A quick heads up to a couple of things LP readers might find interesting.
John Quiggin and I have an article published in the Fin today (online for subscribers only) – “Bad Choices for Work” on the likely implications of WorkChoices.
Jason Soon has an excellent post at Catallaxy on the Cronulla riots. Go read!
Update: More on the Cronulla sharks at Andrew Leigh’s place. Rex looks at media and political reaction at Labor First, The Currency Lad has a different take, Gary Sauer-Thompson examines “One Nation nationalism”, Rooster questions the use of Australian symbols by rioters, Tim Blair describes the rioters as “beach trash” and links to RWDB reaction in the blogosphere, and Darp looks at how to go forward from an anti-racist perspective.
Further update: More on Cronulla by Glen and Andrew Norton.
I vented here:
http://stoush.net/comment/reply/100/504
Timbo is a decent bloke but some of his readers are plain frightening, especially that idiot named Amos
funny how Andrea or Timbo does not invoke his comments policy on people who clearly breach it!
A decent bloke? Pfft. He’s been a foremost dogwhistler, and now he wrings his hands at the result (while, of course, managing to blow the whistle again by spreading blame to “both sides”).
Some people just can’t help themselves, it seems.
Mark, they had to burn the school to get me out.
What is your point?
Homer, you shouldn’t assume I was linking to your comment!
Mark, where is your article in the paper version of the Fin, do you know? Looked through it three times now …
That Neil Shoebridge is rather prolific. Hope he gets paid by the word.
Crisis over. Mine had pages missing, found one not so cannabalised.
Trackback
“‘Cronulla’ is now a name forever associated with popularist racial violence. [...] Beyond the racist/alterity/po-co angle, which I don’t feel like I can say much about, the media must pay the price for the unethical part they played.”
Glen, would you say that ‘Leb’ is also now a name forever associated with popularist racial violence?
As in Australian women being called “Christian whores,”, “white sluts” and “Aussie pigs.”
All those phrases, for the record, were used by the infamous Lebanese sexual terror gangs in Sydney.
Perhaps you should read Kim’s latest post and apply its message to accounts of Lebanese gangs marauding on Sydney beaches, telling white women in bikinis to cover up or be raped.
The commenter you linked to is an American reader, Mark. I don’t subscribe to all his views anymore than you subscribe to, say, all of mine.
CL just can’t bring himself to actually condemn a race riot. Shame, CL, shame.
Perhaps you should read what I published more twelve hour sago. Shame you can’t read.
Bill Posters’ usual tactic is to let loose with invective without informing himself: http://larvatusprodeo.net/2005/12/05/is-this-sedition/#comment-40892
A master of half-cocked indignation.
CL: read it, didn’t think much of it.
P. 22, Amanda, for anyone else looking!
err, yeah, CL, I _would_ associate ‘Leb’ with popularist racial violence because that is what the reactionary nationalist fools who rioted at Cronulla were shouting!
‘Cronulla’ is not just a name or a place, but a name of an event. I am not sure you are fully appreciating the scale of what has happened on the weekend.
The to-ing and fro-ing between idiots on both sides of the ethnic divide does not erase the fact that people like John Howard have used the divide to their own political advantage, rather than attempting to quell the tensions that exist across it. People in the media are just as bad describing Howard’s actions in almost reverentional tones ‘oh, he is such a good political operator’ and so on. No, Howard is a bloody hack who can not lead in any sense of the term; using an apt metaphor, he _surfs_ the hatred he whips up in the mass-population using a complicit mass-media. We are witnessing the effects of a decade of exremely poor social governance.
Howard is a punk. I am glad this riot has happened only because now historians will look back and see it as his true political legacy.
I think I understand what C.L. says, but s/he conflates too much in trying to find patterns.
C.L.: you’re not questioning your ideas enough. Look for potential problems in your ideas as well as confirmation.
Ban Him CL
“All those phrases, for the record, were used by the infamous Lebanese sexual terror gangs in Sydney.”
Which is just a discredited culture – warrior way of saying “All those phrases, used by a criminal gang, now in jail”. Dare I say that tarring the Lebanese community as a whole has been part of problem here. That they *arent* collectively responsible for the behaviour of specified individuals is surely the important message from the Cronulla Beerhall putsch.
Howard finally got around to making some comments at 1pm, condemning the action, which were apparently “non-racist”, in his warped, defensive view. I hope he spent a good bunch of uncomfortable hours this morning, realising what a pile of shit he’s turning our country into. “Worst PM ever” is written all over this sorry episode.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/australians-not-racist-says-pm/2005/12/12/1134235983741.html
I doubt that very much.
Picked up the Fin at lunch. Very nice work Mark (and John). Be interested in the responses (if any).
Probably right there Bill. However, Im sure he *was* squirming around figuring how to dodge the merest hint of responsibility; and worse, pondering how he’s going to spin this PR disaster in Kuala Lumpur tomorrow.
On the popularist distinction (ie made by Howard in the article linked to aboce by lefty elitist) between racism and other events in this popularist reactionary nationalism see Jon Stratton’s book on Pauline Hanson _Race Daze_. Stratton investigated how Hanson could say that she wasn’t racist and, in one sense, be correct. He is also one of my old Profs from Curtin Uni.
“Within the Australia of European, ‘white’ multiculturalism, ‘race’ has become a marker of a cultural difference which is, in some way, incompatible with Australian, or Anglo-Celtic-Australian, or Anglo-Celtic-European-Australian culture. The variety of these terms signals the lived uncertainty as to how, precisely, the claimed ‘core’ Australian culture is composed. At the same time, race tends t be seen as not determinative of this cultural difference. Rather, it is thought of as a signifier of it. Certainly as I shall argue, this is how Hanson tends to think of race, hence her outraged claim that she is not a racist. For her, it would seem, the term racist is only applicable to those who think of race as determining ‘culture’ in soe way, not to those like herself who use it as a way of categorising culture and signalling an incompatibility of cultures which, it is thought, cannot be overcome.” pg 45.
“In the new racism, as in Hanson’s rhetoric [and that of John Howard], the connection between ‘race’ and ‘culture’ has not been lost, rather it is articulated differently. ‘Culture’ is now the privileged term. With ‘race’ no longer considered to determine ‘culture’, that is anybody of any race can assimilate into any culture, it has come to be used as a signifier which marks the claimed incompatibility of cultures. The point to keep in mind here is that culture is itself a term as problematic as race. As I have been suggesting, the image of culture as a discrete entity with clear limits and an internal cohesion is one that can be tracked back to both late-nineteenth0century anthropology and nineteenth-century claims about national cultures.” pg 63-64
CL’s atempted emblematic idenification of ‘Leb’ with sexist and racist acts or discourse fits perfectly with Stratton’s claim that race has come to be a signifier that “marks the claimed incompatibility of cultures.” Howard’s refusal to call these acts racist shows that he is refusing to admit a determinative relation between his use of the divide in ethnic tensions and race.
Lefty E – I don’t know what version of Howard’s comments you read, but it sounds very much like you scanned the SMH’s website headline: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/pm-refuses-to-use-racist-tag/2005/12/12/1134235985480.html
That headline sets new standards in subeditorial dishonesty. Howard was asked if he thought “Australians” were racist. He said no (naturally), but went on to give his non-exceptional views on the culpability of the participants in the violence. The SMH then says he refused to apply the “racist” tag. Quite extraordinary.
Bismarck: another way of looking at it is that the SMH refused to fall for Howard’s rhetorical sleight of hand. Choose whichever explanation you prefer.
Have you read the article, Bill? I doubt it.
Carry on making up whatever you like about whatever I have or haven’t done, then.
Yes, Glen your Prof is right – problem is, loads of the supporters dont really get the culturalist angle, and blur the lines in the streets. Same happened with Hanson – all sorts of fringe crazies and old-fashioned racists heard the dog whistle and came running. Because ultimately, the more sophisticated “cultural incompatibility” argument is just a whistled refrain on the old tune. And its normally nothing deeper than a dressed-up reaction to the last group to arrive. She e.g. was actually worried about Asians (as “they form ethnic gangs and dont assimilate”). No-one is now.
I hadnt read the SMH – but I have now, and there’s the big wink to the rioters. All sorts of understanding flowing from the PM about ethnic gangs who dont integrate.; and a big denial from the PM that the rioters could themselves be considered a “gang” (being, of course, Anglo-mainstream folk).
Hopeless leadership.
Hopeless?
Or evil beyond any of our suspicions?
I’m still reeling with shock that this unspeakable disgrace has happened.
Peter Costello: ”We don’t want to see Australia become like this – it’s not the Australia we know, it’s not the Australia we want,”
Shorter Howard government: But if that’s the price Australians have to pay for us to retain power, it is the Australia we want, bring it on. Besides, we don’t fucking care because the states have to clean up the mess
Ooookay then. Obviously some of these subtleties are lost on some of us. To my mind, directly asking the PM whether the riots indicate that Australians as a group are racist and then using his denial to beat him with explores deeper semiotics than I am used to.
bismarck, do you mean ‘deeper signification’? because ‘deeper semiotics’ doesn’t make sense. ’semiotic exploration at a deeper level of signification’ makes sense.
anyway, it is not ‘deep’ signification at all, rather, it is purely superficial with the ‘racialising culturalist’ (instead of just ‘racist’) manipulation of people’s fears and prejudices on display for anyone to see in a blatantly obvious way.
Gough Whitlam: gave the green light to an East Timor genocide (250,000 dead) and called boat people unwanted “fucking Vietnamese Balts….”
Naturally, the left never calls their hero “evil.”
Howard: presides as PM while a bunch of yobs go beserk…
Laura: evil beyond any of our suspicions.
LOL.
CL, perhaps you should read some Foucault about the necessary conditions of a good genealogy. It is obvious to note, but there is very is little equivalence between post-9/11, ‘noughties’ Australia and the Australia of Whitlam’s era. Having said that, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t think that what happened in East Timor is also a disgrace. Yet, the equivalences, if they had to be drawn, would not be between East Timor and Sydney’s Eastern suburbs, but East Timor and, say, Iraq… Did Australia actually send troops to East Timor to invade it? On the other hand, the South African rugby tour of Australia and Cronulla would involve similar issues. Except Gough’s Labor Government announced a boycott of apartheid South Africa…
Only on planet currency lad was Whitlam in charge of the Indonesian Army.
Actually, I agree with CL re Whitlam/ Timor, as he probably knows. I just dont see the connection with this thread.
Here’s our great leader, taking charge of the issue today:
“Its important not to over or under-react to this issue.”
Huh?
The biggest race riot in a century, and Howard’s mumbling incoherently into his shirt.
At least Iemma can say that racism was part of ‘a combination of factors’ with alcohol and the sun.
Izquierdista, as a Brisbane boy yourself as you say, wouldn’t you agree that the Brisbane riots in 1942 against American soldiers—especially the black soldiers—were the worst racist riots in the last century? Wouldn’t you also see the similarities of grog and heat and and common ignorant resentment?
Only on Planet Zarquon was radical hero Gough incapable of voicing a protest about Indonesia’s East Timor liquidation. Maybe he didn’t want any fuzzy-wuzzy boat people coming here either.
Interesting, Liam. There were many other smaller versions of the ‘Battle of Brisbane.’ I think it’s relevant that their causes were almost always related to women and the longstanding Australian aversion to overbearing arrogance.
At Cronulla we had wear a bikini and we’ll rape you. In Brisbane in 1942, we had suggestions from American troops that the Diggers’ women would be “taken care of” in their absence. At Cronulla, we had a strutting gang saying they “owned” the beach. In WWII Australia, the behaviour of the Americans was comparable in the minds of many humbly-attired and under-paid Australians.
You’ve swum miles out to sea on this Currency, without a life-jacket. Tread water and feel the currents, Lad.
A Clayton’s rebuttal, Christopher.
Noticed lotsa wavin’, just tryin’ to save a drownin’.
Us cretans can’t swim none too good.
Clearly.
These days it cant be easy being a supporter of multiculturalism – the doctrine that ethnicity should be basis of political culture. Our highly-esteemed cultural policy and polity makers have been encouraging ethnics to assert their identity for the past generation.
Now the ethnic chickens are coming home to roost, with a vendetta. First the London Bombings, then the Paris Burnings and now the Cronulla Bashings. All caused, or conditioned by, the ethnic-identified gangs of one sort or another.
The Larva-Prodders are indignant about the signs of an Australian nativist reaction. They have no one to blame but themselves. Newton taught that every action brings forth an equal and opposite reaction. So it makes a kind of twisted sense for Anglo-Celtic youths to face-off against Lebanese youths. The Skips are actually practising “multiculturalism with an Ocker face”. What did the Larva-Prodders expect? Dogs and Cats to finally make-up and mend their ways?
