Sunday, May 08, 2016



A reluctant defence of Australia's successful exclusion of illegal imigrants

By Jonathan Holmes

Nick Riemer has a choleric response to the article below on New Matilda -- but I can't see that he offers any arguments that hold water.  I am amused that he waxes righteous about what is the "moral" thing to do.  Stopping unauthorized arrivals is immoral, apparently. I wonder how he deduces that?  And since he and his ilk would in other contexts argue that "there is no such thing as right and wrong", I can't see that he has any basis for his moral claims at all.  As I pointed out long ago, Leftists who use moral claims are just being manipulative and dishonest. 

And -- OF COURSE -- stopping the boats is RACIST!  Everything that Leftists disagree with is racist.  So how does Herr Riemer (Riemer is a German and Yiddish name for a maker of leather reins and similar articles) decide that it is racist?  Because the illegals are brown.  But they mostly are not.  Iranians and Afghans are white -- not as white as Northern Europeans but no darker than Southern Italians.  And seeing that Australia accepts immigrants of all races through legal channels, the racism accusation is patently absurd anyway.

So I can't see that Riemer has any basis for his opposition to immigration control at all.  He certainly does not show that it is in Australia's best interests to accept poorly educated arrivals who subscribe to a barbaric religion and who often hate us and who mostly become welfare dependent. All he has is his rage and his faux morality.   The rage could be faux too.

I doubt that he would be happy about a third world family moving into his house and living there without his permission -- but other Australians should accept the something very similar, apparently.  Australians are not allowed to regard their country as their home.  He wants to deny their government the selectivity that he himself would exercise.

But now for Jonathan Holmes. I have omitted the initial throat clearing:



During the so-called "Tampa" election in 2001, I was the executive producer of the ABC's 7.30 Report. Every time we aired an item that was in any way sympathetic to boat people, we would get a flood of reaction from viewers: outraged, furious, bitter. It gave me some inkling of the tide that was washing into MPs' electoral offices.

And nowhere more than in western Sydney and western Melbourne, the heartlands of Australia's post-war immigrant population, where to have parents who were native English speakers made you the exception, not the rule.

These were people who had stood in the "queue" that others called fictional, who had waited years for the family reunion scheme to bring their wives and kids and parents to Australia; who had relatives and friends hoping desperately to join them; who knew that every boat person allowed to stay was one fewer of their own people who'd be admitted through the off-shore humanitarian visa intake.

They are also the parts of Australia where most people know someone who arrived by boat. They know about the networks of agents set up by people-smugglers, have seen the phone calls to families in Malaysia and Indonesia.

In three Four Corners programs (links here, here and here) that made far less impact than they deserved, Sarah Ferguson revealed beyond doubt that the criminal people-smuggler networks are not just a fantasy dreamt up by immigration ministers. They exist. And a lot of Australians know it. They don't see why people who can pay criminals should be able to buy a chance at a life they themselves had to get by legal means.

I still see the opposition to boat people dismissed by refugee advocates as "racist". That's a fundamental misunderstanding. Australia is rightly proud of its immigration program. It has created one of the most diverse and successful multi-ethnic nations in the world. The reason the boat people had to be stopped was that – justifiably or otherwise – they were undermining Australians' belief in a fair and orderly immigration program.

But, say many of the current policy's opponents, there are other solutions. In this four-year-old blog on the ABC's Religion and Ethics site, Aly argues that it's just a matter of taking more refugees from Indonesia. If people could get here legitimately, they wouldn't risk the boats. The Guardian's Richard Ackland put much the same proposition just last week.

Both blithely ignore that the people in Indonesia and Malaysia who want to come to Australia are not Indonesians or Malaysians. Overwhelmingly, they are Hazaras from Afghanistan, and Iranians; if the way to Australia were open, they would now be Syrians too.

They've already travelled a long way – helped by people smugglers – to get to Indonesia, and there are hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, more where they came from.

Taking a large proportion of would-be Australian migrants from Indonesia would only induce more to follow; very soon there would be far more than any orderly migration program could accommodate. The Indonesians and Malaysians would not thank us for that. That's why we source so much of our refugee intake from camps close to where they've fled from: Somalis and Sudanese from Kenya, Afghans from Pakistan, and so on.

As Europe is discovering, there is an almost limitless demand, through the Middle East, and central Asia, and Africa, for a better, safer life. Whether these people are "genuine refugees" or "economic migrants" may matter to the lawyers, but is immaterial in policy terms.

The brutal fact is that we cannot take them all. We cannot, without risking social disruption, take more than a tiny fraction of them. And as John Howard famously said, it should be our government that decides who comes to this country, not a free-for-all scramble for a place on a leaky boat.

For the poor souls who are its victims, the "Pacific Solution" has provided a living hell. I doubt their agony can be justified philosophically. I don't believe we should be sheltered from it by censorship. I hope, somehow, that it can soon be ended.
But I don't know what the alternative policy should have been in the past, or could be in the future.

