Melbourne's gang menace

February 24, 2008, Herald Sun:

A TEEN bashed with a tomahawk was fighting for his life last night as youths warned of a Cronulla-type gang explosion in Melbourne.

Sunshine Hospital was forced to call police and shut its emergency department as about 100 youths descended, angered by the brutal attack on their friend.

In another unprecedented escalation of gang violence, a molotov cocktail was hurled on a suburban train last week.

More attacks were pledged as part of a bitter conflict between two of Melbourne's biggest gangs that has seen 10 youth stabbings ...

Four men were charged with attempted murder and serious assaults last night over the savage attack on the Delahey youth, 17, on Friday.

The teenager's family was keeping a vigil after he and four friends were "pulverised" in the St Albans attack.

Their assailants -- one 16 -- used a tomahawk, baseball bats and hockey sticks in an orgy of violence destroying their car and hospitalising the five men.

One of the teens caught in the attack said the violent onslaught had been triggered by them being on someone else's turf.

The teen, who would not give his name, had facial bruising and injured ribs and described the attack as ruthless and against innocent victims.

As well as being territorial, he said the attack was carried out for fun.

Police, social workers and even gang members told the Sunday Herald Sun gang violence was flaring across Melbourne's suburbs.

The Police Association -- representing 11,000 officers -- said the youth gang crisis demanded a regional taskforce on youth crime and anti-assembly powers.

"They're under-18 and they're coming in from the outer suburbs and causing mayhem in the city and the inner suburbs," assistant secretary Bruce McKenzie said ...

The association was expected to lobby Premier John Brumby for anti-assembly powers to break up big groups of teens and expressed a desire for British-style portable walk-through metal scanners ...

In an escalating stoush between two of the city's biggest gangs, an Arab coalition from Melbourne's north was seething over a rap song released by enemy gang South-East Boys, threatening "another Cronulla".

The song, Lullaby, derides the Dandenong gang's Arab enemies as "pussies" and threatens a local Cronulla-style race clash.

Gang members said the rivalry between the north and south gangs had already led to 10 stabbings.

"Give it tomorrow, give it a year. We will hit back 10 times harder," said Ronni, leader of northern gang ASAD or Arabian Soldiers Arab Defenders.

Gang members are aged 17 to 26 and brawl with machetes, bottles, poles, knuckle-dusters and knives.

The North-West Boys, who have a distinct double-fist handshake, are made up of gangs including ASAD, which has spread from Newport, and The Clan ...

The North-West Boys said their opposing gang, based around Dandenong, was a mix of white "Aussie bogans", Sudanese, Afghans, Italians and Greeks.

"We were hunting them for almost seven hours," The Clan leader Hash said.

"If the South-East want war, then so be it."

The gangs have sophisticated fight strategies and youths are attacked if they stray into another gang's side of the city.

"Something in the future is going to happen to them," Ronni said ...

Smell the cultural vacuum, smell the self-determination, smell the no-go zones. When the white man leaves, when Christianity leaves - what fills the vacuum? Little Kosovos in the making. Just keep fueling the conflict with increased immigration and high birth rates and watch it explode like France, Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, etc. And just like the UK with 170 gangs on the streets of London.

Mark Steyn:

... when you raise a generation in the great wobbling blancmange of ... cultural relativism – nothing is any better or any worse than anything else; if people are "mean and nasty" to us, it's only because we didn't sing enough Barney the Dinosaur songs at them – in such a world a certain percentage of its youth will have a great gaping hole where their sense of identity should be. And into that hole you can pour something fierce and primal and implacable.

Via Oz Conservative