The Australian heroine from start, when she carried the Olympic torch into the stadium, to finish, as she crossed the line to take 400m gold, was the indigenous athlete Cathy Freeman. Against the will of many of her still oppressed people, she came to represent the symbol, albeit shallow, of reconciliation between White and Aboriginal Australia. But the frenzy of flames and fireworks surrounding the Games blinded the rest of the world to the darker side of a land down under.
In 1999, John Pilger returned home to find that the elaborate preparations for the Games overshadowed a hidden world where Aborigines continue to live in Third World conditions. He revealed that some of the greatest sportsmen and women in the world were in fact Aboriginal. Many of them, like blacks in South Africa under Apartheid, were until recently denied a place in their country’s Olympic teams.
He also found that the Australian Government was in the process of overturning the landmark legislation of 1992 which finally recognised Aborigines as people with common law rights before the English colonised the country. ‘Welcome to Australia: The Secret Shame Behind the Sydney Olympics’ was the third film Pilger made on the Aboriginal struggle alongside fellow Australian, Alan Lowery.
Absolute disgrace to call this a documentary,
It’s anti Australia propaganda.
It is this kind of shameful media that creates
Tension and divide.
Huh ? Pilger is a twit.
After visiting Croatia, you will wish to live there.
Country glorious history, many inventions, the beautiful and pure nature. Heaven on earth.
i am one of the 44 users online presently and this is as good a place as any to express my appreciation for your compilation work by way of fingertaps …. wish i had my donation channell all up and blazing .. so yall can buy them bags of heirloom seeds and stock up on toolhandles while your/my/our money is worth as much still.
i went to oz in 97 and it hit me so differently from my 5 sojourns to the
states during the eighties … i now am ashamed to travel, even to provoke
and invite travelling by advertizing my collection of paper (remember that
medium? The one that cut up our identity like we cut the giant trees that
could take and bear it .. up .. into cellulose. Cut-up style the old way). Has
to do with the renter disallowing overnight guests. Sigh. We are such a long
way from at least the hard won progress the UK good folks achieved – see
livinginthefuture.org (low impact, friendly, intimate feminine artistic
macho medicine ‘settlementation’)
try the file called ‘priority issues’ for more
http://poetpiet.tripod.com/keywords_proper_names_and_brief_descriptions.htm