Fortunately, there is, however, an altogether new way of deciphering species' relationships. It also relies on DNA, but rather than being based on the degree of sequence similarity, it looks for the presence and absence of certain landmarks in specific places in species DNA. These landmarks are produced by accidental insertions of junk DNA sequences near genes. Particular chunks of junk DNA, call long interspersed elements (LINES) and short interspersed elements (SINES), are very easy to detect. Once a SINE or LINE is inserted, there is no active mechanism for removing it. The insertion of these elements marks a gene in a species, and is then inherited by all species descended from it. They are really perfect tracers of genealogy. These insertion events are very rare; therefore, their presence in the same place in the DNA of two species can be explained only by the species sharing a common ancestor. The inheritance of variable markers in DNA is the same principle applied to paternity testing in humans. By surveying the distribution of a number of elements that arose at different times in different ancestors, biologists have sufficient forensic evidence to determine species' kinship beyond any doubt.
The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution by Sean B. Carroll
Friday, August 31, 2018
50% of American voters want to throw President Fucktard Trump out the window.
ABC News - Trouble for Trump: Disapproval at a high, 63% back Mueller, half favor impeachment
Disapproval of Donald Trump is at a new high, support for the Mueller investigation is broad and half of Americans in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll favor Congress initiating impeachment proceedings against the president.
Sixty percent in the national survey disapprove of Trump’s performance in office, numerically the highest of his presidency, albeit by a single point; that includes 53 percent who disapprove strongly, more than half for the first time. Thirty-six percent approve, matching his low.
The results come a week after Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was convicted of fraud, and his former longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to eight felonies, including illegal campaign finance actions that he said Trump directed.
Trump’s average approval rating since taking office is the lowest for any president in modern polling since the 1940s. One factor: Contrary to his “drain the swamp” rhetoric, 45 percent say corruption in Washington has increased under Trump, while just 13 percent say it’s declined.
Suspicions of the president relating to the Mueller investigation are substantial. Sixty-one percent say that if assertions by Cohen are true, Trump broke the law. Fifty-three percent also think Trump obstructed special counsel Robert Mueller’s work.
The national survey, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, finds that half the public supports Congress initiating impeachment proceedings against Trump, 49-46 percent; support rises to 57 percent among women. And support for the investigation running its course is broader: Americans overall back Mueller’s probe by 63-29 percent. Fifty-two percent support it strongly, a high level of strong sentiment.
Mueller prosecuted Manafort and referred the Cohen case to federal prosecutors in New York. Support for Mueller’s investigation peaks at 85 percent among Democrats, but also takes in 67 percent of independents and even a third of Republicans (32 percent). Forty-one percent of conservatives back Mueller, rising to more than seven in 10 moderates and liberals.
In Trump’s dispute with Attorney General Jeff Sessions for allowing the investigation to proceed, the public sides with Sessions, 62-23 percent. Sixty-four percent also oppose the idea of Trump firing Sessions; just 19 percent support it.
Further, while Trump has railed against the Manafort prosecution, Americans call it justified by an overwhelming 67-17 percent, including nearly half of Republicans. The public opposes Trump pardoning Manafort by essentially the same margin, 66-18 percent, with 53 percent strongly opposed. Even among Republicans, 45 percent oppose a Manafort pardon; 36 percent support it.
The damage to Trump on these ethics concerns overwhelms his better rating for handling the economy, an essentially even split, 45-47 percent. That demonstrates that a good economy only makes it possible for a president to be popular – it’s no guarantee.
Approval, Groups
The president’s approval rating is highly partisan, but with relative challenges for Trump across the board. His job rating matches his low among Republicans (78 percent approve) and Democrats (6 percent) alike. It’s 35 percent among independents.
He’s at new lows among college-educated Americans (albeit just by a point; 29 percent approve), moderates (24 percent) and blacks (3 percent, with a nearly unanimous 93 percent disapproving).
The single biggest shift is among college-educated white women – just 23 percent now approve of Trump, down 17 points from the peak in April 2017, with disapproval up 20 points, from 55 percent then to 75 percent now. Still, even among non-college white men, a core Trump group, his approval is down 15 points, from 70 percent just this spring to 55 percent today.
Other Group Results
Trump’s approval rating is 12 points lower among women than men, and that gender gap is reflected elsewhere. As noted, 57 percent of women favor Congress initiating impeachment proceedings; that drops to 40 percent of men.
Seventy percent of liberals support impeachment proceedings, declining to 51 percent of moderates and 30 percent of conservatives. Impeachment support is highest, a vast 80 percent, among blacks; 37 percent of whites agree.
Some of these gaps narrow on whether or not the charges against Manafort were justified. Two-thirds of men and women alike say they were, as do two-thirds of whites – including 64 percent of white men without college degrees. Even among Republicans, conservatives and those who approve of Trump’s work in office, more see the charges as justified than as unjustified, by 48-28, 49-30 and 47-29 percent, respectively. (The rest express no opinion.)
As noted, 45 percent of Republicans oppose Trump pardoning Manafort, with 36 percent support. It’s similar among conservatives, 46-34 percent. Trump approvers split about evenly on a Manafort pardon, with 39 percent opposed, 37 percent in favor.
Opposition to a pardon goes higher in other groups – 68 percent among men and 64 percent among women, for example (no real difference between them), 64 percent among whites and Hispanics alike, and 82 percent among blacks.
Sixty-one percent, as noted, say that if Cohen’s claim that he acted at Trump’s direction is true, Trump committed a crime. That view is lowest among Republicans, 28 percent. But there’s concern for Trump in other core groups: A substantial minority of conservatives, 41 percent, say he broke the law if Cohen’s telling the truth. So do 44 percent of evangelical white Protestants, 52 percent of whites and 52 percent of non-college white men, all groups whose support Trump needs.
Methodology
This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone Aug. 26-29, 2018, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,003 adults. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.6 points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 33-25-37 percent, Democrats-Republicans-independents.
The survey was produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates of New York, N.Y., with sampling, data collection and tabulation by Abt Associates of Rockville, Md. See details on the survey’s methodology here.
Disapproval of Donald Trump is at a new high, support for the Mueller investigation is broad and half of Americans in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll favor Congress initiating impeachment proceedings against the president.
Sixty percent in the national survey disapprove of Trump’s performance in office, numerically the highest of his presidency, albeit by a single point; that includes 53 percent who disapprove strongly, more than half for the first time. Thirty-six percent approve, matching his low.
The results come a week after Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was convicted of fraud, and his former longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to eight felonies, including illegal campaign finance actions that he said Trump directed.
Trump’s average approval rating since taking office is the lowest for any president in modern polling since the 1940s. One factor: Contrary to his “drain the swamp” rhetoric, 45 percent say corruption in Washington has increased under Trump, while just 13 percent say it’s declined.
Suspicions of the president relating to the Mueller investigation are substantial. Sixty-one percent say that if assertions by Cohen are true, Trump broke the law. Fifty-three percent also think Trump obstructed special counsel Robert Mueller’s work.
The national survey, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, finds that half the public supports Congress initiating impeachment proceedings against Trump, 49-46 percent; support rises to 57 percent among women. And support for the investigation running its course is broader: Americans overall back Mueller’s probe by 63-29 percent. Fifty-two percent support it strongly, a high level of strong sentiment.
Mueller prosecuted Manafort and referred the Cohen case to federal prosecutors in New York. Support for Mueller’s investigation peaks at 85 percent among Democrats, but also takes in 67 percent of independents and even a third of Republicans (32 percent). Forty-one percent of conservatives back Mueller, rising to more than seven in 10 moderates and liberals.
In Trump’s dispute with Attorney General Jeff Sessions for allowing the investigation to proceed, the public sides with Sessions, 62-23 percent. Sixty-four percent also oppose the idea of Trump firing Sessions; just 19 percent support it.
Further, while Trump has railed against the Manafort prosecution, Americans call it justified by an overwhelming 67-17 percent, including nearly half of Republicans. The public opposes Trump pardoning Manafort by essentially the same margin, 66-18 percent, with 53 percent strongly opposed. Even among Republicans, 45 percent oppose a Manafort pardon; 36 percent support it.
The damage to Trump on these ethics concerns overwhelms his better rating for handling the economy, an essentially even split, 45-47 percent. That demonstrates that a good economy only makes it possible for a president to be popular – it’s no guarantee.
Approval, Groups
The president’s approval rating is highly partisan, but with relative challenges for Trump across the board. His job rating matches his low among Republicans (78 percent approve) and Democrats (6 percent) alike. It’s 35 percent among independents.
He’s at new lows among college-educated Americans (albeit just by a point; 29 percent approve), moderates (24 percent) and blacks (3 percent, with a nearly unanimous 93 percent disapproving).
The single biggest shift is among college-educated white women – just 23 percent now approve of Trump, down 17 points from the peak in April 2017, with disapproval up 20 points, from 55 percent then to 75 percent now. Still, even among non-college white men, a core Trump group, his approval is down 15 points, from 70 percent just this spring to 55 percent today.
Other Group Results
Trump’s approval rating is 12 points lower among women than men, and that gender gap is reflected elsewhere. As noted, 57 percent of women favor Congress initiating impeachment proceedings; that drops to 40 percent of men.
Seventy percent of liberals support impeachment proceedings, declining to 51 percent of moderates and 30 percent of conservatives. Impeachment support is highest, a vast 80 percent, among blacks; 37 percent of whites agree.
Some of these gaps narrow on whether or not the charges against Manafort were justified. Two-thirds of men and women alike say they were, as do two-thirds of whites – including 64 percent of white men without college degrees. Even among Republicans, conservatives and those who approve of Trump’s work in office, more see the charges as justified than as unjustified, by 48-28, 49-30 and 47-29 percent, respectively. (The rest express no opinion.)
As noted, 45 percent of Republicans oppose Trump pardoning Manafort, with 36 percent support. It’s similar among conservatives, 46-34 percent. Trump approvers split about evenly on a Manafort pardon, with 39 percent opposed, 37 percent in favor.
Opposition to a pardon goes higher in other groups – 68 percent among men and 64 percent among women, for example (no real difference between them), 64 percent among whites and Hispanics alike, and 82 percent among blacks.
Sixty-one percent, as noted, say that if Cohen’s claim that he acted at Trump’s direction is true, Trump committed a crime. That view is lowest among Republicans, 28 percent. But there’s concern for Trump in other core groups: A substantial minority of conservatives, 41 percent, say he broke the law if Cohen’s telling the truth. So do 44 percent of evangelical white Protestants, 52 percent of whites and 52 percent of non-college white men, all groups whose support Trump needs.
Methodology
This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone Aug. 26-29, 2018, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,003 adults. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.6 points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 33-25-37 percent, Democrats-Republicans-independents.
The survey was produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates of New York, N.Y., with sampling, data collection and tabulation by Abt Associates of Rockville, Md. See details on the survey’s methodology here.
Some wonderful news: President Fucktard Trump will be impeached (thrown out the window) next year in 2019.
ABC News - White House faces brain drain at perilous moment
By ZEKE MILLER, JILL COLVIN AND JONATHAN LEMIRE, ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — Aug 31, 2018
Increasingly convinced that the West Wing is wholly unprepared to handle the expected assault from Democrats if they win the House in November, President Donald Trump's aides and allies are privately raising alarm as his circle of legal and communications advisers continues to shrink.
With vacancies abounding in the White House and more departures on the horizon, there is growing concern among Trump allies that the brain drain at the center of the administration could hardly come at a more perilous time. Special counsel Robert Mueller's swirling probe of Russian election interference and potential obstruction of justice by Trump has reached ever closer to the Oval Office, and the upcoming midterm elections could grant his political adversaries the power of subpoena or, more worryingly, the votes to attempt impeachment.
Nine current and former White House staffers and administration allies expressed concerns Thursday that the West Wing is simply unprepared for the potential troubles ahead. They spoke on the condition of anonymity over concerns about estranging colleagues.
Attrition, job changes and firings have taken their toll across the White House, but their impact has been felt particularly in the communications and legal shops — two departments crucial to Trump staving off the looming threats. The upcoming departure of White House counsel Don McGahn has highlighted the challenges in an office that has shrunk by a third since last year.
McGahn's former chief of staff, deputy counsel Annie Donaldson, is also expected to leave soon after McGahn departs, two staffers said. Similarly, the White House press office is down to four press secretaries working on day-to-day White House matters, including Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and the regional and Cabinet affairs media teams in the communications office have been hollowed out.
The staffing shortage and struggles to recruit top-flight talent have left the White House ill-prepared to handle the legal onslaught that may come when Mueller issues an expected report summarizing his findings and the flood of congressional investigations that could follow a Democratic takeover of the House.
Former Fox News executive Bill Shine, who joined the White House earlier this summer as communications director and deputy chief of staff, is looking to rebuild a shrunken media affairs team in anticipation of the challenges ahead.
Shine is said to be looking for seasoned communications professionals to handle both Mueller-related questions and congressional oversight requests.
"He's doing a lot of thinking about how to properly structure everything, not only for a Trump White House but for what the next couple of years will be like," said former White House press secretary Sean Spicer.
But like other White House departments, the effort to fill jobs is proving difficult. Qualified candidates are steering clear of the volatile West Wing, ignoring pleas from Shine and others to join the administration over fears to their reputation and even potential legal exposure, according to current and former officials and one candidate approached by the White House. Those people and others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations and conversations.
Others are wary of joining the team to defend the president, knowing full well he will often ignore their advice or could turn on them by tweet.
A White House official disputed that the administration has had difficulty filling positions with talented people.
Trump allies have long boasted that he was his own political consultant during the 2016 campaign and serves as his own communications director inside the White House, but they are increasingly cautioning him that he can't be his own attorney as well.
Indeed, his outside legal team reached out to some of Washington's most prominent attorneys, including Supreme Court litigator Ted Olson, before former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani — a longtime friend of the president whose erratic television interviews have defined his tenure — joined the team in April. Since then, Giuliani has been the primary public face of the defense team, along with Jay Sekulow, a lawyer specializing in constitutional law and religious liberties. A husband-wife duo, Martin and Jane Raskin, was also added to work behind the scenes.
At the same time, the president is more volatile than ever, creating new challenges for both his communication and legal teams.
Trump built his professional empire on a foundation of secrecy, enforced by fixers, lawyers, hush payments and non-disclosure agreements. Seeing that world collapse around him in recent weeks has yielded intense frustration in the president, who has angrily told confidants that he feels betrayed by a number of former allies, including attorney Michael Cohen and National Enquirer head David Pecker.
Trump has denounced the "sweetheart deal" received by Cohen, fumed about the overzealous prosecution of former campaign chair Paul Manafort and seethed over the pressure on Pecker to agree to an immunity deal, according to two Republicans close to the White House but not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations.
Trump signaled Thursday that he has settled on a successor for McGahn. "I am very excited about the person who will be taking the place of Don McGahn as White House Councel!" Trump tweeted Thursday. He sent a later tweet that spelled "counsel" correctly.
Trump also took a shot at reports that McGahn had threatened to resign last year if the president continued to press for Mueller's removal.
"I liked Don, but he was NOT responsible for me not firing Bob Mueller or Jeff Sessions. So much Fake Reporting and Fake News!" Trump said, referring as well to his attorney general, who recused himself from the investigation, much to the president's annoyance.
The widely expected pick to replace McGahn is White House is attorney Emmet Flood, who joined Trump's White House in May as in-house counsel for the Mueller probe and has McGahn's support in taking the role.
