"Busy as a Blue-Arsed Fly"

[tcpip]

Apart from a veritable mountain of webdevelopment that I have to complete this week (currently half way through a 75 page site), tonight I also have to go to Boronia to do after-hours network forensics. In the meantime, have completed a draft of Tax Reform Australia. Please feel free to read, elaborate, criticise and, if you agree, join. Also managed to do a Tetum health booklet translation for Accents Ireland. Haven't slept much in the past few days.

Software Freedom Day was a big success; the Box Hill TAFE event apparently went well, as did the Melbourne Town Hall event and the Distribution Walk was completed within an hour. For our part, the Install Fest attracted roughly thirty people all told, including a couple of total novices.

Ran Cybernoia on Sunday; player-characters had been kidnapped and shipped off to a communications dead-zone in Fjordland, New Zealand. Were approached by their old employer who babbled on about "transformation of the human species" and required them to do an "kidnapping" of a goddam alien scientist. After crashing their 'copter and blasting their way out of the Christchurch compound, they eventually made it back to base where they took a quick jet the Cairns Space Station. In other words, it was damn good fun.

"Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached, speaketh the Pope. The Islamic world is unimpressed. Some seem to justify the claim. Is it part of an agenda? Or just a big whoops?

On topic, caseopaya and I had the misfortune of overhearing a rather aggressive Anglo-Australian telling some Lebanese youths to "shut up and speak English, you're in Australia now" etc on the tram during SFD. Not being the people to let such comments pass, we came to the defense with justly seething remarks. I reminded the twit that "English" is not an indigenous language to Australia either. This is the second time caseopaya in recent weeks has witnessed direct, aggressive racism on Melbourne's public transport. It is the ugly side of recent public debates about "Australian values" and insulting restrictions to citizenship rules

Comments

[devilgirly.livejournal.com]

Were people always quite this stupid and racist? Or are people really just that easily swayed by the media / blatantly ridiculous government policies?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Of course, there has always been a lot of racist people in Australia. Part of a cultural cringe I guess for being a colonial invader in the first instance (although sadly racism seems just as prevalent among indigenous Australians). I remember a rather prominent Nazi movement in Perth in the mid 1980s. They weren't very nice people at all.

All this said however, many, if not most, people are significantly swayed by media and government policies. When the government starts talking about keeping "them" (non-English speakers) out, then the dregs of Anglophone culture will feel sufficiently emboldened to express their insecurities.

[devilgirly.livejournal.com]

Eugh. :/ Just wait til I'm dictator of the world with my rampaging death squads, I'll get rid of all the racist people ;)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

As David Gerard once said (I'm really paraphrasing) "Well kick your arse with our nice boots and not even smear our eyeliner".

[devilgirly.livejournal.com]

Hey that's a fantastic quote! I like nice boots! And eyeliner! And kicking people! ;D

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

IIRC it was the byline for alt.gothic.special-forces

BTW, we're supposed to have dinner soon. We owe you a feast and we have a nice flat to show off..

[reddragdiva]

There have, but they thought they had to shut up for about twenty years until Pauline then Johnny gave them permission to be their big Aussie selves again.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Indeed. There was a bipartisan agreement not to play the "race card" in Australian politics... Then someone realised they could get votes out of it.

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

How would you respond to an elderly person who claimed that Australia was a Christian country?

[angel80.livejournal.com]

That "real" Australians are atheists ;)

Win

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Possibly the best use of the "No True Scotsman" argument I have ever seen.

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

Hahaha I like it. I'll remember that one for next time ;)

[recumbenteer.livejournal.com]

The ABS
thinks otherwise.

In 2002, 23% [of Australians aged 18+] reported participating in church or religious activities over a three month period.

(And that's all children of the book, buddhists, and hindus thrown in for good measure).

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

If one was calculating religous attendence as an proof of faith the numbers would certainly be very, very different.

hmmm

[imajica-lj.livejournal.com]

Um ... that the clock on their bullshit dogma is ticking?

Re: hmmm

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

It reminds me a little of a East Timorese parliamentarian who tried to argue that because the overwhelming majority of the country was Christian that they should become, effectively, a religous state.

It wasn't a very popular suggestion.

Re: hmmm

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

This person wasn't a Christian himself, just old and stuck in an outdated perception of Australia. Interesting that those not involved in the Christian religion can still see our country as inherently Christian.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I would say the majority of the population are nominally Christian (even if they aren't practising), but our state and laws should be secular.

I would also point out the relevant section (116) of the Constitution.

"The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth."

I would try, and probably fail, to resist the temptation to mention that particular section of the Constitution was phrased by then Tasmanian Attorney-General, Andrew Inglis Clark, an ardent Unitarian.

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

I think they were trying to make the case that our 'values' were built on Christian values. I didn't try to resist the temptation to point out that values such as "don't kill people or steal their stuff" aren't the eminent domain of Christianity.

This was part of a conversation half a year ago, when there was that kerfuffle about girls wanting to wear their headscarfs to schools who had a 'no hats indoors' policy. There was that ridiculous debate: Should they conform to our standards, our values? A stupid debate because they were simply freely exercising their religion, which as you point out is covered by our constitution and thus part of our value system.

Stupid old people.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

It's a very strange notion to suggest that there's something in Australian values which says "you may not wear a headscarf".

[jennifergearing.livejournal.com]

My (effective) M-I-L apparently has to "really fight the urge" not to rip the headscarves off women she sees walking down the street. The fact she repeatedly mentioned this in my presence meant I was doing some 'urge-fighting' on my own. And apparently all these young feminists are evil because we're not that keen on assaulting people because we find aspects of their traditional practices problematic. Apparently assaulting them would help, or something. Mmm.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

*nods*

Imagine the uproar if it was suggested that wearing headscarves should become compulsory...

[txxxpxx.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry you had to go to Boronia.

No, nothing else

:-)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The train station made me think that I'd ended up a Checkpoint Charlie

[kits-the-dm.livejournal.com]

Hey, do you reckon we could do a bastardisation of the English Language and call it Australian? Y'know in a parody of "American" being a language?

Sometimes I wish I stayed in the army... at least then I could always ask the bigots if they fought for their country. Right now, I can't exactly use that as a retort.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

You could always use it the past tense.

Given the guy was wearing a scruffy military style shirt (the sort of thing picked up in a army surplus store fifteen years ago) it would have been interested. Given your own appearance I think you would have broken his brain.

That would have been very, very funny to watch.

[jennifergearing.livejournal.com]

I saw a couple of older Indigenous Australian women on the bus the other day, conversing in what I assume was their native dialect and one of the other people on the bus made some snide comment about how they should go home if they weren't going to speak English. One of them very calmly turned to him and said that they were speaking the language of this country, and perhaps he should go home because he wasn't speaking it.

I spent the rest of the busride grinning like a loon.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

*RESOUNDING APPLAUSE*

"Get ye back to Essex!"