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Australia’s Sorry Day Inspires the White House

President Bush says sorry to African Americans

At 9am, Feb 13/08, the Australian Parliament formally apologised for the hurt and suffering its previous policies had inflicted on the indigenous population. Such policies included the forcible removal of children from their families. “These injustices must never happen again,” the Prime Minister said, “they are a great stain on the nation’s soul”. For thirty minutes, Kevin Rudd held the nation in his hands, as millions cheered, applauded and wept. Watching a broadcast of the apology in the White House, George Bush was transfixed, and he urgently summoned speech writers. RICHARD NEVILLE found himself amongst them, offering suggestions...

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President George W. Bush delivers a national apology, Thursday, Feb. 14, 2008, in the Oval Office of the White House:

The genius of our system is that it can absorb shocks and emerge even stronger, despite injustices and mistakes. While our great country continues to be the marvel of the world, we have sometimes hurt people along the way, and today I wish to apologize for their suffering. To Native Americans I say “sorry” for the land we stole, the treaties we violated, the squaws we raped. To African Americans I say sorry for slavery. The first President of the United States, George Washington, is now in heaven, but I know he would want me to apologize to the nation for having enslaved over 300 people of color on his plantation in Virginia. After a time, he switched his crop from tobacco to hemp, so maybe the slaves had a good time. (Chuckles).

photo-06[1]I say sorry to all the civil right activists who were beat up by the police in the sixties and hounded by the FBI and even subjected to secret LSD experiments by the CIA, but I’m running ahead of myself. It’s about time we apologized to the people of Mexico. I hate to say this, but I’ve been told to: In 1848, in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, all or parts of 7 different US states were stolen from Mexico. We put guns to the temples of the Mexican officials and forced them to sign away half their land. Sorry about that. But I’m not sorry about what we did three years earlier, when we annexed the State of Texas. Well, we had to. God wanted us to discover oil and use it to make this country great. Hell, if we hadn’t come along, the Mexicans would’ve wasted the oil on cooking tacos.

Let me now apologize for all the nasty stuff we did in Latin America, especially in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Grenada, Columbia, Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador and Chile, to name a few, but damned if I’m going to say sorry for Cuba. Not only did they whip us at the Bay of Pigs, but Fidel Castro is an atheist! Sure, I know our trade blockade is a cause of immense suffering for its citizens, but the Cubans shouldn’t have voted for him.

Now it’s time to express regret for the numerous crimes against humanity our country has committed in Latin America. Our famous School of the Americas, formerly located in Panama and now based in Fort Benning, Georgia, continues to produce graduates who are skilled in combat, counter insurgency and enhanced interrogation. Most of Latin America’s major dictator’s are graduates from this military school, and I believe it is time to say sorry to all the surviving victims and their families for the suffering we have inflicted, and will continue to inflict in that continent. Why only last month two of our graduates were implicated in the slaughter of 20 people in Bogota.

But all of this is only the tip of the iceberg. When I first looked over this speech earlier today, I was shocked by its length, and insisted that huge chunks be cut out. We Americans are busy re-building the economy right now, and there’s not much time to rake over all the injustices of the past, even though God probably wants us to own up. So I’ll give you a quick run down of other items that can be bundled into this apology, ones that we do need to acknowledge, so we can achieve “closure” and move on to maintaining our total dominance of the 21st Century:

• To Vietnam I say Sorry for invading your county, slaughtering your civilians and poisoning your land with Agent Orange. Our Government is sorry that our actions led to so many children being born with deformities, but we can't turn back the clock.

• To Cambodia and Laos I say sorry for the illegal bombing of your lands. Even today these bombs still kill and maim your children, but what can we do? We are too busy making new bombs to clean up the old ones. But our heart's in the right place.

• To Japan, a really big Sorry! Because they were really big bombs! As there is mounting evidence that your nation was on the verge of surrender in 1945, and that our leaders were aware this at the time, I guess it was wrong and cruel to unleash nuclear weapons upon your cities. So to the families of the hundreds of thousands of citizens who died slow, agonizing deaths, I apologize. But I must admit that the majority of Americans still think we did the right thing, and would do it again in a flash! So watch out Iran.

Pause, muffled voices, silence, speech resumes:

photo-04[1]Okay, so we forgot about Korea. Oh, fuck Korea! Oops, the mike’s still on… Anyway, no-one in the White House has a clue about what that war in Korea was about, but we might as well say sorry anyway, ‘cause we dropped a lot of bombs. They tell me that a million civilians were killed in Korea. Sorry about that.

Now a lot of you out there listening to this speech are probably starting to ask yourselves – is he gonna talk about Iraq? You bet I am! There’s a lot to be sorry about for the first Iraq war, the one in 1990, and that’s the fault of my dad. He didn’t go far enough. I’m sincerely sorry for that, and I apologize on his behalf. If George senior had finished job, we wouldn’t be in Baghdad right now, up shit creek.