Praise for Flood, a veteran attorney who defended Bill Clinton during his impeachment process and represented George W. Bush in executive-privilege disputes with Congress, poured in Thursday.
"His reputation is stellar and he brings the requisite skillset and pretty much unmatched experience, having been in both the Bush and Clinton White Houses and now serving in President Trump's counsel's office," said Mark Corallo, a former spokesman for the president's outside legal team. "You couldn't ask for a more qualified and better-prepared attorney."
"I think Flood of all people seems to have clearly the experience that would be required if indeed it's needed," said Spicer.
If the Democrats win, Trump is expected to face not only possible impeachment hearings, but a bombardment of Congressional subpoenas, inquires and hearings that Democrats hope will hobble his administration, giving it little room to do much else.
"At that point," said Corallo, "the president's going to need some very skilled attorneys" — Constitutional scholars who are familiar with the past impeachments of Clinton and former President Andrew Johnson, have dozens of Supreme Court arguments under their belt, are highly respected and understand the mechanics and the politics of impeachment hearings.
But others were less concerned.
"Everybody wants to make sure he gets the best advice," former campaign adviser Barry Bennett said of the president. "But battling is something he's very good at, so he's got some home turf advantage."
Trump, too, dismissed the chatter in an interview Thursday with Bloomberg News.
"I don't think they can impeach somebody that's doing a great job," he said.
Lemire reported from New York. Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.
By ZEKE MILLER, JILL COLVIN AND JONATHAN LEMIRE, ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — Aug 31, 2018
Increasingly convinced that the West Wing is wholly unprepared to handle the expected assault from Democrats if they win the House in November, President Donald Trump's aides and allies are privately raising alarm as his circle of legal and communications advisers continues to shrink.
With vacancies abounding in the White House and more departures on the horizon, there is growing concern among Trump allies that the brain drain at the center of the administration could hardly come at a more perilous time. Special counsel Robert Mueller's swirling probe of Russian election interference and potential obstruction of justice by Trump has reached ever closer to the Oval Office, and the upcoming midterm elections could grant his political adversaries the power of subpoena or, more worryingly, the votes to attempt impeachment.
Nine current and former White House staffers and administration allies expressed concerns Thursday that the West Wing is simply unprepared for the potential troubles ahead. They spoke on the condition of anonymity over concerns about estranging colleagues.
Attrition, job changes and firings have taken their toll across the White House, but their impact has been felt particularly in the communications and legal shops — two departments crucial to Trump staving off the looming threats. The upcoming departure of White House counsel Don McGahn has highlighted the challenges in an office that has shrunk by a third since last year.
McGahn's former chief of staff, deputy counsel Annie Donaldson, is also expected to leave soon after McGahn departs, two staffers said. Similarly, the White House press office is down to four press secretaries working on day-to-day White House matters, including Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and the regional and Cabinet affairs media teams in the communications office have been hollowed out.
The staffing shortage and struggles to recruit top-flight talent have left the White House ill-prepared to handle the legal onslaught that may come when Mueller issues an expected report summarizing his findings and the flood of congressional investigations that could follow a Democratic takeover of the House.
Former Fox News executive Bill Shine, who joined the White House earlier this summer as communications director and deputy chief of staff, is looking to rebuild a shrunken media affairs team in anticipation of the challenges ahead.
Shine is said to be looking for seasoned communications professionals to handle both Mueller-related questions and congressional oversight requests.
"He's doing a lot of thinking about how to properly structure everything, not only for a Trump White House but for what the next couple of years will be like," said former White House press secretary Sean Spicer.
But like other White House departments, the effort to fill jobs is proving difficult. Qualified candidates are steering clear of the volatile West Wing, ignoring pleas from Shine and others to join the administration over fears to their reputation and even potential legal exposure, according to current and former officials and one candidate approached by the White House. Those people and others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations and conversations.
Others are wary of joining the team to defend the president, knowing full well he will often ignore their advice or could turn on them by tweet.
A White House official disputed that the administration has had difficulty filling positions with talented people.
Trump allies have long boasted that he was his own political consultant during the 2016 campaign and serves as his own communications director inside the White House, but they are increasingly cautioning him that he can't be his own attorney as well.
Indeed, his outside legal team reached out to some of Washington's most prominent attorneys, including Supreme Court litigator Ted Olson, before former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani — a longtime friend of the president whose erratic television interviews have defined his tenure — joined the team in April. Since then, Giuliani has been the primary public face of the defense team, along with Jay Sekulow, a lawyer specializing in constitutional law and religious liberties. A husband-wife duo, Martin and Jane Raskin, was also added to work behind the scenes.
At the same time, the president is more volatile than ever, creating new challenges for both his communication and legal teams.
Trump built his professional empire on a foundation of secrecy, enforced by fixers, lawyers, hush payments and non-disclosure agreements. Seeing that world collapse around him in recent weeks has yielded intense frustration in the president, who has angrily told confidants that he feels betrayed by a number of former allies, including attorney Michael Cohen and National Enquirer head David Pecker.
Trump has denounced the "sweetheart deal" received by Cohen, fumed about the overzealous prosecution of former campaign chair Paul Manafort and seethed over the pressure on Pecker to agree to an immunity deal, according to two Republicans close to the White House but not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations.
Trump signaled Thursday that he has settled on a successor for McGahn. "I am very excited about the person who will be taking the place of Don McGahn as White House Councel!" Trump tweeted Thursday. He sent a later tweet that spelled "counsel" correctly.
Trump also took a shot at reports that McGahn had threatened to resign last year if the president continued to press for Mueller's removal.
"I liked Don, but he was NOT responsible for me not firing Bob Mueller or Jeff Sessions. So much Fake Reporting and Fake News!" Trump said, referring as well to his attorney general, who recused himself from the investigation, much to the president's annoyance.
The widely expected pick to replace McGahn is White House is attorney Emmet Flood, who joined Trump's White House in May as in-house counsel for the Mueller probe and has McGahn's support in taking the role.
Praise for Flood, a veteran attorney who defended Bill Clinton during his impeachment process and represented George W. Bush in executive-privilege disputes with Congress, poured in Thursday.
"His reputation is stellar and he brings the requisite skillset and pretty much unmatched experience, having been in both the Bush and Clinton White Houses and now serving in President Trump's counsel's office," said Mark Corallo, a former spokesman for the president's outside legal team. "You couldn't ask for a more qualified and better-prepared attorney."
"I think Flood of all people seems to have clearly the experience that would be required if indeed it's needed," said Spicer.
If the Democrats win, Trump is expected to face not only possible impeachment hearings, but a bombardment of Congressional subpoenas, inquires and hearings that Democrats hope will hobble his administration, giving it little room to do much else.
"At that point," said Corallo, "the president's going to need some very skilled attorneys" — Constitutional scholars who are familiar with the past impeachments of Clinton and former President Andrew Johnson, have dozens of Supreme Court arguments under their belt, are highly respected and understand the mechanics and the politics of impeachment hearings.
But others were less concerned.
"Everybody wants to make sure he gets the best advice," former campaign adviser Barry Bennett said of the president. "But battling is something he's very good at, so he's got some home turf advantage."
Trump, too, dismissed the chatter in an interview Thursday with Bloomberg News.
"I don't think they can impeach somebody that's doing a great job," he said.
Lemire reported from New York. Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.
Why are Americans so fucking stupid? The problem is religion. Young people are brainwashed to believe in bullshit. They learn how to be uneducated morons.
I found a science website for very young students. If students learn this stuff before morons destroy their brains, they have a chance to be normal instead of retarded.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Welcome to evogeneao.com!
Our mission is to promote the teaching of evolution by emphasizing its greatest lesson: LIFE ON EARTH IS ONE BIG EXTENDED FAMILY! Every human being is related genealogically not just to all other humans, but to all other creatures that have ever lived! All living things on Earth are cousins. This view of life can be thought of as 'Evolutionary Genealogy'. In fact, evogeneao (pronounced "ee-voh-gee-nee-oh") is short for 'evolutionary genealogy'.
Biological evolution is one of the three most profound discoveries in science. The other two are the vastness of the universe and the depth of geologic time. As such, these three discoveries deserve to be the foundation of all science learning and should be taught from an early age.
If the typical fourth grader can name planets in their order from the sun, she should also know that life is all related by descent from common ancestors. Life on Earth is One Big Extended Family.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Welcome to evogeneao.com!
Our mission is to promote the teaching of evolution by emphasizing its greatest lesson: LIFE ON EARTH IS ONE BIG EXTENDED FAMILY! Every human being is related genealogically not just to all other humans, but to all other creatures that have ever lived! All living things on Earth are cousins. This view of life can be thought of as 'Evolutionary Genealogy'. In fact, evogeneao (pronounced "ee-voh-gee-nee-oh") is short for 'evolutionary genealogy'.
Biological evolution is one of the three most profound discoveries in science. The other two are the vastness of the universe and the depth of geologic time. As such, these three discoveries deserve to be the foundation of all science learning and should be taught from an early age.
If the typical fourth grader can name planets in their order from the sun, she should also know that life is all related by descent from common ancestors. Life on Earth is One Big Extended Family.
Thursday, August 30, 2018
It's becoming more and more likely President Fucktard Trump will be impeached.
It's becoming more and more likely President Fucktard Trump will be impeached. Good riddance when that happens.
Trump has been trying to destroy the environment. He has been attacking America with his ridiculous trade wars. He has repeatedly disgraced this country. Trump is a world-class stupid fucking asshole.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
New York Times - National Enquirer Had Decades of Trump Dirt. He Wanted to Buy It All.
A recording released last month of a conversation between Michael Cohen and Donald J. Trump hinted at more than hush money to a former Playboy model. “It’s all the stuff,” Mr. Cohen can be heard saying.
By Jim Rutenberg and Maggie Haberman
August 30, 2018
Federal investigators have provided ample evidence that President Trump was involved in deals to pay two women to keep them from speaking publicly before the 2016 election about affairs that they said they had with him.
But it turns out that Mr. Trump wanted to go even further.
He and his lawyer at the time, Michael D. Cohen, devised a plan to buy up all the dirt on Mr. Trump that the National Enquirer and its parent company had collected on him, dating back to the 1980s, according to several of Mr. Trump’s associates.
The existence of the plan, which was never finalized, has not been reported before. But it was strongly hinted at in a recording that Mr. Cohen’s lawyer released last month of a conversation about payoffs that Mr. Cohen had with Mr. Trump.
“It’s all the stuff — all the stuff, because you never know,” Mr. Cohen said on the recording.
The move by Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen indicated just how concerned they were about all the information amassed by the company, American Media, and its chairman, David Pecker, a loyal Trump ally of two decades who has cooperated with investigators.
It is not clear yet whether the proposed plan to purchase all the information from American Media has attracted the interest of federal prosecutors in New York, who last week obtained a guilty plea from Mr. Cohen over a $130,000 payment to the adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, and a $150,000 payment to a Playboy model, Karen McDougal.
But the prosecutors have provided at least partial immunity to Mr. Pecker, who is a key witness in their inquiry into payments made on behalf of Mr. Trump during the 2016 campaign.
In providing the guilty plea, Mr. Cohen had said the payments to the women came at Mr. Trump’s direction as part of a broader effort to protect his candidacy. The discussed purchase of American Media’s broader cache of Trump information appears to have been part of the same effort.
The people who knew about the discussions would speak about them only on condition of anonymity, given that they are now the potential subject of a federal investigation that did not end with Mr. Cohen’s plea.
Lawyers for Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen declined to comment for this article as did American Media.
It is not known how much of the material on Mr. Trump is still in American Media’s possession or whether American Media destroyed any of it after the campaign. Prosecutors have not said whether they have obtained any of the material beyond that which pertains to Ms. McDougal and Ms. Clifford and the discussions about their arrangements.
For the better part of two decades, Mr. Pecker had ordered his staff at American Media to protect Mr. Trump from troublesome stories, in some cases by buying up stories about him and filing them away.
In 2016, he kept his staff from going back through the old Trump tip and story files that dated to before Mr. Pecker became company chairman in 1999, several former staff members said in interviews with The New York Times.
That meant that American Media, the nation’s largest gossip publisher, did not play a role during the election year in vetting a presidential candidacy — Mr. Trump’s — made for the tabloids.
Mr. Pecker also worked with Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen to buy and bury Ms. McDougal’s story of an affair with Mr. Trump, a practice known as “catch and kill.” Mr. Cohen admitted as much in making his guilty plea last week.
In August 2016, American Media acquired the rights to Ms. McDougal’s story in return for $150,000 and commitments to use its magazines to promote her career as a fitness specialist. But American Media never published her allegations about a relationship with Mr. Trump.
Shortly after American Media completed the arrangement with Ms. McDougal at Mr. Trump’s behest, a troubling question began to nag at Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen, according to several people who knew about the discussions at the time: What would happen to America Media’s sensitive Trump files if Mr. Pecker were to leave the company?
Mr. Cohen, those people said, was hearing rumors that Mr. Pecker might leave American Media for Time magazine — a title Mr. Pecker is known to have dreams of running.
There was perennial talk about American Media’s business troubles. And Mr. Trump appeared to take a world-wearier view of the wisdom of leaving his sensitive personal secrets in someone else’s hands:
“Maybe he gets hit by a truck,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Pecker in a conversation with Mr. Cohen, musing about an unfortunate mishap befalling his good friend.
Mr. Cohen captured that conversation on a recording that his adviser released roughly a month before his guilty plea, which included two counts of campaign finance violations relating to the payments to Ms. Clifford and Ms. McDougal. The recording was given to CNN after Mr. Trump’s main lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, acknowledged its existence to The New York Times.
When The Times first reported that the recording had been discovered by the F.B.I., people close to Mr. Cohen and Mr. Trump initially described it in the narrow context of Ms. McDougal’s deal.
But Mr. Cohen, in fact, indicates in the audio that he and Mr. Trump are speaking about an arrangement involving far more.
“I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info, regarding our friend David,” Mr. Cohen says in reference to Mr. Pecker.
The plan got far enough along that Mr. Cohen relays in the recorded conversation that he had discussed paying for all the information from American Media with the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg.
“I’ve spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up,” he says, adding about Mr. Pecker, “We’ll have to pay him something.”
In the end, the deal never came together.
When Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty, prosecutors said in court documents that Mr. Cohen and American Media did enter into a deal in which Mr. Cohen agreed to pay the company $125,000 for the rights to Ms. McDougal’s story.
After the deal was signed but before Mr. Cohen paid, prosecutors said, American Media backed out of the arrangement and warned Mr. Cohen to shred the paperwork (he did not).
Prosecutors said there had been discussions between Mr. Pecker and Mr. Cohen in which Mr. Cohen said American Media would be reimbursed for the payment to Ms. McDougal.
The notoriously frugal Mr. Trump balked at doing so, causing Mr. Pecker anxiety about explaining the payout to his board, according to a person briefed on the discussions. It was unclear whether Mr. Trump ever provided a reimbursement.
Mr. Weisselberg ultimately provided information about Mr. Cohen under a deal that protected him from self-incrimination. As prosecutors continue in their investigation, Mr. Weisselberg could serve as a particularly helpful guide through the Trump Organization’s operations.
Mr. Pecker, whose company is expected to be of continued interest in the investigation, has a similar arrangement with prosecutors. Potentially as worrisome for Mr. Trump and his advisers, Mr. Pecker could be a particularly knowing guide through any other potentially illegal efforts made to protect Mr. Trump’s candidacy from his own less savory exploits.
