Take a moment to read this poem

Discussion in 'General chat' started by frosty, Dec 12, 2005.

  1. frosty

    frosty Junior Member

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    of course and just as obviously there are a few of us in WA who are not rednecks :lol:

    heuristic thanks the post from Crikey are interesting especially from such a usually right wing blog 8)

    and yes I do agree there are good and bad people on both sides but it seems the muslims are portraid as always wrong and the whiteys as always right by the mainstream media :cry:

    there are varying reports on whether to expect trouble in Perth over the weekend

    only time will tell


    frosty
     
  2. biofarmag

    biofarmag Junior Member

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    Yep. And then the moderate muslims can't get a break because of what some ratbag muslims do. And on it goes.....

    Huge danger in generalising, isn't there people? Typecasting according to someone's background, and not giving them a chance? mmmmm........reminds me of something. ("Why are you here?" = "Why don't they go back to their own country?") Might go and stir the large vat of roundup that monsanto sent me as payola........
     
  3. Guest

    The following are comms from the "eye of the storm"... The responses have been edited out, and I will leave them unidentified. I found them all worth considering.

    Dec 12 -
    The choppers are flying over the roof again, and sirens are sounding in the streets. People are walking around with weapons in hand...
    Having lived in Cronulla all my life, I am well aware of the events that have brought this to a head, wrong or right in the way todays young locals are handling it, is not for me to say. We older locals travelled the same roads years ago, although it was not reported by the media... and the cops didnt give a hoot.

    Dec 13 (1) -
    Thats the feeling around here mate, messages are being sent out left right and centre, warning people to stay away from certain shopping centres on certain days etc. Cars are still being attacked at night in the streets around my place, every now and then someone comes along the street with a weapon of some kind in the hand. Four cars last night got hit at the end of the street, and i am sure more tonight will be hit.
    Gun shots were heard last night not to far from here. Some are already talking about going away for the weekend, and as long as they don't close the place off again...I will be at work this weekend. I for one will not be doing anything different as a result of this, if and when I am confronted with no option but to make a stand, I will be doing just that, some may say it's Vigilante, but fuck em, you do what ya need to do.

    Dec 13 (2) -
    Cheers, there are a large number of young familys around here, I saw a kid this arvo to scared to walk home from the corner shop on his own - a lady took him home and calmed him down.
    It is going to get worse no doubts about that, before it gets better...the holidays this year will not be holidays for most, not to mention the kids out of school who live on the beach at this time of year. there are teenagers roaming the streets here armed with pipes and bars etc, just so they have a chance at surviving an attack, these attacks are unprovocked , quick, and they target anyone, young, old , male , female etc.

    Dec 14 -
    WE LIVE in an era in which someone else is always to blame for what ails us. So the search is on for a scapegoat for the riots and gang rampages in Sydney this week.

    Who you blame will depend largely on your personal prejudices, life experiences and the effectiveness of your grasp on reality.

    These are the prime candidates:

    1. John Howard. The Prime Minister let the "racism genie" out of the bottle with his Tampa proclamation: "We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come" being extrapolated in Cronulla to, "We will decide who comes to this beach". This particular root-cause theory, promoted by academics such as Amanda Wise, from Macquarie University's Centre for Research on Social Inclusion, holds that Lebanese Australians have been "demonised" by Howard "dog-whistling on immigration" and former Premier Bob Carr "singling out the ethnicity of rapists".

    Howard, the devil's spawn, jumped on the Pauline Hanson bandwagon by creating an atmosphere in which racist attitudes are allowed to flourish. He "alienated" Australian Muslims by joining with the United States in the war on terror, especially in the invasion of Iraq. He whipped up fear of Muslims in the rest of the community with his "emphasis on terrorism, [on] home-grown terrorism in Australia [which] has made people more worried about certain sections of society" as one reporter put it at a press conference this week.

    2. The media. Radio 2GB talk-back host Alan Jones stands accused of condoning vigilante barbarism and tacitly urging antagonism to young men of Middle Eastern descent last week before Sunday's conflagration in Cronulla. "Alan Jones's week of ranting wog-baiting which preceded the Sydney riots was ... vulgar, vicious and racist, and an unmistakable incitement to violence," is how Jones's 2UE rival Mike Carlton described it in a letter to the Crikey website yesterday. "Daily he cautioned his listeners not to take the law into their own hands, but he warmed to those who had exactly that on their minds," wrote former Media Watch presenter David Marr in this newspaper.

    The rest of the media is to blame for beating up the story in salivating anticipation of a "summer of riots". In particular, television cameras incited large congregations of young Big Brother wannabes who crave fame and understand the need for props - hence the dinky-di cricket pads and Australian flags so evident on Sunday.

    3. Inadequate law enforcement. Criminals and thugs have been emboldened by years of timid, "community-based", statistics-driven policing while ever-more draconian laws have made NSW like a police state for law-abiding citizens.

    Lenient, left-leaning, anti-police magistrates appointed by the Carr government have led to a revolving-door justice system that frustrates police .

    As one serving police officer of 17 years wrote in an open letter to the Cronulla community: "I am scared to do my job ... I totally understand why young men feel they have to take the law into their own hands. I don't trust, and have very little loyalty in, the police service and the court system."

    Political correctness has suppressed reporting of the growing problems between Lebanese Muslim youths and Cronulla locals, while allowing the problems to fester. Locals have long complained of a lack of response from police and too few officers in the area, which allowed the attack on two surf lifesavers two weeks ago.

    Ineffectual policing has led to the farcical press conference in which the Bra Boys gang of Maroubra reassured the community that they will keep them safe. What an indictment on the government's law and order strategies.

