Superfluous People
For today’s post I’m borrowing a theme from Turgenev, specifically from The Diary of a Superfluous Man. As readers of Turgenev will know, much of his fiction is associated with…
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April 1, 2011
The life of a culture depends on its transmission across generations
Following is the second installment of David Harrison’s story from member of the ‘new’ stolen generation to disaffected adult to fully fledged social activist. Over to David breaking the connection…
March 20, 2011
The `Stolen Generations’ and Cultural Genocide
Mr David Harrison is a member of the ‘new’ stolen generation and a former colleague from Canberra. I asked David a while ago if he would write a piece about…
March 16, 2011
Accountability / Australian Federal Police / Commonwealth Government / Corruption / Culture / Hypocrisy / NSW Police / Rule of Law / Uncategorized
Mr Commissioner Hypocrisy doesn’t equal integrity
As part of the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Additional estimates for 2006–2007, held in February 2007, Senator Evans put the following question on notice to…
March 8, 2011
Accountability / Corruption / Culture / Discrimination/Racism / Equality of opportunity / Human Rights / Hypocrisy / Rule of Law
Some uncomfortable parallels between Mubarak’s Egypt and contemporary Australia
Mr Paulo Flores is today’s guest poster on Blak and Black. Paulo is a European trained and qualified Psychologist, Lawyer, Mediator and Human Rights Activist. He is currently working in…
February 25, 2011
Shades of hypocrisy
Some observations on the realities of being and Aborigine in 21stcentury Australia by an observer who isn’t. One of my piano teachers was the sole child of Polish Holocaust survivors.…
January 22, 2011
Will Australia ever move from Black and White to the Grey that sits between?
I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by…
January 19, 2011
A blast in a bin; corruption holds sway
While strolling along the foreshore of Botany Bay today I spotted a Kingfisher. In Classical Greek mythology "Halcyon" is associated with the Kingfisher. There was an ancient belief that the…
January 14, 2011
Accountability / Corporate responsibility / Corruption / Culture / Discrimination/Racism / Equality of opportunity / Human Rights / Hypocrisy / Law Enforcement / Respect / WA Police
Racism takes many forms
Kevin Spratt, an Aboriginal man from Western Australia, was tasered up to 41 times in a week and went to hospital with fractures, a collapsed lung and a dislocated shoulder…
December 11, 2010
The Mirrors
As society becomes more narcissistic, as we push ourselves harder and harder in the name of status at the expense of everything else, society starts heading towards the unknown. It…
November 22, 2010
Music gives a soul to the Universe
After plumbing the depths of human depravity in my last few posts, I thought it’s time for a little soul food, or at least soul hors d'oeuvres. Ah that’s the…
October 16, 2010
Art the soul of life!
My approach to life owes much to Lao Tzu’s maximum: “Live life in all possible ways; don't choose one thing against the other, and don't try to be in the…
October 16, 2010
The subtleties of genocide
Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot and Joseph Stalin were at best clumsy amateurs when it came to genocide. If a political group wants to rid itself of a troublesome ethnic minority,…
September 26, 2010
Art and the sacred in Aboriginal Society
While traditional and authentic Aboriginal culture in South-Eastern Australia went into terminal decline with the arrival of European settlers in 1788, the Aboriginal tribes of Arnhem Land in the north-eastern…
September 20, 2010