I guess I should say I’ve been away over the festy sleazon. I’ll answer comments when I get back. I really do appreciate the interaction with everyone who takes a moment to post a comment here.
Enjoy your state and capital enforced holy daze, y’all!
One family’s beautiful beach life robbed of innocence
Not that this is news, but the journos at the smh consider it worthy of printing anyway. One woman describes her horror that her son would be drawn to spectate of beach riots, but ultimately lays blame for the riots at he feet of ‘young lebanese men’. Curiously enough, the 5000 white race-rioters remain blameless.
“I’ve been shocked and surprised by what I’ve seen,” she says.
Despite her amazement at the scale and viciousness of the recent confrontations, Ms Iredaou says tension has been building on the beach for some time.
Her son, Matthew, is a junior lifeguard and has often experienced the anti-social behaviour that some locals say groups of young Lebanese men are bringing to the foreshore.
“It’s their complete arrogance and disregard for the rules that most of us follow at the beach,” she says.
“You don’t kick balls at people, you swim between the flags, you don’t call girls by disgusting names.”
My favourite bit is where the journo has to explain this woman’s local connections. I for one, was fooled by her ‘foreign-sounding’ name. I thought this might be a story about how an innocent family got assaulted by racists after going for a dip. Rest assured, its actually about a “fit and tanned”, very local, PE teacher.
Ms Iredaoe, 51, has lived in Cronulla for two decades, moving here after growing up on the sands around Bondi in Sydney’s east. Fit and tanned, she teaches physical education at nearby Kirrawee High School and lives with her son Matthew and daughter Jamie, at Wanda, just north of Cronulla beach.
The smh is offering a soapbox to racial bigotry by running these puff pieces where “locals” vent at “lebs” in their own words.
Autonoumous self-organising of the class
The “Beach Riots” of recent days might put paid to the fantasy that the Australian working class might spontaneously rise up and overthrow their masters without much intervention from vanguardists. Its clear that when Australia errupts, it is with a flare of racist bigotry. The “reputable dailies” fan the flames, and offer a soapboax to white racists by contruing them as “locals” (not racists) who “confront” (not bash) “muslims” (not locals). The majority of photos published show arabs beinfg arrested, and whites in the full glory of the fray. No-ne seems to mind mangling history when racists talk of “defending these beaches…like our grandfathers did”. Actually, our grandfathers fought over beaches is Turkey, to defend our colonial master’s interests.
Saint John Howard’s biggest coup is convincing these young racists that their racism is right, is sanctified and is supported by a friendly government. When the working class errupts, it is against itself, not the government who orchestrates and condones racist violence; not against a government who has pursued a war on the working class for 9 years, and counting; not against the bosses who gladly institute the minimum wage.
There is no better argument to organise that this: the spontaneous radicalisation of the working class will fixate on any convenient scapegoat, not necessarily on those who actually perpertrate oppression against them on a daily basis.
I feel sick, yet its like watching a train wreck. I’m transfixed. I’m reading about execution on Death Penalty Info, an american website about the death penalty. They go through all the methods, and means of death. I suppose the americans think they’re so superior because they no longer have beheadings or stoning. A small concession that’s quite meaningless.
An australian is about to be executed tomorrow in Singapore. We’re all talking about it in the media and in the lunchrooms because he’s an Ozzie, and that’s more meaningful than all the other executions that happen every day. He smuggled heroin. The argument is that his death is required to mollify the 2600 other possible deaths that herion might have caused had it found its way to the street. There’s been a division in the Australian popular media about whether he should die or live. On the one hand, australians are eager to demonise asians. On the other, we despise heroin sellers even more than we despise herion addicts.
What resonates with me is how awful, how barbaric and deliberate execution is. How can we treat death like its politics? How is it fair to cut a life short? Whether its a ‘humane’ method or not doesn’t matter. Most people don’t want to die if they can help it. The very concept of execution is inhumane. I can’t understand how it can be argued that killing another person can be worth it.
