Salam, I liked your article, spot on.

A decade ago I was naive in thinking Australia as a tolerant, multicultural land. The many ugly responses to your essay show a markedly different story. But maybe they are just a vocal minority.

As for Australia day? My household celebrated Australia Day in an old-fashioned way. We invited everyone in my neighbourhood to our house, we had an enormous feast, and then we killed them and took their land.

(That was tongue-in-cheek. Let us never foget the first Australians.)

This forum has got boring ,just going over and over and over the same thing again and again,.
The answer is a public forum ,openly discuss the lebanese gangs and others as well as the white anglo's reactions after putting up with gang attacks for many years ,it had to explode.

Now it has to change . The mindsets are too angry and hostile to make sense now,as pay back will be planned , unless the Muslim Men and Women have a say about what they want, same with White Anglo's.

Again,should Australia change anything?
We have had a beautiful nation for a long time ,then we get people from the deserts who live like 2,000 years behind times coming to our modern democratic country,telling us how to live .

I ask all politicians to take your so called wisdom and solve this created problem that you created in the first place ,with multi-beliefs,multi-culture,multi-dress,multi-religions and multi- turmoil,costing the Australian taxpayers multi -millions of dollars in costs.
They say ,"a leopard can NEVER change it's spots".

How are they telling you how to live? How do they live 2000 yrs behind the times? That is part of the very stereotype that we need to fight against in order to make progress.

Rainer

your quote

Question: Who here has coherently explained the cultural, political and ideological reasons and thus existence behind the of the Far Right wing white Australians at the Riot and their infestation generally in our society?

Infestation generally in our society?

You explain how you reached this conclusion and you will have the answer you require. Just apply your answer to the Lebanese community equally.

Dear Col,

I apologize for not responding in kind.

Nonetheless, the interaction with others has given me time to mull over a response to your significant question.

For myself, there is a juncture we find ourselves at odds with.

That is whether we use old or new models of assimilation.

The old ones [biological absorption] relied on racial classifications and the need to maintain national racial homogeneity.

New models of assimilation cannot rely on this adhoc approach. Nor can it invent and prescribe ‘cultural formulas’- policy can only take a principled and guiding approach.

You ask me if I’m an assimilationist. I am cautious to consent to your model as I sense it may defer back to the older models aforementioned.

Tensions clearly exist in terms of what the nation-state should display symbolically as its national identity. Most of this relies on a reading of the past as a grey cardigan history, not a fluid social history.

Clearly, ethno-nationalism resists the demands of a cosmopolitan morality, but the nation-state already draws upon this for its own legitimation.

We are not bees or ants who rely on instinct; we are humans who can construct tools to allow for social adaptations.

For me there needs to be greater investment in the social and cultural habits that our own society has assembled over the last 100 years or so. Some of these habits were exemplary; others abominable in regards to how people were/were not accorded the means to productively adapt into the existing metropolis - without cultural discontinuity. A holistic approach is required.

The tide is upon us, we either build cultural canals that regulate the flow or drown from our own nationalistic insecurities.

We cannot rely on the modernist vocabulary born out in expressions of anti-multiculturalism and regulated assimilation. Culture should be seen as a storehouse of pooled learning not a uniform we issue.

As Hugh Mackay has written, ‘Our society demands that we master the art of being two things at once: - proudly cosmopolitan as well as comfortably parochial”

Dawood my reply :

ME is Behind the times in dress, transport,human rights,women treated like second class citizens,men who need to clean up their minds (women not allowed to show their God given beauty).Donkey carts and child slavery weaving carpets,making tools ,etc, for long hours,education only for the rich,poor hygeine,illiteracy abounds,low class housing,no welfare ,health bad,and much more. Beggars everywhere.

Religious zealots control most people in middle east nations,politics corrupt and more.

They (ME) people want to see Australian's mindsets like theirs in religion,food (no pork eaten) dress (no part of female body seen) no alcohol (good one ) and men only to make all decisions ,. Plus Jihad to all infidels (read the right Koran translation) as there are many.