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Recently, and no doubt encouraged by people who know better but still find it useful to promote fauxboriginal Bruce Pascoe and his crackpottery, up to and including installing the shameless fraud as a Melbourne University professor, the author of Dark Emu took to the opinion pages of the Nine press under the headline “Dark Discovery: European mindset of superiority continues today”. Even by his loose standards this column is a piece of work, so appalling in the paraded venom of its ignorance that Quadrant contributor Patrick McCauley was moved to take it apart, paragraph by paragraph.
Pascoe’s piffle is reproduced below in italic, with Patrick’s commentary following. — rf
_______________
“What was happening in the European mind when they built ships big enough to cross oceans? The spread of Christianity, bringing light to the dark places? Or gold? Enough gold to gild a king’s palace or a priest’s church.”
The Industrial Revolution was happening. The European mind had absorbed the Enlightenment and listened to both Locke and Hume. Royalty was being replaced and, where it continued, rising democratic sentiment was curbing its authority. Habeus Corpus, the Abolition of Slavery Bill on the high seas. It was establishing the church of England and the Protestant Reformation and reducing the powers of Rome within the Christian Churches. It was invading Ireland. It was establishing education all over the known and civilised world. The that Western world, no matter how perverted, agreed in principle to live by the Christian law — the Ten Commandments — worked into civil law and lore. The European mind survived through the Dark Ages and countless pandemics and invasions and slaughters and genocides and totalitarian barbarities. The Europeans knew barbarity well. The spread of Christianity throughout Europe and Britain and Spain was the enlightenment of the soul and the recognition of individuals as equals before God.
It was education and science which developed the big ships that sailed to the edge of the world and found strange new lands still consumed with barbarism and tribal warfare, cannibalism, infanticide and short, brutal lives.
Of course Christianity thought it had a responsibility to bring the light of self-worth, forgiveness and redemption to savage peoples entombed in terrible and existential struggles for survival. European Christians knew how to grow and harvest food, they knew how to write, read and store knowledge. And because they had the weapons to defeat primitive peoples, they were able to impose order, the first necessary requirement for civilisation to emerge.
“After Columbus and his journey to the Americas, Pope Alexander VI provided the answer in his papal bull of 1493, The Doctrine of Discovery, which deemed that Christians could lay claim to the territory of other nations on the grounds that the Indigenes did not know the name Jesus Christ. If they resisted the right of this most reasonable test, they could be justifiably killed.”
It was never that “Indigenes did not know the name of Jesus Christ”, rather that Indigenes were unconscious to the possibilities of happiness available to the individual human being — the quality of life available through love and peace and agreement and forgiveness and the consciousness of taking responsibility for oneself. The indigenes who Pascoe exalts had little personal agency in tribal societies and lived often short lives of violence and fear.
“European thought and spiritual imagination were declared superior to all others. There may have been humanitarian moves afoot in England but the result was the same, robbery under arms. So, the plunder began. And the murder. The invasions of Africa, North and South America and Asia were vicious and contemptuous.”
The ‘thought and spiritual imagination’ of Western Civilisation is there for all to see, manifest in the high-tech worlds of the greatest democracies and societies the world has ever known. Look at the US, Europe, Britain and every country which has been touched by European thought and its spiritual imagination and you will see why it is superior to all others. This is not “White Supremacy”, it is just what happened and why — the truth exemplified in the evidence. It continues to invite all races and religions and non-Christian, non-European peoples – in to share in its bounty.
“By the time the Christians reached Australia, the colonial methods were refined to a ruthless edge. Backed by both the Church and Crown, invaders felt impervious to the claims of the Indigenous population. They refused to acknowledge the rights to land and even to their humanity.”
Yet today, over 60 per cent of the Australian mainland is covered by Native Title. This was largely due to Christian intervention and the genuine desire for reconciliation. Christian settlement continually offered Aboriginal peoples ‘their humanity’. Indeed, in most ways it offered Aboriginal people more humanity than did their own tribes.