    Similar efforts by left-leaning academics, lawyers and journalists to suppress debate about the ethnically motivated gang rapes that plagued Sydney from 2000 have helped fuel the "us v them" siege mentality of whitebread Sydney. It is an inevitable consequence of ignoring and trivialising community tensions, just as Hansonism was.

    Vigilante justice, ranging from Sunday's violent mob attacks in Cronulla on random people suspected of being of "Middle Eastern" descent, to an unspoken "No Leb" rule at a number of pubs, has led to a very real sense of grievance and victimhood among young Arabic-background men.

    4. Multiculturalism. This line holds that there is an essential incompatibility of large unassimilated communities of Muslims with Australia's ostensibly Judeo-Christian culture and secular society. Against the backdrop of Australia's alliance with the US in the war against terrorism, which has been interpreted as a war against Islam, the grievances of Australian Muslims and the fear and resentment from non-Muslims has become toxic.

    5. Testosterone. Young men will continue to behave in violent ways, despite more than a generation of attempts by education authorities to stamp out these tendencies. Gang violence is a male rite of passage, from Sydney's razor gangs of the 1920s, through bodgies, widgies, mods, rockers, bikies, westies and surfies. Talk of a "clash of civilisations" is hysterical fear-mongering.

    Take your pick. There are probably elements of truth in all the arguments. But like a festering boil that needs to be lanced before healing can begin, it may have taken the ugly scenes and soul-searching of the past week to challenge people to finally reassess their own private fears and prejudices.
     
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  5. Squeak

    Squeak Junior Member

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    A beautiful poem, I thought, until I saw this line:

    Because I realised then that even this poet doesn't understand it either.
     
  6. frosty

    frosty Junior Member

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    HI squeak

    maybe you can explain why you think that ?

    I thought it was quite appropriate in the context of the paragraph

    frosty
     
  7. Squeak

    Squeak Junior Member

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    Looking at your prior posts in this thread, Frosty, you would :D

    White guilt is an American political term (hails from the civil rights movement) used in regard to white and black Americans to refer to feelings of guilt said to be experienced by some people of European descent when they consider present or past wrongs committed by their ancestors against natives of conquered and colonised lands. It's a term that reflects a lack of authority based on skin colour and is often used as a power tactic or point scorer in the American landscape.

    So when one considers that the poem apparently refers to the disaster known as 9/11 as well as humanity's inhumane practices toward itself, it seems proposterous to me that colour lines should have any bearing. Considering again that the poet is Latino (and identifies himself as such), has no connection with the civil rights movement or the Black American populace, one would be right in asking themselves just where the term is relevant and just who "his people" actually are. Indeed this then leads to the question as to why he chooses to politicise grief as such before arriving at the conclusion that the poet simply does not understand the concept of what is simply a universal feeling with varied expression. Like the interesting and somewhat contradictory title of the poem ("Not In My Name" - referring to a political movement opposing US involvement in Iraq), perhaps in order for it to make sense to him finds the need to categorise it and does so using the predictably explosive race card.

    What a pity then for me is that he uses a term he obviously does not understand because, other than that, I think it's a good poem.
     
  8. frosty

    frosty Junior Member

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    thanks squeak

    I had no idea it was A US political term :oops: I just took it at face value ....... I am white and I feel guilty about the way whites are wreaking the planet ........ and as well the terrible way latinos are treated by the US

    I am trying to remember how I came to get this poem ......... it was very shortly after the sept 11th "event" and I am fairly sure it was posted on the No US bases list ......... this is a list made up of peopels from all over the world who are living in communities suffering illness and environmental destruction due to US bases and training ..........

    there are a lot of people of latino background and maybe you know of the horrifiic situation US training caused on the Puerto rican island of vieques ? nearly 70% of the 9000 people have some kind of sickness attributed to military training and there is hardly a family hasnt lost at least 1 member ........ and the worst effected are the children .........

    I just took the poem as an extension of their feelings :? maybe I was wrong

    but it certainly reflects my feelings about the US and the way they reacted (or overreacted ) to sept 11th :evil: and the way their military is marauding arround the world killing people in the millions and yet americans on the whole just dont care ........ they only care when a comparatively few americans die

    frosty
     
  9. Squeak

    Squeak Junior Member

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    There may be a few things I may feel guilt for but being white is not one of them. Environmental destruction is a global responsibility - from the highest ivory tower to the blokes chopping down trees in the Amazon forest...as is the care of the person. Plenty of people are ill treated all over world irrespective of their country, colour, creed or background. What may seem like a large number up close is but a drop in the ocean when compared on a world scale.

    I mean we could refer to Chinese dying rooms where toddlers are left tied to beds and left to die solely because they are born girls, or the burgeoning sex slave industry which highly prizes caucasian women - usually from the Balkans - on the black market, live export to the Middle East where sheep and cattle are brutally slain by ignorant butchers or all the various ways that animals suffer, trees die, waterways polluted, the list goes on. If anything, it's here were permaculture offers hope, a chance for people like you and me to make a difference in the world by using our environment in way that adds good rather than continually takes away from.

    There are a lot of militaries around the place doing the wrong thing and plenty of kids dying. Thing is, whether it's one life, the 3,000 that died in the Twin Towers, the scores that were gunned down in Beslan or the hundreds of thousands that were massacred in Rwanda, Sierra Leone or Iraq, all losses are tragic. Yes, we heard a lot about 9/11 but let's not forget that much of this was media fed as were the endless stories and constant rehashing after the Bali Bombings. People grieve as they feel fit and then they move on - it's the media that often won't let go.

    I wasn't saying you were wrong about anything. I was just answering your query as to why I responded in the manner I did, that's all. And that doesn't mean I'm right :D
     
  10. frosty

    frosty Junior Member

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    and I likewise wasnt saying my opinion is right I was just interested in your pont of view :D thanks squeak

    frosty
     

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