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If you've got Google Earth installed, you can click here to download a location file that'll open the program and go to Cronulla. It's not like it's the middle of nowhere, or even as isolated as some town further down the coast.
(The Maroubra Boys, or the 'Bra Boys, are a mostly Anglo surfie-beach gang, who got involved in some of the violence last night.)
For more info on the "Bra Boys", there's a transcript from an episode of Australian Story to be found here. The show pitched them, in some way, as a bigger brother kind of organisation, but they seemed dodgy as fuck to me.
That Anglo-Australian men gang rape, and have done for years, is rarely used to contextualise these incidents.
Whenever the topic is brought up, I note the lack of mention of the recent Bulldogs event.
Additionally, without dismissing the seriousness of multiple sexual assaults, I find it intriguing that people get whipped up over them, and yet pretty much ignore standard, one-on-one sexual assaults, which happen every day.
I've seen on other messageboards, someone spreading postings about how they'd "heard from a mate who was at the scene" about how a 15-year-old was meant to pack-raped by a bunch of Lebanese youths who'd written "Lebo cum whore" on her back. It was written so stupidly, and with such conspiracy-theory bullshit that I took it as merely the evidence of an attempt at creating a workable urban myth, but the bitterness and obvious racial slurring intent in its authorship really shocked me.
There's some good information about the Immigration Restriction Act to be found here, if you're curious. Immigration Australia's factsheet on same's abolition is here.
My partner makes the point that there's not much difference in the anti-female sentiment that the Lebanese youths are supposedly bringing to the beaches and the anti-female sentiment that exists in anglo grommets and waxheads. She grew up on Sydney's northern beaches area, and says that the amount of shittalking and abuse that women have to put up with from the people who're supposedly playing the role of defenders here is the same as you'd get from any other group. Being a cock, obviously, isn't something any racial group has a hammerlock on.
Last week the talkback host who first publicised the 'leb and wog bashing day' text then encourages callers who said they would take the law into their own hands.
There's talk that that talkback host - Alan Jones, the smug fuck - could be charged under the strengthened sedition provisions in law. I fervently pray that it's true.
I might be giving Howard too much credit - and I think the guy's pure poison for Australia - but I think that he honestly is naive about how people react. That's why he said Australia wasn't racist - because he can't fathom how anyone could be. It's the same tack that was used in the recent Industrial Relations reforms, which effectively put the kybosh on unfair dismissal claims and other workers' rights - in all the grilling I saw on TV and read in press, he wouldn't concede that an employer would use their power to strongarm employees into signing individual workplace agreements as he couldn't see when they'd need to.
I think he needs to speak to anyone who's ever had a job while at uni.
But there we have it - I think he may be just hopelessly naive about the feelings of people. It's all I can think of, short of rampant stupidity, for his claiming that racism doesn't exist here. It does, John, and your government has a bit of a say in it. But then, he hasn't expressed any real sentiments about the National Front-esque groups that tagged along on the riot day...
Midnight Oil, Redneck Wonderland. Frenzal Rhomb, Racist. Sad but true. |
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