Intelligent Leftists in the UK have abandoned this doctrine. And the general populus is certainly swung to the “Right” on Culture. That is, to the Platonic-Lockean-Kantian position which emphasises citizenship over kinsmanship.
When will the Larva-Prodders finally stop twisting themselves into the intellectual equivalent of a pretzel and cave in, rather than defend the indefensible? After all, Leftists are meant to oppose racism, sexism and sectarianism. Yet multiculturalism breeds these three evils like the plague. The irony would be delicious if it were not soured by so much tragedy.
They should be pelted with dead dogs until they recant their foolish cultural philosophy. I have been issuing warnings of this for years, and copped nothing but abuse for my troubles. Still, at least I can say I told them so.
Well spotted Liam, (hyperbole, thy name is LE).
Lets say, then, worst race riots in 50 years, agreed?
To pick you up on the point though – the anti-black GI riots were in most cases an intra-US army affair, stewarded at best by puzzled diggers (including my Grandad, as it happens, in the Townsville version) –
so, you know, foreigners bringing their problems and not integrating! (etc…)
Indeed, many black GIs recount fondly Diggers joining them in fights against White GIs.
Far more public, if not ‘worse’ per se, was the Battle of Brisbane, as you no doubt well know – a three day riot between Yanks and Diggers. Not a racial element in that case, asa it took place in the CBD (where it was white yanks only).
The shorter Chris: “”
Howard clearly does not want to deal with the issue of racism. Wonder how that’ll go down with the ASEAN types?
Nice trick Jack. The Right stuffs it for ten years with race-baiting, populist wedges and then says “look, it doesnt work!”.
A confession is more apt than a gloat.
At Cronulla, we had a strutting gang saying they “owned� the beach.
…and that was just the lifeguards.
So bashing emergency service personnel is OK is it Robert? The Police Commissioner says it’s “un-Australian.” I agree with him.
No of course it’s bloody not, CL. I was being facetious.
You seem unable to comprehend that the people insisting they “own” the beach are the “Aussie” locals — or that the lifeguards are often just the respectable face of beach thugs, and drawn from the membership of gangs like the Bra Boys.
Here’s what the local MP said:
Heaven forbid that some outsider darkie should want to swim or kick a football on their beach, eh? Why don’t we install an apartheid regime wherein certain beaches are designated Leb beaches, so that upstanding white citizens (who would never dream of assaulting women or ambulance officers) can swim in peace.
Sigh. The mob concerned didn’t go to the beach to kick a football, Robert. As for the apartheid idea, I don’t support the all-whites angle – actually, yesterday’s yob mob included many non-whites. (Nice attempt at a whitey-darkie dichotomy). Quarantining neanderthals who threaten to rape women, however, sounds like a good idea. I suggest an unpatrolled and shark-infested stretch.
No, CL, the mob didn’t go to the beach to kick a football. But I daresay some of its victims did.
Absolutely. But unless you want to do what the mob did yesterday — declare that all “Lebs” are neanderthals who threaten to rape women — you’re going to have to face up to the fact that this is a fight between macho pricks of various ethnic persuasions, who are fighting over territorial claims to the surf and the sand — and the women. It’s about who gets to ogle the women and proposition them inappropriately. Both sides are disgusting.
Incidentally, and to play a game you play around these parts from time to time:
A chap called Dan, commenting at your blog, said the mob violence was “a sign of moral health”. He went on to suggest that we all call our violent mates to “leave them [Muslims] in NO DOUBT, that Australia belongs to you, will always belong to you”. Although you have read these comments, you have not criticised them. I will therefore take it that you endorse the sentiments.
Robert, you are spot on. Referring to the original lifeguard-bashing incident according to this report (but not mentioned here) it was a question of kicking a football:
“Premier Iemma said the riots had been a response to the bashing of two lifeguards at Cronulla the previous weekend after he told a groups of youths, said to be Lebanese, to stop playing soccer. (One man has been charged over the incident.)”
As a sidenote, where I grew up we created novel ways of curbing peer-group stupidity. First, when I was 5 (at primary school, with unsupervised play time for the first time) it was “skill”: the bum disease you got when you were showing off and you approriately said “skill” (like you were your own mono-syllabic commentator). Then it was label “hero”, which you received if you went it alone during a team ball sport, for example. These are just two examples. No one ever thought, “Oh, we had better curb the affects of peer group pressure because it might eventualy spiral into acts of utter stupidity.” But looking back that is what the net effect of such emergent cultural practices.
“Playing soccer” is another way of saying “a loosely organised sporting contest that allows young men to show off in front of their peers.” The machismo masculinity needs further investigation here. Where is my mate clif…?
Gee Glen, I wonder why the Tele didn’t pick up on the wisdom of an opinion piece in The Age entitled “A Potpourri of Causes: Bali, Tampa, 9/11.” (They left out “George Bush”, “Area 51″ and “Wapping”). I especially enjoyed the Muslim spokesman who denounced stereotyping by reference to the “Kath ‘n’ Kim” territory involved.
There was a brief, passing and grudging reference to the Lebanese sexual terror gangs on page two.
I think what you mean Robert is that I don’t apply an LP Stasi policy and ban people with whom I disagree.
This site ordered EP off the beach, as I recall.
Lefty Elitist on 12 December 2005 at 10:42 pm
No. The facts refute Lefty Elitist. The Cultural Right, under Howard, has managed to save Australia’s multi-racial polity from its feigned defenders. Mainly by attacking the rorts and posturing of multi-cultural politickers.
It is the Cultural Left which has practised race-baiting and race-hustling. When you encourage ethnic identity politics you encourage people to think of themselves in racial, rather than national, terms.
Here are the facts of alien intake and reception during the Howard decade:
Objectively, the overall rate of immigration.
Whats more, the NESB ratio is up to record levels:
Subjectively, the publics attitude towards immigration has softened over this period.
celebration of diversity”, of both the ethno-tribal multi-cultural and gangsta-global sub-cultural type.
It is the confluence of these two forms of diversity that are making urban life in the melting pot so “interesting” these days. The London Bombings, Paris Burnings and Cronulla Bashings prove that this sweet dream was always going to be a nightmare in reality. I have been warning of this for years. This gives me ideological vindication, but I would willingly trade this feeling to do without the street hassle.
Its time for the Cultural Left to ‘fess up, admit they were wrong about cultural policy and about face. They need to return to the Enlightenment tradition of free and equal citizenship.
Naomi, you are spot on.
Jack, I think you are getting there but not quite. You see, the problem isn’t mulitculturalism but capitalism.
These are tensions which have been grown and exacerbated by a certain class for its own benefit. In this case it was the Liberal Party political class and its allies in the media stirring up shit so as to distract people’s attention from the real crime in Canberra.
Am I the only one who remembers what happened in Canberra last week?
Am I the only one disgusted by the disembowlment of a socially responsible Australia through IR reform and Anti-Terrorism Tyranny?
Am I the only one disgusted that our involvement in Iraq will continue for another year?
My greatest fear is that they will fan this racism even more so as to encourage white hoons to go over to the middle-east for more war…
CL, your site’s comments policy is, of course, your own concern. If someone posted that rubbish here on my blog, I would have no trouble telling people I disagreed with them. But if incitements to racial violence (against Muslims, at least) go unreprimanded on your blog, then I think it’s fair to ask why.
I wonder whether you even read that article in The Age. It was Bruce Baird — who sides with the “Aussie” lynch mob — who blamed 11/9 and Bali, as well as the rape cases:
This is because he does what you do — make a list of every bad thing any Muslim has ever done, and hold them all accountable for it, while ignoring or at least downplaying the bad behaviour of the acceptable, white population of Cronulla.
For instance, your blog condemns one of the Sydney rapists because he thinks women have no right to say no. You paint that as a cultural trait common to Muslims — I’d say it’s something rapists have in common, regardless of their professed religion. I trust you will hang on every self-excusing word uttered in court by a white rapist, will hold all whites responsible for their attitude, and will post accordingly on your blog.
Naomi: it’s strange that Howard is playing footsies with the racist right? Politics as usual, surely.
Jack Strocchi, I think I speak for everyone here when I say you should put some pants on, your arse is speaking too much.
Who is it arguing that the beach belongs to everyone? Who is it arguing that there should be no no-go areas in cities? Who is arguing that people have a right to be safe both from gang and mob violence? Everyone is, Jack, wet and dry, or whatever.
You might consider it appropriate to use a terrible week’s events to ride your favourite hobby horse. I don’t.
So, the effective ghettoisation of Middle Eastern males by a maelstrom of anti-asylum seekers, anti-Lebanese, anti-terrorist propaganda form RW pollies and shock-jocks is contributing to a rennaisance in multiculturalism, Jack? To free an equal citizenship? Recent “facts” would suggest the opposite.
The problem Jack has, is that he takes a RW stereotype of what multiculturalism was in the labor years (when it was in fact support was quite bipartisan) and declares it real – when it was always rank nonsense. We’ve never had the type of ethnic ghetto-sponsoring policies – multiculturalism from Galbally on has always been seen as an integrative mechanism in a cross-generational sense, designed to faciltate poltical, economic and social participation, while allowing people to celebrate their home cultures (even as the kids drifted away from them, into new hybrid forms).
That that vision of multiculturalism is alive and well today, and unlikely in my view, to ever leave us, is *despite* the efforts of federal government over the last ten years. What Howard *has* done is to run a neat line with Hansonite insecurities, bringing Anglo-Celtic idenitity back to the historical centre-stage, while, as you note, in fact bringing immigration back to late Hawke-era levels. The problem with souble-act / lie, which is “you know what Im thinking, its gone too far” is that it a catalyst or two later and it breaks into this sort of public gang-type, ghettoised, territorial identity politics we’ve just seen in Cronulla – the very thing I would have though you might oppose, Mr Strocchi.
That Alan Jones link is gobsmacking. Wasn’t there a similar bloke on radio in Rwanda in 94?
Incidentally, on CL’s general beef: Im no Sydney boy, but wasnt the OZ classic 70s flim “Puberty Blues” set around Cronulla?
I seem to recall chicks weren’t allowed in the surf, certainly not on a board, cos it was a blokes bizness.
“Surfies. Defending our bitches from Muslim oppression since 1976″
Jack, the very same multiculturalism you condemn has led to the Bra Boys brokering a peace deal. It seems that multiculturalism does work for those exposed to it long enough like Maroubra, where the ‘wogs’ are part of the gangs. I do find this sort of odd, but whatever works …
http://smh.com.au/news/national/gang-peace-deal-appeal/2005/12/13/1134236033030.html
Robert, and many others, you are commenting on things you don’t understand.
The Lebanese gangs certainly do play soccer on the beach, but it’s not the innocent activity you think. They often deliberately cause their games to expand across areas where other people are lying, or even start the game using such areas.
This seems to be a deliberately provocative action and if the people lying on the beach complain, they will be threatened or attacked by the entire Lebanese group. In the odd circumstance where a local prevails in such a dispute, or has mates with him, or the police intervene, the Lebanese will summon more Lebanese using mobile phones.
It’s a no-win for the police, who would be attacked by the multicultural lobby. Under Ryan, it also looked terrible in their statistics-based reporting system.
Lebanese gangs have been known as a problem throughout Sydney’s eastern beach suburbs for many years, although most people know not to say so directly.
Historically, lifesavers have had no authority to intervene in beach disputes, and so didn’t. Recently they gained the lawful authority to intervene, partly in response to concerns about ethnic intimidation.
In the Cronulla situation, a woman being monstered by a Lebanese soccer game complained to a lifesaver, who asked them to stop. In typical Lebanese style, the Lebanese were reluctant to obey a command from a mere skip, and there was some argument.
Again, in typical Lebanese style, the soccer players returned the following day with a gang of about 20 and bashed the lifesaver. This is certainly racism, but it’s not by the Australians.
Voa’s schoolyard cry of “the Lebs started it” is echoed by Tony Parkinson in today’s Age, here
Naomi
You are close to the truth, however voa is closer to the mark. Both my wife and I attended UNSW in the mid eighties. Even then the “Lebs� were a problem. She maintains that no one is better at making you feel “like a piece of meat� (even when modestly dressed) then a bunch of young Lebanese men. It is not their race that causes such revulsion/aversion to these men, but the way that they make a woman feel by their actions. They cannot occupy a public space without puffing out their chests, acting like dicks and generally pissing every other group off. As soon as they arrive at a park (i.e. next to a beach) you can feel the tension. They have no respect for personal space. I do not condone what these yobs have done on the weekend but I understand the resentment that has fuelled this.
You just keep burying yourself in tendentious hyperbole, Robert. I didn’t say Muslims are more likely to commit rape, as a commonly shared trait. There were five gang rapes that became notorious in recent years. They all involved Muslims and four of the five involved Lebanese Muslims. I will continue to argue that Islam is inherently misognistic and inherently likely to lead to violence against them. As The so-called ‘Prophet’ was himself a rapist and a child molester, this is inevitable. If people don’t like me saying so, too bad.
