritical. Everyone colonised it is just that in more primitive cultures they killed everyone apart from a few useful females. As humans developed they sought to use the labour of others, which beats having both your feet cut off and being left to bleed to death as happened in many parts of Africa.
The Israelis did have dreams of a compliant slave labour pool of subhumans but the Palestinians would not lie down and play dead which really pissed off the superior humans.
So, no, I do not agree Israel can be compared. That would be like saying cannibalism is no different to being a carnivore.
The Apartheid government saw non-whites as subhuman. Not everything is legislation. It's how people are treated and thought of. The poor remain slaves, and those of different colour and religion are treated as lesser animals e.g. lots of terrible stories from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and the replacements Israel has ordered will further that. It's the colonisation of labour, as if humans are cows and donkeys. For me, neoliberalism is the worst form of colonisation, but in the more historical definition of the practice, Israel is clearly the vilest. Does every comment have to be debated when there are so many other topics at hand. Is the acknowledgement of Zionism as an enemy to be defeated not enough? As I've said before, some of your comments should be articles. This is such.
Yes, apartheid South Africa is the one which does have some comparisons with Israel, but, even there, it was not founded on a religious belief that the natives were subhuman and needed to be exterminated or expelled.
All humans have a capacity for cruelty when they have power over others. Some choose not to use it for ill. Many do not.
I saw enough in India and Africa to know slavery and cruelty still exist and yet these cultures are never called to account. Only the anglo-europeans. And that in itself is racist because it is saying the anglo-e's are being held to a higher standard of behaviour.
Labour has always been a resource and throughout much of human history it was anglo-europeans who were the slave labour. The mills, mines and factories of England and Scotland were no different.
Nothing needs to be debated. I merely offer a different perspective and reply out of courtesy and interest when people say things which prompt insights to mind.
* Australia, just as the USA, also tops the genocidal-ethnic-cleansing-policy chart. IsraHell just upped all their game because, well, the socio-genetically ingrained stockholm syndrome turned incurable social psychopathology. Basically, the same MO as the US and the rest of the genocidal supremacist settler-colonial Anglo-pack, which the former wishes so desperately to get in front of.
Less obvious, but Australia is in thrall of the same syndrome.
I would humbly suggest you study original records for Australian history from 1788 onwards and stop when you get to 1950. Australia never had a genocidal ethnic cleansing policy. It would have been very easy to let aborigines die out if that was their policy. they would have done nothing.
do not set up hundreds of ration depots to follow and feed aborigines.
do not take abandoned babies into care when infanticide was still a norm
do not provide medical care and particularly do not build hospitals to treat Sexually Transmitted Diseases in aborigines which, if not treated would either kill them or leave them sterile.
do not provide blankets to help them survive the Winter
do not provide education to help them join the then modern world
do not make them citizens very quickly when like everyone else, genocide and murder would be a crime punished in law.
do not work to end inter-clan warfare which led to the deaths of not just men but all women and children.
do not work to end cannibalism
do not work to end aboriginal women as slaves
so not set up Aboriginal Protectors to protect aboriginal peoples
I could go on but if the British and later Australian Governments had not done any of the above then the native peoples would have died out. It is farcical to talk about genocidal ethnic cleansing when the historical facts show they did everything to keep them alive and to live healthy lives.
Great input, Roslyn. I promise not to call you an Aussie coloniser. Smiley.
Well I am not an Aussie coloniser. One great-great grandfather could be called that but it was not his fault because he was a convict. Smiley.
And then again, that same history proves you outright wrong. Thus, instead of being apologetic for the Brit-Aussie genocidal (https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=genocide+of+aborigines&btnG=) supremacist (see the meaning of "Terra Nullius" ethnic cleansing doctrine) settler-colonialism (https://australian.nativetribe.info/terra-nullius-a-legacy-of-dispossession-and-its-enduring-impact/?amp=1), I suggest you do the factual brushing up of your intellectual archive. Acts like that do wonders for people. At least that is what the rest of humanity hopes for. ✌🏼
Neither of your links are reliable historical sources. I suggest you do some real research. If you did have the facts you would have immediately recognised the many errors in the two sites you have linked.
And you would know that Terra Nullius did not arrive with the First Fleet but was first recorded as one reference, in documents in 1864 and then was revived and re-invented in the 1970's as part of a highly subjective campaign.
Do you even know what Terra Nullius means? Clearly not. It does not mention ethnic cleansing or settler-colonialism but was an aspect of English law where efforts were made to establish ownership. As I said Terra Nullius did not become a part of the conversation until the 1970's. I can give you some reading links if you like.
Terra Nullius simply meant, 'nobody's land' or 'land belonging to nobody. ' In legal jargon, terra nullius means 'land over which no previous sovereignty has been exercised.'
No doubt similar views regarding ownership, applied of course when the Romans invaded and colonised Britain so it is not wise to retrofit modern values to the past.
Since there were 350 to 500 different groups of peoples in Australia in 1788, bit of guessing I am sure given the capacity to know in the times, who were not united, had no common language and who were often no more than family clans, it was deemed in the times, that there was no sovereignty, because by the laws of the times there was no sovereignty.
The British first called them Indians, then Natives and finally settled for Aborigines, more Latin, meaning in essence there when the British arrived.
This is why aborigines were never a nation either. They had no common language and were not united. This is why no Treaty was ever done as happened in New Zealand. They would have needed as many as 500 Treaties.
