“The City of Sydney has voted to replace the words “European arrival” in the official record with “invasion”.
The deputy lord mayor, Marcelle Hoff,
says it is intellectually dishonest to use any other word in describing how Aboriginal Australia was dispossessed by the British.
“We were invaded,” said Paul Morris, an Aboriginal adviser to the council.
“It is the truth and it shouldn’t be watered down. We wouldn’t expect Jewish people to accept a watered-down version of the Holocaust,
so why should we?”
So writes John Pilger for GLOBAL RESEARCH 3 July 2011.
Isn’t it admirable how the City of Sydney can make such a fuss and be so “proper” and “upright” when it comes to historical injustices of their ancestors 60 or 70 years ago but so slow to admit the injustices and faults of their own generation. What will history have to say about Australia’s collaboration in the inhumane and unnecessary invasion and occupation of Iraq under false pretences? This invasion had the appearances of good intentions, but only to those who were unaware of Iraq’s massive oil reserves that the war has brought under the control of the coalition of the willing that includes Australia.
In 2008, the then prime minister Kevin Rudd formally apologised to Aborigines wrenched from their families as children, but what about an apology to the millions of Iraqi families who have been devastated by the illegal aggression and infringement of a weaker country’s sovereignty by a coalition including Australia and New Zealand under pretences of looking for weapons? Given the sordid history of unholy interference in the affairs of other countries by the United States to further US business or strategic interests one doesn’t expect any apologies from the US – but Australia and New Zealand? Should we not expect a better example from our leaders? New Zealand seems forced into collaborating with the sordid politics of our big bully brothers [the US and UK] and shows this awkward collaboration by very quietly providing mainly only “technical assistance” to the war efforts.
Most Australians and New Zealanders now realise they were conned by their governments concerning the reasons for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. New Zealanders are still paying billions of dollars in compensation to indigenous people for land confiscation by our European ancestors. But will our governments offer an apology and compensation to Iraqis of Afghanistan’s civilians?
If our governments miss this opportunity and leaves the apology and compensation to a more honourable and humane generation 60 or 70 years from now, then all this modern political correctness looks like a political farce and this generation of Australians and New Zealanders will lose respect among decent people in the rest of the world.