MikeT agreed:
“I love Colonial Beer, esp the IPA - perhaps BLACKhearts and Sparrows should be cancelled.”
Peter said cheers:
“I bought a dozen as soon as this foolishness became a story. I will buy more.”
Michael was suspicious:
“Maybe Colonial was behind this, as it’s been a great marketing move!”
Another Peter wondered who would guard The Guardian:
“Mocker, re your revelation about John Edward Taylor, founder and owner of the holier than thou, sanctimonious The Guardian and his connection to the slave trade. The newsprint brother in arms of our ABC both of which have conspicuously failed to condemn the violence associated with the exploitation of the tragedy of Minneapolis.
“Seeing Guardian journalists are without a doubt the ABC’s favourites, what are the chances of the likes of Speers, Baird, Sales questioning the likes of Lenore Taylor or Katharine Murphy on their paper’s historical connection to the slave trade?
Surely Guardianistas and Guardian staff, being so honourable will fall on their sword and support calls that ‘The Guardian Must Fall’?”
Sarcasm from Samantha:
“It’s a relief to see things such as Colonial beer and the game of chess being targeted, it means that things such as homelessness, child abuse, branch stacking, recession and increase in cancer deaths have been sorted and no longer a problem.”
Yet another Peter:
“Today my wife asked me to hang out the washing she had loaded into the washing machine. While doing this I noticed all the clothes that I had hung up were white! This filled me feelings of guilt and shame.
“How could I have allowed myself to be in this position? The white privilege belonged not only to me but also the clothes. The whites had been washed first! How did this unconscious bias make the non white clothes feel? Could I ever understand how the black shirt felt being worn doing the gardening while the white shirt was worn under a nice jacket with a tie to work!
“This is the way it’s always been done, I thought to myself. Is that a good enough reason? I doubted myself. People now wear a black shirt to gala events, things are changing I thought. This improved my mood somewhat which was important as it was quite uncomfortable hanging out the washing with one knee on the ground.”
Rationalist poked the woke:
“Not only is it colonial but it is also pale — how did (The Guardian’s) D’Souza miss that. Maybe he secretly harbours colonial and racist tendencies; the secret counter revolutionaries are often revealed by their own words. Off with his head just in case. One cannot be too careful, and it is better to kill 100 innocents than let one guilty person evade justice (was that Lenin?).”
Archaeo was appalled:
“Similarly ignorant @$$holes have just vandalised the statue of Col William Light in Adelaide twice. The lunacy is spreading. The irony is that the Colonel was British-Malaysian and classed as Eurasian which meant he didn’t have the same entitlements as a British person. The Royal Navy and British Army gave him opportunities. He helped Muhammad Ali set up the Egyptian navy. He ended up laying out the city of Adelaide and discovered the Barossa Valley, thank you very much Colonel!
“Apparently he established friendly and cooperative relations with the Kaurna people. And 180 years later his statue gets vandalised.”
Michael mused:
“Cancel Culture activists simply see another statue erected to honour a renowned historical figure and instantly equate them to a colonial oppressor, racist or worse. Labels and feelings rule all. Never historical fact and context.”
Matthew warned:
“I’m left handed and am thinking of suing the Department of Education for perpetuating the use of the words sinister and gauche.”
Greg quoted Orwell:
“There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”
Karl quipped:
“I didn’t realise that Colonial had a beer called Sour Southwest. Perhaps, in honour of the company’s invasion of the vine growing territory, they should rename the company Sour Grapes, which would both remain true to the company’s roots (no pun) and at the same time serve as a perpetual acknowledgement to the complainants.”
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Nick Cater railed against the ABC’s ongoing war on history and its recent wheeling out of author Bruce Pascoe to suggest slavery flourished in Australia, concluding that these are dangerous times to be undermining Australia’s moral foundations and the values and institutions that underpin its success. Ross responded:
“This is why so many people are frustrated with the ABC. Without any commercial interference the ABC should be the independent arbitrator in matters like this. They should be able to run sensible discourse that accurately represents all facts and perspectives. But they don’t — they want to act like click-baiters and attract ‘likes’ just like all the other hacks. As an example, Four Corners on Monday night ABC TV could be once relied upon to offer sensible discussion on incidents and current news items in their 50-min ad-free slot. But not anymore. Four Corners’ role now is to raise biased controversy as a lead in to Q&A.”
