Tuesday, October 25, 2016


Multiculturalism in Australia, success or failure?

David Forde, below, seems to think there has been some sort of success of multiculturalism in Australia.  Maybe there has been, though he offers no proof of it.  But the big success with immigrants to Australia has in fact been with assimilation.  People from all over the world have come to Australia and fitted in well with the mores of the host society.  And by and large, their children are indistiguishable from other Australians.  Not much multiculturalism there!

The ARE multiculturalists here but do we call African crime and Muslim hostility a success?  I can't see it.  It's true that not all Africans commit crimes and not all Muslims wage jihad against us but the crimes and the jihad clearly come from the alien culture of the offenders.  Not many Presbyterians wage Jihad and not many Han Chinese do breaking and entering.  The culture clearly makes a difference.  The assimilated Han are no problem but who would say that of the Africans?

David Forde's big problem is that he has swallolwed the Leftist hokum that all men are equal. To him the Han and the Africans are all the same.  If only Africans WERE as civilized as the Han!  But he is quite incapable of discussing such differences. He relies totally on overgeneralizations.  He inhabits a world of mental fog.

As we read below, Forde thinks that if all are treated and made to feel equal within the rule of law, that will create "a sense of belonging and strengthening social cohesion".  So how come it hasn't?  There's certainly no "sense of belonging and social cohesion" among members of the South Sudanese Apex gang members who are terrorising parts of Melbourne these days.  But they have all been treated equally before the law.

If we look at the detail that Forde cannot see, we have to conclude that assimilation is the answer to social cohesion, not multiculturalism



RECENTLY there has been a resurgence in negativity regarding multiculturalism.

As I see it, we have two choices. We can speak up in support of inclusion where all are treated and made to feel equal within the rule of law, thereby creating a sense of belonging and strengthening social cohesion.

Or, we don’t speak up and treat multiculturalism as a concept to be avoided or scapegoated. Thereby letting the negative control the narrative while creating a sense of exclusion, where people are more readily labelled and some are considered more Australian than others. As a result, we encourage division as people retreat into various ethnic groupings and put up the barriers as they seek a sense of belonging and acceptance from within.

It also creates an environment where the more vulnerable are left open to exploitation.

Yes, there are people who don’t want to, or don’t feel comfortable associating with people outside their own given identity – this is normal and applies to people of all backgrounds.

The important thing is that it’s not about everyone agreeing or being the same, that’s simply impossible, it’s about acceptance and a fair go where everyone is treated equally. Surely everyone is entitled to that.

There are too many Australians, including many born here, who feel excluded from society and continually have to justify their “Australianness”.

Every one of us is different, but as individuals we share more in common than we realise. One of those commonalities is that everyone, except our First Peoples, is of migrant stock; it’s just that some are more recent than others.

Currently more than 28 per cent of Australia’s population was born overseas. Australia is a multicultural success story.

So scapegoating the very substance that has delivered today’s Australia is not the answer. In fact it is completely counter-productive, not least for economic reasons around trade and tourism.

I have been very fortunate to call Australia home for the past 24 years and live in one of the most culturally diverse suburbs in Queensland. I have neighbours who originate from all parts of the globe. Despite this diversity – or because of it – we have a tremendous sense of community, not least when the community, be they from the local service clubs, mosques, churches, temples or just everyday community members, rally together to assist those in need.

Creating fear of the “other” or the unknown is very easy. But rather than rejecting or scapegoating Australia’s multicultural success story, we should embrace it; there are simply too many benefits.

Go out and meet your fellow Australians, engage and replace (politically motivated) fear of the unknown with curiosity.

This leads to one simple question. What sort of Australia do we want, a weak and divided Australia or a strong and inclusive Australia?

I know what I want and what is in Australia’s long-term interests.

SOURCE






Britain's social work terrorists again

A mother who took her 14-month-old son to hospital after he fell and bumped his head was 'made to feel like a criminal' by doctors who summoned social workers to attend a routine appointment.

Danielle Rawes, 22, from Millom in Cumbria, took her toddler Kobey-Lee to Furness General Hospital in Barrow when he stumbled on the sloping driveway at his grandparents' house.

After checking over Kobey-Lee, medics contacted social workers and told Miss Rawes police would be called if she left the hospital.

For the next two days family were questioned and Kobey-Lee was sedated and given a CT scan and 21 X-rays to check for deliberate injuries. 

He also had blood taken and was observed by staff while Miss Rawes, Kobey-Lee's father Jamie Harvey and other members of the family were quizzed by police.

The toddler, who only started walking eight weeks ago, was allowed to go home when all his tests came back clear.

