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| Riffhard |
I would like to introduce to a great man. His name is Charles Krauthammer. He loves your country and so do I. Please read this great article and you will understand that the vast vast vast majority of conservative Americans are NOT Nazi Freaks! TIA!
Riffy
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Why I Love Australia
By Charles Krauthammer
WASHINGTON -- In the Australian House of Representatives last month, opposition member Julia Gillard interrupted a speech by the minister of health thusly: "I move that that sniveling grub over there be not further heard.''
For that, the good woman was ordered removed from the House, if only for a day. She might have escaped that little time-out if she had responded to the speaker's demand for an apology with something other than "If I have offended grubs, I withdraw unconditionally.''
God, I love Australia. Where else do you have a shadow health minister with such, er, starch? Of course I'm prejudiced, having married an Australian, but how not to like a country, in this age of sniveling grubs worldwide, whose treasurer suggests to any person who "wants to live under sharia law'' to try Saudi Arabia and Iran, "but not Australia.'' He was elaborating on an earlier suggestion that "people who ... don't want to live by Australian values and understand them, well then they can basically clear off.'' Contrast this with Canada, historically and culturally Australia's commonwealth twin, where last year Ontario actually gave serious consideration to allowing its Muslims to live under sharia law.
Such things don't happen in Australia. This is a place where, when the remains of a fallen soldier are accidentally switched with those of a Bosnian, the enraged widow picks up the phone late at night, calls the prime minister at home in bed and delivers a furious unedited rant -- which he publicly and graciously accepts as fully deserved. Where Americans today sue, Australians slash and skewer.
For Americans, Australia engenders nostalgia for our own past, which we gauzily remember as infused with John Wayne plain-spokenness and vigor. Australia evokes an echo of our own frontier, which is why Australia is the only place you can unironically still shoot a Western.
It is surely the only place where you hear officials speaking plainly in defense of action. What other foreign minister but Australia's would see through "multilateralism,'' the fetish of every sniveling foreign policy grub from the Quai d'Orsay to Foggy Bottom, calling it correctly "a synonym for an ineffective and unfocused policy involving internationalism of the lowest common denominator''?
And with action comes bravery, from the transcendent courage of the doomed at Gallipoli to the playful insanity of Australian-rules football. How can you not like a country whose trademark sport has Attila-the-Hun rules, short pants and no padding -- a national passion that makes American football look positively pastoral?
That bravery breeds affection in America for another reason as well. Australia is the only country that has fought with the United States in every one of its major conflicts since 1914, the good and the bad, the winning and the losing.
Why? Because Australia's geographic and historical isolation has bred a wisdom about the structure of peace -- a wisdom that eludes most other countries. Australia has no illusions about the "international community'' and its feckless institutions. An island of tranquility in a roiling region, Australia understands that peace and prosperity do not come with the air we breathe, but are maintained by power -- once the power of the British Empire, now the power of the United States.
Australia joined the faraway wars of early-20th-century Europe not out of imperial nostalgia, but out of a deep understanding that its fate and the fate of liberty were intimately bound with that of the British Empire as principal underwriter of the international system. Today the underwriter is America, and Australia understands that an American retreat or defeat -- a chastening consummation devoutly, if secretly, wished by many a Western ally -- would be catastrophic for Australia and for the world.
When Australian ambassadors in Washington express support for the U.S., it is heartfelt and unalloyed, never the "yes, but'' of the other allies, perfunctory support followed by a list of complaints, slights and sage finger-wagging. Australia understands America's role and is sympathetic to its predicament as reluctant hegemon. That understanding has led it to share foxholes with Americans from Korea to Kabul. They fought with us at Tet and now in Baghdad. Not every engagement has ended well. But every one was strenuous, and many quite friendless. Which is why America has such affection for a country whose prime minister said after 9/11, "This is no time to be an 80 percent ally,'' and actually meant it.
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| egon |
best country in the world!
corgi is king. |
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| Fiji Joe |
Australia is very similar to the US...except they've never produced anything...unless you count Olivia Newton-John...and she wasn't so great
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| Fiji Joe |
Well yes..if he keeps working out he may yet reach ONJ status |
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| corgi37 |
Actually, Oliva is English.
Riffy - A post that has made me your lover. I will do you. Or, you can do me. Whatever!
I didnt know you married an Aussie. Shows your good taste! A very well perceived post, with some crap, but mainly spot on.
Julia Gillard is a brillant politican. She is from the party i support, which sadly, is not in Goverment. Now, she was suspended from parliamnet. Yep, she sure was. But, she was merely 100% repeating what a Government Minister said. He was not suspended! She ok too, but alas, like most in my treasured Labour Party, is totally devoid of every day life. Never had kids. Not married. Never worked (well, she IS a lawyer!). Still, she can cut the men down anytime.
It aint all peaches and cream though.
Apart from me, it has long been a sport for Aussies to denigrate all that is American. In years gone by, it was all things British. Its a chip on our shoulder we have, but is slowly being whittled away. Fiji, being an idiot (and some one who left the board, as far as i recall, never to return!), would not know that it was us who invented the flight data recorder (known as the "black box). It was us who invented the spinning clothes line, and it was us that had the 1st full length motion picture. An Aussie, as you all know, discovered the general use for penicillan. We are a nation of only 20mill, but i feel we are over achievers and we punch above our weight. For example, i believe most people here would know and hear more of AUssies and Aussie news than, say, Brazil. Which i think is the worlds 5th largest nation.
Riffy, your understanding of Oz is very good. We were founded by convicts. Not all of Oz (only New South Wales and Tasmania really, the rest were free settlers). In the space of only about 150 years, we are a 1st world country with a life style the envy of nations thousands of years old.
We have never had a civil war. Sure, we argue and bicker amongst the states, but its all fun. And, yes, we are ambivelant to U.S. You are so right. Since WW1, we have fought along side each other. WW1 started in 1914 by the way. Just as WW2 started in 1939. Aussies never will forget the sacrifice and help "Yanks" gave to us in the dark day of WW2. In Korea, we fought side by side, wishing like fuck we were not there. In Nam, a tragic error that should not have occurred, we fought side by side again. Our revered Prime Minister of the time, Robert Menzies, hated this country. He was "British to his boot straps". He lied to Parliament that the "South Vietnamese have requested "advisers" to help fight the Communist insurgency". Thats fact! He lied! It was 1964. There was no such request. it only came to light 30 years later when Parliamentary papers are released. Hence, that man, revered by conservatives (are current Prime Minister is one) was a liar directly responsible for hundreds of Aussie deaths, and thousand of woundings. For that, he shouuld be dug up from his grave, and his rotted corpse hung upside down from a flag pole!
But, i digress. yes, Canada is very close to us. Commonwealth and all that. Again, you amaze me with your knowledge. We are similar to them, and you. We dont have a gun culture. We associate love of guns with lack of cock size. Many Aussies thinks Yanks are loud, stupid, ignorant and greedy. But, hey, we dont think of Canadians at all! hahahahaa.
I have been to Yankee Doodle Land 3 times. I have nothing but love for the people. So many said "Are you English?" - with a snarl on their face. When i said, with a fucking snarl on MY face, "No, AUstralian" - well - Their faces lit up and it was "wanna beer?" or "I've always wanted to go to Australia" or "My God, you are hung like King Kong!".
Oz & Yank are very similar. We only lack a love of guns and a overtly political religious influences. Basically, we mistrust ALL authority. It might be our Irish convict roots!
Mind you, as i have said many a time, my Great-great Grandfather, left Oakham, Mass circa 1850 for the gold fields of Victoria, Australia. So, i can claim SOME Yank heritage.
I am not right wing. To many Yanks, i am far-far left. But i aint really. I support the Labour Party here in Oz. To you Yanks, they would probably be the Dems. Our party was founded in outback Queensland in the 1890's. It is the oldedst political party in Oz. It was founded under a tree! Which, i might add, some Neo con cunt just poisoned! It is the party of the working class. Or was. Now it is the party of the lawyer, teacher, political adviser. Our greatest Prime Minister, a Labour Party man, was Ben Chifley. He was our WW2 Pm. He was a train driver! Can you imagine a train driver being Prez of U.S.???
Hey, did i mention Robert Menzies? He is our longest serving Prime Minister. You know, go up a few paragraphs. Anyway, he was Prime Minister at the outbreak of WW2. But, in a election not long after the start of the war (Sept 1, 1939), he got booted out. Why? well, let me tell you. The fucking traitor sold "pig iron" to the Japs!!! A few months later, that "pig iron" was returned.
In the shape of ZERO fighter/bombers and 100 pound high incendiary bombs! Did ya'll know Darwin was one of the highest bombed cities of the Allies during WW2?
Riffy - tell me more of your Aussie wife. Does she miss old Oz? Has she lost her accent? Isnt it wonderful to get 2 sides of a story? How many Yanks would say "Australian, gee, you speak good English (said to my Mum in Chicago in 1991!!!!) Or, "You are from AUSTRIA"????)
Let me tell you something about us. Bryce Coutney (he's South African and the author, among others, of "The power of one") summed it up pretty well.
On morning tv a few years ago, he reduced himself to tears. He said this (and i have it taped, and memorised it pretty well) he said of our beginnings and who we are:
"So they (the British) sent them out here. The Irish, the sluts, the poor - and they said, "Go rot, you bastards". And they came here, with nothing. The 1st currency was rum, for Christ sake! And they came here with nothing, and they made something. Then others came here. The wogs, and the gooks, and the spics, and the dagoe's - and all others. And they brought something too. For no love of a country can a person have than some one who wants to be there. So, these derelicts, these disposed, these nobodies, they came out to the end of the world and they made something. They said "Fuck you!" (Yep, he said it on national tv- we aint so uptight as Yanks), and they made it. You know, they sometimes go back, they go back and say "Now i'll buy YOUR company, and i'll invent this, and WE can write this and act in that. I've been there. I've seen us beat America in '84 (The L.A. Olympics) on $200 bicycles. We beat them! Their's was designed by NASA, and we bloody beat them! We won the America's Cup. Are we the greatest? No. But we are what we are. A bunch of 3rd rate losers. a bunch of thieves and crooks who wanted better, and we made it. We (he slams his fist on the table) made it!"
I have long had a intense interest in U.S. politics. It amazes and facinates me. I dont think of Fox News "Heartland" as real America. I've met real Americans. They are like me. Hell, they are like some cunt in Moscow or Tiberia or Peru. All they want is the best for their kids. Yanks are great. Neo-cons and all. Because, though we can argue and dispute, at least in the morning, we are still alive to argue and dispute.
