UPDATE: The NYT has a detailed report. A snippet:
Police said more than 5,000 white youths, some wrapped in Australian flags and chanting racist slurs, fought with police, attacked people they believed to be of Arab descent and assaulted a pair of paramedics trying to help people escape the riot.Very bad times for Australia.
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Plain old thuggery and gangs vying for turf, or something more sinister? It's sort of like Gump's box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get when you pick a source of news. From one source I read, the mideast rioters were quite well organized, showing some strategic insight visa-via getaway cars arriving to transport vandals away. I read reports of the same type of folks harassing women wearing bikinis on the beaches. Showing lots of flesh is no-no in islam. Other sources tell of caucasion louts well into their grog running amok. All that's missing as of yet is blame being put on Bush.
""The level of violence suggests profoundly deep-seated hostility bubbling away for some time.""
Gee. ya think?
Actually the trouble started A WEEK AGO, and the police did nothing. So everybody simmered for a week and then boom. It's happened twice here in LA and now the cops react quickly with huge numbers. Sometimes things are simmering and they don't know. Had they stepped in when the lifeguards got beaten things would never have come to this.
The Aussie yobs were NOT just responding to what happened last week, they were responding to a pattern of harrassment and intimidation. The no-go areas of major European cities are the result of this kind of harassment...
But Austrailia isn't Europe, and a beach, especially a surfing beach, is VALUABLE. And it isn't valuable to middle aged men or old men, or to women. It is valuable to young, physically brave, physically powerful young men. I would be SHOCKED if the Austrailian surfers were intimidated off of a surfing beach, or allowed people to intimidate their women off of a surfing beach.
If a group of Muslims, or any group, started harassing local girls or life guards on a surfing beach in Hawaii the violence would be IMMEDIATE, instant. And if the surfers were badly outnumbered it would be same-day, probably same-hour, and the surfers would start with fists, and if that didn't work they would move to bats and knives, and if that didn't work they would move on to guns.
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