Describing the ordeal Miss Rawes said: 'I was devastated to be treated like I'd hurt Kobey-Lee when I hadn't done anything. Really gutted.

'I understand they have got a job to do but the way they dealt with it was awful.'

She said she feared her son would be taken into care when doctors warned her police would be called if she tried to leave the hospital.

Joan Rawes, Kobey-Lee's grandmother, said the incident had been a nightmare for the whole family.

They have since sought advice from a lawyer regarding their treatment by the hospital.

Mrs Rawes said: 'It's fair enough that the hospital makes sure children are OK if they spot an injury, but the way they handled the situation was absolutely appalling.

'Danielle was made to feel like a criminal and no-one explained what was going on.

'We all absolutely adore Kobey-Lee. It's been awful.'

Sue Smith, executive chief nurse at the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust, the organisation that runs FGH, said: 'On behalf of the trust, I'd like to sincerely apologise to Kobey-Lee's mother for any distress caused.

'To protect patients when any safeguarding concerns are raised, it is standard practice for staff to follow the trust's safeguarding policy and appropriately investigate the concerns.

'While we appreciate this may have caused additional distress, our staff did follow the correct and appropriate procedures.

'That said, we are committed to ensuring patients and their families are treated with dignity and respect at all times, and I can only apologise if Kobey-Lee's mother felt this wasn't the case.

'We would be keen to speak to the family directly so we can discuss the matter in full, answer any questions they may have, and share any learning with our teams too.'

SOURCE






Christian parents of girl, 14, who wants to change gender forced to take legal action against their local council after it backs her efforts against their wishes

The parents of a 14-year-old girl are taking legal action to challenge their local authority's backing for their daughter to transition into a boy.

The girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is believed to want to change her gender and has received the support of her local authority.

However, the girl's parents object to the process, and believe their daughter is too young to take such a dramatic decision.

The parents will meet with teachers and social workers next month to decide whether the girl should be known in school by a boy's name rather than the one she was given as a baby.

According to the Sunday Times, the parents' solicitor, Michael Phillips of Andrew Storch solicitors said if the family failed to follow the guidance of social workers, the girl could be taken into care.

This follows the case of a young boy who has been taken from his mother's care because she tried to raise him 'entirely as a girl'.

In this latest case, the 14-year-old girl's mother told the Sunday Times: 'The rights of parents in the UK are being eroded, especially those who have traditional Christian values. It is leaving parents to feel fearful, vulnerable and intimidated.

'We were told by the psychiatrist that Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services said that if the name change does not happen then she would be a high suicide risk.'

The girl's parents are devout Christians and do not accept the daughter's decision.

Social workers claim he girl has a close 'heterosexual' relationship with a 13-year-old girl. [Come again??]

The Christian Legal Centre are supporting the family and funding their legal costs. Andrea Williams of the Centre added: 'The transgender cultural movement is creating a new "conflict of rights" within the family. This is the emperor's new clothes. Authorities are forcing an agenda that is not true, and harmful to children. This case demonstrates shocking disregard for parental authority: no one is listening to what the parents want or have to say. The know the child the best, and have the child's interests at heart.' 

SOURCE





Ched Evans and the fury of the middle‑class mob

This case has exposed the illiberalism and classism of the new elite

When snobs talk about mobs, they usually mean poor people who say things they disagree with. Brexit voters, or Trump’s angry white army. To a certain kind of sniffy commentator, these people are basically a pitchfork-wielding crowd, clueless and toothless. But if you want to see a real mob – in the classic sense of a gang with nasty extrajudicial instincts – forget the poor and take a look at the middle-class media set. Take a look at the very people who bandy about the word ‘mob’ to describe anyone they don’t like. For it is they, ironically, who are most mob-like, and nothing demonstrates this better than their ugly commentary on the Ched Evans case.

Ever since Evans, a Welsh footballer, was arrested in 2011, following a threesome in a hotel room in Rhyl which he says was consensual but the woman involved says was non-consensual, the awful illiberal strain that lurks just under the surface of 21st-century Western society has been given full voice. It burst through the polite veneer of respect for the rule of law and belief in the human value of redemption, exposing how negotiable such values now are in the eyes of the opinion-forming set. The authoritarianism, anti-democracy and outright classism of the middle-class mob has been on full display.

It started in earnest when Evans was still in jail, following his conviction for rape in 2012. Petitions emerged demanding that he should not be allowed to return to football – his career – even after he’d served his time. The main petition, which got more than 170,000 signatures, said Evans’ prison sentence was ‘only a small penance’. Men who ‘commit gross acts of violence against women’ should continue to ‘pay for what they have done’ even after they leave jail, it said, and in Evans’ case this means ‘relinquishing the celebrity [he has] attained’. It was an explicit call for extrajudicial punishment, for the extension of his ‘penance’ beyond that which had been sanctioned by law. Evans should be branded forever, they demanded, echoing the medieval view that certain sinners, certain penitents, are so wicked they can never come back.

