Talking about management, it is about time our OLO managers brought in essayists up to date with the news, especially concerning the now scary Middle East problem, as noted below.

One wonders why the Clinton's are again courting Israel after all these years.

Patrick Tyler's "A World of Trouble", though not yet finished, so far says how Bill Clinton when US President let himself be manipulated by Israel's Netanyahu, and now Hillary is foolishly playing the same game right now, as shown recently on Sky TV.

Barak Obama sadly will now not only again enter Tyler's World of Trouble through having to flirt with the Clinton's, but could mean our cocky nasty little Israel is again dominating the Middle East future.

According to Martin Woolcott, a 'Guardian' journo', there is already a rush to get Tyler's coming book onto Obama's table, a book which will keep insisting that foolish US decisions all along have let Israel not only call the wrong tune in the Middle East, but according to our predictions, might easily cause Iran to look east, Russia and even China possibly backing Iran.

Going by the foolish way America let Israel target Syria earlier, as if Israel is part of a US plan to prevent war, there is little doubt that Israel also has loaded nuclear rockets pointed towards Iran.

The above is certainly a crucial testing time for Obama, and going by the original tone of the millions who supported him, he'd be better to look to them than to proven international failures like the Clintons.

Hoping for more interest in the more important world problems,

Regards, BB, Buntine, WA.

The author makes some very good and important points. It is hard to understand if you are not a member of a sometimes persecuted minority group, just how insiduous the use of language can be and how, often completely inwittingly, writers and editors can end up reinforcing dangerous stereotypes.

However, I suspect that a lot of readers will immediately reject the point this article is trying to make due to the inclusion of certain trigger words and names (e.g. colonial conquest, Edward Said and Noam Chomsky). Unfortunate as it may be, such terms automatically cause brains to shut off and emotions to take over.

I agree with the author that the media is biassed against Muslims.
It is wrong to point out the errors of one religion while glossing over those of another.
In a rational society we would insist that all religious beliefs be evidence based.
And yes I hear your rejoinder; a belief that is evidence based is not a belief but a fact.

Even if one has a rudimentary knowledge of Australian history then it can be easily identified that many non-anglo groups have had to struggle to have their concerns heard and prejudices overcome.

The religious group into which most Australians classify themselves, Catholicism, is and has been fair game to malign in the media for decades.

It could easily be argued that this has much more to do will the origin of its supports (Ireland initially and more recently Mediterranean regions) then the more recently exposed insidious abuse cases.

Catholic leaders condemned the IRA bombings in Northern Ireland and London as vocally as they opposed conscription years beforehand.

Secular Australia needs this country’s Muslim leaders to stand up and vocalise their positions on many important issues regardless of the criticism that may be dished out from both the media and from within.

David Chibo is starting behind the 8 ball in claiming that Australia’s media is anti-Middle East and Islam. People will automatically say: “He would say that, being of Iraqi background.”

Others would say: “Well, hell David, isn’t the Middle East and Islam anti-Australian? Are we not engaged militarily with the US in Iraq and against Islamic terrorism in Afghanistan? Is Australia not at risk, like other Western democracies, from Middle Eastern terror? Have we not recently needed to lock up some of these characters for a good part of their lives?”

Still others, who know about Edward Said, would just switch off.

David still insists on talking about ‘racism’ in relation to the thuggery perpetrated by Middle Eastern youths at Cronulla. How is that for bias? What could be more racist than Middle Eastern culture and Islamic separatism! Not to ignore Western racism in some quarters, but let’s keep a balance and not go back to the bad white man nonsense.

David is also upset about the occupation by the US of parts of the Middle East. Well, tough David. What about the occupation of Middle Easterners in no-go areas in Australia? They were brought here by our own idiot politicians, sure; but the licence taken by many, many people from the Middle East is insulting and threatening to Australia.

“The Australian Middle Eastern and Islamic community has never been able to aptly express or manifest this alleged bias...” says David. They have never ‘expressed’ anything except complaints. They keep to themselves. They want their own rules. They are separatists. No wonder they don’t get a ‘good press’.

As for the reporting differences between stories about Taj Din al-Hilali and Pastor Danny Nalliah, the latter was prosecuted for simply repeating a passage from the Koran, and al-Halali continued to run off at the mouth.

Perhaps nothing good is said about Middle Easterners and Muslims because they blame everyone else for their problems – a good example of this is seen in this article.

The author does make some good points. The way incidents are reported makes a difference - when authors only use examples of behaviour which highlight the bad behaviour of "the other" we have cause for legitimate concern that they are running an agenda seperate to the stated issue.

But then I see the author refering to the Cronulla "riots" which would suggest a number of riots rather than what appears to be one drawn out episode of ugly mob violence.

Is he describing the very ugly mob violence as one riot and the violence by "middle eastern" youths as another or is this as often happens an attempt to portray that there was a series of riots by the anti-middle eastern crowd without reference to the actions which preceeded the Cronulla riot and which followed it?

I got the impression reading the piece that the reference to the racism of the Cronulla riots was targetted at the anti-muslim crowd and ignored the rest. Is the author playing the same game he laments or have I misread his intent?

R0bert