Views in Verse on Bigotry

We read graphic details this week of an Australian Academic Professor Spurr who had regularly sent around emails to his peers promoting racism and religious intolerance. This same man had been appointed to review Australia's English curriculum. When challenged on this outrage, he retorted that he was entitled to his own views on such matters and yet be totally objective in setting context and policy in relation to our national learning program for our children. Wrong man ...hand in your guns and get out of town!


In fact this bombardment by 'fire breathing' individuals spreading hate via email has taken on a very unwelcome level of late.

Only this week I received an elaborate chain letter detailing how a Christian Pastor and an Imam had crossed paths at a lecture in an American jail. The story spread by the Pastor tells how he boldly confronted the Imam on the lack of tolerance by Muslims in relation to all non-believers. The Pastor built a healthy case of disdain against what he saw as outright bigotry himself. All was plain sailing and mildly convincing till I got to the Pastors name, church but beyond all of this ...his address: ALABAMA. Hmmm ...stirs a few too many memories doesn't it? 

The question I ask is: do we ever learn? The thing most common to all this hate mail I see is that the authors always sees themselves as coming from a position of absolute righteousness.

Alabama

Oh Alabama
The devil fools
with the best laid plan.
Swing low Alabama
You got spare change
You got to feel strange
And now the moment
is all that it meant.

Alabama, you got
the weight on your shoulders
That's breaking your back.
Your Cadillac
has got a wheel in the ditch
And a wheel on the track

Oh Alabama
Banjos playing
through the broken glass
Windows down in Alabama.
See the old folks
tied in white ropes
Hear the banjo.
Don't it take you down home?

Alabama, you got
the weight on your shoulders
That's breaking your back.
Your Cadillac
has got a wheel in the ditch
And a wheel on the track

Oh Alabama.
Can I see you
and shake your hand.
Make friends down in Alabama.
I'm from a new land
I come to you
and see all this ruin
What are you doing Alabama?
You got the rest of the union
to help you along
What's going wrong?

NEIL YOUNG

The Others

You took me in when I needed help

I know that you are my friend

He vouched for me also at that time 

A ready hand to lend

She too was like a sister to me

Without asking a thing in return

But it's not about them of whom I speak

It’s the others that I spurn

I didn’t mean you, when I spoke of ‘a plot’

I didn’t mean him, involved he’s not

I didn’t mean her, I’d be needlessly hurting

It’s the rest of the others to whom I’m referring

It’s all the others, who offer a threat

It’s all the others, whose intent I get

It's all about them, their motives aren't true

I know this just simply, because …I do!

from my desktop Grahame J Flynn

Views in verse on Clive Palmer

Clive Palmer 'the populist'

snidely 'second guessing' the easy winners 

Wit and policy 'on the fly'

Racism - It's a hit and miss affair

Several commentators mentioned of Clive's appearance on ABC's Q&A panel the other night - where he had so cleverly picked up on the  'populist winners' as they were delivered from the audience. Easy pickings!

How he had garnered the easy points that were there and just cast them into his policy bag as he went along ...just another night at the office.

Until he delivered a colourful rant against 'Chinese Bastards' as the debate went on. This was then seen as: a side issue, to do with his company problems, more just Clive being Clive. Perhaps not.

If you roll it up with all the other populist points he tucked away during that debate ...this I suggest was just another. As soon as he sensed though how poorly timed it was, he then attempted to 'wrap it up in a blanket of concern' re: communism, "shooting their own people", buying our ports...facts instead of his summary views.

Clive Palmer, just like Pauline Hanson before him, has a mistaken belief that all Australians if given the chance will respond to a racist call. I suggest that Clive was simply 'tucking another populist point in the bag' when he second guessed himself on racism as soon as the words slipped from his mouth. The tirade that followed was then camouflage for what he had unwittingly allowed to creep into his agenda . Quick wit and 'policy making on the fly' are strange bedfellows.

But why did he then carry on so to such an extent? He knows that that he cannot afford to be compared with Hanson. She proved that Australians will think through the real issues over time and see racism calls for what they are. Bunkum!

I blogged on 'White Australia policy' in this country only five days back. It is well and truly buried and so will Clive be if he allows himself to put up side by side against Hanson. People will readily see a lot of comparisons to her that will not speak well to his judgement. Voters at the end of the day in this country, once the fanfare is done, try to seek out 'integrity'.

Perhaps the 'populist' Messiah has fallen at the first turn...

There is a chap in a social club to which I belong who regularly emails around racist rants to 'all and sundry' on our common email list. He has been admonished time and time again by return emails. But he just doesn't get it. Regardless of what continues to happen, he just keeps sending them. He believes in his heart that everyone thinks the same way he does. He will keep doing it. Somehow he filters out the reality. Sad really.

