 |
|
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
|
| Post subject: |  |
|
| Morrigu wrote: | This here's the wattle, the emblem of our land. You can stick it in a bottle, you can hold it in your hand.
Forget the motherland..........
  |
You feeling less Irish today ? 😉
Seriously, though, this is not about Britain. It's about Australia and why it is what it is. It started with a legacy and because of the way our ancestors developed that legacy it did not become Zimbabwe, or South Africa, or Indonesia. Britain is not really relevant to the matter, except it was the parent of a nation, now long adult, that grew up well because of its own energies and because it took what was best in its past and planted it -through immense struggle - amid the grey gums and the spinifex. Those proud, spade-bearded men and tough colonial women we see in the sepia pictures - some of whom are my ancestors from Devon and Dublin - did embrace the wattle and they deserve to be remembered as a lot more than invaders by people who live amid the prosperity, liberty and advantage they secured.
_________________
Two more flags before I die! |
|
|
|
 |
think positive 
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
|
| Post subject: | |
|
Where abouts in Devon?
I was born in Ilfracombe
_________________
You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
|
|
|
|
Morrigu 
Joined: 11 Aug 2001
|
| Post subject: | |
|
BUT Mug IMHO they were invaders in the true sense of the word - " an army or country that uses force to enter and take control of another country"
Had this been a country without people then different - BUT there was already people inhabiting this country and force was used to take control. If I was an indigenous Australian I would most certainly see it as Inavsion Day.
I agree with suggestions that "Australia Day" should be the day the Australia Act was passed in 1986!
That way people can remember and celebrate what they believe and feel has made this country what it is including the ancestors as you described, the indigenous population and the plethora of migrants who call Australia home
You may disagree but I think the current date is actually diminishing the legacy of what the first white people did achieve in making this country great.
_________________
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” |
|
|
|
|
HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| You and I are on the same wavelength, Morrigu. |
|
|
|
|
Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| think positive wrote: | Where abouts in Devon?
I was born in Ilfracombe |
Tavistock. Lovely spot though, Ilfrcombe. Very picturesque.
_________________
Two more flags before I die! |
|
|
|
|
Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| Morrigu wrote: | BUT Mug IMHO they were invaders in the true sense of the word - " an army or country that uses force to enter and take control of another country"
Had this been a country without people then different - BUT there was already people inhabiting this country and force was used to take control. If I was an indigenous Australian I would most certainly see it as Inavsion Day.
I agree with suggestions that "Australia Day" should be the day the Australia Act was passed in 1986!
That way people can remember and celebrate what they believe and feel has made this country what it is including the ancestors as you described, the indigenous population and the plethora of migrants who call Australia home
You may disagree but I think the current date is actually diminishing the legacy of what the first white people did achieve in making this country great. |
Feel free to disagree, that's what this board is about. If you disgree with me it is either because we value different things or I am not making my argument well enough. Of course they were invaders technically, as were the various inter-tribal warriors who ranged across Aboriginal Australia. Aboriginal Australia was an interesting set of micro-cultures, important in the identity of this land, and eventually history overtook it, as it has most cultures since time began. Aboriginal tribes frequently invaded one another, as far as we can tell. Were those invasion days too ? Or is that term simply an attempt to claw sectional power in this century through a dodgy, anhistoric and simplistic narrative ?
If you want to describe it as an invasion you can, because in one sense it was. The point, however, is that this aspect is only the most important thing about it to a small section of the population. The migrants who came here afterward did not come for Aboriginal culture, interesting and significant though it is. They came for democracy, the rule of law, liberty, free speech and the modern legacies built by Australians from the British constitution. I suspect those who still have an historical memory of why they came here will recognize why 26 January matters immensely. 1986 was an administrative and bureaucratic technicality. Call it lawyer's day, if it is worthy of commemoration, for it changed nothing important in practice.
The Han consolidation in China and the Norman invasions of England were also invasions. So, of course were many US settlements. None of those countries are so cringeing as to define a key national day as "invasion day". It's far too reductive for a mature nation. Anyway, no opinions were harmed in the making of this thread, more's the pity, and it's time to retire. Australia will still be here tomorrow, fortunately, lying amid the luxury of its ill-gotten gains.
_________________
Two more flags before I die! |
|
|
|
|
5150 
Joined: 31 Aug 2005
|
| Post subject: | |
|
Well said Mugwump.
Agree 99% - just waiting for the balance of my ill-gotten gains, the Nigerian Business man has said the cheque is in the mail. |
|
|
|
|
pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| Mugwump wrote: | | David wrote: | | Mugwump wrote: | | David wrote: | Orwell's formulation was a simple statement of fact, of the way things are in all societies. We are not talking about the erasure of history in any way, shape or form, however; one presumes that 1788 will still be taught in school textbooks! Likewise, any political action (of which maintaining the status quo is very much one) is a form of "experimenting with the future". I'm not sure why you're suggesting that these are things only people of certain political ideologies or agendas are trying to do.