Lets imagine if gangs of rapists – organised strictly on denominational Christian lines – had committed five consecutive attacks on Muslim women in Lakemba. Mmm – I wonder if the left would start making sociological comments about Christians, attitudes to women, a sick misogynistic culture etc etc. I’m guessing yes.
At my blog, comments are never deleted unless they’re legally actionable or peppered with four-letter words. The only one I’ve ever deleted was a comment by someone casting aspersions on the sexual preferences of Justice Kirby. So, please, don’t try on your moral postering with me. You ban people like Evil because they make you look silly with their arguments. Moreover, the commenter has been reprimanded by me before. This made matters worse so now I don’t bother.
I have to come to the defence of CL here re comments policy. When people directly pick fights with me on my comments thread, I’m too argumentative not to reply. But if they just say stupid things that I don’t agree with, there’ve been numerous occasions when I couldn’t be bothered and let them pass uncommented too. Comments are not representative of the views of the blog operator even if the blog operator does not respond to them or make any other attempt to distance himself from them – there may be numerous reasons for this, ranging from time constraints to not being bothered getting into a flame war. Like CL I too have an open slather comments policy and don’t have the luxury of just deleting everything undesirable, so it’s worth making clear.
Naomi
As I said previously – I substantially agreed with your prior post, however I just do not see it as a predominantly racial thing and I thought Voa is closer to the mark. I agree that boofy young men are intimidating (to both men and women), and that “Lebsâ€? don’t have a monopoly on dickhead behaviour. However they are very big stakeholders in this particular area, and have been a prime cause of friction in the past in the eastern suburbs. Tasmanian hoons may be just as frightening to you, however we are talking about Cronulla.
A rather silly and intemperant remark Robert.
Even more so given the policy towards Evilpundit
Richard, Both my wife and I attended UNSW in the mid eighties.
I lived in Maroubra and Coogee in the early nineties. I cannot recall Lebanese-Australians being a problem back then.
Jason: at the same time, you don’t go around telling people that their failure to condemn one thing or another constitutes support for it. As I said, I was playing one of CL’s disingenuous games.
These damn Muslims keep causing problems!!
And CL, I’d argue to some extent that all religions are misogynistic, including Catholicism, that depicts women as nothing more that incubators, and not worthy to hold any position of power.
Within the church that is.
Cameron,
Perhaps you were lucky. I may be getting older but my memory is not that bad.
Shit! Harry Quick MP reckons racism might have been a factor in the Cronulla BierHalle Putsch. http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200512/s1529572.htm
I dont know where he’d get that idea. I thought it was just a combo of too many Reschs and not enough sunscreen. “Just some good old boys/ never meanin’ no harm…”
I mean, take the following SMS which kicked it off. How it could be read as anything ele but an innocent call for a community BBQ is beyond me.
“All real Aussies come out for Leb and wog bashing day.”
Lefty E
Or wearing an Ethnic Cleansing Unit t-shirt, makes me wonder what you have to do to be labelled a racist today. This has been the real PC of the last decade. Kath and Kim suburb – tsk, what an ourageous slur.
Unsurprising to see the old fig leaf of racist activists of defending their women coming out again, like our flag they used, they’ll give themselves anything for an ounce of credibility.
I thought you were a bit hard on yourself on the hyperbole front for the worst race riots, this is worse – perhaps numbers can be argues but it’s a hope of progressive people that we’ve improved over the years and we seem to be doing the full circle. It’s like a 25 year old shitting his pants, sure they he have done more often as a baby but they should have moved on my then.
David, the kind of power Abbesses wielded in the Dark Ages wasn’t matched in the non-regal world until the twentieth century. It hasn’t been matched in the Islamic world yet.
Far from believing women are merely incubators, many of her most honoured exemplars never had children. So that’s a bizarre argument. Among the most powerful people in the Church’s schools, universities, specialist institutes, scholarly endeavours, pastoral programmes and modes of medical service are women. This constitutes the preponderance of the institutional Church’s everyday life.
In even ‘moderate’ Islam, women are yet to be permitted to wear stylish hat.
To buttress a true equivalency theory on this matter, try comparing the two founders – Christ and the ‘Prophet.’
Good luck with that.
Well said, CL. A matter of degrees no doubt, however, women have no say in the development of Church doctrine. A fairly good measure of equality I’d say.
Doctrine is not developed by individuals of either gender. It develops over time within the whole community of the People of God, whose collective sensus fidelium – spiritually guided sense of what is true and right in the faith – is the ultimate judge. In the ranks of that ecclesia women have always figured prominently – perhaps even predominantly.
Moreover, three of the Church’s officially recognised Doctors – that is, especially saintly and authoritative teachers of doctrine – are women: St. Catherine of
Siena, St. Teresa of Avila and St. Thérèse of Lisieux. Pre-eminent among the saints and patroness of the Church is Mary.
“In even ‘moderate’ Islam, women are yet to be permitted to wear stylish hat.”
I’m bitched and moaned in your comments aplenty on this CL, but there are plenty of women (turks and bengalis for example) that are allowed to do pretty much what the hell they want.
I also believe the disgraceful incident of 4 or 5 yobs at Crunulla on the weekend pulling off a young woman’s headscarf and yelling “get her” proves that these kinds of generalities are problematic.
Maybe its better just to condemn racially-motivated violence, whoever’s committing it? I think that’s the point a lot of people are making.
Coming in late, but it seems to me that the issues are clear. Acts for which individuals are responsible do not justify retaliation against a group of which those individuals are members. That seems to me a very just and easy to grasp moral principle.
True, Kim. Except when those individual acts follow an apparent pattern.
Except “sluts,” presumably.
No reason to presume that, CL. In fact to presume that would be to completely ignore what Kim just said.
Yes, ‘apparent patterns’ were also noticed among money-hoarding Jews in 1930s Germany; rioting Kanakas in 1890s QLD; Inscrutable Chinese in the 1850s; thieving Gypsies, well, anytime in Eastern Europe; Lazy blacks in the Southern USA etc….
It’s the sine qua non of racism.
CL, your contention that Lebanese Muslims are somehow more likely to commit sexual offences, does not hold up statistically.
The highest rates per thousand of sexual offences take place in rural NSW, where the migrant population is virtually non existent.
Weezil has more here
Also, it’s worth having a play with the NSW Lawlink online tools to get breakdowns of various crime statistics per region.
I have never contended Lebanese Muslims are more likely to commit rapes. I have contended that Islam is inherently misogynistic and that the most notorious gang rapes in recent years were committed by Muslims.
This is a fact and cannot be denied.
Threats to “Aussie sluts” were made at Cronulla beach – including the threat that immodest dress would result in punitive rape. LP’s feminists, naturally, are not interested in this because it doesn’t involve Evil White Men.
Richard, I am not being flippant. I seriously do not remember any problems from the Lebanese-Australians. Then again I was in my early twenties back then and thought I was invincible.
I can recall there being some tensions between the waxheads (locals only beach dwellers), highway-waxheads (SW Sydney ie Lakemba to Liverpool), inner-city folk and westies. But nothing too big.
I can only remember getting hassled by the locals only crowd in Maroubra once, IIRC it was because I was wearing flannel. A fashion faux-paus as well as a provincial one.
Bullshit.
Do you need us all to line up and denounce it? I don’t mind indulging you. I think anyone who would say such a thing is uncivil. ignorant and disrespectful, at the very least.
CL – The fact that can not be denied is that the rapes that have been most horrifically detailed by the media in recent years were by Muslims. This is a reflection of the media which you consume publishing what will sell the most newspapers and cause the most uninformed moral indignation. It is the media that makes the crime “notorious”, not the crime itself.
Heard on the train today that SMS messages are being send around the Central Coast trying to set something up for the weekend. This was confirmed by other local sources today. Hopefully cooler heads will have prevailed by then.
Do you need us all to line up and denounce it?
Yes.
You’re quite wrong, Stuart. An attempt was actually made to censor the culprits’ racial identity but it proved impossible.
As I said above, I’d be interested to hear of any gang rapes where the perpetrators were organised on strictly denominational Christian lines (or, for that matter Buddhist lines etc) and which involved the explicitly punitive violation of several teenage Muslim girls. There are no such cases.
Only Muslim ones.
Moreover, the exact same language that was used by the rapists during their attacks then is being reported in tens of incidents throughout Sydney now. That link above is from the SMH: “Aussie sluts.” This differs from the phrase used by the fourteen Lebanese men who raped woman “C” only slightly. As they hosed her off, they called her an “Aussie pig.”
Good leftists and good feminists used to be critical of religion and used to believe that a patois of violence of this kind was indicative of a sick culture.
I miss the Old Left.
Well, as I said, I am happy on this occasion to indulge you.
But really, CL, why don’t you try asking for a person’s view rather than demanding that they denounce what you find objectionable? It’s a Stalinist technique.
I wonder what religion these guys are?
Still going CL, even after the NSW crime stats categorically prove your racial slur wrong?
Seems masochistic. Or obsessive.
Jeez, call me out there, but imagine you belonged to an ethnic group that was utterly media-blitzed, in an unprecedented, obscene, bog-racist manner by the accusation of being gang-rapists, which was *in fact* true of some 0.0001% of your ethnic group.
Pissed off, alienated, young, defensive. So maybe up to 1% of them decide to verbally threaten the same. No examples of it actually happening again, mind you – but verbal threats are made, again, by a minority. A similar kind of identity reversal like gay men embracing the term “fag” or “poof”. Its a “fuck-you” to the world that, in their view, stereotypes them. Ugly shit, sure. More dysfunctional than other forms of stereotype ‘reversal’, probably. But evidence of “cultural” gang-rape tendencies – bollocks, CL.
Meanwhile, a 17yo girl is saved from being beaten, quite possibly to death, by an drunken Anglo mob.
Im sorry – this is incipient fascism we are witnessing here, and you’re at risk of becoming an apologist for it. There’s cycle of violence going on right now, and the last thing we need is more bullshit, dishonest, *demonstrably false* racist sterotyping.
Calm down, LE. Islam isn’t a race.
But this is fascist:
No examples of it actually happening again, mind you…
And from my link above:
Shorter LE: Take it bitch – they were only joshin!
Very Lakembrist.
Right, by my calculations we’re up to 0.00002%.
Call me when your slur becomes statistically significant.
Now there’s some Stalinism for you, Zoe. A pack assault on a female motorist might be a tragedy but LE wants a significant statistic.
Inflammatory stuff.
C.L., what does the testimony of some drunken nutcase not taking his medication have to do with the price of Sharks, as it were? You kind of left your readers to make the link themselves, while muttering incoherently about ‘leftists’ and ‘root causes’. Care to fill us in, oh Moral Crusader? Or are you simply content to sully the name of Islam, as always.
Great way to calm things down, though.
Speaking of sullying the name of Islam, families abused, shotguns fired at a primary school carols night. Those in attendence included “students as young as five years old.” What’s that Dylan line from Hurricane – “brave and gettin’ braver.”
I suppose tearing a hijab off is purely ethnic, coz muslim is a ‘background’. Only quality analysis via. C.L.
I thinks it’s quite clear that the rapes CL is interested in rapes that he can pin on muslims and that he’s using it to his agenda is disgusting.
All of the previous incidents took place on religious grounds – unless you can provide evidence that Lebanese gangs are threatening to rape cheeky hijab-wearing Muslims as well.
Only quality commentary from Dicko.
Terrible as it was, “tearing a hijab off” isn’t comparable to firing shotguns at families, Christian Lebanese families and five year old children. And the hijab wouldn’t have been torn off at all if those fourteen sons of the ‘Prophet’ hadn’t bashed lifeguards and threatened to rape white women on the beach. They started it and what followed was dreadful.
Dreadful but predictable.
Still digging, CL?
That hole’s pretty damn deep.
young male Lebanese thugs hunting in packs is not an unusual phenomenon in Sydney.
Note they are not Lebanese Maronite only Muslim.
I have said previously they start a fight and suddenly, courtesy of mobile phones, you are faced with 10-20 people as happened down at Cronulla.
It was disgraceful.
As were the consequences. I have to agree with CL it was predictable though.
Terrible as it was, “tearing a hijab off� isn’t comparable to firing shotguns at families, Christian Lebanese families and five year old children.
Once again, Crusader Lad deliberately misrepresents the truth for his own twisted ideology:
A cowardly act, for sure, but a symbolic one. They didn’t even work out where the guns had been fired until the next day. Hardly ‘firing them at five year old children.’
While everyone is jumping up and down about the rioters and the government is working on strengthening riot laws people seem to be forgetting the obvious answer to the problem. Remove the Lebanese gangs, either through jailing them or relocation (preferably overseas). Once the gangs are gone, the rioters have no reason to exist and paublic order is restored.
DK,
what do you think they were dong when shooting the bullets?