“The only thing better than a single piece of evidence is multiple pieces of evidence,” said Jeff Tsai, a lawyer now in private practice who, as a Justice Department public integrity section lawyer, had served on the team that prosecuted Senator John Edwards on campaign finance charges in 2012.
He added, “Look to whom the government is reportedly giving immunity to. Those individuals are the ones who would have knowledge about what, if anything, the campaign at the highest, or lowest, or any level in between had on this issue.”
People with knowledge of American Media’s operations, who would speak only on condition of anonymity, described the files on Mr. Trump as mostly older National Enquirer stories about Mr. Trump’s marital woes and lawsuits; related story notes and lists of sensitive sources; some tips about alleged affairs; and minutia, like allegations of unscrupulous golfing.
As The Associated Press reported last week, some of the information was kept in a safe devoted to particularly sensitive material.
Many of the older National Enquirer stories are often not accessible through Google or databases like Nexis.
Several former American Media staff members said that at the very least, the material the company had on Mr. Trump would have put its flagship, The Enquirer, in a prime position to dominate on coverage of Mr. Trump’s scandalous past.
Ben Protess contributed reporting.
A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 31, 2018 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump Tip File In Tabloid Safe Inspired a Plan.
Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
Trump has been trying to destroy the environment. He has been attacking America with his ridiculous trade wars. He has repeatedly disgraced this country. Trump is a world-class stupid fucking asshole.
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New York Times - National Enquirer Had Decades of Trump Dirt. He Wanted to Buy It All.
A recording released last month of a conversation between Michael Cohen and Donald J. Trump hinted at more than hush money to a former Playboy model. “It’s all the stuff,” Mr. Cohen can be heard saying.
By Jim Rutenberg and Maggie Haberman
August 30, 2018
Federal investigators have provided ample evidence that President Trump was involved in deals to pay two women to keep them from speaking publicly before the 2016 election about affairs that they said they had with him.
But it turns out that Mr. Trump wanted to go even further.
He and his lawyer at the time, Michael D. Cohen, devised a plan to buy up all the dirt on Mr. Trump that the National Enquirer and its parent company had collected on him, dating back to the 1980s, according to several of Mr. Trump’s associates.
The existence of the plan, which was never finalized, has not been reported before. But it was strongly hinted at in a recording that Mr. Cohen’s lawyer released last month of a conversation about payoffs that Mr. Cohen had with Mr. Trump.
“It’s all the stuff — all the stuff, because you never know,” Mr. Cohen said on the recording.
The move by Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen indicated just how concerned they were about all the information amassed by the company, American Media, and its chairman, David Pecker, a loyal Trump ally of two decades who has cooperated with investigators.
It is not clear yet whether the proposed plan to purchase all the information from American Media has attracted the interest of federal prosecutors in New York, who last week obtained a guilty plea from Mr. Cohen over a $130,000 payment to the adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, and a $150,000 payment to a Playboy model, Karen McDougal.
But the prosecutors have provided at least partial immunity to Mr. Pecker, who is a key witness in their inquiry into payments made on behalf of Mr. Trump during the 2016 campaign.
In providing the guilty plea, Mr. Cohen had said the payments to the women came at Mr. Trump’s direction as part of a broader effort to protect his candidacy. The discussed purchase of American Media’s broader cache of Trump information appears to have been part of the same effort.
The people who knew about the discussions would speak about them only on condition of anonymity, given that they are now the potential subject of a federal investigation that did not end with Mr. Cohen’s plea.
Lawyers for Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen declined to comment for this article as did American Media.
It is not known how much of the material on Mr. Trump is still in American Media’s possession or whether American Media destroyed any of it after the campaign. Prosecutors have not said whether they have obtained any of the material beyond that which pertains to Ms. McDougal and Ms. Clifford and the discussions about their arrangements.
For the better part of two decades, Mr. Pecker had ordered his staff at American Media to protect Mr. Trump from troublesome stories, in some cases by buying up stories about him and filing them away.
In 2016, he kept his staff from going back through the old Trump tip and story files that dated to before Mr. Pecker became company chairman in 1999, several former staff members said in interviews with The New York Times.
That meant that American Media, the nation’s largest gossip publisher, did not play a role during the election year in vetting a presidential candidacy — Mr. Trump’s — made for the tabloids.
Mr. Pecker also worked with Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen to buy and bury Ms. McDougal’s story of an affair with Mr. Trump, a practice known as “catch and kill.” Mr. Cohen admitted as much in making his guilty plea last week.
In August 2016, American Media acquired the rights to Ms. McDougal’s story in return for $150,000 and commitments to use its magazines to promote her career as a fitness specialist. But American Media never published her allegations about a relationship with Mr. Trump.
Shortly after American Media completed the arrangement with Ms. McDougal at Mr. Trump’s behest, a troubling question began to nag at Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen, according to several people who knew about the discussions at the time: What would happen to America Media’s sensitive Trump files if Mr. Pecker were to leave the company?
Mr. Cohen, those people said, was hearing rumors that Mr. Pecker might leave American Media for Time magazine — a title Mr. Pecker is known to have dreams of running.
There was perennial talk about American Media’s business troubles. And Mr. Trump appeared to take a world-wearier view of the wisdom of leaving his sensitive personal secrets in someone else’s hands:
“Maybe he gets hit by a truck,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Pecker in a conversation with Mr. Cohen, musing about an unfortunate mishap befalling his good friend.
Mr. Cohen captured that conversation on a recording that his adviser released roughly a month before his guilty plea, which included two counts of campaign finance violations relating to the payments to Ms. Clifford and Ms. McDougal. The recording was given to CNN after Mr. Trump’s main lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, acknowledged its existence to The New York Times.
When The Times first reported that the recording had been discovered by the F.B.I., people close to Mr. Cohen and Mr. Trump initially described it in the narrow context of Ms. McDougal’s deal.
But Mr. Cohen, in fact, indicates in the audio that he and Mr. Trump are speaking about an arrangement involving far more.
“I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info, regarding our friend David,” Mr. Cohen says in reference to Mr. Pecker.
The plan got far enough along that Mr. Cohen relays in the recorded conversation that he had discussed paying for all the information from American Media with the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg.
“I’ve spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up,” he says, adding about Mr. Pecker, “We’ll have to pay him something.”
In the end, the deal never came together.
When Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty, prosecutors said in court documents that Mr. Cohen and American Media did enter into a deal in which Mr. Cohen agreed to pay the company $125,000 for the rights to Ms. McDougal’s story.
After the deal was signed but before Mr. Cohen paid, prosecutors said, American Media backed out of the arrangement and warned Mr. Cohen to shred the paperwork (he did not).
Prosecutors said there had been discussions between Mr. Pecker and Mr. Cohen in which Mr. Cohen said American Media would be reimbursed for the payment to Ms. McDougal.
The notoriously frugal Mr. Trump balked at doing so, causing Mr. Pecker anxiety about explaining the payout to his board, according to a person briefed on the discussions. It was unclear whether Mr. Trump ever provided a reimbursement.
Mr. Weisselberg ultimately provided information about Mr. Cohen under a deal that protected him from self-incrimination. As prosecutors continue in their investigation, Mr. Weisselberg could serve as a particularly helpful guide through the Trump Organization’s operations.
Mr. Pecker, whose company is expected to be of continued interest in the investigation, has a similar arrangement with prosecutors. Potentially as worrisome for Mr. Trump and his advisers, Mr. Pecker could be a particularly knowing guide through any other potentially illegal efforts made to protect Mr. Trump’s candidacy from his own less savory exploits.
“The only thing better than a single piece of evidence is multiple pieces of evidence,” said Jeff Tsai, a lawyer now in private practice who, as a Justice Department public integrity section lawyer, had served on the team that prosecuted Senator John Edwards on campaign finance charges in 2012.
He added, “Look to whom the government is reportedly giving immunity to. Those individuals are the ones who would have knowledge about what, if anything, the campaign at the highest, or lowest, or any level in between had on this issue.”
People with knowledge of American Media’s operations, who would speak only on condition of anonymity, described the files on Mr. Trump as mostly older National Enquirer stories about Mr. Trump’s marital woes and lawsuits; related story notes and lists of sensitive sources; some tips about alleged affairs; and minutia, like allegations of unscrupulous golfing.
As The Associated Press reported last week, some of the information was kept in a safe devoted to particularly sensitive material.
Many of the older National Enquirer stories are often not accessible through Google or databases like Nexis.
Several former American Media staff members said that at the very least, the material the company had on Mr. Trump would have put its flagship, The Enquirer, in a prime position to dominate on coverage of Mr. Trump’s scandalous past.
Ben Protess contributed reporting.
A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 31, 2018 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump Tip File In Tabloid Safe Inspired a Plan.
Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
Some extreme Christian stupid: According to batshit crazy Christian fucktards, the Magic Jeebus Man will magically come back to Earth even though the thing has been dead for 2,000 years. I found numerous websites that explain this bullshit. Apparently Jeebus is not a big fucking hurry to come back, maybe because he's fucking dead.
Second Coming Of Christ
Second Coming of Christ - No One Knows When
The Second Coming of Christ is plagued by many false teachings. Prediction books have even been written picking the exact day of Jesus' return. These books may sell many copies, but they mislead their readers. There's one guarantee: As soon as someone predicts the day or time of Jesus Christ's second coming, that prediction is wrong. Why? Simply, only God the Father knows when it will be -- Jesus doesn't even know. Jesus told His disciples:
"No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father... Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with the hand mill; one will be taken and the other left... Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come" (Matthew 24:36, 40, 42).
The Second Coming of Christ is plagued by many false teachings. Prediction books have even been written picking the exact day of Jesus' return. These books may sell many copies, but they mislead their readers. There's one guarantee: As soon as someone predicts the day or time of Jesus Christ's second coming, that prediction is wrong. Why? Simply, only God the Father knows when it will be -- Jesus doesn't even know. Jesus told His disciples:
"No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father... Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with the hand mill; one will be taken and the other left... Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come" (Matthew 24:36, 40, 42).
Second Coming of Christ - Signs for Keeping Watch
We could just shrug our shoulders and casually wait for the Second Coming of Christ. However, Jesus wants us to "keep watch." A great way to keep watch is to know what the Bible reveals about upcoming events and compare those to what we see happening today. There are nearly 100 biblical passages discussing the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. The key events can be summarized with the acrostic: S - E - C - O - N - D.
S…Sudden. As we saw above, no one but the Father knows when. However, we do know it will take place "as lightning." Matthew 24:27 says, "For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man."
E…Essential. One of the foundations of the Christian faith is Jesus' second coming. It is spoken of by Jesus and many others in the Bible. Jesus will physically come again for all His believers and for His final judgment. Unfortunately, some Christian cults teach that Christ "secretly" returned already. As you read what the Bible says about the Second Coming of Jesus, it will be obvious that it hasn't happened yet.
C…Christ's Final Judgment. The Bible declares that Jesus will be the final judge of the world (John 5:22, Acts 10:42 and 2 Timothy 4:1). Some of the additional verses describing the second coming, resurrection of the dead, millennium, and final judgment are located in Acts 17:31, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-5:11 and Hebrews 10:27.
O…Obvious. There are over 6 billion people on the planet. God only knows what percentage are truly Christians, but let's use a conservative number like 10%. If this is true, over 600,000,000 people will vanish from the earth simultaneously according to Matthew 24:40. There will be no mistaking when Christ comes back for His Church!
N…No One Knows When. In Matthew 24:36, Jesus said only God the Father knows when. God is outside time. God already knows every prediction regarding Jesus' return that has ever been or will ever be made. Since Jesus said that no one knows about that day but the Father, NO ONE KNOWS!
We could just shrug our shoulders and casually wait for the Second Coming of Christ. However, Jesus wants us to "keep watch." A great way to keep watch is to know what the Bible reveals about upcoming events and compare those to what we see happening today. There are nearly 100 biblical passages discussing the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. The key events can be summarized with the acrostic: S - E - C - O - N - D.
S…Sudden. As we saw above, no one but the Father knows when. However, we do know it will take place "as lightning." Matthew 24:27 says, "For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man."
E…Essential. One of the foundations of the Christian faith is Jesus' second coming. It is spoken of by Jesus and many others in the Bible. Jesus will physically come again for all His believers and for His final judgment. Unfortunately, some Christian cults teach that Christ "secretly" returned already. As you read what the Bible says about the Second Coming of Jesus, it will be obvious that it hasn't happened yet.
C…Christ's Final Judgment. The Bible declares that Jesus will be the final judge of the world (John 5:22, Acts 10:42 and 2 Timothy 4:1). Some of the additional verses describing the second coming, resurrection of the dead, millennium, and final judgment are located in Acts 17:31, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-5:11 and Hebrews 10:27.
O…Obvious. There are over 6 billion people on the planet. God only knows what percentage are truly Christians, but let's use a conservative number like 10%. If this is true, over 600,000,000 people will vanish from the earth simultaneously according to Matthew 24:40. There will be no mistaking when Christ comes back for His Church!
N…No One Knows When. In Matthew 24:36, Jesus said only God the Father knows when. God is outside time. God already knows every prediction regarding Jesus' return that has ever been or will ever be made. Since Jesus said that no one knows about that day but the Father, NO ONE KNOWS!
Second Coming of Christ - The "D" is for "Doubters"
As we get closer and closer to the Second Coming of Christ, there will be increasing and widespread doubt about whether Jesus even existed. People will also start wondering if God really exists and believers will leave the Christian faith (2 Thessalonians 2:1-4, 1 Timothy 4:1-2, and 2 Peter 2:1-3). Do you think we're already seeing these signs?
I asked a question about the 2nd coming of Jeebus and a fucktard answered it. These people are fucking insane.
"In the 21st century do Christians still believe in the Second Coming Of Christ?"
Most assuredly.
Jesus promised that he would return for his people. He proved his deity by defeating death, being raised from the grave with his glorified new body. God the Son does not lie.
John 14:2-3
In My Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and welcome you into My presence, so that you also may be where I am.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Somebody wrote "Sure they do, without the magic religion has nothing." I'm going to add this to my list of favorite quotes.
Many years ago I had the best vegetable garden in Chicago.
I used to grow this stuff in a vegetable garden in a Chicago backyard. It was illegal for some reason but I never had a problem with the Chicago police. Unfortunately I had a fucktard neighbor who would steal some of it. The idiot didn't know it wasn't ready. I didn't want to call the police to complain.
It's just a fucking plant. It should have been legal a long time ago. I'm still waiting for Florida to get the job done so I can go to a store and buy a cannabis edible. This plant makes Republicans cry which is one of the many reasons I will never vote for a Republican again.
It's just a fucking plant. It should have been legal a long time ago. I'm still waiting for Florida to get the job done so I can go to a store and buy a cannabis edible. This plant makes Republicans cry which is one of the many reasons I will never vote for a Republican again.
 |
| The special substance |
I never met a god-soaked fucktard who wasn't a cowardly moron.
What I wrote for a fucktard:
"Why don't atheists wish to live again?"
We are lucky to have one life. Also we accept reality. You morons live in a everything-is-magic fantasy land. You people are cowards. Reality makes you cry. Grow up and face facts.
"Why don't atheists wish to live again?"
We are lucky to have one life. Also we accept reality. You morons live in a everything-is-magic fantasy land. You people are cowards. Reality makes you cry. Grow up and face facts.
America's anti-science Republican Party is famous for their childish fear of evolution. Even India has noticed the problem.
Study reveals majority of Indians accept evolution.
"Vehemently opposing Darwinism had traditionally been a tactic in conservative parties around the world, especially by the Republican Party in the US."
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Virtually 100% of Republicans are science deniers. Human caused global warming and evolution makes them cry.