Another thing that happens here, which i think explains the Aussie spirit is thus.
S many of us, me included say; "Hey, its Australia, do as we do!!!" So some Arab chick walks down the street all covered up. Some bloke says "Fuck this", and rips the chicks head gear off. Man, she's petrified! So, what happens? Hey, no one is happy she's wearing the atrocity, but fuck me if the guy didnt get hammered (and hard!) by some brick layers who didnt take too kindly to him meting out his own justice/censorship (Aussies HATE censorship). Basically, we aint happy with the bitch wearing that shit, but fucked if we'll tolerate some inbred ripping it from her! I mean, whats next? No flares? No bare mid riffs? (And i love showing my mid-riff!)
Also, we aint nuts. Soccer world cup shows you nuts. Here, Aussies Rules, rules. Well, we dont have fucking fences, or seperate trains. You sit, you watch the teams, and if you get beat - big bloody deal? Our Grand Final has around 100,000 people. No one fights. You lose - pft! Go home and fuck the wife. Dont throw darts or flares at each other.
For a time, baseball was popular here. We had quite a few dudes play in the NBA too. But, it died out. We got a few "punters" in the Yank Footy league. Darren Bennett was pretty successful, and i think Ben Graham will do well. At the end of this year, i think Savario Rocca is going over. Baseball, too, we have had a few Aussies succeed.
Alas, no Yanks have made it into Aussie Rules. Ya'll just cant take it!
Riffy, i have gone on. I am drunk, and took some spped about an hour ago, an my eyeballs aint working. Let alone, my brain.
Goood post. Aussies love/hate Yanks. But we are mates. And, thats all that matters. I've been to:
L.A.
Monteray
San Fran
Hawaii
Scottsdale, Arizona
Vegas
Carmel
San Diego
Your Prez (in my book) is a illiterate, rich, cunt. No doubt, so will your next. And your next. But, i hate our Prime Minister since he was a little, furry eye browed treasurer back in 1979. I liked Clinton! He was cool.
I dont believe being in Iraq is smart, Hell, Nam was dumb enough! ANd, i cant understand the patriotic fervour of many Yanks. But, i also admire and appreciate the heartfelt sentiments and indeed, lives, Americans have given over the years. It always amazes me how the French hate the Yanks, considering how many dead young American men lay in French soil.
I will always prouldy tease Americans. You fuckers aint the best. Aint CLOSE to being the best. But, you will wont find a greater supporter.
Long live the Republic! |
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| Fiji Joe |
Penis envy from down under is just the way I like...let gravity do it's thing
Bukkake!
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| Joey |
quote:
Fiji Joe wrote:
Australia is very similar to the US...except they've never produced anything...
Mimi MacPherson
...........................
[cc:ss]
[Edited by Joey] |
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| Fiji Joe |
What I find most impressive about the Aussies is the manner in which they have kept their Gitmo under the radar...
Refugees at South Australia's Baxter detention centre have renamed the facility Abu Ghraib, saying they had suffered similar violence to the Iraqi prisoners.
In a letter read to a Sydney rally to mark World Refugee Day, the Baxter detainees said the support from parts of the community was comforting given the nightmare they were living behind the razor wire.
"Recently its name was agreed to be Abu Ghraib prison, because all the mistreatment, humiliation and torture that the coalition soldiers have committed against the prisoners in Baghdad have happened in Australia too," the letter, read to the rally, said.
"[It's happened] against the ladies, against the children, against the men who came to your land to be safe and far away from any violence, imprisonment or discrimination."
The letter's main writer said after four years in detention he understood what humanity, human rights and equal opportunity meant - but he had seen no evidence of it in the way he had been treated.
"It is not deserved to call us queue-jumpers or illegal immigrants, to lock us up more than four or five or six years," he said.
"How strange that we must be in suffering now, after a long time, and live in this agony, torment, misery, distress and tribulation.
"I just want to know when - exactly when - can we live far from all these anxieties, pain and cruelties."
Also speaking at the Sydney rally - one of many such events organised to mark World Refugee Day in Australia - was now-infamous Big Brother evictee, Merlin Luck.
The 24-year-old emerged from the Big Brother house last Sunday with his mouth gaffer-taped shut, carrying a sign that read 'FREE TH (sic) REFUGEES'.
Mr Luck today suggested a more realistic TV program should be allowing the media into Australia's detention centres.
"People want real drama and real conflict, yet they change the channel when it's a child's face behind bars," he told the cheering crowd.
"Maybe we should set up cameras in there and evict someone every week, give them a brand new car and a mobile phone.
"Or maybe that's just a little bit too real."
Politicians from the Democrats, Greens and Labor also demanded the Howard government change its stance on mandatory detention.
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Hang in there Chin Bong...the motherland is coming to set you free
[Edited by Fiji Joe] |
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| Joey |
Corgi is THE KING !!!!! |
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| Fiji Joe |
quote:
Joey wrote:
Corgi is THE KING !!!!!
