I was listening to the latest episode of one of my favourite podcasts tonight; and the German host was talking about what's been happening in his neck of the woods lately.
He said his wife had wanted to do some sewing, but when they went to buy fabric they found they couldn't get to the shop. Apparently a group of about 4000 nazis had come to town to "fight islamists", and a coalition of about 6000 socialists & others had shown up to fight the nazis.
Christ, I hope things never get like that here.
Anybody seen that sort of thing up close?
13 comments :
My only question is: where were the Islamists?
Nah, only joking.
Nothing has happened like that near me. Thankfully. But it seems to be on the rise again around the world. Anti-semitism, tribal clashes, all that stuff.
You watching the news, Melbs?
I notice ABC are being very cautious with the Muslim angle. Haven't looked at other channels.
Regardless of what the outcome is though, I'm betting this's only gonna stoke the embers.
Well, ABC were being cautious until the 7PM news. Then they went full-on fear-porn mode.
Check out the opening story from tonight's 7:30 Report. Fuck you ABC; if I wanted shit like that, I'd watch Today Tonight.
I don't watch the news, you know that.
Do yourself a favour, and don't watch :)
So, you don't know anything about the hostage situation in Sydney?
I do know about it, I see things on twitter and facebook but usually skim that stuff. I avoid the MSM as I've said before, because it just pisses me off. In this case, all the 'terrorist' stuff, when of course it's turned out to be a lone bad guy, not a terrorist.
I can see it's had a bad outcome overnight, and seeing pictures of people escaping made me sad and teary.
We've talked about it before so we know there are other ways to know what's going on without watching the news on tv which is shit, or reading the newspapers, which is shit. All twisted and skewed and hysterical. Twitter too is hysterical but at least concise hysteria.
I tried it. I tried following what was going on last night through social media.
It seemed like an awful, confused mess. How the fuck do you do it?
But I'm not really following it, I'm avoiding it but people talk about stuff and that way, while I'm screening it out bits still get through and that's all I need to know. Sometimes more than. I'm happy to not know about some things, or to choose not to know. Some people can't stand it, they need to know.
Yes, you're right, I can't.
Not on important stuff.
OK I've read a couple of articles about it and they made me teary. So it's definitely a case of me protecting myself, and that is a stronger instinct or need than wanting to know absolutely everything about this incident.
I love the idea of people acting with good hearts in this situation but can't stand all the self-congratulatory stuff going on on twitter. Fucking shits me. "Look how good we are as human beings." Yes, it's great (the #illridewithyou thing) but just get on with it without the trumpeting.
I'm torn. Yes, it's self-aggrandizing wankery -- but ... it's better than things going in the other direction.
Absolutely, couldn't agree with you more. It IS better than going the other way so if we have to suffer through the self back-patting, then that's fine.
I think things have always been 'this bad' but now with instant news dissemination, it feels like there are more incidents, and that they are worse. In the past we wouldn't have known (necessarily) about things happening overseas (I'm thinking of the school shooting in Pakistan). We've had a bit of terrorism in this country from before (thinking about the Hilton bombing, when was that, late '70s?), the UK has had the IRA. There was Lockerbie and various Olympic things. There is a different element with the Islamicist thing, here in Australia. But other countries have been dealing with these sorts of occurrences.
I have a theory that our brains (my brain?) can only deal with the pain of a village. So a few families, and my own, I can only manage that amount of joy and pain and interaction. When the world's pain and suffering is delivered to me on a large scale, I can't handle it. So I don't go there as much as possible. We have talked about this before. I'm good at choosing not to indulge myself I suppose. Otherwise it would be hard to keep positive.
I agree in that, I don't think terrorism, tribal conflict, crime, etc, are getting worse (by much, if at all). What I do think is getting worse, and what I want to keep my eye on, is the way that we (collectively) deal with it. This very gentle and gradual drift towards authoritarianism, militarised police, surveillance, collusion amongst authority, corruption, injustice, jingoistic nationalism, etc. And part of it is that, as we get more informed about these things, we also get more accepting of it.
One of the things I was really interested in the other day, was watching how the police handled the situation. To some extent, I'm relieved they showed as much restraint as they did. But also the rhetoric of politicians/lobbyists/media/etc. Who tried to make mileage, and the direction they took.
One of the things that German podcast bloke has said before is that his biggest fear is apathy (and he had a cool German word for this particular type of apathy); because it was (that specific type of) apathy/acceptance that let the Nazi machine grow into what it became. Now, I know it's uncool to make parallels with Nazi Germany, and no, I don't think we'll ever become exactly like that; but y'know, it wasn't that long ago that we had the bloody white Australia policy. Also (in QLD) Joe and his police force. I don't think it's all just fanciful, paranoid nonsense.
In fact, I'm concerned that looking at America might be close to looking at our future. And some of the stuff they're introducing in the UK, regarding criminalising speech. And Spain has just made protesting illegal. And ...
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