SOURCE







Multicultural mass murderer



A former trash collector in Los Angeles was convicted Thursday of 10 'Grim Sleeper' serial killings that spanned two decades and targeted vulnerable young black women in the inner city.

Lonnie Franklin Jr. showed no emotion as a clerk read the ten murder verdicts in Los Angeles County Superior Court after a two-month trial in the potential death penalty case.

Franklin also was found guilty of one count of attempted murder.

Jurors were told to return May 12 for the trial's penalty phase. Franklin could receive the death penalty.

The killings from 1985 to 2007 were dubbed the work of the 'Grim Sleeper' because of an apparent 14-year gap after one woman survived a gunshot to the chest in 1988.

The crimes went unsolved for decades and community members complained that police ignored the cases because the victims were black, poor and some were prostitutes and drug users.

Much of the violence unfolded during the nation's crack cocaine epidemic when at least two other serial killers prowled the part of the city then known as South Central.

The ten victims, including a 15-year-old girl, were fatally shot or strangled and dumped in alleys and garbage bins. Most had traces of cocaine in their systems.

Franklin, 63, a onetime trash collector in the area and a garage attendant for the Los Angeles Police Department, had been hiding in plain sight, said Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman.

Police eventually connected Franklin to the crimes after a task force was assigned to revisit the case that dozens of officers failed to solve in the 1980s.

The sister of the youngest victim of the "Grim Sleeper" serial killer says she was elated when she heard guilty verdicts in a Los Angeles courtroom.

Lonnie Franklin Jr. faces a possible death sentence after being convicted Thursday of 10 counts of first-degree murder in slayings spanning two decades.

Samara Herard, the sister of 15-year-old victim Princess Berthomieux, says she had waited so long for justice she almost didn't think it was going to happen.

Herard says her sister had a heart of gold and deserved to live a full life. She says she wasn't surprised Franklin showed no emotion during the verdict because he didn't value life.

The DNA of Franklin's son, collected after a felony arrest, had similarities to genetic material left on the bodies of many of the victims.

An officer posing as a busboy later retrieved pizza crusts and napkins with Franklin's DNA while he was celebrating at a birthday party.

It proved a match with material found on the breasts and clothing of many of the women and on the zip tie of a trash bag that held the curled-up body of the final victim, Janecia Peters.

She was found January 1, 2007, by someone who was rifling through a trash bin and noticed her red fingernails through a hole in the bag.

Silverman described the victims as sisters, daughters and mothers who suffered frailties but had hopes and dreams.

She projected photos of the ten women from happier days, many smiling from head shots that captured their youth and the hairstyles of the times.

The images were in stark contrast to gory crime scene and autopsy photos also displayed of half-naked bodies sprawled among garbage - images that made family members wince, weep and recoil in the gallery.

Defense lawyer Seymour Amster challenged what he called 'inferior science' of DNA and ballistics evidence. During his closing argument, he introduced a new theory: a 'mystery man with a mystery gun and mystery DNA' was responsible for all the killings.

He said the man was a 'nephew' of Franklin's who was jealous because his uncle had better luck with romance, though he offered no supporting evidence or any name.

Amster based the theory on the testimony of the sole known survivor, Enietra Washington, who was shot in the chest and crawled to safety after being shoved from an orange Ford Pinto in November 1988.

She testified that her assailant said he had to stop at his 'uncle's house' for money before the attack. Washington later led detectives to Franklin's street.

Silverman scoffed at the 'mystery nephew' notion, saying it was as rational an explanation as a space ship killing the women.

She said the killer had just lied to Washington about an uncle and was probably stopping at his house to get his gun.

The attack fit the pattern of seven previous killings and showed how the killer carried out the crimes, Silverman said.

SOURCE






NC Conservatives: Obama Administration Using Children as ‘Pawns’ for LGBT Agenda

North Carolina conservatives are fighting what they call “bullying” after the Obama administration threatened a lawsuit against the state.

The Justice Department is suing North Carolina over a law that allows private businesses to set whatever bathroom policies they like for transgender people, but mandates that biological sex will determine access to government bathrooms.

“This is definitely a bully tactic by the Obama administration to push this radical agenda that allows individuals based on the feelings that they have about their biological sex to really trump the privacy rights of the public in the most intimate of places,” state Rep. Chris Millis, a Republican from the 16th District who has been a leading voice in the debate, told The Daily Signal. “It’s absolutely astounding.”

The Justice Department sent a letter to Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, on Wednesday, accusing the state of “engaging in a pattern or practice of discrimination against transgender state employees.”

The letter says that under HB2, North Carolina is “in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.” Title VII prohibits any employer from discriminating against an individual on the basis of sex. Experts disagree on whether Title VII applies to transgender people.

The letter also says that HB2 violates Title IX, which is the federal civil rights law that bans discrimination on the basis of sex in any program that receives federal education dollars. It has also been debated whether or not Title IX applies to transgender students, with courts ruling on both sides.

