Lack of original content

[sabotabby]

The Pride Weekend festivities shall begin fairly soon (which means I won't be at my computer very much), but in the meantime, here's some reading material.

Many of you have heard of the latest outrage in Australia. As if the aboriginal communities there don't have enough problems, the Howard government has decided that Father Knows Best and it looks like they're gearing to revive the good ol' tradition of stealing indigenous kids from their families and such.

ironed_orchid has a link round-up. It's some very disturbing stuff.

First, the good news: They might close down Gitmo. The bad news? You know they'll come up with something worse. (Hat tip: jhfurnish.)

The CIA is finally going to tell you about the nasty shit it did a few decades ago. The nasty shit it's doing now is still classified, sorry. (Hat tip: jamie_miller.)

Call-out for the Second Carnival of Radical Action.

zingerella wants your opinion on ideological purity in the feminist movement.

Comments

[nom-de-grr.livejournal.com]

Wow, I wonder if this will raise the shitstorm that the Church Committee did when COINTELPRO was revealed. This sort of dirty tricks stuff always makes for some tittilating reading.

And closing Gitmo is definitely ONLY a PR move. How many off the books secret prisons exist that serve exactly the same purpose?

[sabotabby]

Lots. And they can always find new ones.

[elgordochico.livejournal.com]

Australian government makes me sick. The notorious Australian detention center called Woomera served as a model for Gitmo in its treatment and practices of innocents. In a country that big, I always wondered what made them so maliciously anti-humanitarian.

[sabotabby]

I don't know. I mean, to some extent, any country founded on colonialism and subjugation of an indigenous population is going to have baggage. But Australia's government seems to go out of its way to be vicious.

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

I mean, to some extent, any country founded on colonialism and subjugation of an indigenous population is going to have baggage.

I think this makes a lot of sense. I've never been to Australia, politcally and culturally they seem to not be too out of sync with America. They seem to have a individualistic "cowboy" idea of themselves.

No wonder they were the only ones (along with Thailand and So. Korea) to send troops to Vietnam when the U.S. asked them too.

[sabotabby]

I don't know; all but one of the Australians I know don't fit the stereotype at all. But that goes for most of the Americans I know too.

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

I would posit that is because you have good taste in the friends you make. Or that disparity in experience might exist because I live in Nevada where rednecks and cretins abound.

[elgordochico.livejournal.com]

That's because the rule of scales apply to human beings. The rule of scales in physics, for instance, says that Newton's first rule of motion break down at subatomic distances. Similarly, I'd suggest the same can be said about individuals and their social groups. The generalization we have of people in groups does not necessarily apply to people when they are in isolation. There is always that chance that they do, though, which is what makes life so difficult.

[elgordochico.livejournal.com]

The political culture of any country is different than individuals, in my view. It embodies both the best and the worst aspects of a cultural group's idea of itself. In this case, the Australian politicians are probably invoking the "prison island" archetype of Australia and viewing the immigrants with a prisoner's disdain and pessimism about human nature. They might be saying to themselves, at a deep level, "If they want to come here, they must have done something wrong. Therefore, they deserve what we do to them." In comparison, here in US most people frame the immigrant experience to themselves in a positive, businesslike way. "If they want to come here, we must be doing something right." However, the race of the immigrants play a HUGE role in all this. Everyone can see the only reason Australia is excluding immigrants is because they are not white. They wouldn't get the same treatment if they were like the whites from South Africa, who were given right to Aussie citizenship when they fled in the early 90s after the fall of apartheid regime. That's very telling in my view.

[esizzle.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the links to good news. Well, as close to good news as news gets these days, anyway! Sounds like you're still having a busy time, though :)

[sabotabby]

It looks to be a wild weekend.