The Voice is purely an advisory board and will not have powers to veto laws, though they are supposedly able to influence legislation. Supposedly.
The Voice would be an elected group charged with advocating Indigenous interests to Parliament, but would not have a vote on laws. In other words, a snow job, a charade, a sham that purports to be democratic and dissimulates endorsement of the will of the Aboriginal people, but does no such thing. One and the same as the rest of Parliament, and the Australian "Democracy" with respect to the will of the Australian: it's a total betrayal. The will of the Australian people is irrelevant to the Australian government and has absolutely no bearing on policy.
Long-term activist and elder Gary Foley, who co-founded Canberra’s Aboriginal Tent Embassy in 1972, has said, “I want you to think; think before you vote. Make sure that you’re not being manoeuvred into a position of being complicit in the latest of a long line of cosmetic bullshit measures that will achieve nothing in the way of justice [for Aboriginal people].”
Victorian Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe told the crowd [at Melbourne’s Invasion Day rally] Australia had been at war with Aboriginal people since 1788.
“What do we have to celebrate in this country? Do we want to become advisors now? Do we want to become an advisory body to the colonial system?”
In Sydney, Gomeroi man Ian Brown said he had no trust in a Voice to parliament because it would be “another formal process of government not listening to mob”.
Activist co-organiser of Melbourne’s Invasion Day rally and Victorian Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe's sister, Meriki Onus says. "If people don’t trust Voice, it’s because they don’t trust governments."
And neither should anyone ever again.
First nations are being used as proxies by global oiler banker corporation oligarchs, for whom the Australian government truly works and whose interests government only ever serves.
This Voice malarkey simply creates another government department needing more government officers and administration and bureaucracy. It co-opts some Aboriginals into the government to give the government a veneer of legitimacy in its rulings on indigenous Australians, however phoney and thin. It is a far simpler job to deceive the few government-captured Aborigines from the city with an urban middle class background, and then make their underhanded agreements the official word, than it is to convince all First Nationals.
Gary Foley has also said, “Beware of Blak bourgeoisie trying to sell you a referendum, trying to sell you a shonky proposition called the Voice.”
And will be bought and sold by people pushing an agenda, by Labour, to get things done (or stop) that they can’t by normal legislation. It will be (Joe Biden) quid pro quo on steroids.
Precisely! And we mustn't for a minute believe Labor, enjoying their present ascendancy, are acting independently of the Liberals. The system is being institutionalised in order that will be exploited just as handily by either party, however the musical chairs farce that is a change of government takes place.
Your automatic/instinctive response to ANYTHING the government of the day (regardless of political persuasion) puts forward should be a firm and vocal NO.
If the government tries to intimidate you or call you names, you should know that your decision to say no was DEFINITELY the correct one.
At that time, you should move from passively opposing to actively working your backside off to ENSURE that proposal by the government FAILS (and ideally fails spectacularly!)
We are there when it comes to most things they are doing, to be frank.
I can't think of a single 'initiative' that seems to be born of a pure intent.
Flooding the country with people that we cannot accommodate, as wages have barely started recovering from 2 decades of supercharged immigration, is another.
Ultimately, we have puppets in government. The decisions are made elsewhere. And the '2-party' paradigm keeps most distracted from the fact they both work for the same boss.
Didn't Pelosi say "we have to pass it to see what's in it?"
Seems to be a lot of that nowadays. Thanks Rebekah.
(Relatedly, I applied to work in the state counting centre graveyard shift for the referendum but still no response. They probably, for once, did their due diligence and the response was: abort! abort!)
Well... if they support it (Pfizer and other corporations like RioTinto etc.), that confirms it's to enhance corporate power, and not help indigenous at all...
As it's a change to our constitution, and NO details are given... They could use the voice to write up literally "anything", and use it as a backdoor to over ride our rights, our land our minerals, basically anything (and it will all be "constitutional" as we agreed to something with NO details disclosed!)
If corporations are pushing "yes", there's definitely a hidden agenda of benefit for them, and not our indigenous people.
So why not establish a Voice WITHOUT putting it in the Constitution yet. Allow it to run for ten years. Collect feedback from all different types of Aboriginal communities from urban/modernised to rural and remote communities with stronger specific cultural identities (e,g, Yolgnu - ?spelling). Then when we have something that works, put in in the Constitution.
ATSIC never worked - lots of money spent and no real benefits achieved.
I believe in greater inclusion of Indigenous voices in our cultural discourse, and I like to believe there is a lot of good faith behind the majority of the support for the Voice. Unfortunately there was also a lot of good faith behind the majority those who supported the Jibby Jab mandates, because the majority of people still seem almost wilfully naive to how completely corrupted our institutions are and how accomplished they have become at hijacking good intentions. With almost all of the prominent names backing it revealing themselves to be self-evident globalists/marxists, it is becoming increasingly hard to put forward any defence for a Yes vote.
It is the same players, using variations of the same play. To complete their takeover. Make no mistake, it is almost complete. Western Europe has passed the tipping point, and the USA is not far behind.
The Indigenous in this case are used as pawns. Like so many others.
Their radicals playbook isn't that innovative, but they keep scoring wins using it because they have psychopathic dedication to winning.
The Agenda seeks to dis-empower, impoverish, and enslave. Everyone.
This is the vector they are using against Australia. A Trojan.
The excessively long Voice Circus also seeks to distract for the better part of a year. Like a US election cycle.
The blank cheque aspect is an absolute insult to everyone. We have to know exactly what is going to be said in the constitution AND exactly what infrastructure will be created or adapted to fulfill “the Voice”. We have to know exactly how this is going to work before we vote for it. While there is no details, every intelligent person should vote no.
The polls are running at about 50:50 which is good news. It means that 50% of the population are not being bullied by the brainwashing campaign in the way they were by the covid jab campaign. I watched Linda Burney last night evading every single question about wording and structure, and showing herself as either a liar or utterly incompetent. But David Spears went easy on her because she IS Aboriginal, in a way he would never have backed off with any other politician. His very "niceness" to her was racist. I was horrified. This is no way to determine the future of a country.
I am originally from Germany, lived in NZ from 1992 - 2018, and lived the last five years in Australia. I did a lap around Australia for 1.5 years and fell in love with the land. First in NZ, and now in Australia, I have what life coaches call "the clarity of distance". I am not very affected or biased by the emotional history between the colonial forces and indigenous people.
In the early to mid 1990ties, there was a lot of friction between NZ Māori and the rest of the country. I happened to settle and run a tourist business in an area with 90% Māori population. It also happened that I, my family and my business somehow ended up as the ham in a sandwich in land-occupying Maori protest. I experienced the relatively rare situation for a white person to be in a minority, relatively powerless and a victim of racial abuse by some Maori activists. The vast majority of my Maori neighbors had been nothing but amazing, welcoming and supportive of us for the four preceding years. My young son went to the Maori kindergarten, Kohanga Reo, and spoke better Maori than English at the time.
But the activists not only destroyed my business and contributed to the end of my marriage, but a car load of them, each over six foot tall and approx. 120 kg's heavy, with full facial tattoos, came to my property and threatened in front of my small children to burn my house and business down if I didn't stop talking to the media. That's when my then-wife and the children left for white conservative Napier, Hawkes Bay, and I can't blame her.
I was also chased down by a mob in cars on the main street of Wairoa and had to seek refuge at the police station. Which wasn't much of a refuge as the activists returned and told the police officer "to fuck off from their land." The police officers just stood there doing nothing because they were ordered to do nothing by the government, as a cop friend told me a few days later, hugely upset and embarrassed.
The activists had occupied the campground of the Lake Waikaremoana National Park for over three months. They drove off every tourist, local or international, and entered the campground grocery shop with machetes to help themselves with free food. I owned a backpacker's hostel about 60 km away and operated the Urewera Shuttle Service, shuttling backpackers and locals to this stunningly beautiful lake.
On my last ever trip, I had two young Scandinavian and Japanese couples in the van. I rounded a corner in the dense bush and found a tree trunk blocking the road. I stopped, and out of the bush came a handful of big scary-looking Maori activists, one of them the famous Tama Iti, who was also an Maori artist. He later would become an international celebrity flown around the world by wealthy supporters.
(I love this song). He opened the sliding door and stared at all of us without saying a word. He knew very well that his fully tattooed face was more intimidating than any words he could say. The faces of the young tourists turned to a "whiter shade of pale". After what felt like an eternity, he said: "You are not ever coming back here to our land." This was on State Highway 50. A national road.
This was just one of many similar stories that hit the headlines of all national papers and TV stations at the time. Jenny Shipley, the first unelected female prime minister of NZ (no, it wasn't Helen Clark) had just dethroned Jim Bolgers. And she decided not to do anything about this anarchy. It was just one of several Māori land occupations at that time. It ruined my family. Tourists didn't come back to the area for years. We worked hard to establish the business from scratch to make Tipi Backpackers one of the highest-rated hostels in New Zealand. Our local Maori friends mourned with us. Worse, I couldn't join my family in Napier because the business was unsellable. The hostel actually did burn down a year later when I was in Germany, but an insurance investigation ruled out any Māori activist connection. But that is a story for another day. I also did a bi-cultural three-year psychotherapy diploma after that and spent a lot of time in Maori meetinghouses and learned a lot about the culture and developed a deep love for Maori culture. I am telling this story to give you an impression of how tense the relationship between Pakeha (the visitors) and Maori activists was at the time. It makes me sort of chuckle when I listen to the concerns of some of my Australian friends fearing an indigenous people uprising.