Wigger please...Corgi can't carry Pdog's jockstrap
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| telecaster |
Outside of "Air Supply" the Aussies have made great contributions to the world
HOT women as well |
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| Fiji Joe |
To be honest Joey...Corgi can't even carry your jockstrap
[Edited by Fiji Joe] |
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| Fiji Joe |
Australian women secretly long to go on a walkabout with "real" australian men
[Edited by Fiji Joe] |
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| Joey |
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| Maxlugar |
Riffy is a great man.
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| Joey |
quote:
Maxlugar wrote:
Joey is a great man.
Bless You Son .
Please enjoy some " 1991 Petey "
Mmmmmmmmm ! Good !!!!!
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| Fiji Joe |
I'm afraid from this point on Joey will be nothing more than Corgi's flamboyantly faggoty sidekick
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| Joey |
quote:
Fiji Joe wrote:
I'm afraid from this point on Joey will be nothing more than Corgi's flamboyantly faggoty sidekick
http://www.petetownshend.co.uk/diary/display.cfm?id=339&zone=pr
" This coming Monday (July 10th) sees the release of the much-anticipated Wire & Glass: Six Songs From A Mini-Opera EP. This is The Who's first single for 24 years and the songs that comprise the Mini-Opera's sections are Pete's first written for the band since Real Good Looking Boy and Old Red Wine were featured on the Then and Now compilation. Wire & Glass reflects Pete's ongoing fascination with technology (and the internet/grid in particular) and, for anyone who missed it initially, it's well worth checking out his novella The Boy Who Heard Music, which can still be read in it's entirety HERE
as many of the themes from Wire & Glass are extrapolated in the novella. Pete previously dedicated the track Endless Wire to internet 'guru' Vint Cerf whose vision and application helped give us the infrastructure and protocols that we take so much for granted these days whenever we surf, blog or download. Thought it would be a nice touch to include Pete's lyric for the track for you - enjoy the Mini-Opera in full come Monday…it's a bit special. "
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| monkey_man |
quote:
Maxlugar wrote:
Riffy is a great man.
I love the celebrate diversity t-shirt!!! |
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| pdog |
Aussie's are just The USA drunk! |
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| Dan |
http://bulletin.ninemsn.com.au/Bulletin/EdDesk.nsf/All/6D71C6A2570B7D...
Gangsters' paradise
02/04/2004
Port Keats, a speck on the map of the Northern Territory, is a town on
a path of self-destruction, a town of fear and loathing, where gangs
using satanic, heavy metal music as their anthems engage openly in
tribal warfare. BY PAUL TOOHEY
Like many Port Keats women, Margaret Rose Perdjert wears a rosary at
all times. It is both a symbol of faith and a hangover of times she
knew as a girl when the Catholic Church attempted to liquefy one of
Australia's most warrior-like cultures. Now just a priest and a
handful of elderly nuns maintain a skeleton outpost in the coastal
community, witnesses to their own descent into irrelevance.
The Port Keats warrior culture is being reclaimed by its young men.
Those white Australians who nurse guilt for the destruction of
Aboriginal cultures might normally celebrate such a rewinding of the
clock were it not for the disconcerting manner in which these young men
are going about it. The traditional short throwing spears, once used in
carefully controlled dispute-resolution sessions, have been traded for
cut-down star pickets and unrestrained brawling. The new warriors call
themselves gangsters. Some 10 gangs, including the Evil Warriors, Judas
Priest and the Cowboys From Hell, have spooked the older Port Keats
Christians, black and white, into helpless silence.
Perdjert, 41, is a member of the clan group that can rightfully claim
to be the traditional owners of Port Keats, or Wadeye, 350km south-west
of Darwin. For five months every year, as the wet season sets in, 10
creek and river crossings conspire to cut the town off from all but
light-aircraft pilots and barge captains. Yet for Perdjert and some 50
others in her wider family, there is no way in to Port Keats. They
live as exiles in a few overcrowded houses in the back streets of
Wyndham, far northern Western Australia. Judas Priest gangsters
meticulously trashed their homes in Port Keats, burning cars and
destroying all personal belongings. They say they are too afraid to go
back.
Since October 2002, gangster-related violence has seen about 600 people
flee Port Keats. Many have failed to return home, fearing they will be
hunted out and bashed, or worse. They are hiding at Kununurra, Timber
Creek, Peppimenarti, Daly River and Darwin, relying on the goodwill of
their extended families to tide them over until normality returns to
their fractured town. Some of those who have made their way to Darwin
share a particularly bleak outlook, living rough on the streets by day,
camping in the bushes by night. "Better to sleep with the snakes than
sleep in Port Keats," says one of the exiles, who has made a home in
rainforest near the airport.
The fact that Port Keats people claim to have had a pre-missionary
contact visit from the Virgin made the Catholics' early work easier.
A murderous witchdoctor, Mollingin, changed his killing ways after
receiving instructions from a giant lady in long flowing robes. At the
place where she was said to have hovered, just south of the town, Port
Keats women still make pilgrimages to a shrine where the black sands
are said to hold miraculous healing qualities.
But the Port Keats people were too strong to fully succumb to the
church. Autonomous forces survived and, over the past 20 years, gangs
have come to steer the undercurrent of life in the town. "They
never sleep," Perdjert says. "They're always causing problems.
Everyone stays up till daylight waiting for them to go to sleep. When
the daylight comes, that's when we sleep."
