“to Indians getting attacked”

That is media sensationalism. I can think of a half dozen of the most brutal attacks that left Indians in hospital or dead that were committed by other Indians but at one stage or another were blamed on Australians without any evidence or established motive (the deaths of Gurshan Singh, Navdeep Singh, Kanwaljit Singh, Ranjodh Singh, as well as the setting alight of Jaspreet Singh, where the victim in fact done it to himself and botched his attempt at insurance fraud, and the train bashing of Sukhraj Singh where at least one of the assailants was described as being of Indian background and many of the others were of various Asian backgrounds). The most serious attack that was committed by a non-Indian was the death of Nitin Garg, but there is no evidence it was racially motivated, it was motivated over the theft of a mobile phone. The Indian protests in Sydney occurred after a series of attacks between Indians and Lebanese communities in Harris Park, including the petrol bombing of Rajesh Kumar (if people are going to continue to pick out the fact about the Cronulla riot, it should be noted that a lot of Indians were wanting retaliation on Lebanese during these ‘protests’). Also Sukhraj Singh was put into a coma by a Somali or Somali-led gang. Many of the victims of the lesser crimes told interviewers for a play that they didn’t believe the crimes were racially motivated and felt they were being manipulated (Google the article Return to the Scene of the Race Crimes from the Australian).

“Australia also has a notorious track record for its treatment of refugees which is way below par.”

Actually, Australia leads the world in refugee resettlement per capita by a fair margin. Between refugees resettled and recognized, Australia is 5th in the developed world. Japan is nowhere on the map, not only in that but also in refugee hosting, which Australia fairs less favourably in. Australia does have mandatory detention (the US is also reported as practicing occasional detention on far higher numbers of refugees) and our refugee hosting rates are somewhere around that of the lesser European countries, but far from ‘way below par’.

Sorry, I can’t speak English well…

オーストラリア人 – Australian
オーストコリア人 – Aust-Korean

It’s the same number of letters with only one being different.

Who the hell cares whether the the folks at Broome see the error of their ways.

JP should have thumb-up&down function like they have in YT. This japanobserver’s post won 100000thumbs up from me. Thank you japanobserver!

I don’t know about Australian counter part, but Taiji is small fishing village. They really don’t need international ties like this. Considering gaijin media hysteria on their way of life recently, they wouldn’t care less about getting severed from this false international sisterhood.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=127329496914

You may have a point with the tourism angle, but it might just be possible that the council reversed their decision and resolved to apologise to Taiji due to pressure from townspeople such as these.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/10/14/2713734.htm?site=news

Sometimes there are more sides to an issue than we think we know.

By the way, if we’re all looking at Australia in a fair and balanced manner, you might have noticed that the Broome Council has seen the error of its ways:
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20091015a4.html

“a great number died from diseased blankets given to them when they were pushed away from their traditional lives.”

Is this like that similar stories about the American Indians that have been shown as either false or genuine mistakes?

On 2ch, the often hysterical and irrational tone of anti-Japanese rhetoric in Korea is regarded as plain fact and common knowledge, and is of course regarded with contempt and disdain.
With the recent increase in radical anti-Japanese remarks by Australia centered around but not limited to whaling issues, the people of 2ch began regarding Australia as being cast from the same mold as Korea. And thus the word “Aust-Korea” joined the vast ranks of 2ch jargon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Chin

US Hate Crime Stats.

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2007/table_01.htm

Canada Hate Crime Stats.

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85f0033m/85f0033m2008017-eng.pdf

Story from NZ

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/271717

And the difficult thing to deal with is that we are very complexed beings.
White people in U.S. have been much more educated about this issues than anybody else by getting so much protests from Blacks for a long time. They cetainly know how to behave when they have to deal with others. But that does not mean they are much less racistic than others unfortunately.
And other people in U.S. think they are better than other minorities knowing the top of the hierarchy is mosdef White.
A guy who lives next door to you might looks like a great son to his mother or great dad to his kids, and a good neighbor to you. But still he could be a bigot.
I know I can be racistic sometimes too.

Note: Aust-Korea is a pejorative slang term used against Australia/Koreans. It combines the names of Australia and Korea.

and not

Note: Aust-Korea is a pejorative slang term used against Australia/Australians. It combines the names of Australia and Korea.

