violence in cronulla - a recreation of... (MERGED)

[Zero the hero]

It's just anti-Islamic propoganda.

Of course it is...8)

 

[mrK!NGP!N]

Do you think the Police detectives even thought that maybe the pro white neo nazis in australia maybe sending SMS texts to both sides to keep this thing going ?? and playing all of us as fools ???

Just a thought...

 

[CutHere]

I don't think it's necessarily anti-Islamic, ... just a reflection of some of the terrible things that happen in our world. Makes for very sad reading, that's for sure.

I disagree. Here's some reasons why:

But violent jihad is a constant of Islamic history. Many passages of the Qur'an and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad are used by jihad warriors today to justify their actions and gain new recruits. No major Muslim group has ever repudiated the doctrines of armed jihad. The theology of jihad, which denies unbelievers equality of human rights and dignity, is available today for anyone with the will and means to bring it to life.

...

it scares me, Iran is what I see as islam controling a country, america is christianity... I would prefer neither but I would take the christian right anyday over this

<then a rant about Iran mudering two people>

Where do I start? For starters there's:

"No major Muslim group has ever repudiated the doctrines of armed jihad."​

A complete distortion of the truth if not an outright lie. The motive behind such a biased statement is clear and I'm not going to spell it out for you. Instead we'll move on to the next deliberately ambigious statement:

"The theology of jihad, which denies unbelievers equality of human rights and dignity, is available today for anyone with the will and means to bring it to life."​

One can only interpret that last line as suggesting that anyone who believes in "Jihad" (i.e. Muslims) deny everyone else "equality of humand rights and dignity" which is absolute bullshit. Of course it's worded ambigiously so they can deny this was the intended meaning.

We then have the posters own assertion that:

"Iran is what I see as islam controling a country, america is christianity"​

Forgetting the hundreds of other Christian countries and Islamic countries. Forgetting that America has a secular government (well it's meant to). Iran is not a representative of "Islam controlling a country" and neither is America an example of "Christianity controlling a country".

But the poster then goes on to draw our conclusions for us:

"I would prefer neither but I would take the christian right anyday over this"​

i.e. Islam bad, Christianity good.

What follows is a huge excerpt with all the bells and whistles including shocking and sensationalist pictures. The story is indeed as shocking as it is true. I am a person vehemently opposed to capital punishment. But that's all beside the point. Why?

1. Iran is not an example of Islam running a country.
2. Iran has nothing to do with Cronulla. It is used only to further prejudice against Islam.
3. America also has the death penalty. They still use the electric chair which is just as inhumane as hanging.​

So why the hell are those posts in this thread? Because some people think that Lebanese are Muslims. They're not, well not overtly. In fact, most Lebanese living abroad are Christian, including in Australia.

The post is nothing but a rant with a sensationalist story, the whole point of which is obvious to further prejudice against Islam and then incorrectly, against Lebanese. In that respect it's propoganda.

 

[Zero the hero]

I don't think it's necessarily anti-Islamic, ... just a reflection of some of the terrible things that happen in our world. Makes for very sad reading, that's for sure.

He's CLEARLY anti-Islamic and TOTALLY justifying the riots...8)

 

[silvia saint]

i am very against the practices of sharia law and what goes on in islamic nations such as saudi arabia and iran. i have read much on what took place in iran during the revolution and at present, and it disgusts me.

that being said though, the post by streetsurfer is irrelevant to this thread.

 

[Donny Don't]

Before the left-wingers get up in arms about anglo australians being a bunch of rednecks, you have to realise that anger has been simmering ever since the actions of this scum. I know it doesn't justify anything that happened last sunday, but please understand that it evoked resentment in even the most easy-going of individuals....resentment that has been brewing for four years.

I consider myself a laid-back and tolerant kind of person, but my blood boils when i see unprovoked attacks by groups of fifteen guys on
a. innocent schoolgirls
b. volunteer lifeguards

I hate violence of any kind, and i was appalled to see what that mob did to those innocent victims last sunday. But the only way to solve this mess is to understand the feelings of all involved.