“‘Explorers’ and ‘pioneers’ saw and recorded vast croplands of tubers and grasses. They reported dams and wells, villages and roads but the pope’s bull emboldened them in the certainty that they could take anyone’s land. And life.”
Pascoe here expounds his own fake theory of Aboriginal culture’s high civilisation, evoking villages and roads and dams and crops which never existed except in the imagination of an author with an eye for the main chance and a devious gift misquoting explorers’ journals. As Peter O’Brien and others have painstakingly explained, the explorers did not record ‘vast croplands’ at all, nor villages with livestock pens. Pascoe has not revealed what animals were kept in the village pens he mentions, but give him time. By the next edition of Dark Emu he might well be telling us that Aborigines domesticated wombats. That should be enough to earn him another professorship.
Australia’s settlers were instructed from the very first that anybody found to have murdered a native would be charged, tried and, if guilty, hanged by the neck until dead. It is a lie, a flat-out, blatant and shameful lie, to say white Christian settlers were given permission to take Aboriginal lives.
“Their confidence that any un-Christian abomination would be smiled on by the church and indulged by both the state and courts allowed explorer and pastoralist Angus McMillan to kill hundreds of Aborigines in Gippsland. Of course, there were many others involved in massacres all over Australia and these massacres are well documented, but even today, some Australians confect ways of denial.”
The taking of another life is considered the greatest of mortal sins by Christians. It is the first commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’. It was certainly not Christianity which was responsible for the ‘massacres’ of Aboriginal (and white) families. Christianity hates the sin but loves the sinner. Again, from first settlement any white man convicted of killing an Aborigine was subject to the law, the punishment for which was death.
“That denial produces confidence in today’s law to turn a blind eye to deaths in custody, to people being shot in their homes in Yuendumu, to the explosion of the world’s oldest art and for the shares of the nationally respected perpetrating company to rise.”
I don’t think that there are too many Australian citizens who won’t acknowledge that there were massacres and violence in the settlement of Australia. The journey from the Stone Age to the modern world has been long and full of suffering for all. Nobody has turned a blind eye to black deaths in custody; indeed, there was a royal commission which found Aboriginal death rates to be less than that for whites. Where a blind eye is useful for the likes of Pascoe is when it suits the narrative to ignore the crimes that land perpetrators in ‘custody’ in the first place. You might have noticed, for example, that news coverage of appalling violence in too many Aboriginal communities gets far less attention than dubious claims of massacres two centuries ago.
Oddly, Pascoe also lurches into a delirious sentence in which he says “and for the shares of the national respected perpetrating company to rise”. I have no idea what this means or implies, other than that editing standards at the Age and SMH are these days nonexistent.
“The rest of the world understands Australian theft and murder, mainly because of their participation in similar acts, but in Australia, we pretend bemusement or outright hostility to the mere suggestion.”
What ‘theft’ have I, my ancestors or anyone else participated in? If we have stolen anything from the Aboriginal people it is their pre-settlement barbarity and much of their suffering. We have relieved them of a constant existential fear of starvation and hunger. We have emancipated Aboriginal women from terrible lives of brutal and violent slavery. We have offered their children education and comfort. We have given far more than we have taken.
“While the public sentiment and colloquial banter maintain that Aborigines did nothing with the land and are just lucky that Europeans turned up, then that sentiment seeps subliminally into every school, every church, every court and every employment agency.”
We all know that, far from being shunned, qualified Aborigines and those recognised as such can enjoy a rails run to any employment position they want. Here Kerryn Pholi’s Quadrant essay detailing the advantage being Aboriginal afforded her comes to mind. In regard to jobs, where there is discrimination it is of the reverse variety. Nor are Aborigines discriminated against by any church or court in the land. Does anyone seriously suggest Pascoe would have gained riches and misplaced acclaim were he recognised for what he is — a race-mongering charlatan whose only impressive attribute is his beard.
