The year that was meant to be but didn’t

This was the year Intelligent Design (ID) made its push to get into the science classroom and Iraq was supposed to be the shining new example of democracy in the Middle East. Alas, the latest attempt at cloaking creationism by another named gibberish has encountered its first knock back by the US legal system in Pennsylvania. The court's decision is available here (pdf) for the interested.

Judge John E. Jones III declared that the school district's claim that I.D. is a scientifically valid alternative to evolution is simply wrong. "Intelligent design is nothing less than the progeny of creationism," he writes.

Salon has an in depth article titled Survival of the unfittest looking at the challenge from ID and its rise in mainstream culture. Thankfully the situation here doesn’t appear to be as bad as in the US with both Bush and the Pope joining the chorus.

A lot of people seek answers to complex systems with closed solutions rather than spending the effort required to critique and/or debunk one’s beliefs and maintain an open and sceptical mind. ID isn’t the first and will not be the last challenge to the sceptics amongst us. I was always in favour of teaching the theory of the Flying Spaghetti Monster alongside ID. So what’s going to happen to FSM now?

As Nassim Taleb writes, there are many Opiates of the middle classes needing debunking. Another supposed success was to be the spread of secular democracy in Iraq. While some sense of political self-governance has taken hold it’s hardly the resounding success it was meant to be. The US appears to have done a deal with the Sunni leadership but Iran is sabre rattling, so what's up?. IMO, the biggest questions in 2006 will be if Iraq slips into a civil war and how the US-Iran relationship will evolve. Meanwhile Juan Cole has a an excellent article titled Top Ten Myths about Iraq in 2005

See you in the next year and all hail

Racing to develop

Over at Lanka Libertarian there is a bit of discussion about the social vs economic development. Sometime ago while discussing Sri Lanka with a family friend who was involved in and led a development organization for most of his life expressed the view that the problems were caused by the social development of the country outpacing economic development. I made a mental note though I wasn’t convinced of this as the causal factor.

The more plausible argument seems to be that the problems faced by Sri Lanka are multi-causal and economic development (the lack of it) was one of the causes. Particularly amongst the educated and meritorious youth who were frustrated by the lack of opportunities for advancement.

Anyway, while googling for a book on SL the new big-brother suggested a link to this paper titled Economic Roots of Political Conflict: The Case of Sri Lanka (pdf) by Sirimal Abeyratne. The Abstract reads,

The escalation of political conflicts in many developing countries and their impact on economic development have been topical issues in recent development literature. The overwhelming emphasis on 'ethnic conflicts' in the literature has, however, precluded analysts from looking at political conflicts beyond their ethnic dimension, in the wider context of the development process. In particular, because of the preoccupation with ethnic roots as the prime source of these conflicts, reverse causation, running from economic policy to political conflict, has been virtually ignored in the debate. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap through an in-depth case study of the 'twin political conflict' in Sri Lanka - the Tamil separatist war in the North and the Sinhala youth uprising in the South - with emphasis on its economic roots. The findings suggest that fundamental contradictions in the national development policy in the restrictive trade regime of Sri Lanka were at the heart of the country's twin political conflict.[paper (pdf)]

For an academic paper in economics its a surprisingly easy read. I recommend reading it, better yet print it out and keep it under the pillow and read a page or two each night before falling a sleep. More south-asian economics info at ASARC.

of Middle Eastern Appearance

Note:subscription issues using links try www.bugmenot.com

Over the past five years these words became part of the media verbiage when describing violent and anti-social activities associated with gangs of first and second generation Lebanese-Australian youth in Sydney. It looks like the blowback has finally happened in the rather insular suburb of Cronulla which has a history of intolerance towards people from other suburbs. What was intended to be a legitimate protest by surfies and beachgoers quickly became a cowardly and inexcusable racist mob that indiscriminately attacked anyone who looked “middle eastern”. This has been followed by more cowardly reprisal attacks over the past two nights by car loads of youth (read Lebanese). Lets make no mistake, this is a turf war between two Neanderthal tribes ( the "lebos" and the "surfies" ) with a racial elements mixed in.

While I’m not a Sydneysider and am not intimately familiar with the city, I lived there for a year. I also have family members and friends whom I visit at least twice a year. It is from this perspective that I analyse and write here.

The timeline and lead up

Lebanese youth seem to have been frequenting the beachside suburbs of southern Sydney and generally making a nuisance of themselves (more below). Reports alleged threatening behaviour towards fellow beachgoers, loudmouthed ogling and calls of “sluts” towards girls in bikinis / swimwear, etc.

Ms Lamour said the gangs that roamed the beach targeted the locals. "They always come down trying to start trouble. It's the only reason we don't want to come down, because we know we will get harassed."

On the previous Sunday a gang of Lebanese youth were involved in an attack on lifeguards at Cronulla beach. This attack seems to have been the straw that broke the camels back. In most beaches lifeguards provide a volunteer community service which carries a degree of respect and gratitude within the local community.

As a response a community protest was planned this past Sunday but without proper coordination the organisation took a life of it’s own (similar to flash mobs) as SMS texts did the rounds calling “Aussies” to take back the beach and join in “bash a wog and leb day”. The media too got a wind of this and started to report on it.

The media baiting and incitement(?)

During the week elements of the media, particularly the RWDB shock jocks on Sydney talk-back radio let rip and stoked the flames on intolerance as usual.