Ignorance is a two-way street.

 

[Makaveli]

"Yeah, well that shit doesn't tend to happen in melbourne, maybe because we aren't such a racist community and have learnt to coexist with our ethnic communities... "

Have you ever thought that our certain ethnic communities perhaps do not want to assimilate with the Australian way, and would prefer to be divided and have their own culture here?

Originally Posted by Chronik Fatigue
^^ i'll be the first to line up with the lebs to crack some scumbag racist skulls if that shit goes down here. Of course, it won't, we are not Sydney.

*edit* removed inflammatory section of post - there are far better ways of expressing your argument than what you have done here... have a think about it before you post again

It's a big trend of the do-gooders to criticize everything Australian. This pisses me off most as they are contributing nothing to the Australian people. If only the do-gooders could move to other countries that they support -such as their ethnic friends. but then their rights and priviliges to slag off this country, fence sit, and tell everyone what is pollitically correct or not would be flushed down the drain, - and they would find themselves being bum fucked in the toilets by 20 'brothers'. they are then thinking these are the dogs i stood up for? if only i could have sided with the Australians instead of being blinded by my Anti-australian ideoligies.

*edit* removed inflammatory section of post


Originally Posted by keystroke
well, while you side with "the lebs" as you put it so nicely, when the churches are burning down, the children singing christmas carols are being shot at, girls are being threatened with rape for dressing in board shorts, 12 year olds are being spat on, their parents are abused and chased out of the swimming pool areas because ethnic women want to swim in privacy and lifeguards are being bashed, you'll be a hero because you're politically correct.

^ I think keystroke puts this best.. and i completely agree with alot of the posts i have read from you(i havent read this whole thread). I think i have made myself clear. Surely the do-gooders will make a tiny quote of something i have said and will try to dot my I's and cross my T's.

 

[lostpunk5545]

*edit* removed quote from previously edited post

Been reading too much of The Prince?

It was meant as a theoretical outline of a perfect system for keeping people in control. Not as an outline for an actual society.

*edit* no personal attacks

 

[MistaHappy]

This is nothing other than yobbo's vs yobbo's.

Problem is that the NSW poolice have difficulties dealing with lebanese yobbo's. Read this article (written 2 years ago by a disillusioned NSW detective) as a background to the difficulties of the current situation, describing police fear and unwillingness to deal with real crims from within the lebanese community:

http://www.quadrant.org.au/php/article_view.php?article_id=581

 

[CutHere]

*edit* not necessary

 

[Mary Poppins]

as has been mentioned numerous times by many people in this thread

PLEASE keep the petty name calling and irrelevant crap out of it, ok?

there are heaps of people on both sides of this argument who have made very valuable contributions...

turning this into a slinging match isn't going to strengthen your arguments; argue with logic, not insults.

 

[silvia saint]

i spent my teenage years growing up in a south east queensland regional town. i also happened to be a skateboarder, this was before it was socially accepted to the point it is today. dying one's hair would see them labelled a "fag" in this small backward town and our love of baggy clothing, which was only otherwise seen in capital cities at the time, would see us small number of skaters cop abuse from all sorts. because of this we usually all hanged out together in groups on the weekends.

there was another group of minorities in this country town, young indigenous australians. no doubt that from time to time they were subjected to racism from a small portion of the town, the rednecks, jocks etc. they attended the various schools spread throughout the town, on the weekend however a great deal of them would all hang out together in what many would say constitutes a gang.

throughout the years we skaters would become an outlet for the racism these indigenous australians endured at the hands of others. completely unprovoked, they would come down to the isolated skate park and assault or threaten to assault us from time to time, usually when we were in small numbers. being in a large group in a very public place however would still not deter them.

