Corrupt Australia presents an alternative to the politically correct channels of debate to reveal and scrutinize the skewed structure/design of modern Australian society. We also seek to encourage autonomous Australian culture which is free from the standardizing and overly materialistic clutches of globalisation and which encourages citizens to go further than simply contributing to a quantity over quality mindset and the banal and unsustainable conditions under which we may increase our love for and attainment of material mass.

'Footy' to fix the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?



'AFL kicking goals in Israel' - From the ABC's 7.30 Report - 19/06/08

~

"It's remarkable to be standing here in Israel on the shores of the Mediterranean and watching an Israeli and a Palestinian boy in a marking competition. And they're kicking and they're running and they're hand-passing in a way we thought only Australian kids knew how to do"
[...]
"...the inner stress that they have they wanna get out and instead of taking it out on the kid next to him in a violent way, they can take it out on a footy pitch in the proper way...I think it will be really good here in Israel. I think it will work"

~

Please. This sort of outlook is so utterly simplistic and delusional that its offensive. It makes out that Israeli (Jewish) and Palestinian (Arab) people are fighting each other because they are backward people who have not yet discovered the 'Australian' or 'Western/progressive' way of dealing with their inner tension: on the footy field, for instance.

The report ignores the fact that Jews have been flooding into Palestine from other countries since around the time of WWI, and that just after WWII, with newly thriving numbers (and with the aid of Britain and the UN), the Jews declared a large part of Palestine their own with the announcement of an Israeli state, displaying expansionist behaviour ever since to the anger of the Arab population.

This, and not some mysterious sort of 'inner stress', is the root cause of the ongoing bloodshed between Jews and Arabs in Israel and Palestine. Western ignorance of the peculiarities of the region has already contributed to enough instability. Lets stop scheming about places on the other side of the world and worry about our own cultural problems.


Think of it all - of the life that is! Study your friends and foes!
Study the past! And answer this: "Are these times better than those?" The life-long quarrel, the paltry spite, the sting of your poisoned pride! No matter who fell it were better to fight as they did when the world was wide.

Boast as you will of your mateship now - crippled and mean and sly - The lines of suspicion on friendship's brow were traced since the days gone by.
There was room in the long, free lines of the van to fight for it side by side -
There was beating-room for the heart of a man in the days when the world was wide.

With its dull, brown days of a-shilling-an-hour the dreary year drags round: Is this the result of Old England's power? - the bourne of the Outward Bound?
Is this the sequel of Westward Ho! - of the days of Whate'er Betide? The heart of the rebel makes answer "No! We'll fight till the world grows wide!"

The world shall yet be a wider world - for the tokens are manifest; East and North shall the wrongs be hurled that followed us South and West. The march of Freedom is North by the Dawn! Follow, whate'er betide! Sons of the Exiles, march! March on! March till the world grows wide!

- Henry Lawson

(c)2008 Corrupt AU