Cronulla thoughts in no particular order.

[catsidhe]

"Cronulla locals beating up on angry Middle Eastern men?"

Funny, the interviews I have seen with Cronulla locals have said that they have never seen most of those thugs on Sunday before. It isn't 'Cronulla locals', but Neo-Nazis shit-stirring.

---

Brave, brave defenders of the Australian Way Of Life, to beat up a couple of teenage girls.

---

Brave, brave Lions of Lebanon, to stab innocent bystanders, invade their homes, and trash their cars. Oh, and burn down a church.

---

Brave, brave whoever the fsck you are, to try it on in Melbourne.

---

The 'Lebs' ... well. They are a bunch of thugs who identify as Lebanese. That's OK, the thugs on Sunday identify themselves as True Australians. They don't represent me, or anyone I know, so I see no reason why the wider Lebanese community would not be similarly outraged and misrepresented.

The problem is not so much Muslims who form gangs (which implies that all Muslims are somehow complicit, just like for terrism), and instead think of it as a problem of gangs, which happen to be formed of (some) Muslims.

feh, semantics. This is all a roundabout way of trying to say that all Muslims, and all Lebanese-Australians (not conjoint sets, by the way) are getting backlash for the actions of a few brutes. So are non-Arabic-looking people in those parts of Sydney, as of Sunday night. Both are wrong.

---

Alan Jones. What a mensch.

---

Summary:

It's all stupid. I think I need to get drunk.

Comments

[iosef.livejournal.com]

Lets not forget that the main Lebanese gang in Melbourne in the 80s, the Lebanese Tigers, were all nominally Christian anyway....

[usuakari.livejournal.com]

I still remember George Negus's shouted reports from Beirut in the early-mid 80s when there was at least a three way fight in Lebanon between the Jews, Muslims, and Christians... and I assume various factions of all of them. Isn't religion fun...?

catsidhe, that's pretty close to how I feel too. And Alan Jones is about as much of a mensch as I am a eggplant. Fucktard!

[scribblette.livejournal.com]

Yeah, from their appearances I doubt the initial lebanese involved were actual muslims. The muslim girls you typically see are wrapped up to at least SOME degree. Christian lebanese girls however are typical of the one you'd have seen on the news a few days ago, some blonde chick in black who got pulled down by the cops. I didn't even know Lebanese were ARABS - I thought they were Eastern Europe o_O So all the "They're Arabs" stuff made me think "Whaaa?? You're throwing in a huge area there and stirring up way more than just anti-lebs sentiment!"

The problem with some of the lebanese gangs is that they DON'T see themselves as Australian at all. I've talked to some people and gone WTF? If you have an issue with the place, leave. Eesh. It's like any twit who wants fundamentalistic law either christian or islamic - there are countries like that out there, bugger off to them and leave Australia free. lol. Eesh.