Here in Australia last January an Aboriginal elder was pulled over in a country town for drunk driving. This guy wasn't some loser lowlife, he was a respected member of the community who had been invited to address Parliament on indigenous people's issues and who had recently been part of the Australian delegation to a land management conference in China. And he'd had too much to drink and got behind the wheel of a car. Silly fellow.

But Mr Ward was Aboriginal.

So he was thrown in jail without bail - hell, without even being CHARGED - and the next morning he was handed over to a "private security contractor" (ahh, what a wonderful phrase) for transportation to Kalgoorlie jail 400km away, where presumably after having already been in custody for a day he would actually be charged with something or maybe even get to talk to a lawyer or make a phone call.

So Mr Ward was chucked in an unventilated metal "security compartment" in the back of a van and driven 400km through the fucking outback in fucking January with no air and no water, so Mr Ward got cooked to death. Tests showed the metal of the compartment in which he'd been confined reached 56 degrees, and that the air temperature in the box would have reached 47 degrees by the end of the first hour of the four-hour journey. The two guards driving the van later admitted that they heard some noise from the back, but you know, whatever.

So when they arrived at Kalgoorlie they unloaded a dead lump of cooked meat, a lump that had experienced third-degree burns wherever he had come in contact with the metal of the box in which he'd been locked before he died.

The guards received no disciplinary action because they hadn't breached any company policies or procedures. Translation: just a fucking nigger, who gives a shit.

Mr Ward was probably on his way to rape some white girl. It's a good thing they locked him up in time!

oh man, that's disgusting. Had an aboriginal film director over for dinner recently. A few stories she had to tell would drive someone insane or to homicide. Poor buggers :(

Not even close.

Given the attitudes I've encountered from Aussies towards Abos, I'd have to disagree.

Yeah how bout those riots in Onehunga!

Or was it Cronulla?

Sheesh, I'd forgotten how everything has to spelled out so explicitly.

For the record: Racism is ingrained at such a deep level in almost every aspect of Australian society that Australians don't even notice it. It's fucking unreal. It's the sort of place where Aussie Joe Sixpack could say something like "I'm not racist, I just think Abos are shit" without a trace of irony. I wouldn't go so far as to call myself well-travelled, but of the places I've been Australia is the most racist by a factor of a bajillion.

Ah well don't be so subtle next time! :D

yeah my dad works in aussie, and hes a bit of an old schooler (says things like "jungle music" when referring to rap etc) and even he cant stand how racist aussies are.

cynos- could have just read it, you know, as it was written.

Funnily enough I know someone that went to Aussie and had problems with racism - and he isn't black. He is a NZer with Italian blood and Aussies were telling him to go back to Iraq and calling him a raghead. I suspect that Aussies are both racist and not too smart.

Australia can't even manage anti-racism without being racist.


in all fairness, it is a pretty lol image though.

Perhaps it needs to be updated to say "Racism - There's no excuse! Unless they're Asian."

Is it that far away from Thomas "All men are created equal, now who wants to buy a slave" Jefferson?

It's not seen as racism if it's 'normal'

And in today's news...

Channel Nine cameraman taunts Arab Australian for being a "fucking terrorist"
Analysis from Mediawatch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4xwhhnaEBQ

Italics mine.

I concur with the above. Australia is without doubt the most racist, xenophobic country I've experienced.

'Oh we're multi cultural'. Yeah, whatever, that just gives the white aussies more people to hate.

Do the white aussies chicks love the brown man like they do in NZ? Breeding out the racism ftw.

And in today's news...

Member of the Queensland Young Liberal National Party expelled after calling Barack Obama a monkey

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2...16/2875124.htm

Italics mine.

I am not a racist but...
 

Further to discussions about racism in Australia, I met a whole bunch of examples on Saturday when I went to hit up my local MP about the Labor Party's Internet censorship plan. The whole experience was so fucking weird I did something I've never done before.

I blogged about it.

See, I'm hip. I'm down with this Internet stuff. (picture Dr Evil doing the Macarena)

http://www.simongarlick.net/deep-in-...th-tony-zappia

You have a blog?!

Well, I do now :) it was a hosting account that I use for playing with Wordpress so I just pointed a domain at it.

OIC, since march! I shall keep this in mind for perusing when bored at work. Like now.

There's no such thing as too muck Garlick!

Little bit sensationalist on the "Subtext: wild assumption" comments, no?
Is it totally unreasonable to think that they may have genuine non-racist reasons to be bringing up those issues or are nationalism and racism the same thing?

For every one of my trite bulletpoints imagine that there was about ten minutes of discussion. Almost every speaker eventually used the words "the Asians" or "China" or "the Chinese". Although I think the guy complaining about outsourcing also bitched about Indians.

nationalism for a country that was founded by forced immigrants a couple hundred years ago?

Yeah. But they're white immigrants!

and criminals !

Well for readers, without hearing the discussion, it kind of reads like you're assuming a bit much.
And also, without hearing their arguments, I have had plenty of discussions with older people who use labels like "The Asians" without intending to be racist or derogatory at all. They're just still functioning as they were in a time where cultural sensitivity wasn't as ridiculously rampant as it is now. I must have heard industry old buggers say "The Asians are bloody good at producing [insert product]" more than a few times. Does it sound rough these days? Yeah. Did he mean anything bad by it? No. Is he racist because he said it that way? Fuck no.

At least the MP engages the public. I can't ever remember receiving an invitation for such a thing in the many places I've lived in NZ.. does anyone else?

That's alright. White criminals only commit petty crimes. Darks are murderers and rapists and aggravated robbers etc!


My only problem with overseas investment is that profits always seem to go out of the country and never reinvested into the company that made them. I don't care if coons/yellows/wogs etc own the company, just don't suck it for profit and then close it when the well runs dry. But then, I'm no expert in the matter so I'm open to enlightenment.

Or worse - screws! (prison guards)

AB - great write - up

...... and vote......

and that's why sometimes "1 person, 1 vote" is, well, possibly up for debate.

Keep it up if you can be arsed, I appreciated that post.

It's pretty routine in pre-election time to have MP's hold meetings in town halls/schools/churches etc. to meet the people they want to vote for them.

Also I believe Grey Power and the Winston Party used to do this sort of get together (actually, they were pretty racist too...)

I hope that you informed them that despite their good intentions the terms are racist. That way their ignorance won't be an excuse next time.

Well in this case I was there, and trust me... they were being racist. And of course, this being Australia, the speakers saw nothing wrong with it.