[cashman]

Originally Posted by Eric

You can't use this type of argument for this case. It is difficult for people in England to understand this kind of decision and it's underlying mentality ... by the way I'm not trying to justify it. Australia, like the US and Canada, has a large aboriginal population and the history of how the two groups, settlers and aboriginals, have interacted is not pleasant to contemplate. It has become conventional wisdom among certain "whites" that the aboriginals are not quite human. Both Canada and the US once had bounties on the "red" indians. And still the image of the drunken, criminal, sex crazed, drugged Indian living on welfare is one that is still accepted by certain segments of the population. In British Columbia several years ago, a judge was found guilty of sexually exploiting young girls ... getting a blow job for a lighter sentence. He is now in jail, thank god. England does not have aboriginal peoples. They did not aquire their country be a recent rape of an idigenous population. They are not in the process of coming to terms with that "crime." And unless you take that into account, any statement of who is ahead of whom is flawed to the point of being meaningless.

i would say that the aboriginies/ indians etc are the true population of those countries and have been marginalised by the "whites" probably not what people want to hear but its true.