"He was a remarkably effective prime minister for a while. The most difficult time was in 1997 and, to give credit to the government, they tightened the supervision over th ...
January 30, 2013
Thus Friend comforted me. I took great comfort from his counsel, and it seemed to me, indeed that he knew at least more than Reason did. But before he had finished his argument, which agreed strongly with me, Sweet Thought, and Sweet Talk came back, and from then on they stayed close to me and hardly ever left me afterward. But they did not bring Sweet Looks; I did not ...
January 24, 2013
I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves — this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in ...
January 23, 2013
It is sillier than the vain futile cawing of a senseless crow to try to talk to others about one’s own deep sorrow! (Wakayama Bakusai (1885-1928) trans. Robert Wood Clack) On Sunday afternoon while painting at Palm Beach, I received an email from my good friend Mr Julian Moti QC, the former Attorney-General of the Solomon Islands. Attached to Julian’s e-mail was one he had received from his friend and former ...
January 22, 2013
#IdleNoMore is a growing movement of indigenous activism that started with Canada's First Nations taking a stand against a long history of systematic, institutionalized abuse from the Canadian authorities. ...
January 13, 2013
”Quite often before they get there they have done something quite serious. It becomes quite difficult because the offending behaviour is the first point that you’ve got to address and you can’t say that just because someone is Aboriginal they are excused from any criminal behaviour. Clearly that doesn’t work. You have to go back earlier, to why they are offending in the first place.” Chief Justice Terrence ...
January 7, 2013
With the Inauguration of President Obama for his second term fast approaching (20 January, 2013) it is worth considering just how far the United States and indeed the West has fallen from the lofty ideals that underpin the West’s claim to moral, if no longer financial and technological, supremacy. This West’s claim to moral superiority has again been put to the test and has again been found wanting. I’m referring ...
January 5, 2013
Liberté, égalité, fraternité; the national motto of France, indeed the emphasis on Fraternité during the French Revolution led Olympe de Gouges, a contemporary French playwright, political activist and journalist, to write the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen shortly after the French constitution of 1791 was created. She was alarmed that the constitution, which was to promote equal suffrage, did not address, nor even consider, women’s ...
January 2, 2013
I couldn’t resist writing this post. I just couldn’t. Because since well before the whole Destroy the Joint thing has started, Blak and Black has been fighting to draw attention to the plight of Ms. King, Australia’s most senior Indigenous female banking executive who was indecently assaulted in broad daylight in the political heart of the Australian Capital Territory, also know as Canberra in 2005. What happened to Ms. King ...
December 10, 2012
“No-one ever argues that governments should have less integrity, that elected officials should not be accountable, or that public servants should behave unethically. Broad statements of the value of integrity, transparency, accountability and ethics gain general agreement from all sides of politics and from all participants in public debate. But government integrity demands more than general expressions of goodwill. Enhancing transparency and accountability requires supportive structures as well as declarations ...
December 6, 2012
Let us venture to advance another truth, a truth useful to the Minister himself. There exists among the officers of the Marine, an intractable esprit de corps, a pretended point of honour, equally false and arrogant, which leads them to consider as an insult to the whole navy, the discovery of one guilty individual. This inadmissible principle, which is useful only to insignificance, to intrigue, to people the least worthy ...
November 29, 2012
…believing that the ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole cause of public calamities and of the corruption of governments, have determined to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, inalienable, and sacred rights of man…Men are born and remain free and equal in rights… These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression… Declaration of the Rights of Man and the ...
November 29, 2012
YINDJIBARNDI ABORIGINAL CORPORATION MEDIA STATEMENT—Thursday 29 November 2012 http://yindjibarndi.org.au/ YINDJIBARNDI WANT SOLUTION TO FMG DEBACLE Yindjibarndi Elder Bruce Woodley joins Sue Singleton, Brad Goode and Kerry Savas in telling the ‘inconvenient’ truth about Fortescue’s (FMG) behind-the-scenes tactics to divide Yindjibarndi society and destroy our culture. We thank him for his courage, as we do the others, and all those who might follow. We especially hope that Bruce’s peers ...
November 25, 2012
On Wednesday, November 21, the NSW Police arrested a man at Gosford train station for assaulting two people on a train. During that trip it is alleged that the man interfered with a 14 year old boy and a 44 year old woman whose breast he had grabbed. The offender has been charged with two counts of indecent assault. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Which makes me ask, why has ...
November 21, 2012
Last week one comment on twitter to some of the Blak and Black crew resulted in considerable discussion about the underlying intent of this wee blog. The commenter, apparently thinking that Bakchos was proselytizing in his post A Hypocrite for a Prime Minister, a Hypocrite for a Chief Minister, fired off this somewhat surprising reply: Some of the crew were online at the time and promptly replied to the ...
November 15, 2012
The announcement of a Royal Commission into child abuse by clergy is as big an issue as was the Wood Royal Commission into police corruption, if not bigger. This is no ordinary review of process or legality, but a direct attack on the primacy of religious and canon law over that of the state. Such a thing would never have happened a century ago, because the place of the church ...
November 13, 2012
Each man reaches perfection by doing his own duty; he worships god – from whom all beings come, by whom this universe was stretched forth – by doing his appointed work, with no desire for reward. You must do the work for its own sake and not for anything that it may bring to you. When pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat are the same to you, ...
November 10, 2012
A couple of weeks ago Mr. Julian Moti QC kindly pointed me toward a paper about the marginalization and usury of black women in the industrial age. Discussing the circumstances of the effective enslavement of Saartjie Baartman, also known as the Hottentot Venus and Truganini, Tasmania’s presumed last full-blood Aborigine, the paper investigated the means by which black women were dehumanized to become “black things”. The paper concluded with a ...
November 8, 2012
Lady, lady, hear her shout The black thing no-one sees about Lady, lady, on your knees Where white man says you must always be. Lady, lady, don’t you know You’re no more free than that nigger Truth Learn your place, and bow ’fore we The white ones with the power of sleaze! My full name is ...
November 1, 2012
Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation—BULLETIN http://yindjibarndi.org.au/ Wednesday 31 October 2012 No amount of corporate spin, bulldust or threats can save Fortescue Metals Group (FMG) from the continuing revelations of whistleblowers and freedom on information documents that show the under-handed tactics and bullying they ply for profit. * Today Solicitor Kerry Savas, who spent more than a year representing the interests of the splinter Wirlu-murra Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation, told The National Indigenous Times that the ...
October 11, 2012
Misogyny is a nasty word. It implies much more than sexism; it indicates a hatred of women. That’s why, in the overall view of the current political debates I must rise to the defence of the Opposition Leader Tony Abbott. I do not perceive that he hates women, although his views on gender equality and marriage rights may not align with mine. Alan Jones, similarly, I do not believe to ...
Design by ITS