A few years later, the NZ government decided to fully compensate and settle all historical grievances with Maori for good. White New Zealanders were very wary and anxious about it at the time. Basically, over a period of about 20 years, every iwi (tribe) could lodge a claim of what was stolen from them, dating back to the first white people arriving. They were all compensated. It cost billions of dollars. If they couldn't give back the land, for example, because an airport was built on it since then (like in Napier), they negotiated some other compensation, be it rent, other lands, or money. It took 20
years and the difference it made was amazing.
When I left in 2018, there was peace. All protests stopped, and white people and Maori came closer than ever in the history of NZ. Sadly, some Maori elders abused their new power and were corrupt and funnelled the newfound riches to their families only and the vast majority of the iwi missed out. But the majority put the money to very good use, and a new proud, confident and well-educated Maori generation prospered that sees themselves as equal and respected and part of a united New Zealand.
In turn, most white people in NZ are proud of and embrace Maori culture and language.
However, lately, pushed by the woke Marxist NZ labor party, things got a bit weird. A big push for central planning (Three Waters etc.) is taking place in the name of Māori governance. Some claim Māori are used to push a Marxist agenda. This brings us to Australia.
I got carried away a bit (lol) and my comment was too long. So I divided it. This is part two.
I don't have a huge inside into First Nation People and politics around it. But what is abundantly clear is that it can't be compared to Māori. The history and character of the two peoples are vastly different.
First Nation people were obliterated by the colonists. Māori stood their ground. New Zealand was colonized almost 150 years later, and attitudes towards indigenous people had changed. The colonizing forces were also much weaker, and the Māori stronger. They couldn't be conquered with force only, so the colonists used trickery and deceit and eventually, a treaty was signed. So, it is not directly comparable.
However, the basic principle of decency still applies. It wasn't right how First Nation People were treated for centuries. And acknowledgment and reparations do go a long way to normalize the relationship, as shown in NZ. It is not good for modern-day Australians to live with this guilt.
How to undo this - I honestly don't know. Throw money at them? Give the land back? I believe some of that has to happen. The value lies not so much in the riches but in the sacrifice. If it hurts the white Australians it means something. It has to hurt. And it is still a tiny fraction of the hurt that was dished out over centuries. Yes, it wasn't this generation that did most of the atrocities, but the children always have to pay for the mistakes of the past generations. They also inherited the riches of their forefathers. You can't just take and not pay back. Something needs to be done. All parties will feel better about it.
But how and what exactly - I don't know. But gestures and good-will are important. It won't be all perfect. Some people on both sides will take advantage. The same happened in NZ. But it still worked overall. But there were no Marxist agendas back then.
And therein lies the current angst that this really could be the Trojan horse of the woke Australian Marxists. They are well aware of the white middle-class guilt that badly wants someone to take it off them and support anything that looks like that without looking at the deeper motives.
Some of my new friends belong to that group. It is mainly the well-educated, intellectual middle-aged women. They think they are so progressive and smart. They never had much hardship in their lives. They lost their survival instinct, their mistrust. They can be so easily fooled by optimistic-sounding political slogans. They all enthusiastically vote for labor and celebrate the demotion of the old white male guard. True, these guys needed sorting out, but in their newly found sense of power, they are totally ignorant about the bigger Marxist danger.
As I said, I am no insider. But I haven't noticed much tribal cohesion with First Nation People as there is with Maori iwis. The iwis were never destroyed. The iwis always had their land and their Meeting Houses and the graveyards of their ancestors. First Nation People were mostly nomads if I am not mistaken. While they lived in a certain area, they moved around a lot. I simply don't see their tribal presence as I did see it with the Maori. They seem invisible on a tribal united presence in comparison. So who do we pay respect to? Who do we compensate? How do we avoid corruption? Who represents the majority of them? I am sure insiders know. But in NZ I didn't need to be an insider to notice the presence of Maori. They were everywhere right from my first day in the country.
Despite seeing so much of Australia, including very remote rural areas, I hardly notice First Nation People's presence. That saddens me. The main objective for me would be to bring that presence and the pride of this amazing old culture back. It is the oldest culture in the world. It should be in all our interest to revitalise it, learn from it and be proud of it. But how exactly, I don't know.
It starts with respect. And as an outsider, with the clarity of distance, I am not influenced by decades of media reports rubbishing the self-destructive behavior of so many First Nation People; quite to the opposite. I feel compassion for that because, as a trained psychotherapist, I know that these are the dysfunctional behaviors of severely abused people. So first they get abused, then they get judged and disrespected for their dysfunctional destructive behaviour. In the past years, I had several discussions with Australians regarding this topic. Some of them were people who worked in First Nation Community for years. What I noticed most, in that order, was: Being utterly puzzled, simply not understanding, judgmental disgust, hopelessness, pitty, guilt, blame. All negative. I met one person who lived with them in the Northern Territory that was blown away by them and what he learned from them and truly admired them. There are pockets left. Seeds. For me, it starts with true guilt-free understanding of their plight, compassion instead of pitty, and admiration instead of patronization.
Several times I read the phrase "our First Nation People". It was meant well-meaning, almost endearing, for sure. Like "our children". However, I find that strange.
No one in NZ would say "our Maori people". It would be perceived as patronizing, possibly insulting to a Maori. These little phrases, well-meant, no doubt, go probably unnoticed for Australians because they became part of the narrative. But I believe that we have to treat them as equals, not as someone we have to look after. Or someone helpless.
They might be more helpless in our technological-materialistic Western world than we are. But how helpless would we be in their world? They survived and flourished for something like 60.000 years in one of the harshest environments on the planet without much technology. Their spiritual world is a miracle to us. We would perish in their world.
When I was in Cooktown, I read a report from James Cook himself about the local aborigines at the time. He spent several months there. It was very moving. It was along the lines of "These are the most content and happy people I ever met." He was deeply impressed by many of their traits and how they lived together. It sounded a bit like paradise.
And then this horde of mostly brutish greedy people invaded them, our forefathers, and almost wiped them out. We don't need to blame them or feel guilty on their behalf. It is all down to determinism imo (see my writings). Nothing good comes from guilt or blame. They were victims of circumstances themselves. But we can make amends from a place of deep understanding, true compassion, love and, most importantly, deep admiration and respect. If any material things are being used - they have to be used as symbols and tokens of the healing emotions mentioned.
I was actually thinking about using it as the base of an article myself but very happy to leave it in your very capable hands, Rebekah. Thank you. Shoot away. :-)
Granted, I am sure they weren't all angels and perfect. Maybe the Cooktown ones were top of the crop and had a good year while James Cook studied them and reported back. I am sure we find some ugly stories too. However, in general, logic implies that they must have been by multitudes more functional to survive pre-colonial life in Australia than the sad state they are in today in comparison, generally speaking. You don't need to be a studied researcher on this topic to see that something terrible happened to them and who did it. To acknowledge that is the very first step. Denying that is equal to denying the Holocaust. The evidence is simply overwhelming. As I said, I don't meant to induce guilt or blame.Jesus was spot on: Father forgive them, they know not what they do. But to heal, the facts have to be fully acknowledged imo.
Reference then to the inter-generational transmission of guilt?
“For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments” (Deuteronomy 5:9-10).
Wow, I just wrote about that topic in a draft for my next substack, working title: Good and evil. Therefore I won't go into details. But I will point out the fact how and why religions meddled and twisted the words of the prophets and that human morality and emotions can be anti-spiritual at times and unrelated, even prohibited for true spiritual quests. "A jealous god" is one obvious meddling and spiritual non-sense. To personify and humanize god is one of the biggest spiritual sins ever committed.
For the most part of fifty years, I have lived within Aboriginal culture as it has been in North East Arnhem Land and I have many Aboriginal relations, most in the NT but also in NSW. I am also required to direct my communication through the Dhangu and Dhuwal languages, two of nine in this region.
I am also the Researcher for YNA's campaign for recognition of Aboriginal Law, and I have actively campaigned for government recognition of Aboriginal languages, without which there can be no transcultural communication in the NT and Kimberly.
My frustration flows from the ignorance of supposed experts, the absolute corruption of anthropology especially, and academia in general.
A few salient features of reality:
(1) Nobody alive today has guilt. There are no genes for guilt and transcultural guilt is a concept for children or those who are simply child-like. My message: grow up. Deal with the current situation with evidence-based solutions.
(2) Get over this myth of 60,000 years. Never trust a scientist. They say what they are paid to say. Aborigines have been around for the Holocene Era. The people here in the Pliestocene were a negrito type that the second arrivals rejected. There was clearly a slow-motion genocide; as has been the case across the planet with various population displacements. Remnants survived in Tasmania and the Atherton rainforest highlands. Stop moralising over pre-histpory. This too is childlike.
(3) People who have fractional Aboriginal genetic inheretance and zero Aboriginal culture or language cannot sanely claim to be Aboriginal. Whatever definition is adopted eventually must have global applicability. Urban Aboriginal people with no language or culture are pissing in the pockets of gullible whites with faux ceremonies and welcomes to country, which do not exist in tribal Australia.
(4) The Aboriginal people of the NT and Kimberly cannot participate in the Australian community, or learn about malnutrition, food toxicity, post-contact child-raising prerequisites, or legal compliance, unless governments direct their liaison officers to learn Aboriginal languages. This is the absolute prerequisite, a demand that not one of the 'Voice' architects would support. In fact, because it would detract from their power-base, they would oppose it.
