Someone please write to The Japan Times

The Japan Times Online

I generally like the Japan Times, but they have a regular contributor Roger Pulvers, an author and artistic gadabout who seems to live mainly in Japan now but still claims a deep understanding of the Australian social psyche.

His column about the Cronulla "race riots"(linked above) is appalling:

"In fact, the blame for Australia's worst race riots since the country abandoned its heinous White Australia policy more than 30 years ago can be laid squarely at the feet of Mr. Howard. Over his past nine years in office, Howard and his coterie of yes-ministers have effectively re-embraced an image of Australia as an Anglo-Celtic outpost in faraway Asia. While the United States and the United Kingdom have continued to integrate non-Anglo-Celtic minorities into their societies, Australia's enthusiasm for multiculturalism has been largely a colorful lifestyle veneer pasted over a structure of ingrained provincialism.

Thanks to Howard and his cohorts in power, however, even that veneer is being stripped away and the true color of the Australian ethos is resurfacing.

With its inhumane detention of refugees and asylum seekers, among them many children, its gung-ho participation in the American and British incursion into Iraq, its lack of a Bill of Rights guaranteeing freedom of expression, and its newly reinforced sedition laws, Australia is now arguably the Western world's least democratic democracy."

Oh please.