Multicultural Tyranny

This is a picture of Kayser Trad, once a spokesman for the Australian Mufti, now more of a self-styled spokesman for the Lebanese community in Australia. The backdrop is Maroubra, which saw some of the tensions spilling over from Cronulla at the end of last year. Once again the whole debate is on, with the Danish embassies burning in the middle east, with the placards declaring that Europe will bow down to the mujahadeen. I remember as a kid, we were fascinated by the local Greek grocer, because he was from somewhere else, had things, like garlic, in his shop, that we weren't used to. That was the Australia of old. Then the bureaucrats came up with multiculturalism and Australia has never been the same since. Its meant to be a measure of progressiveness, how much you embrace multiculturalism. Any hint of disbelief marked you as a neanderthal racist. Any suggest that the immigration policies in this country have been completely insane, have already lead to massive social dislocation and ghettoisation of half the city, are pooh poohed as signs of your unreconstructed, clearly unintelligent self.

Yet in all these suburbs, filled now with women with headscarves and people who barely speak any English at all, who have no allegiance to the country, gangsters and the sons of gangsters, precursors to the mobs who will roam the city's streets, are remnant populations horrified at what their suburbs have become. We're not allowed to say these things. As the Danish have discovered, there's much you're not allowed to say anymore. All day, yet again, talkback was dominated by the muslim debate; talkback of course being one of the only venues where people can say what they really think. Many of us are sick of the hijacking of the entire public discourse for a cause foisted upon an unsuspecting population by left wing intellectuals who will die; unable to sip their chardonnay any longer, in comfortable old age homes with never a regret, never a shiver of self doubt. If in the end the world did not fit their theories; that was the fault of the plebs.

The streets have been burning, the flags, the wild crowds; the placards threatening another 9/11 on the people of Europe, all this, the fascism and the fury, are suddenly startling the complacent, placid view that everyone had of this; that only morons would question the state religion of multiculturalism. Well listen to the static and tell me that it's working; this thing imposed and propagandised with millions upon millions of dollars of public money in a determined will to undermine the mainstream culture; adopted by the half-educated, the useful fools, as Marx called them, the school teachers, the bureaucrats, the journalists. Tell me the genie's not out of the bottle.

Here's some of the latest coverage from CBS:

Islamic fury over the cartoons of Prophet Muhammad spilled violently into the streets of Afghanistan, where protesters vented their anger against America. Police gunned down at least four people, some as they tried to storm a U.S. military base. Thousands more joined increasingly violent demonstrations across the world, including in Somalia where stampeding protesters killed a teenage boy. For the first time, a small but unruly protest flared up in Iran, where about 200 demonstrators threw stones at the Austrian Embassy, while in Paris, a newspaper which published the caricatures last week, evacuated its office during a bomb scare. The European Union issued stern reminders to 18 Arab and other Muslim countries that they must protect foreign embassies. British Prime Minister Tony Blair also criticized attacks on people of Denmark, where the cartoons were first published, and other Europeans as "completely unacceptable," CBS News radio correspondent Larry Miller reports. "The attacks on the citizens of Denmark and people of the European community were completely unacceptable, as is the behavior of some of the demonstrators in London over the past few days," Blair said in a statement read by his spokesman. "The police shall have our full support in respect of any action they wish to take with respect to upholding the law, so we understand the difficult situation they were facing." Lebanon apologized to Denmark one day after protesters set fire to a building housing the Danish mission in Beirut. The attack "harmed Lebanon's reputation and its civilized image," Lebanese Information Minister Ghazi Aridi said.