Crickey! Are book sales falling? Is Schwartz Publishing rolling out another foot-soldier to defend Bruce Pascoe and the Dark Emu brand?
Crickey! Are book sales falling? Is Schwartz Publishing rolling out another foot-soldier to defend Bruce Pascoe and the Dark Emu brand?
After the previous two Knights of the Schwartz Publishing Realm, Sir Squiggly Morton and Sir Tom ‘The Griffin’, fell on their swords for failing to declare their Conflict of Interest when writing about Bruce Pascoe and his Dark Emu, the Schwartz Empire has pushed another foot-soldier forward to defend the good name of Sir Bruce ‘The Scribbler’ and his Dark Emu.
The latest gallant hopeful, Sir Guy ‘Drops his Rundle’, has at least donned the correct bit of extra armour in the form of a tin-plated Disclaimer, declaring that Bruce Pascoe’s publisher, Schwartz [Black Inc] is also his publisher, as he we learn in his current Crikey article on the Bruce Pascoe controversy.
Sir Guy’s rambling article is about some alleged, anti-Semitic, conspiracy theory that is rising up against those associated with poor Sir Bruce ‘The Scribbler’, who’s book Dark Emu, has taken quite a battering over the past year from critics.
We will let readers decide for themselves whether Sir Guy is right to dump on Josephine Cashman, as he does in his Crikey article, using his usual ‘irreverent reporting and caustic wit’, but we will provide the following additional information to assist readers to make up their own minds.
Sir Guy writes in his Crikey article,
“At the same time, Cashman fell out with onetime mentor Marcia Langton, and Black Inc. publisher Morry Schwartz, both of whom were on the board of Cashman’s Indigenous bootstrapping Big River Impact foundation, after Cashman made wild allegations about organised crime in Indigenous groups and launched her attacks on Pascoe (who is published by Black Inc.)”. - (our emphasis)
We, at Dark Emu Exposed, understand Josephine Cashman was wanting to discuss the, Australian Crime Commission’s (ACC) “The Final Report of the National Indigenous Intelligence Task Force 2006–2014”, which was funded by all of us as tax-payers, a copy of which we have obtained under Freedom of Information, here.
We draw our readers attention to Page 22 of the redacted report which says,
“Emerging trend – links to organized crime groups. - Individuals with links to organised crime groups will likely continue exploiting Indigenous communities. Indigenous communities can be an attractive target for members of organised crime groups as there is limited law enforcement presence in many remote communities, and significant amounts of public funding that can be exploited. While organized crime groups rarely operate directly in Indigenous communities, Indigenous and non-Indigenous individuals linked to these groups have been identified in drug trafficking and financial criminal activities in regional and remote communities.”
This ACC report makes for truly horrific reading and, from what we understand, Cashman is fighting to have the report more widely publicized, and to have action taken on its findings.
We would suggest that Sir Guy has really ‘dropped his bundle’ by trying to paint Cashman as some sort of ‘whacko’ for standing up for the rights of Aboriginal people against organised crime.
We suggest Sir Guy take a good, hard look in the mirror and think about what is at stake here – the business and political goals of the ‘Elites’, or a chance to ease the suffering, at the hands of organised criminals, of Aboriginal men, women and children on the ground.
Even the Guardian, an online paper we understand Sir Guy writes for, has reported on the ACC Report, or as Sir Guy refers to it, “wild allegations about organised crime.” Not much chivalry being shown here by Sir Guy we would suggest.
To our mind, Sir Guy has ‘dropped his bundle’ in his Crikey article and has not presented a coherent critique to address the real issues, such as organised crime in Aboriginal communities, and violence against Aboriginal women and children, being raised by Cashman in her social media.
Instead, he has run into battle armed only with a ‘bucket of word soup’ containing the usual Progressive Left suspects to feed his indoctrinated readership – ‘anti-Semitism’, ‘Andrew Bolt’, ‘whacko-right’, ‘Milo Yiannopoulos’, ‘Jordan Peterson’, ‘shape-shifting lizards, the ‘KKK’ and the ‘Nation of Islam’, ‘climate denier’ ‘Obama birther’, ‘swastikas’, et al.
Ho-hum.
So while the Truth-Caravan rolls on, fact-checking and exposing the fallacies of Mr Pascoe and his Dark Emu, we look forward to the next Black Knight that Schwartz Publishing Castle sends out in defence of Sir Bruce ‘The Scribbler’, after they drag the literary corpse of Sir Guy from the field.
ps: Update - a few weeks after Sir Guy is reported Missing in Action, Capt. Charlie Lewis of the Crikey! Recovery Team is despatched to try and retake Virtue Signalling Hill, armed only with his June 26 2020 Crikey! article. Crikey! mission failure….again.