“Doesn’t our democracy look efficient when you compare it to the COVID-19 response in the rest of the world? Don’t we look peaceable when you look at the Speaker’s chair in our Parliament and see there no vandal wearing horns?”
If it’s a choice between our flawed democracy and the tribal ways of the various Aboriginal tribes (or any ‘vandal wearing horns’), I choose democracy — and so do most Aborigines. The civilised choice is the only logical choice.
“Yes, we do many things well but we are selective and most of all, we are selective about what we believe about the entry of Europeans into this continent and why they entered.”
Europeans entered this continent because it was there. Because they hoped for a better world and a better way of life. They knew that with compassion and Christian heritage, which blesses believers and others alike, it was possible to build a nation which today feeds close to 26 million people, build great cities and live comfortable civilised lives. And we did.
A while back, in a comment on a transgender discussion, someone quoted The Life of Brian (It’s symbolic of his struggle against reality), which I’ve always thought summed things up rather well. Similarly the “What have the Romans ever done for us” dialogue perhaps puts the Black Armband debate into perspective, even for a Cornishman masquerading as an Aborigine:
“REG: They’ve bled us white, the bastards. They’ve taken everything we had, and not just from us, from our fathers, and from our fathers’ fathers.
LORETTA: And from our fathers’ fathers’ fathers.
REG: Yeah.
LORETTA: And from our fathers’ fathers’ fathers’ fathers.
REG: Yeah. All right, Stan. Don’t labour the point. And what have they ever given us in return?!
XERXES: The aqueduct?
REG: What?
XERXES: The aqueduct.
REG: Oh. Yeah, yeah. They did give us that. Uh, that’s true. Yeah.
COMMANDO #3: And the sanitation.
LORETTA: Oh, yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like?
REG: Yeah. All right. I’ll grant you the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done.
MATTHIAS: And the roads.
REG: Well, yeah. Obviously the roads. I mean, the roads go without saying, don’t they? But apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct, and the roads–
COMMANDO: Irrigation.
XERXES: Medicine.
COMMANDOS: Huh? Heh? Huh…
COMMANDO #2: Education.
COMMANDOS: Ohh…
REG: Yeah, yeah. All right. Fair enough.
COMMANDO #1: And the wine.
COMMANDOS: Oh, yes. Yeah…
FRANCIS: Yeah. Yeah, that’s something we’d really miss, Reg, if the Romans left. Huh.
COMMANDO: Public baths.
LORETTA: And it’s safe to walk in the streets at night now, Reg.
FRANCIS: Yeah, they certainly know how to keep order. Let’s face it. They’re the only ones who could in a place like this.
COMMANDOS: Hehh, heh. Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh.
REG: All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?”
It makes me think that when some Green-Left government in the future changes the date of Australia Day, it should be rechristened Literacy Day, to commemorate the permanent establishment of literacy in Australia, the last of the inhabited continents to be so blessed.
It seems to me that most of Mr Pascoe’s references are “correct” insofar as the documents he refers to actually exist. What he infers from them I suppose is beyond the capacity of those of us mired in the Western tradition of “objective truth”.
I’m surprised that Mr Pascoe does not reference the legend of the young man who, caught in a storm on Mt Pilot, had secured the hem of his possum-skin cloak below his knees with leather strips. He happened to breast a ridge just as a particularly strong gust blew, thereby inventing aviation decades before the Wright brothers were born.
I think writing was first developed about 4 to 5 thousand years ago in the Middle East when people were able to give up the nomadic life, settle in permanent towns and live off agriculture. Writing then spread to the Mediterranean and Herodotus wrote his Histories 2500 years ago. Aborigines have lived here for over 60,000 years but havn’t developed any written record of how they lived or of any of the events of those 60 millennia.