Alan Jones was screaming like a race caller whose horse was coming home. "I'm the person that's led this charge here. Nobody wanted to know about North Cronulla, now it's gathered to this."...

top-rating breakfast host had heaps of anonymous emails to whip his 2GB listeners on. "Alan, it's not just a few Middle Eastern bastards at the weekend, it's thousands. Cronulla is a very long beach and it's been taken over by this scum. It's not a few causing trouble, it's all of them."...

He assured his audience he "understood" why that famous text message went out and he read it right through again on air: "Come to Cronulla this weekend to take revenge. This Sunday every Aussie in the shire get down to North Cronulla to support the leb and wog bashing day …"

Such comments, IMHO, contain statements inciting violence. The question is, would the authorities enforce the rule of law and call these lame and temporal media elites to account?

Though this is not the first instance of the media targeting the Lebanese community as a whole due to the actions of some, many high-profile incidents involving self-identifying Lebanese youth have created a negative stereotype

Lebanese violence and stereotype

The history of Lebanese migration following the civil-war is an interesting story on its own. It’s my understanding that the then prime-minister allowed many unsavoury characters to migrate to Australia and most of them settled in Sydney but they certainly haven’t followed the script of Model Minorities. From this emerged crime gangs whose modus operandi became the unrestrained use of firearms. At times it seemed that drive-by shootings in the south-western suburbs became a weekly event and even the police stations came under fire.

Also in Sydney, around 2000 gangs of youth from muslim backgrounds were involved in luring and gang-raping “Aussie” girls. Most of these limpdicks self-identified themselves as Lebanese. The most notorious being one Bilal Skaf now in jail.

These events and other minor incidents involving a disproportionate use of violence sent chills throughout Sydney and socialised the “lebo” stereotype. Though some are eager to blame the S11, Bali and Tampa incidents I believe much of the damage was self-inflicted by a community now knowing how to come to grips with the idiotic and macho elements among them. As with any other insecure minority the lebos too make a habit of over emphasising their ethnicity and are negative towards “Aussies”.

Cronulla; an intolerant suburb

Cronulla, the suburb where the riots occurred, has a history of violence towards outsiders. During the week the beach is primarily the domain of locals but on weekend the people from the nearby suburbs arrive and it seems this riles the locals. There have been riots and rivalry between the parochial insiders and outsiders and it appears to have been particularly bad in the 60s. Most of the Lebanese youth who frequent the beach are from these same suburbs.

My significant other worked in a Cronulla school for over 6 years and according her it’s a generally middle-class suburb, but ethnically homogenous with a underbelly of nastiness. According to her, the yobbo elements were always a significant proportion of the population. It also appears to have one of the lowest proportions of migrant settlement rates in Sydney.

In 2003 I wrote a feature for the Herald about the implications of the Shire's cultural make-up. Its 215,000 people then (the second biggest local council in NSW and the fourth biggest in Australia), had one of the lowest proportions of non-English-speaking-background residents in the country: 9 per cent. White faces dominate, as do conservative values.

The suburb is known for its surfing facilities. While there are many smart people who surf one needs to differentiate them from the “surfies”. The surfies are those for whom surfing is their primary identity and lifestyle. Having spent some time amongst surfies, most people I know agree with me when I say that surfies are not the brightest lights on the beach.

The riots

Following the cowardly attack on two lifeguards by about 20 Lebanese youth a community protest was planned for Sunday. Spreading the message via SMS and the media the protest seems to have attracted a large numbers of youth from all around the shire. It was also attended by small numbers of ultra-rightwing neo-nazi and nationalist groups who were there spreading their bile and stirring the passions of hatred as usual.

According to what I saw on TV, a hot day, lots of booze and a lackadaisical police presence seems to have turned local pride into jingoistic ethno-nationalist hatred. While there was a racist element to the mob, my observation was that it contained people from many races not just Caucasian Australians as reported worldwide. The racism that was evident was of everyone hating the “lebos”.

Irrespective of the targets all racism is deplorable. What is bravery when the fight is 5000 vs 1 or 20 vs 2 ? How does one justify a mob attacking a muslim girl? or attacking an ambulance? These acts of violence were conducted by cowardly thugs involved in a turf war. They seem to find security in self-fulfilling ethnic identities and resorting to pack mentalities afraid of one on one confrontations.

More discussion at catallaxy(post1, post2), LarvatusProdeo and darp. Oh and by the way, In my experience Australia is not Racist.

A whinge or two

I haven’t been in a blogging mood lately. It must be that time of the year because I have been out of sorts. The head heavy; the heart dry; the clouds grey; the mood dim. This explains the lack of interest in the blogosphere.

Weekend and long hours became part of the work week in trying to get the latest version of the software out the door. Having inherited some bad algorithm designs it always riles me when a change in behaviour/usage exposes holes containing code that’s comparable to using band-aids to hold together a train. There is no excuse for bad design decisions, says I, one who has been guilty of such conduct at times. Anyway, managed to get it all under control and ship it in time.

On top of that one of my neighbours seems to have set up a wifi network. This coupled with a M$ XP software “product feature” meant that every time I tried to load a page the laptop would drop the network connection. On the weekend I finally managed to move aside the furniture in the study to get to the router and reconfigure the channel. It seems to be working now.

There are a few things to blog about. Have been holding back from blogging something about the elections but the time is nigh (unlike some broken intentinons). Before that however I must write something about the anti-lebanese racially tuned riots at Cronulla beach in Sydney. For now, it’s time to cruise across the blogs and leave some comments.