Why would a political party be so interested in throwing out science? It's a stupidity problem, extreme incurable stupidity.
"Vehemently opposing Darwinism had traditionally been a tactic in conservative parties around the world, especially by the Republican Party in the US."
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Virtually 100% of Republicans are science deniers. Human caused global warming and evolution makes them cry.
Why would a political party be so interested in throwing out science? It's a stupidity problem, extreme incurable stupidity.
I'm a voter in Florida. This year we have to choose the next governor. We have 2 choices. A Republican fucktard who loves Fucktard Trump or a normal person, aka Democrat.
This is the Republican fucktard who sucks up to the most moronic president in United States history.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
This is the normal person. I voting for him because he's not a Republican asshole.
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Wikipedia - Everything you didn't want to know about the Florida gubernatorial election, 2018
For me deciding who to vote for is easy. I just vote for the Democrat whether or not I agree with his or her ideas.
The ballot will be mailed to me. I can vote in my living room then mail the ballot to the government.
I predict some day people will be able to vote on the internet. We could do that now. We just need a government that isn't incompetent. In other words a government that isn't infested with Republican fucktards.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
This is the normal person. I voting for him because he's not a Republican asshole.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Wikipedia - Everything you didn't want to know about the Florida gubernatorial election, 2018
For me deciding who to vote for is easy. I just vote for the Democrat whether or not I agree with his or her ideas.
The ballot will be mailed to me. I can vote in my living room then mail the ballot to the government.
I predict some day people will be able to vote on the internet. We could do that now. We just need a government that isn't incompetent. In other words a government that isn't infested with Republican fucktards.
Wednesday, August 29, 2018
This is one of the many reasons I buy everything from Amazon. They take good care of their customers. In other news the book about Vice President Fucktard Pence is on the way.
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In Idiot America anyone can buy weapons including lunatics. We have more guns than we have people. The 2nd amendment can't be thrown out but this is ridiculous.
"The suspected gunman behind America’s latest mass shooting had a history of mental illness and was prescribed anti-psychotic medicine, court records revealed."
How did this deranged fucktard with a history of being a nutjob get a weapon? Only in Idiot America would this idiot be able to get anything he wants to kill anyone he wants.
Florida shooting suspect had history of mental illness, court records show
Wikipedia - Jacksonville Landing shooting
Wikipedia - Second Amendment to the United States Constitution
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
How did this deranged fucktard with a history of being a nutjob get a weapon? Only in Idiot America would this idiot be able to get anything he wants to kill anyone he wants.
Florida shooting suspect had history of mental illness, court records show
Wikipedia - Jacksonville Landing shooting
Wikipedia - Second Amendment to the United States Constitution
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Today, August 29, 2018, is Harry Potter's 20th Anniversary.
I have read all 7 Harry Potter books twice. I plan to read all 7 books a 3rd time before I drop dead.
The 2nd time I read it I frequently had to stop just to admire how brilliant the author was. She earned her one billion dollars.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
New York Times - Happy 20th Anniversary, Harry Potter
A publishing saga, captured in Potter ephemera — letters, sketches, mementos and more — that has been transfigured into treasure.
By Maria Russo
August 29, 2018
Before there was a movie franchise, and a collection of theme parks, and a Broadway play (two actually); before you could spot wand-wielding children sporting long black robes and know just what they were up to; there was Joanne Rowling’s manuscript, famously rumored to have been partly written on disposable napkins, about an orphaned boy who did not know he was a wizard. It was rejected by several British publishers, and then accepted by one, Bloomsbury, which published it as “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” with Rowling’s name defeminized into “J.K.” A year later — on Sept. 1, 1998 — it arrived in American bookstores as “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” with a new cover designed by Mary GrandPré. There was another publisher, Scholastic, tasked with introducing the book and the wizarding world to American children, and soon enough, across the country there were young readers, and more than a few older ones, clamoring for more.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
New York Times - Happy 20th Anniversary, Harry Potter
A publishing saga, captured in Potter ephemera — letters, sketches, mementos and more — that has been transfigured into treasure.
By Maria Russo
August 29, 2018
Before there was a movie franchise, and a collection of theme parks, and a Broadway play (two actually); before you could spot wand-wielding children sporting long black robes and know just what they were up to; there was Joanne Rowling’s manuscript, famously rumored to have been partly written on disposable napkins, about an orphaned boy who did not know he was a wizard. It was rejected by several British publishers, and then accepted by one, Bloomsbury, which published it as “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” with Rowling’s name defeminized into “J.K.” A year later — on Sept. 1, 1998 — it arrived in American bookstores as “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” with a new cover designed by Mary GrandPré. There was another publisher, Scholastic, tasked with introducing the book and the wizarding world to American children, and soon enough, across the country there were young readers, and more than a few older ones, clamoring for more.
 |
| A letter from Rowling’s American editor that was in galleys sent to media and booksellers. |
It's about time to throw out the primitive religious cults, especially something as idiotic and disgusting as the Catholic Church.
At the New York Times I was reading what a Catholic wrote about the child abuse problem in her church. What I got out of it is she's insane. She lets her 6 year old son get brainwashed by morons. She thinks "faith" is a virtue even though it's an excuse to believe in bullshit that makes cowards feel good. She think "prayer" is something more than talking to yourself. She continues to be a Catholic even though she can't trust a priest to be alone with her child.
What is fucking wrong with these people? This is the 21st century FFS. It's about time to throw out the primitive religious cults, especially something as idiotic and disgusting as the Catholic Church.
Here is what she wrote:
My family and I have been Catholic for generations. It is time for my son to take first communion classes as a 1st grader. I am saddened that my first thought was that I could not leave him alone with my priest and my second was that I have to have a talk with him about inappropriate touching. If more is not actually and concretely done to combat and stop covering up and preventing abuse, then we will go and I will not look back. I am fine with priests getting married and having families. Singular devotion to God via celibacy doesn’t seem to work with natural desire for sex by men. Let’s move the church past vows of celibacy and refocus on faith, prayer, healing and good works.
— Michelle M., San Francisco
What is fucking wrong with these people? This is the 21st century FFS. It's about time to throw out the primitive religious cults, especially something as idiotic and disgusting as the Catholic Church.
Here is what she wrote:
My family and I have been Catholic for generations. It is time for my son to take first communion classes as a 1st grader. I am saddened that my first thought was that I could not leave him alone with my priest and my second was that I have to have a talk with him about inappropriate touching. If more is not actually and concretely done to combat and stop covering up and preventing abuse, then we will go and I will not look back. I am fine with priests getting married and having families. Singular devotion to God via celibacy doesn’t seem to work with natural desire for sex by men. Let’s move the church past vows of celibacy and refocus on faith, prayer, healing and good works.
— Michelle M., San Francisco
The stupid fucking assholes of Idiot America (aka Christian scum) want to throw out the Establishment Clause of our Bill of Rights.
Jerry Coyne wrote about Idiot America's in-god-we-trust bullshit on our dollar bills at “In God We Trust” to stay on U.S. currency.
Our Establishment Clause is a wonderful thing but not every judge got the memo. There is a lot of extreme stupid in Idiot America.
Cash is obsolete. I never carry it with me. My credit card pays for everything and I get two percent cash back from Citibank. Every month I pay for the whole thing so I never have to pay interest.
There is no god bullshit on my credit card.
I never met a Christian who wasn't a stupid fucking asshole.
Christian morons don't understand how insane they are. Also, extreme stupidity is part of the problem.
What I wrote for a know-nothing Christian asshole:
"Whether or not you are a Christian or an atheist your ideology is still based on what you believe without evidence."
Reality has millions of evidences. Reality does not require faith.
Your supernatural magic obviously requires faith because it has zero evidence and because it's ridiculous, not to mention impossible.
What I wrote for a know-nothing Christian asshole:
"Whether or not you are a Christian or an atheist your ideology is still based on what you believe without evidence."
Reality has millions of evidences. Reality does not require faith.
Your supernatural magic obviously requires faith because it has zero evidence and because it's ridiculous, not to mention impossible.
The Ten Commandments according to Christopher Hitchens
Atheism, aka reality, does not requires commandments, however Christopher Hitchen wrote these ten commandments which I mostly agree with, especially "VIII: Turn off that fucking cell phone".
I: Do not condemn people on the basis of their ethnicity or color.
II: Do not ever use people as private property.
III: Despise those who use violence or the threat of it in sexual relations.
IV: Hide your face and weep if you dare to harm a child.
V: Do not condemn people for their inborn nature.
VI: Be aware that you too are an animal and dependent on the web of nature, and think and act accordingly.
VII: Do not imagine that you can escape judgment if you rob people with a false prospectus rather than with a knife.
VIII: Turn off that fucking cell phone.
IX: Denounce all jihadists and crusaders for what they are: psychopathic criminals with ugly delusions.
X: Be willing to renounce any god or any religion if any holy commandments should contradict any of the above.
I: Do not condemn people on the basis of their ethnicity or color.
II: Do not ever use people as private property.
III: Despise those who use violence or the threat of it in sexual relations.
IV: Hide your face and weep if you dare to harm a child.
V: Do not condemn people for their inborn nature.
VI: Be aware that you too are an animal and dependent on the web of nature, and think and act accordingly.
VII: Do not imagine that you can escape judgment if you rob people with a false prospectus rather than with a knife.
VIII: Turn off that fucking cell phone.
IX: Denounce all jihadists and crusaders for what they are: psychopathic criminals with ugly delusions.
X: Be willing to renounce any god or any religion if any holy commandments should contradict any of the above.
Click "Start the gallery" to see nature's cutest creatures.
The baby gorilla clinging to its mother looks exactly like a human baby clinging to its human ape mother, except the gorillas have more hair. It's very obvious we share an ancestor with the other ape species.
BBC Earth
Which baby animal is cutest?
By Melissa Hogenboom
3 September 2016
We all find our own babies cute. And their big eyes, large heads and round faces may prime us to do so.
There is a good evolutionary reason for this, our babies are born helpless, their power of cute therefore helps ensure they get the attention they need.
Start the gallery
BBC Earth
Which baby animal is cutest?
By Melissa Hogenboom
3 September 2016
We all find our own babies cute. And their big eyes, large heads and round faces may prime us to do so.
There is a good evolutionary reason for this, our babies are born helpless, their power of cute therefore helps ensure they get the attention they need.
Start the gallery
Click "Start the gallery" to see some unusual creatures made possible by evolution.
BBC Earth
Feast your eyes on the ugliest animals in the world
By Michael Marshall 22 October 2016
Sometimes evolution creates beautiful, colourful animals, and at other times it comes up with creatures that look like they came out of our worst nightmares.
Start the gallery
Feast your eyes on the ugliest animals in the world
By Michael Marshall 22 October 2016
Sometimes evolution creates beautiful, colourful animals, and at other times it comes up with creatures that look like they came out of our worst nightmares.
Start the gallery
Black War, also known as the Tasmanian War
I like to explore Wikipedia. I randomly click their links to learn about stuff I didn't know anything about. Obviously I have way too much time on my hands.
I found Wikipedia - Tasmania and from there I found Wikipedia - Black War. It's about genocide in the 1800's. America had the same genocide problem.
Wikipedia - Black War
The Black War was the period of violent conflict between British colonists and Aboriginal Australians in Tasmania from the mid-1820s to 1832. The conflict, fought largely as a guerrilla war by both sides, claimed the lives of more than 200 European colonists and between 600 and 900 Aboriginal people, nearly annihilating the island's indigenous population.[2][3] The near-destruction of the Aboriginal Tasmanians, and the frequent incidence of mass killings, has sparked debate among historians over whether the Black War should be defined as an act of genocide.[4]
The terms "Black War" and "Black Line" were coined by journalist Henry Melville in 1835,[5][6] but historian Lyndall Ryan has argued that it should be known as the Tasmanian War. She has also called for the erection of a public memorial to the fallen from both sides of the war.[7]
The escalation of violence in the late 1820s prompted Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur to declare martial law—effectively providing legal immunity for killing Aboriginal people[8]—and in late 1830 to order a massive six-week military offensive known as the Black Line, in which 2200 civilians and soldiers formed a series of moving cordons stretching hundreds of kilometres across the island in order to drive Aboriginal people from the colony's settled districts to the Tasman Peninsula in the southeast, where it was intended they would remain permanently confined.[9][10][11]
The Black War was prompted by the rapid spread of British settlers and agricultural livestock throughout areas of Tasmania that had been traditional Aboriginal hunting grounds. Historian Nicholas Clements has described the Aboriginal violence as a resistance movement—the use of force against an invading or occupying enemy. He said the Aboriginal attacks were motivated by revenge for European atrocities and the widespread kidnapping, rape and murder of Aboriginal women and girls by convicts, settlers and soldiers, but particularly from the late 1820s the Aboriginal people were also driven by hunger to plunder settlers' homes for food as their hunting grounds shrank, native game disappeared and the dangers of hunting on open ground grew.[12] European violence, meanwhile, was motivated by mounting terror of Aboriginal attacks and a conviction that extermination of the Aboriginal population was the only means by which peace could be secured. Clements noted: "As black violence grew in intensity, so too did the frequency of revenge attacks and pre-emptive strikes by frontiersmen."[13]
Attacks were launched by groups of Aboriginal people almost always in daylight with a variety of weapons including spears, rocks and waddies used to kill and maim settlers and shepherds, as well as their livestock, while homes, haystacks and crops were often set alight. European attacks, in contrast, were mainly launched at night or in the early hours of dawn by pursuit parties or roving parties of civilians or soldiers who aimed to strike as their quarry slept in bush camps. Women and children were commonly casualties on both sides.
