should flag-burners be booted

I think tolerance is good, but I also think there is a limit to what kind of idiocy that needs to be tolerated. As you said, it does no good, so what's the point? As far as I can see there is none. I think that if they feel this way, then they can use thier energies in a more positive way instead of crying about it and stomping thier feet like a bunch of babies. I don't know that the consequences should be that severe, but I think there should be some kind of retribution for stupid shite like that.

ultra-right-wingers here in the US always caution about infringing on people's right to protest (and bear arms and such) and ironically it's the right wing of govt. that probably drives most people to protest. maybe they just love the drama and should go on Ricki Lake or Jerry Springer

but seriously, deporting people is a touchy subject. Are you saying AU is tolerant of many cultures, viewpoints, etc. but only as long as they're warm and fuzzy? Unfortunately life is fucked for many people around the globe and they feel the need to act out. but I do have some sympathy for your viewpoint, it's just a dangerous place to start going.

so basically, immigrants are fine so long as they don't oppose the USA and the Israeli terror state?

the idea the someone could be expelled from a country for burning a flag, let alone the flag of a completely different country is insane.

so basically, immigrants are fine so long as they don't oppose the USA and the Israeli terror state?

Being deported over a flag is ridiculous, I agree. Having a peace rally turn into a call for more destruction is, however, as ridiculous.

burning flags isn't something that bothers me that much. people attach so much importance to it, but when you really get down to it, it's still just a piece of cloth. now, trying to burn other people or other people's houses or something, that's actually criminal, but not burning flags. unless they're other people's flags, that's vandalism.

I don't understand why burning flags, an act of relatively harmless symbolic protest, bothers you so much more than the same people committing violence against innocents. This strikes me as a weird perspective. Personally, I couldn't care less if anyone burns a flag, and as for the Israel/Palestine trouble, I'm a bit mystified why almost everyone has to pick one side as the good guys and the other as the bad guys. What is this, the WWF?

What is this, the WWF?

pretty much. and the US is the disgruntled girlfriend who keeps jumping into other peoples' fights and bitchslapping someone.

Who cares about burning flags? The KKK burns crosses, not that I have much respect for crosses (I don't have ANY respect for the KKK). But anyways, let them burn flags. Of course I think setting flags on fire has had its day. I like the idea of using the flag as a rug.

Isn't the proper way to dispose of an old flag is to set it on fire?

geoff what a fucking weird suggestion! would anyone from anywhere except australia prescribe "throw them out of the country" for...i dont know, for ANYTHING...man i saw this doco a couple nights ago about the camps they put afghani refugees in & i was just incredulous, like, what, there isnt enough ROOM in that country or something? WTF?

sorry not wanting to sound like i'm giving you a hard time just for being australian & shit

but also wanna say, i don't even think angry violent protests against israel by palestinians are...well yeah violence is no good & shit but, jesus how do you expect those ppl to act? their sons are being shot by soldiers forthrowing stones at the ppl who came to bulldoze their homes & shit & all the so called free world still seems to suupport the other side & call any palestinian who takes action or protests as a "terrorist", "fanatic", whatever.

this is why i was asking, i don't like having htose views either...

I've been along time supporter of palestinian statehood and I ain't picking sides here...

It's the symbolism - that "we don't have protests like that here" thing, you know - if you wanna burn flags, do it somewhere else...I guess because we seem far away from the rest of the world, we like our problems that way too...

I'm not justifying my beliefs - I'm asking for opinions here, because I know that what I think isn't a coherent argument.

"and Australia is a multicultural place, supposedly tolerant of many forms of life/cultures/religions etc" Sorry but my time in Aussie would tell a different story: Strewth, pass us another tinny would ya Queenie and look-more fucking coons causing trouble...

that's why i said supposedly - i know we're not, i know there are deep divisions and that the governments fucked...

but flag burning just doesn't make much sense either, especially not when you've migrated to here, ostensibly to get away from all that shit.

Firstly, I'd never heard the word coon used to describe anything other than cheese until I was 20 and a British tourist told me that it was also used for Abos.

Secondly, Australia does not put refugees (i.e. people who have applied for and been granted refugee status) into camps, it puts illegal immigrants (i.e. people who enter the country with no visa, no refugee status and without going through customs) into camps. Many of these people do not qualify for refugee status and so they are later deported. If refugee status/permanent residency was the reward for anyone who bothered to make the effort to get to Australia somehow then it would be very difficult to maintain the (already slowly eroding) standards of living (i.e. levels of Social Security, Public Health, Free Education, low crime rates) that make Australia the sort of country that it is and therefore the very things that make it a desirable place to be.

