It will be noted by those who can add that bikies have killed more Australians than ‘terrorists’. Dozens more. On the mainland, hundreds more.
Yet bikies are allowed to cross state borders unimpeded. They come in aggressive swarms into country towns unchallenged. They can take their bikes onto the Princess of Tasmania and menace that small island unreproved. They shoot up the homes of rival ‘families’ like mafiosi and all the resources of the State are unable, thus far, to stem the momentum of their random, bullet-flying, neighbourhood-terrorising, almost nightly violence.
If one could play with the figures as statisticians do one could say, with accuracy, that bikies kill hundreds of times, thousands of times, millions of times, more Australians in Australia than ‘terrorists’. Yet billions are spent on worthless weapons of detection and fruitless house-raids in search of one sort of ‘terrorist’ when another sort are blam-blamming away uncorrected.
For bikies are by any definition terrorists too. They terrorise, kidnap, threaten, sell drugs and smuggle weapons as did al-Qaeda and, in the past, the IRA.
Yet because they are home-grown they are treated, or have been thus far treated, as a minor irritant, and ‘terrorists’, that is, swarthy Muslim heathens who may not have been born here, as an international enemy we are at war with. We are in a ‘war on terrorism’ and spending scores of billions on it though it has cost us less lives in a hundred years than car accidents in a month, and relatively relaxed about bikies who continue to kill and scare a lot of us, treating them not as ‘terrorists’ but naughty boys.
Is there a racist component in all this? Of course there is. Is there a culturist component? You bet.
It is racism, and culturism, that is ‘securing our borders’ at a cost of annual billions against a threat that is not there. No Afghans thus far have gone to gaol for violent crimes against Australians; none, I think, in one hundred and seventy years. But lots of Anglo Australians on Harley Davidsons have.
It is only blind prejuduce therefore that is waging this War on Afghans, this War on Tamils, this War on Palestinians whise cost coukd feed and house a football stadium of them for decades.
It is because we are racist idiots like white Alabamans in the 1920s that we are making war on good people, and wrecking the education of their children by locking them up, and letting Anglo hoons blam-blam away unimpeded, terrorising, literally terrorising, hundreds of thousands of us.
We are as shameful a country as that.
Discuss.
Name:
I don’t know about racism but totally agree that something drastically needs to be done about bikie gangs. Despite the law and order election tactics of State Premiers, Labor and Liberal, the bikies have been getting away with murder for far too long.
And why, in an environmentally sensitive world, are they allowed to assault the ears with the appallingly loud sounds of their bikes? Hundreds of them drive past my house every Sunday and I have to say that it is as bad as being under a flight pass. I am beginning to think affectionately of the red-necks in the last scene in Easy Rider.
But don’t bikies live by some sort of code of honour? Living within a club and showing your “colors” signifys loyalty to your own tribe. Terrorists kill indiscriminately. Bikies as far as I am aware kill only other bikies. What’s wrong with that? Let them run free Bob. Why restrict their freedoms? The Left love a Nanny state and trampling on civil liberties is what the Left love to do. And trumpeting it as a Labor reform! Sorry I dont buy Left propaganda. Not me. Let the bikies run free and cull each other. They are performing a service for the broader community.
Even if what you say is true – bikies only kill each other – they have in the past done so in situations where innocent people are put at risk (Milperra, Airport, drive-by shootings). And, like anybody else, where they break the law, they should be punished appropriately.
And I am not a left winger.
To Frank:
So Sunni terrorists killing Shi-ite pilgrims have no targets and are killing indiscriminately you say? And al-Qaeda terrorists attacking the Twin Towers had no targets? What an idiot you are.
And you say bikies should be licensed to shoot up each other’s homes and kill each others’ wives and children, do you?
Do you?
Are you serious?
Are you serious?
There are laws against encouraging terrorism, and you are in breach of them.
Explain why I should not ban you for life.