one time a group of ten friends or so, including myself, found themselves in a scary situation in the main street. whilst skating a spot, somebody had rode past on a bike shouting the usual "fucking skaters" at us. one of my friends without looking to see who it was responded with something along the lines of "how original dickhead". unfortunately the guy was one of the bad ass aboriginal kids. a few minutes later a group of around twenty or more of his friends rocked up, threatening us unless we told them who said it. luckily two of my friends were much older than the rest of us and they managed to diffuse the situation, much to our delight, with only a few bottles thrown at us whilst the younger of our bunch got into the car we had and left.

so what's your point you say? well i guess i can see similarities between the situation some young australian lebanese and aboriginal men face based on my own real life experience. i can see why some of them lash out and stick together due to feeling alienated from years of racial profiling and racist taunts, whether it has come from some redneck on the street, the police, or a government that has used the underlying racism that exists in this nation to get re-elected twice. i'm not defending what certain thugs do, and let's be honest it happens, but i can understand why.

the difference between some of the other posters in this thread and myself, who have both been subjected to reverse racism, is that i, now being older and slightly wiser, realize not all aboriginals are like those who victimized my friends and i in my youth, just as i realize not all lebanese australians have "fully sic" cars as one poster put it, nor do they all brandish baseball bats or pack rape "our" girls.

grow the fuck up otherwise head off to the beach for some "retribution".

 

[MooShiE]

Im not sure if its been mentioned before! These things are hard to track in this thread its going so fast.

I find it strange how they are attacking our Churches.

Mainly because I dont believe Australia to be a HUGELY religious country and I I honestly doubt that any of those original 5000 Aussies at the beach that day even seen inside a church

They seem to be attacking our religious temples because they themselves are extremely religious.

I sorta feel as if they are attacking something of not much worth to average Australian that is fighting for this cause. Religious groups are something of a miniority in this country.

Thats my opinion anyway! Seems we both dont agree with each others way of life, but somewhere someone has to draw the line and accept we are all bought up different.

 

[katmeow]

This is a longish read, but worthwhile.

From The SYdney Morning Herald

A great divide takes some great understanding

December 17, 2005

Understanding traditional social structures of the Lebanese would go a long way toward avoiding the racial clashes seen at Cronulla this week, writes Paul Sheehan.


MICHAEL Kennedy was sitting in the living room of a Lebanese drug dealer in Condell Park when the dealer pulled a gun from his belt. He pointed it at Kennedy's head.

"You're an undercover cop," the dealer said. Kennedy did not move. He had been operating behind enemy lines for so long he could remain, at least outwardly, calm.

The two men looked at one another, the gun pointed at Kennedy's temple. He had time to examine the weapon. Russian. Nine millimetre.

"Is that a registered handgun?" Kennedy asked.

It was a strange thing to say under the circumstances.

"No," the dealer replied.

"Well, you could be charged for that," said Kennedy, keeping a benign expression, as if he were offering friendly advice. Then he added: "And yes, I'm an undercover cop, so you'd better put that gun away."

Pause.

"You're right," the dealer replied. He slipped the gun back into his belt, under his shirt.

Somewhere in this transaction, Kennedy and the drug dealer, a Maronite Christian, had reached an understanding. Kennedy had proved himself. They could talk about what to do next. Some honour code had been reached. Kennedy never charged the dealer. What he wanted was information.

"He ended up being not a bad source of information. That's what [NSW Police Commissioner] Ken Moroney doesn't understand. You don't need a show of force and tough words, you need information, pointy information, and you simply have to put up with the baggage to get it …

"Moroney speaks in cliches. It suited the ALP to emasculate the police. They now run the police like a business, like a Coca-Cola bottling plant, statistics and productivity bonuses. It's all data-driven."

This view has friends in high places, such as Senator Bill Heffernan: "The NSW Police has just developed into a pansy operation since politicians took away the kick-arse provisions in the law. You give the crims an inch and they take a mile."