Singing Christmas carols
Dicko okays shooting up carols sing-along,
Truly sick.
Calling an act cowardly excuses it, eh C.L. Quick – better tell the Bra Boys that they might be prosecuted under sedition laws!
Shorter CL: We are the ones who will decide that all ‘wogs’ are misogynist and the 0.00002% manner in which they all become rapists.
Shorter John Howard: We are the ones who will decide which racist battlers are not racist and the manner in which I wont dog-whistle them now.
Shorter Paul: We are the ones who will enact the ‘Leb-Wog’ Nacht und Nebel Bill 2005 (Cth)
Might I venture to suggest that there is another form of racism at play here – the racism of low expectations. Thus, a rampage by Lebanese gang members armed to the teeth is regrettable but the actions of the drunken yobs on the beach is a national disgrace, by people who should know better, the PM must denounce the nation as racist to its core, etc, etc. And DK even even thinks shooting at churches loses its heinousness by the sheer symbolism of the act. Is that because we don’t expect more of them?
Shorter LE: assaulted “Aussie slut” motorist is not statistically “significant.”
Shorter dk.au: Discharging rifles in the vicinity of Christmas carolers (including children) is “symbolic.”
Shorter LP feminists on yesterday’s pack assault on that motorist: “”.
Bismark, that line of reasoning would excuse the KKK for burning crosses out the front of people’s houses – also a heinous act in its symbolism.
“Symbolic” was your word, not mine, DK.
Not ‘regretable’, but to be dealt with, but within the rule of law. Lebanese gangs, no more so than any other gang, shouldn’t be permitted to operate freely. The police must act, the community must act, each within their respective spheres. And frankly, the actions of a thousand drunken yobs is a national disgrace. Claiming otherwise is a dishonest dismissal of a real problem, no less than trying to ignore gang activity.
Actually, Greg, since we live in a multicultural society, the actions of both sides would be a national disgrace, wouldn’t they?
Bismark, you equated ’symbolic’ with emotional neutrality. I didn’t.
DK – “Cowardly … but … symbolic”. I think the equation is clear. Not, I note, “cowardly and symbolic”.
Shorter CL: why condemn the individual wrongdoer when you can slur an ethnic group instead.
You see what I mean, Jason?
CL won’t denounce exhortations to racist violence posted on his own blog, but he’ll damn sure jump up and down demanding that everyone else denounces whatever it is that’s got a bee in his bonnet.
Pathetic.
(For the record, I agree that rape, sexual assault and misongynistic comments made to women and girls are unacceptable. I won’t hold my breath waiting for CL to tell Dan to take his violent racism elsewhere.)
You’re being hysterical, Rob, and your analogy is silly. I haven’t expressed wonder about LP feminists and their responses to participants on this thread. I’ve expressed wonder about their disinterest in posting substantive cultural commentary on the phenomenon of Muslim sexual violence.
As I’ve already told you – and Jason agrees with me so don’t go crying to him – I have reprimanded that commenter before and it made matters worse. (Including via private email). Best to ignore such a person. Not so good to ignore and describe as insignificant a pack assault on women. Or to reduce a gun attack on families to a “symbolic” act.
The left truly is morally ill.
“…the phenomenon of Muslim sexual violence.”
You haven’t actually established this ‘phenomenon’ exists, CL. But this deficiency alone does not fully account for our ‘disinterest’: where you cite two individual cases, you bizarrely urge us to blame others in their community for it, along some ill-defined religious line of association.
Which is, in my book, so random an account of responsibility for these criminal acts as to constitute a fundamentally amoral form of vilification.
Or to reduce a gun attack on families to a “symbolic� act.
Yes, yes we eagerly await the apprehension of these criminal cowards and thugs from the eye witness testimony of all the families who were fired upon. Perhaps the police are still busily interviewing those empty cars that were wounded, the poor souls. The oil stains of our fallen heroes sustains our rage!!
So shooting cars outside a building full of people (which just happens to be a church) is OK is it? I thought discharging firearms in a populated area, causing damage to others property, and generally scaring the bejesus out of people is usually fairly good reason for a stretch in the can. It is not a laughing matter even if you are trying to refute CL’s claims. Use a better argument please….
DK is adrift from his moral moorings and now can’t decide if ’symbolic’ violence involving firearms is OK or heinous or trivial. My take is that it will vary in his world depending on how he feels about the civilians on the receiving end.
The actions of both sides have certainly become a national disgrace, ‘Bismark’, but the rioters started as one; the other group was originally just a local disgrace. Credit where, when, and how it’s due – or shame, that is.
I have no particular argument with you on that Greg.
CL:
I can’t provide what you call ’substantive cultural commentary on the phenomenon of Muslim sexual violence’, because that can’t be done with any kind of intellectual respectability: the terms of your challenge are a nonsense. You are, still, confusing a religion with a race, and implicitly confusing a race with a country as well.
But since you seem to be asking for a detailed feminist response, not that any of your posts inspire confidence that you’d read one, here’s mine.
I’m not at all sure who you mean by ‘LP feminists’, since it isn’t at all clear to me that you know what a feminist is. Quite the reverse, in fact.
It’s also clear that you didn’t bother to read Zoe’s post directly answering your accuation. (“LP’s feminists, naturally, are not interested in this because it does not involve Evil White Men.”) Could this be because you have less respect for Zoe’s words than for those of the blokes you’re reading and arguing with?
I assume you’re making the assertion so that if one of us cracks and says ‘Yes, CL , we agree that it’s a bad thing to be threatened with rape,’ you think you will have won some kind of point. But I was under the impression that “the LP feminists” had been saying this very thing for some time now.
I’m a newcomer here — but I’m a feminist and I’m here, so okay, here you go. This should make you happy.
(1) Yes, the attack on the female motorist was deplorable. Quite as deplorable as the attack on the girl in the hijab.
(2) Yes, the behaviour of SOME Lebanese youths towards women is and has for some time been appalling. Not as appalling as the Anita Cobby rapists and murderers, three of whom (if you insist, as you clearly do, on racist distinctions) were called Murphy — but appalling enough to be going on with.
(3) And yes, speaking strictly for myself, the point at which my usually broad tolerance for cultural difference ends abruptly is where that cultural difference involves culturally ingrained disrespect, much less harassment, abuse, or phsyical and/or sexual assault, to/of women.
Happy now?
I assume what you’re trying to do is force one of us to point blaming fingers at the deplorable behaviour of SOME Lebanese youths towards women, so that you can crow Gotcha! Okay, here I am: do your worst.
But it’s hard to say exactly what it is that you’ve ‘got’: an admission that certain political or ethical positions can be difficult to hold simultaneously? Like the Right doesn’t ever have that problem? I thought it was called the human condition.
If at this point you are indeed thinking Gotcha, remember that what I’ve just done is claim the primacy of women’s rights (not to be abused, humiliated, threatened and raped) over another culture’s rights to do the abusing, humilitating etc because their culture allows it. Which I don’t think is quite what you wanted to hear.
I’m not sure what you think it proves, either.
I and most of the thinking women I know are very, very unhappy about this situation. Quite apart from the fact that we hate seeing large numbers of male morons trying to kill each other, it’s horrible when one sees two of one’s sets of convictions crashing into each other so violently. Most of us are feeling sorry and despairing. I’ll pay you the compliment of not assuming that will please you.
In fairness to women morons, there were clearly some women morons in the photos from that Cronulla crowd from Sunday.
The hard right wingers on this blog have become part of the conflict, looking at purely one side, failing to see the bigger picture. Once we all fall to this level, the situation will never improve. The blog conflicts over the Sydney problems disturb me as much as the original events.
Good point, so there were.
Some examples of “hard right” thinking:
A molested woman not “significant.” (LE).
Firing guns at families “symbolic.” (dk).
“Women morons” at Cronulla. (Stuart).
Disturbing stuff.
Text:
Picture:
CL says it is “disturbing” to suggest that this is moronic behaviour. I beg to differ.
Forty years on, and people are still stupid.
Well I’m about to get sick
From watchin’ my TV
Been checkin’ out the news
Until my eyeballs fail to see
I mean to say that every day
Is just another rotten mess
And when it’s gonna change, my friends
Is anybody’s guess
So I’m watchin’ and I’m waitin’
Hopin’ for the best
Even think I’ll go to prayin’
Every time I hear ‘em sayin’
That there’s no way to delay
That trouble comin’ every day
No way to delay
That trouble comin’ every day
Wednesday Sunday I watched the riot…
I seen the cops out on the street
Watched ‘em throwin’ rocks and stuff
And chokin’ in the heat
Listened to reports
About the whisky passin’ ’round
Seen the smoke & fire
And the market Church burnin’ down
Watched while everybody
On his street would take a turn
To stomp and smash and bash and crash
And slash and bust and burn
And I’m watchin’ and I’m waitin’
Hopin’ for the best
Even think I’ll go to prayin’
Every time I hear ‘em sayin’
That there’s no way to delay
That trouble comin’ every day
No way to delay
That trouble comin’ every day
Well you can cool it,
You can heat it…
‘Cause, baby, I don’t need it…
Take your TV tube and eat it
‘N all that phony stuff on sports
‘N all the unconfirmed reports
You know I watched that rotten box
Until my head began to hurt
From checkin’ out the way
The newsmen say they get the dirt
Before the guys on channel so-and-so
And further they assert
That any show they’ll interrupt
To bring you news if it comes up
They say that if the place blows up
They’ll be the first to tell
Because the boys they got downtown
Are workin’ hard and doin’ swell,
And if anybody gets the news
Before it hits the street,
They say that no one blabs it faster
Their coverage can’t be beat
And if another woman driver
Gets machine-gunned from her seat
They’ll send some joker with a brownie
And you’ll see it all complete
So I’m watchin’ and I’m waitin’
Hopin’ for the best
Even think I’ll go to prayin’
Every time I hear ‘em sayin’
That there’s no way to delay
That trouble comin’ every day
No way to delay
That trouble comin’ every day
Hey you know something people
I’m not black
But there’s a whole lots a times
I wish I could say I’m not white
Well, I seen the fires burnin’
And the local people turnin’
On the merchants and the shops
Who used to sell their brooms and mops
And every other household item
Watched the mob just turn and bite ‘em
And they say it served ‘em right
Because a few of them are white,
And it’s the same across the nation
Black & white discrimination
They’re yellin’ “You can’t understand me!”
And all the other crap they hand me
In the papers and TV
‘N all that mass stupidity
That seems to grow more every day
Each time you hear some nitwit say
He wants to go and do you in
Because the color of your skin
Just don’t appeal to him
(No matter if it’s black or white)
Because he’s out for blood tonight
You know we gotta sit around at home
And watch this thing begin
But I bet there won’t be many left
To see it really end
‘Cause the fire in the street
Ain’t like the fire in my heart
And in the eyes of all these people
Don’t you know that this could start
On any street in any town
In any state if any clown
Decides that now’s the time to fight
For some ideal he thinks is right
And if a million more agree
There ain’t no great society
As it applies to you and me
Our country isn’t free
And the law refuses to see
If all that you can ever be
Is just a lousy janitor
Unless your uncle owns a store
You know that five in every four
Just one amount and nothin’ more
Don’t watch the rats go across the floor
And make up songs about being poor
Blow you harmonica son!
C.L. – your whole argument is ridden with fallacies. You say that any history would look at what prompted the Sunday events. Yes, it would, but it would also get things in their proper proportion. Your argument appears to be that the events in Cronulla were a proportionate response. You don’t say that, but the logic of what you write implies it. Secondly, your moral posturing disrespects the seriousness of the issue. It seems as if your only aims are to continue to make your unjustified equation of Islam and violence and to score points off other commenters by claiming they don’t condemn things to your satisfaction.
It is clear from this discussion that the very worst thing in the world that could happen would be for cultual elites of all parties to admit that mulitculturalism was a bad idea, both morally and politically. I can understand how venal and vulgar people cleave to their prejudices in favour of their interests. But for privileged intellectuals to do it is a complete disgrace.
Sure that isn’t a Sydney-centric view, Jack?
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2005/12/13/1134236064283.html
(Of course with SMS messages and E-Mails now flying around the Garden State, this morning’s Age is like so eighteen hours ago).
Using ‘privileged’ and ‘intellectual’ in the same sentence gets more ironic by the year, Jack, but all the same: yes, love multiculturalism, proud of it, and it will go on. You wont see it pass as the key intercultural policy framework in your lifetime.
What Jack fails to understand or at least pretends to fail to understand is that there is no substantive difference between multiculturalism and whatever happened before it aside from a slight increase in the share of tax dollars that go into things like SBS and the occasional ethnic festival. Care to come up with some stats Jack and demonstrate that the extra amount spent on these things can have such a big effect on incentives to integrate into the community? It’s not as if pre-multiculturalism, new immigrants were getting lessons in ‘how to be Australian’. I arrived with my family in 1990 when I suppose official multiculturalism began and I don’t recall the converse, i.e. any government officials coming to our place and saying ‘you don’t have to assimilate, here’s a bag of money, use it to promote your non-anglo customs’.