No, I’m not going to talk about our two big wars of today, except to say how angry I am about the latest announcement from the UN – the United Nations of Communists! They claim things are getting much worse for the Iraqi people: Four million are struggling to feed themselves, half of the country's 27 million population lack safe drinking water, and about 2.5 million have been displaced from their homes. So what! There’s a war going on! And if they think its bad now, wait till John McCain gets elected.

You know, there’s only a limited number of times a man can say he’s sorry and I reckon I’m done.

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Dear President Obama,

My friend, Cynthia McKinney and Nobel laureate, Mairead Maguire and 20 other people were trying to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, which, as I understand, is something that you have encouraged Israel to allow.

The Honorable Cynthia McKinney served six terms in the US Congress and she was the Green Party candidate for the office that you eventually won. It is an outrage that the Israeli Navy would block the boat that she and 21 others were on in international waters and board the boat and kidnap the crew and humanitarian aid workers.

President Obama, when an American captain was kidnapped by Somali "pirates" US Navy SEALS were sent in to rescue him. He was the captain of a private, for profit, ship and the US military was used to rescue him.

What Israel did, outside of its waters, to an unarmed boat filled with aid for Gazans who have been trapped in a concentration camp by Israel, is an act of international piracy and you must demand that Israel release Ms. McKinney and her fellow captors with all haste.

I just received word that the illegally detained captives have been moved to another prison and may be charged with trying to enter Israel illegally, when they were trying to get aid to Gaza and were not even in Israeli waters.

I can't even express my immense outrage at this overt breach of international law that has been perpetrated by Israel.

Use your influence as the greatest dispenser of military aid to Israel to force that rogue state to release Ms. McKinney et. al., then we can talk about their immoral occupation of Palestine and the inhumane blockade of Gaza.

With urgency,

Cindy Sheehan

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Re: My Unrealistic Wish for the Chaser

Right on, the chasers approach is exactly what is needed to make the comfortable uncomfortable and give greater accesibility for criticism and analysis of the ridiculous shit we have to continuously put up with from our political system and those running it. I only hope they manage to keep it up without compromising themselves. - Simon

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Re: Sol Trujilo

Sean Maguire is right to say that Australia has racist tendencies. Our first people have been copping it badly since the next lot arrived. When my refugee father's lot arrived in '59 he suffered racist abuse. My mother had to put up with neighbours refusing to speak to her because she'd crossed the line and married "one of them" and, growing up in the 60s and 70s. I copped it too, including a public school infants school teacher ostracising me for my wog breath. Newcomers still cop racism every day.

But while horrid things happen here all too often, I don't know that Australia is particularly racist. We don't have hostels being razed to the ground (yet). We don't have religious riots either. It isn't as bad as many many other places but that's not really the point of my letter. My main point is that I just don't believe that Sol Trujillo's accusation is made in good faith. It seems like a pretty easy way to try and distract the world from the real reason that Sol is leaving and leaving early. He failed at Telstra and he failed spectacularly. What he really is pissed about is that we're "over-regulated" because he's still caught up with the whole neo-con approach: the approach that led to our current financial meltdown. If we were even less regulated he and his henchmen could have taken us for even more of a ride. - Mouldfield

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Re: The AfPak Blues

Isn't it strange that the bad terrorist guys we need to attack all seem to have things in common: >OIL >GAS >OIL & GAS >PIPELINE ACCESS TO OIL/GAS Just one of those weird coincidences I guess. Maybe the next attack will be on a little country with huge reserves of Brussel Sprouts -just to prove me wrong. - Warren

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Re:  How To Become Weapons of Mass Destruction

Well written, I really dig this article. - Peter Silver

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Re: HomepageDaily

I usually get the real news from overseas sites. How good it is to find your site after wading through the sanitized oz media for so long. Onya HomepageDaily! [this is definately not a commercial announcement]. - Woz

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Re: Ron Paul on Swine Flu

It takes courage to speak out when those around you are cowed by ignorance and fear. HPD's running the Ron Paul article shows they are one of those we can count on in Australia to hold the line and provide decent edutorial standards.When I came through Brisbane aurport on the morning of May 1st 2009 the passengers were ordered to walk in single file keeping a one metre distance from the person in front. The flight crew who I thought would be used to this sort of thing joked "they will be making us goose step in time next". This was suposedly so we could be screened electronically for "fever". This flu virus beat up like the 1976 version ramps up budgets for more police state nonsense and loss of civil liberty. HPD carries some of the only copy that speaks to the decline of criticism of the status quo. While Murdoch's papers are lobbying for the criminal class of the financial banksters HPD gives life to a wider debate. When my North American friends say "Who can you recommend for some genuine Australian insight?" HPD is tragically one of the few links I have to offer and does so with my heartfelt thanks. - Anthony Innes

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