Down at ground zero, a former policeman from Cronulla said this week: "It's as if they've left the police band out to do the job. They are small, young, one-stripe. Little experience. No street presence. They can't do it."

To this day, Kennedy has mates in the Lebanese underworld, Muslim and Christian. He has been to Lebanon. He likes the Lebanese. "With the Lebanese, even those involved in organised crime, once you get their trust, they are easy to deal with. Their front door is always open. They work on the basis of the extended family."

This is a familiarity built over 25 years, first as a policeman, then in intelligence operations, then as a community worker and now as a member of the faculty of the University of Western Sydney. He has a PhD. His honours thesis was about policing in the Lebanese community. He looks at the phenomenon with sympathy for both sides. He believes young Lebanese men have been radicalised, and young police officers sacrificed, by an inept political and legal class.

Kennedy goes back to the source of the subculture at the eye of the racial storm in Sydney, the northern towns and villages around Zgharta, Batroun and El Mina, and the Bekaa Valley. These provided the third wave of Lebanese immigrants to Australia, when 16,000 mostly Shiite and Sunni Muslims fled the Lebanese civil war after 1975, a war in which more than 150,000 died and 200,000 were injured in a population not much greater than Sydney's.

"We got north Lebanese, disproportionately Shiite, mostly peasants, mostly uneducated, who didn't want to be here in the first place," Kennedy says. "They come from a very patriarchal culture. They don't go in for the greater good. Their families have survived a brutal civil war. They are tribal. They are aggressive. They are in your face. And they are not grateful.

"Historically, they have always been shafted, and so they are used to looking after themselves. When the Turks ran Lebanon, the minority Sunnis controlled government contracts. When the French took over, the Maronites got the contracts. The Sunnis and the Maronites developed a healthy business relationship. The Shiites were left out, they did the lowest jobs, and they were lower than working class."

According to the last census, the Lebanese community in Sydney was 114,491 in 2001, so would be about 120,000 today, or 3 per cent of Sydney's population. About a third are Muslim. Ninety per cent were born overseas or have at least one foreign-born parent. The community is almost as diverse as Lebanon itself - Maronite, Orthodox, Shiite, Sunni, Druze and secular. The majority are Maronite, who dominated the first 80 years of Lebanese migration to Australia and whose children blended into the Catholic school system.

Though the Lebanese Muslim community is about 40,000 - just 1 per cent of Sydney's 4 million population - Kennedy believes the social gulf has drifted to the point of social danger: "The mismanagement of this situation by politicians, lawyers and police has taken us to the point where we could see violent civil disorder on a scale we have not seen before. The minute you talk tough, and these Lebanese guys lose face, they only know one thing to do. Retaliate. You saw it immediately after the Cronulla riot.

"They react with emotion. Violent emotion. You've seen the funerals in the Middle East where people are tearing their hair out. There is also the mentality you see in prison, where any failure to retaliate, immediately, and with violence, will mark you as weak, and therefore vulnerable. This is the logic of the street, not society, and they have completely insulated themselves from society."

Kennedy believes police have failed to absorb even the surface of the complexities of the traditional social structures of the Lebanese, which often revolve around the za'im, who controls the patronage and kinship relationships, and the qabaday, who backs him up. In an Australian context, this tradition is seen as "muscle", but in Lebanon, where the state was weak, the concept of protection is entirely different.

The concept of muscle, or vigilantism, expressed itself last week via the new organising tool of society, the mobile phone. While Australian provocateurs and racists were circulating mass text messages about taking back the beaches from the Lebs, similarly inflammatory text messages were soon circulating through a sub-group of Lebanese. Just as the Cronulla rally opened an opportunity for the right-wing fringe, the worst text circulating among the Lebanese carried overtones of the Lebanese civil war: "Today in the jungle the lion sleeps. Wake up, wake up oh lions of Lebanon, 'retaliate', take action for we are the king of the jungle. Show them we have awakened this Sunday. We will all meet at Brighton and together exterminate the enemy at Cronulla."

