Posts by Russell Brown
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Not ideal, but far better than the postulated alternatives.
The suggestion isn't about recapturing the spirit of the BDO, it's about preventing the misuse of the Australian flag to abuse people of colour. Banning the flag, or discouraging attendees from bringing flags on the day before Australia Day won't recapture the spirit of the BDO either.
So the solution to aggressive nationalism is to make nationalism compulsory? To repeat some of the objections I raised on Kiwiblog yesterday, aren't you just going to get thugs telling non-whites they have no right to the flag? Do you become a target if you decline to carry the flag around all day? And do the organisers then ban people bringing in, say, Lebanese flags?
As I said, they're in danger of the event becoming too weird and too tense to be fun any more.
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I didn't get around to using it in the main post this morning, but this blog entry is interesting.
It points out that the National Soccer League was de-ethnicised in the late 1990s:
Melbourne Croatia became the Melbourne Knights, Preston Makedonia became the Preston Lions and South Melbourne Hellas became the South Melbourne Lakers.
As part of the process, heritage flags were banned, on the basis that they were associated with violence. The author concludes:
More recently, an incident between Serbian, Greek and Croatian fans at the Australian Tennis Open raised immediate calls to ban these flags from entering Melbourne Park. If the Serbian and Croatian flags can incite violence, then why is the Australian flag exempt, especially given the newfound nationalism that has spurred up in many young Australians since the Cronulla riots and with talk by such individuals of a second riot happening at Rye in the near future.
John Howard is right, flags do not have arms and legs and as such should not be banned from being displayed, however this proud country built on multiculturalism cannot truly celebrate Australia Day without celebrating what makes this country so great. An incredibly diverse pot of cultures, traditions, religions and above all a mutual respect makes Australia distinct from any other country the Australian flag should be waved proudly, as too should the flags of the countries which the Australian people come from.
When you suppress people of the right to celebrate their origins and cultures, you suppress the nation of the very multicultural fragment that makes Australia the lucky country.
The thing that strikes me is not so much the racism of one side or the other (the Leb gangs are clearly nasty thugs), but the extent to which Australians seem to be set against each other, the pressure to assimilate notwithstanding. It's a very different country to ours.
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Perhaps the drug dogs are just a way for thousands of music fans to have their music festival back too - it's the Big Day Out, not J-Day :-)
Right. So we can go back to the golden era when everyone at the Big Day Out was stone cold sober, even in the Boiler Room. Oh, hang on ...
But seriously Graeme, the idea of resoonding to problems by pushing the event into being some sort of flag day is silly. Reading a number of sites, I get the impression that long-term punters feel that it's losing its quirkiness. Turning it into flag day hardly recaptures the spirit.
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Wow! The sound's a bit shit, but here's something you probably never thought you'd see again. Kids, this was actually a hit back in the day ...
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McAloo Tikki™
Fried breaded potato & peas patty that is flavoured with a special spice mix, fresh tomato slices, onion, and veg. tomato mayonnaise between toasted buns.
It actually doesn't sound so bad ...
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The forces of political correctness shall not beat us down.
The clip is here
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It's such a shame the "God Hates Fags" clip has been taken down - it was so ludicrous, and so utterly fruity that any sensible person should have been amused, not offended by it. Indeed, my first action on finding it was to send the link to two gay friends ...
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My mind was, however, preoccupied. I'd ate a McAloo Tikki burger from McDonald's the night before, and my mind was boogling at the the sheer range of stories where I could use "McAloo Tikki" as a humourous aside, handy segue, or even as a metaphor that encapsulates the commercialisation of India in one neatly oversimplified little package. Absolute gem.
This is a fine post, Keith. But review the burger, dammit.
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I always wonder how they all find the time. And the emotional energy for that level of hate.
Come to think of how do you all find the time?You mean for our love?
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Redbaiter has patches of sanity that make me suspect he is more than one person, or perhaps that another regular user has Redbaiter as an amusing sockpuppet and forgets to stay in character.
Unlikely. Redbaiter's a relative newbie on Kiwiblog, but he has a long history on the local Usenet newsgroups, so it would be a long act. But agreed, he does occasionally briefly drop out of character.
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