These shrill petitions explicitly called into question one of key beliefs of the modern idea of justice: that of redemption, or at least rehabilitation – the notion that punishing people forever is wrong because people can change. The middle-class mob’s instigators in the press openly trampled on the notion of redemption. In an ugly piece titled ‘The limits of redemption’, Caitlin Moran said perhaps ‘men who have raped… need to see their lives reduced to ash’ (burn them?). Even when they’re released their lives should be made ‘publicly, endlessly awful, unrelentingly humiliating, without prospect of absolution’, she said. ‘No football club should touch Ched Evans’, said Suzanne Moore in the Guardian. The End Violence Against Women Coalition said allowing Evans back into his old line of work would ‘re-traumatise his own and many other victims’, overlooking the fact that the purpose of justice is that society, not your victim, punishes you, and once it has done so you should be allowed to show you are a changed citizen.

To understand the authoritarianism of these demands for extrajudicial punishment of Evans, just imagine if the same was said of other criminals. Imagine if a Conservative politician argued that anyone convicted of selling heroin should have their lives ‘reduced to ash’ and made ‘publicly, endlessly awful’. Or if an angry Daily Mail columnist said robbers should not be ‘touched’ by serious employers lest their rehabilitation ‘re-traumatise’ all robbery victims. We would recognise the pre-modern vindictiveness of such cries for ceaseless humiliation of ex-cons. Yet the liberal set makes these demands in relation to Evans, in relation to rape, and considers it normal, even good. Rape is a serious crime of violence, of course, but surely the same civilised, redemptive attitude should apply to this crime as to others.

The mob-like behaviour of the Evans obsessives erupted again last week when he was found not guilty of rape in his retrial. Feminists took to Twitter to say ‘I believe’ the complainant. This ‘Believe the Woman’ movement discards with the need for a justice system entirely, since every complaint of rape is automatically treated as true. It’s Salem-like. One observer says, ‘There are a few fundamental beliefs that I hold, and one of them is that I believe women [who make accusations of rape]’. There’s a Stalinist feel to this, where the pointed finger is enough to establish guilt. Some feminists now argue for an end to trial by jury in rape cases because jurors lack ‘the training and awareness-raising’ necessary to understand rape. So let a single judge decide, or better still the mob: they believe rape happened, so it must have.

Why has the middle-class mob focused its extrajudicial gaze on Evans in particular? Because of who he performs for: football fans, working-class men. Perhaps the ugliest element of the polite hysteria surrounding Evans is its naked contempt for the masses who follow football. Observers have extrapolated from Evans’ behaviour on 30 May 2011 to point to ‘how sick football culture is’. A Guardian writer bizarrely used the Evans case to indict football for having become ‘awash with money’ and being consumed by ‘attitudes [that] seem rooted in the past’. Shorter version: football followers are backward. ‘[M]en, football men particularly, are not fully understanding the abhorrence and fear women have of sexual abuse’, said one observer.

‘Football men’ – who are they? They know and you know: they’re blokes who read the Sun, who don’t have PhDs, who probably haven’t had their ‘awareness raised’. They’re Those People, who, as one columnist says, are obsessed with a sport that has ‘unpleasant, wilfully damaging and dangerous attitudes’. This is why petitioners and tweeters and columnists are so adamant that Evans not be allowed to play again: because they view his watchers, the teeming terraces, as savages, basically, with unreconstructed attitudes and a stunning disregard for the feelings of women. It isn’t really Evans they fear; it’s the masses (though now they use the PC term ‘football people’). This extrapolation from the Evans case to brand a whole section of society as rapacious is indistinguishable from when racists argued in the 1970s that instances of black men raping white women showed no blacks could be trusted in society.

There has been media fury over football fans who have cheered Evans’ not-guilty verdict and who are looking forward to his return to the game. But there is infinitely more humanism and more decency in these fans’ support of Evans than there is in the ugly petitioning and scaremongering of the middle-class mob that wants one man’s life made ‘endlessly awful’ as a means of re-educating pig-ignorant ‘football people’. Those fans understand redemption and the capacity of people to change; the middle-class mob understands little beyond its own fear of the blob and its talk of ‘ash’ and ‘humiliation’ and its corresponding desire to make educational, medieval public spectacles of men who commit certain crimes.

SOURCE

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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

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