Garnet Milne At present, it seems that I am forced to review the ghastly Garnet Milne, currently pontificating about the demon smut on his lone website… There's nothing more pathetic than ex-CHP cast-offs, bereft of a political vehicle. Unfortunately, I seem to be akin to 1984's Emmanuel Goldstein in some foetid corners of theirinfinitesimal, lonely littlesubculture of conservative Calvinists, after Capillgate and the final collapse of the CHP last year. Let's talk about Milne's latest rant, though, which is that erstwhile Australian PM John Howard has currently realised that cumulative neglect of the vulnerable and marginal results in destruction of the social fabric of such communities, particularly Australia's indigenous ones. I would call this a conversion on the road to Damascus, but unfortunately for Howard, it's a transparent political stunt, of the same cloth as limiting Aboriginal native title land claims, abolishing the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Commission and similar attacks on the wellbeing of Aboriginal communities. Having said that, Australia's record on indigenous issues is truly appalling compared to those of Canada and New Zealand. Aborigines were only allowed to vote forty years ago, their families were ripped apart and children forcibly adopted out (the 'stolen generations' controversy), and indigenous land rights/native title was only recognised in 1988. And that applies to both the conservative federal Coalition and state and federal ALP governments, I'm afraid. While it is true that alcohol is one serious contributing factor, so is the cumulative destruction of indigenous institutions of social control that might once have limited harm and injury against children. Howard mentioned smut in this context, which led our Garnet off on a tangent, whose vector is centred on the Canadian Christian Right Lifesite, and a so-called 'family' research organisation which states that smut is 'really' a principal cause of violence against women and children. Then why don't mainstream media effects scholars find such relationships, one is forced to ask? Humans are not behaviouralist Pavlov's Dogs, who slaver in response to certain stimuli, and quite frankly, given Garnet's rabid anti-welfare and anti-Maori diatribes on his Reformation Testimony website over time, dare I say this? One cannot blame single stimuli for social collapse. Rather, the answer is social inclusion. Unfortunately, that point is rather lost if one is an isolated provincial member of a conservative Calvinist sect without any New Zealand adherents... Craig Young - 27th June 2007