Best tweet of the week

@GreenJ Jonathan Green

things could be worse. #trollday 1914 ... RT @AustralianArmy: On this day in 1914, Great Britain declared war on Germany.

Potted History: Australia 1952 t0 1956 - Women as Reds Under Beds

League of Women Voters of South Australia (1909 - 1979)
Alternative Names
Women's Non-Party Political Association (former name)
Women's Political Association (former name)
Summary
Originally formed in 1909 as the Women’s Political Association, its name was quickly changed to the Women’s Non-Party Political Association and then the Women’s Non-Party Association. Catherine Helen Spence spoke at the inaugural meeting and introduced the major planks of the Association which were ‘Equal Federal Marriage and Divorce Laws’, and ‘Equal Pay for Equal Work’. In 1939 the Association changed its name to the League of Women Voters. This was an Australian-wide title that enabled its aims to be more widely known. The League remained politically active in these areas and was instrumental in the development of a Parliamentary Bill to enact the principle of equality for female and male parents which was passed in 1940. In later years the League developed a close relationship with the Women’s Electoral Lobby, acting as a mentor. In 1979 the League was voluntarily wound up as it was felt that the Women’s Electoral Lobby could carry on its work. Ellinor Walker gave the valedictory address.

There was a time not so long ago when standing up for women's rights and equal pay meant that Communisim was suspected by Government and ASIO.............

Potted History: Australia 1966 - 'very well and cunningly devised'

Correspondence between W.C. "Billy" Wentworth MP and Minister for External Affairs Paul Hasluck concerning censorship in July 1966 - four years after Australia's involvement in Viet Nam began and one year after Prime Minister Menzies formally committed Australian troops at battalion strength to the Viet Nam War.
[Digital images from the Australian National Archives,Communism - Control of Communist Propaganda in Australia - Vietnam War]

Click on images to enlarge

Koori Mail Collection Online 1991-2011 digital archive of a vibrant media presence

The Koori Mail Collection Online

The Koori Mail – 100 per cent Aboriginal owned and controlled – is situated on Bundjalung country on the far north coast of New South Wales. Its shareholders are five small Aboriginal organisations – the Bundjalung Tribal Society (Lismore), Bunjum Co-operative (Ballina/Cabbage Tree Island), Buyinbin Co-operative (Casino), Kurrachee Co-operative (Coraki) and Nungera Co-operative (Maclean).

The Australian and Sheridan create a ranting LOL

This is what The Australian says in About Greg Sheridan……….

Greg Sheridan, The Australian's foreign editor, is the most influential foreign affairs analyst in Australian journalism.
After 25 years in the field, he is a veteran of international affairs who has interviewed leaders all over the Asia Pacific and America.

This is what Greg Sheridan writes in Fraser's unreliable memoirs rewrite history on 26 May 2011…….

Snapshot taken 26 May 2011

But even Henderson's splendid industry omits many of Fraser's howlers. Fraser claims the neo-conservatives wielded great influence in the Bush administration of the 90s. But George W. Bush was not even elected until November 2000.

Now 25 years in the field takes Sheridan the journalist back to around 1986. Surely that’s long enough for him to have formed a memory of the Forty-First U.S. President George H. W. Bush (term of office January 1989 - January 1993) who in 1991 sent 425,000 American troops into Kuwait as part of the multinational force taking part in Desert Storm, which resulted in the rout of Saddam Hussein’s military forces and their retreat back into Iraq.
Sheridan post-rant might even recall the that neo-conservatives existed prior to November 2000.

Can anyone solve this WWI mystery?

Excerpt from Item No.11613276
NAA Australian Military records
Click on image to enlarge

On 22 February 1917 a group of soldiers, allegedly under arrest for rioting, were led back into A.I.F. No. 4 Depot, Wareham, possibly in Dorset, England, when the military escort party was attacked by 1,500 troops within the depot grounds.

Even allowing for a degree of exaggeration, Australian troops pelting a military escort with bricks and bottles in the wake of a recent riot, presumably in an effort to free the rioters, should not have gone unnoticed.

Does anyone know the background of this "melee"?

Echoes of the past

The Internet's seemingly bottomless well means that nothing fades from memory......

The civil suit for alleged rape against then Governor-General Peter Hollingworth in the Supreme Court of Victoria collapsed when the plaintiff died and her personal representative withdrew the suit. Before the withdrawal of the suit and during the proceedings before the Court, Peter Hollingworth did not assert the claim that he should not be sued while he was Governor-General There are no explicit provisions in the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia to provide immunity to the Governor-General. There is also a dearth of case law in Australia on this matter.

An evergreen word on editors

A hatip to Clarrie Rivers for this glimpse into our collective newspaper past.......