P.S. As a former immigrant and now a Canadian citizen, as much as I may appreciate Canada overall it’s misleading to potray it as a paragon of multicultural virtue. There are problems there as well, though probably less magnified than in other countries simply because of the relatively small population.

you can post this stuff. no problem.
though a look at youtube’s comments shows how little representative it is.

content:

there are differnet forms of racisms against different people. comments like “australia is a racist country” bring us nowhere. differentiated view please!

This is so ture.

Thank you japanobserver and HamachiMan for voicing reason! Of all these hypocritical gaijins here, you two guys are clearly exceptions.

To all you fuckers still don’t get it,
Perhaps we 日本人 should start carrying baseball bats for smashing your thick gaijin heads one by one in public like racist Australia. Then you would finally realize how lucky you guys are living in peaceful non-racist 日本.

“we give citizenship and the right to vote to long-term immigrants ”

As for the right to vote, I think the followings are more accurate pictures.

Australia
(CN member) National voting rights were granted to Commonwealth citizens from 1960 to 1984.[2] In 1984, 1947 legislation which had allowed non-citizen voting was repealed, but voters registered before 1984 retained their voting rights.

(Right of foreigners to vote Wikipedia)

Australia

Local level // Regional Level natonal Level
right to・ Eligibility//right to・Eligibility//right to・ Eligibility
vote vote vote

CL/CT ・CL/CT // CL CL 　　　　　　　//CL・ ー

CL =Electoral rights for citizens of certain countries on the basis of a colonial links in the past;
CT = Electoral rights in certain territories (region, province, or municipality);

(Electoral rights for foreign nationals:
a comparative overview of regulations in 36 countries
Harald Waldrauch February 2003,)

オーストラリア

英連邦諸国

国政の選挙権は1984年1月25日の時点で選挙人名簿に登録されている英連邦市民。
地方の選挙権は特定の期日（州により異なる）時点で選挙人名簿に登録されている英連邦市民。地方の被選挙権は西オーストラリア州など一部の州で付与されている。

その他

・南オーストラリア州
→1か月以上の居住。
・ 南オーストラリア州、タスマニア州及びヴィクトリア州
→州内に不動産を所有している州外居住者。

(外国人参政権をめぐる論点
佐藤　令)

Japan won the racism title.
Japan won the xenophobia title.
Japan won the pervert title.
Japan won the weirdo title.
Japan won the bigot title.
Japan won the sexist title.
…anything more?

I’m Italian-Australian.

I’ve been called racist names while living in Australia, but I’ve been rejected from renting an apartment based on xenophobia while living in Japan. Which is worse?

Is it true that all Americans have guns and go on crazy rampages in schools? No, that is not a fair judgement, in the same way is it fair in this case.

And I couldn’t disagree with you more!

I do not believe that the majority of Australians are racist. We have a higher number of ethnic groups and immigrants then do most countries including Japan and we give citizenship and the right to vote to long-term immigrants unlike Japan currently does (I’m aware that this is changing). I’m hoping that this example of one person’s actions does not give a long-term negative view of Australia to anyone who has one the moment. That said for the defense, I deeply feel shame for what has happened and I hope that James of Illawong and anyone else who does something like this is made and example of and receives the punishment they deserves.

And I wonder why Japan Probe is filled with so many racism related articles and they draw so much more attentions than new s of any other kinds. Well, I am one of them too, who pay more attention to them.
I have certainly become race-sensitive a lot since I moved to U.S. as many people here do not treat Asians who speak English with heavy accent like me very well.
I guess some Gaijins in Japan become race sensitive too by living in Japan as a minority.
I think we might get a little too obsessive about this subject, but it might be justifiable as it affects our identity issues so much.

Before I came to U.S., I believed I could make friends with anybody. Boy, I was wrong.

This site is much more liberal compared to 2channel.
I think it’s better to check both side of Japanese netizens.

Also, by the time the British Crown came around to NZ, it was starting to realise its errors in dealing with native peoples and wanted to try a more equitable settlement, which, even if it didn’t work out as well in practice, was a hell of an improvement on reservations or random slaughter or the like.

“Itai News” from where James picked up some of comments is actually a summary blog site of a 2ch boards, “Itai News+”. Hence, at least, two persons are involved in the filtering process.

