AUSTRALIAN ACADEMIC: CRONULLA VIOLENCE JUST LIKE FRANCE

Lefty Australian academic John Quigging is hard to figure. Sometimes he's quite sensible but all too often he goes all hyperbolic and frothy. His reaction to the Cronulla violence is a classic example of the latter.

For one thing, Quiggin demands that the Federal government strip radio 2GB of its license as penalty for talk-back jock Alan Jones's alleged on-air incitement in the days leading up to the "riot". Unfortunately, precious little is offered by way of evidence of Jones's supposed incitement. Quiggin also thinks Jones should be tried, either under existing law or under the reviled-by-lefties anti-sedition laws. Now don't get me wrong, whereas Jones's on-air comments might well have contributed to the violence, it's just that all I've seen so far is a few out of context snippets that are far from conclusive. Maybe Quiggin has more on this that he hasn't posted or linked to.

Quiggin also mischaracterizes the Cronulla violence by comparing it to recent events in France:

The crowd at Cronulla on Sunday was large, but it seems that only a couple of hundred were engaged in violence. Similarly, forty car loads of thugs were said to have been involved in the subsequent round of attacks on Monday night. That’s alarming but again it amounts to a couple of hundred people. The same was true in the French riots, which mainly consisted of small groups burning cars under cover of darkness.

Yeah right, about the only similarity is the inclination of Muslim youths – here and in France – to launch unprovoked attacks on unprotected cars (close to 10,000 cars destroyed in France). France was forced to field a force of 18,000 police with a reserve of 1,500 and the riots were still uncontrolled for close to three weeks. There were 2,888 arrests, with 126 police injured. Property and personal damage is estimated to amount to AU$318 million (AU$32 million in damage to cars alone). There is no comparison.

Anyway, every non-leftist should hit the Quiggin link and read through the reflexive-lefty "Australians are racists" comments. Leftyland is a parallel universe in which no right thinking person wants to live.