Tuesday, February 17, 2009

If we don't wake up, the humans will kill themselves.


I went to see the movie "Australia" a few days ago. My 11 year old daughter came home from school and told me it was "required reading". That seems to be the new norm instead of reading books now-a-days.


I balked at this notion when she begged me to go, but then thought better of it. I told her I would go but ONLY if she promised to go to the library with me AND she had to check out the book. Deal? "Gotcha" she said with a smirk on her face. Lol! Cute kid.


The movie turned out to be so wonderful, great, spectacular and any other word you can think of. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT!! For those of you that may not know what the movie is about, it stars Nichole Kidman and Hugh Jackman (the guy who played Wolverine on X-Men) but the best actor is the 10 year old kid named Brandon Walters, a "creamy" son born to a white ranch hand father and an aborigines mother.


The movie is actually three storys in one.


1. Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman), is an English, aristocratic woman who leaves England to follow her husband to Australia. He is in Australia with the intention of selling his cattle station(Faraway Downs)which is the size of Belgium. However, Lady Ashley believes he is having an affair and travels out there to confront him. The property is in the north of Australia, and she embarks on an African Queen type journey, accompanied by a rough, hewn cattle drover (Hugh Jackman). Ultimately, Lady Ashley finds herself inheriting the cattle station and, in order to save it, she and the drover must undertake an epic cattle drive to Darwin. In the course of that journey, she falls in love with the drover, and the Australian landscape, and realises that her life is not over, and there’s always a new life to be had.


2. Australia, on the brink of World War II, faces the bombing of the city of Darwin by the Japanese forces that attacked Pearl Harbor. (Actual footage in the film too)


3. Aborigines "Stolen Generation"

The story hinges on the racism of the frontier, with an English lady, Nicole Kidman, and a drover, Hugh Jackman, each widowed in tragic circumstances, drawn to each other. The drover's wife was Aboriginal - who died from TB when no hospital would admit her and when liaisons between white and black were outlawed in Australia.
But it is the English lady's attachment to an orphaned Aborigines ranchhand boy, Nullah, that

brings to light the plight of all aborigines children being taken (stolen) from their family's by missionaries of various governments and shipped off to Mission Island (off the coast of Australia) to be "taught the Christian way" since attitudes where such that Christianity was the "right way" and these children had to be saved from their native heathen ways or so it was thought to be but in actually, not.


Between 1910 and 1970, roughly 100,000 Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their homes [source: European Network for Indigenous Australian Rights]. Known to many as the Stolen Generation, these children, most under the age of five, were taken from their birth families because the Australian government decided that their race lacked a solid future.
The government believed that the children would fare better if raised by white families [source: The Independent]. This rationale was due to the hard truths that the Aborigines are at a much higher risk -- even today -- for alcoholism, infant mortality, criminal behavior and drug addiction than other Australians. In fact, the average Aborigine life expectancy today is 17 years shorter than the rest of the country's population [source: The Independent]. But it wasn't just a few overzealous rulers who forced this removal policy upon the nation; rather, numerous state and federal laws were drafted and passed with the express intention of "breeding out" the color of Australia's indigenous race and helping the young members fit into mainstream society [source: The Independent]. The hope was to phase out Aboriginal culture.


­A variety of deceptive means were used to whisk Aboriginal babies and children from their families. Some children were simply removed from their homes by government officials. Too young to remember their family histories, the children were told that they were orphans. One mother was given a consent form for what was supposedly a routine vaccination, when in fact she authorized her baby, Leonie Pope, to be sent to foster care. She was then told that Leonie had died; Leonie was alive and well and residing with a white family [source: The Independent]. Other children were taken for treatment to hospitals, never to be seen again by their families, who were also led to believe that their children had died. The majority of them were placed in more affluent foster homes with white families, or they were taken to orphanages or church missions.


It wasn't until 1995 that a national investigation was launched, culminating in the release of the "Bringing Them Home" report by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission in 1997. The report detailed more than 50 recommendations as to how the Australian government could help remedy the pain caused by the removal of Aboriginal children from their homes.


Australian Prime Minister John Howard refused to make a formal apology, citing his fear that it would open the Australian government to lawsuits and demands for financial compensation. The issue went largely ignored until the election of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who made a formal apology to the Aboriginal people on Feb. 13, 2008.