How much longer must we wait for Professor Pascoe to teach us that there were in fact accomplished Aboriginal writers but their histories and literature and trade records were deliberately destroyed by early colonists who, from Port Jackson to Birdsville to Cape York to the Kimberleys, all understood the terra nullius theory of settlement in international law and didn’t want there to be any evidence of occupation of the continent by an indigenous civilisation before 1788?
What is beyond argument is the fact that thousands of years before Europeans arrived, Aboriginal people had built the world’s first skyscrapers and even fitted them with high-speed elevators. Remains of these 40-storey buildings can still be found around Lake Mungo; site of the world’s first metropolis, before it was destroyed by a comet. Pascoe will be writing about it in his upcoming title: Dark Emu, Aboriginal Architecture and the City.
Another Life of Brian cameo comes to mind. ‘If you want to be a member of the People’s Liberation Front you’ve got to really hate the Romans”. Methinks this is a case of Pascoe proving that he really hates the colonizers – a lot. He can relax. His Aboriginal credentials are safe as long as he continues to be a useful tool for the Marcia Langtons of his world – with the emphasis on tool.
Who is responsible for allowing this charlatan to peddle his shoddy historical wares?
The Academy and the media.
Refutation of his thesis in Quadrant and the pages of ‘Bitter Harvest’ is a noble exercise, but in the final analysis futile.
What has always fascinated me are the vast differences in the respective technologies of the Australian aborigines to the relatively advanced inhabitants of Papua, barely 250kms away from Australia. Torres Strait islanders notwithstanding, what was it that enabled Pascoesque permanent communities and agricultural activities to thrive in Papua but to be completely unknown beyond the Torres Strait?
Pascoe thrives because of BS like this by Academics who have no idea how much damage they are doing….
Initiative 4
The AESC will be the first convention to have a session on indigenous perspectives and contributions to Australian Earth Sciences (session titled “Australian Aboriginal history and its influence on Science”). This session (details coming soon!) will address the questions below:
a) What do we know? – Focus on indigenous people’s history, knowledge, and its impact on Science
b) What is being done (and not done)? – Focus on scientific collaborative work being done by indigenous and non-indigenous people, key issues regarding aboriginal intellectual property, inclusion of indigenous knowledge in school and university curriculum
c) What can be done (or needs to be done)? – Focus on identifying more but ethical collaborative pathways for scientific advancements, encourage awareness on importance of indigenous knowledge and include indigenous concepts in secondary and tertiary education.
More drivel at…
https://www.aesconvention.com.au/diversity/
A Catholic priest from the inner west of Sydney said that Aboriginies are closer to God.
Congratulations Patrick on joining the ranks exposing Pascoe who is followed by the gullible depriving our aborigines of their longest hunter gatherer culture.
None of us are so blind as to not see him as a Trojan Horse ‘tool'(ty Peter O’Brien’) in Wyatt’s political agenda for a ‘voice’ and eventual sovereignty and 7th State.
Bruce Pascoe is a clear fraud. Yet I continually see his book ‘Dark Emu’ at the top of Australian best seller lists. Why are so many people eager to lap up this man’s fabrications?
You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. Abraham Lincoln
Pascoe has disproved Lincoln’s maxim. The miracle of postmodernism simplifies the aphorism to, “you can fool most of the people all of the time”.
Thank God for Quadrant.
“…. Doubting Thomas – 7th February 2021
What has always fascinated me are the vast differences in the respective technologies of the Australian aborigines to the relatively advanced inhabitants of Papua…”
The Australian aborigines resistance (or blindness) to any advance in technology seems to be almost unique in the world. Indonesian sailors had apparently been visiting northern Australia for hundreds of years to trade and fish – a feat that would have required considerable skill in boat building, food and water storage, and other trades. Its possible that even ‘the wheel’ and pottery were on display, yet theres no sign that the aborigines conceived of any use for either.
Catholic priest from the inner west of Sydney said that Aborigines are closer to God”.
.
True in that they, on average, live far shorter lives than non-Aboriginal Australians, due to Aborigine-on-Aborigine violence and otherwise degenerate life-style.
