The globalisation juggernaut will be catastrophic for the island continent of Australia. While our eyes are turned to events in the Middle East, an even more pernicious terror has stealthily found its way into Australia. We do not see any news headlines about it, but gradually over the last three years, thousands of Australians have lost their livelihoods to the hordes from Chindia, through outsourcing services to offshore companies.

I think I re-read that paragraph three times before finally deciding that it wasn’t being farcical or satirical, and that the writer was in fact serious. I’m ethnically not part of the group that Ellett so blithely and flippantly attacks, but, as one who belongs to the population he claims to represent, I’m insulted.

Perhaps the content is valid — offshoring of jobs results in diminishing employment opportunities for Australians. Or not. Either way, the phrasing of the last sentence of that first paragraph is inappropriate at best, and overtly racist at worst; overwhelmingly reminiscent of cries against the “Yellow Peril” from earlier in our country’s history. I can’t get over the line “hordes from Chindia”, myself. Both the term “hordes” and its negative connotations (likening the population of this “Chindia” to a mob whose purpose is to overrun Australian employment), as well as the term “Chindia” — which I’d personally never heard before, but is apparently accepted terminology — still, a quick Google revealed it’s a generic noun used to describe Asiatic nations (of which, debatably, Australia should count itself one) — this isn’t shocking in itself, but viewed in the context of Ellett’s message is perhaps a little too nationalistic… one may argue to the point of racism. And I do.

The irony of all this is brought out well in another article by The Economist, in which both China and India are described as having a “tendency towards economic isolationism” and “proud […] self-sufficiency”… and yet we complain of (what is portrayed as) their active desire to steal our domestic industry away from us, when, in reality, people elect to use their services and industry as opposed to employing local sources in attempted exploitation of them (or so Ellett would have us believe in a somewhat twisted way in which racist nationalism becomes the dominant tone of the piece)… but this “exploitation” is actually to mutual benefit, as illustrated in an article linked to from the original piece (but apparently not read, or at least ignored, by Ellett).

This is, afterall, a “pernicious terror” with which our country is threatened. More so than militarism, seemingly. “While our eyes are turned to events in the Middle East, an even more pernicious terror has stealthily found its way into Australia.” Notably, not that an even more pernicious terror has developed in Australia, in the form of our own socially irresponsible management (although, to be fair, Ellett alludes to this at a later point in the piece), or that Australia is embracing globalisation in the form of its own international agenda and policies, including “free” trade agreements with other nations perhaps not so interested in “free” trade as unilateral trade with a side dish of pretenses at diplomatic niceties. But I digress.

It has the potential to see the nation evolve from its Third World poverty and skip straight into the information and technology age. It is truly one of the great achievements of history, and one from which we can all learn.

It’s just “the nation”, now: this Chindia, in the mind of Ellett, truely is the one foreign entity. From a nationalistic perspective, perhaps it is… but surely, no one in a developed, good, Western nation would seriously consider matters that way anymore — not since the early twentieth century! Everything old is new again: including, it would seem, this “truly […] great achievement” in which developing Asian nations (I refuse to use the term “Chindia”) may circumvent the process of progression from proverty to prosperity. On that note, I indicate Ellett’s choice of words — he refers to “evolution” from Third World poverty — I needn’t elaborate on possible interpretations of that.

It also disregards the need for development of infrastructure which comes as a side effect of the industrialisation process, something which some citizens of post-industrial Western society apparently take for granted. There is, and always will be, a process which needs to occur to “evolve” (cringe) from a state of poverty. Infrastructure does not instantly appear, neither does technology, and neither do adequately trained educators and users of this technology, neccessary for sustainable industry (which is itself obviously requisite for the alleviation of poverty in an urban society).

The problem with Ellett’s approach is it looks to globalisation without any real comprehension of what the “global” part of that word means. Protectionism, nationalism, and the notion of requisite self-preservation at a “national” level in this context is somewhat antiquated: globalisation is about the breaking down of barriers such that the skills and abilities of the individual may be realised regardless as to physical circumstance… even when that individual is a “Chindian”.

We’ve been dutifully feeding it into babelfish and various other online translators, just to give foreign-language spammers an opportunity to make their impact on their target audience.  Spam email IS effective, ladies and gentlemen; whilst I wouldn’t normally give any normal spam a second glance,

*categorised, mark as “read”, filed in the spam folder (4085 messages)*

foreign language email (n.b. there are no images in ANY of these emails, only the occasional text-only link… if there were images, I wouldn’t have opened them.) gets translated, and then read!  I even clicked on a link or two (after ascertaining that there were no identifying features to the URL — e.g. email campaign success tracking/address skimming)!!!

The actual content of the emails is… interesting (or questionable.)  For the most part, they are political messages of one kind or another — it is not immediately clear what they are trying to say — the general gist of it seems to be that EU immigrants are bad, criminal people, and shouldn’t be allowed into the country or welfare.

One message reproduced here for your convenience:

Immigration wave of Eastern European people on social security fears Munich(rpo). Hans Werner sense, president institute for economic research has inthe ‘Sueddeutschen Zeitung’ before a solid immigration wave of EasternEuropean people on social security to Germany warned. The European Unionembodied transition periods for employees, but unemployed persons mightimmigrate immediately and would have from the outset ‘Anspruch on all socialLeistungen’. This regulation is grotesque and the Western European welfarestates will destroy. Only a change of the European Union condition can stillprevent. The consequences of the liberality guideline for migrations withinthe European Union, approved of by the European Union parliament, are ‘vonpolitics and public totally uebersehen’ , the economist criticized. EastEuropeans may come during a transition period of several years ‘nicht asemployees. As independent ones and not an employed person persons may dothem itself however immediately in Germany niederlassen’, explained sense.‘Von beginning on does not have also that employed person requirement on allsocial achievements of the state as more native. That becomes many, whichare in the poorer regions of Europe at home, arranges, into the rich welfarestates of the European Union wandern.’ The incentives are over powerful. TheGerman social welfare assistance is five times as highly as slowakischerwages. The forthcoming poverty migration made of Eastern Europe will erodethe Western European welfare states: ‘Die states will back-screw theirachievements in a kind deterrence competition, because none become the goalof the welfare migrations will’, and ‘im final result could be Europe onlyas socially, as it America today ist’. In order to turn away this, theEuropean Union states ‘das right of the migration would have into theSozialstaat’ paint: The homeland would have to remain responsible for thesocial security benefits at not employed person immigrant, demanded the ifopresident.

Babelfish’d, not human translation, hence the… obscure… nature of it all.

All this poses an interesting question in terms of email-marketing/spam: would you get a higher market penetration by sending foreign-language messages, and a babel link?

Possibly not… not everyone is as weird as myself, and most probably still wouldn’t bother.  I imagine they get a high enough clickthrough by simply sending out pr0n email… sad, but probably true.

So has anyone else been receiving this kind of email?  Does anyone speak/translate German fluently and receive this kind of email (i.e. can you make more sense of it than babelfish’d english does?)