From 1830 Arthur offered rewards for the capture of Aboriginal people, but bounties were also paid when Aboriginal people were killed. From 1829 efforts were made with the aid of humanitarian George Augustus Robinson to launch a "friendly mission" to persuade Aboriginal people to surrender and be removed to an island sanctuary; from November 1830 to December 1831 several groups accepted his offer[14] and 46 were initially placed on Flinders Island, from which escape was deemed to be impossible.[15] Although conflict between Aboriginal people and settlers almost completely ceased from January 1832, another 148 Aboriginal people were captured in the island's northwest over the next four years as a "clean up" and forcibly removed to Hunter Island and then Flinders Island.[16]
Although sealers had begun commercial operations on Van Diemen's Land in late 1798, the first significant European presence on the island came five years later, with the establishment in September 1803 of a small military outpost at Risdon on the Derwent River near present-day Hobart.[17][18] Several bloody encounters with local Aboriginal clans took place over the next five months, with shots fired and an Aboriginal boy seized. David Collins arrived as the colony's first lieutenant governor in February 1804 with instructions from London that any acts of violence against the Aboriginal people by Europeans were to be punished, but failed to publish those instructions, leaving no legal framework on how to deal with any violent conflict.[19]
On 3 May 1804, alarmed soldiers from Risdon fired grapeshot from a carronade on a group of about 100 Aboriginal people after an encounter at a farm, while settlers and convicts fired rifles, pistols and muskets in support. Magistrate Robert Knopwood told a subsequent inquiry into the so-called Risdon massacre that five or six Aboriginal people had been killed, but other witnesses claimed as many as 50 men, women and children had died, with 30 bodies later burned or buried to extinguish the odour as they decomposed.[20][21]
A wave of violence erupted during a drought in 1806–7 as tribes in both the north and south of the island killed or wounded several Europeans in conflicts sparked by the competition for game, while explorer and naval officer John Oxley referred in an 1810 report to the "many atrocious cruelties" inflicted on Aboriginal people by convict bushrangersin the north, which in turn led to black attacks on solitary white hunters.[22]
The arrival of 600 colonists from Norfolk Island between 1807 and 1813 increased tensions as they established farms along the River Derwent and east and west of Launceston, occupying 10 percent of Van Diemen's Land. By 1814 12,700ha of land was under cultivation, with 5000 cattle and 38,000 sheep. The Norfolk Islanders used violence to stake their claim on the land, attacking Aboriginal camps at night, slaughtering parents and abducting the orphaned children as their servants. The attacks prompted retaliatory raids on settlers' cattle herds in the southeast. Between 1817 and 1824 the colonial population rose from 2000 to 12,600 and in 1823 alone more than 1000 land grants totalling 175,704ha were made to new settlers; by that year Van Diemen's Land's sheep population had reached 200,000 and the so-called Settled Districts accounted for 30 per cent of the island's total land area. The rapid colonisation transformed traditional kangaroo hunting grounds into farms with grazing livestock as well as fences, hedges and stone walls, while police and military patrols were increased to control the convict farm labourers.[23]
Over the first two decades of settlement Aboriginal people launched at least 57 attacks on white settlers, punctuating a general calm,[24] but by 1820 the violence was becoming markedly more frequent, with one Russian explorer reporting that year that "the natives of Tasmania live in a state of perpetual hostility against the Europeans".[25] From the mid 1820s, the number of attacks initiated by both whites and blacks rose sharply. Clements says the main reasons for settler attacks on Aboriginal people were revenge, killing for sport, sexual desire for women and children and suppression of the native threat. Van Diemen's Land had an enormous gender imbalance, with male colonists outnumbering females six to one in 1822 and the ratio as high as 16 to one among the convict population. Clements has suggested the "voracious appetite" for native women was the most important trigger for the Black War. He wrote: "Sex continued to be a central motivation for attacking natives until around 1828, by which time killing the enemy had taken priority over raping them."[26]
From 1825 to 1828, the number of native attacks more than doubled each year, raising panic among settlers. By 1828, says Clements, colonists had no doubt they were fighting a war—"but this was not a conventional war, and the enemy could not be combated by conventional means. The blacks were not one people, but rather a number of disparate tribes. They had no home base and no recognisable command structure."[27]
George Arthur, Governor of the colony since May 1824, had issued a proclamation on his arrival that placed Aboriginal people under the protection of British law and threatened prosecution and trial for Europeans who continued to "wantonly destroy" them. Arthur sought to establish a "native institution" for Aboriginal people and in September 1826 expressed a hope that the trial and subsequent hanging of two Aboriginal people arrested for the spearing of three colonists earlier that year would "not only prevent further atrocities ... but lead to a conciliatory line of conduct". But between September and November 1826 six more colonists were murdered. Among them was George Taylor Junior, a "respectable settler" from Campbell Town, whose body was found "transfixed with many spears, and his head dreadfully shattered with blows, inflicted either with stones or waddies". The Colonial Times newspaper, in response, demanded a drastic change of official policy, urging the forcible removal of all Aboriginal people from the Settled Districts to an island in the Bass Strait. It warned: "Self-defence is the first law of nature. The government must remove the natives—if not, they will be hunted down like wild beasts, and destroyed!"[28][29]
Responding to the rising panic, Arthur on 29 November 1826 issued a government notice setting out the legal conditions under which the colonists could kill Aboriginal people when they attacked settlers or their property. The notice declared that acts of aggression could be repelled "in the same as if they had proceeded from an accredited State". Though the notice was greeted by the Colonial Times as a declaration of war on Aboriginal people in the Settled Districts, and some settlers saw it as "a noble service to shoot them down", Clements believes that the legality of killing blacks was never made clear to colonists and historian Lyndall Ryan has argued that Arthur intended nothing more than to force their surrender.[30][31]
Over the summer of 1826–7 clans from the Big River, Oyster Bay and North Midlands nations speared a number of stock-keepers on farms and made it clear that they wanted the settlers and their sheep and cattle to move from their kangaroo hunting grounds. Settlers responded vigorously, resulting in many mass-killings, though this was poorly reported at the time. On 8 December 1826 a group led by Kickerterpoller threatened a farm overseer at Bank Hill farm at Orielton, near Richmond; the following day soldiers from the 40th Regiment killed 14 Aboriginal people from the Oyster Bay nation and captured and jailed another nine, including Kickerterpoller. In April 1827 two shepherds were killed at Hugh Murray's farm at Mount Augustus near Campbell Town, south of Launceston, and a party of settlers with a detachment of the 40th Regiment launched a reprisal attack at dawn on an undefended Aboriginal camp, killing as many as 70 Aboriginal men, women and children. In March and April several settlers and convict servants were killed and a pursuit party avenged one of the incidents in a dawn raid in which "they fired volley after volley in among the Blackfellows ... they reported killing some two score (40)." In May 1827 a group of Oyster Bay Aboriginal people killed a stock-keeper at Great Swanport near Swansea and a party of soldiers, field police, settlers and stock-keepers launched a night raid on the culprits' camp. A report noted: "Volley after volley of ball cartridge was poured in upon the dark groups surrounding the little camp fires. The number slain was considerable."[32]
Over 18 days in June 1827 at least 100 members of the Pallittorre clan from the North nation were killed in reprisals for the killing of three stockmen and Ryan calculates that in the eight months from 1 December 1826 to 31 July 1827 more than 200 Aboriginal people were killed in the Settled Districts in reprisal for their killing of 15 colonists. An entire clan of 150 Oyster Bay people may have been killed in one pursuit through the Sorell Valley in November 1827, significantly reducing population numbers. In September Arthur appointed another 26 field police and deployed another 55 soldiers from the 40th Regiment and New South Wales Royal Veteran Company into the Settled Districts to deal with the rising conflict. Between September 1827 and the following March, at least 70 Aboriginal attacks were reported throughout the Settled Districts, taking the lives of 20 colonists. By March 1828 the death toll in the Settled Districts for the 16 months since Arthur's November 1826 official notice had risen to 43 colonists and probably 350 Aboriginal people. But by then reports were being received that Aboriginal people were more interested in plundering huts for food—stealing bread, flour, tea and digging up potatoes and turnips from settlers' gardens—than killing colonists.[33]
Arthur reported to the Colonial Office secretary in London that the Aboriginal people "already complained that the white people have taken possession of their country, encroached upon their hunting grounds, and destroyed their natural food, the kangaroo" and in a memo he proposed settling the Aboriginal people "in some remote quarter of the island, which should be reserved strictly for them, and to supply them with food and clothing, and afford them protection ... on condition of their confining themselves peaceably to certain limits". He said Tasmania's northeast coast was the preferred location for such a reserve and suggested they remain there "until their habits shall become more civilised". He pursued the proposal by issuing on 19 April 1828 a "Proclamation Separating the Aborigines from the White Inhabitants" that divided the island into two parts to regulate and restrict contact between blacks and whites. The northeast region was an area traditionally visited by many groups for its rich food reserves, and rivers, estuaries and sheltered bays as well as its mild climate. It was also largely unoccupied by colonists. But the proclamation partitioning the island also provided the first official sanction of the use of force to expel any Aboriginal people from the Settled Districts. Historian James Boyce observed: "Any Aborigine could now be legally killed for doing no more than crossing an unmarked border that the government did not even bother to define."[34]
In a letter to colonial officials in London in April 1828, Arthur admitted:
Arthur enforced the border by deploying almost 300 troops from the 40th and 57th Regiments at 14 military posts along the frontier and within the Settled Districts. The tactic appeared to deter Aboriginal attacks; through the winter of 1828 few Aboriginal people appeared in the Settled Districts, and those that did were driven back by military parties. Among them were at least 16 undefended Oyster Bay people who were killed in July at their encampment in the Eastern Tiers by a detachment of the 40th Regiment.[37]
Any hopes of peace in the Settled Districts were dashed in spring. Between 22 August and 29 October 15 colonists died in 39 Aboriginal attacks—about one every two days—as the Oyster Bay and Big River clans launched raids on stock huts, while Ben Lomond and North clans burned down stock huts along the Nile and Meander rivers in the east and west. From early October Oyster Bay warriors also began killing white women and children. Galvanised by the escalation of violence, Arthur called a meeting of Van Diemen's Land's Executive Council—comprising himself, the chief justice and the colonial treasurer—and on 1 November declared martial law against the Aboriginal people in the Settled Districts, who were now "open enemies of the King". Proclamation of martial law was a crown prerogative to be used "against rebels and enemies as a ... convenient mode of exercising a right to kill in war, a right originating in self-defence"[38] and Arthur's move was effectively a declaration of total war. Soldiers now had the right to apprehend without warrant or to shoot on sight any Aboriginal person in the Settled Districts who resisted them, though the proclamation ordered settlers:
Martial law would remain in force for more than three years, the longest period of martial law in Australian history.[37]
About 500 Aboriginal people from five clan groups were still operating in the Settled Districts when martial law was declared and Arthur's first action was to encourage civilian parties to begin capturing them. On 7 November a party operating from Richmond captured Umarrah—who was thought to have led a fatal attack on stockmen in the Norfolk Plains in February 1827—and four others including his wife and a child. Umarrah remained defiant and was placed in Richmond jail and remained there for a year. Arthur then established military patrols or "pursuing parties" of eight to 10 men from the 39th, 40th and 63rd Regiments who were ordered to remain in the field for about two weeks at a time, scouring the Settled Districts for Aboriginal people, whom they should capture or shoot. By March 1829, 23 military parties, a total of about 200 armed soldiers, were scouring the Settled Districts, mainly intent on killing, rather than capturing, their quarry. Aboriginal people were killed in groups of as large as 10 at a time, mainly in dawn raids on their camps or running them down in daylight, and by March press reports indicated that about 60 Aboriginal people had been killed since martial law had been declared, with the loss of 15 colonists.[40]
The Aboriginal attacks fuelled settlers' anger and a craving for revenge, but according to Clements the primary emotion colonists experienced was fear, ranging from a constant unease to paralysing terror. He noted: "Everybody on the frontier was afraid, all the time." The financial loss from theft, destruction of stock and arson attacks was a constant threat: there were no insurance companies and settlers faced financial ruin if crops and buildings were burnt or their stock destroyed.[41] The Hobart Town Courier newspaper warned that the Aboriginal people had declared a "war of extermination" on white settlers, while the Colonial Times declared: "The Government must remove the natives. If not they will be hunted down like wild beasts and destroyed."[42]
By winter 1829 the southern part of the Settled Districts had become a war zone and Aboriginal people later identified campsites where their relatives had been killed and mutilated. Several more incidents were reported in which Aboriginal people were raiding huts for food and blankets or digging up potatoes, but they too were killed. In an effort to conciliate Aboriginal people, Arthur arranged for the distribution of "proclamation boards" comprising four panels that depicted white and black Tasmanians dwelling together peaceably, and also illustrated the legal consequences for members of either race that committed acts of violence—that an Aboriginal would be hanged for killing a white settler and a settler would be hanged for killing an Aboriginal person.[43] No colonist was ever charged in Van Diemen's Land, or committed for trial, for assaulting or killing an Aboriginal person.[44]
Aboriginal people maintained their attacks on settlers, killing 19 colonists between August and December 1829—the total for the year was 33, six more than for 1828. Among the white victims was a servant burned to death in a house at Bothwell and a settler mutilated. But the white response was even more vigorous, with the report after one expedition noting "a terrible slaughter" resulting from an overnight raid on a camp. In late February 1830 Arthur introduced a bounty of ₤5 for every captured Aboriginal and ₤2 per child, and also sought a greater military presence, trying to halt the departure to India of the last detachment of the 40th Regiment and requesting reinforcements from the 63rd Regiment in Western Australia, but without success.[45] In April he also advised London that a significant boost to the convict population in remote frontier areas would help protect settlers and explicitly asked that all convict transport ships be diverted to Van Diemen's Land.[46]
In March 1830 Arthur appointed Anglican Archdeacon William Broughton as chairman of a six-man Aborigines Committee to conduct an inquiry into the origin of the black hostility and recommend measures to stop the violence and destruction of property. Sixteen months had now passed since the declaration of martial law in November 1828 and in that time there had been 120 Aboriginal attacks on settlers, resulting in about 50 deaths and more than 60 wounded. Over the same period at least 200 Aboriginal people had been killed, with many of them in mass killings of six or more. Among submissions it received were suggestions to set up "decoy huts, containing flour and sugar, strongly impregnated with poison", that Aboriginal people be rooted out with bloodhounds and that Maori warriors be brought to Tasmania to capture the Aboriginal people for removal to New Zealand as slaves. Settlers and soldiers gave evidence of killings and atrocities on both sides, but the committee was also told that despite the attacks, some settlers believed very few Aboriginal people now remained in the Settled Districts. The inquiry was conducted in the context of a further escalation in hostilities: in February alone there were 30 separate incidents in which seven Europeans were killed.[47]
In its report, published in March 1830, the committee noted that "It is manifest that (the Aboriginal people) have lost the sense of superiority of white men, and the dread of the effects of fire-arms" and were now on a systematic plan of attacking the settlers and their possessions. The committee's report supported the bounty system, recommended an increase in mounted police patrols and urged settlers to remain well armed and alert.[48] Arthur, in turn, forwarded their report to Secretary of State for War and the Colonies Sir George Murray, pointing out that although "lawless convicts" and convict stock-keepers had acted with great inhumanity towards the black natives, "it is increasingly apparent the Aboriginal natives of this colony are, and have ever been, a most treacherous race; and that the kindness and humanity which they have always experienced from the free settlers has not tended to civilize them to any degree."[47]
News of friendly encounters with Aboriginal people and a season decline in attacks prompted Arthur on 19 August to issue a government notice expressing his satisfaction "a less hostile disposition" being displayed by the indigenous population and advising that settlers cautiously "abstain from acts of aggression against these benighted beings" and allow them to feed and depart. But still the attacks continued, however, and as public panic and anger mounted, the Executive Council met a week later and decided a full-scale military operation would be required to force an end to what threatened to become a "war of extermination" between settlers and the Big River and Oyster Bay people. Martial law was extended to the whole of Van Diemen's Land on 1 October[49] and every able-bodied male colonist was ordered by Arthur to assemble on 7 October at one of seven designated places in the Settled Districts to join a massive drive to sweep "these miserable people" from the region. The campaign, which became known as the Black Line,[11][48] was greeted enthusiastically by the colonist press. The Hobart Town Courier said it doubted settlers would need persuading "to accomplish the one grand and glorious object now before them".[50]
Violence in the island's north-west, where the colonists were servants of the Van Diemen's Land Company, erupted in 1825, fuelled by disputes over Aboriginal women, who were often violated or abducted, and the destruction of kangaroo stocks. An escalating cycle of violence broke out in 1827 after white shepherds attempted to force themselves on black women; a shepherd was speared and more than 100 sheep killed in retribution and in turn a white party launched a dawn attack on an Aboriginal campsite, killing 12. The conflict led to the Cape Grim massacre of 10 February 1828 in which shepherds armed with muskets ambushed up to 30 Aboriginal people as they collected shellfish at the foot of a cliff.[51]
On 21 August 1829 four company servants shot an Aboriginal woman in the back, then executed her with an axe at Emu Bay, near present-day Burnie. Violence continued in the region, with three company men fatally speared in July and October 1831 and heavy losses inflicted on sheep and oxen. The population of North West clans fell from 700 to 300 through the 1820s, while in the North nation—where shepherds vowed to shoot Aboriginal people whenever they saw them—numbers had plummeted from 400 in 1826 to fewer than 60 by mid-1830. Violence ceased in 1834 but resumed between September 1839 and February 1842 when Aboriginal people made at least 18 attacks on company men and property.[51][52]
The Black Line consisted of 2,200 men: about 550 soldiers—a little over half of the entire garrison in Van Diemen's Land—as well as 738 convict servants and 912 free settlers or civilians.[53] Arthur, who maintained overall control, placed Major Sholto Douglas of the 63rd Regiment in command of the forces.[54]Separated into three divisions and aided by Aboriginal guides, they formed a staggered front more than 300 km long that began pushing south and east across the Settled Districts from 7 October with the intention of forming a pincer movement to trap members of four of the nine Aboriginal nations in front of the line and drive them across the Forestier Peninsula to East Bay Neck and into the Tasman Peninsula, which Arthur had designated as an Aboriginal Reserve.[10]
The campaign was beset by severe weather, rugged terrain, impenetrable scrub and vast swamps, inadequate maps and poor supply lines and although two of the divisions met in mid-October the hostile terrain soon resulted in the cordon being broken, leaving many wide gaps through which the Aboriginal people were able to slip. Many of the men, by then barefoot and their clothes tattered, deserted the line and returned home. The campaign's single success was a dawn ambush on 25 October in which two Aboriginal people were captured and two killed. The Black Line was disbanded on 26 November.