I don't necessarily disagree with your assertion of the fundamental importance of 1788 on shaping Australia as we know it today (though a lot has happened in the intervening period, needless to say would we still point to 1066 or the earlier Saxon or Roman conquests as the key moment in British history?). Whether it should be celebrated as our national day is, naturally, an entirely separate question. We don't get to choose our history, but we do get to choose which parts of it we especially cherish. |
You are not erasing the event as a day, but y abolishing its observance you are presumably imposing a narrative of shame and disgrace upon it, and for the reasons I have explained above, I think that is an act which forgets the defining elements that emerged specifically from that settlement. I think it is interesting that the accommodative and constructive suggestion of a day to acknowledge and appreciate indigenous Australians is met instead with a demand to ban the observance of a day marking the epochal British settlement. It's a strange totalist mindset, imposing a very simplistic narrative on our history. |
Again, this is such extreme language: "imposing a narrative"; "ban"; "totalist". Is anyone proposing that you be legally blocked from firing up the barbecue and singing the anthem on the 26th, if that date still holds resonance for you in the future? Was a narrative of shame imposed on God Save the Queen when it ceased to be our national anthem?
I dare say that, once it has ceased to be our national day, the anniversary of the landings will be treated much the same in its future as it is now: as a day with important but problematic associations. If anything, it might liberate it from some of the angst and negativity that surround it right now. |
Ban, dethrone, abolish, de-recognise : choose the word you will. I would say that "Invasion Day" is many times more extreme and simplistic. The point is that it is our national day today, and has been for many years - and because of an imposed association with shame and disgrace, it would cease to be. As, I gather, would Christmas and Easter cease to be national days in your new order.
If you think Orwell was simply chatting about "facts" then you either need to read the book again, or you're surely being disingenuous. The Marxists fight over this stuff because they know that it helps to anchor a people to memories that have political meaning.
God Save the Queen was rightly replaced as our national anthem because it was already the national anthem of another country. Australian symbols and commemorations should recognise the uniqueness of Australia's historic experience - such as the transformational and defining event that occurred on the 26th January. I know that the Leftists want young Australians to not be taught, and thus to forget, the legacy of the common law and liberty of the subject, constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy, and the roots of their freedom. So would I if I wanted to create new men fit to live in their state-controlled, semi-literate, culturally denatured country; a country which will doubtless prove unable to defend itself when history's gangsters come knocking, as they surely will, eventually. People and places which can be taught that they were founded on illegitimacy will make fine slaves for new overlords. |
That's worse than me on a bender!
https://youtube.com/watch?v=RVmG_d3HKBA
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
|
|
|
|
Morrigu
Joined: 11 Aug 2001
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| Mugwump wrote: | | Feel free to disagree, that's what this board is about. If you disgree with me it is either because we value different things or I am not making my argument well. |
To be honest I really don't care much either way and as such shouldn't have been so flippant as some people obviously do care - lo siento!
_________________
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
Last edited by Morrigu on Mon Nov 28, 2016 9:47 pm; edited 1 time in total |
|
|
|
|
stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
|
| Post subject: | |
|
Invade
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/invade
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/invade
You could force fit the definition of "Invade" to suit the narrative, but it doesn't work for me.
The Aboriginals may have had occupancy, but they were a disjointed collection of stone age tribes. The continent was occupied on the principle of terra nullius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_nullius which in the thinking of the time was a reasonable assertion as in the view of Europe at the time, the land had "never been subject to the sovereignty of any state, or over which any prior sovereign has expressly or implicitly relinquished sovereignty. Sovereignty over territory which is terra nullius may be acquired through occupation"
A few legal decisions since then have changed that, but hindsight on legality doesn't change intention.
The English were pretty good colonisers, known to do treaties with local chiefs rather than invade and wipe out civilisations like the Spanish.
The Aboriginals weren't a nation, they weren't invaded.
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
|
|
|
|
Pies4shaw 
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| Cooper v Stuart. Anyone? |
|
|
|
|
Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| 5150 wrote: | Well said Mugwump.
Agree 99% - just waiting for the balance of my ill-gotten gains, the Nigerian Business man has said the cheque is in the mail. |
If you send him your bank account details he'll send you New Zealand as well. He knows someone who died in a car crash and left it to your wife's goldfish.
_________________
Two more flags before I die! |
|
|
|
|
pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| stui magpie wrote: | | The Aboriginals weren't a nation, they weren't invaded. |
That's horribly trivial, although that is perhaps your point (i.e., the other side is using trivial, ahistorical definitions, but we can all play silly buggers like that).
My view is we can only ever supersede these old nonsense back-and-forths; I couldn't even be bothering arguing them anymore. We will never ever ever satisfy or resolve them.
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
|
|
|
|
Pies4shaw
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
|
| Post subject: | |
|
Except, I suppose, that the High Court (hardly - and let's be quite blunt - a left-leaning institution) has expressly found that old colonial nonsense to be legal nonsense, as well.
Which, of course, was the point of mentioning Cooper v Stuart. In that case, the Privy Council in 1889 peddled Stui's line. It's not been the law of our country (although it probably remains the law of the other country that, in the respectful view of quite a few of our indigenous fellow-Australians, perpetrated the invasion and genocide) since 1992. |
|
|
|
|
Skids 
Quitting drinking will be one of the best choices you make in your life.
Joined: 11 Sep 2007
Location: Joined 3/6/02 . Member #175
|
| Post subject: | |
|
<snip please don't copy and paste articles here without attribution.>
_________________
Don't count the days, make the days count. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You cannot download files in this forum
|
|
The Rules
FAQ
Usergroups
Calendar
Search
Log in
Register