On October 23, 2002, after a policeman shot dead a Judas Priest gang
member in Port Keats, the JPs - who that day had been fighting the
Evil Warriors - turned savagely on anyone with links to the Warriors.
Perdjert felt their wrath due to her marriage to Eugenio Kurungaiyi,
the deputy commander of the Evil Warriors.
"They [Judas Priest members] smashed my house, all my property,
everything. They trashed my washing machine, my deep freezer, DVD and
video machine, TV, table, chairs, everything," she says. "They
burned my clothes, mattresses, blankets. I was there."
It was anything but a casual going over. Twelve houses were destroyed
and eight cars burned. The message was clear: the traditional owners of
Port Keats were no longer welcome on their own land. "They smashed
everything," Perdjert says. "They smashed the toilet, the sink,
the fan, even the power points - everything."
Six weeks ago, she sneaked back into Port Keats to visit her sick
grandmother. But she was quickly found out and Judas Priest gangsters
went to her aunt's home, where she was hiding. Perdjert was punched
three times in the head. The boys said they were looking for her
husband. Her aunt's house was trashed as punishment for shielding
Perdjert, who immediately chartered an aircraft back to Wyndham.
The Evil Warriors align themselves musically to the heavy metal bands
Pantera, Iced Earth and Testament. Outcrops of graffiti across the Top
End testify that Pantera's Cowboys From Hell album is regarded as a
seminal work. Iced Earth, a shock-rock band, has albums called The Dark
Saga, Dark Genesis and Burnt Offerings. Testament album titles include
Demonic and Signs of Chaos, all of it suggesting the gangs rejoice in
concepts forbidden and reviled by the church.
The Judas Priest boys take their name from the leather-and-chain
British band. Metallica, the band that screams against injustice over
studiously disjointed machine-gun bursts of sound, is also rated highly
by JP. Both groups reject the other's music as crap.
Beneath the two dominant gangs are sub-gangs with names like the Lica
(from Metallica) Warriors, Mad Warriors, Fear Factory, Big T (taken
from the band Testament), the German Punks, the White Lions and the
Cowboys From Hell - a small group of young boys from just up the road
at Palumpa. They are variously aligned to the two main groups.
"These smaller gangs," says a lawyer with experience in the area,
"represent the small Port Keats family groupings or clans that
aren't terribly powerful. They form their small gangs almost as a
defence against the larger family gangs but inevitably they need to
align themselves to the bigger groups." In a power switch that came
after October 2002, when the Evil Warriors lost influence in Port
Keats, most of the smaller gangs got onside with Judas Priest as a
matter of survival.
Wyndham exile Peter Cumaiyi confirms the lawyer's assessment. "The
reason why they're in a gang is to protect themselves from other
gangs," he says. While his sons and nephews are members of the Evil
Warriors, Cumaiyi, 47, insists he is too old to be in the gang -
even though, when it comes down to it, he has stood alongside his boys
and fought Judas Priest.
Sitting atop the Five Rivers look-out at Wyndham, with the obligatory
half-carton of cold cans going warm fast, the boys from the Evil
Warriors are talking, on the record, perhaps for the first time in
their lives. Normally, they wouldn't open up. The gang scene at
Port Keats is one of the most anthropologically curious developments
in contemporary Aboriginal Australia, but few outsiders have been
able to explore its world.
For a start, these are bush kids who don't speak English well enough
to explain themselves. The church sent their parents - like Cumaiyi
- to Catholic boarding school in Darwin. But then came the era of
self-determination, which demanded the church move aside so that
Aborigines could do things for themselves. What in fact happened was
that a whole generation - these very boys - fell into a vacuum.
They got to grade six and seven then disappeared into the bush.
They deal with problems the best way they know how - through
confrontation, using their clan numbers, or forming allegiances with
others, much as their ancestors did. But their life as bush gangsters
has bitten back.
Asked why he is living in Wyndham, Mark Cumaiyi, 20, says: "Why?
I'm frightened. Too much fight there. If I go home to Port Keats,
they're really going to belt me." This is not an easy admission to
make. Fear is not supposed to be part of the mind-set. But there have
been ambushes, shootings, home invasions and constant jailings.
"It's not safe in Port Keats," says Francis Kurungaiyi, 20.
"People carry axes, machetes, hammers, star pickets. Here in Wyndham,
we can walk without fear."
Port Keats has changed its name to Wadeye - pronounced Wad-air - in
a politically correct attempt to acknowledge the town's overriding
Aboriginality. Locals still call it Port Keats. The community has in
recent times been presented to wider Australia - through the comments
of Aboriginal Affairs Minister Amanda Vanstone and her predecessor,
Philip Ruddock - as a place on the mend, a disturbed town where hope
finally shines after years of disruption and neglect. Those who live
there - or choose not to, as the case may be - see it differently.
Port Keats was created in the 1930s and has become a settlement for 20
clans, pulled from their bush locations to one central point to make it
easier to deliver basic services. None of the clans has gotten along
particularly well since.
What has been created is Australia's biggest Aboriginal community,
running to more than 2500 people at its peak. With infant mortality
problems largely conquered in the north, statisticians predict that
Port Keats will double its population in the next 20 years. But
statisticians have not accounted for the fact that the locals are
getting cold feet and leaving.