Whether or not Australia has ROOM for more people is not a relevant question. Whether or not Australia has the RESOURCES for more people is. It doesn't. Whether or not Australia has the INFRASTRUCTURE for more people is another relevant question. It doesn't. I'm sure it would be not trouble to send all the illegal immigrants over to NZ if you guys are so kindly disposed towards them. The fact that we a geographically more accessible doesn't mean that we should therefore be obliged to take them in.

Burning flags is such a silly thing to get upset about. Flags are merely a symbol. People communicate with symbols. Burning a flag is a symbolic gesture (but more-so when it is your own country's flag, I think). They are trying to make a statement and they need to use colourful and noticible ways of doing that. If they just stood around saying "We're really unhappy because our families/friends/fellow humans are getting slaughtered by the Israelis" not many people are going to hear them or take notice of them or put them in the news.

To say that they should use their energies in a more positive way really implies a lack of empathy. These people are angry, scared, frustrated, confused, terrified and probably being driven mad with grief and the injustice of it all. How else do you expect them to express that? Of course they're going to go psycho. Who wouldn't?

I think warm and fuzzy thing hit the nail on the head. Australia likes to call itself multicultural because it gives a warm and fuzzy feeling. Australian capital cities may be multicultural, especially Melbourne and Sydney (there is a suburb in Melbourne where 81% of the population was born outside Australia, for example) but the rest of the country isn't.

Australia is so fond of being Politically Correct that the Government and Opposition spend more time arguing about semantics than actually achieving anything.

In Australia the only valid opinions are Politically Correct ones. If your beliefs do not adhere to what is considered to be PC then they carry no weight at all and are discarded. Due to the fact that we have the lovely preferential system in our elections any votes that do not support the major parties and therefore major PC opinions are conveniently ignored. A good example is that of the One Nation supporters. In the second last Federal Election that party got 8.43% of the natinal vote and yet not a single one of their candidates got a seat. The only two parties to get a higher percentage of the votes were Liberal and Labour - and yet out of 148 seats, 18 went to candidates from other parties due to preference distribution. Surely if 8.43% of voters voted for One Nation then 12 seats should have gone to them (in fact more because they got their highest percentages of votes in the larger states which contribute more seats to parliment).

No one in the Parliment or the media bothers to make a fuss about this sort of lack or representation because being a Warm & Fuzzy PC Nation it just wouldn't do to have One Nation supporters represented, would it? And it doesn't matter that they aren't supported because their views, being non-PC are therefore non-valid as well. If you are not warm and fuzzy then you do not matter.

I'm wondering, G, if your issues with flag-burning, office-trashing, Israeli-death-wishing antics might be revealing that underneath your spikey, confrontational exterior their is something warm and fuzzy. That'd make you an echidna and .^.. a true-blue Australian if there ever was one.

Oh, and I voted Green and I couldn't care less who comes and lives here. I am merely following my Government's example of arguing semantics and statistics.

toraneko discovers my secret shock; must now be killed; let loose the monkeys with their anal beads!!

I'm not saying anyone who has posted here is wrong - I was really surprised by my own emotive reasons...but then I think well, if it was teh asutralian flag, I guess I wouldn't have a huge hassle with it. It'd just be like well yeah, of course the flag suz - it's got england on it for gods sake....so maybe it's just living down here in Sydney amongst refugees and poor people, and being underclass myself and just wondering whetehr I was being racist, no not racist..but anti-something, by thinking hey, you don't do this down here, it's just not on...

Because I support the palestinaina state and the jewish state, and I want peace in the middle east, and god-damn it flag-burning and calling for a coutnry's death ain't going to do it...

Maybe I didn't like the unbridled emotion of it - that overflowing of sentiment that allows no room fr debate.

Maybe it's something to do with fresh starts and clean slates and wanting people to come to our terra-nullis and start from scratch, leaving behind their culture and religion and antagonisms like we feel our ancestors did.

When war broke out it Yugoslavia I absolutely could not understand why guys who had been born in Tasmania and spent their whole life there suddenly started declaring their Croation heritage, which they had hitherto forgotten to speak about, and up and left to go and fight for Croatia. Actually I still don't understand it.

Part of me wants to demand of immigrants that they decide if they are Australian or Greek (for example) and if they're bloody Greek then fuck of back to Greece but if they're bloody Australian then quit demanding that all their offspring only socialise with and marry other "Greek" Australians. It shits me no end when some dickweed Australian-who-used-to-be-Lebanese sends his daughter to Lebanon to an arranged marriage against her will. It's like, fuck you cunt, you may consider yourself Lebanese despite your Australian residency status but your daughter is Australian and it's just not on to send Australian girls overseas to arranged marriages against their will. Anyway, her husband decided he hated her and sent her back. Pity she now can't leave the house because she's in hiding from her family because if they find her she fears for her safety.