(5) Government recognition of Aboriginal traditional law has already been proven to create miraculous conversions from dysfunctional communities to fully functioning places (ie Bamyili to Burunga in 1979) yet the judiciary, bureaucracy, and politicians oppose this. The 'Voice' proponents most certainly oppose this.
I have elaborated on these themes in the novel "The Lost Track", but this book will be banned by the upcoming anti-misinformation legislation, which is in fact an act to make totalitarianism mandated by Law.
To assume the thoughts and actions of God is, I agree, impossible ground upon which to walk, and yet some seem to do so readily. The salient point that struck me regarding the above was the concept of transmitting the consequences and guilt of sins of previous generations upon the current generation. I tread lightly here as the counterpoint remains, how can the unborn be held responsible for the sins of their antecedents? It never ends. Unrepresentative, politics without constituency is the twisted bane and plague of our lives.
And my deepest respect for having suffered from violent activism, yet still be able to express compassion and understanding for the Māori and by extension, the Australian indigenous people (who are by no means a single "nation").
But let's cut to the heart of this: you are still falling into the framing of this issue as "Voice = Justice, "NO" = racist and against aboriginal rights".
I agree with most of what you say. Including that the "how" and "what" are complex and difficult. But that is not the core issue here.
The core issue is that - like the propaganda we have been subjected to over the past 3 years - this is being framed for us in ways that effectively weaponise our altruism and better natures.
I wrote a fuller comment on this article, but it has not gotten much traction, so I will reproduce it here:
We need to ask 2 questions:
1) WHOSE voice, exactly? ... because indigenous Australians are not exactly a unified group, in fact, they are hugely diverse in their thinking, and in their cultural traditions too.
2) We already have a system of representational government, flawed though it may be. It is supposed to give ALL of us a chance to be represented in the process of government. (Of course, it doesn't actually do this, but that is another problem, for all of us, and any VOICE mechanism is not going to fix this.)
If it is thought that our current system does not allow adequate representation of the aboriginal people, then we already have a way to adjust this, by changing electoral boundaries.
So why has this not been considered as an alternative?
We have people like Jacinta Price, elected to the Senate as a representative for the NT, who is already giving a voice to many people. (She's against the VOICE, which in itself is enough for me.) And Lidia Thorpe, offering her own radical voice, often expressing something quite different. No unity there. But that is our current process of government.
What is the VOICE supposed to do, that these elected representatives can't already do?
HOW, exactly, is the VOICE supposed to do all those wonderful things the "YES" mob are claiming?
Me, I smell the same sort of baseless hopium that was being broadcast around in 2020 about an experimental medical procedure. You don't even need to understand all the downside and risk - the hypnotic language and messaging should be enough to ring loud warning bells.
And the more propaganda they push, the more entrenched I become in my stance on this.
Thank you Mara. Just to be clear: I am not specificallt for the Voice. I don't have any substantial political knowledge regarding First Nation People representation. But, as you pointed out, the fact that it is pushed so hard by extreme lefties and Pfizer is on board too, makes me instinctively suspicious of the Voice. On the other hand, I am not too worried the Voice will cause any major power shifts or changes is in the political power structure, but again, I am no expert there and go by instinct again. What dangers do you see coming with the Voice? I see it more as left propaganda stint to make their goodie-goodies feel better. I also see it as huge problem that First Nation People are not one People but many tribes. Every political move towards representation will favor a few active loud voices and ignore the vast majority. But that is inherent in such a system in general.
The purpose for my long comment wasn't politically motivated but of a social and healing nature. A nation can be seen as a body. If one part of a body is vastly dysfunctional, it affects the well-being of the whole body. If our knee doesn't work properly we try to heal it. Not because we feel sorry for the knee - but because it limits and affects the rest of the body.
Obviously, with a social nation body, the dysfunctional elements are mostly emotional (collective guilt, shame, fear etc.) on one side, and depression, self-harm, despair, sadness, anger etc. on the other side. It is in the interest of both parties to heal it.
That was exactly what I observed in NZ. Before the settlements, the unhealed wounds and grief was a constant source of distraction and dysfunctionality to the whole nation. After It was healed, the spirit was lifted.
The irony of my personal involvement was that I was always in support of it. It was started by local Maoris over grievances of bureaucratic mismanagement of their land by the Department managing National Parks. The local Tuhoe tribe owned all the land but they leased it to the Government. Many of the local protesters used my shuttle service to get to the protesters camp and home again. Only later, when "the professional activists" moved in from across the country to "support" the Tuhoe, things got radical and chaotic and we (the local tourist operators) ended up as collateral damage.
Our issue, however, was never with the Maori. It was with the government over reparation and financial support. The government allowed the laws to be broken and anarchy to recall to avoid violent confrontation. The anarchy caused us to go bankrupt. But the government decided not to compensate us. We had opposition MP's in parliament supporting us and pointing out the obvious but to no avail.
Anyway, despite all the personal hardship and trauma the Maori activists inflicted on my family, my main grievance was and still is with the bureaucrats and the government. They caused most of it.
What I noticed in my white Australian friends (sadly I haven't yet met First Nation People friends) regarding First Nation People is very similar to what I noticed in my white NZ friends before the healing took place: Confusion about the guilt and shame (something wasn't done right but I didn't do that and I don't want to feel guilt or shame) and confusion and fear about "revenge" and loosing power and assets and money). They can't see past the obvious obstacles and problems to heal this.
A bit like we put up with a sore knee because it costs time and money to go to a healer with no guranteed outcome of getting better. They even might have tried to heal it in the past but it didn't work , which reenforces the negative mind set.
First and foremost, a critical mass of non-political genuine Australians have to develop the insight, good-will and have to undetstand the necessity to sort out this national lingering social and spiritual injury. It will be a painful and disrupting process to heal it, like a knee operation. It sometimes has to get worse before it gets better. But the alternative is to limp on indefinetly and it will get worse and worse doing that.
The key point is taking responsibility that is not based on guilt or shame. A bit like good parenting. There is the added problem that the guilt and shame is subconscious for most white Australians. Hence the resistance and denial in some of my genuinely good-hearted Australian friends.
I know all about it, being a recipient of the generational Holocaust guilt and shame of the German people. While the Holocaust attrocities appear even more monsterous because of the cold-hearted bureaucratic execution, there are many parallels. The execution was different but the motivation was similar: The financial, social, spiritual and physical abuse and destruction of a race.
Growing up with the knowledge that some of my forefathers did that was terrible for me and my generation. However, we had it easier than the current day Australians to overcome it. The political and educational leadership in the sixties and seventies took total responsibility that our nation did this. There was no pussyfooting around, no half-hearted apologies, no softening of speech that would encourage excuses.
History lessons at school were brutally honest. Nothing like the joke of a history lesson taught to Australian kids about what really happened to First Nation People.
For example, my school trip as a sixteen year old was to the former Dachau concentration camp near Munich were we stared in disbelieve and shock at a large room full of white bones and sculls of killed prisoners. We looked at the gas chambers and how they were exactly operated. There was no hiding of the terrible reality of it all.
As traumatizing and painful as it was, it ebbed the way to make the subconscious guilt and shame conscious. Only then can we deal and process it. For a few it was to much - that's how you end up with Holocaust deniers.
But the majority of my generation went through that process. It still took many years of personal work and living overseas to get rid of the conscious guilt and shame and the feeling of "being a bad German". The healing lies in the full understanding of determinism (which I wrote a lot about in my substack) and spiritual awareness work to understand the enormous scope of our mental conditioning through family, culture, media and religions.
Imo, the Australian leaders in all fields (Politics, Education, Art, Sport, Media, Business etc,) have to openly acknowledge and accurately describe what was done to First Nation People. In great detail.
But not in the woke guilt-inducing shame driven way as they do with critical race theory. That is terrible and no genious healing attempt.
Wokeness is not about healing but a deliberate use of guilt and shame to oppress a specific group and gain power. It is the opposite. We didn't have the woke destructive and manipulative forces in Germany back then It was an genuine attempt to take responsibility, make amends and heal. How this can be achieved in today's Australia - I don't know.
Awareness, patience, non-violence and love, like always, go a long way. And like a seed, these attributes start as individuals on a personal level and grow into a mighty forest one day. If not, the land will be barren and dead and barely livable.
Thanks for your thoughtful response, Mark. Let me just say again that I have immense admiration and respect for your stance, coming as it is from a deep healing perspective.
I don't have any expertise in political science, so I don't have anything extra to contribute about possible dangers of the Voice. Others have done this much better than I could, including Rebekah in this substack, and Tony Ryan in this article: https://oziz4oziz.substack.com/p/the-future-of-gove-peninsula
For me, the whole thing just doesn't smell right, and the suppression of thoughtful debate, so reminiscent of the covid propaganda effort, sets off warning bells. And I agree with you that it seems to be mostly a very expensive "feel good" exercise for the Left. More sinister, it's been suggested that the establishment of this Voice will absolve the government of any further responsibility to do anything to address the real issues facing the aboriginal people.
Senator Alex Antic (South Australia) has made some very good points which I agree with:
1. Because the Voice would be entrenched into our Constitution if Labor’s referendum succeeds, we won’t be able to get rid of it if it becomes a headache for the parliament and the nation.
