BOOK REVIEW
The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding by Robert Hughes. Colorful history of Australia's origins as a penal colony.  Britain basically criminalized poverty.  Anyone who so much as farted in the wrong direction were locked up.  When the prisons started to overflow, they packed everyone in ships and sent them off to Australia. The British didn't separate folks out, so women, children and other non-violent offenders were all brutally raped and sodomized by their fellow passengers.  When they landed in Australia, they were used as slave labor. Those who weren't sold remained in hellish prison camps where they were constantly raped and tortured.  Native Aborigines were exterminated.  It was literally like Planet of the Apes shit, with whites riding around on horses hunting down families for sport.  The prison system didn't end until the 19th-century when a gold rush opened Australia up for everyone.  My Aussie friends can't be smug about how great they are.  Their history is as dark and sordid as America and Europe, if not even worse.