It’s the Pascoe fiasco.
To Fransworth “I continually see his book ‘Dark Emu’ at the top of Australian best seller lists. Why are so many people eager to lap up this man’s fabrications?” – This surprises me too, but we may need to put it into context : 200,000 copies were sold – so maybe, let’s say, 400,000 Australian have read it? There are 800,000 ‘Aborigines’ and Australia’s pop. is 25M so it is still only a small reach to real people. In the ‘real’ world I ask as many ‘normal’ people as I meet if they have heard of Bruce Pascoe and/or Dark Emu and invariably I just get a blank stare. But I suspect every member of the intelligentsia , media, academia, schools, etc have read or heard of it and so those of us who read and consume media are easily led to believe that Pascoe’s Dark Emu has overrun Australia when that is probably not the case. Nevertheless, we do need to be concerned that this parasitic brain meme is now infecting our school kids so our fight in exposing it needs to continue. Very good article Patrick think
MungoMann: “But I suspect every member of the intelligentsia , media, academia, schools, etc have read or heard of it and so those of us who read and consume media are easily led to believe that Pascoe’s Dark Emu has overrun Australia when that is probably not the case.”
Good point.
One of the less appreciated problems with Bruce Pascoe’s nonsense is that it devalues the genuine achievements of Aboriginal people in surviving on the least hospitable continent, through ice ages and interglacials, flood and drought with only wooden and stone tools, largely cut off from the rest of the world. In this regard it is instructive to compare this situation with examples elsewhere. In the case of my ancestors in far northern Britain, they were a tribal people until about 500 years ago. Violence (clan warfare) was endemic and literacy the preserve of only aristocrats and the clergy. The list of improvements in my comments above about “what did the Romans ever do for us” could equally apply to clan Mackenzie, except that there was a much larger pool of contacts than just the Romans. Nearly every advantage that my people had resulted from ideas, technology, plants or livestock developed elsewhere, and that is really the only difference with Aboriginal people – their isolation. Although, as noted above there was intermittent contact between Aboriginal people and sailors from what is now Indonesia, this had little impact, perhaps because it represented no threat to those living on the northern coast. No threat requires no adaption. Viking raiders on the other hand…..
The other aspect of Pascoe’s presentation that is most concerning is the promotion of a victim culture. If you can blame all your problems on someone else, there is little incentive to improve your lot. It makes virtue signalers like Pascoe feel good but is absolute poison to the recipients. The result is a group of people with a motive to preserve disadvantage, and consequently to denigrate those trying to put in place actual, practical solutions. To support this contention, I see in the online Australian that Indigenous politician Jacinta Price is suing the ABC for defamation over comments by Aboriginal groups who accused her of spreading ‘racist vitriol’. I hope that it is true that Ms Price is pushing back. As one of those trying to implement practical solutions, she deserves the support of all right-thinking people. The ABC of course deserves only condemnation and defunding.
“Australia’s settlers were instructed from the very first that anybody found to have murdered a native would be charged, tried and, if guilty, hanged by the neck until dead.”
King George III himself formally instructed Arthur Phillip in 1787:
“You are to endeavour, by every possible means, to open an intercourse with the natives, and to conciliate their affections, enjoining all our subjects to live in amity and kindness with them. And if any of our subjects shall wantonly destroy them, or give them any unnecessary interruption in the exercise of their several occupations, it is our will and pleasure that you do cause such offenders to be brought to punishment according to the degree of the offence.”
To put another perspective on MungoMann’s comment, what he says is true. However the real purpose of Dark Emu, at least as far as the Aboriginal intelligentsia is concerned, is to buttress their claims for sovereignty. If it becomes accepted wisdom, via our history faculties, that Aborigines were a sedentary agricultural society, it undermines the legal basis for the colonization of Australia. Coupled with the myth of determined and prolonged aboriginal resistance (also promulgated by Pascoe) this gives crdibility to the theory that Australia was invaded. That poses all sorts of constitutional questions. That is why, eg Marcia Langton supports even though she must know it’s BS. In this context, it does not matter how many ordinary Australians have read Dark Emu. What matters is that those who shape public opinion (the ABC, educators etc etc) have read it.