Ryan estimates that barely 300 Aboriginal people were still alive on the entire island, including 200 within the region in which the Black Line was operating. Yet they launched at least 50 attacks on settlers—both in front of and behind the line—during the campaign, often plundering huts for food.[55]
Colonists' hopes of peace rose over the summer of 1830-31 as Aboriginal attacks fell to a low level and the Colonial Times newspaper speculated that their enemy had either been wiped out or frightened into inaction. But the north remained a dangerous place: on 29 January a Dairy Plains woman was murdered—three months after her husband had died in a similar attack—and in March a mother carrying her infant was fatally speared while working in her garden on the East Tamar. Though the number of attacks in 1831 was less than a third of those the previous year—a total of 70, compared with 250 in 1830—settlers remained so fearful that many men refused to go out to work.[56]
Yet, as the Aborigines Committee discovered in a new series of hearings, there was some positive news arising from the work of evangelical humanitarian George Augustus Robinson, who in 1829 had been appointed storekeeper at a ration depot for Aboriginal people on Bruny Island. From January 1830 Robinson had embarked on a series of expeditions across the island to make contact with Aboriginal people and in November he secured the surrender of 13 of them, prompting him to write to Arthur claiming he could remove "the entire black population", which he estimated to be 700.[57] In a new report on 4 February 1831, the Aborigines Committee praised Robinson's "conciliatory mission" and his efforts to learn the local languages and "explain the kind and pacific intentions of the government and the settlers generally towards them". The committee recommended that Aboriginal people who surrendered should be sent to Gun Carriage Island in Bass Strait.[58] But the committee also urged settlers to remain vigilant, recommending that parties of armed men should be stationed in the most remote stock huts. In response up to 150 stock huts were turned into ambush locations, military posts were established on native migratory routes and new barracks were built at Spring Bay, Richmond and Break O'Day Plains.[57]
Arthur's conciliatory approach and his support for Robinson's "friendly mission" brought widespread condemnation from colonists and the settler press, which intensified after a series of violent mid-winter raids launched by evidently hungry, cold and desperate Aboriginal people in the Great Western Tiers in the island's northern highlands. Those raids culminated in the murder of Captain Bartholomew Thomas and his overseer James Parker at Port Sorell on the north coast on 31 August 1831. The killings would, in fact, turn out to be the last of the Black War, but they triggered an unprecedented surge of fear and anger, particularly because Thomas—the brother of the Colonial Treasurer—had been sympathetic towards Aboriginal people and had made attempts to conciliate the local indigenous population. The Launceston Advertiser declared that the only course left was the "utter annihilation" of Aboriginal population, while another newspaper expressed fears that the natives would resort to even greater atrocities in the coming season. Several weeks later a group robbed huts at Great Swansea, causing panic, and in late October 100 armed settlers formed a cordon across the narrow part of Freycinet Peninsula in an attempt to capture several dozen Aboriginal people who had passed on to the peninsula. The cordon was abandoned four days later after Aboriginal people slipped through and escaped at night.[59]
On 31 December 1831 Robinson and his group of about 14 black envoys negotiated the surrender of 28 members of the Mairremmener people, an amalgam of Oyster Bay and Big River tribes. The tiny group of 16 men, nine women and a child, led by Tongerlongter and Montpeliater, was all that remained of what had once been one of the island's most powerful clans and much of Hobart Town's population lined the streets as Robinson walked with them through the main street towards Government House.[59] They were sent to the Wybalenna settlement on Flinders Island, joining another 40 Aboriginal people who had previously been captured, although another 20 interned on the island had earlier died. By late May many more, including Kickerterpoller and Umarrah, had also contracted influenza and died.[60]
The December surrender effectively brought to a close the Black War. There were no further reports of violence in the Settled Districts from that date, although isolated acts of violence continued in the north-west until 1842.[61]
Martial law was revoked in January 1832, two weeks after the well-publicised surrender, and the bounty on captured Aboriginal people was scrapped on 28 May 1832.
In February 1832 Robinson embarked on the first of several expeditions to the west, north-west and the Launceston area to secure the surrender of remaining Aboriginal people, believing the strategy was "for their own good" and would save them from extermination at the hands of settlers while providing them with the benefits of British civilisation and Christianity. Warning that they faced violent hostility without protection,[62] he persuaded several small groups to be transported to Flinders Island—where many died of pneumonia, influenza and catarrh[63]—but from early 1833 began to use force to capture those who still lived freely in the north-east, despite the cessation of violence. Both Hunter Island, at Tasmania's north-west tip, and penal stations on islands in Macquarie Harbour, on the west coast, were used to detain captured Aboriginal people, where many succumbed quickly to disease and the mortality rate reached 75 percent. Robinson noted of conditions in the Macquarie Harbour penal stations: "The mortality was dreadful, its ravages was unprecedented, it was a dreadful calamity." In November 1833 all surviving Aboriginal people were moved from Macquarie Harbour to Flinders Island.[64][65]
By early 1835 almost 300 people had surrendered to Robinson,[62] who reported to the colonial secretary: "The entire Aboriginal population is now removed", although in 1842 he located one remaining family near Cradle Mountain, who surrendered.[66] Men on the island were expected to clear forest land, build roads, erect fences and shear sheep, while women were required to wash clothes, attend sewing classes and attend classes. All were expected to wear European clothes and many women were given European names.[67] A high rate of infectious disease at the Wybalenna settlement on Flinders Island cut the population from about 220 in 1833 to 46 in 1847.[68]
Estimates of Tasmania's Aboriginal population in 1803, the year of the first British arrivals, range from 3,000 to 7,000. Lyndall Ryan's analysis of population studies led her to conclude that there were about 7,000 spread throughout the island's nine nations;[69] However, Nicholas Clements, citing research by N.J.B Plomley and Rhys Jones, settled on a figure of 3,000 to 4,000; this number being a more reasonable number when the circumstances of Indigenous life are factored in.[70]
But Aboriginal numbers began dropping almost immediately: violent encounters were reported in the Hobart region, while at Port Dalrymplein the colony's north, Lieutenant-Governor William Paterson is thought to have ordered soldiers to shoot at Aboriginal people wherever they were found, leading to the virtual disappearance of North Midlands clans in that region after 1806. In 1809 New South Wales surveyor-general John Oxley reported that kangaroo hunting by whites had led to a "considerable loss of life among the natives" throughout the colony. One settler, the convict adventurer Jørgen Jørgensen, also claimed that Aboriginal numbers were "much reduced during the first six or seven years of the colony" as whites "harassed them with impunity". By 1819 the Aboriginal and British population reached parity with about 5000 of each, although among the colonists men outnumbered women four to one. At that stage both population groups enjoyed good health, with infectious diseases not taking hold until the late 1820s.[71]
Ryan accepts a figure of 1200 Aboriginal people dwelling in the Settled Districts in 1826 at the start of the Black War,[72] while Clements believes the number in the eastern part of Tasmania was about 1000.[73]
Historians have differed in their estimates of the total number of fatalities in the Black War and acknowledge that most killings of Aboriginal people went unreported. The Colonial Advocate newspaper reported in 1828 that "up country, instances occur where the Natives are 'shot like so many crows', which never come before the public'."[70] The table at right, documenting fatalities among Aboriginal people and colonists, is based on statistics in Ryan's account of the conflict in the Settled Districts.[3]
About 100 Tasmanian Aboriginal people survived the conflict and Clements—who calculates that the Black War began with an indigenous population of about 1000—has therefore concluded 900 died in that time. He surmises that about one-third may have died through internecine conflict, disease and natural deaths, leaving a "conservative and realistic" estimate of 600 who died in frontier violence, though he admits: "The true figure might be as low as 400 or as high as 1000."[73]
The near-destruction of Tasmania's Aboriginal population has been described as an act of genocide by historians including Robert Hughes, James Boyce, Lyndall Ryan and Tom Lawson.[74][75][76][77] The author of the concept of genocide, Raphael Lemkin, considered Tasmania the site of one of the world's clear cases of genocide[78] and Hughes has described the loss of Aboriginal Tasmanians as "the only true genocide in English colonial history".[74]
Boyce has claimed that the April 1828 "Proclamation Separating the Aborigines from the White Inhabitants" sanctioned force against Aboriginal people "for no other reason than that they were Aboriginal" and described the decision to remove all Aboriginal Tasmanians after 1832—by which time they had given up their fight against white colonists—as an extreme policy position. He concluded: "The colonial government from 1832 to 1838 ethnically cleansed the western half of Van Diemen's Land and then callously left the exiled people to their fate."[79] As early as 1852 John West's History of Tasmania portrayed the obliteration of Tasmania's Aboriginal people as an example of "systematic massacre"[80] and in the 1979 High Court case of Coe v Commonwealth of Australia, judge Lionel Murphy observed that Aboriginal people did not give up their land peacefully and that they were killed or forcibly removed from their land "in what amounted to attempted (and in Tasmania almost complete) genocide".[81]
Historian Henry Reynolds says there was a widespread call from settlers during the frontier wars for the "extirpation" or "extermination" of the Aboriginal people.[82] But he has contended that the British government acted as a source of restraint on settlers' actions. Reynolds says there is no evidence the British government deliberately planned the wholesale destruction of indigenous Tasmanians—a November 1830 letter to Arthur by Sir George Murray warned that the extinction of the race would leave "an indelible stain upon the character of the British Government"[83]—and therefore what eventuated does not meet the definition of genocide codified in the 1948 United Nations convention. He says Arthur was determined to defeat the Aboriginal people and take their land, but believes there is little evidence he had aims beyond that objective and wished to destroy the Tasmanian race.[84]
Clements accepts Reynolds' argument but also exonerates the colonists themselves of the charge of genocide. He says that unlike genocidal determinations by Nazis against Jews in World War II, Hutus against Tutsis in Rwanda and Ottomans against Armenians in present-day Turkey, which were carried out for ideological reasons, Tasmanian settlers participated in violence largely out of revenge and self-preservation. He adds: "Even those who were motivated by sex or morbid thrillseeking lacked any ideological impetus to exterminate the natives." He also argues that while genocides are inflicted on defeated, captive or otherwise vulnerable minorities, Tasmanian natives appeared as a "capable and terrifying enemy" to colonists and were killed in the context of a war in which both sides killed noncombatants.[85]
Lawson, in a critique of Reynolds' stand, argues that genocide was the inevitable outcome of a set of British policies to colonise Van Diemen's Land.[86] He says the British government endorsed the use of partitioning and "absolute force" against Tasmanians, approved Robinson's "Friendly Mission" and colluded in transforming that mission into a campaign of ethnic cleansing from 1832. He says that once on Flinders Island, indigenous peoples were taught to farm land like Europeans and worship God like Europeans and concludes: "The campaign of transformation enacted on Flinders Island amounted to cultural genocide."[87]
The conflict has been a controversial area of study by historians, even characterised as among Australia's history wars. Keith Windschuttle in his 2002 work, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume One: Van Diemen's Land 1803–1847,[88] questioned the historical evidence used to identify the number of Aboriginal people killed and the extent of conflict. He stated his belief that it had been exaggerated and he challenged what is labelled the "Black armband view of history" of Tasmanian colonisation. Windschuttle argued that there were only 2000 Aboriginal people in Tasmania at the moment of colonisation, that they had an internally dysfunctional society with no clear tribal organisation or connection to the land and were politically incapable of conducting a guerrilla war with the settlers. He argued they were more like "black bushrangers" who attacked settlers' huts for plunder and were led by "educated black terrorists" disaffected from white society. He concluded that two colonists had been killed for every Aboriginal person and there was only one massacre of Aboriginal people. He also claimed that the Aboriginal Tasmanians, by prostituting their women to sealers and stock-keepers, by catching European diseases, and through intertribal warfare, were responsible for their own demise. His argument in turn has been challenged by a number of authors, including S.G. Foster in Quadrant, Lyndall Ryan and Nicholas Clements.[89][90][91]
I found Wikipedia - Tasmania and from there I found Wikipedia - Black War. It's about genocide in the 1800's. America had the same genocide problem.
Wikipedia - Black War
The Black War was the period of violent conflict between British colonists and Aboriginal Australians in Tasmania from the mid-1820s to 1832. The conflict, fought largely as a guerrilla war by both sides, claimed the lives of more than 200 European colonists and between 600 and 900 Aboriginal people, nearly annihilating the island's indigenous population.[2][3] The near-destruction of the Aboriginal Tasmanians, and the frequent incidence of mass killings, has sparked debate among historians over whether the Black War should be defined as an act of genocide.[4]
The terms "Black War" and "Black Line" were coined by journalist Henry Melville in 1835,[5][6] but historian Lyndall Ryan has argued that it should be known as the Tasmanian War. She has also called for the erection of a public memorial to the fallen from both sides of the war.[7]
The escalation of violence in the late 1820s prompted Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur to declare martial law—effectively providing legal immunity for killing Aboriginal people[8]—and in late 1830 to order a massive six-week military offensive known as the Black Line, in which 2200 civilians and soldiers formed a series of moving cordons stretching hundreds of kilometres across the island in order to drive Aboriginal people from the colony's settled districts to the Tasman Peninsula in the southeast, where it was intended they would remain permanently confined.[9][10][11]
The Black War was prompted by the rapid spread of British settlers and agricultural livestock throughout areas of Tasmania that had been traditional Aboriginal hunting grounds. Historian Nicholas Clements has described the Aboriginal violence as a resistance movement—the use of force against an invading or occupying enemy. He said the Aboriginal attacks were motivated by revenge for European atrocities and the widespread kidnapping, rape and murder of Aboriginal women and girls by convicts, settlers and soldiers, but particularly from the late 1820s the Aboriginal people were also driven by hunger to plunder settlers' homes for food as their hunting grounds shrank, native game disappeared and the dangers of hunting on open ground grew.[12] European violence, meanwhile, was motivated by mounting terror of Aboriginal attacks and a conviction that extermination of the Aboriginal population was the only means by which peace could be secured. Clements noted: "As black violence grew in intensity, so too did the frequency of revenge attacks and pre-emptive strikes by frontiersmen."[13]
Attacks were launched by groups of Aboriginal people almost always in daylight with a variety of weapons including spears, rocks and waddies used to kill and maim settlers and shepherds, as well as their livestock, while homes, haystacks and crops were often set alight. European attacks, in contrast, were mainly launched at night or in the early hours of dawn by pursuit parties or roving parties of civilians or soldiers who aimed to strike as their quarry slept in bush camps. Women and children were commonly casualties on both sides.
