Fiedrich srote - except the bit where you compare Nazi Germany with the left. Nazi Germany controlled the press for the good of the mother land. The left don't care about Australia. That's a big difference. The left is about race mixing and sexual perversions(child porn etc). The only good leftie is a dead one.

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The left is about mixing race and about sexual peversions such as child porn? What a disgusting way of looking at life. Nazi Germany did not control the media for the good of the motherland, nor because it was left wing, it controlled for control, for the good of their fascist principles. It was a fascist state and controlled by fear, brutality and propoganda.

Fear will bring out the worse in the people. This is well documented, and in particular, used and admitted to with great preide by senior members of the 3rd Reich. Fear is being galvanised in this country, rascism is being mixed with bigotry. The lines are being scrambled between one issue and another. The issue with the young Lebanese Muslims and Lebanese Christians, along with the issues of behaviour is being blurred and crossed. The thugs who created carnage and burned churches is a hate crime. The weekend thuggery was based on hatred, bigotry, retaliation, and long term unrest, which should never reached these points.

The media has been full of shock horror for a long time about Muslims, and blind freddy could see that if you keep pounding on a subject, and fear and ignorance is involved, then people will react.
The reasons for the weekend riots are many, and it is not one nor another being the main problem.

We are a rascist nation, always have been. The shame is that the young, who grew up with people from other nationalities, have less tolerance,at times, than those of the 1950's and 1960's. Is this the product of our child rearing? Are the baby boomers responsible for this? We will need to dig very deep to find the answers.

Perseus

"But in relation to the Cronulla riot, the very worst bit of highly offensive opinionism, it is not journalism, was the cartoonist that implied that this entirely metropolitan problem, in both cause and effect, was somehow rooted in rural Australia. The background shadow of the hat with corks was a classic example of the propagandists art."

Talk about jumping at shadows, or is it a case of "If the hat fits.."

The hat with corks is a well-recognised symbol of Australia. I'm sure Sean Leahy was making a statement about Australians in general, rather than directing blame onto rural Australia.

Tinkerbell1952, Terje, I agree wholeheartedly with your posts, sadly between you, I have nothing to add, except to congratulate you both, on very well written posts. Nobody has a monopoly on truth, truth is different for all of us, we need to be tolerant of others opinions. The schock-jocks cater to a certain section of society, a section I do not subscribe to, and as such can't comment.

Keep Left Unless Overtaking signs: elitism, riots and civil unrest.

'Keep Left Unless Overtaking' is widely viewed to mean KEEP LEFT UNLESS SPEEDING. If you are on the speed limit in NSW and slowly overtaking a vehicle of slightly slower speed you will be booked. If you tailgate a legally overtaking vehicle in the overtaking lane, approaching it at 140 Km per Hour and causing massive confusion, angst and traffic instability you are in the right and it appears from the rapidly increasing number of these incidents that you will not be booked. This stems from yet another blundering bravado attitude displayed by roads minister Costa and an ingrained incompetence at the RTA as shown by the recent sacking of Paul Forward.

Keep Left Unless Overtaking signs are an implicit invitation to speed and break the law. This technical RTA failure continues to engender a sentiment of elitism and agression througout a very competetive section of the community. This section does not only include aggressive youths that participate in riots. A wide sleeper section of the community is involved.

A fundamental commonality in the current riots has been souped-up cars and mobile phones. Any signage that acts as an invitation to break the law with cars is inflaming a feeling of lawlessness and unfounded elitism among agressive sections of the community, including youths involved from both sides of the current riots. As an aside, it is interesting that police now have the power to confiscate cars and mobile phones from potential rioters.

If ZERO TOLERANCE is the way to quell rioting in Sydney then the place to start is with public officials who appear to have subtle reasons for engendering a feeling of elitism in selected sections of the community as a way to curry favour with community power players. The way to begin this process is to take away their cherished 'Keep Left Unless Overtaking' sign and replace it with a truth-in-notification sign of "KEEP LEFT UNLESS TRAVELLING AT SPEED LIMIT".

I guarantee this single action will be like hitting all elitists with the ol' Pea beu.

After the riots are over.

It still leaves the problem of festering resentments in the community over out of control immigration policy. It is no use if you do stop the flagrancy of these riots among youth when resentment about new housing encroachments are brewing right throughout ALL sections of the community. Again, ZERO TOLERANCE is needed and this time with the NSW Carr/Iemma government. They must be forced to stop their PROPAGANDA desal advertisments now flooding radio and TV at taxpayer expense. These adds say " because of overpopulation and climate change, Sydney must have a secure water supply for the future ...".

The required TRUTH-IN-ADVERTISING should be: "because overpopulation, climate change and low dam levels are caused by the NSW government policy of overpopulating Sydney and of building 1,000,000 new homes by 2020 we are ceasing such developments forthwith and thus reducing population growth in Sydney for the forseeable future. A desal plant will no longer be required and we apologise for the unprecedented concerm this matter has caused in a community which cherishes it's democratic freedoms and it's sense of community and open space. We also apologise to big Macbusinesses that we feel have been let down by this and we hope that they will still support our government and give us well paid jobs when we leave office."

Next topic: ZERO TOLERANCE and TRUTH-IN-SENTENCING for free speech.

Another content-free contribution from the Flint/Stone team of cartoon characters.

The headline of the article is a swipe against critics of shock-jockery - a trade that is surely the simplest way of making money that the world has ever dreamed up. Just open the phone lines, pander to the basest instincts of the public at large, and watch the phones light up.

The attractively-coiffed professor proceeds to equate the contributions of those who call in with "public opinion", despite the fact that there is only a very narrow section of the population who would ever pick up that phone and call. For one thing, it is standard operating procedure that any sign of tolerance and consideration is met with on-air derision, which has the effect of narrowing response even further. If you make it clear that there is only one side of the argument on offer, why would you call in the first place?

But no matter. It makes a good story, and attracts exactly the same reaction in print as it does on the air, from those whose instincts cause them to reach for the phone when the dog-whistle blows.

Interestingly though, the article ends with a call to zero-tolerance policing, which is a horse of a very different colour. It is entirely possible to disagree with the opinion that the voice of talk-back radio is the voice of the people, while agreeing that stricter enforcement of existing laws and greater support for our police force is a good thing.

They are not mutually exclusive, but it is standard practice for the Flintstones to lump them together, so that they can take some easy shots, and plaster a few more un-Australian labels on those who disagree with their worldview.

Shoddy stuff, basically.