From the last Australian Newspaper History Group newsletter of 2010:

60.4.7 A TOAST TO THE EDITOR Grafton Argus, 28 May 1875 (from the Papers): ―At a printer's festival at Boston, a short time since, the following capital toast was drunk: ‗The editor—the man who is expected to know everything, tell all he knows and guess the rest; to make known his good character, establish the reputation of his neighbours, and elect all candidates to office, to blow up everybody, and reform the world; to live for the benefit of others, and have the epitaph on his tombstone, ―Here he lies at last; in short, he is a locomotive runner on the track of public notoriety; his lever is his pen; whenever he explodes it is caused by non-payment of subscriptions.'

Some issues of the Grafton Argus and Clarence River General Advertiser (1874-1920) can be found in print and on microfiche and the National Library of Australia.

Every wondered what the Americans were doing while Julian & Chas 'trashed' APEC in 2007?

Wikileaks excerpt from U.S. diplomatic cable transcript:

S E C R E T STATE 152317

E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/31/2027
TAGS: PARM PREL
SUBJECT: POST REQUESTED TO FOLLOW UP ON ONGOING MATTERS OF PROLIFERATION CONCERN RAISED AT APEC BY PRESIDENT BUSH

REF: (A)STATE 071143, (B)STATE 073601, (C)STATE 72896, (D)BEIJING
5361, (E) STATE 148514

CLASSIFIED BY EAP DAS THOMAS J. CHRISTENSEN: 1.4 (B) AND (D).

¶1. (S) URGENT ACTION REQUEST: IN SEPTEMBER DURING THEIR MEETING AT THE APEC SUMMIT IN SYDNEY AUSTRALIA, PRESIDENT BUSH DISCUSSED WITH CHINESE PRESIDENT HU STRONG CONCERNS RELATING TO THE ONGOING TRANSSHIPMENT VIA BEIJING OF KEY BALLISTIC MISSILE PARTS FROM NORTH KOREA TO IRAN'S MISSILE PROGRAM. PRESIDENT BUSH PLEDGED TO RESPOND TO PRESIDENT HU'S REQUESTS FOR FURTHER INFORMATION. EMBASSY SHOULD ON NOVEMBER 3 AT THE MOST EFFECTIVE LEVEL POSSIBLE, DELIVER THE NON-PAPER IN PARA 8 WHICH RELATES TO SPECIFIC, TIME-SENSITIVE INFORMATION ABOUT AN IMMINENT TRANSSHIPMENT. IN ADDITION, AT THE EARLIEST OPPORTUNITY POST SHOULD DELIVER THE NON-PAPER IN PARA 9 TO MFA AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL POSSIBLE, PREFERABLY BY THE AMBASSADOR SINCE THIS IS IN RESPONSE TO PRESIDENTIAL-LEVEL DISCUSSIONS.......

Earlier that same year U.S. diplomatic sources had this to say:

Equally important is an active U.S. leadership
role in the international community. The UK is ham-strung
by its colonial past and domestic politics, thus, letting them
set the pace alone merely limits our effectiveness. The EU is
divided between the hard north and its soft southern
underbelly. The Africans are only now beginning to find
their voice. Rock solid partners like Australia donQt
pack enough punch to step out front and the UN is a
non-player. Thus it falls to the U.S., once again, to take
the lead, to say and do the hard things and to set the agenda.

Wikileaks Cable Viewer.

* While the U.S administration makes overt threats against Wikileaks and veiled threats against those who republish, the mainstream media reports in articles such as the Washington Post's WikiLeaks's unveiling of secret State Department cables exposes U.S. diplomacy and, the online comments this attracts are sometimes appalling:

ABC1 "Family Confidential" episode on the Mundine Family of Baryulgil at 8pm on 20 December 2010

At 8pm on 20 December 2010 ABC1 will televise a documentary on:

Australia’s most high-profile Aboriginal family, the Mundines, whose members include boxing legends Tony and Anthony ‘Choc’, are cursed from a source that once gave them power and unity.

A remarkable act of charity 60 years ago gave the Mundines an extraordinary advantage over many others in their community. The owners of a NSW cattle station, where the Mundines lived and worked, gave the family 50 acres of land to call their own.

Having this property saved the family from untold suffering and dispossession by the Aboriginal Protection Board. It was a gathering place for the clan, and the children who grew up in its bushland came to cherish ‘The Square’ as it became known, and the roots it gave them. There were even jobs for all the Mundine men when a mine opened and operated right next door.

A new generation grew up with the confidence and wherewithal to move to the city and build exciting new futures. Leading the charge was Tony Mundine who became a world champion boxer – and put the family, and Baryulgil, on the map.

