Blood on the Wattle

I have just finished Blood on the Wattle by Bruce Elder, a history of the mistreatment and slaughter of the Australian Aborigines. Of course we all know that the Aborigines met much the same fate as American Indians. But Elder's book makes it clear that it was much worse than anyone imagined. This is true because no records were kept of how many natives were slaughtered. Elder mentions several named massacres, but it is quite clear from his account that many more such massacres occurred and were never accounted for. Furthermore, when the Australian settlers weren't engaging in outright massacres they were just routinely hunting and killing Aborigines indiscriminatly. Men, women, and children were mercilessly slaughtered even when they were completely innocent of any wrongdoing. Ranchers would go out specifically to hunt and kill natives, no records were ever kept, very rarely was anyone punished for killing them. On the one occasion when a particularly brutal massacre occurred several whites were actually hanged for their participation. All this accomplished was to make it common knowledge that if you kept secret your raids and killings nothing would happen to you. Indeed, they started insisting that those who were about to participate in slaughtering natives must first take an oath of secrecy. It was understood on the outback frontier that killing natives was perfectly acceptable even though technically British law forbade such a thing. British law was regarded as a joke by those interested in usurping land and protecting their flocks and herds. Elder has done a fine job in putting together bits and pieces of this dismal period of history, a history of the non-stop slaughter of innocent men, women, and children from 1788 right on up to the 1920's and probably beyond. Although these early Australian settlers tried as hard as they could to kill all the natives, and total genocide was their stated goal, the country proved too large and the native population too resilient to be completely destroyed like the Tasmanians. Thus Australia continues to have "an Aboriginal problem."

Apparently all of the Democratic candidates (except Kucinich, who is much more intelligent than the rest) want to spend more money on the military. I regard this as either a form of collective insanity or a confession that they want to further support the military/industrial/political complex that is now in charge of our country. What else can they possibly be thinking? We already spend more money on the military than all the rest of the world combined. What is it we need so despertely that we don't have (other than some form of true leadership)? Where is the threat so great that even more of our national treasure has to be committed? Who is it that is about to attack us, other, perhaps, than a handful of terrorists who will not be deterred by more battleships, tanks, nuclear bombs, or whatever. Those things don't work too well against box cutters and individual terrorists. This military obsession we seem to have is just that, an obsession, with no basis in reality whatsoever. Kucinich says he would cut the military budget by 25%. I bet you could cut it a great deal more and do nothing to reduce our actual ability to defend our country. So do Democrats secretly believe in an American Empire such that we will pre-emptively attack anyone and everyone until we control the entire planet? Why else would we need such an enormous military machine? The fact is, we don't need it for defense, we need it for Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Electric, the Carlyle Group, and so on. I fear it's true, the Democrats are just as much involved in this obscene system as Republicans. We need to throw them all out and start over again. Fat chance!

Yes, I considered the idea that Rove is pretending to hate Hillary in order to get more liberals to vote for her and thus insure her candidacy so that Republicans could easily defeat her. After thinking about his attitude towards Democrats in general, I concluded that he probably really does hate her. Perhaps I am wrong. But I don't believe Rove is just a simple political consultant who just honestly offers his opinion. He wants to roviate her and if by doing so he helps insure her candidacy what will he have lost? Either way he wins. Besides, given the Republican record of blatantly stealing elections, if the fix is in again it won't matter who the Democratic candidate is.

LKBIQ:
"The best thing that can be done is to shoot all the blacks and manure the ground with their carcasses."
William Cox, Australian landowner, 1824 (quoted in Elder 1988:42)