Pride goeth before destruction and an haughty spirit before a fall.

Fooey, the Barcelona footy riot doesn't display

anymore. Here's another one. The home team,
North Korea, lost 2-0 to Iran in March 2005.
This is the disappointed fans surrounding
the Iran team's bus in Pyongyang. (BBC)

On the political chatrooms of Internet Relay Chat -- the Internet's version of AM radio talk/chat/phone-in programs -- Americans and English-speakers, I guess from Canada and the UK, expressed their disgust and dismay against Arab immigrants who were rioting through the slums of French cities in late October and November. The suggestions were thick that these were things white Euros and Christians and English speakers would never do. Caucasian Christians never riot. We are too well-brought-up, we are too civic, we are far too restrained and disciplined and intelligent and law-abiding ever to do anything like that.

Pride goeth before destruction,
and an haughty spirit before a fall.

-- Proverbs 16:18

==========================

The Daily Telegraph (UK)
Monday 12 December 2005

Second night of violence
in Sydney

Scores of youths have driven through beachside suburbs in Sydney smashing windows of stores, homes and apartments, in a second night of race rioting.

[image] Rioting in Sydney / The riots were organised by neo-Nazi groups

The riots first broke out in Cronulla, on Sunday when a mob of 5,000 white men, many of them drunk, attacked men they believed were of Middle Eastern descent. The men were retaliating for the the assault of two volunteer lifeguards by youths of Lebanese descent, although police said there was no apparent racial motive.

Police said the riots were organised by mobile phone text messages and encouraged by neo-Nazi groups.

The violence continued after dark on Monday night when two dozen car loads of youths rampaged through the city chased by hundreds of police vehicles and a helicopter.

Paul Bugden, a spokesman for New South Wales police said that six people had been arrested.

On Sunday, police arrested 16 rioters and said 31 people were injured, including a man who was stabbed in the back by a man they said was "of Arab appearance."

John Howard, the prime minister, called the violence "sickening," but said he did not accept that there was "underlying racism" in Australia.

Anti-Muslim sentiment has grown in the country since the September 11 terror attacks and the Bali bombings in October 2002 in which 202 people, 88 of them Australian, were killed.

Around 300,000 Muslims live in Australia, the majority in lower income suburbs of large cities.

Christian leaders also condemned the violence. Cardinal George Pell, the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, said that, "All people of goodwill should reject the extremists in both camps and work together so that this is the end of major disturbances, not the beginning of something worse."

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005