A slice of life in diverse Dandenong

The Age newspaper sent two journalists to look for the mean streets of Melbourne. They found two dangerous hot spots to be the railway stations in Footscray and Dandenong.

As Melbourne residents will know, these are arguably the two most diverse, multicultural suburbs in the city (in Footscray 61% of residents were born overseas, in Dandenong the figure rises to 67%).

So what's it like trying to catch a train in Dandenong? According to the report, it's OK as long as you are willing to catch a taxi to the station in order to avoid walking the gauntlet of local youth:

It's 8 o'clock on Thursday evening, the sun hasn't gone down, and the six boys on the overpass know they are scaring people with their kung-fu moves, scowling faces and gangsta bandannas. Aged 16 to 19, of Samoan and Maori extraction, they make a corridor of threat at the station entrance and it's all for fun. When a train arrives, they smile broadly as the commuters hurry past, tight-faced and looking straight ahead.

One of the boys says he's on a court order to stay away from the station because of assaults he's carried out in the past. Another talks of ''so many stabbings'' he's done and now regrets.

A drunk man gets their attention, causes some offence - and all but one of the boys disappear into the station proper. One of them punches the drunk, leaving a red mark on the man's cheek.

Why did they hit the man? One of them laughs: ''He called us out. He's with the Crips.'' But he's making fun of the situation. His friends giggle and jostle - it's all a game.

Suddenly, the drunk calls out something and the boys begin to chant: ''One on one. One on one.''

Soon after, another man, a friend of the drunk, comes halfway along the overpass. He wants to know if the group will accept an apology. ''He wants to say sorry. Can he come out now?''

The boys laugh, make noises. They tell me they won't attack the man if he comes down, but they want to keep him scared.

They say that later in the evening, a Sudanese gang will turn up and take over the scene. ''They're worse than us.''

Down below, the taxi queue shifts along like a factory conveyor belt. Cabbie Sandeep says most of his fares are for trips 100 or 200 metres from the station. ''Because people don't want to walk, even if they only live a couple of streets away.''

There's more to say about stabbings and police and drunken gang brawls, but he has to leave with a customer. When asked for his mobile number, he says, ''Oh, don't worry. I'll be back in a few minutes. I'm never more than five minutes away from here. If anyone has to travel a long distance they take the bus. We make our money from the people who live a walking distance from the station.''

How Indian TV explains student attacks

Face the Nation is an Indian current affairs show. It featured recently a discussion about the attacks on Indian students in Melbourne and Sydney.

The program's host blamed the violence on Australians still holding to an illegitimate white and Western identity rather than embracing multiculturalism. She introduced the discussion by asking:

So has Australia actually been able to create multiculturalism within its society? ... we're asking the question: are countries like Australia still imprisoned in a whites only mindset? You're telling us at the start of the show, 71% are saying yes, well that's a very decisive verdict, 71% seem to know that this is in fact the case ...

The panel members ran with similar arguments about the violence:

Srivastava argued that the Australians are confused over their identity as a nation.

“There is resistance in certain sections to a multi-cultural Australia."

What's wrong with framing the issue this way? First, it's presumptuous for Indians to declare the traditional national identity of another country to be illegitimate - as a "prison" to be escaped from. It's not exactly reassuring for white Australians to be told that we are to switch our allegiance from our traditional Western allies to the emerging Asian powers when there are such hostile views towards us within these countries.

Second, the framing of the debate puts things exactly the wrong way round. It is not traditional Australia which is attacking the Indian students but modern multicultural Australia.

Take the most recent attack on an Indian in Melbourne. The attackers were members of a Vietnamese gang who on the same night bashed a Brisbane tourist, Jeff Pooler, putting him in a coma in intensive care.