The above site itself is not intended to be a summary site of comments to general news but focuses on little more wacky, silly, and worthless news. The Japanese word “itai” usually means “painful”, but in “Itai News” it is supposed to be a slang word. According to the definition of an online dictionary “The Dictionary of Japanese Slang Words“:

“itai” is a word representing a sense or feeling of, e.g. pitifulness induced by other’s irrelevant or misguided speech and/or action.

Era: post year 2000, Category: word of the youth

More detailed explanation is given there, but I will not translat it. A typical usage of this slang word is, “itai-ko”, which means a (young) person who is often awkward and is characterized by his/her frequent misguided or irrelevant speech and action. That Australian man might be seriously “itai-ko” for various reasons.

In my opinion, it is not a problem as long as everyone here understand backgrounds and a prerequisite knowledge.

Okay, now I’ll give you some more details.

This is in Australia. I am a White Australian. My sister is too. My wife is Japanese. The man was Aborginal. He came and sat near us and spoke to us, not because he was friendly, but because he was intoxicated and hostile. He accused us of ignoring him because he was black. We were ignoring him because you ignore the occasional person who is like that on the train (e.g. drunk, drugged, begging for change, or have mental problems).

The point I would like to make is that while there are race-related aspects to both the murder this blog article has discussed and my encounter on the train this morning, I don’t think it is the core issue. Were people in each of these incidents prejudiced? Apparently so. They were also intoxicated and violent, or prone to it.

It is sad that these incidents occur. It is also sad and frustrating that it suddenly becomes a matter of an Australian killed someone he thought was Japanese because of that, or an Aboriginal man threatened a White Australian.

Unfortunately, there are troubled ‘toorima’ wherever there are people. In these cases, it appears race (as a social construct) set them off, in addition to drink. Are not others set off by age, gender, or some another marker?

Australia has historically been a *very* white place. The natives were pushed into the desert and ignored, and up until a few decades ago you had to be white to immigrate. Cronulla was also the place where those riots were a few years ago, so is perhaps not the most tolerant and inclusive of places.

2channel (not “2chan”) has been mentioned many times before on this site and many other Japan blogs. A great deal of this site’s readership has probably had some experience with it.

I feel no obligation whatsoever to force feed readers who can’t figure out what they should take seriously.

I expect that most of the readers here are smart enough not to judge an entire country based on what a few netizens wrote on an internet forum.

“blog-based reservoir of information, entertainment, and news

Many posts, like this one, share a news article and then provide other information that is more of entertainment value.

This is an entertainment/news site. Most posts here focus on the weird, ridiculous, or outrageous things. If you want to get dry and serious news reports, I suggest you check a newspaper.

P.S. irregardless?

helical:

You’re right. There is a certain risk in my picking up comments that were featured on Itai News.

Since you’ve brought up a good point, the next time I use Itai News as a source, I will probably skim the actual 2ch thread and possibly take some comments that the Itai blogger didn’t pick up.

Honestly from my experience Canada is always better than USA no matter what.

Just because a Prime Minister likes something doesn’t make it right.

Basically your post proves the fact that a lot of bloggers are acting like news reporters and people aren’t told the truth that they aren’t actually providing all the facts, just their opinions. I say news because in the About US for this site they state the posts here are “blog-based reservoir of information, entertainment, and news”. Reporting something that happened is news reporting. You may say you aren’t reporting news, but you are. Writing about an actual event that happened, communicating a current event, that is reporting news.

For an issue, there may be a whole half of the responses that have a favorable reaction to it, but it may be entirely ignored in favor of presenting a series of amusing rants of outrage on the blog.

Although itai news has dropped the practice recently, the person maintaining it used to visually highlight opinions contrary to the “general consensus” or just plain dumb comments, followed up by a series of rebuttals and insults thrown at the person. Though this is pretty much how it works in 2ch itself, what comments are chosen to be highlighted shows those sites aren’t quite neutral.

And because it’s highly impractical to present the entire 1000-reply long thread on a blog, often the only way to get an accurate reading of the reactions posted on 2ch is to go to the actual thread and slog through it all.
That, or entrust whoever is doing the picking and choosing to present a reasonable accurate image of the whole flow.