Either Jack is making a mountain of a molehill or his being anti-multiculturalism is just a euphemism for ‘let’s stop taking anymore Muslims’. Jack, if that’s your game, come out and say it. At least John Stone’s got more balls than you.
What Jason said.
Jack is under an obligation to specify what his alternative would be, how it would work in practice, and how it would prevent events such as the recent ones.
Multiculturalism at fault is it?
In Cronulla?
Despite whatever initial and awful deed, perpetrated (in this instance) by certain Lebanese thugs, the reaction of the stolid inhabitants of Cronulla suggests that a crimped monoculturalism may be more to blame.
Good points Jason (though some quibbling – multiculturalism offically started as a settlment/ citzenship policy in 1978, following the Galbally report, admittedly with Whitlamite precursor ideas and institutions; and in the assimilation era, they actually *did* have a “how to be Aussie” program called Neighbourhood friends, or somesuch. Since they were practically all Anglos then, it was a matter of a cup of tea, bit of advice eg flatten your vowels, dont go near blacktown etc) Didnt work with non-Anglos, for langauge reasons, so we now have a settlment policy that encourages learnign English, meeting people, understanding law and customs, and becoming a citizen: all the things Jack likes to pretend it doesnt do.
Meanwhile, the older generation who dont pick it English so quick get SBS and radio in their home language, and get forms translated at centrelink and acouple of migrant resource centres so they know what the hell is happening.
So, yes – run for your lives! a spectre is haunting Ostraya, the spectre of MULTICULTURALISM!
Yeah, but don’t sweat it Lefty.
Jack’s on watch. And he’s getting traction.
Hell, I enjoy it, if truth be told
Still, might to time to say g’night to this thread.
To supplement the Age article Gummo linked to, Christian Kerr has a good opinion piece in Crikey http://crikey.com.au/articles/2005/12/14-1613-4504.html. Darp’s post http://isitwrongtowishonspacehardware.blogspot.com/2005_12_11_isitwrongtowishonspacehardware_archive.html#113429228602139698 was good on the cultural-geographic problems of Sydney too. Definitely worth a read if you’re unfamiliar with Sydney or if you’ve only been to the CBD and surrounds.
During the French riots, the Wall Street Journal ran a piece…. You’ll fin out in a second what it said.
Guess which country has what could be considered the most successful Muslim immigration in the world. Yep, you guessed it, the US.
There between 2 to 3 million Muslims in the US and have a median income of $65,000 against the national median of $41,000. Other than a heavy concentration in Michigan most Muslims are spread out. They are a heavily educated group having a high numbers with degrees and post grads.
All told, the piece said they are a highly successful group living the American dream.
This is quite telling isn’t it, in context to what is happening in France, UK and the rest of Europe in circumstances we find ourselves here.
Quite honestly, I can’t believe for a moment, that the Lebanese Muslims accused of pretty vile things have a university education. In fact it would be impossible to believe.
So it seems in a shallow sort of way if we looking not to discriminate against this religious group, the US and Europe are pointing the way forward for us before it becomes a real problem.
Holy moley! Must have missed this: C.L. still insisting that guns were fired at families! I expected better than postmodern lunacy (cars are people too) or bald faced lies. Oh well. I think I can take over from here C.L.:
Muslim terrorist arsonists target cute school-aged children with big eyed puppy dogs who like to skip to school, smiling, sing happy songs and bake nice Christmas cakes for their neighbours http://www.abc.net.au/ra/news/stories/s1531057.htm
That should calm things down.
And, yeah L.E., I think this thread has run its course.
CL and other bigots say the fault is “Leb”-looking people who assault women and girls on the beach. But let’s ask some regular beach-going folks what goes on at Cronulla, as The Australian did:
Outrageous!
Once a guy hit on me. It was annoying because his name was Ali.
Did you hear that? Some teenage boys whistled at teenage girls, and then all the teenage boys flexed their muscles. What is the world coming to!?
Boy meets girl. Boy compliments girl. Girl hurls racist abuse. Boy responds in kind.
And finally:
Disrespectful? Certainly. But nothing that wasn’t regularly said out the window from the back seats of the bus to my Catholic school.
In other words, typical teenage boys doing annoying, disrespectful, but nonetheless typical teenage boy stuff.
Except these are Lebanese boys, so let’s have a race riot!
Robert
There was also corroborating evidence that a great deal of interaction, which happened on that beach wasn’t that harmless either. I can’t link it but several old timers reported what could only be considered disturbing dialogue. Let’s also not forget the two people were bashed the other week.
There was continuous corrob. that reporting incidents to police fell on deaf ears. That’s where the problem is, I think.
Congratulations Robert for totally losing the plot! Did any of the situations you mention cause a riot? No, they didn’t. In fact the one event that gave rise to the riot is conveniently ommitted by yourself. Your post has no credibility what so ever.
People have been arrested for the assault on the lifeguards. I’m not sure why that crime means other, innocent people ought to be chased off the beach by a bogan mob.
The other excuse is that the “Lebs” “disrespect our women” at the beach, but when journos ask what that means it turns out that people’s direct experience (as opposed to third- and fourth-hand Chinese whisper hearsay) is pretty innocuous.
DK’s trivialisation of arson and firearm attacks on non-Muslim places of worship make the accusations of dogwhistling against the PM really quite amusing. Keep that harmless symbolism going, fellas.
Bismarck, you’re conflating my satire of C.L.’s overblown, dishonest response to these attacks, which Mark quite rightly points out effectively excuses the mob violence as ‘predictable’, with my actual stance. I’ve never called them anything less than cowardly and criminal. You would do well to wait until the investigation into the church hall fire is complete before you buy into heresay and rumour and label it as arson http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/blaze-minister-disputes-riot-link/2005/12/14/1134500874235.html. That’s just the sort of dishonesty I’m fighting against because it can so easily become ’causes’ for more ‘predictable’ violence, and so the cycle goes.
fellahs,
If people who describe themselves as Lebanese Muslims did not turn up in droves and bash some lifesavers none of this would have happened.
This sort of incident has happened on regular occasions all around Sydanee
What happened afterwards was a disgrace but it was after the lifesaver bashing.
don’t forget kicking a football next into white anglo females and then saying they aren’t worth 15 years means?
Homer – they’re describing themselves as Lebanese Muslims largely to distinguish themselves from Lebanese Christians – there were two waves of immigration and the second group have done much worse than the first – partly because low skilled manufacturing work dried up about the same time they came out. It’s very clear that few if any of the gang members are devout Muslims – you may as well use American gangsta rap as a more relevant reference if you want to make cultural aspersions.
I agree that they are nominal muslims however they sometimes turn out to be most dangerous.
I was merely trying to point out why anglos were describing them as lebo muslims.
By the way I haven’t noticed any lebo maronite trawling the streets!
Homer, this article from a Lebanese bloke is worth a read.
As I understand it, the Maronites came out here much earlier, and are generally better educated and with better life prospects. What we have with the minority of Lebanese Muslims who are in gangs is a classic outcome of social and economic exclusion.
I might add too that RWDB commentary gets confused here – people like C.L. want to ascribe some sort of violent essence to Islam, while anti-multiculturalists want to stigmatise all Lebanese people.
The truth is that the problems are in part related to the Australian economy since the 70s, and in part to structural exclusion. The yobbo surfies are also driven by structural factors – in their case, nativist historical narratives and more generalised resentment against the economic success of other ethnic groups (for whom the Lebanese can be a convenient proxy as the “wogs” they actually encounter). Cronulla might have its share of waterside mansions (I know – I’ve stayed in one at Woolooware) but it’s also got economically and educationally marginal kids.
It’s difficult to hold right wing discourse to any standards of logic and rationality on these issues because:
(a) it’s confused as to whether it wants to attack Islam or immigrants or both and contradictions arise;
(b) nationalism and racism are driven by sentiment and myth and fall apart instantly under the light of rationality, so there has to be constant weaving when confronted by reason.
Yes Mark the Maronites were predominantly affluent middle class types who came out here to flee the civil war.
Muslims came at the same time. We had some at My old high school Meadowbank.
Actually back then both groups described themselves merely as Lebanese although the maronites possessed better english skills and were far better academically.
In Sydney the only gangs that exist are those of young male Lebanese Muslims.
They target white Anglos mainly women.
when fights eventuate cars arrive faster than you can say EP youre banned.
This has been growing for some time. Can’t say I was prescient to sat it would happen soon but it was always bubbling below the surface.
I live at Eastwood where Chinese, Koreans and Indians seemingly outnumber Anglos and if the local primary school is anything to go by they are certainly not loved but interestingly enough they know only Anglos are targeted!
Jason Soon on 14 December 2005 at 9:54 pm
Jason Soon is “not even wrong” about this issue. Maybe he should stick to counting beans. The statistics on the scale of the multicultural diaster are here.
Multiculutral settlement policies are neither a necessary, or sufficient, condition for multi-ethnic diaster zones. But in Australia they have made a bad situation worse.
The problem lies with poor selection as much as bad settlement. This is because the New Left needs to pad welfare rolls. And the New Right always needs more factory fodder.
Mark on 14 December 2005 at 10:01 pm
My extended take on the matter is here. Short answer: do no harm. Longer answer: immigrate only nice, fit and smart people. Citizenship rather than kinsmanship.
Howard is my preferred cultural policy alternative. Also the evolution of Australian immigration policy between Downer I and Grassby. Forget about ethnics per se and concentrate on economics and ethics.
I am depressed by the shallow and foolish response to this issue by the Larva Prodders, as if its all Allan Jones is fault. (He has not helped.)
The fact that my repeated warnings of ethnic unrest and nativist reaction have been thunderously vindicated should have caused scientific Larva Prodders to revisit their crticisms.
Mark Bahnisch is wrong alright, suicidally and catastrophically wrong. He needs to get his ideological act together before he and his mates destroy the achievements of the progressive Left.
Obviously it must be painful to have to lose an argument to Strocchi. Tough luck sunshine. The London Bombings, Paris Burnings and Cronulla Bashings prove I was right. You are wrong. Deal with it.
The shorter de-euphemised Jack Strocchi: I am actually whinging about Australia taking in Muslim immigrants, not about ‘multiculturalism’ (defined in terms of funding) as such.
In other words, I was right, and John Stone does at least have more balls than Jack Strocchi though they are equally bigoted.
Poor Mark. Beaten by:
Hobbes may have seen it differently
I think the Nazi Scientists used that line of argument
…
!!
I hope Strocchi wasn’t interviewed for that lectureship too!
What Jason said, except maybe just Arabs, rather than all Muslims? I guess it depends which way the rational-colourific-scientific-race-chart-of-objectivity Jack seems to hide in his closet is labelled.
I see our brave leader is still pretending their isnt a problem. Lessons to be learnt “later” etc
Oh yes, and the mandatory “were still the greatest nation on earth” which goes along with endless recantations that “Australians are fine, decent people”. Say it enough times an you’ll get away with murder, eventually.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/its-still-the-greatest-place-on-earth–pm/2005/12/15/1134500961749.htm
Oh yes, and a stunning rout of we moistened, chastened leftists, Jack, congrats. Even more impressive given you’ve clearly never had the slightests idea what Austrlaian multiculturalsim, or immigration sand aseettlment policy is (NB The points test keeps out low-skilled migrants; aside from the small humanitarian program). KO’d us in complete darkness, just on instinct. I salute you.
Jason Soon has committed to pixel an unusually high ratio of falsehoods and terms of abuse in his latest comment. I will refute his falsehoods. I dont intend to lecture him on the morality of civil discourse. He is old enough to know better.
Jason Soon on 16 December 2005 at 12:57 am
Dont be so naive. Look at social reality and read between the budget lines.
Worrying about “‘multiculturalism’ (defined in terms of funding)” shows just how far Jason Soon has to go to get to Go in political analysis. This is the methodological fallacy of “documentalism” – if it isnt on the books it does not exist. Jason Soon, meet Keith Windschuttle, fellow documentalist and self-sucker.
Multicultural settlement programs are the icing on the cake to sucker the public and to pay the salaries of people who could not get a real job. Multicultural selection programs are where its at for this racket: guest workers, welfare roll padders, branch stackers, union bolsterers etc. It is the way that the Old Left morphed into the New Left: from class to cultural politics. The job opportunities are better for unemployable Arts graduates in this line of work.
Falsehood. Jason Soon should read what I wrote before he engages in “creative writing” about my political opinions:
Does this sound like John Stone tring to block the immigration of Islamic Arabs?