I am appaulded that it took 98 years for the Austrialian government to acknowledge it was wrong and 60 years of that same government "allowing" this to go on!


but then again I am reminded of our own government after Pearl Harbor in 1941,

quickly put all Japanese descent and Japanese-American's in War Internment Camps.


Roosevelt's executive order was fueled by anti-Japanese sentiment among farmers who competed against Japanese labor, politicians who sided with anti-Japanese constituencies, and the general public, whose frenzy was heightened by the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor. More than 2/3 of the Japanese who were interned in the spring of 1942 were citizens of the United States.


Leadership positions within the camps were only offered to the Nisei, or American-born, Japanese. The older generation, or the Issei, were forced to watch as the government promoted their children and ignored them.Eventually the government allowed internees to leave the concentration camps if they enlisted in the U.S. Army. This offer was not well received. Only 1,200 internees chose to do so.


In 1944, two and a half years after signing Executive Order 9066, Roosevelt rescinded the order. The last internment camp was closed by the end of 1945.


Forced into confinement by the United States, 5,766 Nisei ultimately renounced their American citizenship. In 1968, nearly two dozen years after the camps were closed, the government began reparations to Japanese Americans for property they had lost.
In 1988, the U.S. Congress passed legislation which awarded formal payments of $20,000 each to the surviving internees�60,000 in all. This same year, formal apologies were also issued by the government.


Again it took 46 years to right a wrong. And while Japanese-Americans comprised the overwhelming majority of those in the camps, thousands of Americans of German, Italian, and other European descent were also forced to relocate there. Many more were classified as "enemy aliens" and subject to increased restrictions. AND as of 2004, the U.S. Government has made no formal apology or reparations to Americans of German, Italian and other European descent.


One can not forget Hilter's demize of the Jewish population too.


There are Arabic countries (and I am sure others) that conspire to rid the world of Americans.


My point is that there are so many injustices from so many cultures TO other cultures guilty only of "being different". It is not just because of color or religion, or way of life, it is because "you ARE different" and my way is BETTER mentality.


WRONG!!!


If we dont wake up, the human race will kill itself. One group feeding after another.


.......as to my 11 year old daughter? She gets the message...loud and clear.

6 comments:

  1. I was in the Australian outback in 2004. I met two Aborigine men who were taken as children and raised outside their culture. It is an intersting and sad story especially hearing it firsthand.

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  2. Hi Rachel,

    For so long, there has been an outstanding warrant for "crimes against humanity" against tyrants, dictators and corrupt government regimes. It as never been served because there is an overwhelming insecurity in humanity that usurps common decency on behalf of cruelty.

    Cruelty, indignity and inhumanity is a steep price to pay in order to feel superior. Race and ethnecity have little to do with it. I came to this conclusion years ago when I visited Dachau, a Nazi concentration camp on the outskirts of Munich. There is a concrete pit that was used to herd Jews into. They were shot, doused with gasoline and set on fire.

    OMG Rachel! I totally zoned out on the movie review.

    Thanks for sharing your thoughts on Australia.

    underOvr

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  3. I really do not know why these tyrants get away with these attrosities, against humans, even animals and children, I live in South Africa, and can hide my head in shame. We are also lead around by our noses, and believe all sorts of things we are told. I do think we are getting wiser now, we have learnt. Now look at Zimbabwe, those poor, poor people, it is terrible there, far worse than one hears.
    But that man is getting away with it and all close their eyes, especially Black Africa. Oh Dear.
    I will also go and see the movie Australia. Love xxxx

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  4. I am right with you there. We always listen to what we want to hear and not what is actually being said as a country. The sad thing is that we never hear the crys of ALL. I am ashamed that I do not know much of the plight of the Zimbabwe though I do know that of Africa on a broad scale.
    I hope we will DO something soon.

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  5. Hi - Stopping by via the "U". I like your blog and enjoyed reading this post. It always amazes me when I hear stories such as these, but there are never front and center in the main stream media. Instead they bring us stories about Jessica Simpson's weight gain, Paris Hilton's jail stay and OJ's conviction and people chose to get all whipped into a frenzy over it. It's no wonder this movie is not doing well at the box office. People clearly aren't able to understand the depth of it....maybe if Paris played the leading lady ;)

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