âWhen an Arab torches a school, it's rebellion. When a white guy does it, it's fascism,â says French-Jewish philosopher, Alain Finkielkraut. His observation vis-Ã -vis the riots in France has been validated by the coverage of the ârace riotsâ in Australia. These began in Cronulla, south of Sydney, and soon spread to other beach suburbs, where Anglo-Aussies descended on âpeople of Arabic and Mediterranean backgroundâ in a territorial display of fury.
Hardly a dog of a commentator missed the opportunity to lift his leg in protest against the âwhite teenagersâ and the âracist white mobs.â However, they quickly resumed racially neutral languageâand the passive voiceâwhen Arabs were implicated. Thus BBC News reported that âa man [Anglo] was stabbed in the back [by a Lebanese] in south Sydney.â
Yes, the Anglosâalso the blokes whose Anglo-Celtic forefathers established Australiaâs political order and âcivic cultureââwere not described as disenfranchised or alienated. Such existential exigencies are the exclusive preserve of the âLebsâ (Lebanese, in local parlance). Or of Franceâs Noble Savages. In the latterâs case, it took the âmullahs of the mediaâ a good week before they deigned to mention the riotersâ ethnic identity. And even then, reporting was saturated with Rousseauian reverence.
Nor were experts on hand in TV studios or over op-ed pages to âanalyzeâ what might have âdrivenâ young surfer Aussies to alight on the "Lebs" with such anger.
Buried in the clucking about âwhite racist gangsâ were a few richly revealing words, a hint at the straw that broke the koalaâs back: Lebanese had brutally beat two Cronulla lifeguards. The Australian says lifesavers âepitomize Australiaâs white traditions and Anglo-Saxon roots.â Other provocations: Lebanese were in the habit of loitering around bikini-clad white girls, calling them prostitutes and exhorting them to âcover up,â as have they been implicated in a string of racially motivated, gang-rapes of young white girls. The presence among Anglo-Aussies of a camarilla of Sami Al-Arians has done nothing to ease coexistence. Ditto the memory of the 2002 Bali bombing, in which approximately 160 Australians were slaughtered.
For fingering the French rioters as âblacks or Arabs with a Muslim identity,â latte sippers across the Continent labeled Finkielkraut, Europeâs leading conservative philosopher, the "new neo-reactionary.â (Entre nous: Iâd garner the same honorific for my roundup on Franceâs rioters). He had pointed outâand provenâthat the rioters were staging an anti-republican pogrom, rooted in a fundamental hatred of France and the French. Rioters had raged to the sounds of Monsieur Râs rapper âlyricsâââI piss on France,â he rapped, and they did. But did the cognoscenti condemn this racial hatred? Not on your life.
Freedom of speech is heavily proscribed in Europe and Australia. Aussies and Europeans can end up jailed and jobless for mouthing about Muslims (but not the reverse). So Finkielkraut recanted (and Oriana Fallaci fled).
As in France, Australiaâs Muslims have inflicted on their hosts harm that exceeds by far the scratches and other scurrilities they suffered from the surfers. Soon after the riots erupted, a Uniting Church hall adjacent to a mosque was burned to the ground and four churches in Sydney's southwest were attacked. A Catholic Archbishop has had to entreat Middle Easterners not to target Christmas celebrations, after these hoodlums threatened, spat on, and shot at parents and kids who convened to sing carols at a primary school in western Sydney.
Decades of indoctrination by the âmanagerial professional elitesâ were supposed to emasculate the surfer dudes for good. They were expected to toke it up or turn the other cheek. Instead, they fought back against what they perceive as a threat to their land and life.
A threat that commenced approximately 40 years ago, when Australian central planners decided in favor of mass importation of immigrants from the Third World. Hitherto, a limited and selective immigration policy had guaranteed newcomers reinforced the ethnic and cultural composition of the founding folk. If this sounds familiar, itâs because âCamelot knight-errantâ Ted Kennedy engineered a similar coup in the United States.
The statist revolution was (and still is) directed from above by a treacherous political class which has shared the ideological cockpit with âintellectualsâ (a misnomer, if ever there was one), who hate their countryâs history and inhabitants (aboriginals excluded). This hatred has fueled their quest to marginalize North-Western Europeans, whose âcultureâ has facilitated âthe fundamental constitutional norms associated with the rule of law, representative government and individual rights,â to quote Andrew Fraser (now banned in Oz).