I am happy to have Muslim immigrants so long as they are nice, smart and fit. They should also be encouraged to fit into modern society rather than revert to racist, sexist and sectarian practices that (Whiggish!) Jason Soon’s beloved multiculturalism entrenches into social practice. (Mill would be rolling in his grave!)
Howard has brought in thousands ofMuslims and I dont have a problem with that. Here is what I wrote about Howard’s pro-Muslim immigration policies more than a year ago:
Jason Soon one day calls me an anti-Judaic, and the next day an anti-Muslim. These accusations are tiresome and somewhat contradictory. Make up your mind Jason, you are running out terms of abuse.
Jason Soon, you are a nice enough person but you have a long way to go before you mature intellectually. When you have lost an argument you do not make up lost ground by getting angry, making things up or stalking off in a huff. You make up lost ground by admitting you were wrong, apologising and rectifying error.
Don’t worry, I have concern for your well being and will be in step with you to catch you when you fall from grace.
Merry Christmas.
Jack, most people follow Messiahs, they don’t try to be their own.
Glad to see I have a guardian angel. We all need all the help we can get…
dk.au on 16 December 2005 at 1:11 am
No, my view is based on Hobbes. dk.au’s view is ignorant of Hobbes intent. Hobbe’s work was normative, not positive. Remember the “state of nature”? This was an idealised ethnic point of origin for the development of the nation state, from which the civilization of nasty, brutish life began.
Most non-idiots are aware that ethnicity is the basis of most nation states. Even the US, the premier proposition nations, is 50% Anglo Celtic. Here is a common definition of the nation state (nation ~ natural):
“Language or common decent”. Liturgy Lineage = Ethnicity. Thats simple enough for even dk.au to understand.
Perhaps, but so would any person with a positive IQ. Some cultures are still living in a state of nature and may be unfit (ie unwilling or unable) to make the transition to civil society.
Take for instance, the recent irruption of cannibalism in the Congo. Canabalism is one of those ethnic traditions so beloved of multiculturalists such as dk.au.
If a tribe of Congolese cannibals moved into his suburb and, feeling peckish one evening, decided to decapitate his parents and put them in a pot of soup, does he think that would make for a good civil society in his neighbourhood? If he does then he is even stupider than I thought. (Hard to believe.)
My theory of ethnic youth unrest at least attempts to come to grips with the facts that most ethnic rioters are Muslim, yet are not traditional. I suggest that these disturbances are the result of pre-modern ethno-tribalist multi-cultures mangling with post-modern gangsta-globalist sub-cultures.
If dk.au have a better theory, put it forward and I will refute it or prove it. Something tells me he is more interested in moral posturing and mud slinging than rational analysis. He does not appear to be too smart.
The HGP & Cavalli Sforza shows we are closely related to our troubled ME cousins. Arabics are part of the Caucasian racial lineage. Islamics are part of the Abrahamic religious liturgy.
It is no shame for dk.au to beaten by Jack. It is a shame that it was so easy.
Lefty Elitist on 16 December 2005 at 9:25 am
False. The New Left’s family re-union progam and the New Right’s de facto guest worker program was used to rort the points test for almost a generation. Here are the facts:
For once I agree with the marxists. We should stop exploiting low skilled migrant labour!
If Lefty Elitist believes that most multiculturally selected immigrants are highly skilled he would believe anything. Seeing how LE is still a supporter of multiculturalism after the London Bombings, Paris Burnings and Cronulla Bashings it would be unwise to underestimate his credulity.
Jack, your endless auto-declarations of victory remind me of Napoleon ….(on St Helena).
Im half-wazzled and can still tear each of your points a fresh with one eye on today’s cricket news.
“a sovereign state of which most of the citizens or subjects are united also by factors which define a nation, such as language or common descent. ”
Thats the problem with dictionaries. Look up Jus Soli and get back to us. Ill save you the trouble – ‘right of the soil’. Just means you were born there. Most nations employ this principle today (along with naturalisation), your Jus Sanguinis / right of the blood is only popular in Germany and Japan these days. (Plus ive got a feeling germany may have just given it away).
Shit … all out for 250 odd. Inauspicious.
“Multicultural selection programs are where its at for this racket: guest workers, welfare roll padders, branch stackers, union bolsterers etc.”
Total waller Jack. Check the points test.
Does it bother you that the few substantive points in your rhetorical sweeps are demonstrably false?
Mmm, how about we leave that 1996 article about the early 90s aside, and look at DIMIA figures for, say, 2003-4.
http://www.immi.gov.au/statistics/publications/popflows2003_4/ch1_pt2.pdf
Here’s a summary. Now, bear in mind you dont get to come on the family program unless you a) have a sponsor who is financially supporting you – normally a skilled entrant (so much for welfare-padding, you can scratch that one Jack, and we can hardly accept their skills without letting their family in) or b) you’re a refugee (check the small numbers). In sum, Two thirds are either skilled, or New Zealanders; and most of rest arent eligible for centrelink for some years.
“The 2003-04 figure for permanent additions was made up of
111,590 permanent settler arrivals, 36,691 onshore Migration Program outcomes and 603 onshore Humanitarian Program outcomes (ie. grants of Permanent Protection Visas). Permanent settler arrivals was made up of 91,619 arrivals under the Migration and Humanitarian Programs and 19,971 non-program migrant arrivals
(mainly New Zealand Citizens).
In 2003-04, 28.3 per cent of permanent additions were Family Stream, 50.3 per cent Skill Stream, 0.6 per cent Special Eligibility, 7.3 per cent Humanitarian Program while the remaining 13.4 per cent were Non-Program Migration (mainly New Zealand citizens).
Comparing 2003-04 to 2002-03, Family Stream increased by 5.2 per cent, Skill Stream increased by 31.8 per cent and Humanitarian increased by 7.4 per cent.”
dk.au’s view is ignorant of Hobbes intent. Hobbe’s work was normative, not positive. Remember the “state of nature�? This was an idealised ethnic point of origin for the development of the nation state, from which the civilization of nasty, brutish life began.
Jack, once again you’ve demonstrated that your reading comprehension skills are barely adequate to the task of identifying opportunites to big-note yourself. I suggest you read Hobbes again: the posited “state of nature” is the one in which life is “nasty, poore, brutish and short” – the posited cause being, not ethnicity, but the absence of of a political power sufficient to enforce the “keeping of compacts”.
Some cultures are still living in a state of nature and may be unfit (ie unwilling or unable) to make the transition to civil society.
And if you’re going to introduce the positive/normative distinction to argue against someone else’s take on Hobbes, it’s probably a good idea to respect it yourself.
My theory of ethnic youth unrest at least attempts to come to grips with the facts that most ethnic rioters are Muslim, yet are not traditional. I suggest that these disturbances are the result of pre-modern ethno-tribalist multi-cultures mangling with post-modern gangsta-globalist sub-cultures.
Spoken in the best tradition of lumpencommentarian-polysyllabic-hyphenationism. It takes a little more than a trick of punctuation to make a theory, old son.
What is it with all of you attacking such a great and dignified holy man as Jack Strocchi? His words come to us like an afternoon’s warm golden shower. His ideas are like the smell that blessedly lingers in your nostrils.
So you all know, I won’t have this fucking blasphemy. There is no God but the Dry One and Jack Strocchi is his prophet.
Jack, I’ve asked you repeatedly to demonstrate or at least explain how you think the formal apparatus of multicutural policy led to a change in incentives of immigrants to integrate into the community. I’ve picked up on the budgetary aspects because it’s an obvious, measurable change in policy. All you can offer is some flatulence about ‘look at the vibes’ and the obligatory dig at Arts degrees. Then you bring up selection but the issue of skilled migration (which I’ll address later below) is completely separate from multiculturalism. You can have as much or as little skilled migration as you want and still have the formal apparatus of policies (which you have not cared to isolate to demonstrate which bits aren’t working) of multiculturalism.
Believe it or not, Jack, I do not regard you as a major public intellectual and hence have neither the patience nor intestinal fortitude to trawl through the Internet searching through old archives of John Quiggin and wherever else you have left your brain droppings to compile your Collected Works. Either you adduce evidence here about what you think isn’t working or I can only go by inferences that the real problem you have is with selection policies and the new ethnicities introduced by them.
For someone who’s like to stomp about having his opinions misrepresented this is pot-kettle-black stuff, Jack. I’ve explained my views ad nauseam. I believe in freedom of contract and association and equality before the law. This means people should be free to enter into whatever contractual/social arrangements they like as long as they’re consensual. This means that if Catholic and Orthodox Jewish schools qualify for State funding if they meet certain conditions, then so should Muslim schools if they meet the same conditions. If you’d like to revisit the State Aid debate, be my guest. You can call this multiculturalism if you like, I just call is the natural outcome of classical liberalism. Also, I have repeatedly beseeched you to explain exactly how funding for multicultural programmes currently discourages ‘ethnics’ from fitting into modern socety. How, Jack, how?? Is the elasticity of integration into society so high?
Jack is projecting here. My ripostes have been written more in the spirit of a detached amusement, akin to that of prodding a clownfish in an aquarium.
Just a couple of points in addition to what LE said about immigration policy, Gummo about the Levithan and Jason about ‘cultural funding’
Short answer: do no harm. Longer answer: immigrate only nice, fit and smart people. Citizenship rather than kinsmanship.
For a defender of knowledge society, this is a very confusing and confused answer. If knowledge societies are going to be competitive, they need to formulate immigration policies that attract the best talent. Even the silliest Dry would agree, no? A good way to be uncompetitive is to say, for example, “you can come here because we want your skills, but only the family members defined by our notion of family – which we ‘know’ is the right one – can come too if you choose to stay here. That means Uncle and Grandma stay home.” This is a problem that requires flexible and innovative thinking, not ‘natural’ justifications for exclusion.
nation state (nation ~ natural)
A hideous conflation of science and politics. Hobbes’s Leviathan was a tool of political expediency designed to end civil war. He never claimed to have found any sort of Archimedian points of origin in ethnicity; which, particularly since the eugenics scares of the 1920s and 1930s and the Holocaust, few have been stupid enough to look for.
Lefty elitist is saying that ethnicity is not the original basis for the modern nation state. This sounds mad, but perhaps LE is just dumb. I will try to compensate for his learning difficulties.
The modern European nation state emerged with the rediscovery of ethnic national traditions (lingua franca) after the break up of multi-national empires and the consolidation of sub-national city states. It was formalized into constitutional status by the Treaty of Wesphalia. It may well be that the nation state has evolved away from ethnicity, but nothing can change the fact that it started “at home”.
Lefty Elitist on 16 December 2005 at 10:58 pm
Lefty Elitist equates ethnicity with geographical (“soil”) and biological (“blood”) history. He seems to be more or less agreeing with me, but perhaps does not want to be seen to do this in public.
I am stating that ethnicity was the modal origin, but not moral destiny, of the nation state. A common ethnicity was the necessary, but not sufficient, condition for the formation of the modern nation state.
I define ethnicity as partly cultural (eg religious liturgy), partly natural (ie racial lineage) and partly geographical (ie regional). Geography does not apply to immigrant, who can retain ethnicity despite leaving their homeland. My defintion agrees with the common definition:
Wikipedia notes the organic connection between ethnicity and nationalism, the ideology of the nation state:
The Old Left economic politics was replaced by New Left ethnic politics. When the Wets were in charge of cultural policiy – 1975-1995 – immigration was being rorted to allow in low-skilled ethnics to stack branches, pad welfare rolls and bolster declining union memberships.
This is causing ethnic ghettos in Sydney which is having a momentous political effect:
This is the rotten borough syndrome. Lyle Allan, Ernest Healy and Bob Birrell http://theage.com.au/news/Opinion/Loss-in-any-language/2005/01/15/1105582764381.html“>examine the trend.
So we have a full-scale political disaster brewing in this country because New Class politicos, whether New Left or New Right, wanted to feather their own nests using the ethnic issue. Unfit persons – unwilling or unable to fit in – have been brought in to this country and been encouraged to self-segregate. The result has been ethnic ghettos, rotten bourough and now race riots.
I have been warning of this for years and now the warnings have been proven true.
[sigh]
How have they been encouraged to self-segregate, Jack?? By funding SBS? Because they mystically perceived a change in the zeitegeist because ‘elites’ started bandying around the term ‘multiculturalism’ in those highbrow academic journals that the average low SES ‘wog’ commonly subscribe to such as Meanjin? I think you are overestimating the influence of the intellectual Left, as usual, to think that their high faluting pronouncements on multiculturalism can suddenly filter down to Ahmed in Lakemba. For generations new immigrants have tended to settle close to each other because of the existence of support networks, Jack. This has been happening long before multiculturalism.
Of course if you want to encourage more dispersion of migrants, there are ways of doing this. Public housing, an Old Left idea, has passed its used by date. It has detrimental effects not only in exacerbating ethnic self-segregation but in creating spots of poor social capital such as Macquarie Fields. The New Right idea of portable rent subsidies which let low income people settle wherever they want by subsidising their rent wherever they choose to live, may be a possible response to ghettotisation whether it affects ‘ethnics’ or Macquarie Fields disadvantaged.