2. Amending the Constitution is unnecessary, as recently proven by South Australia’s state parliament, which established a state Voice via legislation.
3. Labor claims the Voice will “make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.” This could mean anything, as there are no issues in this country that don’t, in some sense, relate to indigenous people. The scope of the Voice’s focus and activity is unknown.
4. Labor says, “the Parliament shall… have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.” This means virtually every aspect of the Voice is subject to change, meaning Australians cannot cast an informed vote.
(My comment was too long, so I'm posting part 2 separately.)
Healing is not in any way dependent upon implementing any change to our Constitution, or even upon setting up a Voice as proposed.
As a middle-class white woman I'm hesitant to speak out too loudly, but as a Healer myself (clinical psychologist by profession, now retired) I'll offer some thoughts.
Back in the late 1990s I delved into some of the reconciliation issues, and ending up doing a residential workshop called "World Work and Eldership". I got mauled, of course - not as badly as you, but one of my big takeaways was not to let myself by used as a punching bag.
The biggest takeaway though, was this: all of us are somewhere on the power ladder - whatever type of power you are talking about: money, influence, spiritual power, physical power, any other type of advantage or privilege. And we tend to be very aware of those above us on that ladder - but not very aware of those below us. Even the poorest of street people have a hierarchy, of haves & have-nots, of the strong and the less strong.
So now at least I am more aware of the ones below me on various ladders, and more respectful of their position.
By coincidence, one of the other women in my accommodation at that workshop had been my boss, 16 years earlier. I had admired her greatly, as a single parent (as was I) and a successful woman who had created a super innovative Women's program at Footscray TAFE in Melbourne, for women wanting to re-enter education or the workforce. Still, I had always found her a bit stressful to be around, and I used to get a terrible headache every Thursday night, Thursday being the day of my weekly supervision session with her.
But there she was at this workshop, parading her victimhood. I was gobsmacked. What victimhood, I asked? Part of it was her age - by that time she was in her 60s - and had used this to get extra privilege with a room to herself, and ensuite too. (The rest of us had to share in twin rooms - same cost.) And she was Chinese - something I had never realised, back in the 80s & the era of curly permed hair. As a child, she had suffered from racial discrimination. Which would have been horrible - but why was she now claiming her victimhood, after being a wonderful strong woman for most of her life?
And it was also obvious that she was not in the same category of woundedness as the aboriginal people, even though she was identifying with them. (This thought was not welcomed.) But it was a group where woundedness itself was a badge of honour and privilege, and she wanted to be up near the top.
So I realised that we have many different ladders simultaneously, and on one, we may be above someone else, and on another ladder we can be below them. But generally we are only aware of the one where that person is above us.
(She disclosed to me that she had always felt resentful about my school background, going to a private girls' school - something my parents had made great sacrifices for, but still an area of privilege for which I am very grateful.)
Soon after that workshop I started working in the correctional system (as a psychologist), and at that time DCS was implementing recommendations from a recent enquiry into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. Yes, there ARE a disproportionate number of indigenous men in the correctional system - because they commit more crimes, some of them nasty, violent crimes. And yes, this is because we, the white invaders, destroyed their culture and social structure, killed them like nuisance animals, sexually abused them, enslaved them, with the result that family violence, sexual violence, drug & alcohol abuse, and so on are now endemic in most of the indigenous communities and families (less so in some of the more remote communities, but none of them have remained unaffected).
What to do about it, though?
I don't believe that throwing money at the problem will make it go away. It never does. Often, monetary compensation is associated with mining rights, where a small faction is bribed to give away access to traditional lands. This happened with the Adani mine in north Qld, also Gove, and lots of other places.
It's also a bit like what happens when a couple separates & there are property disputes: most of the time neither party is happy with the result (because divvying up the property always leads to losses for all parties, and money is usually just the visible symbol of all the other grievances that cannot be so easily quantified). I've seen people get stuck in bitter disputes for years, never able to move on, and even when settled in their favour, it never quite compensates for the energy, time, and legal costs involved. (I had to learn this lesson myself, about letting go in order to heal.)
(But I agree that resources should be made available, considerable resources - but disbursed from some principle, not just to assuage guilt or anger.)
I don't believe in encouraging victim mentality, and I won't let myself be a punching bag.
This is not a casual statement - it is a core part of my personal and professional values and principles as a healer & psychotherapist myself. As part of a quest to explore how to do this, I spent over 10 years practising Aikido, 3 of them in Japan in a traditional Japaneses dojo, getting up at 5 am in summer and winter, 3-4 times each week to train, as a way of embodying these principles. And I found Aikido a great model for dealing with conflict like this.
Coming back to the healer model: if you are working with a person who is wounded in some way, eg Borderline Personality Disorder, then you need to find a way to set limits to their behaviour while facilitating healing. You don't just keep trying to meet all their demands, because it never ends - because that is not the core issue.
In the wider social context, it would be unacceptably arrogant to try to take on the Healer role while being part of the problem. By the same token, it is not possible to give power to someone - it's a contradiction in terms. Aikido is, I think, a better model!
There is no way to turn the clock back and undo what has been done.
I believe that the answers need to come from within the aboriginal communities themselves, with the rest of us being willing to hold the space and facilitate healing, whatever that means.
We also have to be willing to provide resources, without pushing people further into welfare dependence. I support land rights in principle - but it's a hugely complex issue and won't be easy to come to a happy solution.
I think some moves towards self-management of their own communities would be a good start - but the same wet lefties who are all starry-eyed about the Voice won't relinquish the paternalistic government treatment of those communities.
Back in the 1990s, I heard of some hopeful initiatives, coming from the communities, led by the older women (who were fed up with the substance abuse and violence). I don't know what has happened to those now, though.
Formulating all this has been a good exercise for me, even if no-one else reads it. Working in the correctional system for several years, and in mental health and family support fields, I have offered help as a I could to a lot of wounded people, some of them indigenous. I think of myself as a healer - but I don't have the power to heal, that is something that comes from accessing Oneness. My core business (apart from the stuff you have to do, in every job) has been to help with that healing on an individual basis. The world will only heal when we look into our own hearts and lives, and allow ourselves to heal, and support others around us in that process.
Maybe others have some good answers for the grander social scale, but this has been my own contribution, limited and flawed though it might be. I just hope we don't keep implementing more and more divisive solutions, because that will just send us all deeper into the clutches of the globalists. And that won't help any of us.
Thank you very much indeed for sharing your perspective, your intimate first-hand experience (however frightening at times) and engagement with the realities of the situations, and clarity of mind in rationalising what you have seen and learnt.
I have only one question: What language will the Voice to Parliament speak?
If your answer is English, how is this not a prime example of 21st century neo-colonialism, where the colonial power strips its native subjects of the heart of their culture: Australia's 370+ languages and dialects?
Notice the parliament never stoops to learn so much as one of those languages, so as to truly listen to the real voices of the poor and disenfranchised in Aboriginal communities?
I will pursue options to retire overseas permanently (gaining citizenship in another country) if this Voice gets through. There has never been a successful country in the history of humanity that treats people unequally according to race. I have no desire to live in a country that is already being brought to it's knees with woke ideology and a suicidal energy and transport policy (eventual mandated EVs), only to be treated as a third class citizen below other citizens who I have paid handsomely via my taxes for decades and who already receive preferential treatment and exclusive advantages such as scholarships not available to the rest of us. If anything, if anyone owes anybody anything, they should be paying us for the quality of life we have provided to them versus the quality of life they would still have today had there been no settlement. It's despicable, disgusting, insulting and I won't have a bar of it. Maybe that is the plan - to have millions of Aussies leave the country for good.
But it would be totally consistent with the admitted aim of fragmentation. Of countries. Of national identity. Of cultures.
Worst thing is, so many seem to be falling for the 'stated aim' without even seeing the 'actual aim'. Voting for national suicide. Western Europe has been doing the same.
The Voice is purely an advisory board and will not have powers to veto laws, though they are supposedly able to influence legislation. Supposedly.
The Voice would be an elected group charged with advocating Indigenous interests to Parliament, but would not have a vote on laws. In other words, a snow job, a charade, a sham that purports to be democratic and dissimulates endorsement of the will of the Aboriginal people, but does no such thing. One and the same as the rest of Parliament, and the Australian "Democracy" with respect to the will of the Australian: it's a total betrayal. The will of the Australian people is irrelevant to the Australian government and has absolutely no bearing on policy.
Long-term activist and elder Gary Foley, who co-founded Canberra’s Aboriginal Tent Embassy in 1972, has said, “I want you to think; think before you vote. Make sure that you’re not being manoeuvred into a position of being complicit in the latest of a long line of cosmetic bullshit measures that will achieve nothing in the way of justice [for Aboriginal people].”
Victorian Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe told the crowd [at Melbourne’s Invasion Day rally] Australia had been at war with Aboriginal people since 1788.
“What do we have to celebrate in this country? Do we want to become advisors now? Do we want to become an advisory body to the colonial system?”
In Sydney, Gomeroi man Ian Brown said he had no trust in a Voice to parliament because it would be “another formal process of government not listening to mob”.
Activist co-organiser of Melbourne’s Invasion Day rally and Victorian Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe's sister, Meriki Onus says. "If people don’t trust Voice, it’s because they don’t trust governments."
And neither should anyone ever again.
First nations are being used as proxies by global oiler banker corporation oligarchs, for whom the Australian government truly works and whose interests government only ever serves.