The police have also revealed that most of those who have committed violent assaults in the city come from the northern suburbs of Melbourne. I'll list the suburbs which produce the most offenders and put in brackets the percentage of households where only English is spoken (2006 census data): Reservoir (49%), St Albans (28%), Craigieburn (70%), Broadmeadows (41%), Hoppers Crossing (72%), Sunshine (37%), Coburg (50%), Glenroy (53%) and Coolaroo (44%). On average 49% of households in these suburbs speak only English at home. So the violence is again associated with multiculturalism - making it seem odd to recommend multiculturalism as a solution to attacks on Indian students.

How is the media explaining the violence? So far Dr Birrell of Monash University is the only one I've seen who has recognised the link to multiculturalism. He was quoted as arguing that,

Indian students had come under attack as enrolments boomed, pushing them into less affluent suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne where they competed for jobs and housing with youth from low-skill migrant backgrounds.

I'm sceptical that competition for jobs and housing has much to do with it, but at least Dr Birrell recognises the demographic reality.

The Lord Mayor of Melbourne, Robert Doyle, has chosen to blame bogans for the attacks. Overseas readers may not be aware of what the term bogan means: it usually refers to culturally unsophisticated, working-class white Australians. Other figures have started to blame poverty and disadvantage. But none of this makes much sense.

After all, back in the early 1980s there were bogans and there was poverty. Even so, you could go pretty much anywhere anytime in Melbourne. I can remember thinking with some pride back then that for such a large city Melbourne was remarkably safe. I don't recall ever meeting hostility or aggression from the working class Australians of that time. I found them easy to get along with.

So what changed? Again, we shouldn't ignore the effects of multiculturalism. Within traditional Australian culture there were certain rules of engagement when it came to violence. It was unusual for weapons to be used in fights. The fights were usually one on one. It was thought cowardly to king hit (sucker punch). It would have been thought vicious to kick an unconscious opponent in the head. Looking at someone the wrong way was not thought to be sufficient provocation for an attack. A drunk person mouthing off was not generally thought to have invited upon himself a bashing.

Clearly for some cultures these rules do not apply. It has now become dangerous to follow the traditional culture, as a man who is worse for wear, alone and expecting a fair fight has become exceptionally vulnerable to attack - particularly if he is not aware that there are some groups who might target him as a rival.

So the Indian media pundits have it wrong. They have blamed a traditional Australian identity for street violence and recommended multiculturalism as a cure. But the violence is more closely associated with the newer, multicultural areas of our cities. As I wrote earlier, the Indian journalists have things exactly the wrong way around.

The Melbourne terror plot

I'm not sure if the news was picked up overseas but we've had another foiled terrorist plot here in Melbourne. Five Muslims living in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, four from Somalia and one from Lebanon, have been arrested for planning an attack on a military base near Sydney.

The reaction within the Somali community isn't promising. There have been reports in the media of Somalis claiming that the men are innocent, that the police are terrorists, that the Australian government is corrupt, that Australian authorities are bigoted, that the raids on terror suspects were unreasonable and that Somali leaders should have been consulted by the police before the raids:

Abdurahman Osman, a leader of Melbourne's 15,000 strong Somali community, said police acted unreasonably.

"What do you call waking people up at four in the morning with guns?" he said.

"It is the police themselves that are the terrorists.

... Mr Osman's outburst came as a prominent Muslim website featured a photograph of Australian soldiers in uniform with the caption: "Real Australian terrorists."

It also features a photograph of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd addressing Australian troops overseas with the caption: "Terrorist mastermind delivers sermon to impressionable followers."

"Mohammed" said on the website: "Why is it called terrorist attack when the Aussie troops have been raping, killing innocent Muslims for years?

"In this country we can't trust nobody. The Australian Government is corrupted."

... Mr Osman, until now a voice of moderation between Somalis and the wider community, said police should have consulted migrant leaders.

"The federal police could have come to us first and we could have helped them," Mr Osman said.

"We have met with them now, but we don't believe they have evidence of a terrorist plot and that is the feeling of the community."

Other Somalis accused Australian authorities of bigotry.