“This is no longer just a North Carolina issue,” McCrory said on Wednesday. “This impacts every state, every university, and almost every employee in the United States of America.”

“All those,” he added, “will have to comply with new definitions of requirements by the federal government regarding restrooms, locker rooms, and shower facilities in both the private and public sector.”

Unless the state confirms it will “not comply or implement HB2” and notifies all government workers that “they are permitted to access bathrooms and other facilities consistent with their gender identity,” all schools that receive federal education dollars could be at risk of losing that funding.

According to The Charlotte Observer, state public schools received $861 million in federal funding this school year, and the University of North Carolina received $1.4 billion in the 2014-15 school year.

“To use our children and their educational futures as pawns to advance an agenda that will ultimately open those same children up to exploitation at the hands of sexual predators is by far, the sickest example of the depths the Obama administration will stoop to ‘fundamentally transform our nation,'” Lt. Gov. Dan Forest said in a statement after the Justice Department issued its letters.

Millis said the effort on behalf of the Obama administration is “absolutely astounding, and really shows you the length that this current administration will go to push their agenda regardless of who it will harm.”

North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore, a Republican, told media on Thursday that lawmakers don’t plan on meeting the May 9 deadline issued by the Obama administration to repeal HB2.

Millis said the process of fighting the mandate “could go in multiple different directions.”

HB2, called the Bathroom Privacy Act, took effect on March 23. Lawmakers approved the bill after the city of Charlotte passed an ordinance that allowed individuals to choose public restrooms corresponding with their gender identity, not their biological sex. HB2, also known as the “bathroom bill,” reversed that policy for all government-run facilities, while also prohibiting local governments from adopting any similar protections for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender people.

The law does not affect private businesses, which are still free to set their own restroom policies, and includes a provision that allows government-run buildings to supply special accommodations such as single-occupancy restrooms to people who are uncomfortable using the facility that corresponds to their biological sex.

Shortly after McCrory signed the bathroom bill into law, entertainers, big businesses, and special interest groups began boycotting the state. The American Civil Liberties Union, along with LGBT advocacy group Lambda Legal, filed a lawsuit, arguing that the law “sends a purposeful message that LGBT people are second-class citizens who are undeserving of the privacy, respect, and protections afforded to others in the state.”

In response to the Justice Department’s Wednesday letter, the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement, “It is now clearer than ever that this discriminatory law violates civil rights protections and jeopardizes billions of dollars in federal funds for North Carolina,” adding:

Gov. McCrory and the legislators who forced through HB 2 in a single day were warned about these dire consequences, but they ignored the law and the North Carolinians it would harm and passed the bill anyway. The only way to reverse the ongoing damage HB 2 is causing to North Carolina’s people, economy, and reputation is a full repeal.

Tami Fitzgerald, executive director of the conservative North Carolina Values Coalition, which is an advocacy group that supports HB2, said she expects lawmakers to stand firm on their support for the new law.

“I believe this action, on the part of an unpopular, lame duck president, is going to cause our legislature and our governor to dig themselves in deeper,” Fitzgerald said. “I think they’re going to dig their heels in more and be true tar heels because the federal government has no right to try and force a state like North Carolina to do what they’re asking.”

SOURCE






Social Media Campaign Urges Disney to Make Elsa a Lesbian Princess in ‘Frozen’ Sequel

The sequel to Disney’s “Frozen” won’t be out for a few years, but some fans have already launched a social media campaign calling on Disney to make the main character, Elsa, a lesbian.

The campaign #GiveElsaAGirlfriend began when a teen named Alexis Isabel tweeted: “I hope Disney makes Elsa a lesbian princess imagine how iconic that would be.” Then she tweeted: “Dear @Disney, #GiveElsaAGirlfriend.”

Others have joined the call for Disney to make Elsa gay and use the movie to raise LGBT awareness, according to CNN.

“Dear @Disney #GiveElsaAGirlfriend because girls need to know everyone can be princess,” Ellie tweeted.

“#GiveElsaAGirlfriend little kids need to learn young there is absolutely nothing wrong with being gay,” Isobel tweeted.

Elsa’s song, “Let It Go” in the original movie became a popular and catchy tune for young viewers, but according an April 10, 2014 blog in The Guardian, it’s also an anthem for the LGBT community.

Kristen Anderson-Lopez, who co-wrote the song with Robert Lopez, told said the song is “also a coming-out anthem for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.”

“Outside the film, Let It Go is also a coming-out anthem for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people: “Conceal don’t feel, don’t let them know/ Well now they know!” The lines “It’s funny how some distance/ Makes everything seem small/ And the fears that once controlled me/ Can’t get to me at all” could almost be from an It Gets Better video. “I was really excited to write an anthem that said, ‘Screw fear and shame, be yourself, be powerful,’” said Anderson-Lopez.

“Frozen” raked in $1.3 billion at the box office in 2013. Its sequel is slated for release before 2018. Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel are confirmed to appear in it.

SOURCE

*************************

Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here

***************************


No comments: