Highlights from the forum and feedback to New Matilda
Magazine
Not surprisingly, Salam Zreika’s piece on the Cronulla riots, Advance Australia Fair?, provoked the most comments:
‘ and its obvious what John Howard thinks of a multicultural Australia, seems like those young Caucasians were expressing his deepest desires.’ ‘ I believe that a huge, co-ordinated political effort is needed to fight this racism, or we will find ourselves becoming the new South Africa, pre Mandela, derided internationally and divided internally.’ ‘If you get stupid people drunk enough, make them defensive and paranoid with fridge magnets and politicians’ lies about terrorists, inflame them with rants from Alan Jones and shock jocks, add a bit of neo-Nazi venom and the crowd will transform into that ugly sight on the beach.’ ‘Some aspects of the past week have been positive. The ‘locals’ got the beach all to themselves, much of south-east and eastern Sydney experienced ‘Fortress Australia’ first hand, SWAT teams got to strut their stuff. It showed the populace here still functions well under a police state ‘
Read more comments on the New Matilda forum.