Aussie Riot Roundup

Australia has "declare war on rioters":

SYDNEY has declared war on all rioters after more than 48 hours of lawlessness and admissions from both the police and Muslim leaders that they have been unable to control the angry mobs of young men.NSW Premier Morris Iemma announced a series of new police powers, including increasing the penalty for rioting from five years to 15, as the number of officers on the streets was trebled.

At dusk last night, an extra 450 highly mobile police and 20 dog-squad units were patrolling the hot spots in suburbs across Sydney as communities braced for a third night of violence.


However, despite the extreme measures, the rioting is spreading to other cities:


SYDNEY, Australia (AP) - The racial unrest that broke out in Sydney’s beachside suburbs over the weekend has spread to two other large Australian cities, where people of Middle Eastern descent were assaulted by whites, police said Tuesday.

The media keeps telling the story as if it were "white supremacists" beating on Muslims. But, that's not the whole story:


On Monday night, several thousand men met at Lakemba Mosque, where leaders urged them to keep the peace. Their calls were ignored, however, and 11 men were arrested after a second night of violence in Cronulla that left seven people injured, one of them a police officer.

Bats and iron bars were seized and police found a cache of Molotov cocktails.

Police are also now investigating bullet holes found in the cars of several staff members at St Joseph the Worker Primary School in South Auburn after a Christmas carols service on Monday evening. Parents and children were abused by a group of young men of Middle Eastern appearance and gunshots were heard during the service.


An editorial in the Australian declares it is not all about racism:


Premier Morris Iemma has said it was a demonstration of Australian racism. He is probably right that some in the mob baying for blood believe people of Middle Eastern birth or ancestry, all labelled as Lebanese, come from an inherently inferior culture. But this does not mean they speak for us all. The way Australia has successfully accepted millions of migrants over 50 years makes it manifest they do not. About 20 per cent of all Australians come from non-English-speaking families who have been in Australia for only one or two generations.

Certainly, there is a great deal of prejudice directed against migrants, especially those who affect to despise Australia. But there is a world of difference between prejudice directed against migrants, which time heals, and racism, which festers for centuries.


So, if it's not racism, then what is it. Jonz hasexcerpts from a note from an Australian women explaining what it's like on the ground:


YESTERDAY a colleague emailed me from New York. The young lawyer - her family lives in Brighton-Le-Sands, a bayside suburb north of Cronulla in Sydney - wrote: "While I agree there is no justifying excuse for the violence and breakdown in order that occurred at Cronulla, it needs to be put in context. Unless you live in an area like Cronulla, Brighton-Le-Sands or Bondi, you have no idea what it is like to have one's suburb regularly inundated with large groups of young Muslim men from the western suburbs who proceed to shoot people [as has happened in Brighton], intimidate people, regularly threaten people within their vicinity with violence, drive around in large groups screaming abuse at people from cars with their music blaring, regularly brawling, etc."

This young woman recounted that all of the girls in her family (except the youngest) have been "subject to harassment inflicted by groups of these men - comments on our appearances, racist comments on our Australian background, unwanted touching, being followed while walking home by groups of men in cars (I was once followed all the way home - have never been so scared in my life), sexually explicit remarks while alone, with friends or with boyfriends, unwanted called-out invitations to have sex with groups of them, etc".


And finally, Wretchard has some uncharacteristically dark ruminations:


My two cents worth on the Maroubra beach riots (Eastern suburbs) is this. There's a perception, justified or not, among some Anglo Australians that authorities are not cracking down hard enough on Middle Eastern gangs, who are in Western Sydney. Some days ago, a Lebanese gang supposedly attacked lifeguards, who are an iconic part of Australian beach culture. That's a little bit like spitting on the Flag and writing grafitti on the Liberty Bell. So guys revved up by beer decided it wasn't just Miller Time, but payback time.

I have no doubt that some of the Middle Eastern guys beat up were innocent. But that's what happens when perceived political correctness undermines public confidence. We rely on the state to dispense justice, when that is thought to fail then mob rule steps in and punishes innocent and guilty alike.

I've been warning about this for some time now, both with respect to the torture debate and in an old post called the Three Conjectures. Like most people in Oz, I have Muslim or Middle Eastern friends and the way I got it figured is if we don't start cracking down on the Osamas and the Zawahiris and the al-Arians because they are draped in this bogus human rights shield, then the Joe Samadis and the Bill Mansours of the world are gonna start catching it. What's the use of being innocent if the guilty go scot free? One day if a nuke goes off in Sydney or Manhattan all the bets are off.

I get a little emotional sometimes watching these peacenik types defend blatant murderers because by frustrating justice they are building up tectonic pressures that will go snap one day, and it won't be their necks at the end of a rope. What the world needs isn't the fake sympathy of the Euro-human rights crowd but justice. They should remember that in the absence of justice there is only revenge.