From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Sat Apr 08 2000 - 21:05:31 MDT
>Here's an interesting fact about the States: you get to choose where you
>want to live. Comparing homicide rates in two countries as large as ours
>is almost worthless, unless you suppose you'll settle down in a fully
>random location.
>Ellis Wyatt
A telling argument. In Australia, by contrast, the commissars roster us at
birth to certain localities. Our internal passports do not permit us to
move outside the small region to which we have been allocated. There's
barbed wire everywhere, and machine guns set up at the checkpoints.
Visiting black ghetto Americans are astonished to witness these
restrictions. But we don't mind too much, since our crime figures are lower.
Damien
[actually, all irony aside, Australian blacks *have* been treated
abominably. There's a furious debate at the moment over the `stolen
generation' created by a do-gooding imperial policy of government
kidnappings of a third or more of part-aboriginal children, forcibly
removed from their mothers and taken to orphanages for adoption; the plan
was to assimilate/deracinate them for their own good. The reaction to this
grotesque tragedy is slowly building among the now-middle-aged victims.
Expect to hear more about this during the Sydney Olympics.]
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