the recent court defeat of the watchtower emphasizes a point i have repeatedly dwelt on:.
the confidential judicial files in each congregation of jehovah's witnesses are a potential "bomb"!.
they often make for interesting reading, if you have access to them.
Nothing. There are congos that have pretty much done that to some extent.
I had a feeling that would be the case. I once posed a question here about if there are DFing quotas. Since there aren't it's amazing to see how many people do get DFed. I suppose some people just get that buzz from all the power...
i am a college student working on my ba degree.
i recently graduated with my "aa" degree and i just fell in love with school.
at 40 i don't mind going to school with 19-20 year olds.
A certain "Religion of Peace" doesn't use the term "murder" - sounds too nasty. Try "honour killing", Booker-T - you'll feel much better.
for those who have the discovery channel, tonight at 9pm eastern time (determine your time accordingly) they are starting a new series about different countries and continents in the world.. it looks very interesting.. juni .
The epitome of "solutions that aren't working" of me is the law that imposed VERY STIFF fines (up to $75,000 and 18 months imprisonment) for people entering Doomadgee with liquor. It allows one to bring up to 71 cans but not a single bottle of wine.
You've got to wonder what the hell passes for thinking among the people who legislate this stuff! 71 cans is one can short of three cases of beer. Is there some kind of study that shows that 3 cases of beer can be detrimental, but anything less than 3 cases is fine?? As for wine vs. beer, I know they used to be taxed differently; who knows if that is a factor in this crazy law??
I have a friend who is from Mauritius (and has part African and part Indian heritage) and she lived in Darwin for a year while doing some research. Because of her ethnicity, she was taken to be Aborigine and she told me that never in her life -- and she lived for many years in Germany and other countries -- had she never experienced racism as she did there. Being a white visitor, I wasn't able to see this side of things....until I picked up a newspaper and read some of the letters to the editor.
I've seen a lot of stuff on telly lately with Darwin bragging about how "multi-cultural" it is. Untrusting soul that I am, I usually mentally add: "Except for the Abos (the derogatory term)".
I seem to remember there being some scandals within some of the Northern Communities earlier this year - child abuse and so forth. Was any of that being covered while you were there. I remember thinking of the Dubs and the Amish and other closed patriarchal groups, when I heard all that.
I dunno, sticking a bunch of people out in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do, does nothing for them. And all it does for you is keep them away from you!
the recent court defeat of the watchtower emphasizes a point i have repeatedly dwelt on:.
the confidential judicial files in each congregation of jehovah's witnesses are a potential "bomb"!.
they often make for interesting reading, if you have access to them.
What would happen to a BOE who got sick of it all and just decided to let things slide and not form JCs in order to DF people?
the recent court defeat of the watchtower emphasizes a point i have repeatedly dwelt on:.
the confidential judicial files in each congregation of jehovah's witnesses are a potential "bomb"!.
they often make for interesting reading, if you have access to them.
Heh, heh! Well, we ARE in the information age - some information is more powerful than others...
for those who have the discovery channel, tonight at 9pm eastern time (determine your time accordingly) they are starting a new series about different countries and continents in the world.. it looks very interesting.. juni .
Stephanus, I appreciate the information you shared with me re: genocide. Of course, here in the USA, we've got our own "Hall of Shame"..........the horrible things that the "white man" did to the resident native americans............of course, this has happened in just about every land that has been invaded by Europeans.........I'm remembering what the Spaniards did to the Mayans and the Mexicans and the Aztecs..............please don't think I'm pointing fingers just at Australia. I just want to clarify that with you. I'm wondering also, especially considering Leoila's(sp?) comment, if racism and prejudice is "hidden" as it is here in the US? Some people like to boast and say that here in the "North" we don't have prejudice, but, I've heard enough first hand accounts to know that's a lie.
Oh, there's definitely racism here, overt, as well as subtle. Just writing about "Aborigines" here, like they're some sort of subset, or "them", is paining me. I try to only acknowledge one race, the Human one. Unfortunately, we like to categorise and make tidy neat piles of everything. Including people. In the cities it's less obvious, and generally is an individual thing, according to the person. It's more observable in rural towns where there's a sizeable Aboriginal population on the edge of town.
I'll never forget one heart wrenching story. I was studying accounting at the local Tech College and one of my classmates was an Aborigine named Allan. He told us the story how one time he was in the north-central NSW town of Moree and went in the pub. He was told by the publican he couldn't come in; he'd need to go to the pub at the other end of town where they served Aborigines. The publican was kindly and nice about it all, but...Segregation! In NSW!! In MY lifetime!!! Allan wasn't even from the local tribe - he was from near where I live, on the coast!
More about it here:
http://www.active.org.au/sydney/news/front.php3?article_id=3484&group=webcast
for those who have the discovery channel, tonight at 9pm eastern time (determine your time accordingly) they are starting a new series about different countries and continents in the world.. it looks very interesting.. juni .
Andamooka is another desert opal mining town that features dugout homes and other strange architecture:
http://www.opalplus.com/sa-fields.php
http://www.oacdt.sa.gov.au/communities/map_of_communities/andamooka
for those who have the discovery channel, tonight at 9pm eastern time (determine your time accordingly) they are starting a new series about different countries and continents in the world.. it looks very interesting.. juni .
Thank Stephanus Where can I see some pictures of some of these underground homes? Do they have running water, a sewer system and electricity?
Like most outback towns, they have to be fairly self sufficient. I remember seeing a news item some years back about the town of Coober Pedy having a wind generator built to try and address the electricty problem. When the wind's not blowin', they still have to use generators run on expensive shipped in petrol.
Here's a link or two:
http://www.gluckman.com/CooberPedy.Australia.html
http://bandb.about.com/cs/uniquegetaways/a/underground.htm
http://www.goway.com/downunder/australia/saus/saus_coober.html
for those who have the discovery channel, tonight at 9pm eastern time (determine your time accordingly) they are starting a new series about different countries and continents in the world.. it looks very interesting.. juni .
Plus lots of paternalism I saw. Spent the morning in an aborigine town in the bush and guess who was running the police, the bakery, the store, etc.? Not aborigines. At least in Normanton I bought ice at a store that looked like it was run by an aborigine family. And in Burketown I met a woman who lived there all her life who seemed quite close to some Aborigine friends...but who knows... at one of the roadhouses, the owners were very polite and courteous to the Aborigines who come to fill their cars up with cases of beer (no doubt obliging for $$$), and at the same time complaining once they left how lazy and stoopid and drunk they are, etc.It was pretty surreal.
There are some very big problems involved in the whole thing. There are lots of causes, and probably lots of solutions. But they aren't easy ones. The easy ones have all been tried. "Just sit in Canberra and throw money" has been tried for at least my lifetime. When you just give people money, when they've got no opportunities to spend it in order to make a difference and there're no jobs to help foster some independence and self-esteem and self-reliance, then sitting around drinking beer all day is probably as good a thing to do as any. Sad to say, it's not unique to here. Ottawa throws huge sums of money at Canadian Aboriginal communities, with pretty similar results, or so I understand. One thing I do know, solutions aimed at easing "the White Man's Guilt" aren't working.
It's strange, but yesterday afternoon, when I left this board and had a chance to calm down, I took my youngest to his Grandma's to work in her yard for some pocket money. Mum showed me photos of my nephew and his new baby. Then she showed me a picture that came with a plea for donations towards "indigenous health", a picture of some aboriginal kids all sitting on a log, all smiles. And said something about "aren't they beautiful?" I was wondering if it was a set up; if she'd been reading this thread and was taking the mick - it just seemed very strange, what with the timing. There was a bit of banter and I ended up saying that the only Aborigines I ever knew or hung out with wore suits and ties and were my co-workers in Sydney office blocks.
So what's a real Aborigine? The tourist authority version that the documentary programmes always show, painted up in ceremonial paint, or taking people around the scrub sampling bush tucker? The one's you've seen buying beer and the ones both my barber (hostile to Aborigines) and my mother(sympathetic towards Aborigines) have observed, lying out in the scrub somewhere in Northern Australia, passed out and surrounded by empty beer cans? The ones I know who have jobs in offices in Sydney?
I wish I had some answers. I find that the more I study and look at these issues, I end up with just more questions.
for those who have the discovery channel, tonight at 9pm eastern time (determine your time accordingly) they are starting a new series about different countries and continents in the world.. it looks very interesting.. juni .
I am intrigued by the unique wild life there but all those poisonous bugs and that awful spider that is lethal.
My father used to be the local "wildlife expert" in this area, so people were always popping in with jars full of bugs, spiders and reptiles for him to identify. He had quite a collection of dead things in formaldehyde in jars. He was particularly amused when someone brought him a Funnel-Web Spider (the deadly one) on Christmas Day. He even made up a song about it!
Is it true a lot of people have homes underground out in the outback
Yes, mainly in some of the opal fields in central Australia. After mining out the opal, the shafts and tunnels left behind make good places to retreat from the heat. The rock is firm and doesn't tend to drop on your head at awkward moments, but it is reasonably easy to dig through, so turning an old opal mine into a 4 bedroom luxury home is a relatively easy thing to do. It makes sense, because like any far flung community, using local materials is a lot easier and cheaper than importing bricks and timber, etc.
