My grandfather also fought in world war 2 abroad, he had a genuine hatred for the Japanese. One for atrocities they commited and one because he had to fight them. In later years my grandfather learnt to forgive the Japanese and now has Japanese friends.
The wars were created by the governments of the day and essentially the flag can be seen as representation of governments moreso than people a lot of the times ( thats why burning of flags doesn't really worry me.
Those governments are gone, our governments of the past have also gone.
I think overall the vast majority of Australians forgive the Japanese and germans.
Since those governments we still make mistakes but on a whole the world and Australia are improving with regards to human rights. People all over the world are becoming more educated, much more so than 200 years ago.
Even so, many people still hold grudges, just watch the news every night. The Indians and the Pakistanis, South Korea and North Korea, palestine and Israel. Sure they all have had bad things happen in the past done by previous governments but only forgiveness and understanding of those mistakes will help them move forward.
Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom. Hannah Arendt
Forgiveness is the remission of sins. For it is by this that what has been lost, and was found, is saved from being lost again. Saint Augustine
Forgiveness means letting go of the past. Gerald Jampolsky
Forgotten is forgiven. F. Scott Fitzgerald
Genuine forgiveness does not deny anger but faces it head-on. Alice Duer Miller
Those who need to forgive can take into account things like disease that caused a lot of deaths weren't deliberate acts and have happened all over the world. Some argue some of these things were deliberate, there is no proof this existed in Asutralia I beleive.
Encounters between explorers and populations in the rest of the world often introduced new diseases, which sometimes caused local epidemics of extraordinary virulence.
For example, smallpox, measles, malaria, yellow fever, and others were unknown in pre-Columbian America.
Disease killed the entire native (Guanches) population of the Canary Islands in the 16th century. Half the native population of Hispaniola in 1518 was killed by smallpox. Smallpox also ravaged Mexico in the 1520s, killing 150,000 in Tenochtitlan alone, including the emperor, and Peru in the 1530s, aiding the European conquerors. Measles killed a further two million Mexican natives in the 17th century.
In 1618–1619, smallpox wiped out 90% of the Massachusetts Bay Native Americans. Smallpox epidemics in 1780–1782 and 1837–1838 brought devastation and drastic depopulation among the Plains Indians.
Some believe that the death of up to 95% of the Native American population of the New World was caused by Old World diseases. Over the centuries, the Europeans had developed high degrees of immunity to these diseases, while the indigenous peoples had no time to build no such immunity.
Smallpox decimated the native population of Australia, killing around 50% of indigenous Australians in the early years of British colonisation. It also killed many New Zealand Maori. As late as 1848–49, as many as 40,000 out of 150,000 Hawaiians are estimated to have died of measles, whooping cough and influenza. Introduced diseases, notably smallpox, nearly wiped out the native population of Easter Island. In 1875, measles killed over 40,000 Fijians, approximately one-third of the population. The Ainu population decreased drastically in the 19th century, due in large part to infectious diseases brought by Japanese settlers pouring into Hokkaido.
Conversely, researchers concluded that syphilis was carried from the New World to Europe after Columbus's voyages. The findings suggested Europeans could have carried the nonvenereal tropical bacteria home, where the organisms may have mutated into a more deadly form in the different conditions of Europe. The disease was more frequently fatal than it is today; syphilis was a major killer in Europe during the Renaissance. The first cholera pandemic began in Bengal, then spread across India by 1820. Ten thousand British troops and countless Indians died during this pandemic. Between 1736 and 1834 only some 10% of East India Company's officers survived to take the final voyage home.
Colinialism has happened on every continent in the world.
Colonialism is a relationship between an indigenous (or forcibly imported) majority and a minority of foreign invaders. The fundamental decisions affecting the lives of the colonised people are made and implemented by the colonial rulers in pursuit of interests that are often defined in a distant metropolis. Rejecting cultural compromises with the colonised population, the colonisers are convinced of their own superiority and their ordained mandate to rule.
Pick a continent and its people have been involved in colonialism, from the Vietnamese to the Russians to the French on to the Japanese...was just the way the world worked 1000's of years ago and only recently and possibly in the future.
Things will never improve until people learn to forgive.
We all make mistakes, the aboriginals themselves have made their fare share. From ATSIC corruption to inter tribal warfare to setting bad examples for their children etc etc.
Consider what Tony Abbot actually said that supposedly incited this-
"Look, I can understand why the tent embassy was established all those years ago. I think a lot has changed for the better since then. We had the historic apology just a few years ago, one of the genuine achievements of Kevin Rudd as prime minister. We had the proposal which is currently for national consideration to recognise indigenous people in the constitution. I think the indigenous people of Australia can be very proud of the respect in which they are held by every Australian and yes, I think a lot has changed since then and I think it probably is time to move on from that."
Now look at what one of the leaders of the tent cities reply was "He said the Aboriginal embassy had to go, we heard it on a radio broadcast. We thought no way, so we circled around the building . . . It's just madness on the part of Tony Abbott. What he said amounts to inciting racial riots."
This is a big part of the reason why those involved in this have just shot themselves in the foot. For things to improve you need honesty.
Abbott has just spent the last few weeks with Noel Pearson I beleive amongst other aboriginal leaders in their communities look at ways to improve govt policies.
I am no fan of Abbott but I beleive he is a good mate of Noel Pearsons who I think is a great ambassador for aboriginal people and their issues and he should be speaking instead of the tent city fools.
If anyone was trying to incite racial riots on Asutralia day it would be easy to point the finger at the group who's cmmentary and actions were the poorest.