There seems to be a view that Aboriginal history (whether real or fabricated) is relevant to debates about the future of persons of Aboriginal descent in Australia. There is a ferment of more-or-less scholarly activity based on this view. However underlying this view are assumptions that should be more closely examined – in particular the assumption that Aboriginal history should in some way control current government policy and legislation. Were that to happen it would be yet another example of government based on racial characteristics. That type of government really does constitute the much-decried practice of “systemic racism”. Australian governments should not be flying the Aboriginal flag on public buildings. Rather they should be insisting that history cannot be reversed, and will not be atoned for by race-based laws and administration. All current residents of Australia, whatever their grievances and whatever the supposed origin of those grievances, must accept the rule of one law, the same for all. This is not to deny the cultural importance of the study of Aboriginal history, neither is it to deny that truth matters in studying that history. But the idea that any version of Aboriginal history might influence the system of government in this country ought to be rejected out of hand. There will be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth. To counter that a strong government-sponsored campaign to educate the public about the proper basis of Australian government is long overdue.
Mungo – it’s being taught as truth in schools.
That’s where the damage is being done.
The next generation of lawyers and journalists will all believe in it.
Ian MacKenzie says:”The other aspect of Pascoe’s presentation that is most concerning is the promotion of a victim culture.” Pascoe is merely following the new fashion of academics and law reform commissions that the explanation for intractable indigenous disadvantage is what sounds like a medical diagnosis: intergenerational trauma. The rot has advanced a long way in Queensland. The Queensland Government is committed to a treaty with indigenous Queenslanders. Truth Telling and Healing is a key part of the treaty. The Government has accepted in principle the recommendation of the Eminent Panel “ That healing and reconciliation be supported through the Truth Telling process with relevant service providers auspiced to provide support to First Nations People to recover from their lived experience and impacts of intergenerational trauma”. The government’s optimism that First Nations People will, if supported by relevant service providers, be cured of perpetual victimhood and embrace personal responsibility, may very likely end up in just the usual waste of taxpayer moneys.
“Torres Strait Islanders celebrate 1st July as The Coming of the Light, a yearly holiday in the Torres Strait. One Saturday evening, 1st July 1871, the Reverend Samuel MacFarlane of the London Missionary Society anchored at Erub (Darnley Island). The Society had been active in the Southwest Pacific since the 1840’s converting people to Christianity. Dabad, a Warrior Clan Elder on Erub, “defied his Tribal Law” and openly welcomed the London Missionary Society clergymen and South Sea Islander evangelists and teachers.
“Torres Strait Islanders acknowledgment of the missionaries was the acceptance of a change that would profoundly affect every aspect of life in the Torres Strait from that time onwards. The Islanders acceptance of the missionaries and Christianity meant the end of inter island conflict. Christian principles were partly compatible with traditional religion and the missionaries gave some protection and assistance to Islanders in their contact with foreigners in the maritime industry.”
Queensland Museum
I have been suggesting Bitter Harvest for my local Hornsby library since it came out. They rejected it twice. I put in a third request and this is the response….
“Bitter Harvest Not currently available from our suppliers.”
Peter O’Brien – congratulations on selling it out!
March, I donated a copy to my local library and after a month it had still not appeared in their catalogue. I sent a letter, some weeks ago, asking why. Still no response. I must follow up on that this week. And thanks for your efforts in promoting Bitter Harvest and in this space generally.