More uninformed waller from Jack! Will it ever end?
“Lefty elitist is saying that ethnicity is not the original basis for the modern nation state.” er, no Jack (see Brendan, Phonics doesnt work).You just arent getting Jus Soli Jack – go read about it. Its the dominant citzenship principle in all but a handful of states these days, and no, its not about ethnicity. It has replaced Jus Sanguinis the dominant principle of national citizenship in all but a handful of states.
As for your beloved points test and Howardite emphasis, it will surprise no-one but you to learn that Howard is yet again claiming credit for another government’s actions.
the points test was introduced under Fraser in 1978, and skill entrants reached a peak in as a % of intake in – wait for it – 1988 under Hawke (yes, there goes the multiculto – ‘wet’ thesis). Howard has merely continued of the previous government – much like ‘economic reform’.
Our old friend Professor Kev returns
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17604345%5E601,00.html
More of LE’s intellectual garbage to take out. Another point by point refutation. I doubt it will ever end as he is too stupid (or dishonest) to know when he is beat.
Lefty Elitist on 18 December 2005 at 10:53 am
Lefty Elitist is just not getting the meaning of common English words, like ORIGIN. Lets go back to my original statement, since only the literal truth will save readers from his confusion or mischief:
The evolution of a Lockean-Kantian-Rawlsian state has been, or should be, from an origin (ethnic) kinsmanship to a destination of (ethical) citizenship. The multiculturalist Wets are trying to reverse this rational and moral trend by empahsising ethnic heritage over ethical obligations as the basis for political culture. This is evil. It does to culture what class division does to the economy: divide communities. It provokes racism, sexism and sectarianism – all the evils that the Wets claim to oppose. What hypocrites, and no wonder they are running for cover under a shelter of lies, now that the truth is out.
LE insists that the principle of Jus Soli (citizenship by geographical region) refutes my statement, because it is nowadays in operation. Whereas the principle of Jus Sanguinis (citizenship by ethnic status) is no longer in operation.
LE may be right about this or not. My impression is that many states are tightening citizenship rules to prevent jurisdiction shopping by prospective parents. And there are stil a few ethnic-only states, with there numbers seeming to grow a bit since people discovered why they formed nations in the first place.
But LE’s crticism is irrelevant to my original statement “Ethnicity is the origin of the nation state.” I define ethnicity as a breeding populationn’s traditional heritage – some combination of lineage (biological race), liturgy (theological religion) or literacy (philological communication). This notion of ethnicity is more or less equivalent to Jus Sanguina.
LE therefore implicitly concedes my point, since Jus Sanguina is equivalent to citizenship by ethnic origin. But he still insists that I am wrong, perhaps just to blow smoke whilst he makes his escape?
A traditional heritage is obviously ORIGINAL (or even abORIGINAL) to the legatee. That should be clear enough even for someone as dopey as LE. What a moral and intellectual disgrace the Wets have become. They have to twist common English words nowadays to escape damning criticism.
If that is the case then the points test must have been rorted then, like everything else related to cultural policy administered by the Wets. They are specialists in culture and had their hands on Australian cultural political and professional matters for a generation. Thats why it got so stuffed up, from the Museum of Contemporary Art to immigration department, because half-educated ingnorami were in charge and wanted to go over big in front of their latte-sipping, chaddonay-quaffing mates. Wankers.
In reality the batch of NESB immigrants brought in from the late seventies through mid eighties were substantially below par, for a variety of reasons. One main reason was political demand: both major parties were courting the ethnic vote, although it gradually fell into Labor’s lap for obvious reasons.
The other major reason was demographic supply: this period saw quite a few global Cold War/Culture War struggles flaring up and settling down, particulalry in SW Asia (Lebanon) and SE Asia (Vietnam). Australia was a natural destination point for people fleeing collapsing societies but with no particular notion of civic loyalty to a nation state.
Sheehan reports:
Does that lot sound like points test-blitzing material? This is why I say that the current outbreak of social hatred is a result of the Wets beloved multicultural-subcultural system: mixing pre-modern ethno-tribalism with post-modern gangsta-globalism. The result is disaster squared.
Obviously something went wrong with either selection or settlement policy, it is difficult to tease out which factor has the stronger causal power. But the results are evidently not good. Bob Birrell has investigated the social outcomes achieved and discovered that South West Sydney now has an ethnic under-class:
No risk! I’d like to see someone say that now with a straight face.
The crime rates for Lebanese (and Vietnamese) are way beyond anything seem amongst native Australians or previous generations of immigrants. Even the oh-so poltically correct Department of Multicultural Affairs admits this:
It will always be the case that immigrants may drift into crime when jobs are scarse in a foreign land.
Vietnamese ethnics have also had major problems integrating, one perpetrated Australia’s first political assasination. Fortunately Vietnamese children seem to have fairly high IQ’s. Now that Howard and the Salvation Army are winning the war on drugs they have found more useful outlet for their talents, with some tragic exceptions.
But the worrying thing is that some of the children of some of these immigrants appear to be worse than the parents. This is esThis is a reversal of the historic trend towards social integration. And we know why: because a pack of fools or knaves found it advantageous to indulge in a bit of nation wrecking under the aegis of multiculturalism.
This is why I say that people selection is more important than community settlement policy. Microsoft hires graduates for their high IQ, which does not lie. Rather than resumes which, like points tests, can be padded or rorted. So LE should look at the real world before being suckered by multiculturalist talking points.
It boils down to who should we trust: the multicultural Wets dodgy claims and bodgy stats or our own ‘lyin eyes?
You really don’t get Jus Soli do you Jack. It’s not about ethnicity or religion or anything like that. It’s about fairness.
Listen, get yourself a copy of Alistair Davidson’s From Subject To Citizen (Cambridge Uni Press 1997), sit down and have a read about citizenship theory in the past hundred years of Australian history, and please, please, please, don’t repeat anything you’ve said above around any recent Vietnamese immigrants because the ones I know would be liable to get really really fucking offended if you associated them with Phoung Ngo.
Seriously.
Jack Strocchi said:
Donald Mackay was murdered by vietnamese? I thought it was the Italian mafia?
Wasn’t the heart specialist Victor Chang also murdered by a vietnamese gang?
I think Victor Chang’s murderers were Chinese.
And the Prince of Wales, I’d forgotten. Not shot by a deranged Fenian—it was the Vietnamese all along.
Steve Edney, do you live under a bush or something?
Vietnamese councillor Phuong Ngo was famously convicted of organising the murder of his ALP political rival, NSW parliamentarian John Newman.
L,
Not last time I checked. Yes I know about Phuong Ngo, but perhaps its you living under a bush. The comment was that John Newman was not the first political assasination. Griffith Counciller Donald Mackay was killed previously by the Italian Mafia for his anti-drugs campaigning.
Actually if you look on the Wikipedia entry for John Newman you’ll see it even mentions that this wasn’t the first Australian political assasination.
Sounding increasingly shrill there Jack. Now the stats are lying?
Im happy to take that last dump of unfocussed, vituperative rhetoric as a concession speech on the substantive points.
And now, it only remains to wrap the dry, tattered remants of your thesis: Nearly all Muslim Lebanese came in between 1976 and 1981 under the Fraser/ Howard government, which ran a special humanitarain program ( as the refugee Convention does not cover civil war). So, no, cant blame the ‘wets’ of the ALP. And anyway, as already established, you’ve been imagining the whole wet/ multiculto thing anyway – as we’ve alrady noted, skilled migration reach a peak of % intake under Hawke in ‘88. Howard merely following along, as always, just with extra “Anglo -primacy” rhetoric to sucker the gullible into believing he’s doing it all differently.
And if you really dont like our immigration program – why not take it up with the Business Council of Australia, who drive the issue these days.
Steve, Mackay’s assassination would not be described as a political assassination, because it was not done to further direct political interests as Newman’s was, and because local councillors would not generally be defined as politicians.
Media reports at the time of Newman’s assassination identified it as the first political assassination in Australia. Those reports carry more authority than a pissy Wikipedia entry.
Well I disagree about that Mackays assasination wasn’t political. Trying to effect the political process by killing a politician, seems pretty much like a political assasination to me regardless if its done by the mafia or a rival politician.
As Liam mentions there have previously been other attemps as well, The Prince of Wales and Arthur Calwell, both survived attempts.
liam on 19 December 2005 at 8:07 pm
Don’t lecture me about political theory. Liam is the one who needs to go back to school. My distinction between ethnic politics and ethical politics fairly closely corresponds to the classical distinction between Jus Sanguina (citizenship by socio-biological identity) and Jus Soli (citizenship by jurisdictional station).
Listen, open your eyes and think for yourself instead of burying your nose in books. I did not have to study international law or history to figure these distinctions out (although I have). I worked them out myself, they are obvious from first principles of political philosophy and socio-biology. Not to mention one’s own ‘lyin eyes.
My models of cultural organization (ethno-tribal-gangsta-global / Clash within Civilization) predicted this outbreak of social conflict.
Liam’s models are degenerate, ad hoc refutation immunization strategies. They consist of nothing more than blaming the victim (Cronulla vigilantes) or shooting the messenger (Alan Jones, John Howard). They reveal nothing except the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of their builders.
It is Liam and hid political cahoots who need to sort themselves out. Their intellectual grasp on the social situation is pretty slack, and it appears their moral principles are questionable.
That sounds like a threat. Really, the immorality and stupidity of the multicultural Wets continues to stagger me. I correctly predict these problems and in retaliation they issue thinly veiled threats to silence the tocsin-sounder and whistleblowers. So now free speech is being chilled by Liam…and whose army? Ha ha ha. Bring ‘em on I say.
FTR I think that, although the Vietnamese community has spawned a large amount of ethnic gangsterism, the vast majority of the Vietnamese community are non-gangsterish and not even particularly ethnic, especially the nerdy students. So their social prospects are good.
I even took the trouble to spell this out in the kind of plain language which Liam obviously has trouble comprehending. Here it is again for him and his oh-so scary mates to mull over:
But that does not mean that, over the past generation, there has not been considerable grief caused by bungling and rorting of the immigrant selection and settlement program. Or that there is not a long way to go before the social structure of South East Asians is isomorphic to the native Caucasian distribution ie equality of opportunity.
The fact is that the South East Asian ethnic community have had a major criminal gang problem. Anyone who travelled down to Cabramatta in a non-comatose state would be aware of this. Only a reign of politically correct error, which even extended to the Police Force, prevented proper action from being taken.
Also, I am not so optimistic about the prospects for social progress of South West Asian ethnic communities. I am not exactly Robinson Crusoe on this issue. Tim Priest blamed the multicultural racket for disabling police and empowering local thugs:
These people do not have the same focus on intellectual improvement as East Asians. The unpleasant results can be observed on the streets and beaches, to any one with a sighted eye to see and a half a brain to think. As someone who resides in Bondi but works out West I speak with some feeling.
Every twelve-stepping programmer knows that self-revelation is the first step to recovery. But the professional and political intellectuals who were responsible for managing and selling these programs have not, through stupidity or duplicity, owned up to their errors or rorts. The example of people like Liam does not make me optimistic about the prospects for our civic health.
Shorter Jack:
Steve Edney on 20 December 2005 at 8:22 am
Well its a toss up and depends on how you define “ethnic gang” and “political assasination”. Seeing as how Grassby, the pioneer multiculturalist, was implicated in smearing the Mackay family on behalf of an ethnic criminal gang this is not a debate that a prudent multiculturalist Wet should be interested in pursuing.
BTW, In Australia, the (age-standardised) Italian-born crime rate is about 2/3 of the general Australian native crime rate and half the Vietnamese-born crime rate. Of course there are still a few rotten apples in the Italian immigrant barrell.
Jack – that makes no sense whatsoever. Apparently Vietnamese commit crimes because of some group trait but Italians are just individual rotten apples. At least be consistent in attributing collective vs. individual responsibility for crime.
Jack Strocchi wrote:
The scary and morally repugnant thing here is you think that a drunken lynch mob are “victims”. They weren’t a bunch of vigilanties patroling the beach if trouble arises. They (or at least the worst portion) were an out of control mob hunting victims on the basis of appearance.
The victims are the lifesavers that got bashed by thugs, the people who got bashed by the racist mob because they looked like lebs and the victims of the random and racists attacks on people and cars by lebanese gangs.
Steve Edney on 20 December 2005 at 11:04 pm
I have never defended the actions of “an out of control mob hunting victims on the basis of appearance”. I would invite Steve Edney to point to any sentence of mine that does this. He cant, because I have not.
