Category: racism

My Experience on Black Lives Matter.

As a boomer from the 50’s I’ve seen or at times participated in rallies or change events and of late observed as we have moved in time but not always in social change.

I recall vividly in my childhood how our Aboriginals were regarded as a underclass in school and socially, not my parents view totally but it was important to be seen as just fitting in with societies views at that time.

In saying that my grandfather who was of dubitable heritage of multicultural bloodline nicknamed “Darkie” because of his dark sometimes black skin, had Im told many a confrontation with caucasians who thought he may have been aboriginal, often to their detriment physically. I witnessed a few wise cracks unknowingly at the time and learned his reputation later in life, not only as a fighter against racism but a fighter against all forms of discrimination via the Waterside Workers Federation.

At school aboriginal history was totally erased and British Colonialist culture was the curriculum, and a form of silent hate was projected as aboriginal kids did not have to attend school magnifying the black white divide.

When visiting my country relatives, I could not understand the rhetoric of the adults towards the “Boongs” as referenced but I did take it in as any kid does when you don’t understand at the time.

Life went on and it wasn’t until Cath Walker a not so famous then but Annerley local started getting press and then the conversation escalated through the community about Aboriginal rights , Bjelke Peterson versions and then it started to roll, Sam Watson, Lilla Watson, Nev Bonner, just come to mind but many more.

High school finished at 15 and to be honest I don’t recall any Aboriginal kid attending but I do recall vividly Ian King, a guy from the Gabba Police Youth Club kid who was the quickest bowler I’ve ever faced and had the best arm I’ve ever seen come to cricket training. His nickname “Rainbow”. The kids idolised him I recall and he didn’t coach to much but his presence was awesome to many.

Enter apprenticeship ShipYard and then my little world at Ekibin exploded. Multicultural was a requirement to survive, tradesmen from all over the world, all levels of society were a everyday event. Stories from the War, world conflicts, invasions, religious clashes, things never discussed in our family circle were all a every day experience at lunch times, or on job conversations, which at times amazed me why I was so naive to actual human existence elsewhere on the planet.

The trade union movement bought all those together and although the brought baggage from their lives when the met a former foe, they had to unite and that in itself healed many, but they never forgot within themselves.

Me, I came across many that helped me understand life outside family and was hard to explain to those who were in their Australian bubble and were content, but what I did discover the difference of how migrants regarded our Aboriginals oversaw we regarded them.

Many had been where the Aboriginal was/is and were not backward when we colonials behaved badly towards them. They were more compassionate than us Australians by far. Another Learning curve for me. AND that was in the late 60’s

As life went on and being a sport junkie I witnessed the Elly Bennet aftermath at the yard and watched boxers like Rose, Mundine, and lower fighters on the cards use their skills in the ring often to be ripped off by managers and discarded when they fell out of favour losing them to alcohol or worse, while white fighters we’re “looked After” better even if they did not reach the same heights of accomplishment.

That really irked by sporting ethics, probably more than my moral ethos at the time.

My career moved and I completed my apprenticeship and shifted workplaces practicing my trade still in Brisbane until industrial warfare forced me to change direction and I went off driving cabs and working at the Brisbane Markets both hotbeds of racial appreciation, while the whole time playing or coaching football with overseas players abundant, but it wasn’t until I became a manager with Telstra did it hit home again the divide between Australians on indigenous affairs.

My earlier years with the company was in the inner city and then to developing suburbs like Woodridge, Kingston, Rochdale, Eight Mile Plains, with a lower demographic, exacerbated intolerance and being in the business of communications we were in the kitchen literally and physically.

My movement the South East Queensland Manager give me an area from Walloon to the NT border as high as Birdsville and into Northern NSW. a fair track and a big classroom for me when it come to indigenous customs and affairs.

I had the honour of having some great teachers, mainly staff members of both cultures with heaps of experience briefing me or boxing my ears when needed. A experience that will last my lifetime.

Now looking at this present Black Lives Matter and looking back at where I was made aware progress has been made but its been a fight for little progress really. Politicians of all colours have failed but I am from the Labor side and that party had tried harder I believe to bridge the gap but no where near where we have to go to reach some sort of parity.

Im nearly 70, still with a a bit of sting mainly in kicking political heads via keyboard now and we need youth to stand up as we did in the 60’s and 70’s and 80’s to right some wrongs but I fear the banks and financial institutions have them by the short and curlies and their sacred to stand up, unlike us where we had nothing to loose so fight we had to do.

Well some of is did, whole others freeloaded and then and still now while living on their union fought Superannuation, sick pay, pensions, medicare, yet still won’t support a fair go for all .

Ipswich’s Village Idiot Embarrasses.

Well every village has one (Idiot) but ours is National

In not sure if it’s flipping or flopping day or both but for a politician who states she stands up for the little man and women chooses go against a State Premier who is standing up for the health and well-being of Queenslanders is advocating the States right protect it sovereignty and its borders be overrun to appease southerners who have failed to reach our standards.

It’s well known Hanson talks the talk but fails to walk the walk and when it comes to workers, disabled, unemployed, disadvantaged now health she follows her true form for of voting with the government over 90% of the time abandoning them.

Her China bash appeals to those Trump like tribe forgetting that our farmers, cattlemen, food exporters will cease to exist but it sounds patriotic playing to her deranged base of flag wavers or old men living in the past.

One can be certain, she is never short of stunts to try and justify her political survival and gather her electoral refund, but entering into this COVID-19 debate is well out of her depth as this is not politics it’s lives at stake, and as a former businessman I empathise with that sector but like the exporters who put billions of dollars into our economy know no customers dead or alive means no business anyway. No flipping or flopping there.

Wayne Offer

Watching History is Confronting

Being in lockdown does give you time to watch, research, question, and think about our place in the scheme of things locally, nationally and internationally, that’s is if you choose to move out of your bubble.

For many it’s easier to just turn on, believe, press the share button or talking head and not think of what you’re actually doing as it sounded good for that millisecond you saw it.

History tells us many dictators/tyrants use that initial reaction to indoctrinate their populations and build on via propaganda to convince the populous to fall into line. Hitler, Stalin are the big examples but many more less notables have played the same cards using nationalism right or left as their key ingredient.

So lets look at the leaders in real time starting with our own Scotty Morrison who has discovered like a bolt from his god that there are people outside his bubble that actually keep his business mates in business. Workers are not collateral damage anymore they have become important and without them his mates will fold.

Overall his reaction has been a credible response as PM but the full credit must go to the state Premiers who have become the real national leaders in this fight to save lives. They are the leaders regardless of political alliances.

NZ have a brilliant PM and she saved her nation from what could have been the total destruction of their population.

Merkel another decisive leader who moved quickly and saved millions.

Johnson dithered now the hammer is falling on his people.

Italy and France just missed the boat and the inevitable will play out it will run its course.

So now Trump. What a classic clusterfuck is all that it can be described as. Sorry for the language but that’s it.

When a leader of a nation cannot distinguish between politics and science the outcome will never be good.

People will die for his Dow. He is putting his political future ahead of his people he is supposed to protect but unfortunately his limited mentality only sees politics as his decision maker. IF your a good boy he likes you, if your naughty boy he hates you and that simplistic childish view is accrue to his upbringing as a spoiled little rich mommies boy with all the big new toys in the sand pit.

He hasn’t moved past that grade 5 litterary level in body and mind and America is in danger not only from the virus but I can see this splitting of people will result in genocide of the lower demographics be allowed to occur as a economic strategy to save the rich and elite.

His brainpower does not extend past his political survival and will continue to play divide and rule and if that’s when a country that is 2 months behind the rest of the world in reaction time and he is withholding and telling them a silver bullet is on its way is verging on what could be regarded as a war crime against his own community.

At this point I declare i am not a supporter of any side as I feel their entire system of public care, social consciousness is non existent. They have been attuned to crawling over anyone to get to the top. Money, acquisitions , then power is the sign of success and how you got it is irrelevant and that will be their downfall as they will never be able to adjust to social responsibilities as it would infringe on their so called “freedom” .

Looking at the future the choices leaders is horrific. Two senile old men, one a creepy groping peodiphile and the other simplistic child in a mans body parading as world champion wrestler in his fake hair, tan and plastic belt.

I truly feel sorry for the real people, the intelligent people who must be scared for their lives and their family, as common logic and truth will be overridden by the flood of propaganda that is to come when the real wave hits.

I love where I Live and we can whinge and complain but distance is our friend in these times locally, state wise, and nationally and internationally.

Happy Ester All stay safe

Woff.

It’s Getting Just too Hard for Scotty from Marketing.

No doubt our country is going through a political identity crisis at the present and our political party’s don’t really know who their actual base is as they try to find a space that suits the current climate and suits their factional nemesis’s

Once the proud County Party now the Nationals used to represent the man on the land, the cocky,the producer, now its total focus is running a case for big coal and gas that rips the guts out of agricultural land, contaminates or irradiates underground water surrendering fertile country for the bag of fools gold.

They themselves have created a vacuum that the Greens and other groups with nowhere near the knowledge of the forefathers to fill, all self inflicted.

Amazing diatribe from Allan Jones about coal and climate denial yet the same man led the protest at Aplin against coal expansion. You have to ask who is paying the piper then conveniently forgets or hope we forget.

This country is crying out for leadership on important issues such as climate, mental health, economic certainty for business yet this government and its factions cannot decide what seat they sit in Canberra Parliament, what ideologies to have to suit days narrative, what we expect from Trumpsville but not in a thinking democracy.

If only we thought, listened and questioned more, and actually engaged we the punters could raise the bar if we choose.

Wayne Offer

Greta Thunberg Like Bernie Banton Stands Her Ground.

It must be a pretty big thing to have the President of the United States to fly 4 thousand Kilometres to have a lash at a young teenager. Probably a bit of diversion politics from home issues but this trend to attack the young climate messenger across all media platforms is actually building the case and growing the support no matter of how many of the climate deniers propaganda portray her disability, age, school level, or intelligence.

Its a hard road if you choose to take on an issue that establishment see their status quo challenged, however without those who choose to step up always face the wrath of quite often personal attacks over a debate on fact.

Personally me and many others have to thank our real warrior Bernie Banton who’s fight against politicians. Lobbyists, shareholders and the greater business sector who suffered the same wrath that Thunberg is copping today and that fight is still ongoing across the world as politicians deny or covered up to appease their donors and launched into personal attacks as a means to deflect responsibility.

Be sure this kid ain’t going nowhere and while the men in suits go into palpitations every time they see her one thing is certain,

we had our chance and blew it when this issue first arose back in the 80’s and 90’s and that’s a fact no one can deny.

Wayne Offer

Our PM Morrison Runs Scared.

Not since when the Japanese were on our doorstep and the Brisbane Line was envisaged have we seen our Prime Minister vacate his nation and seek refuge in a foreign land. Menzies headed for England and now Morrison to a American outpost while this country is in a national crisis.

How good is it when every time you turn on a TV or radio you hear how the country is either burning or its population being sizzled by heat, starved of water or oxygen or economically driven into poverty while they protect this governments failing mantra of a surplus.

No wonder our youth or younger people has lost faith politics and are taking things into their own hands.

Each and every day I read or see people on the streets all over the world rebelling against authoritarian, nepotistic, corrupt or just plain arrogant old people who have made their fortunes by manipulating the system they were elected to protect, the we have the audacity to attack those who choose to expose or highlight or hold to account weather it be a journalist, whistle blower or a fourteen year old kid.

It sickens me even more when when I read us mature adults chose to use the autocratic moral high ground when we are questioned by youth then expecting them to go back to their rooms and behave.

If we did our jobs ,listened, planned involved our youth there would be no need for rebellious action but no we are the keepers of all knowledge and now reaping the crop we sewed.

Other nations manage youth successions in business and politics in the national interest unlike us where we see the corporate interests supported by politicians as the norm and our actual island where we live is just a place that is supposed to keep on giving.

Well it’s all over red rover for those who played the schoolyard game, and our PM’s thoughts and prayers are as effective as his understanding of what it takes to be a leader who stands along side those who are doing it rough not from his hotel in yank a colony.

Let’s Get the Gloves Off

Many of us punters we believe that politicians should be accountable, transparent, and have should work for the benefit of the nation regardless of what level. Of government they are elected..

I know I dreamin., but I have had a gut full of politicians refusing to answer questions on anything outside their spin doctors script. We no longer have men and women of character who shake cages inside of their tent.

We have journalists now that run away like scolded children that give up a line of questioning when they should pursue the issue harder and deeper for reasons possibly to do with owners or employers political associations.

So what it that doing to democracy? What is that doing to the credibility of the media profession and it’s role to keep the people informed with balanced reporting and research.?

Once they the media step away and play yes men and women we no longer have a democracy we have a duopoly of left and right proper gander which in fact would suit the ones who wish to have dictatorship over democracy.

This outlet runs its and shame section weekly on Court outcomings so isn’t it time we hold our politicians who refuse to answer questions and revert to blurbs of bull shit when asked simple questions we are entitled to know so that we can judge them and their government or wanna be government with some data. We are not fools and should expose them as overpaid parasite flunkies tied to their ideological peeing posts.

No wonder the youth are moving world wide afters seeing these buffoons perform like bullies in a sand pit.

Sandpit Logic Dumbs America Down.

I astounded daily on what America today accepts as “the Normal”

I do watch and try to consume about 10 news outlets in the world every morning.

I see different slants on stories and totally different conclusions on outcomes, thats democracy I suppose and human prejudices , but in the majority of cases 99% the leader or subject of the story has the intellect to carry on a debate with reasoning that you may not accept but give some sort of credence or logic.

Outlets like Aljazera , DW, RT Today, China CCCT, BBC and many more not counting our own ABC locally, all put difficult questions and then it up to the respondent to qualify, explain, justify, or deny and then be accountable when fact checks are completed.

Not so anymore in America. The population is so divided, truth has fallen victim to political bias which is and will affect the total sociological structures yet they cannot see it coming.

