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Right, so we've moved from contesting that an assault on a lifeguard did happen, which until recently you vehemently denied was the case, to contesting whether the riots were a reaction to that assault?
We haven't moved anywhere. I said on the 6th February of this year:
First up, NSW crime reports do not reference the racial origin of the alleged perpetrators. So, one could say factually that there had been an increase in crime reports of verbal and physical harassment - whether that was a statement of true fact could then be examined from police reports. I am not sure how many weeks you include in "the weeks leading up to the riot", since you were using a fictitious set of sexual attacks based on something that happened four years previously as an example of a recent flashpoint.
The statement that these culminated - that is, reached their peak - in an attack on a volunteer lifesaver again looks like a fact. However, is there a crime report? Is there an official report of any kind? As far as one can ascertain, there was a fight between a group of young men on one side and a smaller group of lifesavers on the other. However, the run-up to it, the cause of the fight... these are not clear. There's quite an interesting bit in the Four Corners Programme transcript about how the runours proliferated - the lifesavers stepped in to prevent an Australian woman being harassed, the lifesavers were attacked after saving the life of a Muslim woman by a crowd of Lebanese men outraged that she had touched her, and so on.
So, again, I think you're taking "accepted wisdom" as historical fact, without taking into account that your own filters are determining what wisdom you find acceptable.
I believe you get very upset when you feel that people are not reading your posts holistically, so I'm not sure where to go with that one. In light of that, I am going to respond to your post here in its entirety, FYI.
I guess there's no way of proving that the riots were a culmination of events.
It is also awkward when you don't read your own posts. You said:
In the weeks leading up to the riot there had been an increasing incidence of groups of young Lebanese men attending the beach and verbally and physically abusing "Aussies" particularly young women. This culminated in an assault on a volounteer lifesaver at the beach.
This is the use of "culminate" being questioned. So, the next section:
But unless we draw a fairly reasonable conclusion that the riots were a culmination of these events, which are well enough documented, then the only conclusion we're left with is to assume that the riots were completely spontaneous and had nothing to do with the incidence, perceived or otherwise, of crimes being perpetrated by young men of Lebanese descent at that time.
Is not relevant.
Bare in mind that this perception had some basis in fact if we accept that the conviction of 14 men of gang rape, the conviction arising from an assault on a lifeguard, and the establishment of a police task force to deal with the issue of "Middle Eastern crime" actually occurred, post riot or not.
Oh dear. 9 convictions, 14 charges. Being charged is not in itself a proof of guilt. Being convicted, for that matter, is not always a proof of guilt, but certainly charge+Lebanese != guilty. We have the conviction, certainly, but you seem to have forgotten what Task Force Gain is up to again. Let's go back to your quote:
"I am advised that current planning will see a core group of about 60 detectives deployed as a central unit of Task Force Gain. In addition, 20 target action group officers will continue to operate with the task force to address the identified organised crime groups and increase the focus on mid-level drug trade. The task force will continue to operate with its Arabic translators and interpreters, and a new 30-member target action group, focusing on street to mid-level drug trafficking, will be attached to the greater metropolitan region. As well as that, a 30-member high-visibility, high-impact policing unit comprising uniformed officers will operate from the south-western under the control of the operations manager of the greater metropolitan region and be on hand to provide the muscle when Task Force Gain asks for it.
As I have said previously, Gain stage three will pave the way for a permanent State Crime Command squad, targeting the same types of crime that led us to establish Task Force Gain 12 months ago. That squad—currently slated as the Middle Eastern Organised Crime Squad—will become the tenth State Crime Command specialist unit."
Organised crime. Mid-level drugs trafficking. Not, as far as I can tell, Lebanese beach hassle.
Whether, at the time, the issue was hearsay is moot. Because the fact is that that "hearsay" turned out to be factually correct do a large degree. Remember, we're not talking about crimes in the dead of night with few or no witnesses here, we're talking about assaults on a busy beach in broad daylight with tens of witnesses.
Well, hearsay involved a series of contradictory accounts. Ergo, "hearsay" could not have turned out to be factually correct to a large degree. For example, the hearsay that the gang were attacking lifesavers attempting to save a Lebanese woman turned out, I believe, to be incorrect. However, if your argument is that there was enough factual accuracy to the rumours to explain the race riots then fair enough - I don't really have a metric there.
