Redneck Salute

ON YOUTH GENOCIDE

(Another Travelogue)

Cambodia is one of those countries where the unspeakable, the unimaginable, the most despicable of acts of genocide since WWII were perpetrated against a peaceful and spiritual community, and where Australia now pays to case manage our so-called illegal boat people.

Politics is a dirty business and the dirty business goes on more than two decades after a few million people disappeared off the face of the earth. Everywhere you go in Cambodia you are faced with grinding poverty, entrenched corruption, continually changing political allegiances, and a Royal family that despite being descendants of a long line of apolitical ancestors has managed to lurch conveniently from the extreme left where the concept of royalty or class doesn’t exist to the extreme right where royalty determines every persons life in their very vertically structured class system. Cambodia is still ruled by a chain-smoking puppet of Vietnam, it has never known in the last half decade any leader but a foreigner brought in to continue with a virtual one-party state controlled from Hanoi.

For those of us who are Monty Python followers people of power, and subsequently the ones with all the money, are easily recognised on the streets of Pnom Penn, ‘ they are the only ones not covered in shit’

Pol Pot wiped out the value of the currency by simply burning it all, wiped out any evidence of ownership by burning it all, destroyed as much as he could of the religious institutions as well as their temples, imprisoned anyone who could read and murdered anyone who could write as well. Impossible rules were put in place whereby anything but ‘Yes’ meant a death sentence. You are a reactionary? Yes! You like this government? Yes! You love being tortured? Yes! The Killing Fields are highly productive and lucrative? Yes!

The only things that appear to have remained untouched were Ankor Wat because it was so huge they couldn’t blow it up, the Golden Pagoda because it would upset the King, and Royal Cambodja Airlines because flying was the only way the Khmer Rouge could travel around the country.

Even when I visited more than 25 years after the genocide and Pol Pot was languishing in Hell, driving down a suburban street could be done no faster than 5Km an hour so that one didn’t end up with whiplash from the jazz-beat jolting in and out of the potholes. In fact the only way shopkeepers could get customers was to constantly be running out and filling the potholes with little rocks to smooth out the road in front of their business.

Half the foreign aid going into Cambodia goes straight into the pockets of the ruling elite, politicians and military leaders. This of course includes anything we pay to them to take these bloody boat people.

The dilemma faced by foreign aid workers is to either allow this situation to continue or stop the aid and see most of the population starve to death. The ruling elite seem also to be the only ones that have a house, when those who were still alive returned to the cities it was first in first served and anything that still had a roof was closely guarded by armed soldiers reserving it for the next up in rank.

Pol Pot’s concept of returning Cambodia to its rural roots and thus to its glorious past was a reasonable concept, to rid the country of everything that was decadent as a means of introducing social equality, strip the country of its shameful colonial past and its capitalist future, in effect to start all over again with ‘Year Zero’, may have been philosophically palatable but totally destructive. It was the way in which he plunged the country back into the Stone Age where bumping off anyone who didn’t belong to your tribe or religion was considered an acceptable, practical and honourable thing to do. Very cleansing and remarkably similar to what the Islamic fundamentalists are trying to do to each other today.

To get to the real point of the story. How are we going to solve the social problems without the radical practice of the moral genocide of our young people? Half the government funding into welfare goes straight into the pockets of the ruling bureaucrats and the social services elite both in non-government and private agencies.

The dilemma faced by dedicated and useful welfare workers is to either allow this situation to continue or stop the money and see most of the population of unemployable young people drug themselves to death. The ruling elite hand down unrealistic dictates according to this theorist or that child psychologist which chew up resources, like the robber barons of the faux-employment training industry.

When we are working with young people who we feel are totally out of wack with normal behaviour, whose practices are socially unacceptable we can’t use the ‘Year Zero’ approach of going back and rebuilding their life from scratch. The damage has already been done. The Buddhist concept of the Willow bending with the wind until the storm passes and then continuing to grow is perhaps a lesson that we might all need to learn.

Can we not accept drug use, prostitution and violence as being part of many an adolescent psyche instead of obstinately sticking to our guns and our own out-dated moral values. Perhaps bending with the whirlwind created by damaged youth and hang in until the storm passes and their energy is sapped before quietly and patiently redirecting their energy into more productive outcomes may be the better option for the community as a whole.

In Cambodia you have a choice of right and left hand drive cars depending on what neighbouring country they were imported from. Should we not have a similar right and left hand concept of working with young people depending from where they have come from?

Do we wipe out their currency, the means by which they survive? Should we burn all their baggage and pretend it didn’t exist in an effort to begin rebuilding again. The Year Zero concept is to expunge them from our thoughts, to not deal with their problems until they become more compliant to our case management principles.

In the words of Ingersoll ‘regardless of what we do to a person we cannot force anyone to think or act differently’.   

PETER PIPER PICKED A PECK OF PICKLED PEPPERS

And that allows us to segway into the subject of P.E.T.A which stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which is supported by the Rabid Vegan Lobby and not as someone suggested to me as People for the Eating of Treated Agriculture which is a different group supported by the Genetic Modification Lobby.

I think that our first argument against this truly crazy cult is that if God didn’t want us to eat animals then why did he give us the spear and the fishing rod. According to ‘his book’ animals were created and put on this earth (at least the ones saved by Noah) to serve mankind and I don’t think he meant for them to work at Café No.80.

So if they don’t believe in God then what do they believe in, here are ten examples from the P.E.T.A Code of Ethics.