"As a Somali-born Australian I am outraged at these raids not only because my fellow Somalis are being targeted, but once again basic human rights are being violated," said Xamxam, a 21-year-old Sunshine woman

So there are Somalis who believe that they are the victims of a corrupt Australian society, even though it was young Somali men who were arrested for planning a violent terrorist act, and even though Somalis commit more crime here in Victoria than any other ethnic group (one in nine Victorians born in Somali committed a crime in the state last year).

The arrests have led a northern suburbs Labor Party MP, Kelvin Thomson, to call for a cut to the immigration intake to allow for a more careful vetting of immigrants who might pose a security risk. He wants a return to the immigration levels of the mid-1990s (80,000) rather than the extraordinarily high numbers of today (150,000 plus 250,000 on entry visas).

Crime as fate, murder as happenstance

Lawrence Auster at View from the Right has picked up on a developing trend in the way crime stories are reported in the media - particularly the crimes of black men against white women.

Normally, liberals stress the idea of our autonomous will. They believe that our "agency" should determine our life paths in all respects.

Yet when it comes to violent crimes of black men against white women the idea of active wills and agency suddenly fades away. Instead of speaking of an evil act committed by the perpetrator against the victim, the event is written of passively as a "tragedy" for both parties involved.

Lawrence Auster's most recent example is the brutal murder of a 17-year-old white girl, Lily Burk, in Los Angeles by a 50-year-old black man, Charlie Samuels. The Los Angeles Times reported that a "collision of two worlds may have led to girl’s death" and that "chance brought the two together on a quiet, tree-lined street." It's as if no-one was really to blame, there was no evil intent, just a random act of fate. Hence the "tragedy".

There's also the somewhat different case of Natalie Novak, a 20-year-old Canadian. She chose to stay in a relationship with a violent, married, 33-year-old Ethiopian, Arssei Hindessa, who twice bashed her in public. The pair quarrelled one night, Hindessa locked the door and stabbed Natalie Novak fatally nine times before disfiguring her body.

The Toronto Star did report the judge's description of the attack as "extreme butchery and degradation". But the reporter wrapped up his article with this terrible quote from a defence lawyer:

This is a tragedy for everybody, a young man will spend most of his adult life in prison and it's a tragic loss of life for a young woman.

We usually think of a tragedy as some unfortunate, unforeseen event, some act of malign fate, bringing suffering to good, well-meaning or innocent people. On the stage, it was a hero or heroine who was brought undone by fate or perhaps by a flaw in an otherwise noble character.

It's difficult to find a "tragedy" in this sense in the crime under discussion. The Ethiopian was not a young man, but a 33-year-old who repeatedly and knowingly broke the law and committed acts of violence. The report describes him as "physically abusive and a philanderer who financially exploited his wife, Indisar Buba-Rashid, during their four-year marriage". He is a dangerous man of low character who predictably has landed in jail.

The victim of the crime chose to place herself in a situation of great danger. Even after being bashed twice in public by her boyfriend, she chose to stay with him. She selected as a boyfriend a much older married man from a completely alien background with a predilection for violence. This is not the same as a tragedy in which a person is struck down by events they cannot control.

But what can explain media reports which turn brutal acts of murder into a passive tragic fate of two equally unsuspecting, equally affected people? In some ways it's surprising that the liberal media would do this. As I mentioned earlier, liberalism tends to emphasise the idea of a radically autonomous individual who self-determines every aspect of his identity and his life path. It therefore reads oddly when this radically autonomous individual is suddenly lost in media reports of murders and replaced with a notion of fate, and not choice or free will, as determining our life outcomes.

Furthermore, liberals often state as their moral ideal the principle that you can do anything you like as long as you don't directly harm the life or liberty of others. In the case of murder, it's clear that the principle has been violated. So liberals ought to be able to hold the line on this issue.

