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First France, now Australia: Trouble in paradise?

December 13, 2005 ~ 5:01 p.m.

Is the world really going to hell in a handbasket this quickly?

My vision of Australia used to be of paradise, or as close to it as one could ever hope to come. I suppose that view will have to be modified some, considering the racial riots currently erupting across the continent.

Or, like France, was Australia just a tinderbox waiting to explode?

Earlier this week, members of a Lebanese immigrant gang reportedly assaulted two lifeguards at Sydney�s Cronulla Beach. Violence erupted when young white Australians made a powerful display of force and protest at Cronulla, attacking the Lebanese and anyone else of Middle Eastern descent while wearing Australian flags and chanting racist chants such as �No Lebs,� �No wogs welcome here,� and �We grew here, you flew here!� The nearly 5,000 Aussies said they were protecting their own, defending their turf � Cronulla Beach, which they consider theirs � and said that the payback was justified.

Police have managed to quell the violence around Cronulla and other Sydney suburbs where gangs of Muslim youths smashed cars and shop windows with baseball bats. They are confiscating alcohol in the areas of unrest and increasing the penalty for rioting from five to fifteen years.

John Howard, the Prime Minister, condemned the violence, calling it �sickening,� and asserted that it was atypical of the Australian way of life. Morris Iemma, a state minister from New South Wales, declared Nicolas Sarkozy-style, �These criminals have declared war on our society and we are not going to let them win.� Caches of firebombs were found in storage on rooftops near another popular Sydney area beach and a school holding a Christmas carol performance by students was shot up.

As with the racial unrest in France, the violence has spread to other areas of Australia, where people of Arab descent were attacked as far away as Adelaide and Perth. Text messages were sent around the Gold Coast of Queensland urging Australians to gather at the beach to �crack some Arab skulls.�

Although they are disenchanted with the War in Iraq, there is no love lost between Australian citizens and Muslims. Australians were enraged by the September 11, 2001 and 2002 Bali terrorist bombings. Furthermore, Lebanese immigrants had a bad profile in Australia at least a decade before the Islamofanatic attacks.

The unrest has many nerves on edge for good reasons. As Labor party politician Harry Quick noted, �We are getting a sample of what happened in France a few months ago.� The unrest in the antipodean nation is occurring just as life in France is resuming some semblance of normalcy.

I can understand the anger and frustration of Australians in dealing with the criminal aspect of some of the immigrant communities, but a racist show-of-force cannot be defended. It is especially disconcerting considering that the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils was one of the first Muslim organizations to admit the problems within the Islamic community in light of the July 7 London bombings.

Australia is changing, becoming more diverse with every passing year. But the law in Australia against criminals will simply have to be enforced. Thuggish behavior will not change things; it will make it worse. White and Middle Eastern gangs alike are as responsible as the other for the aggression as both have taken part in and encouraged the continuation of hostilities.

Here�s hoping this is just an unfortunate blip on the radar screen of an otherwise wonderful and gregarious nation.



U.S. health is not about money, it is about common sense

It seems we Americans just can�t help ourselves. A petty point often made by foreign anti-American intellectuals is that the U.S., despite its riches � or perhaps, because of them � has the world�s largest population of obese and unhealthy people. It would appear that such criticism, though I hate to admit it, is somewhat justified.

Although smoking went down during the early 1990s, and despite intense public knowledge that smoking is harmful and the social negatives that come with smoking, tobacco use has risen while long-term smokers who survived the habit a decade ago are still partaking. A whopping 21 percent of Americans are obese.

The average life expectancy of Americans is only 69.3 years. Twenty-eight countries are healthier and have longer life expectancies than the U.S., including Great Britain, France, Germany and Japan. The American infant mortality rate is twice that of Japan�s.

More worrying is that the number of young Americans graduating high school, which could certainly be said to affect health and life expectancy, is down to 68.3 percent. It is scandalous that the number of high school graduates are below 70 percent in what is considered a literate nation!

A lot of it has to do, of course, with America�s screwy health-care system, which gives the finest care in the world yet is the most expensive and for which a significant part of the population is uninsured and cannot afford. But it�s not the entire story.

The U.S., despite its disparate health-care system, could still rank among the top nations for health and life expectancy if only more people weren�t so, in a word, ignorant about what constitutes a healthy life.

Rich or poor, it is basic knowledge that smoking is harmful and potentially carcinogenic. It should be common sense to anyone, no matter what their economic profile, that sitting on your posterior all day in front of the television while consuming McDonald�s and Ho-Hos three times a day will not help promote a healthy heart or a svelte body shape.

A significant amount of those who are considered unhealthy have only themselves to blame. Which is why it is refreshing to hear Reed Tuckson, vice president of the non-profit organization United Health Foundation, declare that basic health issues are �not about more government money and heavy funding.� Do we really need to launch a government program and/or create a government agency just so Americans can learn to adopt a healthy lifestyle? Or maybe that�s to be expected from a nation where people can sue McDonald�s or Hershey�s for �making� them fat.

If you�re obese, start eating healthy and exercise. If you smoke, give up. If you don�t have a high school diploma, get your GED and actually do something about improving your lot in life, instead of demanding the government take care of you.

Mr. Tuckson is right. No amount of money is going to help people to become healthy. Changing one�s lifestyle, meals, and habits will see to that and it won�t cost a penny.

� M.E.M.

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