2011-04-28
Safety Mosque
Shortly after being physically intimidated by Liberal Party (right-wing - ie the ones I support!) thugs at the NSW election, I was considering switching state to one that wasn't controlled by the Liberal Party. Believe it or not, the Liberal Party was doing this to me even though I live in a (relatively poor) Labor electorate, and the Labor Party was in control in both NSW and Australia at the time. The Liberals knew they were going to win the election though, so maybe that's why they thought they could get away with physical intimidation, which appeared to me to be a criminal offence. I was completely outnumbered by their thugs so couldn't physically respond even if I wanted to, which I didn't. The Labor Party guy didn't respond to the intimidation against him either.
Unfortunately I had a pretty bad calculation - the Liberal Party could send their criminal thugs after me no matter where I went. They could even send them overseas, although not to somewhere like North Korea. The options for personal security that I could see were:
1. Live with an Aboriginal tribe (there are heaps available - they're not homogenous) and hope that 100% of them would be true to the Labor Party and not one of them would attack me for other reasons. The Aboriginal tribes also tend to live in pretty squalid conditions, so I was thinking maybe I could go to a small town and invite Aboriginal friends to join me there instead. But that would take quite a long time to take effect and has numerous impracticalities.
2. Set up an Islamic State in the Old City of Jerusalem (about 5km * 5km area - and no yanks, I'm not going to convert that into King George's You Beaut System of Weights and Measures for you - it's your responsibility to do that conversion yourself in the same way it is my responsibility to switch to American English or suffer the wrath of the spell-checker) and barricade myself in the Al Aqsa mosque and have the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade as my protectors. This has some obvious problems with getting set up too, but at least I would be outside all western power structures, none of which I trusted.
I realised that my desire to be protected by a terrorist organization might land me in even more trouble, so decided to make a bee-line to the nearest mosque. I caught a taxi and asked to be taken to the Lakemba Mosque. The taxi driver couldn't even find it. Which is ironic because it's meant to be so big that people complain about it. I thought I could make common cause with Sheik Hilaly as surely he wasn't a stooge for the Australian government (although you can never be sure).
I then realised Lakemba wasn't close to me anyway, and it was the Auburn mosque I was after, so asked to be taken back to that. You cannot imagine how beautiful a mosque is when you're running from a western government. It was the most beautiful sight in the world. A place of safety. I still had to get past any securitate the Australian government may have placed in my path, and asked the taxi driver to make sure I got into the mosque grounds safely. He didn't. And believe it or not, there was no obvious entrance to this place when I was desperate to get over the fence. So close but yet so far.
I saw a woman in hijab, another beautiful sight, and she directed me to the entrance. I still couldn't see any obvious sign of Muslims, and I asked her where I could be with lots of Muslims and she gave me further direction to where they were holding prayers. The only thing you need to do is take off your shoes, so I did so and went in and finally I was safe. Just to be sure, I skipped the first man in case he was a stooge. The prayer finished shortly after and everyone got up to leave.
I panicked as I was about to lose my protection, and called out to the people to help protect me from the Australian government. I was chased outside by the imam, and most people left. A couple of people stayed with me outside the mosque and at least let me explain myself and they directed me to a particular organization at the Lakemba mosque, whose name I subsequently forgot (something like ANS). But the first thought that came to my mind when I was being kicked out was "I am in the Mu'tazilah - obviously my place is outside". "Mu'tazilah" means "Ones who are separate" in reference to the fact that they weren't welcome to congregate at the same place as everyone else back in the good old days in Basrah.
So with the Chinese unwilling to protect me, and the Muslims unwilling to protect me, I resigned myself to taking my chances with the Australian government. Although that led me to another 3 weeks of incarceration at their hands. But at least this time through the system the nurses took physical abuse seriously. Almost as if someone was reading my blog. It was still a real den though. Violent, frustrated inmates with no outlet. One guy in particular was saying that he was a fucking Wog and that anyone who said otherwise was a fucking liar, and at one point he said "It's all your fault" to me and made a threatening movement. I'm a lilly-white Skip so have no form of immediate protection other than my fists, but he didn't back up his threatening movement with actual punches. Interestingly, he also made threatening movements to a female member of staff (a drop-dead gorgeous Filipina) and I instinctively moved to protect her. I also attempted to protect another inmate with brain damage from a car accident by writing a letter explaining the systematic failures that were endangering him.
I was moved from the violent ward to a ward where there was more wheeling and dealing than I could keep track of, and finally to a ward that was half female and no real threat of violence (just the incredible boredom - but by this time I had finally got substantial amounts of leave).
Moral of the story? Deep analysis needs to continue. We shouldn't have any such thing as Liberal Party Thugs. Those guys spruiking for the Liberal Party (actually, via plausible deniability they were all supposedly spruiking for a supposed independent - who had conveniently swapped preferences with the Liberal Party) should have instead internalized freedom of speech to the point that they - like me - would go out of their way to protect someone who was being intimidated. The Labor Party supporter was actually a South Korean with an accent and the presumably-native (but ethnic Arab) Liberal Party thugs were teasing his accent whenever he spoke. I told the South Korean that he had a beautiful accent (the only accents I don't really like are New Zealand and some American ones). Anyway, I consider the Iraq/Libyan wars to be abstractions of the thuggery we see within Australia (someone bashing you to steal your wallet). And I am currently working on a pad that is designed to abstract even the Libyan war so that I don't have to listen to specious arguments about "British imperialism".