So what goes wrong? I'm not sure I can explain it to my own satisfaction at the moment. But it's possible to speculate. Imagine the situation of liberals who believe:

a) that people are in their natures good and only act to harm others because of ignorance, superstition or prejudice

b) that the moral thing is doing what you want and that it is therefore wrong to judge the moral actions of others (i.e. they believe in a radical form of non-judgementalism)

c) that there is no absolute, objective moral truth but only moral convention or perhaps no moral truth at all

If a liberal believes some combination of the above then he may not have a strongly developed sense of individuals actively choosing to commit acts of evil. Liberals can have a keenly developed sense of "political crimes" in which one group organises to limit the autonomy of another group as an act of power or prejudice. This means that a liberal might be able to see the murders discussed above as a crime of men against women (and the Toronto Star report does spin things this way somewhat). But given that the perpetrators are black and the victims white there doesn't seem to be a political crime in progress here for liberals.

So it's all explained in neutral terms as two people colliding, as a tragedy befalling two people, as a more minor offence gone wrong (a "botched robbery"), almost as happenstance.

Who attacked the Indian student? ... finally the "shock" answer

In May an Indian student, Sourabh Sharma, was bashed by a gang on a Melbourne train. The attack sparked a massive wave of publicity in both Australia and India, with claims that Indian students were victims of racism.

At the time, I pointed out that CCTV cameras had caught the gang in action and that the attackers who appeared on camera didn't appear to be Anglo. I suggested that one of the attackers even looked South Asian.

Still, there was an assumption in some quarters that white Australians were targeting and bashing Indians. The Times of India went so far as to issue the following statement:

What's worrisome is the fact that there appears to be a racist undertone to these incidents. They are apparently part of a new fad ...

In any country there are bound to be extreme elements. It's worrisome that the tribe of extreme nationalists who champion an exclusivist, white Aussie identity seems to be increasing in Australia ...

Clearly, Australia cannot afford to be seen as a hostile country if it wants to continue attracting talent, and money, from outside its shores ... such ugly incidents are simply unacceptable, mate.

You can see what The Times of India is really focused on. The Times wants an open borders Australia and therefore labels anyone who defends traditional Australia as an "extreme nationalist" - as the type of person who would bash a foreigner on a train.

It seems the height of arrogance for an overseas newspaper to dictate what another country's national identity may or may not be. It seems hypocritical too for an Indian to demand that Australia have open borders, given that India itself prefers closed borders and a traditional identity.

But the story doesn't end there. The assumption that white Australians were bashing Indian students caught on in India and led to some angry outbursts in the Indian media. Here are three such angry comments left at online Indian media outlets:

An eye for an eye is it? Let's beat the Aussies up and deport them. This is how justice should be given in the 21st century.

These are a breed of people who were deported from Europe for criminal activities. They have criminal genes. It is also clearly visible in cricket. All Australians good or bad living in India must be thrashed and deported.

Repulsive, backward, Aussie filth, the laughing stock of the Western world.

There were some Indians who tried to defend Australians, though even they assumed that white Australians were responsible for the bashings. One writer pointed out that the number of Indians arriving in Australia each year was equivalent (in terms of population size) to 5.5 million foreign arrivals in India each year - something that Indians themselves would not react well to.

But this week came the following news in the Melbourne Herald Sun (30/06/09):

Shock revelation in attack that incited racial tension

Indian on bash charge

A man accused of a bashing that sparked racial tensions between Australia and India was of Indian descent.

The youth, among four boys charged with assaulting and robbing Indian student Sourabh Sharma on May 9, has been released on bail.

Victoria Police have confirmed the alleged attacker was of Indian descent ...

Mr Sharma siad he did not know any of the men were Indian. "I don't know who they were," he said. "It's definitely a shock."

The attack on Mr Sharma ... evoked widespread condemnation of Australians after the footage was beamed across India.

Federation of Indian Students of Australia president Amit Menghani said he was unaware any of the attackers were of Indian descent. "If it was an Indian, I would be disappointed," he said.

