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But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

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This is the vehicle for constitutional change. You live in an era of absolute despotism and the remedy is plain, not to uphold the constitution but throw it off

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Originally Posted by paraclete

This is the vehicle for constitutional change. You live in an era of absolute despotism and the remedy is plain, not to uphold the constitution but throw it off

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The remedy most often used has been amending the Constitution. In fact, the Framers saw immediately that the Constitution would need to be modified from time to time - hence, the Bill of Rights, the First Ten Amendments.

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Originally Posted by Athos

The remedy most often used has been amending the Constitution. In fact, the Framers saw immediately that the Constitution would need to be modified from time to time - hence, the Bill of Rights, the First Ten Amendments.

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Yes but they didn't go far enough, they were filled with good intentions for future generations but not for themselves, as they maintained slavery and considered democracy an anathema

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=paraclete;3819902 as they maintained slavery

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The alternative was no Constitution and no nation. It would take another 70 years before this was resolved in a bloody Civil War.

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This is the vehicle for constitutional change. You live in an era of absolute despotism and the remedy is plain, not to uphold the constitution but throw it off

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There is no absolute despotism in this country ;not even close .

Athos is right .The issue of slavery was irreconcilable in 1787. It remained so until 1865 when it was settled violently .

But you should stop throwing rocks from a glass house . Your nation allowed slavery to continue until 1970s as the indigenous and people from surrounding islands were compelled to work without wages ;often separating families .The convicts worked without wages until the 1850s . Then there was a practice called pearling where indigenous were kidnapped and sold to the pearl trade in the north . Then there is this :

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Between 1860 and 1970, Australia effectively had

state-sanctioned slavery

of Aboriginal people. Historians Dr Rosalind Kidd and

Dr Thalia Anthony

have documented how Aboriginal Australians of all ages were forcibly sent to work on sheep and cattle properties across Australia under government schemes that were supposedly "

designed to protect them

". Laws in Western Australia allowed Aboriginal children to be sent from the age of 12. The conditions were often horrific: 16-hour days, floggings and forced removal from families. They were either unpaid or received only a few shillings pocket money. State governments assured these workers that their wages were placed in a government trust, but most never saw a cent.

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https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/aus...27-1muhg3.html

No Tom it wasn't slavery, you can't enslave the fauna. We did not forceibly import millions of people from Africa to do unpaid labour after selling them in slave markets. Convicts were criminals, transportation wasn't an ideal solution but they fared better here than where they came from in many cases. There is no doubt indigenous people were badly treated but we did not have a policy of actively wiping them out as you did

I can see you like to listen to propaganda and we have a lot of it here from a noisy minority who have everything done for them and still want more

You mean done to them for there own good. It's not your fault they don't do as you tell them and assimilate at your pace, and the manner prescribed to them.

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We did not forceibly import millions of people from Africa

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you didn't need to .There were plenty of natives and nearby islanders to do your slave labor . You really are in denial about your history. What does blackbirding mean ? How about pearling . Do you deny that Australia used aboriginal slave to create a cotton industry when the American Civil War disrupted the world cotton supply ? Do you deny that men and women from the islands were kidnapped to work in sugar plantations into the 20th century ? Do you deny that aboriginals were kidnapped and sent to cattle and sheep ranches as slaves as late as 1970 ? Do you deny that even when these workers got paid that often the money was confiscated and never given to the workers ? These wages were often stolen by corrupt politicians or the owners themselves . Stolen Compensation is still an unresolved issue there today .

In 1974, in his film The Unlucky Australians , John Goldschmidt explains how “the authorities made [Aboriginal work] slave labour by making the Aborigines wards of the state”, referring to the Welfare Ordinance of 1953 which made Aboriginal people of the NT wards and the Director of Welfare their guardian. As wards, Aboriginal workers couldn’t leave the station where they were working, “could be forcibly brought back with chains around their necks”.