The biggest tribes were in Queensland because this area is rich and fertile. But they were also mostly at war with each other and smaller groups, clans, would camp next to the settlers for protection.
Hahaha a link to the archive of historically-scientifically affirmed texts is not a valid source (the same goes for the rest)? Your perceived logical incoherence is ingrained, Roslyn. Ergo the same mindset as that of the (Israeli) Zionist zealots. Ergo you have fun monologuing in your terra nullius echo-chamber. ✌🏼
No, the link does not go to historically-scientifically affirmed texts. It goes to a list of revised history trying to make various cases for genocide which was never policy. And none of the cited sources relate to Terra Nullius.
The second link is to a website, with no historical or archaeological credibility . Neither provides data, historical facts, relevant to our conversation.
Let us deal in facts, historically proven, recorded, documented facts.
Quote: Terra nullius came to Australia from Algeria, not England. An obscure term, confusingly defined, it was not the legal doctrine behind the 18th Century British occupation of Australia. An argument of modern racial politics, it is not the basis of national sovereignty. In 1977 Paul Coe of the Redfern Legal Service introduced terra nullius into a case he was arguing before Justice Mason of the High Court. Before then few Australians had ever heard the term. Coe, claiming restitution and compensation for Aborigines, argued Australia had not been terra nullius at the time of European settlement. No-one in the 18th Century had said it was.
Coe had not found terra nullius in the Historical Records of Australia, but in the International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinion on Western Sahara, on the 1975 dispute between Algeria and Morocco over Western Sahara. The Algerian lawyers defined terra nullius as a “territory belonging to no-one”. Seldom reported is the Moroccan lawyer’s comment on Algeria’s arguments as a “real piece of intellectual conjuring”.6
Coe rightly sensed the usefulness of terra nullius for the emerging political arguments in favour of Aboriginal land rights. Today it scarcely seems possible that in the mid-1970s Senator Neville Bonner argued in the Senate for recognition of the Aborigines’ prior ownership of the land without using the term. If terra nullius were accepted as the basis of British settlement, the opportunities for eternal legal battles over land were alluring, but Coe’s arguments went nowhere. His case was dismissed by Justice Mason, and two years later, in 1979, his appeal was heard by four High Court Justices. Returning to the courtroom, Coe argued both terra nullius and that Australia had been conquered by the British. His case was disorganised and badly prepared. In dealing with it Justice Gibbs called it “embarrassing”, while recognising “that some of the allegations hint at the existence of questions that might be regarded as arguable”.7
It was the dissenting opinion of Justice Lionel Murphy which moved terra nullius into modern Australian politics. Summing up Coe’s case, he made terra nullius – which appeared in no dictionaries or history books, and very few texts on international law – seem to be the accepted legal and historical explanation of Australian sovereignty.
The term moved from the High Court to the historians, seemingly as something that had always been firmly imbedded in the 18th Century.
In 1980 Professor Alan Frost wrote an article, New South Wales as Terra Nullius: the British Denial of Aboriginal Land Rights”.8 He defined it as “ ‘no person’s land’, that is, belonging to no-one”. Perhaps it could have been made clearer that terra nullius was something to do with international law. Frost gave it historical reality when he wrote that James Cook, on seeing Australia, had to ask two questions:
“Had a population established a right to possess the territory ; or, was it a terra nullius? [I]f it were a terra nullius, was he the first European discoverer of it?”.9
This is supposition, speculation, imagination, but it reads as if it actually happened on the Endeavour.
The phrase was unknown to 18th and 19th Century Australian colonists; it was not referred to in colonial courts or the Privy Council; it was never used by the British government to explain their appropriation of New Holland. It was so new that it didn’t appear in the first edition of the Macquarie Dictionary in 1981. It isn’t in the Oxford English Dictionary. If terra nullius had been sitting in the dictionaries all the time, perhaps it would not so effectively have been able to colonise modern minds.
In 1970 Charles Rowley’s The Destruction of Aboriginal Society put forward a modern tragic version of Australian history, and did not mention terra nullius. Building on Rowley’s work, Henry Reynolds rapidly became the best known and most trusted historian on Aboriginal and white conflict. He was prolific; he dealt with the media skilfully, and his books were quickly accepted into schools and universities. Admitting he had never heard of terra nullius as late as the 1960s, by the late-1980s it was the theoretical underpinning for his best-selling narratives of racial conflict.10
In 1987 Reynolds published The Law of the Land. A book called The Law of the Land should never have been written by an historian. A lawyer, a judge should have done it – and preferably a dull, boring, conscientious creature seriously concerned to do justice to the topic.
https://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/SGSocUphAUCon/2004/7.html
And I must say your last para reminds me of a former abusive poster by the name of Roger.
Keep it factual please. Roslyn, please substntiate. Xiu, comment or argue with fact against it.
Thank you for sharing this. We Americans do not see this. It provides perspective of what the faces of war look like. people just see the missiles going off like a video game. Now we see the results in our face.
Your character’s name is Geo and the game is Political.
The horrifying thing is the Syrians have been suffering in this way for years and the US has played a major part in fuelling the civil war in Syria because they want to unseat Assad. The great power game play when the pieces are real people.
That's the tragedy, one moment in the news all the time, and then forgotten as if that never happened. Syria was in my to do lists, and I never got to them. Shame on me. On the other hand, if I did Syria, then shame on me for not doing Congo etc. These are bloody times.
yes you are correct. The pieces are the regular people on the ground. Thank you for the engagement.