So I was correct in suggesting that one of the attackers was of South Asian descent.

One thing that's true is that there have been a lot of attacks on Indian students in Australia; 1447 last financial year according to the police. So the anger of Indian students at the unsafe conditions they face here is understandable.

But the gangs targeting and attacking Indian students aren't Anglo and traditional, but multicultural.

The diversity involved in the attacks on Indian students has been slowly coming through in the media. For instance, here's a report from the Melbourne Herald Sun:

Gangs assault cabbies. Melbourne's Indian and Pakistani taxi drivers are being bashed and robbed by African youth gangs.

This is the wikipedia account of protests in Sydney by Indian students:

On 8 June, 300 Indian students staged a protest in Harris Park late into the evening in response to an alleged assault, claiming they were considered "soft targets".

Some Indian protestors were reported to be carrying hockey sticks and baseball bats. According to police, the protest was sparked by an attack on Indians earlier in the evening allegedly by Lebanese men.

In retaliation the protesters attacked three uninvolved Lebanese men, who sustained minor injuries. This was believed to be the first violent reaction by Indian students against attacks on them. A police dog squad was called in to control the crowd.

A Bangladeshi man was attacked in the Melbourne suburb of Sunshine (Beyond India Monthly, 08/02/09):

When I turned on Anderson Road I saw four black men standing over there. They were blocking my way. I requested them to make way and they started abusing me and my wife Nasir. I kept low, I preferred to step on the road and go around them. As I walked a bit further one of them came running behind us and hit me with the stick. Then they started hitting my wife ... I want action against those African guys. I want them arrested and punished so that they don't touch my lady again.

Simon Overland, the Chief Commissioner of Police in Victoria, has responded to the attacks by sending an additional 75 police officers into the suburbs of Sunshine and St Albans. These are possibly the most diverse, multicultural suburbs of Melbourne. In St Albans, for example, 27.9% of households speak only English at home, compared to 78.5% for Australia in general (and 91% for my own suburb not that far to the east of St Albans).

So the attacks on Indian students are taking place in the suburbs least populated by young Anglo men. It's possible that many Melbournians are already aware of this, as there's been uncommon resistance amongst Anglo-Australians to accepting the blame.

It's been one of the few positives to come out of the whole affair: a sceptical attitude amongst Anglo-Australians that they are, by default, the guilty oppressor group.

Just who attacked the Indian student?

Early this month an Indian overseas student, Sourabh Sharma, was bashed and robbed on a Melbourne train.

Who was to blame? The Islamic Council of Victoria angrily denounced white racism against brown people as having motivated the attack. It was, fumed Nazeem Hussain, a director of the ICV, a continuing legacy of Australia's dark past:

The police need to acknowledge and loudly condemn racially targeted attacks on Indian international students.

Sourabh Sharma, an Indian international student, was travelling home on the train after a shift at KFC when he was brutally bashed and robbed by six people.

As the 21-year-old lay on the floor, being kicked in the head, face and ribs, his attackers screamed racial insults. They left him bleeding, broken-boned and crying on the floor of the train while other passengers watched and did nothing to intervene ...

I am another brown person. I can say unequivocally, on behalf of every other non-white person in the country, that hearing about racially motivated crimes frightens us.

To an aggressor bent on beating up a "fob" (fresh off the boat) or a "curry", it does not matter that I was born here, and that my parents came here long before the attacker was born ...

Last week, the Islamic Council of Victoria issued a media release noting that police had "failed to adequately address the cause of the attacks — which is racism".

In response, Superintendent Graham Kent lashed out at the council on 3AW, claiming the police were "disappointed" and that the statement was "uninformed".

... The police are charged with upholding the law and fighting crime, whatever its causes. There is little benefit in denying the existence of racist attitudes in our communities.

Sure, the question of racism is something that, as a society, we often feel uncomfortable confronting, given our dark past ...