But gradually the Mundines became aware that for all their success, something was terribly wrong. In an ironic twist, the land that had given them so much was slowly but surely killing them.

Now, the Mundine women, who’ve held the family pain for over 30 years, are finally telling their story. They’ve lost hundreds of their family and many are still getting sick and dying. Led by Tony and the most famous of them all, his son, ‘Choc’, the family is facing the fight of their lives. [ABC Television online promotion]

1840s attack on Darling Downs indigenous family group on display at National Library - ATSIC readers note that there are images of deceased persons

Click on partial depiction of drawing to enlarge

The National Library of Australia goes from strength to strength with the acquisition of the Ffoulkes Family Collection.

This historically unique pencil sketch by Thomas John Domville Taylor depicts 11 squatters firing on a group of 25 Indigenous people (including women with very small children) of whom three appear to have been shot.

So we're to have a national referendum sometime in the next three years....

Well this is bound to get interesting.
Prime Minister Gillard has just announced a long overdue national referendum on including formal recognition of Aboriginal first peoples in the Australian Constitution.
The trick's going to be how to keep the entire proposition from turning into a prolonged and painful train wreck.
Those sticky-fingered political power brokers need to be penned far away from consultations on any proposed wording of the question being put to the vote.
Because as sure as night follows day they will want to tack other questions onto the ballot paper, with the sole purpose of extending political party power over the federal parliament and the people.
Such a move would almost surely sink any hope of formal recognition.

Did Bennie really say that?!

"Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live..."

Yup, you heard it from il papa's own mouth.

It wasn't centuries of entrenched anti-semitism in European society and institutionalised anti-semitism in both Catholic and Protestant mainstream religions which allowed the Nazis to plough politically fertile ground as they first demonised, physically isolated and then attempted wholesale eradication of Jews both before and during World War Two. Oh, no.

Apparently it was teh godless in society who encouraged and supported the Third Reich in this endeavour. An argument that's a bit rich coming as it does from a former member of the Hitler Youth.

I suspect that next Bennie will be blaming atheists for the fact that (according to him) paedophile priests have no free will when in a position of power over a child.

Is it any wonder that the Catholic Church's reputation is all but beyond repair?

One thing's for certain - Robert Bruce and that Knox laddie will be spinning in their graves about now.

"Mass Attendance in Australia" 2008

Pic of il papa in his glory days from Google Images

Amnesty International (Australia) sending butterflies to Rudd in support of justice for WW2 'comfort women'

Amnesty International (Australia) is running a campaign in support of the rights of World War Two comfort women and invites people to create and send a butterfly to the Prime Minister:

In the year 2009, you'd think governments would have well and truly faced the atrocities of World War II. Yet up to 200,000 women who were forced into sexual slavery by Japanese soldiers have still not received an adequate apology - let alone compensation - from the Japan Government.

Their chosen symbol of hope is the butterfly.
We're going to cover the web in beautiful butterflies in the run up to August 15th - the anniversary of WWII's end - to highlight this hidden tragedy.

Each butterfly will represent a message to the Australian PM to pass a motion urging the Japan Government to recognise and compensate survivors. In all this time, Australia is one of the few Allied countries that hasn't stood up and called the Japanese Government to account.

Fairfax misleading digital headline of the week

First Australians were Indian: research was the headline posted on The Sydney Morning Herald website on Thursday 23 July 2009.

Now that isn't exactly what is in the body of the newspaper article (which rather looks to be based on a media release) and it's definitely not what is in the published research Reconstructing Indian-Australian phylogenetic link.

What the researchers appear to be asserting is that early Australians were descended from out-of-Africa migration.

The complete mtDNA sequencing indicate that both Australians and New Guineans exclusively belongs to the out-of-Africa founder types M and N, thus ultimately descended from the same African emigrants ~50 to 70 kyBP, as all other Eurasians.

The researchers, who based their finding on the particular mtDNA sequences of 8 Indians and 6 Aboriginals, are postulating a migration journey which took the ancestors of Australia's traditional owners along what is known as the southern route (Horn of Africa to the Persian/Arabian Gulf and further along the tropical coast of the Indian Ocean to southeast Asia and Australasia) ~ 60 to 50 thousand years before the present day and that migration likely occurred before or at the beginning of N group population growth in pre-history India.

Pity that The Sydney Morning Herald decided on the colourful headline, the published research deserved better.

Big Ben's birthday reminds me that almost every event has an anniversary

On the weekend both radio and television were constantly reminding me that Big Ben (that very large clock in London) was 150 years old on 11 June 2009 (or 12 June if you were across the odd dateline) because it first struck time on that day.