Just getting back to Clive as he delivered his rant about "Chinese bastards" ...sitting right next to him was Penny Wong . I was embarrassed for you Clive and if per chance you don't think to apologise to her ...I will right now. Sorry Ms Wong. He knows not what he does.

The Others

You took me in when I needed help

I know that you are my friend

He vouched for me also at that time 

A ready hand to lend

She too was like a sister to me

Without asking a thing in return

But it's not about them of whom I speak

It’s the others that I spurn

I didn’t mean you, when I spoke of ‘a plot’

I didn’t mean him, involved he’s not

I didn’t mean her, I’d be needlessly hurting

It’s the rest of the others to whom I’m referring

It’s all the others, who offer a threat

It’s all the others, whose intent I get

It's all about them, their motives aren't true

I know this just simply, because …I do!

from my desktop Grahame J Flynn

Views in Verse - on Intolerance

Views in verse on intolerance

I grew up an Irish Catholic boy well imbued by the White Australia rantings of Arthur 'Cocky' Calwell -  the (then) Labour Party Leader of Australia. The white hat says it all!

His deluded views about Communism and Asian folk as its weapon of destruction spread into an Australian form of McCarthyism - 'reds under beds'.






My father too (sadly) became afflicted by these 'ratbag' teachings which were so manifest throughout the Catholic Church at the time. My father (as a convert) to 'the faith' swallowed it all - no questions asked - as did many - given that broad media communications of the day were highly limited.

This backdrop was then a ready justification for the Vietnam War scenario. The Catholic vote was at that time massive compared to what it is today. The decision to fight (often put down to American pressure) seemed a natural progression given the 'story' spawned from within society as a result of Calwell and the church.

All of this seems a vast world away from the social issues we deal with today. However allow me to dwell for a moment...to colour the hatred that was allowed to become manifest yet perhaps has now hopefully died with my late father's generation.

At my infants school our class was subjected to a Sister Vincent (a St Joseph's order nun) who on a daily basis would deliver us a Calwell-ish rant against communism and share her fear that we would soon all be overrun by the people from the North. The woman had clearly 'swallowed a pill' that her protected 'religious' life was not able to rationalise for her. Hatred can do that to people - it is counter to all our basic learnings in life.

Sister was thankfully relieved of her duties half way through that year and quietly taken away. No-one would ever know however of the damage done; the fear she had injected into the seventy odd  children she 'taught'.

Me, I would myself suffer from a recurring dream of 'reds' climbing over our back fence at home for many years to come. Perhaps the bigotry she practised was taken on board by many of this group as a form of self-defence; again I will never know. I somehow suspect not however, despite what we sometimes read in our papers in relation to visiting students and Australian intolerance. Yes, there is history, but today...? Naa.

For my part, only twenty years later on , I married into a Chinese family. Perhaps I should come and chisel that into your gravestone 'Cocky' as a post script to your planned impact on the next generation.

For the Catholic Church bit, I no longer practise. As my life evolved, I looked for integrity in my roots and found too many 'contradictions' coming to the surface that I, like Sr. Vincent, couldn't swallow. Intolerance of any kind I still struggle with today. Religion - everyone is entitled to their own beliefs - how can we question that? Well, how can we? We must respect people's rights to make their own decisions.

* Frank Hardy's 'Power without glory' is an excellent text that conveys the social tensions of this 'colourful' time and the destructive scourge that comes with rising to positions of power.

* Arthur Calwell must be noted as voting against going to war but it also must be noted he was Opposition leader at the time



And justice for all...?

A wild but stumbling rush
a thirst for brother's blood
a victim falls hard before a baying crowd
A lusty blow is struck
just one with any luck
roars of faith ring out for hours
good and loud

The wild group arrived
a sword strapped by the side
the verdict a prescribed but grisly fate
A rigid but cruel
right of tribal rule
it seems justice can be swift
no need to wait

A bunker lit up bright
well into winter's night
Top brass around a massive table
Seems the generals have their say:
"Sir,there is no other way...!"
"but to hit this region hard
to keep it stable!"

The cameras whirl and play
at church that very day
it didn't really matter it wasn't Sunday

"God bless this call we've made

there'll be so many saved"...
(except for thousands there trapped
along the way)

It seems the rules are clear
handed down o'er many years
for a phalanx to extol it's common call
It's well known far and wide
that with god at your side
his will is clearly done
through one and all


But is it really fair?
whose premise we compare...?
seems they'll all see fit to make a rightful plea?
Appears there's justice there for all
for help with righteous cause
as long as one goes down
on bended knee...?


from my desktop Grahame J Flynn