While the violence at Cronulla was racist mob hysteria, it was also alcohol-fuelled, random and spontaneous, and there have been some conspicuous apologies. In contrast, the response from the hard men in Lakemba, Punchbowl and Bankstown, was co-ordinated, armed, premeditated and took the violence to another level.

On Monday night, men in cars assembled at Punchbowl Park, then drove in convoy, with hazard lights on, to Cronulla, where the convoy proceeded in formation down both sides of the Kingsway. A megaphone was brought along to challenge people to come out and fight. It was a message. The police do not control the streets.

The police, by accident or design, were nowhere to be seen during this militia-style show of force. It was the latest in a long line of embarrassments. Tim Priest, another police whistleblower, warned in a speech delivered on November 12, 2003, two years before the Cronulla riots and the Paris riots: "In hundreds upon hundreds of incidents police have backed down to Middle Eastern thugs and taken no action and allowed incidents to go unpunished. I stress the unbelievable influence that local politicians and religious leaders played in covering up the real state of play in the south-west …

"My prediction is that within 10 years there will be no-go areas in south-western Sydney, just like Paris … What sets the Middle Eastern gangs apart from all other gangs is their propensity to use violence at any time for any reason."

Priest and Kennedy differ on analysis for dealing with this - Priest has drifted to the right, Kennedy to the hard left - but find common cause in what they see as corporatised, non-intuitive, statistics-driven, politicised policing.

Priest: "As police began to gather and act on intelligence on these emerging Middle Eastern gangs, the NSW Police was restructured under Peter Ryan and crime intelligence was dismantled overnight and the NSW Police turned against every convention known to Western policing."

Kennedy, in his honours thesis, wrote: "Law enforcement changed significantly when zero tolerance policing was officially launched in 1998 by way of Operation and Crime Reviews … This declaration of war against the Arabic-speaking community in 1998 [caused] the young men of the community to retaliate, not only with an aggressive protest masculinity, but the withdrawal of support for the moral authority of the police … Zero tolerance policing is seen as being directed towards the entire Arabic community."

So the police reaped the worst of both worlds - they acted tough, generating resentment, while their intelligence operations shrivelled, generating loss of control.

All these critics cohere around a belief that the Wood royal commission into the police, which ran from 1994 to 1998, was a disaster from which civil order and police intelligence have yet to recover.

Heffernan: "The Wood royal commission was a farce. There ought to be a royal commission into the royal commission."

Kennedy: "There was a huge struggle by the legal establishment to undermine the police. We had a royal commission that fed the public a lot of nonsense. The Wood royal commission absolutely interfered with policing in this state."

Priest: "In 1996, with the arrival of Peter Ryan [as NSW police commissioner], and the continued public humiliation of the NSW Police through the Wood royal commission, a chain of events began that have affected the police so deeply and so completely that, as far as ensuing public safety, I fear it will take at least a generation to regain lost ground."

The Cronulla former detective (who doesn't want to be named because he has a business in the area and fears it would be attacked): "The young police know that if they ever go in hard, they will get no back-up from the courts, or the police hierarchy. They may be charged with assault and accused of being racist. So we have a static, scared, reactive police force that is driven by statistics, not arrests. That's why you're starting to see vigilante-type thinking."

The local member for Cronulla, Malcolm Kerr, has been saying something similar for years. "The reason why thousands of people gathered on the beach last Sunday was because there has been aggressive behaviour on the beach, and at Gunnamatta Park, for years. I organised a rally about this in 2001. We've been complaining about a lack of police numbers, a lack of police presence, and a lack of police response, for years."

At the rally, former assistant police commissioner Geoff Schuberg told the audience: "Police in this area are barely coping." Before 1997, he said, Cronulla had had its own police station, and area commander, and 50 police, which had dwindled to 29. "Response times are now often two hours."

