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Post by Wayne Hall on Aug 4, 2022 8:16:40 GMT -5
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Post by Wayne Hall on Aug 4, 2022 8:21:58 GMT -5
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Post by Wayne Hall on Aug 4, 2022 8:30:56 GMT -5
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Post by Wayne Hall on Aug 4, 2022 8:43:10 GMT -5
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Post by Wayne Hall on Aug 4, 2022 8:49:14 GMT -5
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Post by Wayne Hall on Aug 4, 2022 8:56:14 GMT -5
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Post by Wayne Hall on Aug 8, 2022 8:03:52 GMT -5
English subtitles can be activated by clicking below the picture.
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Post by Wayne Hall on Jan 1, 2024 13:03:11 GMT -5
26th January and Australia Day
It will be interesting to see the effect, if any, that the resounding NO delivered by the Australian electorate at the 14th October 2023 Aboriginal Voice to Parliament referendum will have on what has become a habitual Australia Day shitshow.
Years ago attention was drawn to a coincidentally convergent Greek and Australian focus on 26th January (in Greek here). (After the Voice to Parliament referendum of 14th October 2023 an even more appropriate counterproposal becomes available in response to those in Australia and elsewhere who would favour Australia Day being moved from 26th January. Namely for Australia's new national day to be 14th October. 26th January could be rebaptised Loyalty Day, and an attempt could even be made to internationalize it.)
Given that February 20-21 has been named as the date for examination of Julian Assange's "final appeal" against extradition to the United States, 26th January could well function as a barometer for testing the political climate that may determine not only what happens with Julian Assange but what is likely to happen on a whole range of political fronts.
On 26th January 2019 a function was held in Athens, a stone's throw from the Acropolis, reminding anyone interested of the symbolic significance of the treatment meted out for the last decade to the Australian journalist Assange.
Since 2019 the world has experienced the "COVID" trauma and its continuing aftermath.
"What now?" is a very pertinent question for 2024.
For Assange even more pertinent now with the passing of a key supporter of his.... John Pilger.
There is an obvious affinity between the reflex of wanting to "change" the facts of one's nation's origins and wanting to be a member of another nation, another "tribe", another peer group, another sex, with different ancestors, a different grandmother, on one side or both. To want this for oneself is neurotic but could be authentic and sincere. Is this true of wanting it for others?
Sensational postscript: cairnsnews.org/2024/01/04/turkey-and-islam-about-to-wipe-out-israel/
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Post by Wayne Hall on Feb 2, 2024 13:07:31 GMT -5
Dear Wayne,
This is the third week in a row I’ve written to you about Australia Day in one way or another.
But there’s a reason for that.
Because I don’t know if you noticed it, but there was a change in the air this year.
Yes, we got the usual protests and complaints from the activists who want to abolish the day and, in fact, abolish Australia itself.
We got the posturing from the sporting codes and supermarkets, and a few celebrities chipped in with their views that no one asked for.
But this time, ordinary Australians pushed back.
The activists who hate our country thought changing the date – and starting the push to do away with any national day – was a done deal.
This year they found out they were wrong.
Woolies’ decision to stop carrying Australia Day merch wasn’t met with indifference but anger.
And after a couple of weeks they were forced to defend themselves in the media. Good luck with that!
Cricket Australia also had to walk back its decision not to acknowledge Australia Day.
They’re finally getting the message.
But you and I know it’s not that easy.
Next year the push will come again, but now our opponents know we’re stronger.
So that’s why it’s time to end this debate once and for all.
It’s time we protect January 26 in legislation. Let’s make it the law that it cannot change without the people getting their say through a vote.
If the activists are so confident Australians want to change the date, let’s ask them. And if they say no, let’s put it in the law.
There’s even a Bill ready to go thanks to Henry Pike, the LNP Member for Bowman, whose Australia Day 2023 Bill will do just that.
My mates at ADVANCE have been on the front foot with a campaign to get this done.
Their supporters have already sent more than 342,000 emails to MPs requesting this legislation change.
And Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has backed it too.
So let’s get it done. Let’s protect our national day.
Because our country is worth celebrating.
