Antipodean antipathy
Ross at Romeo Mike’s has been covering something I haven’t really seen in the news much here, though I’m not being as attentive as usual. I also haven’t been reading my normal blogs much, which is why I’m just noticing it there, too. The post linked there is about the fifth night; you can keep scrolling on his front page for more about what happened on preceding days.
The overall story arc is depressingly familiar, including not just the rioting but the response from pampered celebs. The amusement of seeing Ross, usually a thoroughgoing gentleman, refer to Germaine Greer as “an out-of-touch attention-slag” doesn’t help much. He’s also attended to Cate Blanchett nicely:
Oh groan, as if the situation wasn’t bad enough, now celebrities are coming out kumbayaing. Cate bloody Blanchett stood on a beach next to Peter bloody Garrett announcing their new movement “Wave of Respect’. These people have no mercy.
Cate’ b’ said “racism is bad and we all just have to get along” and Peter said “racism is bad and surfers have to get along.” No mention of Muslim thugs having to get along with anyone though.
Will somebody please save us – BLOODY. SHUT. CATE. UP!
He has a gajillion links to Australian news reports, all frighteningly worth reading. The heart of the problem is here:
The Police Commissioner says he won’t comment on police operations. The point is that ethnic gangs know that the police won’t / can’t touch them, which only emboldens them. It’s why gang crime has now reached the point that our city – this safe, happy city I grew up in and that generations of our families made sacrifices to build and pass on – is hostage to brutal, ballisitic thugs.
It’s also why the rest of us are so frustrated and disillusioned with the system; certain minorities are given undeserved soft treatment and special consideration by authorities which aren’t extended to everyone else.
It’s like trying to fight tigers with one hand tied behind your back. And we’re supposed to just put up with it?
A special mention and thank-you must go to Bob Carr, dilletante NSW Premier since 1995, who suddenly and unexpectedly jumped ship a few months ago like a Labor rat from the proverbial, moments before we could register what was heading toward his office fan; Orange Grove, cross-city tunnel, hospital crises, gang crime, what- else-are-we- in-for? Merry Christmas.
Here’s a must-read plea from a policeman explaining how ‘on the ground cops’ have been emasculated in Sydney. It also explains why gang crime has been increasing.
The sun never sets on the PC empire. Best to those trying to defend themselves and their city.
Oh crap, I didn’t know Cate was a dingbat too.
Yeah, it’s a shame. I like Rondi A’s take here. When actors do their clueless-sermonizing bit, I always try to keep my gorge and blood pressure down by remembering that they impersonate people for a living. I can see how, if you spent your working and imaginative life enacting fantasies, with most of the real-life messiness scrubbed away to enable you to present a coherent story in two-odd-hours, you might start to slip into thinking that it’s possible to stay at one remove from all nastiness even in real life (the “actors are always acting” principle).
That works for about thirty seconds, after which I start wishing anew that people who have no idea what they’re talking about would shut up.