When they first emerged in the 1980s, the gangs were not seen as a
threat. Because each gang is tied to one of the region's 20 clans, or
wider family groupings, it was thought the boys had simply updated clan
names along contemporary lines. Recent events have forced a
reappraisal.
"The music they're listening to is the music of the oppressed and
disadvantaged and these kids really heavily identify," the lawyer
says. "It's anti-authority, angry, violent and rebellious and these
are sentiments a lot of Aboriginal people can identify with. I'm no
musicologist but that's what it seems to be. You just better hope
they don't find Islam." The lawyer pauses and adds: "I think
I'm joking."
The best way they can explain the love of heavy metal is, in the words
of Francis, the "inspiration" it gives them. It needs no beer or
ganja to kick it along. He says the music "works" when they are
sitting at their outstations, bored and in search of a shared muse.
Most like to be seen wearing Kmart-issue camouflage gear they pick up
on occasional trips to Darwin. The militia costume would appear to send
the message that the boys are combat-ready at all times.
By and large, Port Keats men have lean, hard-cut physiques, with veins
that rope in their biceps and powerful shoulders. The boys are careful
to highlight these features in spray-on clothes. The men of Groote
Eylandt, off Arnhem Land, and the Walpiri tribesmen of the Tanami enjoy
their reputations as hard men. But for the men of Port Keats -
nowadays the most jailed people of any NT community - a special
respect is reserved.
Blending the symbols of hard-edged western cultures, gang members -
perhaps surprisingly - prefer the angry guitar sound of white metal
bands to the tempered black ghetto beat. Rap music, they say, is for
kids - even though the shot-dead gangster-musician Tupac Shakur is
singled out as an affectionate exception.
They reject the idea that the allegedly demonic nature of the metal
bands puts them in the Devil's hand. "We can be Evil Warriors and
we can still go to church," says Gerard Cumaiyi. "We go to church
every Sunday here in Wyndham. We are strong believers. It's that mob
[Judas Priest]. They don't believe. They never go to church."
Port Keats is not - on the face of it - a house of horrors. The
church commands the best hilltop position. There is a police station, a
supermarket, even a fruit and vegetable store - an unlikely feature
in any NT Aboriginal community. There is the usual mix of
half-destroyed houses alongside those where residents have heroically
battled to maintain a sense of neatness against the overwhelming odds
that overcrowding and poverty deliver.
There is a new Aboriginal governance system, Thamarrurr, designed to
calm frictions. It offers all 20 resident clans an equal membership and
meets regularly as a roving cabinet, each clan taking turns to host
meetings on its traditional lands. Some who have attended have declared
that it is the first time they have stepped foot on another clan's
land.
But the recent troubles have been working against Thamarrurr. "Port
Keats is running mad right now," Peter Cumaiyi says. "Every phone
call I take [tells me] it's getting worse. It's a bad place.
Thamarrurr's not working. It's out of action. Yes, we brought the
clans together but it didn't work. Everyone's on to this," he
says, pointing at his own can of VB.
The much-stolen Port Keats ambulance is locked inside a barbed-wire
fence. Some white residents chain their vehicles to their houses at
night. Visitors are given a padlock and instructions to park in a
difficult position with the wheels on hard lock, so any thief will have
a tough time making a fast getaway.
The fact that the NT's largest Aboriginal community is shut out from
the world when the rivers run high in part assists in cloaking the
community from the outside world. There has also been over the past 15
years a near-total media ban, meaning the town is subjected to no
independent scrutiny apart from what limited information police are
prepared to give out. Port Keats claims it gets a bad run in the press,
which is always reporting "negative" stories on the violent
behaviour. So the media, which has been refused permits to attend even
open-court magistrate's hearings at Port Keats, must mostly rely on
occasional Darwin court sessions for a look inside the town's
activities; either that or attend the rare fly-in, fly-out media
"junkets" which celebrate some carefully staged event.
What can be seen during these brief glimpses is that the workers
building the new pool are all white. The supermarket staff and the
council staff are mostly white.
Talk quietly to the cheerless women about their dead and jailed
husbands and sons. They are terrified of their own words, afraid
bullies will turn on them for bringing their secluded and secretive
township into disrepute. But they are desperate for what one older
woman (with a jailed husband and jailed son) called "the hand of
darkness" to be lifted.
There is no contemporary starting point for the current Port Keats
exodus. Whenever a judge or magistrate jails another Port Keats man,
which is often, they will inevitably refer loosely to the "ongoing
troubles" that plague the community. Indeed, the events which led to
the 600 leaving the community are, at their heart, straightforward turf
wars, such as have existed between the clans for millennia.
Many of the problems seem to be tied to unreported domestic-violence
incidents between men and women who have married across clan lines. But
court records show there were several incidents during 2002 in which
the Evil Warriors, at that point the dominant faction, gave unwelcome
demonstrations of their power. In May 2002, six Evil Warriors invaded a
home in the middle of the night, dragging Judas Priest associate
Dominic Dumoo out and thrashing him with a stick.
Then, in August, eight men terrorised Port Keats by driving around in a
car, indiscriminately firing a stolen .303 rifle. Jonathon Chula, named
in court as a member of the Evil Warriors, had sat on the roof of the
car discharging between 10 and 15 rounds.
