On this date, 233 years ago, President George Washington said in the first State of the Union Address, “Knowledge is in every Country the surest basis of public happiness.”
On this date, three years ago, The Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, killing all 176 passengers and crew aboard.
A Melbourne Street theatre reenactment of IRGC killings.
In life, we mortal human beings must strive to do the best we can with what God gives us.
121 years ago, in the New Year of 1902, the young Javanese noblewoman and iconic women’s rights pioneer R.A. Kartini and her elder sister experienced a sisterhood revelation which was part of the foundation for Kartini’s greatness as an Indonesian national hero. Kartini described it like this:
“WHEN we were in Samarang {sic, the modern spelling is Semarang}, our eldest sister came over to see us, “Sister, sister,” was all that she said, when she had seen me. The arms that were thrown around me trembled, and her eyes were filled with tears. We were silent; we understood each other. At last we have found our sister.
At last, after years, we have gained her understanding and respect That gives us new courage, because at first, she was very conservative, and was opposed violently to every innovation.”
I see the same glorious beauty in Persian women of the “Women. Life. Freedom” movement in Melbourne.
Mona and Mas, Persian friends.
Is this the fourth wave of feminism, which I predict will strive to replace the self-hatred, victimhood and misandry of third wave feminism with love and fairness for all?
you are Australia’s head of state and you are the Supreme Governor of The Church of England.
I tried theologically to make friends with Anglicans in Melbourne this year. I failed.
An Anglican indigenous leader from New South Wales was falsely described as part of Victorian Wurundjeri language group on his own website. It took me months to get the man to correct the mistake. Ironically this man prides himself on the importance of getting local knowledge right. Sometimes this makes him very wise. But why was it that he could not and cannot respect my attempts to correct his own mistake about his own origins?
He told me that for him aboriginal people should get sovereignty over all of Australia. 3% of the people to rule over the other 97% ?
When I told him I might be 1/16th aboriginal he told me that I had to be all or nothing. I tried to be his friend and engage with his culture
When I was angry because police attacked me in front of the church where this man has been canonised, he and that church’s dean laughed at me. Maybe it was embarassed, nervous laughter in a difficult situation. Maybe not.
The Anglican Church has spat out my attempts at friendship.
Am I better off?
Perhaps I need to move away from them/you towards our God.
4 time British Prime Minister William Gladstone was born on this date 213 years ago in 1809.
He was both a strong opponent of slavery and a statesman who tried to get people to see during the American Civil War that the confederacy’s determination to be independent could not be ignored. He opposed restoration of The Union by military force from the North.
60’s guitar hero Jimi Hendrix borrowed Gladstone’s dream of looking “forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.”
I admire the idealism, which I glimpse from outside their language and culture, of Iranian women and their families and community in Melbourne, who are now opposing evil tyranny by calling it out.
Women life Freedom activist Moloud appeals to Australia’s new ambassador to America. former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, to work against Iranian government terrorism.
Human participation in the creation of new human life is perhaps what brings brings us closer than anything else we do to Our God. I believe the courageous Iranian freedom fighter in these images fully understands that.
I also believe that no group of human beings more fully understands the deep spiritual and personal significance of birthdays than the group of human beings who so often go through labour to give us birth.
These people are our mothers.
Today is the 128th birthday of one of the most profoundly influential thinkers and leaders in Australian history – Robert Gordon Menzies.
Menzies described Freedom like this:
Freedom still rings true to me.
Geoff Fox, 20th December, 2022, Down Under
NB for political balance I plan to publish quotes from Menzies’ peacetime rival and wartime colleague John Curtin in 6 days time.
The slightly clumsy but popular slogan “Woman Life Freedom” comes form the Kurdish slogan “Jin, Jîyan, Azadî”.
Here I, as a poet, offer a different transcreation, “Women’s Science and Life and Freedom”, because it sounds poetically more elegant to my ears.
As someone who was a midwife for approximately 3 decades, my intention here is to ask women what women’s science means to them.
Midwifery taught me that if you want to know what is important to a woman , the best way to find out is to ask her. That is the foundation of my midwifery.
God Bless Truth.
God Bless Freedom.
Or Should I Write “Goddess”?
To begin with, here is how I see the best of what is happening now:
“Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God!” – Benjamin Franklin
The transformative story of Jesus’ birth to Mary and Joseph was a massive shift in human faith from a focus on venal squabbling gods to the love and power of family. Helena is a stalwart of Melbourne’s protests against the Socialist Left tyranny of the Andrews State government.
She holds the iconic image of the Mother and Child and wears a Cross with joy, passion and devotion against a government which persecutes Christians and deprives parents of basic family rights.
Today is the 127th birthday of King George The Sixth, the father of Queen Elisabeth The Second. My grandfather, Ralph Blanchard, attended her coronation in his capacity as Moderator-General of the Presbyterian Church.
In a D-Day address in 2019, with both her son, then Prince Charles, and President Donald Trump sitting behind her, Queen Elisabeth recalled with pride her father’s call to his people for a “revival of the spirit”.
The beginning of her life was a time of great hardship, The Great Depression and World War Two. This period of difficulty lead to one of the great documents of human history – The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights. (UDHR)
This declaration was the response to the Allied world’s triumph aver fascism. It was an attempt to see that fascist atrocities could never be repeated.
It was a time of hope. The young Princess Elisabeth and then Queen Elisabeth was a continuing symbol of that optimism.
Princess Elisabeth and her fiancé a few months before their wedding.
She stood for high ideals.
Lincoln’s formulation of “democracy of the people, by the people, for the people”.
“Congress and our Parliaments are the twin pillars of our civilisations.”
Faith “in the freedom of the individual and the rule of a fair and just law.”
“…. our societies rest on mutual agreement on contract and consensus”
(These 4 quotes come from the Queen’s address to the U.S. Congress in 1991.)
4 decades before that, in 1951, President Harry Truman was not the only one captivated by young Elisabeth’s beauty, grace and charm.
But what has happened to those ideals over the course of her lifetime?
The tragedy of Diana.
The intercontinental family feud that is Megxit.
The persistent allegations against the new King’s disgraced brother, Andrew.
The very recent trashing of the human rights of millions of people across the Western World.
And I personally was physically and sexually assaulted by police representing The Crown at the entrance of The Church of The Crown during a memorial service for Queen Elisabeth on 9/11 a little over three months ago.
I hope that George the Sixth and Elisabeth the Second rest in peace.
But I will not abandon my real human need for a spirit of revival and the fight for fairness and justice and universal human rights from modern government tyrants.
Freedom works.
To quote her own words, corruption of the best ideals espoused by Elisabeth “never grows well nor for very long. Force, in the end, is sterile.”
FREEDOM, DEMOKRASI AND CIVILISED HUMANITY 