Valerie’s view:
“Nick Cater’s last para says it all. Concentrate on the CAUSES of welfare and educational disadvantages of indigenous people TODAY wherever they exist, which is usually in regional and remote areas.”
Peter promoted:
“Bitter Harvest, by Peter O’Brien (Quadrant Books, 2019) is a comprehensive appraisal of Bruce Pascoe’s book Dark Emu. Pascoe postulates that, rather than being a nomadic hunter-gatherer society, Australian Aborigines were actually sedentary agriculturalists with skills superior to those of the white colonists who took their land and despoiled it.
“(It’s) a forensic but highly readable examination which reveals that Pascoe omits, distorts or mischaracterises important information to such an extent that, as purported history, Dark Emu is worthless. Even worse, it promotes a divisive, victim-based agenda that pits one Australian against another. In short, it is a shameful, politically-biased work of fiction, the ideas in which have already been taken up in school texts.”
Wombat was woke:
“Haven’t read Pascoe’s book, have you? He has been called out by people too proud too recognise the dark aspects of own their history. They deliberately try to deny the history told by indigenous people. Colonists the world over used this some strategy so they could live more comfortably with themselves having dispossessed and brutalised the natives. The declaration of Australia as ‘terra nullius’ is a classic example of this deceit.”
Terry was awake:
“Wombat, the Mabo decision long ago overturned the the terra nullius position. You do know about the Mabo decision and its intricacies do you not? It is set in stone legally. Like most advanced civilations we looked back and the court determined that the terra nullius position was not correct. The Mabo decision clearly set out the rules for reclaiming access to indigenous land, whilst also accepting that Australia is a settled country.
“You also cannot compare the behaviour of the British in Australia to the Belgians in the Congo or tbe French and Portugese in Vietnam and surrounds. There is a vast difference between conquering rule aimed at stripping valuable mineral resources and settlement which is what happened here.”
Wombat hit back:
“Keep up Terry. I use the example of the “terra nullius” declaration by white men to justify their take-over and brutalisation of native people and their lands. Other colonists similarly buttoned indigenous history so they could feel good about their atrocities. Terra nullius was entrenched when Australia was “settled” by white men.
“As to the British behaviour as colonists and plunderers, I suggest you read William Dalrymple’s The Anarchist. It might remove the rose coloured tint from your glasses. And, yes, I can compare the behaviour of all colonial powers with each other. The patterns in each case are almost identical. TheIr soul purpose was to claim and plunder distant shores to benefit their own. No distinction, although they didn’t strip mineral back then in Australia; they used it as a dumping ground for what they assessed as the dregs of their society.”
Eileen elucidated:
“A good article but less than accurate on one crucial point, viz: ‘The unlawful killing of Aborigines occurred at the frontiers of settlement and was never sanctioned by the state’. A considerable proportion of the unlawful killing of Aborigines on the frontier — particularly the Queensland pastoral frontier — was perpetrated by the Native Police, a force which was raised and funded by Colonial Governments.”
Last word to Richard:
“Leaving aside the fact that ‘slavery’ requires the slave to be owned by the master, it is also the case that blackbirding, while evil, was not an ‘Australian’ practice. ‘Australia’ was at that time a geographical expression, not a country. Blackbirding took place only in Queensland, which was a separate colony over which the other colonies had no jurisdiction. As soon as they gained that jurisdiction, at Federation, the other colonies, as Australia, stopped the practice.”
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Welcome to the column where you provide the content. The Mocker waded in to the brew-haha over Colonial Brewing and the attempt by boutique bottle shop chain Blackhearts & Sparrows to force a name change upon the craft brewery, the name of which was a reference to its ‘colonisation’ of Western Australia’s wine country. Own goal said David:
“I’d like to express my gratitude to Blackheart and Sparrows. Their folly brought to my attention Colonial Beer, which somehow I had never tried. Now I have a new favourite beer!”