Where have we seen police addressing the racist aggressors? ... there has been no real, tangible response to this pattern of violent racism. The police are not responsible for defeating the disease of racism by themselves — the problem falls on all of our shoulders, particularly those of our leaders.

But what we can demand from police is a loud, vehement condemnation of racial intolerance. Victoria Police should not hesitate to do this ...

... the Government, police and Connex need to begin a campaign to fight racial intolerance.

But was Sourabh Sharma a victim of white racism? The police didn't think so:

Det-Sen Constable Buttigieg said the thugs did abuse him [Sourabh] while they kicked him to the head and ribs although their primary motivation was robbery.

"I think there was a mention where there was a comment similar to `why don't you go home?' but there was nothing more," he said.

"I think the motivation would have been robbery."

Better evidence, though, comes from the CCTV footage. There are four attackers visible in the footage. Two have their faces uncovered. Here is a still image of one of the young men (in a green T-shirt) who attacked Sourabh Sharma:



He's certainly not white. In fact, he looks as if he could be South Asian. Here's an image of the second attacker:



He's certainly not Anglo and probably not European either. There is, in fact, no-one in the CCTV footage who can readily be identified as a white person:



So what is going on here? Why would white Australians and white society be condemned for something they appear to have had no part in?

I suspect the answer has to do with politics. There's a fashionable idea on the left that whites invented the concept of race in order to gain an unearned privilege by oppressing others. Therefore, whites are held to be uniquely guilty of preventing the emergence of human equality.

If you believe this theory then you will look for instances in which whites are the violent aggressors and non-whites are the oppressed victims. It is these cases which will seem to prove your point.

It's convenient for the Islamic Society to follow along. It means that they are assumed to be the aggrieved victims of discrimination seeking redress. It means too that the established society loses a sense of its own legitimacy and its own interests.

It's not difficult to challenge the filtered view of reality. The image of the white racist oppressor breaks down not only when the perpetrators can be shown to be non-white, as in the attack on Sourabh Sharma, but more so when the victims of such aggressive violent crimes are white.

Just today it was reported that a young Anglo-Australian man was stabbed to death in Melbourne by several Asian men. He had stepped in to defend someone they were trying to attack. Later on, the Asian men caught up with him at a convenience store and murdered him.

This is part of a pattern of recent street violence in Melbourne. The victims have been overwhelmingly young Anglo men, who have been either stabbed or bashed to death by gangs of men of some other ethnicity.

And if the pattern of street violence doesn't fit the theory? Do we then close our eyes to a part of reality to make the theory work or do we reject the theory as false, as being unreasonably biased against one group alone?

Would you like crime with that?

I was browsing through the Daily Mail and came across a story about Deptford in London:

The humble London community has been lauded in the New York Times as the latest trendy location to emerge from the capital's melting pot.

The New York Times writer believes that Deptford has "edge"; wikipedia tells us that Deptford is reputed to have;

the capital's most diverse and vibrant high street

But what do you get with the "edge"? I was astonished to read that in 2006 there were nearly 8,500 crimes of violence against the person in Deptford.

That's an extraordinary amount of crime. Deptford has 57,000 residents and 8,500 crimes of violence against the person. I live in a municipality in Melbourne (Nillumbik) with 62,000 residents. In 2007 there were 198 crimes of violence against the person. That means that the crime rate in Deptford is 43 times higher than in Nillumbik, even though the population of Nillumbik is higher.

Little wonder that Deptford resident David Ferndale questions the New York Times travel advice:

Have a look at the local paper - there are stabbings and shootings all the time. You might as well be done with it and book two weeks all-inclusive in Kabul.

Missionaries attacked in Sydney

Here's a news item which the American media has reported on but which the Australian media hasn't been willing to cover.

Two young Mormon men from America were walking home through an area of Sydney known as "Little Lebanon" (thought to be the suburb of Auburn) when they were suddenly attacked by a group of six men of Middle Eastern appearance. The two young Americans were beaten and stabbed.