This Voice malarkey simply creates another government department needing more government officers and administration and bureaucracy. It co-opts some Aboriginals into the government to give the government a veneer of legitimacy in its rulings on indigenous Australians, however phoney and thin. It is a far simpler job to deceive the few government-captured Aborigines from the city with an urban middle class background, and then make their underhanded agreements the official word, than it is to convince all First Nationals.
Gary Foley has also said, “Beware of Blak bourgeoisie trying to sell you a referendum, trying to sell you a shonky proposition called the Voice.”
"If people don’t trust Voice, it’s because they don’t trust governments." 🎯
Start here. Steel yourself, because now comes the hard part ...
And will be bought and sold by people pushing an agenda, by Labour, to get things done (or stop) that they can’t by normal legislation. It will be (Joe Biden) quid pro quo on steroids.
Precisely! And we mustn't for a minute believe Labor, enjoying their present ascendancy, are acting independently of the Liberals. The system is being institutionalised in order that will be exploited just as handily by either party, however the musical chairs farce that is a change of government takes place.
Here is a super simple rule of thumb to live by:
Your automatic/instinctive response to ANYTHING the government of the day (regardless of political persuasion) puts forward should be a firm and vocal NO.
If the government tries to intimidate you or call you names, you should know that your decision to say no was DEFINITELY the correct one.
At that time, you should move from passively opposing to actively working your backside off to ENSURE that proposal by the government FAILS (and ideally fails spectacularly!)
We are there now when it comes to the voice...
Excellent rule, Michael.
We are there when it comes to most things they are doing, to be frank.
I can't think of a single 'initiative' that seems to be born of a pure intent.
Flooding the country with people that we cannot accommodate, as wages have barely started recovering from 2 decades of supercharged immigration, is another.
Ultimately, we have puppets in government. The decisions are made elsewhere. And the '2-party' paradigm keeps most distracted from the fact they both work for the same boss.
Peace.
Didn't Pelosi say "we have to pass it to see what's in it?"
Seems to be a lot of that nowadays. Thanks Rebekah.
(Relatedly, I applied to work in the state counting centre graveyard shift for the referendum but still no response. They probably, for once, did their due diligence and the response was: abort! abort!)
BlackRock Recruiter Claims Senators Can Be 'Bought' For $10k, War 'Good For Business': O'Keefe - https://www.zerohedge.com/political/blackrock-recruiter-claims-senators-can-be-bought-10k-war-good-business-okeefe
https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/about-us/leadership/rachel-lord
How deep down the rabbit hole would you like to go with BR?
For example BR has taken over the US Fed plus the treasury.
Definitely a Trojan horse...
Well... if they support it (Pfizer and other corporations like RioTinto etc.), that confirms it's to enhance corporate power, and not help indigenous at all...
As it's a change to our constitution, and NO details are given... They could use the voice to write up literally "anything", and use it as a backdoor to over ride our rights, our land our minerals, basically anything (and it will all be "constitutional" as we agreed to something with NO details disclosed!)
If corporations are pushing "yes", there's definitely a hidden agenda of benefit for them, and not our indigenous people.
So why not establish a Voice WITHOUT putting it in the Constitution yet. Allow it to run for ten years. Collect feedback from all different types of Aboriginal communities from urban/modernised to rural and remote communities with stronger specific cultural identities (e,g, Yolgnu - ?spelling). Then when we have something that works, put in in the Constitution.
ATSIC never worked - lots of money spent and no real benefits achieved.
I fear the Voice will turn out the same.
I believe in greater inclusion of Indigenous voices in our cultural discourse, and I like to believe there is a lot of good faith behind the majority of the support for the Voice. Unfortunately there was also a lot of good faith behind the majority those who supported the Jibby Jab mandates, because the majority of people still seem almost wilfully naive to how completely corrupted our institutions are and how accomplished they have become at hijacking good intentions. With almost all of the prominent names backing it revealing themselves to be self-evident globalists/marxists, it is becoming increasingly hard to put forward any defence for a Yes vote.
I feel similarly.
It is the same players, using variations of the same play. To complete their takeover. Make no mistake, it is almost complete. Western Europe has passed the tipping point, and the USA is not far behind.
The Indigenous in this case are used as pawns. Like so many others.
Their radicals playbook isn't that innovative, but they keep scoring wins using it because they have psychopathic dedication to winning.
The Agenda seeks to dis-empower, impoverish, and enslave. Everyone.
This is the vector they are using against Australia. A Trojan.
The excessively long Voice Circus also seeks to distract for the better part of a year. Like a US election cycle.
Peace.
The blank cheque aspect is an absolute insult to everyone. We have to know exactly what is going to be said in the constitution AND exactly what infrastructure will be created or adapted to fulfill “the Voice”. We have to know exactly how this is going to work before we vote for it. While there is no details, every intelligent person should vote no.
Well said, Christine.
Given those considerations, the logical facts of the matter, it begs the question.
Why have they shrouded it in such ambiguity? Why would they choose to NOT be clear?
Because it is a choice they have made.
The people conducting deception are never the good guys. Same for the people conducting censorship.
If alarm bells aren't going off then there is probably nothing that will trigger them. The tyranny is naked and on our doorsteps.
Peace.
The polls are running at about 50:50 which is good news. It means that 50% of the population are not being bullied by the brainwashing campaign in the way they were by the covid jab campaign. I watched Linda Burney last night evading every single question about wording and structure, and showing herself as either a liar or utterly incompetent. But David Spears went easy on her because she IS Aboriginal, in a way he would never have backed off with any other politician. His very "niceness" to her was racist. I was horrified. This is no way to determine the future of a country.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWns0IS9dXA
Of course it’s a Trojan Horse. George Christensen had a brilliant piece the other day. It a really bad idea with very dangerous consequences.
I am originally from Germany, lived in NZ from 1992 - 2018, and lived the last five years in Australia. I did a lap around Australia for 1.5 years and fell in love with the land. First in NZ, and now in Australia, I have what life coaches call "the clarity of distance". I am not very affected or biased by the emotional history between the colonial forces and indigenous people.
In the early to mid 1990ties, there was a lot of friction between NZ Māori and the rest of the country. I happened to settle and run a tourist business in an area with 90% Māori population. It also happened that I, my family and my business somehow ended up as the ham in a sandwich in land-occupying Maori protest. I experienced the relatively rare situation for a white person to be in a minority, relatively powerless and a victim of racial abuse by some Maori activists. The vast majority of my Maori neighbors had been nothing but amazing, welcoming and supportive of us for the four preceding years. My young son went to the Maori kindergarten, Kohanga Reo, and spoke better Maori than English at the time.
But the activists not only destroyed my business and contributed to the end of my marriage, but a car load of them, each over six foot tall and approx. 120 kg's heavy, with full facial tattoos, came to my property and threatened in front of my small children to burn my house and business down if I didn't stop talking to the media. That's when my then-wife and the children left for white conservative Napier, Hawkes Bay, and I can't blame her.
I was also chased down by a mob in cars on the main street of Wairoa and had to seek refuge at the police station. Which wasn't much of a refuge as the activists returned and told the police officer "to fuck off from their land." The police officers just stood there doing nothing because they were ordered to do nothing by the government, as a cop friend told me a few days later, hugely upset and embarrassed.
The activists had occupied the campground of the Lake Waikaremoana National Park for over three months. They drove off every tourist, local or international, and entered the campground grocery shop with machetes to help themselves with free food. I owned a backpacker's hostel about 60 km away and operated the Urewera Shuttle Service, shuttling backpackers and locals to this stunningly beautiful lake.
On my last ever trip, I had two young Scandinavian and Japanese couples in the van. I rounded a corner in the dense bush and found a tree trunk blocking the road. I stopped, and out of the bush came a handful of big scary-looking Maori activists, one of them the famous Tama Iti, who was also an Maori artist. He later would become an international celebrity flown around the world by wealthy supporters.
(I love this song). He opened the sliding door and stared at all of us without saying a word. He knew very well that his fully tattooed face was more intimidating than any words he could say. The faces of the young tourists turned to a "whiter shade of pale". After what felt like an eternity, he said: "You are not ever coming back here to our land." This was on State Highway 50. A national road.
This was just one of many similar stories that hit the headlines of all national papers and TV stations at the time. Jenny Shipley, the first unelected female prime minister of NZ (no, it wasn't Helen Clark) had just dethroned Jim Bolgers. And she decided not to do anything about this anarchy. It was just one of several Māori land occupations at that time. It ruined my family. Tourists didn't come back to the area for years. We worked hard to establish the business from scratch to make Tipi Backpackers one of the highest-rated hostels in New Zealand. Our local Maori friends mourned with us. Worse, I couldn't join my family in Napier because the business was unsellable. The hostel actually did burn down a year later when I was in Germany, but an insurance investigation ruled out any Māori activist connection. But that is a story for another day. I also did a bi-cultural three-year psychotherapy diploma after that and spent a lot of time in Maori meetinghouses and learned a lot about the culture and developed a deep love for Maori culture. I am telling this story to give you an impression of how tense the relationship between Pakeha (the visitors) and Maori activists was at the time. It makes me sort of chuckle when I listen to the concerns of some of my Australian friends fearing an indigenous people uprising.
