COMMENT: Powder keg

Let me take you down, 'cos we're going to, Macquarie Fields...

Sorry, couldn't resist. Anyhow, after 4 nights of "rioting" in one of the prole holes from hell that surround metropolitan Sydney, Macquarie Fields, things seem to have settled down somewhat. By the way: what Australians call "rioting" would more properly be called an "affray" or something along those lines. In my six years here, there has not been a single "riot" as the rest of the world understands the word. But this country has been sheltered from reality for so long that a few youths chucking bricks and bottles at a few cops constitutes a "riot" here. Semantics, to be sure, but still: every self-respecting ghetto gang from LA, hooligan crew from Europe, militia from Africa or militant union from Asia would've had both the so-called "rioters" AND the cops in Mac Fields for breakfast. Just to get the hysterical hullabaloo in the Australian press into perspective.

Which you can observe here. In case you have no idea what I'm talking about, The Australian sums it up neatly:

WHEN Dylan Raywood, Matt Robertson and another young man jumped into a stolen white Commodore on Friday night and careered away from police, they embarked on a time-honoured ritual around the Glenquarie housing commission estate.

They headed for Eucalyptus Drive. For the bored and the embittered young men who haunt Glenquarie streets in Macquarie Fields, southwest Sydney, Eucalyptus Drive is more than just a smooth arterial road snaking through the backwaters of one of the more depressed housing estates in Australia...It is there, opposite the small park known as Flinders Oval, that flowers and tributes are being laid for the two teenagers who died when their stolen car rolled several times while being chased by police. And it is there, for four consecutive nights, that hundreds of enraged local youths have staked out their battleground and rioted against police, who they blame for the deaths.

(snip)

As is the case in too many regional areas across the nation, when that thirst for action is coupled with a culture of welfare dependence, unemployment, low education, broken homes and drug and gambling addictions, the result is a creeping lawlessness that authorities struggle to contain. In the case of the Glenquarie Housing Commission estate in Macquarie Fields, a suburb of Campbelltown about one hour's drive from Sydney, it is a cocktail that exploded in a crippled and angry community....

Far from being the tropical paradise Australians and tourists would like it to be, Australia has the same (and in quite some cases worse) social problems as everyone else. In every other country, this observation would sound trite and redundant, but your average Australian really doesn't know and/or care about this country's vast (and I mean VAST) Lumpenproletariat underclass. And that's the difference to civilised nations. In civilised nations, at least the poor and disenfranchised are not comprehensively ignored and left to rot by the majority, whose members care only about looking after No. 1.

(US-Americans: don't comment. I did say civilised nations.)