According to American media sources:

... the United States embassy in Australia is said to be investigating the incident. An official motive has not been released, though Collinsworth's mother believes it was a combination of racial and religious reasons.

"Chris is in a real melting pot, there's guy from all over the world," said Alisa Collinsworth. "He said the guys who came after him were Lebanese Muslims and they were grown men... they were big guys."

Why hasn't the Australian media reported on this story? Are there Lebanese Muslims in Sydney who are willing to launch unprovoked attacks on people because they are white? Or because they are missionaries for another religion? Is this a "hate crime" committed against two white American Mormon men?

There's more information on the attack here and here.

The first gangs of summer

Normally people like us are some of the most vocal in the land. Yet we have become afraid.

Michael Williams is speaking here on behalf of the liberal elite of London. He is a journalist in the liberal press; his neighbours in one of the 'coolest' and most respectable parts of inner London include a senior diplomat, a professor and an eminent architect.

Who are they afraid of? A gang of youths who spend the summer nights in their garden square.

The youths flout the law, drinking and smoking dope, damaging property and making threats. The police won't respond and the residents are too scared to take action themselves.

Williams, despite his own liberal credentials, thinks that the liberal mentality might be partly to blame:

One of the main problems, I believe, is a middle-class conspiracy of silence. Not simply because of the fear of crime itself, but because of a fear of seeming illiberal or intolerant. Sometimes our local residents' meetings can be like a version of Radio 4's Moral Maze, with more hand-wringing than solutions.

Those who are bold enough to complain are mostly older and working-class. Many stay silent. None of us wants to be viewed as a reactionary ...

He recognises too the "Putnam effect": the hunkering down of individuals into social isolation in a diverse society,

In the meantime, our sense of civic responsibility and community continues to diminish. I see more of the youths than I do of my neighbours most days.

... What was meant to be an embracing live-and-let-live acceptance of difference has hardened, over years of soft-thinking, into a live-and-let-live indifference.

Nor is Williams a lone voice. Andrew Anthony is another left-liberal Londoner who has written lately on the same themes. He too writes sadly of summer crime:

After the third burglary, I bought a baseball bat for protection, and on a visit to a friend's house I noticed that he had the same make of bat in his bedroom ... He too had suffered one too many burglaries. The previous summer a burglar had gained access to his house through his two-year-old daughter's bedroom. He climbed over the little girl's bed as she lay asleep. Because it was such a balmy night my friend had left his daughter's window slightly open.

When I heard this, my first thought was, 'How could he have been so slack?' So adjusted had I become to the need to turn one's home into a fortress that I found it unnatural to allow air into a stuffy room. That an intruder would climb in I took, by contrast, as utterly normal.

What went wrong? Anthony is ready to criticise the left-liberalism he once championed. He no longer believes that "leave alone" values such as respect and tolerance are enough to inspire people to look out for each other:

A society that places emphasis on respecting others has next to nothing to say about protecting others.

He points to a contradiction in the liberal view of the police, in which the police aren't trusted and therefore are stripped of their powers, whilst still being expected to protect people from physical danger:

The standard liberal view of the police is a complex and sometimes mystifying affair. By convention they are perceived as the enforcers of the status quo, Little Englanders in blue, restrictive, authoritarian, abusers of the poor and minorities, defenders of 'them' rather than 'us'. That image has changed a little in the post-Macpherson era but a good liberal still errs in favour of not trusting the police. We want them to back off, we don't want them to stop and search, we don't want them to carry arms, and most of all we want them to be there instantly to deal with any situation that threatens physical danger.

After witnessing a particularly violent street attack, Anthony felt unable to process what had happened in liberal terms:

the more I thought about it ... the more I realised that there wasn't a liberal vocabulary with which to describe the situation. Indeed, even a phrase like 'civic decency' sounded fuddy-duddy, uptight, somehow right-wing.