A few years later, the NZ government decided to fully compensate and settle all historical grievances with Maori for good. White New Zealanders were very wary and anxious about it at the time. Basically, over a period of about 20 years, every iwi (tribe) could lodge a claim of what was stolen from them, dating back to the first white people arriving. They were all compensated. It cost billions of dollars. If they couldn't give back the land, for example, because an airport was built on it since then (like in Napier), they negotiated some other compensation, be it rent, other lands, or money. It took 20
years and the difference it made was amazing.
When I left in 2018, there was peace. All protests stopped, and white people and Maori came closer than ever in the history of NZ. Sadly, some Maori elders abused their new power and were corrupt and funnelled the newfound riches to their families only and the vast majority of the iwi missed out. But the majority put the money to very good use, and a new proud, confident and well-educated Maori generation prospered that sees themselves as equal and respected and part of a united New Zealand.
In turn, most white people in NZ are proud of and embrace Maori culture and language.
However, lately, pushed by the woke Marxist NZ labor party, things got a bit weird. A big push for central planning (Three Waters etc.) is taking place in the name of Māori governance. Some claim Māori are used to push a Marxist agenda. This brings us to Australia.
I got carried away a bit (lol) and my comment was too long. So I divided it. This is part two.
I don't have a huge inside into First Nation People and politics around it. But what is abundantly clear is that it can't be compared to Māori. The history and character of the two peoples are vastly different.
First Nation people were obliterated by the colonists. Māori stood their ground. New Zealand was colonized almost 150 years later, and attitudes towards indigenous people had changed. The colonizing forces were also much weaker, and the Māori stronger. They couldn't be conquered with force only, so the colonists used trickery and deceit and eventually, a treaty was signed. So, it is not directly comparable.
However, the basic principle of decency still applies. It wasn't right how First Nation People were treated for centuries. And acknowledgment and reparations do go a long way to normalize the relationship, as shown in NZ. It is not good for modern-day Australians to live with this guilt.
How to undo this - I honestly don't know. Throw money at them? Give the land back? I believe some of that has to happen. The value lies not so much in the riches but in the sacrifice. If it hurts the white Australians it means something. It has to hurt. And it is still a tiny fraction of the hurt that was dished out over centuries. Yes, it wasn't this generation that did most of the atrocities, but the children always have to pay for the mistakes of the past generations. They also inherited the riches of their forefathers. You can't just take and not pay back. Something needs to be done. All parties will feel better about it.
But how and what exactly - I don't know. But gestures and good-will are important. It won't be all perfect. Some people on both sides will take advantage. The same happened in NZ. But it still worked overall. But there were no Marxist agendas back then.
And therein lies the current angst that this really could be the Trojan horse of the woke Australian Marxists. They are well aware of the white middle-class guilt that badly wants someone to take it off them and support anything that looks like that without looking at the deeper motives.
Some of my new friends belong to that group. It is mainly the well-educated, intellectual middle-aged women. They think they are so progressive and smart. They never had much hardship in their lives. They lost their survival instinct, their mistrust. They can be so easily fooled by optimistic-sounding political slogans. They all enthusiastically vote for labor and celebrate the demotion of the old white male guard. True, these guys needed sorting out, but in their newly found sense of power, they are totally ignorant about the bigger Marxist danger.
As I said, I am no insider. But I haven't noticed much tribal cohesion with First Nation People as there is with Maori iwis. The iwis were never destroyed. The iwis always had their land and their Meeting Houses and the graveyards of their ancestors. First Nation People were mostly nomads if I am not mistaken. While they lived in a certain area, they moved around a lot. I simply don't see their tribal presence as I did see it with the Maori. They seem invisible on a tribal united presence in comparison. So who do we pay respect to? Who do we compensate? How do we avoid corruption? Who represents the majority of them? I am sure insiders know. But in NZ I didn't need to be an insider to notice the presence of Maori. They were everywhere right from my first day in the country.
Despite seeing so much of Australia, including very remote rural areas, I hardly notice First Nation People's presence. That saddens me. The main objective for me would be to bring that presence and the pride of this amazing old culture back. It is the oldest culture in the world. It should be in all our interest to revitalise it, learn from it and be proud of it. But how exactly, I don't know.
It starts with respect. And as an outsider, with the clarity of distance, I am not influenced by decades of media reports rubbishing the self-destructive behavior of so many First Nation People; quite to the opposite. I feel compassion for that because, as a trained psychotherapist, I know that these are the dysfunctional behaviors of severely abused people. So first they get abused, then they get judged and disrespected for their dysfunctional destructive behaviour. In the past years, I had several discussions with Australians regarding this topic. Some of them were people who worked in First Nation Community for years. What I noticed most, in that order, was: Being utterly puzzled, simply not understanding, judgmental disgust, hopelessness, pitty, guilt, blame. All negative. I met one person who lived with them in the Northern Territory that was blown away by them and what he learned from them and truly admired them. There are pockets left. Seeds. For me, it starts with true guilt-free understanding of their plight, compassion instead of pitty, and admiration instead of patronization.
Several times I read the phrase "our First Nation People". It was meant well-meaning, almost endearing, for sure. Like "our children". However, I find that strange.
No one in NZ would say "our Maori people". It would be perceived as patronizing, possibly insulting to a Maori. These little phrases, well-meant, no doubt, go probably unnoticed for Australians because they became part of the narrative. But I believe that we have to treat them as equals, not as someone we have to look after. Or someone helpless.
They might be more helpless in our technological-materialistic Western world than we are. But how helpless would we be in their world? They survived and flourished for something like 60.000 years in one of the harshest environments on the planet without much technology. Their spiritual world is a miracle to us. We would perish in their world.
When I was in Cooktown, I read a report from James Cook himself about the local aborigines at the time. He spent several months there. It was very moving. It was along the lines of "These are the most content and happy people I ever met." He was deeply impressed by many of their traits and how they lived together. It sounded a bit like paradise.
And then this horde of mostly brutish greedy people invaded them, our forefathers, and almost wiped them out. We don't need to blame them or feel guilty on their behalf. It is all down to determinism imo (see my writings). Nothing good comes from guilt or blame. They were victims of circumstances themselves. But we can make amends from a place of deep understanding, true compassion, love and, most importantly, deep admiration and respect. If any material things are being used - they have to be used as symbols and tokens of the healing emotions mentioned.
Lastly, be not afraid.
Can I share your comments with my readers? I'll need to trim down for length but I think you have some good insights to offer.
I was actually thinking about using it as the base of an article myself but very happy to leave it in your very capable hands, Rebekah. Thank you. Shoot away. :-)
Thanks, I'm on hols again so will be in about a week's time :)
Oh great. Enjoy. Hope you can resist checking Substack or go out of cover. Thats what I do to have a proper break. Go bush.
"They survived and flourished for something like 60.000 years in one of the harshest environments on the planet without much technology."
The noble savage? : a mythic conception of people belonging to non-European cultures as having innate natural simplicity and virtue uncorrupted by European civilization https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/noble%20savage
Granted, I am sure they weren't all angels and perfect. Maybe the Cooktown ones were top of the crop and had a good year while James Cook studied them and reported back. I am sure we find some ugly stories too. However, in general, logic implies that they must have been by multitudes more functional to survive pre-colonial life in Australia than the sad state they are in today in comparison, generally speaking. You don't need to be a studied researcher on this topic to see that something terrible happened to them and who did it. To acknowledge that is the very first step. Denying that is equal to denying the Holocaust. The evidence is simply overwhelming. As I said, I don't meant to induce guilt or blame.Jesus was spot on: Father forgive them, they know not what they do. But to heal, the facts have to be fully acknowledged imo.
Reference then to the inter-generational transmission of guilt?
“For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments” (Deuteronomy 5:9-10).
Wow, I just wrote about that topic in a draft for my next substack, working title: Good and evil. Therefore I won't go into details. But I will point out the fact how and why religions meddled and twisted the words of the prophets and that human morality and emotions can be anti-spiritual at times and unrelated, even prohibited for true spiritual quests. "A jealous god" is one obvious meddling and spiritual non-sense. To personify and humanize god is one of the biggest spiritual sins ever committed.
For the most part of fifty years, I have lived within Aboriginal culture as it has been in North East Arnhem Land and I have many Aboriginal relations, most in the NT but also in NSW. I am also required to direct my communication through the Dhangu and Dhuwal languages, two of nine in this region.
I am also the Researcher for YNA's campaign for recognition of Aboriginal Law, and I have actively campaigned for government recognition of Aboriginal languages, without which there can be no transcultural communication in the NT and Kimberly.
My frustration flows from the ignorance of supposed experts, the absolute corruption of anthropology especially, and academia in general.
A few salient features of reality:
(1) Nobody alive today has guilt. There are no genes for guilt and transcultural guilt is a concept for children or those who are simply child-like. My message: grow up. Deal with the current situation with evidence-based solutions.
(2) Get over this myth of 60,000 years. Never trust a scientist. They say what they are paid to say. Aborigines have been around for the Holocene Era. The people here in the Pliestocene were a negrito type that the second arrivals rejected. There was clearly a slow-motion genocide; as has been the case across the planet with various population displacements. Remnants survived in Tasmania and the Atherton rainforest highlands. Stop moralising over pre-histpory. This too is childlike.
(3) People who have fractional Aboriginal genetic inheretance and zero Aboriginal culture or language cannot sanely claim to be Aboriginal. Whatever definition is adopted eventually must have global applicability. Urban Aboriginal people with no language or culture are pissing in the pockets of gullible whites with faux ceremonies and welcomes to country, which do not exist in tribal Australia.
