I've also wanted to visit Australia. It's more of a childhood dream now, but I used to think that Australia would probably be the country I would move to if I were to leave my current country. Nowadays I don't care for switching places, here is alright anyway.
I mean, Australia has a lot of endearing aspects. There is a pretty deep safety net for people here. Its a good country to be homeless or struggling as there are resources and services to assist. There is an interesting change in culture away from the parochial, narrow-minded pettiness but racism is really present here. It is not unusual for casual racism to be expounded upon, in public, as almost small talk. Its changing but small minds still rule. Worth a visit though, natural beauty of an impersonal and ancient sort abounds. Central Australia by night, staring up into the Great Rift, you actually feel like a part of the cosmic Milky Way neghbourhood.
Torture isn't justified no matter the crime imo.
15 yr old boys you say?
At least I'm white.
Thats it. I was a troublesome young fellow, often in trouble- physical fights with the police who bashed me several times. Thrown in jail on several occiaions. A bit of a hooligan. I copped some bad treatment but I never mentioned my heritage. When I was growing up, my grandmother (who had no indigenous heritage) warned me to never tell authorities that I had such distant ancestry, but than she was racist. In Australia, indigenous people have a completely different set of rights.
That's fucked up, man. I will also say, I had a fellow Australian BLer casually tell me a story recently about narrowly escaping a drug-testing traffic stop, and it blew my mind. I consider the USA a police state more or less, but here we do not have anything like that. He said they can roadside drug test even for regular traffic stops and that they regularly do traffic stops for it. That's crazy to me, I mean in some towns here they do traffic stops for drunk driving, where they talk to you and breathalyze you if they think they should, but I have never heard of roadside drug testing, that's crazy and the very idea terrifies me. I mean weed sticks around for a long time.
Yep, its absurd. To be fair, I've never been drug tested when pulled over and haven't been pulled over for years- its not incredibly common, but the fear is there and that is what they want. I have a remarkable ability to read traffic
D) and I am adept at avoiding the huge traffic jams caused by fucking cops setting up there enormous, intimidating drug testing sites.
If you are in any traffic accident, and the police get involved, you will most likely be drug tested. Positive tests would see you as culpable.
There was a story recently of a guy who was charged for driving under the influence- 9 days after he last smoked weed.
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
Australia is almost a police state. Quite left wing in terms of size of government but hyper conservative at the same time. You should have seen the state of affairs when our prime minister (head of state basically) was female. She was utterly destroyed by the white, priviledged male hierarchy. It was upsetting. She no longer plays any role in public life, though she was forced from power by her own party in the middle of her tenure.
I found this passage really strange (bolding is mine):
Yeah, what?? He is trying to create a different impression of what Fluffy actually did which was terrify the boys into giving up and laying down their "weapons". And by 'boys' I mean BOY- only one boy in this incident left his cell. The government claimined that it was a riot but the footage has been linked. Several boys who were gassed, stripped naked, tied up, hosed directly in the face and hooded were sitting in their cells playing cards the whole fucking time.
Oh yeah, they were black. Of course, they were probably planning crimes.
This makes me so angry.
:D Forutnately, that dude has been sacked- he is no longer Minister for Corrections (though still minister for Children and Family- the same guy that accpeted the torture of other children!). The Northern Territory is a weird place. It is the central and northern most state, very sparsely populated. Heaps of indigenous people, some even attempting more traditional lives. Its like a frontier place, people have different attitudes, even different accents. When I went to South Africa, large parts of it reminded me of the Northern Territory.
Enough Australia studies for today.