I really don't want to get involved in the whole "Cronullagate" thing again, because I understand that the riot was racist. Like I've said, I was intending to put a different perspective on it, not justify anyone's actions, and frankly, if I get accused of racism one more time, I'll break some valuable computer equipment.
You know, having people talk about the racist assumptions inherent in one's beliefs really isn't that bad a thing. For example, the jump from "charged" to "convicted" of those 14 chaps above - simple factual error? Factual error facilitated by inherent attitudes? There's scope, I think, for looking at this and things like it in terms of what might be going on below the surface. As has already been said, there's a difference between "you are a racist" and "there's some stuff there which I think might be flavoured by unspoken attitudes to race".
My apology for my posts that could have been taken in a racist context are sincere. It seems like people are taking that interpretation, formulating an opinion on what sort of person I am, and projecting it onto the consent debate. Which is fair enough in some ways I guess. I'm just asking people to isolate the issues and take each at it's own merit.
Well, I think the issue at present is the "women lie"iness of the consent discussion, and whether such statements should be protected by a polite tone. It's hard never to think about what someone has said or done previously when responding to what they are saying now, especially when they appear to interact in awkward ways. I think, though, that this is the issue that is being isolated.
As for any breach of Godwin's Law, why is my transgression more heinous than that of others?
That's a fair question. Generally, he who casts the first Godwin has to expect a degree of shoutiness, but you're quite right that it was unhelpful to call you a neo-Nazi on the strength of the available evidence, and indeed to call you a fascist, since we weren't talking about your political views.
On preview:
The first reason probably being that I never made such an outlandish proposition! I should bloody-well hope I wouldn't be banned!
You said:
I agree wholeheartedly that most women would not wish to go through the trauma of a frivolous rape case. But this may well be because of the current difficulty of such a case. Were such cases to become "easier" would this situation change? I don't know. The point is that law must be as watertight as possible, even if we all know it never reaches the point of impermeableness
This is my point - you keep suggesting that maybe - just maybe, I don't knowm, who knows, really, what motivates the heart of that varium et semper mutabile creature, mulier - the only way to stop a statistically significant number of women from waking up after a drunken night next to some wowzer and thinking that the only way to protect their reputation would be to drag said wowzer and themselves into the courts is to make it difficult for charges to be brought on these grounds.
As has been pointed out repeatedly, this is essentially saying that legislation should take into account that women lie, and that women's mendacity is such a force that it needs to be controlled by the legislature. This seems to me rather like saying that because a shopkeeper can throw a brick through his or her own shop window, one should not legislate to make the throwing of brick through a window a justifiable place to start charges of vandalism, since shopkeepers could do it themselves to avoid admitting that their window display was unattractive, and that it was their own fault for arranging it that way when they were a few sheets to the wind. Except it isn't like saying that, because it's about women being raped. This basic point tends towards undermining the reception of your other arguments, such as the one that establishing reasonable doubt about cognitive impairment would collapse a rape prosecution (which I think is problematic in itself, but, as I just said, it's not somewhere I want to go from here).
So, yes. Like that, basically. Back on your original post:
To be honest, debate about "flamings" probably isn't really helpful to anybody. So we should probably leave it there and make out a commitment to carry out any further debate in a more mature way. Which, quite frankly, whether you agree with my posts or not, was happening quite well (in my opinion) in the "Consent" thread. I think that if you have a look at my history on Barb that I have been the subject of many, many accusations and character assassinations. Surely those points have been well enough made by now? Surely we can move on?
This is a tricky one, because you can't compel reception. What you see as accusation and character assassinations others may see as accusations and character assessments. One of the sad things about life is that one simply cannot draw a line on something and expect nobody to step over it. If you want people who refer back to previous behaviour to be disciplined, we could certainly moot that in Policy, but I don't think it would go very far. Your feelings of victimhood and injustice may or may not be shared. Likewise the model of maturity being put forward - where, again, maturity may mean radically different things to different people.
As for putting together thread about the "Stolen Generation" and the apology, go ahead! It would make for an interesting conversation!
Thanks, but after the morass of "Is Australia etc", I don't think I have the resolve.
Anyway, I'm off. This is not a profitable use of time. Stick around for a while, fungus, and you'll get grandfathered, and the people who might raise objections will probably leave, so you're all right. |
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