An 18-year-old Anglo, wearing mirrored sunglasses and a baseball cap, arrived on the beachfront riding an undersized push-bike. As he sifted a fistful of sand through his fingers, he told âThe Australianâ:
âThis is what we're fighting for. Like our fathers, our grandfathers, fought for these beaches and now it's our turn.â
More bathos than pathos, perhaps. But not half bad, considering this parting shot comes from someone who was raised on a diet of state-sponsored multiculturalism and cultural relativism, and who has been taught to hate his heritage.
Posted by: ed ||
12/19/2005 09:10 ||
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The other day, the deputy commander of the Peshmerga, the Kurdish militia, explained in his wistful Kurdish that "the Kurds and the Arabs are as different as the mountains and the stones." I had three-and-a-half hours to think about that as I drove through Piramagrun Mountains from the dusty and polluted Kurdish city of Irbil to the equally dusty town of Sulemaniya.
The road winds past ruins of an ancient civilization. Kurds will remind you that civilization started here, and that the mud-colored citadel of Irbil is the longest continuously inhabited settlement in the world - some 8,000 years. The car: A 1990 Chevy Caprice locals call "Dolphin" due to its porpoise-shape and perhaps due to its reliability. There was a glut of these cars just before the 1991 Gulf War, and the V8 beasts chug on.
The narrow roads, considered fair-to-good by Iraqi standards, are cluttered with oil tankers heading into Iraq from Turkey or Iran. They either smuggle oil one way or another or bring back gasoline after it is refined in Turkey. Insurgents have badly damaged Iraq's oil refinery capacity. And Iraqis are left wondering how it is that a country with 12% of the world's oil has spotty electricity and interminable lines at the fuel pump.
Our "Dolphin" dodges a lazy flock of goats, several exhausted donkeys and beat up cars crawling along the road. We loop north and then head east to avoid Kirkuk, a mixed Arab and Kurdish city now in the gun sights of insurgents. The Kurds want it, partly because the oil fields in its environs spurt out 30% of Iraq's oil. The rest of the country wants to keep it as part of Iraq.
Kurdish guards hold key checkpoints flipping through passports they can't read. After a good long peruse they ask the driver "what nationality." The answer: "America." Camouflage caps pressed on heads, and vests filled with AK-47 magazines corseted around their midsection, they grunt a greeting and wave us on.
The moonscape that scorches most of Iraq, deadly boring stretches of tan dirt, is broken by the sweep of hills. This is my fifth time to Iraq and this is the first hill worth the name. They grow into huge steeples, massive cathedrals of geology for which the Kurds are so thankful and prideful. The mountains, with their caves and streams, have sheltered them over the generations. Those mountains are likely the reason the Kurds - the world's largest stateless people - have survived.
The road and the scenery are a relief from the rest of Iraq. Kurdistan is known as Iraq's paradise and there are still Christian missionaries here that hope to find the Garden of Eden tucked among these hills. The dun colored hills become craggier the farther east we trek. Spiny scrubgrass gives way to scrub trees, and an occasional grapevine. We pass a dam, and leafy oaks beside the castle of Jalal Talabani, president of Iraq, and head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan at the quaint village of Kala Chualan. He had expropriated one of Saddam's many palaces. On the banks of the river, into which men take their cars to wash as if they were dirty beasts of burden, hotels boast modular homes offering views of the river for Iraq's rich. "They cost $70 per night," my driver says and then whistles. Most Iraqis make about $250 a month.
Both places are unique in the world. Kurdistan is the only place in the world that I've been in since the start of the war, where saying one is American is rewarded with a toothy grin and sometimes a: "I love Gorge Booosh."
Coalition troops are rarely seen in either city. Kurdish Peshmerga or members of the Kurdish internal security service, the Asa'ish, line the streets.
During the mass celebrations throughout the week, in the honking snarl of SUVs and sedans charging through Sulimaniya streets, some of the vehicles bore something unusual: American flags.
It is a romp through this city that makes foreigners wonder: All this for elections they haven't even won?