1. Humans should not eat honey because that is stealing the bees hard work.

2. As we do not pay our animals that is akin to ‘slavery’.

3. The confinement of animals against their will is contrary to the law of ‘habeus corpus’.

4. Animals are given no Public Holidays nor Annual Leave.

5. Female animals are not allowed to enjoy ‘Labour Day’.

6. Animals should not be forced to grow unwanted skin, fur, wool or feathers just to meet market demand.

7. Cows should be permitted to give free milk to every sucker that comes along.

8. Milkers should be forced to warm their hands first.

9. Dogs should be free to sniff everyone’s butt.

10. All animal slaughter facilities should be forced to close the week before Sunday.

But do true Vegans understand the horror taking place when they eat their toasted facuchio?, fuckarchio? pinnochio? Bloody hell - when they eat their tomato and lettuce sandwiches.

We are told by the most avid gardeners (who know all about growing things) that talking to your flowers invigorates them. And how does a seed know which way to grow? This would indicate that they can hear us which would support the argument that vegetables have brains. If they have brains, they have veins, and air, and nerves, sex and all the other things that make up life. Bloody hell…. Eating vegetables is Cannabalism. O.M.G

Now I feel guilty about the Mung Beans sautéed in Cogi Berry Juice not just about the Pigs Nipple Chips I bought at the Markets. What would vegans feel about the grubs and bugs they eat accidentally in the garden salad their neighbour tosses onto their plate, or the spiders and bugs consumed when sleeping with your mouths open.

Sometimes, every now and then people who believe in some of this rubbish should sit down in a quite place on a regular basis and either reconsider how stupid they really are or just take a knife and slit their wrists. After all they’d be doing us a favour in volunteering to become compost, which will grow grass, which will then be eaten by a bloody goat. What a turn up for the books that would be - being eaten by the very animal you just saved.

BEN DENISE

ON BALI

Why does anyone travel when we could sit at home at watch it all on the Discovery Channel?

You can see a Buddhist Monastery outside Wollongong, you can smell the pungent odours of the Markets at Preston, you can experience grand architecture at the Regent Theatre or State Library, if you want to see exotic animals go to Melbourne Zoo. Exotic plants? Botanical Gardens. Every airport looks like every other airport and all Non-smoking.

No…. we are curious to see what is on the other side of the fence, and for me the more I travel the more I enjoy coming home. For it is then that I realise what a fortunate position we are all in, and the moans and groans of outrageous fortune don’t seem to occur as often.

It is a great pity that we can’t turn things around so that instead of increasing income through age, experience and knowledge we can’t receive better salaries whilst we are young and have them pegged, as we get older and the need for dough decreases. When do we need money most? When we are starting out in life. Travel, House, Car and Baby all come when we are young and least able to afford them.

Just after a few mentally unstable individuals blew up hundreds of white people and Balinese western lacky’s I had the fortune to visit Bali.These ‘bombers’ believed that Islam was being threatened by the West with such lame duck excuses as ‘our women are getting ideas about being equal to men’ and ‘western culture is the creation of Infidels to seduce our young people’. One might note that some of these cranks are also wearing Nike and GAP.

Indonesia and hence Bali (despite it having a Hindu majority) is part of the Empire of Islam. Unlike the British Empire of old when one nation is under threat all the others will automatically fall in behind them regardless of race or sect, Islam is so fractured and fractuous that even if Islam was to fall completely the aim would be to ensure their brand, Sunni, Shi’ite, Sufi, Wahabi were the last to fall. Survival of the fittest even unto death.

Whilst in Bali amongst the hordes of aged drunken Australians looking for cheap sex (not even our blind whores would want these blokes mounting them), and cringing whenever I had to show anyone my passport, I imagined myself to be back in Kings Cross. It was oft said by local Balinese that half our tourists come from Indonesia just to experience the decadent West. Having recently arrived from Solo in Central Java I found myself agreeing with them.

So why do I enjoy arriving home so much? It is because I begin to appreciate what Australia has to offer. Despite all the prophesies of doom and gloom uttered either side of this column divider and the political atmosphere I realise that I have never had it so good.

So why can’t we have a society that, with the intensity of hormonal youth seeking sex, we travel outside our own borders and discover what the rest of the world hasn’t got. It would certainly be less embarrassing in Bali if the Aussie tourists were all virile young studs rather than the old retired wrinklies I saw with girls appearing more like grand-daughters hanging incestuously from the old guys wallet.

Poverty is relative. Even though I still cannot work out how some young people could possibly survive on what they receive from Centrelink but they fare much better than a country that has no social security system at all. Many tourists complain of the street vendors plying their wares with unceasing sales pitches, where the word ‘No’ seems to invoke an even greater sense of urgency to make you part with your money. Survival is the name of the game and a dollar profit from the fat old fart in the T-shirt, shorts and thongs will help them and their family make it through another day.

If our young people despite all the ‘Americanski hype’ that surrounds them, could see with their own eyes that there are billions worse off than they, then perhaps what we see as unreasonable demands might be seen by them as well.

The unending patience displayed by the people of Asia goes far beyond what we Western races would tolerate. Buddha taught that ‘Life is suffering, and suffering is life’. On the one hand this is a most enlightening decree but on the other it has also helped create the political ambiance of Asia where single parties, dictatorships and inhumane political freedom fighters proliferate. As a result a vast multitude of people suffer through the most bestial of revolutions in the belief that it has been ordained and they may as well just sit it out for the next life. Fortunately for us 500 years ago the Reformation allowed us to begin thinking for ourselves, we saw through the machinations of the Priests, and put religion in its proper place as part of our culture and not the centrepiece of it.

in a world of Donar Kebabs, Chinese Sweet and Sour and African Tapioca

‘WHAT DO WHITE RACISTS EAT?’