The more I look into this ,it resembles holocaust denial or the Germans denying their complicity in the Nazi atrocities . At least in America we acknowledge our past . http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journal....html#Heading1

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Originally Posted by talaniman

You mean done to them for there own good. It's not your fault they don't do as you tell them and assimilate at your pace, and the manner prescribed to them.

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You can't assimilate a tribal person all you can do is leave them alone

It is not deniel to say that not all opinions are true, our nation is still working through the issue of what state and religious organisations were complicit in. We acknowledge our past and we can say that change was made but you need to remember that freedom is not the provience of the USA, you talk to jim crow and excuse the treatment of millions for a century or more before you point at us.

You should know that aboriginals have a particular affinity to country so to say they could not leave is to ignore the question of where did they have to go?

Seems they were not allowed to go anywhere you did not approve of, but so much for your moral high ground and blaming them for their situation. I don't recall you ever acknowledging the part you played in this, or the part you still play. Wrongs that are rooted in race are never solved in a legislative session but through many years and decades of changed minds and hearts, so I ain't buying that you have solved your own problem in this regard, it's just less blatant and probably more insidiously taken off the public front burner just as ours still is.

Whupping someone's arse and then leaving them alone is no solution. That never worked here, it won't work there either... but you'll see.

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Originally Posted by talaniman

Seems they were not allowed to go anywhere you did not approve of, but so much for your moral high ground and blaming them for their situation. I don't recall you ever acknowledging the part you played in this, or the part you still play. Wrongs that are rooted in race are never solved in a legislative session but through many years and decades of changed minds and hearts, so I ain't buying that you have solved your own problem in this regard, it's just less blatant and probably more insidiously taken off the public front burner just as ours still is.

Whupping someone's arse and then leaving them alone is no solution. That never worked here, it won't work there either... but you'll see.

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I didn't play any part in this, nor do I CONTINUE TO PLAY A PART! So stop projecting. I didn't say we have solved all the problems, these people want a sovereignty over the majority we will never surrender. You cannot understand how to negotiate with a people who see themselves as part of the land. Every rock, every pool is "sacred" or has a spirit, so in their view no one can do anything. This isn't race although the concept of work appears to have completely elluded them. The affairs of these people is very much on the front burner. They want us to live by their rules which are completely incomprehensible

Image a situation where prison is seen as a holiday, where you can just go somewhere else when ever you like, where you can't date a girl because she is the wrong "skin" for you, where what ever a family member has can be taken by you for your own use, where you can just move into a family house and sponge on those there. Theirs was a primitive

. Theirs was a primitive communist society, no one owned anything. They spend indeterminate amounts of time discussing things and cannot reach a consensus and they keep talking, talking. There were 250 languages so they couldn't even communicate with each other..
We didn't whupp their arse, we did have skirmishes with small groups in various places and they didn't win and were hunted in the same way you hunted Indians when they killed people or stock That was 200, 150, 100 years ago and it is over and I will not assume the guilt of a colonial past

This isn't about you, but how YOU people deal with your colonial past. All you did was blast the minority AGAIN.

Clete's white man's burden

I have no burden, I would happily leave them to live their stone age lives without interference as long as they leave me alone. I don't need to deal with the colonial past, my family have been here for two hundred years and lived in peace with those who came before.

You see I don't accept projection of guilt for the acts of others and I don't accept that just because someone may have walked upon the land in the distant past it is their's in perpetuity

You could be honest and just say you took it and ain't giving it back, even at this late stage of the game, and screw the aborigines and their issues. Oh wait that is what your saying.

we aren't talking about subduing natives . We are talking about enslaving them. You can deny your history all you want to . But you can no longer bury it .

Tal I see you no longer need an intepreter.

Tom this is not a question of slavery, working for rations may be considered slavery in your country, but such methods of compensation exist in the agricultural industry even today. The problem is that some laws in the distant past were unfair in both your country and mine

And the practice and policies of those antiquated laws still exists and used to disadvantage the unpopular part of the population. Something's have not change and hate is alive and well. The Dufus makes good use of it.