The road that leads to Port Keats ends at Keats. It is a dry community,
but 100km back up the road towards Darwin is Peppimenarti, which runs a
licensed club. It is - or was until recently - visited on most
afternoons by Port Keats people, who drive their half-wrecked cars to
the club where they themselves get half-wrecked. It was near here, on
October 18, 2002, that a vicious payback session was staged, which saw
Evil Warrior gangsters hospitalise three middle-aged Judas Priest men.
Members of the Jongmin family - leaders of Judas Priest - were
heading home when their LandCruiser broke down. Unable to restart it,
they decided to camp by the car. Evil Warriors, also heading home after
an evening of drinking, came across the Jongmin vehicle and set to
beating the men. Albert Jongmin was the most seriously injured,
suffering four broken ribs and a punctured lung.
This, in turn, led to a disastrous public settling of scores, on
October 23, 2002, at the footy oval at Port Keats. Police, at a loss to
cope with the internecine battles, agreed to supervise a series of
boxing bouts between the rival gangs. This was nothing new to Port
Keats. Mass-attended grievance-settling, in which spears were
brandished and sometimes thrown, was recorded by early anthropologists.
The Catholic priests thought it wise to teach the men to box instead.
They remain exceptionally handy at the task.
Three police supervised the bouts as hundreds looked on. One of them,
Sergeant Rob Wittington, pulled in to act as officer-in-charge while
the resident sergeant took his holidays, decided to take his Glock
semi-automatic pistol to the oval. The boys from the Evil Warriors
began losing their fights. Peter Cumaiyi, who was boxing a Judas Priest
man, claims he was set upon with weapons. "They hit me, I blacked
out," he says. "I woke up, took off to the nearest house. I
didn't see nothing - my eyes were covered in blood."
That the Evil Warriors should lose was unprecedented. But due to the
incidents of the previous months, the Evil Warriors had lost their best
fighters to Darwin's Berrimah prison. Judas Priest boys began getting
the upper hand. As an Evil Warrior associate, Tobias Warrumbu
understood that life in Port Keats was about to alter radically for
him. With the protection afforded by the Evil Warriors collapsing, he
ran home and grabbed a single-shot shotgun. Warrumbu returned and fired
the gun into the ground.
Robert Jongmin, 18, younger brother of the leading JP family, grabbed
Warrumbu and began wrestling the gun from him. It is alleged that
Wittington fired at least five rounds, one of which hit Warrumbu in the
elbow. Another allegedly went through Jongmin's neck.
Some 15 months later, Boniface Perdjert, the father of Margaret Rose,
tells how he was one of the hundreds at the oval. Boniface is generally
regarded as the head traditional owner of Port Keats. He is a gentle
man, the first Aboriginal-appointed deacon of the Catholic Church in
the NT. He admits he is fed up with forever trying to settle the
grievances of the clans, all trying to live together on an artificially
created settlement. Continually called upon to mediate over the
town's problems, he finds himself increasingly escaping to Darwin to
find some peace.
Sitting in parkland behind the Moil shops in Darwin, one man in
Boniface's group is singing easy songs of country in his own language
on a steel-string guitar. Moil takes its name from a tribe from the
Port Keats area but, no, says Boniface, he and the others don't come
here for sentimental reasons; it's just that some of his relatives
live nearby. I pass on a message from Margaret Rose that she wants to
come home. Boniface gets misted up and says he, too, wants his daughter
back home.
There are nine or 10 men, all from Port Keats. The ever-present
half-carton is disappearing fast. Boniface tells how he briefly held
the boy, Robert Jongmin, after he was shot. Robert, says Boniface
(although he doesn't refer to the dead boy by name for cultural
reasons), was still chasing the other boy, Tobias, even after he'd
been shot. "He was holding his neck like this," he says, indicating
how Robert was clutching himself, not realising a bullet had exited his
throat. Then he slowed up. "That boy told me, 'I got shot. Sorry,
I'll be gone now'." Boniface says Robert was taken to the clinic
but died quickly. "His spirit was gone and after that, well, that's
it," he says.
That afternoon, the Jongmin family, aka Judas Priest, raged across Port
Keats, destroying anything they could find associated with the Evil
Warriors. They were led by the older brother of the dead boy, Sylvester
Jongmin. They could have attacked the police station and, indeed, there
was talk of it. But once again, the classic and tragic tendency of
Aboriginal people to turn on themselves revealed itself.
Wittington and the other local cops were swiftly evacuated as the
Territory Response Group - the hard men of the NT police - arrived.
Part of their job was to escort frightened people, both Aboriginal and
white, from door-to-door across the community over the following days.
Guns were collected and clans were dispersed, some to the Old Mission
site north of town, some back to their outstations. Some, like Margaret
Rose, went further afield.
Part of the problem, according to senior Port Keats men, is that
Wittington is yet to face court. His case, says Ernest Perdjert,
brother to Boniface, has been "adjourned, adjourned, adjourned".
People want Wittington - charged with a dangerous act causing death
and suspended on full pay - to be dealt with. His case has been set
down for April, when he will fight the charge. Until there is a result,
people feel they cannot move on. But what may prove more telling for
the future of Port Keats is what might happen when John Shelvey
Kurungaiyi is released from Berrimah later this month.