From 1830 Arthur offered rewards for the capture of Aboriginal people, but bounties were also paid when Aboriginal people were killed. From 1829 efforts were made with the aid of humanitarian George Augustus Robinson to launch a "friendly mission" to persuade Aboriginal people to surrender and be removed to an island sanctuary; from November 1830 to December 1831 several groups accepted his offer[14] and 46 were initially placed on Flinders Island, from which escape was deemed to be impossible.[15] Although conflict between Aboriginal people and settlers almost completely ceased from January 1832, another 148 Aboriginal people were captured in the island's northwest over the next four years as a "clean up" and forcibly removed to Hunter Island and then Flinders Island.[16]
Although sealers had begun commercial operations on Van Diemen's Land in late 1798, the first significant European presence on the island came five years later, with the establishment in September 1803 of a small military outpost at Risdon on the Derwent River near present-day Hobart.[17][18] Several bloody encounters with local Aboriginal clans took place over the next five months, with shots fired and an Aboriginal boy seized. David Collins arrived as the colony's first lieutenant governor in February 1804 with instructions from London that any acts of violence against the Aboriginal people by Europeans were to be punished, but failed to publish those instructions, leaving no legal framework on how to deal with any violent conflict.[19]
On 3 May 1804, alarmed soldiers from Risdon fired grapeshot from a carronade on a group of about 100 Aboriginal people after an encounter at a farm, while settlers and convicts fired rifles, pistols and muskets in support. Magistrate Robert Knopwood told a subsequent inquiry into the so-called Risdon massacre that five or six Aboriginal people had been killed, but other witnesses claimed as many as 50 men, women and children had died, with 30 bodies later burned or buried to extinguish the odour as they decomposed.[20][21]
A wave of violence erupted during a drought in 1806–7 as tribes in both the north and south of the island killed or wounded several Europeans in conflicts sparked by the competition for game, while explorer and naval officer John Oxley referred in an 1810 report to the "many atrocious cruelties" inflicted on Aboriginal people by convict bushrangersin the north, which in turn led to black attacks on solitary white hunters.[22]
The arrival of 600 colonists from Norfolk Island between 1807 and 1813 increased tensions as they established farms along the River Derwent and east and west of Launceston, occupying 10 percent of Van Diemen's Land. By 1814 12,700ha of land was under cultivation, with 5000 cattle and 38,000 sheep. The Norfolk Islanders used violence to stake their claim on the land, attacking Aboriginal camps at night, slaughtering parents and abducting the orphaned children as their servants. The attacks prompted retaliatory raids on settlers' cattle herds in the southeast. Between 1817 and 1824 the colonial population rose from 2000 to 12,600 and in 1823 alone more than 1000 land grants totalling 175,704ha were made to new settlers; by that year Van Diemen's Land's sheep population had reached 200,000 and the so-called Settled Districts accounted for 30 per cent of the island's total land area. The rapid colonisation transformed traditional kangaroo hunting grounds into farms with grazing livestock as well as fences, hedges and stone walls, while police and military patrols were increased to control the convict farm labourers.[23]
Over the first two decades of settlement Aboriginal people launched at least 57 attacks on white settlers, punctuating a general calm,[24] but by 1820 the violence was becoming markedly more frequent, with one Russian explorer reporting that year that "the natives of Tasmania live in a state of perpetual hostility against the Europeans".[25] From the mid 1820s, the number of attacks initiated by both whites and blacks rose sharply. Clements says the main reasons for settler attacks on Aboriginal people were revenge, killing for sport, sexual desire for women and children and suppression of the native threat. Van Diemen's Land had an enormous gender imbalance, with male colonists outnumbering females six to one in 1822 and the ratio as high as 16 to one among the convict population. Clements has suggested the "voracious appetite" for native women was the most important trigger for the Black War. He wrote: "Sex continued to be a central motivation for attacking natives until around 1828, by which time killing the enemy had taken priority over raping them."[26]
From 1825 to 1828, the number of native attacks more than doubled each year, raising panic among settlers. By 1828, says Clements, colonists had no doubt they were fighting a war—"but this was not a conventional war, and the enemy could not be combated by conventional means. The blacks were not one people, but rather a number of disparate tribes. They had no home base and no recognisable command structure."[27]
George Arthur, Governor of the colony since May 1824, had issued a proclamation on his arrival that placed Aboriginal people under the protection of British law and threatened prosecution and trial for Europeans who continued to "wantonly destroy" them. Arthur sought to establish a "native institution" for Aboriginal people and in September 1826 expressed a hope that the trial and subsequent hanging of two Aboriginal people arrested for the spearing of three colonists earlier that year would "not only prevent further atrocities ... but lead to a conciliatory line of conduct". But between September and November 1826 six more colonists were murdered. Among them was George Taylor Junior, a "respectable settler" from Campbell Town, whose body was found "transfixed with many spears, and his head dreadfully shattered with blows, inflicted either with stones or waddies". The Colonial Times newspaper, in response, demanded a drastic change of official policy, urging the forcible removal of all Aboriginal people from the Settled Districts to an island in the Bass Strait. It warned: "Self-defence is the first law of nature. The government must remove the natives—if not, they will be hunted down like wild beasts, and destroyed!"[28][29]
Responding to the rising panic, Arthur on 29 November 1826 issued a government notice setting out the legal conditions under which the colonists could kill Aboriginal people when they attacked settlers or their property. The notice declared that acts of aggression could be repelled "in the same as if they had proceeded from an accredited State". Though the notice was greeted by the Colonial Times as a declaration of war on Aboriginal people in the Settled Districts, and some settlers saw it as "a noble service to shoot them down", Clements believes that the legality of killing blacks was never made clear to colonists and historian Lyndall Ryan has argued that Arthur intended nothing more than to force their surrender.[30][31]
Over the summer of 1826–7 clans from the Big River, Oyster Bay and North Midlands nations speared a number of stock-keepers on farms and made it clear that they wanted the settlers and their sheep and cattle to move from their kangaroo hunting grounds. Settlers responded vigorously, resulting in many mass-killings, though this was poorly reported at the time. On 8 December 1826 a group led by Kickerterpoller threatened a farm overseer at Bank Hill farm at Orielton, near Richmond; the following day soldiers from the 40th Regiment killed 14 Aboriginal people from the Oyster Bay nation and captured and jailed another nine, including Kickerterpoller. In April 1827 two shepherds were killed at Hugh Murray's farm at Mount Augustus near Campbell Town, south of Launceston, and a party of settlers with a detachment of the 40th Regiment launched a reprisal attack at dawn on an undefended Aboriginal camp, killing as many as 70 Aboriginal men, women and children. In March and April several settlers and convict servants were killed and a pursuit party avenged one of the incidents in a dawn raid in which "they fired volley after volley in among the Blackfellows ... they reported killing some two score (40)." In May 1827 a group of Oyster Bay Aboriginal people killed a stock-keeper at Great Swanport near Swansea and a party of soldiers, field police, settlers and stock-keepers launched a night raid on the culprits' camp. A report noted: "Volley after volley of ball cartridge was poured in upon the dark groups surrounding the little camp fires. The number slain was considerable."[32]
Over 18 days in June 1827 at least 100 members of the Pallittorre clan from the North nation were killed in reprisals for the killing of three stockmen and Ryan calculates that in the eight months from 1 December 1826 to 31 July 1827 more than 200 Aboriginal people were killed in the Settled Districts in reprisal for their killing of 15 colonists. An entire clan of 150 Oyster Bay people may have been killed in one pursuit through the Sorell Valley in November 1827, significantly reducing population numbers. In September Arthur appointed another 26 field police and deployed another 55 soldiers from the 40th Regiment and New South Wales Royal Veteran Company into the Settled Districts to deal with the rising conflict. Between September 1827 and the following March, at least 70 Aboriginal attacks were reported throughout the Settled Districts, taking the lives of 20 colonists. By March 1828 the death toll in the Settled Districts for the 16 months since Arthur's November 1826 official notice had risen to 43 colonists and probably 350 Aboriginal people. But by then reports were being received that Aboriginal people were more interested in plundering huts for food—stealing bread, flour, tea and digging up potatoes and turnips from settlers' gardens—than killing colonists.[33]
Arthur reported to the Colonial Office secretary in London that the Aboriginal people "already complained that the white people have taken possession of their country, encroached upon their hunting grounds, and destroyed their natural food, the kangaroo" and in a memo he proposed settling the Aboriginal people "in some remote quarter of the island, which should be reserved strictly for them, and to supply them with food and clothing, and afford them protection ... on condition of their confining themselves peaceably to certain limits". He said Tasmania's northeast coast was the preferred location for such a reserve and suggested they remain there "until their habits shall become more civilised". He pursued the proposal by issuing on 19 April 1828 a "Proclamation Separating the Aborigines from the White Inhabitants" that divided the island into two parts to regulate and restrict contact between blacks and whites. The northeast region was an area traditionally visited by many groups for its rich food reserves, and rivers, estuaries and sheltered bays as well as its mild climate. It was also largely unoccupied by colonists. But the proclamation partitioning the island also provided the first official sanction of the use of force to expel any Aboriginal people from the Settled Districts. Historian James Boyce observed: "Any Aborigine could now be legally killed for doing no more than crossing an unmarked border that the government did not even bother to define."[34]
In a letter to colonial officials in London in April 1828, Arthur admitted:
Arthur enforced the border by deploying almost 300 troops from the 40th and 57th Regiments at 14 military posts along the frontier and within the Settled Districts. The tactic appeared to deter Aboriginal attacks; through the winter of 1828 few Aboriginal people appeared in the Settled Districts, and those that did were driven back by military parties. Among them were at least 16 undefended Oyster Bay people who were killed in July at their encampment in the Eastern Tiers by a detachment of the 40th Regiment.[37]
Any hopes of peace in the Settled Districts were dashed in spring. Between 22 August and 29 October 15 colonists died in 39 Aboriginal attacks—about one every two days—as the Oyster Bay and Big River clans launched raids on stock huts, while Ben Lomond and North clans burned down stock huts along the Nile and Meander rivers in the east and west. From early October Oyster Bay warriors also began killing white women and children. Galvanised by the escalation of violence, Arthur called a meeting of Van Diemen's Land's Executive Council—comprising himself, the chief justice and the colonial treasurer—and on 1 November declared martial law against the Aboriginal people in the Settled Districts, who were now "open enemies of the King". Proclamation of martial law was a crown prerogative to be used "against rebels and enemies as a ... convenient mode of exercising a right to kill in war, a right originating in self-defence"[38] and Arthur's move was effectively a declaration of total war. Soldiers now had the right to apprehend without warrant or to shoot on sight any Aboriginal person in the Settled Districts who resisted them, though the proclamation ordered settlers:
Martial law would remain in force for more than three years, the longest period of martial law in Australian history.[37]
About 500 Aboriginal people from five clan groups were still operating in the Settled Districts when martial law was declared and Arthur's first action was to encourage civilian parties to begin capturing them. On 7 November a party operating from Richmond captured Umarrah—who was thought to have led a fatal attack on stockmen in the Norfolk Plains in February 1827—and four others including his wife and a child. Umarrah remained defiant and was placed in Richmond jail and remained there for a year. Arthur then established military patrols or "pursuing parties" of eight to 10 men from the 39th, 40th and 63rd Regiments who were ordered to remain in the field for about two weeks at a time, scouring the Settled Districts for Aboriginal people, whom they should capture or shoot. By March 1829, 23 military parties, a total of about 200 armed soldiers, were scouring the Settled Districts, mainly intent on killing, rather than capturing, their quarry. Aboriginal people were killed in groups of as large as 10 at a time, mainly in dawn raids on their camps or running them down in daylight, and by March press reports indicated that about 60 Aboriginal people had been killed since martial law had been declared, with the loss of 15 colonists.[40]
The Aboriginal attacks fuelled settlers' anger and a craving for revenge, but according to Clements the primary emotion colonists experienced was fear, ranging from a constant unease to paralysing terror. He noted: "Everybody on the frontier was afraid, all the time." The financial loss from theft, destruction of stock and arson attacks was a constant threat: there were no insurance companies and settlers faced financial ruin if crops and buildings were burnt or their stock destroyed.[41] The Hobart Town Courier newspaper warned that the Aboriginal people had declared a "war of extermination" on white settlers, while the Colonial Times declared: "The Government must remove the natives. If not they will be hunted down like wild beasts and destroyed."[42]
By winter 1829 the southern part of the Settled Districts had become a war zone and Aboriginal people later identified campsites where their relatives had been killed and mutilated. Several more incidents were reported in which Aboriginal people were raiding huts for food and blankets or digging up potatoes, but they too were killed. In an effort to conciliate Aboriginal people, Arthur arranged for the distribution of "proclamation boards" comprising four panels that depicted white and black Tasmanians dwelling together peaceably, and also illustrated the legal consequences for members of either race that committed acts of violence—that an Aboriginal would be hanged for killing a white settler and a settler would be hanged for killing an Aboriginal person.[43] No colonist was ever charged in Van Diemen's Land, or committed for trial, for assaulting or killing an Aboriginal person.[44]
Aboriginal people maintained their attacks on settlers, killing 19 colonists between August and December 1829—the total for the year was 33, six more than for 1828. Among the white victims was a servant burned to death in a house at Bothwell and a settler mutilated. But the white response was even more vigorous, with the report after one expedition noting "a terrible slaughter" resulting from an overnight raid on a camp. In late February 1830 Arthur introduced a bounty of ₤5 for every captured Aboriginal and ₤2 per child, and also sought a greater military presence, trying to halt the departure to India of the last detachment of the 40th Regiment and requesting reinforcements from the 63rd Regiment in Western Australia, but without success.[45] In April he also advised London that a significant boost to the convict population in remote frontier areas would help protect settlers and explicitly asked that all convict transport ships be diverted to Van Diemen's Land.[46]
In March 1830 Arthur appointed Anglican Archdeacon William Broughton as chairman of a six-man Aborigines Committee to conduct an inquiry into the origin of the black hostility and recommend measures to stop the violence and destruction of property. Sixteen months had now passed since the declaration of martial law in November 1828 and in that time there had been 120 Aboriginal attacks on settlers, resulting in about 50 deaths and more than 60 wounded. Over the same period at least 200 Aboriginal people had been killed, with many of them in mass killings of six or more. Among submissions it received were suggestions to set up "decoy huts, containing flour and sugar, strongly impregnated with poison", that Aboriginal people be rooted out with bloodhounds and that Maori warriors be brought to Tasmania to capture the Aboriginal people for removal to New Zealand as slaves. Settlers and soldiers gave evidence of killings and atrocities on both sides, but the committee was also told that despite the attacks, some settlers believed very few Aboriginal people now remained in the Settled Districts. The inquiry was conducted in the context of a further escalation in hostilities: in February alone there were 30 separate incidents in which seven Europeans were killed.[47]
In its report, published in March 1830, the committee noted that "It is manifest that (the Aboriginal people) have lost the sense of superiority of white men, and the dread of the effects of fire-arms" and were now on a systematic plan of attacking the settlers and their possessions. The committee's report supported the bounty system, recommended an increase in mounted police patrols and urged settlers to remain well armed and alert.[48] Arthur, in turn, forwarded their report to Secretary of State for War and the Colonies Sir George Murray, pointing out that although "lawless convicts" and convict stock-keepers had acted with great inhumanity towards the black natives, "it is increasingly apparent the Aboriginal natives of this colony are, and have ever been, a most treacherous race; and that the kindness and humanity which they have always experienced from the free settlers has not tended to civilize them to any degree."[47]
News of friendly encounters with Aboriginal people and a season decline in attacks prompted Arthur on 19 August to issue a government notice expressing his satisfaction "a less hostile disposition" being displayed by the indigenous population and advising that settlers cautiously "abstain from acts of aggression against these benighted beings" and allow them to feed and depart. But still the attacks continued, however, and as public panic and anger mounted, the Executive Council met a week later and decided a full-scale military operation would be required to force an end to what threatened to become a "war of extermination" between settlers and the Big River and Oyster Bay people. Martial law was extended to the whole of Van Diemen's Land on 1 October[49] and every able-bodied male colonist was ordered by Arthur to assemble on 7 October at one of seven designated places in the Settled Districts to join a massive drive to sweep "these miserable people" from the region. The campaign, which became known as the Black Line,[11][48] was greeted enthusiastically by the colonist press. The Hobart Town Courier said it doubted settlers would need persuading "to accomplish the one grand and glorious object now before them".[50]
Violence in the island's north-west, where the colonists were servants of the Van Diemen's Land Company, erupted in 1825, fuelled by disputes over Aboriginal women, who were often violated or abducted, and the destruction of kangaroo stocks. An escalating cycle of violence broke out in 1827 after white shepherds attempted to force themselves on black women; a shepherd was speared and more than 100 sheep killed in retribution and in turn a white party launched a dawn attack on an Aboriginal campsite, killing 12. The conflict led to the Cape Grim massacre of 10 February 1828 in which shepherds armed with muskets ambushed up to 30 Aboriginal people as they collected shellfish at the foot of a cliff.[51]
On 21 August 1829 four company servants shot an Aboriginal woman in the back, then executed her with an axe at Emu Bay, near present-day Burnie. Violence continued in the region, with three company men fatally speared in July and October 1831 and heavy losses inflicted on sheep and oxen. The population of North West clans fell from 700 to 300 through the 1820s, while in the North nation—where shepherds vowed to shoot Aboriginal people whenever they saw them—numbers had plummeted from 400 in 1826 to fewer than 60 by mid-1830. Violence ceased in 1834 but resumed between September 1839 and February 1842 when Aboriginal people made at least 18 attacks on company men and property.[51][52]
The Black Line consisted of 2,200 men: about 550 soldiers—a little over half of the entire garrison in Van Diemen's Land—as well as 738 convict servants and 912 free settlers or civilians.[53] Arthur, who maintained overall control, placed Major Sholto Douglas of the 63rd Regiment in command of the forces.[54]Separated into three divisions and aided by Aboriginal guides, they formed a staggered front more than 300 km long that began pushing south and east across the Settled Districts from 7 October with the intention of forming a pincer movement to trap members of four of the nine Aboriginal nations in front of the line and drive them across the Forestier Peninsula to East Bay Neck and into the Tasman Peninsula, which Arthur had designated as an Aboriginal Reserve.[10]
The campaign was beset by severe weather, rugged terrain, impenetrable scrub and vast swamps, inadequate maps and poor supply lines and although two of the divisions met in mid-October the hostile terrain soon resulted in the cordon being broken, leaving many wide gaps through which the Aboriginal people were able to slip. Many of the men, by then barefoot and their clothes tattered, deserted the line and returned home. The campaign's single success was a dawn ambush on 25 October in which two Aboriginal people were captured and two killed. The Black Line was disbanded on 26 November.