Putting the “..what has Bruce Pascoe ever done for us…?” discussion aside for a moment; I can recall of some blunders that the colonists have done since we turned up and interrupted the tranquil indigenous suburb of Pascoeville and their pleasantry of agricultural farming habits and arguments…. Blunders, like welfare. Whose idea was that? I must admit here and now that I too in my past, have committed some terrible anthropological errors. In a bygone era, well before disasters like Greta Thunberg or a Biden Presidency, there was a question on my University enrolment application form, and it asked me “are you an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander?”. This was a challenging question and I did not want to get this question wrong, as entrance to Uni and my whole future could be critical upon this very question, so a lot of thought and analysis had to be lent upon…. I lived just around the corner from Torres Strait and there were some good aboriginal folk in the neighbourhood, so I said YES.
Next week, I was fully enrolled with a scholarship and A Deans Commendation.
See we can all make blunders.
Who was the silly bastard who introduced cats and foxes? and don’t get me started on those bloody cane toads. Which colonist stopped compulsory military service?
But the final question is; Who was the wise guy to bring in alcohol? (Well All praise to him!, because you need every last drop of it when you read Pascoe fiction !!)
Sure, Pascoe is almost entirely BS. And so are most members of the Aboriginal leadership class. Of course, so’s Paul Keating, Wayne Swan, Julia Gillard, Rudd, Shorten, Albanese. And, really, all the people in and around the ALP-unions and Greens, the ABC and SBS, and 90% of the commercial media. And most of the university people, and most of the people in the law industry. And most of the public servants, Fed, Territory, and State, in the areas of immigration/refugees, education, welfare, environment/climate and on and on. Almost all of ’em are anti-empirical woke-ists, and anti-Westernist, esp anti-Englandist. And too many Libs and Nats have imbibed the BS-suds too.
Ordinary non-whites ought to wise up, toughen-up and get some proper spox and useful politicians. Ditto ordinary whites. Furthermore, ordinary people of all colours, and that includes Muslims, ought to devote themselves to becoming self-sufficient, non-violent, and nett-contributing citizens of this Western nation -instead of being nett-consuming casual residents engaged in anti-Westernist activities. Otherwise, Australia will cease to be a Western nation, and it’ll become as bad and as backward as any of the Asian, African or Islamic one-party dictatorships. While this would suit the ALP-union people and the Greenists, it will be very unpleasant for said ordinary people, of all colours, Muslims included.
“habeus corpus” Nope. “habeAs corpus”
For Peter O’Brien and March – patrons of Brisbane City Council’s excellent library service may not be smarter than those at your local libraries but they are certainly better informed – BCC library catalogue list 8 copies of O’Brien’s book of which 7 are out on loan.
DougD,
well that’s heartening. Thank you so much for conveying this welcome news.
I think Aboriginal Australians are fully reconciled to Euro-Celtic ways (not the old ways, of course, but the modern ones). For instance, they dive after books and writing like it was going out of fashion. Perhaps Pascoe should eschew it on the grounds of its representation of ‘white’ (actually a pale beigy-brown) supremacy. Pale beigy-brown supremacy: shows it up for the joke it is.
All other peoples all over the Earth who started agriculture and villages/cities also developed numeracy and literacy, and astronomy.
But the Australian Aborigines did not.
Of course, Pascoe’s agenda and ignorance would ensure that this matter is omitted from his consideration. And Pascoe’s allies, supporters, and puppeteers -Aboriginal and otherwise- do not care about such matters.
Anyway, has any Aboriginal thinker/genius speculated about how Aborigines could have done better for themselves had their ancestors developed numeracy and literacy?
Meanwhile, why the 33Bn pa? No surplus 33Bn pa was available at any time during the 50K years -or was it 200K- years that the Aborigines were doing all that farming and village-building that Pascoe &Co. insist we believe was happening.
Note to all Aboriginal people of all ages: It is best, if one seeks to lead a flourishing life, to be realistic about Reality.
Of course, that goes for all non-Aboriginal people too, and those in between.
It is long past time when the ‘Aborigine’ should say “Thank you” to the British and ‘white’ Australians for bringing him out of a time well before the dark ages.