On the contrary, on this very thread I linked to an extended take on the matter on another site where I made clear my (critical) attitude towards the “the worst portion” of the Cronulla locals who engaged in aggressive behaviour towards “persons of Middle Eastern appearance”. Actually it is most likely that the worst offenders were out-of-town hate criminals, not vigilantes. I have criticised, not condoned, violent mobsters on both sides:
UNCIVIL means bad, wrong, Get it? So no more falsehoods about my “scary and morally repugnant stance”. Jason Soon feels free to fabricate and slander me at whim. He has already been warned about this kind of behaviour before and has had false and slanderous posts on another site deleted. I would expect better from Steve Edney.
It is grotesque for Larva Prodders focus on the uncivil behaviour of a tiny fringe group and ignore the legitimate concerns of the mainstream community which felt itself under siege. Most legitimate protests have an unruly element – does anyone remember how the protesters against Pauline Hanson treated the Hansonites political meetings? They spat, punched and sabotaged her right to free speech. But I bet the individual Larva Prodders, and their cahoots, were silent about this violent fringe because those protesters were politically correct. Hypocrites again.
In any case, vigilantism per se is not wrong and in fact is the right of any member of civil society who is threatened by marauders and who does not have adequate protection from the authorities. The Guardian Angels are vigilantes. I certainly appreciated their presence in my ‘hood when I travelled on the Subway and trekked accross the Park at the height of the Crack Wars. Is Steve Edney saying that the Guardian Angels are “scary and morally repugnant”?
Most of the Cronulla locals were doing nothing more than that – taking to the streets in a show of force to repel gangsters. The locals were certainly being subject to the depredations of marauding gangs without proper civil protection. Their life-guards were being routinely harassed and bashed, women were being molested and cars were being vandalised.
What made matters worse was that “culturally sensitive” policing has let the problem of ethnic gangsters get right out of hand. Another example of the way the multiculturalists have aided and abetted criminals (remember Theophanous?).
Did the Larva-Prodder speak up against this train of abuses whilst it was going on? (I did, and was howled down as hyperbolic or bigoted for my troubles.) Not on your nelly. They never do that, to busy trying to justify their committment to a socially divisive, corrupt and reactionary cultural program.
And when the inevitable happened and a nativist reaction occurred, something I have been warning of for years, they engaged in grotesque moral disequivalence. Not only did they give a free pass to the ethnic gangsters. They defended the politcal programs that created and nurtured them.
Indeed, the Larva Prodders went on the offensive. They focused on criticising a small violent fringe of the protesters and vigilantes who engaged in a few scuffles. Or lambasting Alan Jones whose actions were harmful enough but simply echoed the grass roots communications by emailers and smsers. (Jones audience is mainly 55 and not the kind likely to take to the streets.) Or, ludicrously, blaming the War on Terror or Iraq attack for a problem that has been brewing for almost a decade.
The Cronulla nativist reactions was chickenfeed compared to the ethnic gangsters response which was to return to base and attacking in force the next night:
The thing is, the Cronulla reaction has been a success, at least from the harassed locals point of view. The police are now out in force and ethnic gangsters will think twice before descending on the suburb for another bout of argy-bargy. Also, the problem is now a high priority and it is likely that police will crack down in earnest on gangsters of all persuations. One would think that this is a step in the right direction.
But a more decisive step in this quarter would be for Larva Prodders to own up to their own intellectual and moral failures on cultural policy matters. Instead of denouncing and defaming those who have been prescient enough to warn of the dangers that are exemplified by the Dutch Assasinations, London Bombings, Paris Burnings and Cronulla Bashings.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that the main difference between Jack Strocchi and Andrei Vyshinsky is that the latter had a superior command of the English language.
Spot which quote is by whom.
“This is the old Clemenceau thesis, but in a new version, edited by the united centre of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite terroristic bloc.”
“The evolution of a Lockean-Kantian-Rawlsian state has been, or should be, from an origin (ethnic) kinsmanship to a destination of (ethical) citizenship.”
“At present I merely wish to emphasize once again that the accused are not political infants, that they are hardened players in the political struggle; they know perfectly well that they must answer not only for recognizing terror “theoretically”.
“But the professional and political intellectuals who were responsible for managing and selling these programs have not, through stupidity or duplicity, owned up to their errors or rorts.”
“I demand that dogs gone mad should be shot – every one of them!”
“They should be pelted with dead dogs until they recant their foolish cultural philosophy.”
And there is so much more where all that came from. And if we’re really unfortunate, we’re gonna have this observation denounced in immense and laboured detail by Jack…or Andrei.
Nabakov: Post of the year.
Jack Strocchi wrote:
He also wrote earlier
Explain how the mob were vigilantes Jack. I’d be pretty sure the Gaurdian Angels would look pretty poorly upon being compared with what happenned in Cronulla.
If they had been organizing patrols to throw louts off the beach they’d be vigillantes, but they weren’t. It wasn’t about protecting anyone, it wasn’t about just driving “gangsters” off the beach, it certainly wasn’t about taking the law into their own hands. It was about driving an entire ethnic group off the beach and if you were greek or Jewish or in some other way swarthy and mistaken then you were fair game as well. This is certainly not lawful.
Now you may argue that this was merely the “the worst portionâ€? however from reports the “worst portion” consisted of several thousand people surrounding a pub, chanting racist slogans at a suspected “leb” who had been chased there. Now it may not be the entire crowd but it was a fairly large chunk.
So when you claim that this mob were somehow vigillantes and “victims” you do excuse the behaviour and I will continue to find this morally repugnant
Hear, hear Steve Edney
Stripped of his pungent intellectual flatulence, Jack’s true colours are finally revealed and it ain’t a pretty sight …
Like Don Wiley, the cartoonist who draws that Non Sequitur strip in The Age, I’m starting to feel a certain nostalgia for times past when tenacity was something to be admired.
Steve Edney on 22 December 2005 at 8:48 am
They say offence is the best defence. The multiculturalists are on the defensive now, more and more intellectuals and ordinary folk are realising that they are con artists and racketeers breeding social division for a cushy job and to feed their unearned and bogus sense of self-righteousness.
I have for years been warning of the dangers of ethnic identity politics. This policy breeds ethnic violence the way nuclear explosions scatter radioactive isotopes. Now my warnings are vindicated – and I am somehow to blame! It would make more sense to charge the firebrigade with arson.
To refute Steve Edney’s wilfully obtuse and mendacious interpretation: The offensive mob were not identical to defensive vigilantes. I specifically excluded classifying the violent sections of the mob as vigilantes. It was the lifeguards/surfies who were acting as vigilantes by “organizing patrols to throw louts off the beach”. Thats why they were bashed.
My repeated use of the phrase Cronulla Bashings was in reference to those persons assaulted in the leadup to these riots. Thats why I characterised the vigilant lifeguards and outraged women as “victims”, because bashing community workers and assualting women makes them victims of crime. Capice?
(No wonder my comments are so long: detailed exposure of lies and elaborating the bleeding obvious is a painstaking and tedious chore.)
It is perverse to concentrate on a one-hit wonder riot on one side and ignore the long train of abuses that perpetrated by the other side in the lead up to this unpleasantness. Over the past few years Cronullan residents were subjected to a series of attacks by ethnic gangstas:
Maybe this sort of thing does not bother Steve Edney or Jason Soon. They have the right to be nasty, hateful and mean-spirited people. But I question the right of these people to claim the “progressive” mantle when they remain indifferent to a long series of racist and sexist outrages. Why doesnt Kate, a supposedly sturdy feminist, stick up for her oppressed sisters? I wonder why anyone take seriously her claim to be called “feminist”.
But culturally progressive people have only one kind of politically convenient victim: an ethnic client. That’s where the welfare funding, branch stacking and captive votes are to be found to “resource” their rackets.
Steve Edney says:
I can prove by quote chapter and verse that Steve Edney is lying about my attitude to mob violence. I have never claimed that the mob as a whole were vigilantes or excused any part of the mob, either “Arabic” or “Anglic”, from violence. It is a lie to suggest otherwise.
I have criticised, not condoned, violent mobsters of all ethnic persuations. Here is my plague-on-both-houses take on the rioters:
If the “progressives” had their way the police will be culturally sensitised, the locals would be disempowered and the women would be at the mercy of the gangsters. Tim Priest has exposed this part of the multicultural racket:
Rather than protect the innocent victims the “progressive” tactic is to disempower police, blame the victim and shoot the messenger. This is the main reason why local residents were up in arms. Lets hear, for a change, what they have to say:
Its not as if the incidence of ethnic gangsterism are one-off or untypical. Over the past few years there has been abundant evidence that some ethnic gangs have been rampaging accross Southern Sydney and targetting Anglo females on the basis of race. Paul Sheehan exposes the real story of ethnic racist and sexist hate crimes, and the shameful denial by cultural progressives:
That sounds just like some Larva-Prodders and Jason Soon, our resident racist and sexist hate crime deniers and belittlers. Here are some first hand reports of the kind of goings on that these dear people dont want you to think about:
Tribalism, sexism, racism. Sound familiar? There seems to be a pattern here, one that I have harped on repeatedly. So shoot me, I am the messenger.
I cannot end without a comment on the deformed moral sensibilities of my disputants. They have been nothing short of disgraceful, with blatant lying and monstrous double standards being the order of the day. They give a free pass to the instigators, and main forcers, of ethnic violence whilst vilifying reactive, short-term and low-intensity incidence of the same kind of thing from Anglo Australians. This is moral perversion, a step down from moral equivalence and “morally repugnant” allright.
You only have to consider their silence on two shocking aspects of this conflict in order to draw disturbing conclusions about defects in their character.
Where is the outrage about life-guard bashings? Life guards are considered sacred in this country. The present commenter has many times relied on the bravery and community spirit of these selfless individuals. But people like Steve Edney seem to have a tin ear to conventional moral tones.
I also question the chivalry and manhood of some of my disputants. I pity any poor female under the pusillanimous care of these “whiggish perspective” or progressive “left of centre” types. Fancy a woman being monstered by gangstas and having to rely on the likes of them for protection! Going by their excuse making and throat clearing on this score its a fair bet that they would find some reason to play down the outrage, and politely excuse themselves from the fray.
Nabakov on 22 December 2005 at 1:12 am
I am not surprised that Nabakov brings up Vyshinsky when making another one of his fact free and fanciful excursions into pixel. It is appropriate that one political hack quotes another one in the course of a hatchet job. Takes one to know one I guess.
The aptness of the reference extends to Nabakov’s political cronies. In the late seventies I read accounts of the Soviet prosecutor’s doings in Patrick O’Brien’s “The Saviours”, a history of the Australian (Old) Lefts moral disease in the Cold War. And now here we are again, discussing another example of the Australian (New) Left’s betrayal of Enlightenment ideals – this time in the Culture Wars. Nothing much has changed.
This book, and personal contact with the victims of communist tyranny, encouraged me to volunteer my services to some locally-based Slavic emigre groups. I can’t say that they helped to win the Cold War. But no one can say that they did not do their bit.
I did not do all that much. But I can at least say that I did not stand by and do nothing. My other political cahoots, who styled themselves as Leftists, blithely ignored Solidarity trade union’s cries for help.
And I am willing to bet that my puny contributions were worthier than anything Nabakov did to thwart Vyshinsky’s heirs. His Cold War effort, so far as I could see, was confined to blowing rasberries in the direction of Reagan.
And what I did I did for free. This is the kind of thing that might seem strange to a person, like Nabakov, who demands pay for speaking someone elses mind.
That book also instilled in me a life long suspicion of ostentatiously progressive political operators, the kind who have carved a comfortable niche cranking out their smelly little orthodoxies. One that the Nabakovs of this world have done nothing to allay.
Jack Strocchi on 24 December 2005 at 11:36 pm
By “low intensity” I mean few serious injuries such, as rape or murder, and negligible major property damage, such as arson. There was one significant incidence of property damage when a group of youths wielding baseball bats vandalised scores of cars in Maroubra. Apparently their associates were armed with Molotov Cocktails. And several Churches were also subtantially damaged.
And there was one life threatening injury:
This butchers bill is certainly “low intensity” by the standards of some of the ethnicly-conflicted nations that the present commenter has visited. And whose future he dearly wishes to avoid.
Of course the Cronulla riots were “high intensity” by Australian Culture War standards. It is not clear how this could possibly be, given that multiculturalism was supposed to usher in a reign of diversity celebration and community harmony.
Perhaps the shock will encourage hotheads on all sides to concentrate on the things that unite us, instead of those that divide us. The egg-heads will no doubt be the last to get it.
“And Merry Xmas to you too!” said LE, waving his latte.
No surprises here: low diversity suburbs more intolerant of multiculturalism. http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200512/s1537947.htm
So, those who actually know and mingle with other ethnic groups dont fear them, as cloistered monoculturalists do. How about that.
And Jack, Im sure the women of Australia sleep sounder at night knowing you’re out there, somewhere…
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