In many ways Kurdistan represents the future of Iraq and some of its unbearable past. A nation of people with few exports, save for massive amounts of oil, living in relative security under a strongman leader; in the case of Sulimaniya, Jalal Talabani, who is also head of the PUK, which controls the eastern part of Kurdistan and is president of Iraq. (It all sounds very complicated, but the Kurds have been living with the internal disunity for decades. It is said that the British wanted to grant them a state after WWI, but instead handed it to the Sunni Arabs, who for the time being were able to organize themselves instead of squabble.)
Tellingly, Talabani is called "Mum Jalal," (Uncle Jalal) by his people. Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, and the strong man leader of the western part of Kurdistan, ruled by the KDP, is called "Kak Massoud," (Big Brother Massoud.) But in fairness, every man in Kurdistan calls comrades "Kak."
Photographs or posters of the leaders adorn every shop, every public institution and much empty wall space. One wonders if they were pasted into the same picture frames or bare wall spaces once occupied by Saddam with his Cheshire grin.
It is a place in which for now, these people, who have spent the better part of a century hiding and running, fighting and dying in these hills, are simply happy to speak their language, listen to their music and daydream about their legendary fighters in peace. In one of the cacophonic celebrations ahead of the polls, one man who might have had a drink or two in him - in Sulimaniya one can buy booze on the street in broad daylight - marveled that children were out, enjoying, celebrating their freedom from tyranny. For the Kurds, especially those in the relatively affluent city of Sulimaniya, rejoicing is in vogue. They even got a six-day holiday to properly celebrate the elections.
As opposed to other parts of Iraq, people here are free to criticize the government. Aram Rabia, 20, from Sulimaniya, gaped at the procession of flags, SUV's and posters of "Mum Jalal."
"What is all this, what is it for?" he asked. With hundreds of Kurds around him he openly criticized the government, knowing he would be safe doing so. Under Saddam's regime, children ratted on parents. My translator once joked that Iraqis were so used to getting governmental permission for the smallest things, that some wondered if they needed it to sleep with their wives.
Young Aram did not think the elections deserved such a celebration. And he didn't vote.
In the new Iraq, in these mountains, that's his right.
Posted by: Steve ||
12/19/2005 15:14 ||
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In which the father of the World Wide Web takes one of the toys out for a spin. We all owe him a great debt of gratitude; and please, keep the AlGore jokes to a minimum. (Via LGF):
In 1989 one of the main objectives of the WWW was to be a space for sharing information. It seemed evident that it should be a space in which anyone could be creative, to which anyone could contribute. The first browser was actually a browser/editor, which allowed one to edit any page, and save it back to the web if one had access rights.
Strangely enough, the web took off very much as a publishing medium, in which people edited offline. Bizarely, they were prepared to edit the funny angle brackets of HTML source, and didn't demand a what you see is what you get editor. WWW was soon full of lots of interesting stuff, but not a space for communal design, for discource through communal authorship.
Now in 2005, we have blogs and wikis, and the fact that they are so popular makes me feel I wasn't crazy to think people needed a creative space. In the mean time, I have had the luxury of having a web site which I have write access, and I've used tools like Amaya and Nvu which allow direct editing of web pages. With these, I haven't felt the urge to blog with blogging tools. Effectively my blog has been the Design Issues series of technical articles.
That said, it is nice to have a machine [d]o the administrative work of handling the navigation bars and comment buttons and so on, and it is nice to edit in a mode in which you can [d]o limited damage to the site. So I am going to try this blog thing using blog tools. So this is for all the people who have been saying I ought to have a blog.
Posted by: ed ||
12/19/2005 09:14 ||
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#1
Statements like this encourage not only the massacre of Jews and their holy sites, but also are responsible for the mass murder of Christians and the razing of churches worldwideâin Indonesia, Pakistan, Sudan and Nigeriaâwhich happens in in 83% of nations with Muslim majorities, according to Tom Barrett in American Daily.
Â
To remedy the situation, the UNâas well as all other international organizationsâshould sanction all the countries that do not allow religious freedom and withdraw all membership privileges of all the countries that do not provide legal protection and equal rights to all their citizens.
I'm confident that our sun will explode before the UN ever gets around to sanctioning any countries that obstruct religious freedom.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