This Impeachment circus is revealing how much intellectual debate has been hijacked to a point where the pillars of their justice system is being reduced to infantile sand pit banter by old white men that would be flat out achieving Grade 6 English in this country and that’s how the President wants it, regardless of that side you support.

Most of these men should be in Nursing Homes not power brokers, similar to the House of Lords which they themselves despise with a passion.

When a National Leader need an idiot sheet to say to a presser a THREE WORD STATEMENT begs the question of if the President of the United States is suffering a disability mental or physical, and his capability to consume his role.

His backers will quote his business achievement, wealth , social standing as evidence of qualification but in his case it’s been purely inherited from his parents, not him and the only thing he can lay claim for is live tv productions that are crass ,phoney, and fake like him and he has taken those qualities to the White House and they have b been dumbed down accordingly.

He has surrounded himself in yes people army who are scared shitless as the Gestapo was when Hitler raged, then went out to please to stay on the good books.

Then the simple fact is Obama was black and the Redneck right could never accept that fact ever, and how he survived without assassination attempt is unbelievable in my eyes but that’s not to say it did not happen or discovered.

Secondly the Clintons are Crooks as is most of the American upper class. They rely on the “Thug” mentality throughout their lives and Trump is one of them yet playing the Professional Wrestling Card of Good Guy Bad Guy definition sucked in the American audience as he did on the TV fake shows of his creation.

Yet in saying that his supporters abandoned their ethics and credibility and joined his coat tails to survive, and they too will never recover the status they surrendered.

Now America you are at a tipping point, the impeachment will never happen, and it has to decide if it repeats history and divides the country into Blue and Red and regardless if Trump wins or looses he will wage war, not just political war but civil as well as his followers all propaganda juiced will never accept the peoples wish and he does not have the class or intelligence to calm the waters.

They say a government is only as good as its opposition and by Christ I see them too looking at rich white men for salvation where what the nation needs is a leader that not only America need but the rest of the world needs, a person with integrity and courage, leadership and vision without personal gain

Big call in a country where money is the gauge of success not Ask not what the Country can do for you, but what you can do for your country

Seemed fitting didn’t it?

Morrison Trump Marriage Toxic.

Like Marrage they say if you share the company of another person long enough you both become one of mind on various issues extending to even body language

That is a human habit can be seen since our PM has returned from Trumpsville Washington markedly in the foreign affairs, defence, social conscience, and right down to the weaponise the media making selective interviews and refusing to answer questions the people have a right to know.

I can’t imagine any PM taking a Spiritual Advisor who is under scrutiny expecting him to become part of a national delegation representing all Australians and then refusing to answer any questions when the hosts reject his attendance.

Secondly when the senior partner of a alliance abandons the people who fought alongside of our troops picks up his toys and goes home without notice, refuses to even question the action, which in fact opens the door to a resurgence and another mass extinction as long as it’s done humanly as his American mate describes, is accepted without question is inconceivable

What else on earth has our PM agreed to turn a blind eye to has to be asked and I’ll assure you he won’t answer.

We are at the early stage of Trump tactics of keeping the media away from any scrutiny and only releasing/ answering to friendly outlets, and that strategy was. Highlighted with the raids on journalists and silencing of whistle blowers.

The Trump doctorine is creeping in to our PM’s rhetoric and actions along with the baseball cap so we must call on our media and support them to call out, ask the hard questions without prejudice under the umbrella of true democracy and accountability of those in public office regardless of how high up they think they are.

Grandchildren Taking Up the Baton.

While driving down the ipswich motorway listening to the radio with my son at my side on came the news about the protesters and the disruption they were causing.

Both agreed about the importance of the fact of being allowed to protest but the method and the timing became the debate.

Recalling my youth in the 60’s and 70’s we too caused disruptions while protesting with issues such as work conditions, moratoriums on wars, nuclear armaments, Tasmanian Wildernesses, and many others but the world kept turning and our protests did impact.

Then we both realised the next generation, my sons, went relatively free with possibly the Rights at Work campaign kicking in when all those conditions fought for in my time came under threat.

Today we are seeing the grandchildren era taking up the fight with a cause holding more gravity as we saw in the 60’s and 70’s but this time it’s not nationally it’s internationally..

For those who didn’t fight, and looked on with distain took the conditions and the benefits anyway as it flowed on though the system, and it was only when those conditions come under threat they shifted alliance and dismissed the government.

That time in history is repeating when the youth is taking control because we the keepers of all knowledge have succeeded technologically, and value adding personal life style achievements not thinking too much about if out kids will have the same opportunity by taking earth for granted.

In reality our grandkids are doing exactly what we did only this time it’s not living standards it’s Life on Our earth standards.

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