I found this an excellent article, and an accurate account of the dilemma that leaves this Anglo-Celt origin Australian desperately trying to find words appropriate for an apology to every recent immigrant to this country.

John Howard is wrong. There is racism here, as anyone who listens to locals in small country towns and various other areas (obviously including Cronulla) knows quite well. What is more, John Howard's electoral strategies, described by his campaign architects and colleagues as "dog-whistling", have been built on a knowledge of this tendency, and have worked to exploit it . They even attempted to export it to the UK in the recent elections there.
Racism is not as extreme as it is elsewhere, perhaps. But it exists and can be played upon.

And if you whistle up hatred, you reap the whirlwind.

And pretend, once again, that you owe no-one an apology for doing nothing to prevent the consequences of public policy... ("No, it didn't happen -- and if it did, it wasn't me, sir !")

The last three months will go down in history as being the lowest point in Australian history since the Battle of Lambing Flat:

1. Citizens deported without cause.
2. Citizens gaoled prior to deportation because of illness.
3. 5 years of detention without trial for a citizen overseas without a murmur of complaint from our government.
4. Laws on sedition enhanced ridiculously.
5. Imprisonment without trial in secret authorised on the word of people like those responsible for 1. and 2. above.
6. Unfair dismissal assumed as right of business employers, to deploy without fear wherever convenient.

And now all this....

Meanwhile, Kim Beazley waits around playing "Follow the Johnny leader". (Again.)

Leaving the rest of us of good intent to try to clean up the pieces.

But where the hell do we start ?

Good to see all the apologists out again. PeterGM asks where do we start? Well apart from wringing your hands, gnashing your teeth and blaming the victims how about you look at the problem with a bit of honesty.

Sydney has some pretty serious racial problems. It also has a police force that's pretty quick to break out the batons when it comes to yobbos but sits back and does next to nothing when Muslim youth smash cars, assault people and pack rape girls.

The real crime here is a police force who are more concerned with pandering to "intellectual" nitwits whose main priority seems to be showing everyone how sensitive and compassionate they are, then actually protecting the community from the predations of the Muslim criminal element.

In our nation's history, those who have helped to build the same culture are not necessarily of one race, and those of the same race have not all participated in one culture. Solutions will only come from understanding this fundamental component in our racial and cultural abilities. Irfan, as usual, simply calls on those community leaders who have long understood this to be the case - to come together for the greater good. Solutions will not come from those who preach hate and intollerance.

Irfan

Your response really is very disappointing.

Of course the violence and display in Cronulla was disgraceful and cowardly. It is not the way we do things.

Your response in refering to but not condemning the violence in the other parts of Sydney, on the same Sunday, was disgraceful. Contrary to your inference that violence was perpretrated by Lebanese Muslim men.

Only you know why you didn't take that course, I'm left scratching my head. But that's ok ...as a friend used to say...'Keith it gives your b.... a rest'.

Did you realise on Sunday there were women bashed, attacked with steel bars, (No they didn't merely have headscarfs pulled off) one man was stabbed (not just beaten), other men were bashed, car windows were broken and mobs of Lebanese Muslim men were rampaging down streets chanting slogans in Arabic.

Your article only inflames things. Here's how;

Irfan, I am liberal and I do not condone violence in any way, but your article has bought to the surface, in me, an anger about the uncondemned actions of those Lebanese Muslim men.

I felt, why are you not condemning them in equally if not stronger terms?

It has taken a great deal of effort to exert the self-control needed to stop myself from merely jumping in and ONLY criticising the bashing of Surf Life-savers and then the cowardly rampaging in areas where there was no congregration of people opposing their common and cowardly violence, on Sunday.

But you did exactly that, showed no self-control. Your article inflamed me. I wonder the effect it would have on my rednecked and labor mates, (No, none of them are Lawyers, teachers or government workers, and most wouldn't have been out of place at Cronulla on Sunday}.

But anyway any claim you might have to being a community leader really is now under question.

You are exhibiting exactly the tribal attitudes you seem to criticise in your article.

I agree Peter. Howard's dog-whistling began in '96 when he refused to speak out and officially condemn Pauline Hanson's racist rantings. He's playing the same game now and for the same reasons.

Well said Bozzie.

I was in Sydney over the weekend. On Saturday I chatted with a young vietnamese bloke at Balmoral who was working hard at a cafe to save money to buy his taxi license. On Sunday I had a taxi driver from Ghana who had been in the civil service for twenty years and had three to retirement. Sunday night I had coffee and a Greek shop in Newtown and a laugh with the owner who sold two taxis to buy it.

It seems to me that there are many ethnic people in Australia who face adversity and make the most of it-afterall we are a lucky country. However i don't believe these Lebanese gangs believe in this statement- and I certainly don't believe the Lebanese community is strong enough in condemning their actions.

There is no justification for what happened on Sunday. It was very sad. However I am sadder for the Vietnamese, Greeks, and Ghanans in our community who will undoubtedly suffer. People who blame Howard for this are kidding themselves-the bottom line is that there are people in this country who don't embrace its values and haven't ever done so.

Whether its abusing the ANZACS on 60 minutes or abusing young women for wearing bikinis-it's not on. The wider Lebanese community is too afraid to condemn them and the rest of Australia dare not for fear of being labelled racist.