Which had me thinking of what else happened in the ninth year of past centuries.

Here's my potted selection, with apologies to The Book of Key Facts (1978):

8009 Harun al-Rashid dies but the Book of a Thousand and One Nights gives him a good review
9009 The King of Wessex kicks Northumbrian Danish butt
1009 Persian poet Firdausi is almost finished his epic and is possibly running an early spell check to make sure history is suitably impressed with his efforts
1109 Lois of France and Henry of England diss each other and go to war
1209 Cambridge University is founded with an advanced undergraduate degree in punting
1309 The papacy moves from Rome to Avignon and a whole lot of religious angst is goin' on
1409 Teh English recapture Harlech Castle from those dastardly Welsh rebels
1509 Spain establishes the city of San Sebastian in Columbia as part of a bloody colonisation of South America
1609 Galileo Galili improves his telescope
1709 Afghan state wins independence from Persia and continues down history's page until she is owned by the Coalition of the Willing
1809 Napoleon divorces his Josephine but remains silent about his hemorrhoids
1909 Bakelite is born thereby making a whole collectors' genre for 21st century Australians
2009 Malcolm Bligh Turnbull 'discovers' an email and loses his 'judgment'

21st century history wars U.S. style?

Former U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney may be disappointed that George W. Bush didn't hand out blanket pardons for his partners in political crime when he left the highest office in America, but he is still determined to defend the 'honour' of the administration of which he was a part.

Cheney started out on 2 April 2009 warning of fresh terrorist attacks against a weakened America.

By 15 March on CNN's State of the Nation he further fleshed out his assertion that President Obama's changes to former Bush Administration policy placed America at risk:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday defended the Bush administration's economic record, the invasion of Iraq and the treatment of suspected terrorists, warning that reversing its anti-terrorism policies endangers Americans.

"We've accomplished nearly everything we set out to do," ex-Vice President Dick Cheney says Sunday about Iraq.

In a wide-ranging interview with CNN's "State of the Union," Cheney said the harsh interrogations of suspects and the use of warrantless electronic surveillance were "absolutely essential" to get information to prevent more attacks like the 2001 suicide hijackings that targeted New York and Washington.

"President Obama campaigned against it all across the country, and now he is making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack," he said.

Critics said the Bush administration's "alternative" interrogation techniques amounted to the torture of prisoners in American custody, while the administration's warrantless surveillance program violated federal laws enacted after the Watergate scandal.

Since taking office in January, Obama has announced plans to close the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to halt the military trials of suspected terrorists there, and to make CIA officers follow the Army field manual's rules on interrogations. Cheney said the administration appears to be returning to the pre-2001 model of treating terrorism as a law enforcement issue, rather than a military problem.

"When you go back to the law enforcement mode, which I sense is what they're doing, closing Guantanamo and so forth ... they are very much giving up that center of attention and focus that's required, that concept of military threat that is essential if you're going to successfully defend the nation against further attacks," he said.

One gets the general impression that Cheney can't wait to complete his own memoirs and wants to start massaging the historical record right away.

Still, the poor man is being sorely tested by the blogosphere which saw Slate earlier this year posting 'exclusive excerpts' from these same memoirs after Cheney announced that he was writing his version of events.

Some of which were oddly prescient of his current attitude:

Mark my words: There will be another terrorist attack. Thousands will die. Millions will suffer. When it happens, America will see at last that we were right. History will vindicate us, and we'll receive the respect we rightfully deserve. Not that I would ever want that, of course.

Ah, the memories: Fraser Government cabinet papers

Image from Wired.com

How well I remember those salad days when a rumour went around that disgraced former US president Richard Milhous Nixon was likely to make a formal visit to Australia.

Long before the Internet and instantaneous communication, on a rural exchange where you could still 'phone in your telegrams, I fired off a stern word or two to then Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser telling him that in my opinion Nixon should not be allowed into the country in any capacity.

I eventually received a letter in reply (marred by the fact that the Prime Minister assumed that he was writing to one of the men in the family) which was carefully diplomatic about the possibility that Nixon might visit and, if memory serves me correctly, pointed out that his government was not in the business of barring people from visiting Australia.

Cabinet papers released this week show that behind the scenes, the Fraser Cabinet was working hard on 22 August 1978 to make sure Tricky Dicky did not publicly express a desire to visit down under and that he stayed well away from our shores.

See digital copy of the cabinet minute here.

Forty-five years ago today in the United States of America

Section of the Zapruder film taken on 22 November 1963

Last night I realised that this morning it would be forty-five years to the day since then U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.
Although the years and the dislosures have tarnished the image of the Kennedy Camelot forever, I still remember where I was when I heard the news.