It never stops...
The Kokoda Track in New Guinea is said to be of huge cultural significance to Australians.
Now there is an Australian mining company which wants to re-route a two kilometre section of the track so that it can conduct gold and copper mining in the area. It has obtained the support of the local people by offering to pay royalties which are said to be worth tens of millions of dollars over the life of the mine.
The locals have closed the track in protest over interference by the PNG and Australian governments, and the Orstrayan Kultcha Police are suddenly up in arms at what they say is tantamount to the desecration of sacred ground.
Excuse me ?!?
Didn't we always run roughshod over anyone else's rights whenever it came to the extraction of mineral resources? Didn't we even fight wars over mineral resources? Isn't that what the Iraq war was all about? Killing hundreds of thousands to gain a bit of an oil advantage. Didn't we turn a blind eye towards the Yanks when they installed Pinochet to safeguard American copper pillage in Chile? Pinochet killed three thousand of his own people so that AT&T's copper supply remained in "safe" hands.
Ah... but when it's about remembrance rituals regarding the deaths of 600 Diggers sixty-five years ago, then all of a sudden, all mining has to stop.
The message, once again, is very clear. Iraqis don't count. Chileans don't count. New Guineans don't count. Only Australians, Yanks and British count.
Makes ya proud to be Anglo-whatsit, don't it ???
Now there is an Australian mining company which wants to re-route a two kilometre section of the track so that it can conduct gold and copper mining in the area. It has obtained the support of the local people by offering to pay royalties which are said to be worth tens of millions of dollars over the life of the mine.
The locals have closed the track in protest over interference by the PNG and Australian governments, and the Orstrayan Kultcha Police are suddenly up in arms at what they say is tantamount to the desecration of sacred ground.
Excuse me ?!?
Didn't we always run roughshod over anyone else's rights whenever it came to the extraction of mineral resources? Didn't we even fight wars over mineral resources? Isn't that what the Iraq war was all about? Killing hundreds of thousands to gain a bit of an oil advantage. Didn't we turn a blind eye towards the Yanks when they installed Pinochet to safeguard American copper pillage in Chile? Pinochet killed three thousand of his own people so that AT&T's copper supply remained in "safe" hands.
Ah... but when it's about remembrance rituals regarding the deaths of 600 Diggers sixty-five years ago, then all of a sudden, all mining has to stop.
The message, once again, is very clear. Iraqis don't count. Chileans don't count. New Guineans don't count. Only Australians, Yanks and British count.
Makes ya proud to be Anglo-whatsit, don't it ???
posted by The Editor at
11:10 PM
5 Comments:
Preserving our glorious past and I have to admit that the exploits of untested 18 year olds in holding the Japanese as they did a controlled retreat is way up there for courage in my book. But I also remember the way the "fuzzie-wuzzies" were treated and coerced into service. There's a big sorry in that story as well. Where was I?
I'd like to see what would happen if they discovered oil or gold under Parliament House. Bulldozers would be in before we had time to blink.
These "patriots" were quite unruffled when BHP trashed a serious chunk of the habitat of people living along the the Fly River, downstream of the Ok Tedi copper mine, but touch a few hundred metres of "their" precious track and they go apeshit.
These "patriots" couldn't give a rat's arse about what's happening in the Chilean Andes, but when their "sacred site" looks like getting mined, and suddenly they're protesting.
I has a suggestion. We get the R.S.L.'s Elite History Dept to bulldoze the track into a pile and burn it. The ashes (properly distilled into a Tupperware display jar) could readily be transported around our current conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Samoa, Fiji, etc., and returned to Canberra every Anzac Day for a cricket match/march. PM's Eleven (fat spinners) verses David Hicks' Eleven (sneaky underarm). Sponsored by BHP-Billiton, of course, 'cos that's who we're really fighting for.
Hip, by jingo, I think that's brilliant. :-) What's the bet, though, if we actually suggested that to the RSL they'd brand us unAustralian treasonous dirtbags.
Again?
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