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Unfortunately I had a pretty bad calculation - the Liberal Party could send their criminal thugs after me no matter where I went. They could even send them overseas, although not to somewhere like North Korea. The options for personal security that I could see were:
1. Live with an Aboriginal tribe (there are heaps available - they're not homogenous) and hope that 100% of them would be true to the Labor Party and not one of them would attack me for other reasons. The Aboriginal tribes also tend to live in pretty squalid conditions, so I was thinking maybe I could go to a small town and invite Aboriginal friends to join me there instead. But that would take quite a long time to take effect and has numerous impracticalities.
2. Set up an Islamic State in the Old City of Jerusalem (about 5km * 5km area - and no yanks, I'm not going to convert that into King George's You Beaut System of Weights and Measures for you - it's your responsibility to do that conversion yourself in the same way it is my responsibility to switch to American English or suffer the wrath of the spell-checker) and barricade myself in the Al Aqsa mosque and have the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade as my protectors. This has some obvious problems with getting set up too, but at least I would be outside all western power structures, none of which I trusted.
I realised that my desire to be protected by a terrorist organization might land me in even more trouble, so decided to make a bee-line to the nearest mosque. I caught a taxi and asked to be taken to the Lakemba Mosque. The taxi driver couldn't even find it. Which is ironic because it's meant to be so big that people complain about it. I thought I could make common cause with Sheik Hilaly as surely he wasn't a stooge for the Australian government (although you can never be sure).
I then realised Lakemba wasn't close to me anyway, and it was the Auburn mosque I was after, so asked to be taken back to that. You cannot imagine how beautiful a mosque is when you're running from a western government. It was the most beautiful sight in the world. A place of safety. I still had to get past any securitate the Australian government may have placed in my path, and asked the taxi driver to make sure I got into the mosque grounds safely. He didn't. And believe it or not, there was no obvious entrance to this place when I was desperate to get over the fence. So close but yet so far.
I saw a woman in hijab, another beautiful sight, and she directed me to the entrance. I still couldn't see any obvious sign of Muslims, and I asked her where I could be with lots of Muslims and she gave me further direction to where they were holding prayers. The only thing you need to do is take off your shoes, so I did so and went in and finally I was safe. Just to be sure, I skipped the first man in case he was a stooge. The prayer finished shortly after and everyone got up to leave.
I panicked as I was about to lose my protection, and called out to the people to help protect me from the Australian government. I was chased outside by the imam, and most people left. A couple of people stayed with me outside the mosque and at least let me explain myself and they directed me to a particular organization at the Lakemba mosque, whose name I subsequently forgot (something like ANS). But the first thought that came to my mind when I was being kicked out was "I am in the Mu'tazilah - obviously my place is outside". "Mu'tazilah" means "Ones who are separate" in reference to the fact that they weren't welcome to congregate at the same place as everyone else back in the good old days in Basrah.
So with the Chinese unwilling to protect me, and the Muslims unwilling to protect me, I resigned myself to taking my chances with the Australian government. Although that led me to another 3 weeks of incarceration at their hands. But at least this time through the system the nurses took physical abuse seriously. Almost as if someone was reading my blog. It was still a real den though. Violent, frustrated inmates with no outlet. One guy in particular was saying that he was a fucking Wog and that anyone who said otherwise was a fucking liar, and at one point he said "It's all your fault" to me and made a threatening movement. I'm a lilly-white Skip so have no form of immediate protection other than my fists, but he didn't back up his threatening movement with actual punches. Interestingly, he also made threatening movements to a female member of staff (a drop-dead gorgeous Filipina) and I instinctively moved to protect her. I also attempted to protect another inmate with brain damage from a car accident by writing a letter explaining the systematic failures that were endangering him.
I was moved from the violent ward to a ward where there was more wheeling and dealing than I could keep track of, and finally to a ward that was half female and no real threat of violence (just the incredible boredom - but by this time I had finally got substantial amounts of leave).
Moral of the story? Deep analysis needs to continue. We shouldn't have any such thing as Liberal Party Thugs. Those guys spruiking for the Liberal Party (actually, via plausible deniability they were all supposedly spruiking for a supposed independent - who had conveniently swapped preferences with the Liberal Party) should have instead internalized freedom of speech to the point that they - like me - would go out of their way to protect someone who was being intimidated. The Labor Party supporter was actually a South Korean with an accent and the presumably-native (but ethnic Arab) Liberal Party thugs were teasing his accent whenever he spoke. I told the South Korean that he had a beautiful accent (the only accents I don't really like are New Zealand and some American ones). Anyway, I consider the Iraq/Libyan wars to be abstractions of the thuggery we see within Australia (someone bashing you to steal your wallet). And I am currently working on a pad that is designed to abstract even the Libyan war so that I don't have to listen to specious arguments about "British imperialism".
# posted by Paul Edwards @ 06:36 