John Shelvey, 28, is the leader of the Evil Warriors. He takes his name
from the retired Catholic priest John Shelvey, said to be the man who
taught Port Keats the science of boxing. The Aboriginal John Shelvey,
serving three years for assault, is regarded as charismatic and
intelligent, not to mention physically intimidating. By all accounts he
runs Berrimah prison, a situation that has been shored up by the fact
that his older brother Eugenio - Margaret Rose's husband - has
recently joined him there. So crucial is he to the peace process that
authorities have set up meetings with him and JP leaders in prison in
an attempt to ensure his release does not result in a bloodbath.
Shelvey is far from pleased that JP have the upper hand in his town.
"All sorts of people in Wadeye are absolutely shit-scared of him
getting out," says an observer. "The Jongmins, as a matter of
pride, would say bring it on - but it's the women and kids
generally who are afraid of being caught in the crossfire."
The Wyndham-based Evil Warriors say they are depending on Shelvey to
lead them back to Port Keats. "What the boys are suggesting," says
Gerard Cumaiyi, "is that we need a fair fight with them [Judas
Priest] and then there might be peace." After that, he says it's
over. "We want no more Evil Warriors, no more Judas Priest, no more
gangs. We'll settle down with true family."
Gerard is asked if he hates the boys from Judas Priest. "We don't
hate them," he says. "They're the same mob as us - same
language, but different country." "It's very hard," says Peter
Cumaiyi. "They can be right, we can be right. It's a seesaw. Who is
right? Which way does it go? We just want to be equal."
Much of it comes down to how young Port Keats men see their place in
the world. They have all been through manhood ceremonies and many have
known the inside of Berrimah prison. Yet they are so strongly connected
to ceremonial business that other communities rely on Port Keats people
to guide them through correct ceremonial performance.
They are proud people, but the outside world has never been too
interested in Ports Keats. It is far from the cultural picnic ground of
Arnhem Land, whose people have been pored over for decades. Despite its
extensive collection of Aboriginal art, the Northern Territory Museum
in Darwin does not hang one painting or carving from a Port Keats
artist.
With Port Keats widely regarded as a crime scene, it is not surprising
that the boys duly act as criminals. Port Keats has never produced a
nationally known figure, be it politician, artist, footballer or
musician. For role models, the boys look to their own history. Evil
Warrior brothers Eugenio and John Shelvey are direct descendants of
Nangu clan men who speared Beagle expedition leader John Lort Stokes as
he stomped about an ancestrally important stone fish trap and dreaming
site in Treachery Bay in the 1830s.
And there's Nemarluk, an immortalised warrior who killed three
Japanese pearlers in 1931. Nemarluk's killings and his later jail
break and long evasion from police is regarded - particularly by
romantic whites - as his personal crusade against invaders to his
land. But Nemarluk set up the pearlers by giving them five girls,
including one of his own wives, to lull them into complacency before
murdering them for their tobacco. While some deceive themselves as to
Nemarluk's place in history, Port Keats people don't. The boys
admire Nemarluk's bravery, not his politics. "The story of Nemarluk
can be used," says Peter Cumaiyi. "It just depends on how you want
the story to work."
Same for the heavy metal gangster culture. These young warriors will
fight, will go to jail and will go to jail again for their clans. But
they are not beyond reach. There is none of the lethargy among Port
Keats people that so demoralises many others. The boys are feared by
other communities, seen by the cops as trouble, but are nevertheless
warm and intelligent and would surely prefer to be doing more than
fighting each other. As such, the heavy metal scene could be read as an
attempt to engage in the world beyond their fishbowl existence in a
community at the end of a long, dirt road. In a startling admission, it
turns out there are Elvis Presley and Hank Williams lovers hiding
beneath the furious wall of sound. "Yes, we like angry music," says
Gerard Cumaiyi. "But we also like the crooners."
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| Fiji Joe |
quote:
pdog wrote:
Aussie's are just The USA drunk!
See..this is why Pdog is king...Corgi...man that dude don't even make the junior varsity
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| pdog |
I will always be the token white boy on The Couch!
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| StickyFishFingers |
Great post Riffy, it made me feel all warm and fuzzy. Just to add to Corgi's comments - Menzies was a wanker,as is Malcolm Fraser, Jeff Kennet (even though he did get Melbourne up and running again after Joan Kirner & co knackered it in the 80's) his protege' - our prime minister John Winston Howard is a right wing ultra - conservative, sex only with the lights out once a year, lying little gimp & wanker also - who will hopefully retire at the end of this year (which is not soon enough). At least when he goes his most likely replacement ie our Federal treasurer is pro-republic - sorry to all the English folks here but really the British monarchy has f#ck all relevance to Australia in this day and age & we don't need them - John Howard deliberately saboutaged our republic referendum at our last federal election because he wants our country to keep the Queen of England as our figurehead, the general public was well and truly conned on that one). Our next PM will hopefully be Kim Beasley who really should have won the Federal election in 2001 had it not been for the Tampa children overboard & Sept. 11 events which our devious PM used to his advantage to prey on the xenophobic attitudes of the media and Australians in general. Oh and one final bit of trivia for you - the leader of the Greens party her in Australia is Senator Dr. Bob Browne - a top bloke who incidentally whilst working as a Doctor in London was the Doctor who pronounced Jimi Hendrix as dead. |
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| corgi37 |
And Bob Browne is gay!
Not that there's anything wrong with that. |
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