And while the young boys at Crikey! are getting off on their attacks on Josephine Cashman, she is off to Canberra with a group of strong Aboriginal women seeking change in their fight against crime and violence in their communities. Shame on you Guy Rundle and Charlie Lewis.
Further Reading
The other theme in Sir Guy’s Crikey article is the spectre of anti-Semitism, a topic that does need to be spoken about, in the open, from time-to-time, but with care, civility and a sense of history.
Anti-Semitism is not acceptable, in any form, in Australia and is illegal in the sense that provisions are available under the Racial Discrimination Act to deal with it.
As Australians, we have at various times in our history had legitimate reasons for disagreements with ‘foreigners’ living in Australia, or ‘foreign powers’ seeking to influence events in Australia, which very easily can be conflated as ‘racism’. For example, during the Wars we needed to take certain ‘anti-German’ and ‘anti-Italian’ measures such as internment that were very difficult on Australians of German or Italian descent, who only suffered due to the positions of their respective foreign Governments.
These were not ‘racist’ decisions by Australia. And today, it is not anti-Chinese racism for Australians to condemn any actions that the Chinese Government may take.
Similarly, a sensitive subject in the 1930’s and 1940’s for Aboriginal people, as well as many Australians in general, was the proposal to establish a Jewish homeland in Australia, in particular on one of the preferred sites in the Northern Territory, the Kimberley, or less favourably, South West Tasmania.
The history of the Jewish Territorialist Movement in Australia in the 1930-40’s is told in a wonderful book by Anna Epstein, Melekh Ravitsch – The eccentric outback quest of an urbane Yiddish poet from Poland, Real Film and Publishing, 2019.
Malekh Ravitsh with his ‘most beautiful woman in Darwin’ during his search for a Jewish Homeland in Aboriginal Australia in 1933-34. (Photo credit : Malekh Ravitsh)
Report on Malekh Ravitsh and his trip in search of a Jewish homeland in Aboriginal Australia (Credit ibid. p15)
After much deliberation, the Australian Government and Aboriginal people decided against ceding a section of Australia, and in particular Aboriginal traditional land, to the Jewish Territorialist Movement for use as a Jewish Homeland, despite the fact that a Gallop Poll in 1944 showed that one in three Australians supported the idea (ibid. p122).
Perhaps surprisingly, Jews already living in Australia were strongly opposed to the idea of establishing a Jewish homeland in Australia (ibid. p122).
The main Jewish agent sent to Australia to investigate and promote the scheme was Malekh Ravitsh, a Polish Jew, who wrote many letters of his progress, that were edited and published in 1933 and 1934 in the Warsaw, New People’s Newspaper (ibid. p55-111).
The Australian governments of the day (what Sir Guy and the Glitterati at the Guardian would probably classify nowadays as ‘Right-wing whackos’) were most likely somewhat suspicious of the settlement proposals that were coming from these overseas Jewish groups. A number of Malekh Ravitsch’s published comments were, to say the least, problematic:
- ‘The Northern territory is a land which will not be taken from any original population whatever; in that respect one’s conscience can be quite peaceful. The original black population of 20,000 is no problem whatever in a land of half a million square miles.’ (ibid. p83).
- ‘A full blooded black child gets tangled in our legs. He waits silently for sweets. ”Thankyou!” He has achieved his aim. I pick him up in my arms and look into his burning eyes. You, too, my child, will not live long. You too will die before your time. Over you hangs the death sentence on your whole race. Your murderer is holding you now in his arms, smiling at you benignly and the lolly he has given you, which you are sucking with such pleasure, is your poison.’ (ibid. p66).
- ‘The naivete of the Australian borders on childishness. He believes you because he himself is truthful.’ (ibid. 56).
The Australian government ultimately decided, after years of assessment, that Australia was to avoid,
‘enclaves [that] were contrary to the policy of assimilation aimed at achieving “the ideal of one family of peoples, devoid of foreign communities.”
Labour Prime Minister, John Curtin, put it succinctly when he pronounced the final decision on the plan:
”The government is unable to see a way to depart from the long-established policy with regard to alien settlement in Australia.” (ibid. p121-122).
One would also hope that the Australian government recognised the ethical issue involved – to settle a dispossessed Jewish people, by dispossessing another Aboriginal people – and that this carried weight in their final decision as well.
To our mind this was not a decision based on anti-Semitism, but rather one based on maintaining Australia’s integrity and policy of assimilation for all.
Similarly, just because commentators in Australia today, such as Josephine Cashman, criticise the politics, or business practices, of people who happen to be Jewish, whether they be in Australia or abroad, does not automatically make them anti-Semites.
Listen to Philip Adams on Late Night Live interviewing author Anna Epstein on her book of Malakh Ravitsh and the Jewish Homeland in the Northern Territory
