Aborigines Vs white power/Clancy Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit source: jclancy@peg.apc.org Sun Nov 9 00:40:23 1997 Aborigines Vs White Power Information about Chile's Indigenous Mapuche people and their continued repression and killings by Pinochet and his hand-picked Yes-men, who have the ongoing US-backed power over life and death for this old race of people and their remaining patches of land, will be sent later. At the moment it is Australia's feeble leadership and its attack on Native Rights that must be considered. A vote in the Federal Parliament is about to happen. This vote will completely destroy any effective native rights in this country. The same family oligarchies, represented by their descendents that have enslaved, gunned down, poisoned, raped and cast out of health and education facilities for 200 years, are still with us. "We didn't do it", they say. But some of them did do it. Some of them are still doing it -by encouraging the police to hang them while locked up for minor misdemeanours. Paul Robeson, on a visit here in the 1960's, cried when he saw a family of emaciated desert people who had just walked in to a town "Like Alice" in a search for water and sustenance. "I will come back to help you", he said. But he did not survive the hatred that the KKK and its law enforcements in his own country had for him. Well things have not changed. In a simple exercise in corruption, our white, brain-emaciated leaders have sold most of our resources to US corporations. They have adopted a KKK mentality towards Black people. Man for man, these special native people have more intellig- ence than any white detractor talking loud in our parliaments. Black lives are cut short by white neglect. I met a nursing sister in the 1970's whose job was to take medicine and medical expertise into the heartland of Australian deserts -via a 4W drive van- to help. Even that service has been cut off the Federal budget. The Liberal-National politicians sound off persistently that the Blacks must be assimilated into white society; but once in power, no effort is made to provide the services that the white poor have. In practice no Black would want assimilation -in exchange for his own culture. At the moment 'white' means US, and that is the main source of the world's sickness, starvation and upheavals. Aboriginal Laws and culture have been here for at least a 100,000 years. Of course they squabbled over water holes etc in this land of great deserts. But they had total respect for the forests and environment -just like the Mapuche of Chile and the other natives of Latin America who are fast disappear-ing under US-oligarchy direction and government inspired death squads in that region. Our Native peoples had never developed natural defences against white-introduced measles, whooping cough, diptheria and particularly alcohol. Each of these has helped to decimate their numbers, some- times whole tribes. But the most numbers of deaths have come from white guns, white racism, white politicians, white christian police and white hotel suppliers of booze. Some of these travel hundreds of miles with truck-loads of beer to settlements in a practice that is supposed to be illegal -but not seen by the police. And then there are the children. Presently their mothers are busy going over gov't records to find their stolen children. If you can imagine the worst type of white Indian trader with total control over 'his' mission, 'home' or island, selling or just delivering children from age 5 to graziers to do with them what they wanted. Can you then understand why this native race is now short of full-blood leaders? The book, "Bringing them Home" -the report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their families has a thousand tears for those who read it. One photo shows a group of tiny 6 yr old half-caste girls at the Darwin Half-Caste Home. the caption -"I like the little girl in the centre of the group, but if taken by anyone else, any of the others would do, as long as they are strong". And words from one little girl later, "We was bought like a market. We was all lined up in white dresses, and they'd come around and pick you out like you was for sale." Apart from the US church groups here like Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, the bulk of Australian churches are now speaking loud and clear that Native rights should not be changed by any little man with hate in his political, white heart, just to make life perfect for some wealthy foreign graziers who want to upset the quiet environ- ments with tourist facilities etc, but with no respect for the fragile land; or for uranium miners who want to destroy the water lagoons and little lakes where tribal indigenous people collect their daily 'bush food'. The uranium mines have already received the go- ahead from the present "POWERFUL" corporation's government. Well, powerful by one vote -so far. One can never be certain of a fair deal with a parliament opposition which is also right-wing. One RW Labor person has already changed sides on a financial gain matter. Were it not for the outmoded rules of the Westminister System -wherein all party members must vote for Cabinet decisions, Liberal Peter Nugent announced in conclusion of his remarks on a section of Native Title debate that, "My conscience requires that I place on record my deep reservations about this Bill. I believe it disadvan- tages further those already disadvantaged, and that it will not provide the results sought so vehemently by the wider community." Others mentioned the lack of non-negotiation with Aborigines and the preferential treatment of the land interests for graziers over others. But the noisy world-traveller talks on! In the United Nations the UNHR (Human Rights) Commission is investigating executions in the USA. Republican Sen Jesse Helms, a prolonged adversary of HR for any disadvantaged groups (like CUBA) has called the 'probe' strange, and called on the State Dept to boycott it, saying, "It is intended to be merely a platform for more outrageous accusations from US critics at the UN." CUBA once again has been supported by the nations of the UN. This time improving the numbers to 143 for Cuba 3 to USA.17 Abstained, 22 absent. Good Stuff! The USA ratified the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Human Rights in 1992. In accord with the Covenant terms, the UNHRC made a request to visit the US in 1993. No invitation to do so arrived till 1996. Led by noted Sengalese lawyer Bacre Waly Ndiaye, their investiga- tions found, That in the year 1997 alone, 57 people had been executed. That due to exhaustion of judicial remedies there is a backlog of deathrow prisoners. Some have been there for 20 years. That most governors will not give executive clemency. That poor people and African Americans are the ones filling up death rows and the courts add 200-300 to deathrow yearly. That the Legal Resource Centre for death row Texas prisoners has been shut down, quickening the state sanctioned slaughter of the 420 held there. The US Communist party writer, Frank Chapman, describes this brutality as "The criminal, malicious intent of the US gov't, to murder people of color and the poor, in violation of every one of its own treaty obligations under the UN Covenant, is clear;- and Senator Helms has always been a leader in this criminal conspiracy." There are innocent US and Latin American and US Indian people who have been in US jails also, for 20 years. So there you have it. This describes the model from which our RW politicians breed their right-wings, -or develop their fortunes? JC ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytpac-11.14.97-23:50:44-29131