Frank, check out today’s news from Queensland: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-04-29/police-say-bikie-violence-is-worst-queensland-has-ever-seen/3978444?WT.svl=news0
I have an inkling when Bob Ellis turns 70 he will be suddenly possessed with an urge to ride his own fat boy Harley. Wearing his own studded leather jacket with the Labor skull and crossbones on his back. Purring away from Palm Beach, the wind in his grey hair. A tatooed blond bimbo riding pillion, clutching his nether regions with an automatic pump shotgun in his bag. What a way to go into your sunset years. The “Ellis Angels” ride again. And some flea bags want to end it all? Wowsers! We live in a country of wowsers!
This is very amusing, and you are banned for life.
IPA ground troops normally show their colors in comments section over here …
http://www.abc.net.au/news/thedrum/
Bob, I fear you may have an out of date knowledge of bikie gangs. As long ago as this article :
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1014115/ethnic-overtones-in-bikie-wars
The article refers to author Arthur Veno who wrote in “The Brotherhoods: Inside the Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs” that the rules had changed and that ethnic groups have moved into what used to be Anglo bikie gangs.
Thus the Comancheros “have become largely an ethnic group and have dropped all riding rules and, really, whilst they still maintain their status as a motorcycle club, just barely are doing it.”
“The latest trouble ignited in February [2009], with a drive-by shooting at a tattoo parlour owned by the Hell’s Angels club and, moments later, the bombing of a Hell’s Angels clubhouse.
“[T]he Notorious, which draws heavily from the Lebanese and Pacific Islander communities, was suspected of both in retaliation for the October 2008 shooting of one of its members.”
And then :
“At the airport, the brawl involved the Comancheros, heavily Lebanese as well, and the Hell’s Angels, now drawing the most Pacific Islander members of anyone.”
(end quotes)
The upshot is that there may indeed be racism, but whose racism against whom?
Who cares what the racial make-up of bikie gangs are? They are out of control and need to be curtailed. This is an issue of public safety and, with respect, has nothing to do with racism or refugees – separate issues.
I was commenting on Bob’s article. He raised those issues, and they deserved some treatment.
I agree with you, dawsonb about it being a public safety issue. (Who mentioned refugees?)
I dare say the police are on to the job. There were many raids in the last few days, and there will probably be many more.
You are correct: nobody mentioned refugees – I misread Bob’s post. Sorry.
Maybe, but 100s of badly driven Volvos don’t drive past my house every Sunday. If they do, they do so quietly.
Name one person hurt by one terrorist in this country.
Just one.
$25 billion has been squandered on raiding people’s home for thought crimes.
If you are willing to sacrifice our civil liberties, how can one forget the last piss poor attempt to make some kind of political capital out of bikies that passed as legislation?
What would you do Mr. Ellis? Send them all to prison A.k.a Bikie school a.k.a place where we send law breakers to be raped and bashed at will?
A bit of reality please?
No, I think they should have all the civil rights they now enjoy.
And the boat people treated no worse.
I think we need a cultural revolution of our own, a few months on a forklift would do many the world of good.
I thought it was the green groups who were the real terrorists anyway?
I’m sure Barry O, Ready Teddy and the LNP have our civil liberties at the forefront of their minds.
Why not decriminalise drugs, even legalise them? If you want a war on Bikies why not start with the profit?
While this bullshit culture pervades all, lock one up and the next prick rises to the challenge. Can we for a second consider crime rates in all states in the context of Murdoch rags trying to incite outrage because of our supposed lenient punishments?
I have a generational rage that mirrors your own lament Mr. Ellis, I cannot for the life of me see any fruit in this discussion.
Well said. Well said.
I long for the day when the oil runs out and the grown men who attempt extending their teens through the use of amphetamines and steroids will no longer be able to feel the aphrodisiacal purr between their legs of a high performance hog, and instead have to glide around on near-silent electric battery-powered bikes that, only with the flick of a switch, will make fake muffler sounds. Only then will they be revealed in all their silliness. A good time to re-watch Marlin Brando in ‘The Wild Ones’ methinks…