(4) The Aboriginal people of the NT and Kimberly cannot participate in the Australian community, or learn about malnutrition, food toxicity, post-contact child-raising prerequisites, or legal compliance, unless governments direct their liaison officers to learn Aboriginal languages. This is the absolute prerequisite, a demand that not one of the 'Voice' architects would support. In fact, because it would detract from their power-base, they would oppose it.
(5) Government recognition of Aboriginal traditional law has already been proven to create miraculous conversions from dysfunctional communities to fully functioning places (ie Bamyili to Burunga in 1979) yet the judiciary, bureaucracy, and politicians oppose this. The 'Voice' proponents most certainly oppose this.
I have elaborated on these themes in the novel "The Lost Track", but this book will be banned by the upcoming anti-misinformation legislation, which is in fact an act to make totalitarianism mandated by Law.
To assume the thoughts and actions of God is, I agree, impossible ground upon which to walk, and yet some seem to do so readily. The salient point that struck me regarding the above was the concept of transmitting the consequences and guilt of sins of previous generations upon the current generation. I tread lightly here as the counterpoint remains, how can the unborn be held responsible for the sins of their antecedents? It never ends. Unrepresentative, politics without constituency is the twisted bane and plague of our lives.
Thank you for your thoughtful comments.
And my deepest respect for having suffered from violent activism, yet still be able to express compassion and understanding for the Māori and by extension, the Australian indigenous people (who are by no means a single "nation").
But let's cut to the heart of this: you are still falling into the framing of this issue as "Voice = Justice, "NO" = racist and against aboriginal rights".
I agree with most of what you say. Including that the "how" and "what" are complex and difficult. But that is not the core issue here.
The core issue is that - like the propaganda we have been subjected to over the past 3 years - this is being framed for us in ways that effectively weaponise our altruism and better natures.
I wrote a fuller comment on this article, but it has not gotten much traction, so I will reproduce it here:
We need to ask 2 questions:
1) WHOSE voice, exactly? ... because indigenous Australians are not exactly a unified group, in fact, they are hugely diverse in their thinking, and in their cultural traditions too.
2) We already have a system of representational government, flawed though it may be. It is supposed to give ALL of us a chance to be represented in the process of government. (Of course, it doesn't actually do this, but that is another problem, for all of us, and any VOICE mechanism is not going to fix this.)
If it is thought that our current system does not allow adequate representation of the aboriginal people, then we already have a way to adjust this, by changing electoral boundaries.
So why has this not been considered as an alternative?
We have people like Jacinta Price, elected to the Senate as a representative for the NT, who is already giving a voice to many people. (She's against the VOICE, which in itself is enough for me.) And Lidia Thorpe, offering her own radical voice, often expressing something quite different. No unity there. But that is our current process of government.
What is the VOICE supposed to do, that these elected representatives can't already do?
HOW, exactly, is the VOICE supposed to do all those wonderful things the "YES" mob are claiming?
Me, I smell the same sort of baseless hopium that was being broadcast around in 2020 about an experimental medical procedure. You don't even need to understand all the downside and risk - the hypnotic language and messaging should be enough to ring loud warning bells.
And the more propaganda they push, the more entrenched I become in my stance on this.
Thank you Mara. Just to be clear: I am not specificallt for the Voice. I don't have any substantial political knowledge regarding First Nation People representation. But, as you pointed out, the fact that it is pushed so hard by extreme lefties and Pfizer is on board too, makes me instinctively suspicious of the Voice. On the other hand, I am not too worried the Voice will cause any major power shifts or changes is in the political power structure, but again, I am no expert there and go by instinct again. What dangers do you see coming with the Voice? I see it more as left propaganda stint to make their goodie-goodies feel better. I also see it as huge problem that First Nation People are not one People but many tribes. Every political move towards representation will favor a few active loud voices and ignore the vast majority. But that is inherent in such a system in general.
The purpose for my long comment wasn't politically motivated but of a social and healing nature. A nation can be seen as a body. If one part of a body is vastly dysfunctional, it affects the well-being of the whole body. If our knee doesn't work properly we try to heal it. Not because we feel sorry for the knee - but because it limits and affects the rest of the body.
Obviously, with a social nation body, the dysfunctional elements are mostly emotional (collective guilt, shame, fear etc.) on one side, and depression, self-harm, despair, sadness, anger etc. on the other side. It is in the interest of both parties to heal it.
That was exactly what I observed in NZ. Before the settlements, the unhealed wounds and grief was a constant source of distraction and dysfunctionality to the whole nation. After It was healed, the spirit was lifted.
The irony of my personal involvement was that I was always in support of it. It was started by local Maoris over grievances of bureaucratic mismanagement of their land by the Department managing National Parks. The local Tuhoe tribe owned all the land but they leased it to the Government. Many of the local protesters used my shuttle service to get to the protesters camp and home again. Only later, when "the professional activists" moved in from across the country to "support" the Tuhoe, things got radical and chaotic and we (the local tourist operators) ended up as collateral damage.
Our issue, however, was never with the Maori. It was with the government over reparation and financial support. The government allowed the laws to be broken and anarchy to recall to avoid violent confrontation. The anarchy caused us to go bankrupt. But the government decided not to compensate us. We had opposition MP's in parliament supporting us and pointing out the obvious but to no avail.
Anyway, despite all the personal hardship and trauma the Maori activists inflicted on my family, my main grievance was and still is with the bureaucrats and the government. They caused most of it.
What I noticed in my white Australian friends (sadly I haven't yet met First Nation People friends) regarding First Nation People is very similar to what I noticed in my white NZ friends before the healing took place: Confusion about the guilt and shame (something wasn't done right but I didn't do that and I don't want to feel guilt or shame) and confusion and fear about "revenge" and loosing power and assets and money). They can't see past the obvious obstacles and problems to heal this.
A bit like we put up with a sore knee because it costs time and money to go to a healer with no guranteed outcome of getting better. They even might have tried to heal it in the past but it didn't work , which reenforces the negative mind set.
First and foremost, a critical mass of non-political genuine Australians have to develop the insight, good-will and have to undetstand the necessity to sort out this national lingering social and spiritual injury. It will be a painful and disrupting process to heal it, like a knee operation. It sometimes has to get worse before it gets better. But the alternative is to limp on indefinetly and it will get worse and worse doing that.
The key point is taking responsibility that is not based on guilt or shame. A bit like good parenting. There is the added problem that the guilt and shame is subconscious for most white Australians. Hence the resistance and denial in some of my genuinely good-hearted Australian friends.
I know all about it, being a recipient of the generational Holocaust guilt and shame of the German people. While the Holocaust attrocities appear even more monsterous because of the cold-hearted bureaucratic execution, there are many parallels. The execution was different but the motivation was similar: The financial, social, spiritual and physical abuse and destruction of a race.
Growing up with the knowledge that some of my forefathers did that was terrible for me and my generation. However, we had it easier than the current day Australians to overcome it. The political and educational leadership in the sixties and seventies took total responsibility that our nation did this. There was no pussyfooting around, no half-hearted apologies, no softening of speech that would encourage excuses.
History lessons at school were brutally honest. Nothing like the joke of a history lesson taught to Australian kids about what really happened to First Nation People.
For example, my school trip as a sixteen year old was to the former Dachau concentration camp near Munich were we stared in disbelieve and shock at a large room full of white bones and sculls of killed prisoners. We looked at the gas chambers and how they were exactly operated. There was no hiding of the terrible reality of it all.
As traumatizing and painful as it was, it ebbed the way to make the subconscious guilt and shame conscious. Only then can we deal and process it. For a few it was to much - that's how you end up with Holocaust deniers.
But the majority of my generation went through that process. It still took many years of personal work and living overseas to get rid of the conscious guilt and shame and the feeling of "being a bad German". The healing lies in the full understanding of determinism (which I wrote a lot about in my substack) and spiritual awareness work to understand the enormous scope of our mental conditioning through family, culture, media and religions.
Imo, the Australian leaders in all fields (Politics, Education, Art, Sport, Media, Business etc,) have to openly acknowledge and accurately describe what was done to First Nation People. In great detail.
But not in the woke guilt-inducing shame driven way as they do with critical race theory. That is terrible and no genious healing attempt.
Wokeness is not about healing but a deliberate use of guilt and shame to oppress a specific group and gain power. It is the opposite. We didn't have the woke destructive and manipulative forces in Germany back then It was an genuine attempt to take responsibility, make amends and heal. How this can be achieved in today's Australia - I don't know.
Awareness, patience, non-violence and love, like always, go a long way. And like a seed, these attributes start as individuals on a personal level and grow into a mighty forest one day. If not, the land will be barren and dead and barely livable.
Thanks for your thoughtful response, Mark. Let me just say again that I have immense admiration and respect for your stance, coming as it is from a deep healing perspective.
I don't have any expertise in political science, so I don't have anything extra to contribute about possible dangers of the Voice. Others have done this much better than I could, including Rebekah in this substack, and Tony Ryan in this article: https://oziz4oziz.substack.com/p/the-future-of-gove-peninsula
For me, the whole thing just doesn't smell right, and the suppression of thoughtful debate, so reminiscent of the covid propaganda effort, sets off warning bells. And I agree with you that it seems to be mostly a very expensive "feel good" exercise for the Left. More sinister, it's been suggested that the establishment of this Voice will absolve the government of any further responsibility to do anything to address the real issues facing the aboriginal people.