Ryan estimates that barely 300 Aboriginal people were still alive on the entire island, including 200 within the region in which the Black Line was operating. Yet they launched at least 50 attacks on settlers—both in front of and behind the line—during the campaign, often plundering huts for food.[55]
Colonists' hopes of peace rose over the summer of 1830-31 as Aboriginal attacks fell to a low level and the Colonial Times newspaper speculated that their enemy had either been wiped out or frightened into inaction. But the north remained a dangerous place: on 29 January a Dairy Plains woman was murdered—three months after her husband had died in a similar attack—and in March a mother carrying her infant was fatally speared while working in her garden on the East Tamar. Though the number of attacks in 1831 was less than a third of those the previous year—a total of 70, compared with 250 in 1830—settlers remained so fearful that many men refused to go out to work.[56]
Yet, as the Aborigines Committee discovered in a new series of hearings, there was some positive news arising from the work of evangelical humanitarian George Augustus Robinson, who in 1829 had been appointed storekeeper at a ration depot for Aboriginal people on Bruny Island. From January 1830 Robinson had embarked on a series of expeditions across the island to make contact with Aboriginal people and in November he secured the surrender of 13 of them, prompting him to write to Arthur claiming he could remove "the entire black population", which he estimated to be 700.[57] In a new report on 4 February 1831, the Aborigines Committee praised Robinson's "conciliatory mission" and his efforts to learn the local languages and "explain the kind and pacific intentions of the government and the settlers generally towards them". The committee recommended that Aboriginal people who surrendered should be sent to Gun Carriage Island in Bass Strait.[58] But the committee also urged settlers to remain vigilant, recommending that parties of armed men should be stationed in the most remote stock huts. In response up to 150 stock huts were turned into ambush locations, military posts were established on native migratory routes and new barracks were built at Spring Bay, Richmond and Break O'Day Plains.[57]
Arthur's conciliatory approach and his support for Robinson's "friendly mission" brought widespread condemnation from colonists and the settler press, which intensified after a series of violent mid-winter raids launched by evidently hungry, cold and desperate Aboriginal people in the Great Western Tiers in the island's northern highlands. Those raids culminated in the murder of Captain Bartholomew Thomas and his overseer James Parker at Port Sorell on the north coast on 31 August 1831. The killings would, in fact, turn out to be the last of the Black War, but they triggered an unprecedented surge of fear and anger, particularly because Thomas—the brother of the Colonial Treasurer—had been sympathetic towards Aboriginal people and had made attempts to conciliate the local indigenous population. The Launceston Advertiser declared that the only course left was the "utter annihilation" of Aboriginal population, while another newspaper expressed fears that the natives would resort to even greater atrocities in the coming season. Several weeks later a group robbed huts at Great Swansea, causing panic, and in late October 100 armed settlers formed a cordon across the narrow part of Freycinet Peninsula in an attempt to capture several dozen Aboriginal people who had passed on to the peninsula. The cordon was abandoned four days later after Aboriginal people slipped through and escaped at night.[59]
On 31 December 1831 Robinson and his group of about 14 black envoys negotiated the surrender of 28 members of the Mairremmener people, an amalgam of Oyster Bay and Big River tribes. The tiny group of 16 men, nine women and a child, led by Tongerlongter and Montpeliater, was all that remained of what had once been one of the island's most powerful clans and much of Hobart Town's population lined the streets as Robinson walked with them through the main street towards Government House.[59] They were sent to the Wybalenna settlement on Flinders Island, joining another 40 Aboriginal people who had previously been captured, although another 20 interned on the island had earlier died. By late May many more, including Kickerterpoller and Umarrah, had also contracted influenza and died.[60]
The December surrender effectively brought to a close the Black War. There were no further reports of violence in the Settled Districts from that date, although isolated acts of violence continued in the north-west until 1842.[61]
Martial law was revoked in January 1832, two weeks after the well-publicised surrender, and the bounty on captured Aboriginal people was scrapped on 28 May 1832.
In February 1832 Robinson embarked on the first of several expeditions to the west, north-west and the Launceston area to secure the surrender of remaining Aboriginal people, believing the strategy was "for their own good" and would save them from extermination at the hands of settlers while providing them with the benefits of British civilisation and Christianity. Warning that they faced violent hostility without protection,[62] he persuaded several small groups to be transported to Flinders Island—where many died of pneumonia, influenza and catarrh[63]—but from early 1833 began to use force to capture those who still lived freely in the north-east, despite the cessation of violence. Both Hunter Island, at Tasmania's north-west tip, and penal stations on islands in Macquarie Harbour, on the west coast, were used to detain captured Aboriginal people, where many succumbed quickly to disease and the mortality rate reached 75 percent. Robinson noted of conditions in the Macquarie Harbour penal stations: "The mortality was dreadful, its ravages was unprecedented, it was a dreadful calamity." In November 1833 all surviving Aboriginal people were moved from Macquarie Harbour to Flinders Island.[64][65]
By early 1835 almost 300 people had surrendered to Robinson,[62] who reported to the colonial secretary: "The entire Aboriginal population is now removed", although in 1842 he located one remaining family near Cradle Mountain, who surrendered.[66] Men on the island were expected to clear forest land, build roads, erect fences and shear sheep, while women were required to wash clothes, attend sewing classes and attend classes. All were expected to wear European clothes and many women were given European names.[67] A high rate of infectious disease at the Wybalenna settlement on Flinders Island cut the population from about 220 in 1833 to 46 in 1847.[68]
Estimates of Tasmania's Aboriginal population in 1803, the year of the first British arrivals, range from 3,000 to 7,000. Lyndall Ryan's analysis of population studies led her to conclude that there were about 7,000 spread throughout the island's nine nations;[69] However, Nicholas Clements, citing research by N.J.B Plomley and Rhys Jones, settled on a figure of 3,000 to 4,000; this number being a more reasonable number when the circumstances of Indigenous life are factored in.[70]
But Aboriginal numbers began dropping almost immediately: violent encounters were reported in the Hobart region, while at Port Dalrymplein the colony's north, Lieutenant-Governor William Paterson is thought to have ordered soldiers to shoot at Aboriginal people wherever they were found, leading to the virtual disappearance of North Midlands clans in that region after 1806. In 1809 New South Wales surveyor-general John Oxley reported that kangaroo hunting by whites had led to a "considerable loss of life among the natives" throughout the colony. One settler, the convict adventurer Jørgen Jørgensen, also claimed that Aboriginal numbers were "much reduced during the first six or seven years of the colony" as whites "harassed them with impunity". By 1819 the Aboriginal and British population reached parity with about 5000 of each, although among the colonists men outnumbered women four to one. At that stage both population groups enjoyed good health, with infectious diseases not taking hold until the late 1820s.[71]
Ryan accepts a figure of 1200 Aboriginal people dwelling in the Settled Districts in 1826 at the start of the Black War,[72] while Clements believes the number in the eastern part of Tasmania was about 1000.[73]
Historians have differed in their estimates of the total number of fatalities in the Black War and acknowledge that most killings of Aboriginal people went unreported. The Colonial Advocate newspaper reported in 1828 that "up country, instances occur where the Natives are 'shot like so many crows', which never come before the public'."[70] The table at right, documenting fatalities among Aboriginal people and colonists, is based on statistics in Ryan's account of the conflict in the Settled Districts.[3]
About 100 Tasmanian Aboriginal people survived the conflict and Clements—who calculates that the Black War began with an indigenous population of about 1000—has therefore concluded 900 died in that time. He surmises that about one-third may have died through internecine conflict, disease and natural deaths, leaving a "conservative and realistic" estimate of 600 who died in frontier violence, though he admits: "The true figure might be as low as 400 or as high as 1000."[73]
The near-destruction of Tasmania's Aboriginal population has been described as an act of genocide by historians including Robert Hughes, James Boyce, Lyndall Ryan and Tom Lawson.[74][75][76][77] The author of the concept of genocide, Raphael Lemkin, considered Tasmania the site of one of the world's clear cases of genocide[78] and Hughes has described the loss of Aboriginal Tasmanians as "the only true genocide in English colonial history".[74]
Boyce has claimed that the April 1828 "Proclamation Separating the Aborigines from the White Inhabitants" sanctioned force against Aboriginal people "for no other reason than that they were Aboriginal" and described the decision to remove all Aboriginal Tasmanians after 1832—by which time they had given up their fight against white colonists—as an extreme policy position. He concluded: "The colonial government from 1832 to 1838 ethnically cleansed the western half of Van Diemen's Land and then callously left the exiled people to their fate."[79] As early as 1852 John West's History of Tasmania portrayed the obliteration of Tasmania's Aboriginal people as an example of "systematic massacre"[80] and in the 1979 High Court case of Coe v Commonwealth of Australia, judge Lionel Murphy observed that Aboriginal people did not give up their land peacefully and that they were killed or forcibly removed from their land "in what amounted to attempted (and in Tasmania almost complete) genocide".[81]
Historian Henry Reynolds says there was a widespread call from settlers during the frontier wars for the "extirpation" or "extermination" of the Aboriginal people.[82] But he has contended that the British government acted as a source of restraint on settlers' actions. Reynolds says there is no evidence the British government deliberately planned the wholesale destruction of indigenous Tasmanians—a November 1830 letter to Arthur by Sir George Murray warned that the extinction of the race would leave "an indelible stain upon the character of the British Government"[83]—and therefore what eventuated does not meet the definition of genocide codified in the 1948 United Nations convention. He says Arthur was determined to defeat the Aboriginal people and take their land, but believes there is little evidence he had aims beyond that objective and wished to destroy the Tasmanian race.[84]
Clements accepts Reynolds' argument but also exonerates the colonists themselves of the charge of genocide. He says that unlike genocidal determinations by Nazis against Jews in World War II, Hutus against Tutsis in Rwanda and Ottomans against Armenians in present-day Turkey, which were carried out for ideological reasons, Tasmanian settlers participated in violence largely out of revenge and self-preservation. He adds: "Even those who were motivated by sex or morbid thrillseeking lacked any ideological impetus to exterminate the natives." He also argues that while genocides are inflicted on defeated, captive or otherwise vulnerable minorities, Tasmanian natives appeared as a "capable and terrifying enemy" to colonists and were killed in the context of a war in which both sides killed noncombatants.[85]
Lawson, in a critique of Reynolds' stand, argues that genocide was the inevitable outcome of a set of British policies to colonise Van Diemen's Land.[86] He says the British government endorsed the use of partitioning and "absolute force" against Tasmanians, approved Robinson's "Friendly Mission" and colluded in transforming that mission into a campaign of ethnic cleansing from 1832. He says that once on Flinders Island, indigenous peoples were taught to farm land like Europeans and worship God like Europeans and concludes: "The campaign of transformation enacted on Flinders Island amounted to cultural genocide."[87]
The conflict has been a controversial area of study by historians, even characterised as among Australia's history wars. Keith Windschuttle in his 2002 work, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume One: Van Diemen's Land 1803–1847,[88] questioned the historical evidence used to identify the number of Aboriginal people killed and the extent of conflict. He stated his belief that it had been exaggerated and he challenged what is labelled the "Black armband view of history" of Tasmanian colonisation. Windschuttle argued that there were only 2000 Aboriginal people in Tasmania at the moment of colonisation, that they had an internally dysfunctional society with no clear tribal organisation or connection to the land and were politically incapable of conducting a guerrilla war with the settlers. He argued they were more like "black bushrangers" who attacked settlers' huts for plunder and were led by "educated black terrorists" disaffected from white society. He concluded that two colonists had been killed for every Aboriginal person and there was only one massacre of Aboriginal people. He also claimed that the Aboriginal Tasmanians, by prostituting their women to sealers and stock-keepers, by catching European diseases, and through intertribal warfare, were responsible for their own demise. His argument in turn has been challenged by a number of authors, including S.G. Foster in Quadrant, Lyndall Ryan and Nicholas Clements.[89][90][91]