Where I live in Sydney and along the coast South and North there were huge riots and racial bashings yesterday. This has all been brewing up for a while now, to the point where 'real Aussies' think it's time to start bashing Middle-Eastern men and women to 'reclaim' our beaches, or some such bull .

I really am sad. Not only because of what is happening, but because most of the people leading this violence are young, around my age. I was sort of hoping that the younger generations might have a broader more multicultural view of the society we live in, but apparently not.

A few articles about it:
One
Two
Three
Four

Maroubra is mentioned, where the Middle-Eastern men came to retaliate against the violence with, surprise surprise, more violence, that is where I live. I was out last night and my mother was worried that I would get bashed coming home, since I usually walk from down the beach.

This is all disgusting. They're only fighting themselves, fighting other Austrailians who just happen to have a different colour of skin. It's the same way around the world (the race riots in the 1960's south come to mind), and no one ever seems to learn. One small group does something, the whole group gets blamed, and then both sides just escallate from there. If a middle eastern guy robs me, I'm not going to go find the first brown guy with a turban and a beard and beat him up.

I suppose we can only hope that this sort of thing happens less and less frequently, and as we have the tools to communicate with each other (like the internet). If this isn't a tool to help promote unity, I don't know what is.

Why would the internet be a tool to promote unity? It transcends racial boundaries but doesn't destroy them (they're still there, but you just don't know/see them.) You're not forced to confront racist attitudes on the Internet, you can just quite happily ignore them.

Summed up my thoughts.

The whole racial thing is disgusting, its just wrong to dislike someone because they look different. Internet doesnt get rid of the problem, just makes you faceless and assimilates you into forgetting who you are. Its like the French and English did to the Natives when they arrived in North America, they disliked them for how they looked but made them learn their ways when they were young so that they wouldnt be accepted into their own cultures.

Hmph, I didn't say the internet would solve the world's problems, I was saying it opened up oppurtunities to learn about other places and people, etc etc.

People and general intolerance disgust me. I've learned to block it out, for the most part.

However, those aussies need to seriously get ahold of themselves. I'm no patriot, but I think the U.S. suffered a weee bit more than Aussies did from this Iraq mess - and you don't see this crap going on.

No, we get Fred Phelps. Hey, Quidgy, wanna trade?

Ah, misread what you had said. Yes, it would allow for people to learn. But, it does seem more like assimilation than anything..just an opinion.

No offense, but eh, to put things in perspective... 'real aussies' are the descendants of convicts, are they not? Silly racists.

I'm proud of my criminal heritage . But no, you could go back further and say the real Australians are the ones who we introduced alcohol and small pox too. We're such givers, us Anglos.

But honestly, I hate those sickeningly patriotic nuances such as 'real Australian'. They make me cringe, it's so embaressing to hear that.

nope. off by about 30,000 years.

Haha! We all know that if a native race inhabits a place for hundreds or thousands of years only to be wiped to the brink of extinction by brutal conquerers they don't qualify as 'real people'! I'm looking at you, native americans!

The Australians, as I recall, didn't sell biological weaponry to the Iraqis. The United States, however, did.

What happened in New York was wrong. There is no excuse for it.

However, let's get something straight. The US supported Iraq and Saddam Hussein. By this, I don't mean the infamous Rumsfeld-Hussein handshake. The USA sold anthrax, gas gangrene causing bacteria, and all sorts of other nice things. The US is not innocent by any means, any more than the Iraqis are.

Like I said, I don't support mass acts of violence in any way, particularly when civilian populations are involved. However, it's about time that we stopped and acknowledged that even though this was a terrible, terrible thing, the US is far from an innocent party.

At the same time there are riots in Denmark because a cartoonist drew mohamed in a way that Muslims did not like, and demands the newspaper appologize for the pictures. And killed a filmmaker because they made a movie that was critical of Islam. Why don't people ever get outraged by those acts? Always the white man's fault.

It's not totally centred around Iraq really.

Australia is actually a pretty racist country, to be totally honest, and all of this terrorism nonsense has seemed to stir it up a bit over the past few years.

The curent anti-Middle Eastern feelings also come from a string of gang rapes that were performed by different groups of young Muslim men fairly recently around Sydney.

I never said the U.S. was innocent, by any means. I'm simply pointing out that if anyone is going to lash out at the muslim communities, I'd EXPECT it from the U.S., not the Aussies. I still respect Aussieland!


Although, I don't think it's fair young boys and men need to die because our government is full of shady pricks.

But, I completely agree - we're not innocent, and nothing close to it. Trust me, I'm as hardcore anti-American as you'll find in America. I make some of the saudi's look peace-loving. I make Fred Phelps look like a humanitarian!

Because I don't read Danish news, and no one here brought it up? I wouldn't know about the Australian crap unless I read it here. I only heard of the French problems a week after they started.

Please tell me that's not a national article, and you have more than one each of those for the entire country.

Ah I don't see the problem with the grammar there, except maybe Dog Squad should have been capitalized.

"The" is the definite article for english. Using it implies that either that squad and copter are so much better or more famous that you'll assume the correct one for each, or that there is only one of each them.