Cut & Paste
27 11 08
In an unusual marketing move to promote his movie, Australia, Baz Luhrmann brands Barack Obama the rabbit-proof president:
THE president-elect of the United States is 47. If he (were) living in Australia, it is absolutely credible that the government, because he had one white parent and one black parent, could have taken him forcibly from his family. They would have put him in an institution, probably lied to him that his parents were dead, changed his name and reprogrammed him to be European, so he could have some sort of function doing something of service in white society. That would possibly have been Obama's journey.
Andrew Bolt on his Herald Sun blog asks Baz Luhrmann:
PLEASE name a single child stolen from a Kenyan immigrant and his white wife on the grounds that their son was Aboriginal.
Movie shock our Nicole, victim of stolen generations
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The movie is about authentic a portrayal of Australia, as are the Boab Trees that feature through out the movie,I hope Baz Luhrmann did not give them so much exposure because he was of the belief that they were Australian native trees.
I am sure it will do well in California and parts of Eurabia.
Its not all bad: Wait till it comes out on DVD (in a few weeks I am sure) and turn the sound down and watch some simply stunning scenery.
Oh by the way,it is true the Japanese did bomb Darwin during WW2.
Baz Luhrmann's Australia slammed by US critics
Andrew Bolt
Herald Sun
28jun06
HOW odd to read a letter from Professor Robert Manne in this paper on Monday claiming I was a "coward" and a "hypocrite" for refusing to debate him.
Surprised, because it was five years ago that I turned down his only known invitation to do just that.
He'd wanted me to help promote an essay of his, which attacked me at length -- but without me having the chance to read it first.
Since then, of course, I've debated him on the ABC and in print here, especially over his baseless claim that this country "stole" 25,000 Aboriginal children from their parents for purely racist reasons.
Yesterday, I got him on 3AW for another debate, which showed just why I don't fear debating him at all on this.
You see, there is one great, gaping absence in all the arguments he's produced in more than five years of digging. Let the transcript of yesterday's debate tell the tale.
Bolt: You are the nation's foremost scholar, allegedly, on the "stolen generations". You have said more than anyone else. In fact, you got a $50,000 grant from the taxpayers to write about the "stolen generations" . . .
After years and years of research and grants, of that 25,000 ("stolen" children), I won't ask you to name 25,000, I won't ask you to name 2000, I won't ask you to name 1000. I won't ask you to name 100 kids that were genuinely stolen for racist reasons or even 25. I'll just ask you, can you name just 10? Just 10?
Manne: I can send you material, I can send you material, Andrew, if you're interested.
Bolt: Name them. Just name them.
Manne: Just listen for a sec. You never listen. The policy started in the late 1890s, a man called Walter Roth in north Queensland. I have the names of, I would say, 200 children that he took . . .
Bolt: But can you name for me now 10 names.
Manne: I don't have the names in front of me because they're names -- usually they're names given by the colonial authorities . . .
Let me sum up. The leading propagandist of the "stolen generations" still cannot name even 10 of the 25,000 Aboriginal children who were allegedly stolen for racist reasons. The best he can do is promise to send me a list he's now found of children allegedly taken by one man more than a century ago.
Yes, he's named a few victims in the past -- such as Lorna Cubillo, whose claim to have been stolen was dismissed by the Federal Court when she was found to have actually been taken in by missionaries, aged eight, after being abandoned in the bush with no adult looking after her.
Manne also defended activist Lowitja O'Donoghue, only to then find her telling me she hadn't been stolen after all, but sent to a home by her father.
And he once said the Northern Territory was the place where "child removal (was) conducted more systematically, or tenaciously, than" anywhere else. But then the Federal Court ruled, in its "stolen generations" test case, that the "evidence does not support the finding that there was any policy of removal of part-Aboriginal children, such as that alleged by the plaintiffs".
Ask yourself: If the greatest expert in the "stolen generations" still cannot name even 10 truly stolen children after years of looking, what must we conclude about this myth? emphasis added by ANV
How about another musical called The Heiner affair, starring none other than Australia's # 1 sorry man himself, Australia's PM & Dear Leader Kevin 07 Rudd ?
Horror of sexual abuse among children
Caroline Overington
The Australian
November 27, 2008
THE rape of toddlers by other children is commonplace in Aboriginal communities and, in one case, a girl was attacked so violently she has to wear a colostomy bag.
One boy showed pornographic DVDs to other children so they could re-enact the scenes, and another, aged 11, gave a sexually transmitted disease to two preschool girls.
As well, packs of boys aged as young as 10 raped drunk Aboriginal women who had collapsed in the street.
The gruesome details, provided in an Australian Crime Commission report released yesterday, are matched by the insouciance of the mothers, with one saying that as she had to put up with abuse, why shouldn't her daughter. Another said she had been abused 37 years ago, when "Aboriginal law had started breaking down".
The author of the report, Wendy O'Brien, says there is virtually no academic material acknowledging the existence of children sexually abusing other children. Evidence is drawn from testimony to various inquiries into Aboriginal issues and from the courts, where children end up when caught and prosecuted.
Dr O'Brien's report is essentially a review of this material, plus newspaper reporting, with some academic input.
The report says there is an "urgent need for increased studies on young children engaging in problem sexual behaviour" to overcome "what amounts to silence around this issue".
Reports of sexual abuse by children are met with "shock and denial".
Research suggests that young perpetrators have often been abused themselves.
South Australian child welfare expert Freda Briggs is quoted as saying: "When a child abuses others, inquiries should be made as to how the abuser learned what to do. It is possible that the behaviour was learned from personal experience, or from pornography.
"When a female child is involved in sexual behaviour with older boys, it is sometimes found that she imitates the sexual behaviour, having learned it from being abused herself."
Dr O'Brien's report cites a Northern Territory study that concluded that "everything we have learned convinces us that (this is a symptom of) the breakdown of Aboriginal culture and society".
Children are socialised in an environment that accepts sexual and physical violence.
"This acceptance has now been normalised and crossed generations," the review says.
Young girls see abuse as inevitable, and "they simply believe resistance is futile".
The report says animals are also among the victims.
"Each major jurisdictional taskforce or inquiry report into violence indicates some level of concern about this issue," it says.
The recent NSW Aboriginal child sexual assault taskforce reported that sibling sexual abuse was rife.
The NT board of inquiry report into Aboriginal communities identified "sex between children" and "children's exposure to sexual activity" as problems, and said "many sexual offenders were, in fact, children themselves, and some of these offenders were female children".
That inquiry heard of a 12-year-old boy interfering with a three-year-old, a 13-year-old boy interfering with a five-year-old and a 15-year-old interfering with a three-year-old.
In Brisbane, Dr O'Brien's review identified a four-year-old boy raped by two 10-year-old boys; and in central Queensland, a three-year-old was raped by two juvenile males and an adult.
She cites an 11-year-old-boy in Balgo, NSW, forcing two preschool girls into having sex with him, infecting both with disease.
Then there was the gang-rape of a 10-year-old girl at Aurukun, and repeated sexual assault on an 11-year-old boy by a gang of children who spent their days watching pornography and smoking marijuana.
The review quotes Griffith University associate professor Stephen Smallbone as saying this kind of behaviour is "not unexpected in communities where there is an absence of authority".
There are also reports of informal or formal prostitution -- exchanging sex for money or goods, including alcohol.
It quotes a remote-area nurse in the NT as saying children are "vulnerable and desperate and they crave things they do not get at home, such as love, attention and material goods".