On the other hand it is wrong to expect people to abandon their language and religion and culture. Just as we follow UK/European and our own unique Australian traditions, more recent immigrants have the right to follow their own - and theirs are just as valid as ours.

yeah I know - it's like well part of multiculturalism is that you have to accept that not everything will be palitable to your own cultural expectations...

I live in a largely-Muslim/Lebanese area and it's very bizarre for me to see the boys acting all tough and macho, performing thier oomphness, but then they crumble the moment their mum comes around...but I don't understand why such a strong woman wears the veil...but then I think OK, well it's not for me to understand, I just have to accept it, like I ask them to accept me for who I am... But then I don't know, I don't know in what ways I take my queerness into the street and ask them to deal with it in the same way as they take thier religion/3rd generation cultural practices ... but then I'm a white male so mine is a priveleged position, not that of the other so I question how much I'm allowed to question that...

And I know it's wrong to say well, you come here you leave your problems behind, but I think it is ok to say you want to fight a war, fight it over there, don't bring it here.

That's why I never get the cubans in Miami - they want the US to invade Cuba for them, whilst they sit around and wait for the casinos to open.

i saw i movie i really liked abt being a homo greek-australian eg HEAD ON, about some of this stuff sorta (tho not flag- burning)

Head On rocked, based on the Cristos Tsiolkos book - different title I think...but it was great, Alex Dimitriades destroyed his career as greek girl pinup by playing lovely greek phag boy who wondered where he fitted in - greek/oz/fag/straight/etc

Damn fine flick...

I guess this all comes back to that question that perpetually dogs Oz - what is our identity. Whereas France for example has a strong grasp on it, via its culture etc, we have shit like meat pies and kangaroos which are really not relevant, and then the greek australians have thier church and festivals and stuff, but that's not relevant for all non-greeks and it goes on...

"Firstly, I'd never heard the word coon used to describe anything other than cheese until I was 20 and a British tourist told me that it was also used for Abos." Shit I knew it, Ned Flanders exisits. Take a trip to Kalgoorlie... Dont get me wrong I aint trying to belittle your nation's problems nor take the high moral ground(Though your rant on PC culture was hard to reconcile with your support for the Greens). Just trying to understand why Queen G would feel this way about the flag as it obviously bugs him. Osmosis was what I was getting at. If you think youve got problems with PC, get real and count yourselves lucky not be New Zealanders. Try well known kiwi Liberterian/Broadcaster Lindsay Perigo's "Politically Incorrect Editorials- Beating the Bastards Back" at groups.yahoo.com/group/perigo or freeradical.co.nz - "Politics, Economics and Life as if Freedom mattered" to see just how bad things are here in NZ.

The book was "Loaded". I went to a seminar about the film last fall.

Um, just to interrupt the Antipodean debate on what is the most PC country - Oz and NZ are outposts of the Charlton Heston God Guns'n'Guts Brigade in comparison to Canada!

justify please i doubt u compare

has anyone ever burned the Libyan flag but then claimed they were just burning some fabric that happened to be green?

has anyone ever burned the Irish flag but then claimed it was really Cotes D'Ivoires they had beef with and you were looking at it upside down?

if only Denmark had opted for a less distinctive enblem.

Why they don't make flags out of fireproof material I'll never know.

Or a flag made of fire.

OR - a flag made out of gun powder.
That would teach a lesson to any would be flag burner!

Sometimes I like to burn a flag and put the resulting ashes between two other flags.

if you're in disagreement with flag burners, you should ignore them.

if you're in agreement with flag burners, you should ignore them, too.

Why should anyone give a shit about flag burning? These people don't like your country so burning your flag is a good shorthand way of announcing it.

I can't see to many Palestinians saying to their mates: "Hey Mohammed! Maybe we shouldn't burn the Stars and Stripes 'cause a lot of the infidel yankee pigdogs think that's really disrespectful."

As for burning your own country's flag. It's a piece of dyed and/or printed fabric, nothing more; unless you're doing it on the forecourt of a petrol station burning a flag isn't exactly harmful, is it?

Perhaps I should open a chain of flag shops catering to the flag-burning community and call it "Put Out More Flags."

"Flag" is a really funny word, isn't it? It's been repeated too many times in this thread and it's starting to dissociate from the meaning. At least for me.

your attention is flagging.

This is a banner day for puns. But in such things, ILE has always had high standards.