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“Hannibal and Leigh can I just say your comments are disgusting-they make you absolutely no better or more Australian than the Lebanese gangs who terrorise society. You are terrorists yourselves.”

What on earth are you talking about, you moron? Your barely-literate gibberish has nothing to do with the subject. I’m a terrorist? Your are a boofhead who needs to get off whatever it is you’re smoking or drinking. Get back under your rock.

I whole heartedly disagree with several prefaces on which Benjamin's comments were based.

"Australians tolerate the intolerant...unlike all the places where middle-eastern people come from..." - It is talk like this that creates conscious and sub-conscious segregation in the minds of people - We need to see each other as Australians first and Muslims, Jews, Europeans etc. second.

As Australians, we can't afford to view our country as some heavenly sanctuary of freedom that we extend to other ethnics who then have a responsibility to wholly integrate. Such a view is patronising and unjusitifiable given that white Australia is an immigrant population as well.

Benjamin, you say: "the Australian Way...(is) the reason (Arabs) came here." - well it's not: Yes, Australia is a pluralist democracy, one that we should be proud of and promote to the world - but the Australian way is whatever the mix of cultures living in Australia constitutes at any given time - Right now, that means that Muslims, Asians and Europeans all have a stake in defining the 'Australian Way' as each other.

Your post patronises, condescends and irrationally stigmatises Arabs in a way that I guarantee you would be unable to defend academically.

It is not Muslims rampaging through YOUR streets and threatening YOUR women. It is people rampaging through streets threatening women etc. May be hard to believe, but it's not always Muslims mate (My sister was sexually harrassed by an Anglo-Australian) - open your eyes.

We need to stop thinking of people as 'our people' or 'their people.' - it's a guaranteed sustainer of segregation and racial inequality.

Muslims are just as Australian as we are and are here to shape "the Australian way," not simply to conform to it.

A country is nothing more than a product of the cultures that make it up, whatever they may be. The quicker you realise that Australia belongs to ALL Australians and not just to us and OUR PEOPLE, the happier you'll be.

I suggest everyone goes back to the first post in this thread by Sells. And then let’s extend his argument. Don’t define your identity by attachment to a flag, a culture, a colour, a type of clothing, a sporting team, a language, a religious denomination or any other label. In other words, don't become simply a member of a tribe.

Perhaps it is inescapable that we -- especially adolescents -- will tend to do these things to varying degrees. But we must do all we can to grow out of it. Let's rather construct the sort of socio-political environment in which the adolescent’s, or anyone else’s, predisposition to tribalism does not lead to destructive behaviour.

That doesn’t preclude us from loving our country, practising a religion, supporting a footy team or whatever. However such a preference should never become the basis for identity. The nation is not the ecosystem; the team is not the game; the religious denomination is not God.

Many of us understand this. It is the basis upon which we need to build our society. John Howard, Kym Beazley and other leaders: please consider deeply. You may then be able to help us crawl out of the mess of which the Sydney riots are a symptom. The first step you might take is to chuck the word "un-Australian" out of your vocabulary.

And at the same time the rest of us should be searching for individuals with deeper understanding and propel them into parliament.

Well Salam, I migrated to Australia about 30 years ago. I have never had a problem, neither have any of my friends. Perhaps its time to contemplate your naval and wonder why it is that hundreds of thousands of migrants have thrived in Australia, yet the Lebanese
Muslim community is having such a problem doing the same. Is it really Australia that is the problem, or something about your culture?

Thank you Yobbo.

Your comment that people in Cronulla were happy for ethnic gang violence to continue for ten years provided that it did not affect them personally was spot on.

Eight years ago I handed out "how to vote" cards for "Australians against Immigration" in Cronulla and our Party got a miserable 3% of the primary vote. The Party leader of the AAFI insisted on us wasting our time contesting seats where the numbers of crime prone and welfare dependent minorities was very low, on the presumption that this was where the votes were.

I suggested that we should contest seats in immigrant areas where racial tensions were already very high. But he claimed that "half the vote is already against you."

I gave up on that Party as a waste of time. I learned that Australians could not give a damn about immigration until the consequences affected them directly. We do not need to retaliate against Lebanese Moslem intimidation of Australians by engaging in riotous behaviour. All we need to do is to have the wit to learn from what has been happening in this country and overseas and vote accordingly.

How many of the rioters in Cronulla have bothered to vote for AAFI or One Nation is not known but one suspects that these Parties will do quite well in that electorate this time.

The riots are not a sign of a racist country I am happy to understand that it took a long time for most of these youths to react to insulting actions of a few.
Remember please it is a few on both sides who promote these actions.
But also understand Australians have for a very long time been treated in a racist fashion by a few who while execpting our freedoms are refuseing our laws and lifestyle.
Room exists in this debate for reality.