Yours for REAL solutions,
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price
Senator for the Northern Territory
Dear Jacinta,
I have indeed noticed the "change in the air" over Australia Day and I was similarly disgusted by Woolworths' stupid arrogance. If I were living in Australia I would boycott Woolworths and never shop there again, however much they backtrack. I support the proposal that Australia Day not be changed from 26th January without a popular - universal suffrage - vote.
Since October last year my stance on Australia Day has been that IF it is necessary to compromise with the "change the date" lobby, the new date for Australia Day should be October 14th, commemorating the date when national sovereignty was reaffirmed with a new inclusiveness. But if it is not necessary to compromise, why change the date? Change for the sake of change?
26th January happens to be significant for Greece also. It is the date when the first governor of modern Greece, Ioannis Capodistrias, was sworn in in 1828 in Aegina and the modern Greek state established for Greeks (though not yet for the "international community" of that time). As a resident of Aegina I was pleased (semi-pleased) when ten years ago the persistence of Aeginetans in claiming recognition for 26th January was finally rewarded by a Greek presidential decree proclaiming 26th January as a national day "of local significance". To me there seemed to be some vague purpose to wishing for a common Greek and Australian effort for promotion of 26th January as an important date. main.cse-initiative.eu/?p=483
But in the meantime there have been significant developments. I don't need to tell you about the developments in Australia. In Greece the dramatic dislocations since 2020 have made "how relevant are the ideas of Capodistrias to the present day?" a question of some interest. A discussion on the subject was programmed for 26th January 2024 in Aegina. But for various reasons the event had to be postponed, and the date that was finally judged convenient was 10th February. It is entirely coincidental that this date turned out to be Capodistrias' birthday. He was born in Corfu on that date in 1776, the year when the United States of America declared its independence. His rather neglected grave is in Corfu.
Returning to Australia, Jacinta is probably right when she says "next year the push will come again", meaning that another attempt will be made to change the date of Australia's national day.
I have said before that I happen in my youth to have been in the same far-left (Trotskyist) group as Marcia Langton, one of the prime movers of the campaign for the Voice in parliament and for the push to change the date of Australia Day. It could be instructive to cast an eye on a discussion from ten years ago between Marcia and another member of the Communist League of that time, the distinguished author Peter Robb. It would also be most interesting to hear Peter Robb's views on the Voice campaign and the result of the October 14 2023 referendum.
Peter Robb's book "Lives" includes a chapter on the founder of the Communist League, the Brisbane medical doctor John McCarthy. Peter does not say anything either in "Lives" or in the online discussion with Marcia, about Marcia's relations with John McCarthy, so I am the one who will commit the indiscretion.
John is no longer in this life but tribute is paid to his work, both as a medical doctor and as a defender of Australian "first people's" rights, in the far left press, and not only there. Here is some of it: halva.proboards.com/thread/221/john-mccarthy-1948-2008
I really do think it would be valuable to obtain Peter Robb's views of the current political situation in Australia, including the implications of the Voice's defeat in the October 14 2023 referendum. One of Peter's books, "A Death in Brazil", is centred on the beginnings of the career of Brazil's current president Lula da Silva but expands into a comprehensive overview of the past and present of South America's largest nation. It would be marvellous if e.g. the Brazilian-Australian academic Augusto Zimmerman (or someone else, for heaven's sake!) could find Peter Robb and bring him into our discussion.
In the 1970s the Communist League's international leader, the Belgian economist Ernest Mandel, despite being banned from entry into either Germany or France in Europe's post-1968 crackdown against the far left, was nevertheless invited, along with John McCarthy, to a cabinet meeting of the Whitlam Labor government, at the initiative of the later governor general Bill Hayden. We are speaking of a political current now that is as dead as any extinct "first nation" tribal grouping, and I think the analogy is pertinent because both may warrant investigation. Marcia Langton has sought much more determinedly to keep alive the aspect of the past that she considers worthy of staying alive than I have tried to keep alive the memory of the 1970s groupuscule in which we both participated, but I don't think this really prevents either her or me from living in the present.
I am forwarding this, with the "Let's make it law" idea, to a few people in Australia (and New Zealand) who are more in a position than I am to help with that project.
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