Senator Alex Antic (South Australia) has made some very good points which I agree with:
1. Because the Voice would be entrenched into our Constitution if Labor’s referendum succeeds, we won’t be able to get rid of it if it becomes a headache for the parliament and the nation.
2. Amending the Constitution is unnecessary, as recently proven by South Australia’s state parliament, which established a state Voice via legislation.
3. Labor claims the Voice will “make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.” This could mean anything, as there are no issues in this country that don’t, in some sense, relate to indigenous people. The scope of the Voice’s focus and activity is unknown.
4. Labor says, “the Parliament shall… have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.” This means virtually every aspect of the Voice is subject to change, meaning Australians cannot cast an informed vote.
(My comment was too long, so I'm posting part 2 separately.)
Part 2: Getting to your points about healing:
Healing is not in any way dependent upon implementing any change to our Constitution, or even upon setting up a Voice as proposed.
As a middle-class white woman I'm hesitant to speak out too loudly, but as a Healer myself (clinical psychologist by profession, now retired) I'll offer some thoughts.
Back in the late 1990s I delved into some of the reconciliation issues, and ending up doing a residential workshop called "World Work and Eldership". I got mauled, of course - not as badly as you, but one of my big takeaways was not to let myself by used as a punching bag.
The biggest takeaway though, was this: all of us are somewhere on the power ladder - whatever type of power you are talking about: money, influence, spiritual power, physical power, any other type of advantage or privilege. And we tend to be very aware of those above us on that ladder - but not very aware of those below us. Even the poorest of street people have a hierarchy, of haves & have-nots, of the strong and the less strong.
So now at least I am more aware of the ones below me on various ladders, and more respectful of their position.
By coincidence, one of the other women in my accommodation at that workshop had been my boss, 16 years earlier. I had admired her greatly, as a single parent (as was I) and a successful woman who had created a super innovative Women's program at Footscray TAFE in Melbourne, for women wanting to re-enter education or the workforce. Still, I had always found her a bit stressful to be around, and I used to get a terrible headache every Thursday night, Thursday being the day of my weekly supervision session with her.
But there she was at this workshop, parading her victimhood. I was gobsmacked. What victimhood, I asked? Part of it was her age - by that time she was in her 60s - and had used this to get extra privilege with a room to herself, and ensuite too. (The rest of us had to share in twin rooms - same cost.) And she was Chinese - something I had never realised, back in the 80s & the era of curly permed hair. As a child, she had suffered from racial discrimination. Which would have been horrible - but why was she now claiming her victimhood, after being a wonderful strong woman for most of her life?
And it was also obvious that she was not in the same category of woundedness as the aboriginal people, even though she was identifying with them. (This thought was not welcomed.) But it was a group where woundedness itself was a badge of honour and privilege, and she wanted to be up near the top.
So I realised that we have many different ladders simultaneously, and on one, we may be above someone else, and on another ladder we can be below them. But generally we are only aware of the one where that person is above us.
(She disclosed to me that she had always felt resentful about my school background, going to a private girls' school - something my parents had made great sacrifices for, but still an area of privilege for which I am very grateful.)
Soon after that workshop I started working in the correctional system (as a psychologist), and at that time DCS was implementing recommendations from a recent enquiry into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. Yes, there ARE a disproportionate number of indigenous men in the correctional system - because they commit more crimes, some of them nasty, violent crimes. And yes, this is because we, the white invaders, destroyed their culture and social structure, killed them like nuisance animals, sexually abused them, enslaved them, with the result that family violence, sexual violence, drug & alcohol abuse, and so on are now endemic in most of the indigenous communities and families (less so in some of the more remote communities, but none of them have remained unaffected).
What to do about it, though?
I don't believe that throwing money at the problem will make it go away. It never does. Often, monetary compensation is associated with mining rights, where a small faction is bribed to give away access to traditional lands. This happened with the Adani mine in north Qld, also Gove, and lots of other places.
It's also a bit like what happens when a couple separates & there are property disputes: most of the time neither party is happy with the result (because divvying up the property always leads to losses for all parties, and money is usually just the visible symbol of all the other grievances that cannot be so easily quantified). I've seen people get stuck in bitter disputes for years, never able to move on, and even when settled in their favour, it never quite compensates for the energy, time, and legal costs involved. (I had to learn this lesson myself, about letting go in order to heal.)
(But I agree that resources should be made available, considerable resources - but disbursed from some principle, not just to assuage guilt or anger.)
I don't believe in encouraging victim mentality, and I won't let myself be a punching bag.
This is not a casual statement - it is a core part of my personal and professional values and principles as a healer & psychotherapist myself. As part of a quest to explore how to do this, I spent over 10 years practising Aikido, 3 of them in Japan in a traditional Japaneses dojo, getting up at 5 am in summer and winter, 3-4 times each week to train, as a way of embodying these principles. And I found Aikido a great model for dealing with conflict like this.
Coming back to the healer model: if you are working with a person who is wounded in some way, eg Borderline Personality Disorder, then you need to find a way to set limits to their behaviour while facilitating healing. You don't just keep trying to meet all their demands, because it never ends - because that is not the core issue.
In the wider social context, it would be unacceptably arrogant to try to take on the Healer role while being part of the problem. By the same token, it is not possible to give power to someone - it's a contradiction in terms. Aikido is, I think, a better model!
There is no way to turn the clock back and undo what has been done.
I believe that the answers need to come from within the aboriginal communities themselves, with the rest of us being willing to hold the space and facilitate healing, whatever that means.
We also have to be willing to provide resources, without pushing people further into welfare dependence. I support land rights in principle - but it's a hugely complex issue and won't be easy to come to a happy solution.
I think some moves towards self-management of their own communities would be a good start - but the same wet lefties who are all starry-eyed about the Voice won't relinquish the paternalistic government treatment of those communities.
Back in the 1990s, I heard of some hopeful initiatives, coming from the communities, led by the older women (who were fed up with the substance abuse and violence). I don't know what has happened to those now, though.
Formulating all this has been a good exercise for me, even if no-one else reads it. Working in the correctional system for several years, and in mental health and family support fields, I have offered help as a I could to a lot of wounded people, some of them indigenous. I think of myself as a healer - but I don't have the power to heal, that is something that comes from accessing Oneness. My core business (apart from the stuff you have to do, in every job) has been to help with that healing on an individual basis. The world will only heal when we look into our own hearts and lives, and allow ourselves to heal, and support others around us in that process.
Maybe others have some good answers for the grander social scale, but this has been my own contribution, limited and flawed though it might be. I just hope we don't keep implementing more and more divisive solutions, because that will just send us all deeper into the clutches of the globalists. And that won't help any of us.
Thank you so much. These are the best and most beneficial and constructive thoughts I've read in such a long time.
Thank you very much indeed for sharing your perspective, your intimate first-hand experience (however frightening at times) and engagement with the realities of the situations, and clarity of mind in rationalising what you have seen and learnt.
Why did you leave Germany?
I am a nomad. It wasn't planned. I travelled the world for a while and fate brought me to settle in NZ for a while, then Australia.
I spoke to some farmers today about the July1 Heritage Act changes. They are very worried that it can be weaponsied easily.
Pay the rent? on what exactly? at what rate? where to? who benefits? Voluntary (bwahahahahaha)?
If Jacinta Price, a Pollie with connections to Aboriginals by birth and by representation, says its a bad idea, then it is a bad idea.
Yes. Yes it is.
Thanks Rebekah. Interesting initiative. Hopefully lead to an improvement for the Indigenous people's conditions & status,
I have only one question: What language will the Voice to Parliament speak?
If your answer is English, how is this not a prime example of 21st century neo-colonialism, where the colonial power strips its native subjects of the heart of their culture: Australia's 370+ languages and dialects?
Notice the parliament never stoops to learn so much as one of those languages, so as to truly listen to the real voices of the poor and disenfranchised in Aboriginal communities?
An English 'Voice' is still a colonial voice.
Fantastic tool, thank you again Rebekah 💛
Two thoughts:
1. Rent should be paid by the government from the taxes and duties the homeowners paid to them.
2. This could be a way for Australia to escape the overreach by the globalists, UN and WHO.
I see a politician, I see a liar.
And I see a criminal, a scoundrel, a malignant metastasis on society.
Gosh, I may just be a little too uptight and could benefit from letting my feelings a little loose, doncha think?
I will pursue options to retire overseas permanently (gaining citizenship in another country) if this Voice gets through. There has never been a successful country in the history of humanity that treats people unequally according to race. I have no desire to live in a country that is already being brought to it's knees with woke ideology and a suicidal energy and transport policy (eventual mandated EVs), only to be treated as a third class citizen below other citizens who I have paid handsomely via my taxes for decades and who already receive preferential treatment and exclusive advantages such as scholarships not available to the rest of us. If anything, if anyone owes anybody anything, they should be paying us for the quality of life we have provided to them versus the quality of life they would still have today had there been no settlement. It's despicable, disgusting, insulting and I won't have a bar of it. Maybe that is the plan - to have millions of Aussies leave the country for good.
Intriguing point, Jonathan.
About the mass exodus as desired effect (one of).
Had not thought about it that way.
But it would be totally consistent with the admitted aim of fragmentation. Of countries. Of national identity. Of cultures.
Worst thing is, so many seem to be falling for the 'stated aim' without even seeing the 'actual aim'. Voting for national suicide. Western Europe has been doing the same.
Peace.