He was no longer willing to find excuses for the event:

There was a liberal way of talking about the culprits. It involved referring to their poor education and difficult home lives and the poverty they suffered ... I had no appetite for that kind of reasoning. It blamed nebulous society and excused not just the individuals but also the community of which they were a part.

It seems that crime has London's middle-class liberals cornered. They haven't managed to remove themselves entirely from the consequences of their own politics.

As a result, at least some of these liberals are no longer as complacent in identifying with a mainstream left-liberalism. This is especially true in the case of Andrew Anthony, a point I'll develop further in my next post.

Grandmothers in blue?

I thought it would come to this:

Public save cops from attacker

Passers-by swooped in to help two female police officers being attacked by a man who shrugged off the effects of capsicum spray - and almost stole a gun.

The Bankstown constables went to a Woodville Rd car dealership yesterday afternoon after receiving reports of a man causing problems ... The man ... assaulted them ... He then pushed the other officer into a parked car, causing her to hit her head and drop her baton which he then picked up.

The man was about to strike the officer with the baton when he was restrained by up to 10 passers-by ...

It wasn't so long ago that most police were tall, well-built, physically intimidating men. When there were two on patrol they commanded instinctive respect.

Then the recruiting pattern changed. I remember my surprise the first time I saw the physically weaker new breed of police. Even back then I thought the day would arrive when the public would have to help out the police in violent situations.

The problem runs deep. On the NSW police force website you find the following recruitment information:

Q. Is there a particular cultural group the NSW Police Force is recruiting?

The NSW Police Force's aim is to achieve an officer profile balanced in gender, ethnicity and age, which reflects the diversity of the NSW population.

Think about this. If the police force is no different in composition to the general population, then how is it superior in upholding the law? If an older woman is threatened by a young man, and another older woman arrives to deal with the situation, what has been gained?

I suppose you could argue that the police could send in a large contingent of officers and gain superiority by force of numbers, but in reality it takes time for numbers of police to reach a crime scene.

And anyway, the real aim of the police bureaucracy is not to achieve a balanced profile but to feminise the police force. There are reformers in the ranks who believe that the future for the police forces is female.

Here in Victoria the Police Commissioner Christine Nixon applied to set aside sex discrimination laws to allow 50% of new recruits to be female. As usually happens, the ideal of equal numbers of recruits soon went out the window, and the latest graduating class is two thirds female.

Those police wanting to be promoted to sergeant now face this process:

Applicants are given a long list of qualities our new force demands, such as "empathy and cultural awareness" and the ability to be inclusive, sensitive, polite, considerate, genuine, supportive and co-operative.

Questions they are asked include: "Can you give examples when you have enabled (a) diverse community group with differing views to unify for the common good?"

But not once in the six-page guide are they asked to give examples of crooks caught. No skill in crime-busting is demanded.

No, no, no. More important is that the wannabe sergeant "shows consideration, concern and respect for others' feelings and ideas".

And back in the real world? Less than a week ago, there was another assault on Bankstown police officers:

A male and female police officer were punched in the head while responding to a domestic dispute in Sydney's south-west.

And last month it was the turn of the Townsville police:

Police have interviewed a man over the serious assault of a police officer during a brawl in Townsville ... The female police officer was punched in the head while trying to break up a large fight ...

There will always be an element of force in policing. Not everyone is equally able to apply such force. Young, strong men should be well-regarded when applying to join the police.

Why are 2.2 million Americans in jail?

The American traditionalist philosopher Jim Kalb is back posting regularly after taking some time away from his website to prepare a book.

I was particularly struck by two of his recent posts on the issue of crime. They are well worth reading:

From the Great Society to the Big House

The soul of man under liberalism

I was also interested to read in one of the articles Jim Kalb links to that in the UK the average rate of homicide with a firearm in the years 1890-92 was only 1 per year (when the UK had a population of 30 million). It seems to me that this is a kind of civilisational achievement which has been lost along the way.