Over the past week, a series of newspaper reports have quoted girls in Cronulla saying aggression and sexual innuendo from young Lebanese men have been routine for years at Cronulla. A middle-aged Lebanese man, Peter, who has regularly visited friends at Cronulla, told the story of how they would be surrounded by dozens of young Lebanese men who would tell them, "This is our spot", and intimidate them out of the picnic area.

Another police officer, a detective sergeant, says: "In reality, the sexual assaults and harassment are much higher than are reported. Many girls don't have the courage to face these young men. They are ruthless; they have no regard for the law." There have been thousands of incidents of girls being called "sluts" or similar at Cronulla and elsewhere over the past decade. This sense of loss of civil safety was the context of the size of the Cronulla demonstration last Sunday.

There has also been some bad luck involved for the Lebanese who migrated in the mid-1970s. When the Shiites and Sunnis began arriving it was at the same time as the oil recession began. Many went straight onto social security and a culture of welfare dependence became entrenched. The government later introduced year 12 as a requirement for apprenticeships, when a lot of these new arrivals wanted to leave school in year 10.

"You can't beat these people into submission," says Kennedy. "It will empower the most violent. The police can only keep a lid on things. This is about politics. Politicians can't expect the rank and file to sort out the messes they have been creating. If they want to run the state like a business, then we are going to see stress in the culture down in the grassroots. This is a symptom of something much bigger."

 

[MooShiE]

I only skimmed through that but some excellent points where made, thanks for posting that up!! I tried to mention something about that earlier in the piece that they have a different style when it comes to standing up for beliefs due to the lives they once lived or what their parents have once lived.

Its really sad that these people have come from such horrible countries but I think that should install a sense of gratitude? Instead they are bringing all the problems from their country into this one.

 

[bingey]

Im not sure if its been mentioned before! These things are hard to track in this thread its going so fast.

I find it strange how they are attacking our Churches.

Mainly because I dont believe Australia to be a HUGELY religious country and I I honestly doubt that any of those original 5000 Aussies at the beach that day even seen inside a church

They seem to be attacking our religious temples because they themselves are extremely religious.

I sorta feel as if they are attacking something of not much worth to average Australian that is fighting for this cause. Religious groups are something of a miniority in this country.

Thats my opinion anyway! Seems we both dont agree with each others way of life, but somewhere someone has to draw the line and accept we are all bought up different.

it's a common misconception that these youngsters are extremely religious jsut as it was with the paris riots.

you have to bear in mind that these people and their religion even if they don't really practice it ( a devout muslim will pray 5 times a day) is constantly under attack from the media and common opinion. That's why they are making a religous issue out of it imho.

 

[eagle_eye]

you have to bear in mind that these people and their religion even if they don't really practice it ( a devout muslim will pray 5 times a day) is constantly under attack from the media and common opinion. That's why they are making a religous issue out of it imho.

Are they commonly attacked though? The only real attacks I can seem to think of relate to those who practice extremes of religion and believe blowing up innocent people is acceptable. Everyone gets stereotyped, it is just human nature. But are they attacked anymore than others who on the whole do nothing wrong, but have a minority that cause negative opinion?

 

[bingey]

^
i do think so , you rarel hear the word extremist without the word muslim nowadays.

I'm not saying the extremists are not wrong but everyone assumes islam is basically a violent untolerant religion (maybe it is but not more so than let's say christianity).

 

[0ff1cer_ch0ps]

two thumbs up for the almighty Keysar Trad...

saying that "We gotta stop all the Aussie Racist Rednecks"

Congratulations, for being a knob

I went down to cronulla on sunday, it was depressing, you could of counted the people on the beach and not even lost count...

 

[lostpunk5545]

Well at my local beach there was the same amount of people there always was. I'm guessing this is because no racist rednecks decided to become vigilantes and take the law into their own hands up here, sparking riots.