Australia: Wong is wrong

I couldn't resist that headline -- in the tradition of one Arthur Augustus Calwell -- a former leader of the Australian Labor Party best known for enlivening a debate about Chinese immigration with the sage comment: "Two Wongs don't make a white"

NEW South Wales conservative Christian MP Fred Nile says federal Finance Minister Penny Wong is setting a bad example by having a baby with her female partner.

Senator Wong today announced her partner, Sophie Allouache, is due to give birth in December after falling pregnant through IVF.

NSW Christian Democrats leader Mr Nile is opposed to same-sex relationships and children being raised by gay couples.

"I'm totally against a baby being brought up by two mothers - the baby has human rights," the upper house MP said. "It's a very poor example for the rest of the Australian population.

"She needn't have made it public - it just promotes their lesbian lifestyle and trying to make it natural where it's unnatural. "The only reason she's made it public is to make a statement to the Australian people."

Mr Nile, who has led prayers vigils during Sydney's annual gay Mardi Gras parade, called on Prime Minister Julia Gillard to have a "talk" with her cabinet colleague about her decision to publicise the impending birth. "She should have a serious talk with her," he said.

But he also had words for the prime minister's unmarried status. "Because of her own life, that puts her in a weaker position than if she was traditionally married herself," he said.

Mr Nile said he was surprised Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop had congratulated Senator Wong. "I'm surprised she's done that. She's treated this as if Penny Wong is in a traditional relationship," he said.

The NSW parliament last year passed legislation giving same-sex couples the right to adopt children.

SOURCE



Racial tensions flare after five days of rioting across Britain

Black thugs and useless police

WITH police overwhelmed, a desperate attempt by Birmingham Muslims to protect their properties and mosque has turned to tragedy with three men mown-down. The Muslims of Dudley Road armed themselves with bricks and stones, clubs and cricket bats to fend off carloads of marauding gangs.

Their vigilante stand may have saved a humble row of family-run shops and a red-brick mosque from the looters' grasp - but at a terrible cost.

A carload of rioters sped into a fleeing crowd of shop defenders, witnesses said, hurling three young men into the air and killing amateur boxer Haroon Jahan, 21, and brothers Shazzad Ali, 30, and Abdul Musavir, 31. Police have since detained the alleged driver of the car, charging him with murder.

"We all had stones in our hands. But we had no defense to stop a car. They revved their engines and drove right at us as fast as they could," Mohammed Ibrahim, 23, told The Associated Press. "These black men deliberately tried to kill us all."

Wednesday's 1 a.m. slaughter has laid bare racial tensions underlying this week's riots in Birmingham, Britain's second-largest city and its most ethnically diverse. A fifth of the city's 1 million "Brummies" are Muslims, most commonly of Pakistani origin. About 7 percent are black, mostly Caribbean, in background.

While the riots that have swept England this week have involved looters of every creed and hue, the street anarchy also sometimes has exposed the racial fault lines that run beneath the poorest urban quarters.

Resident after resident of Dudley Road and its surrounding Winson Green district commented that the attackers were black and accused them of targeting Muslim shops.

The passions echo streetfights from previous years, such as in 2005, when a neighbouring Birmingham district suffered two nights of violence between Caribbean and Asian gangs over unsubstantiated rumours that a gang of Pakistani men had raped a 14-year-old Jamaican girl. Two men were stabbed to death, firefighters faced machete-wielding mobs, and Muslim graves were desecrated during those clashes. The west side also suffered riots in 1981, 1985 and 1991 fuelled by minority hatred of white police and black resentment of the Asians' dominant position as shopkeepers.

"We'll hunt down these black men, cut off their heads and feed them to our dogs," said Amir Hawid, 20, who lives just a hundred meters from the killing scene and heard the screams of the crowd at the moment of impact.

As forensics specialists combed the bloodied, rock-strewn pavement for clues, hundreds of local Muslims and Sikhs - some wearing ceremonial daggers at their waists - packed into a community hall Wednesday to confront three white police commanders who had come seeking to calm tensions. Twice as many Muslims, many in robes and kufi caps, stood outside.

Speaker after speaker complained that they had pleaded by phone for police protection the previous night, when black gangs raided local markets and chased bar staff onto the roof of one pub, yet police failed to respond. Some argued that the police had warned them not to attempt to defend their own streets, yet had offered no alternative.

The three dead men "did nothing wrong! They died because they were doing the job of protecting our community. The job that you lot should have been doing!" one speaker shouted, jabbing an accusatory finger at the police panel.

Detective Superintendent Richard Baker, commander of the 60-strong police team hunting the killers, said they already had arrested the suspected driver and 11 others potentially linked to the shop attacks on Dudley Road. He pleaded for locals to overcome their antipathy to the police, give eyewitness statements and hand over amateur camera footage.

"I will deploy whatever it takes to get justice for this community," Baker said above a din of muttered heckles and shouted accusations, dozens of men trying to speak at once.

Baker and the local commander, Superintendent Sean Russell, defended their force's response to the killings - which Russell admitted he could see from the police control centre on a closed-circuit surveillance camera - because gangs were attacking shops in the city centre. That triggered angry cries that police cared more for protecting downtown shopping centres than Muslim communities.

Russell said it took officers 10 minutes to arrive; locals insisted it was a half-hour and the officers arrived in riot gear thinking the Muslim crowd might pose a threat. The officers said they had to be cautious.

Afterward, a chastened Baker said it had been the toughest community meeting of his life. In quiet one-to-one conversations, he offered his cell phone number to local residents and pleaded for them to find eyewitnesses.

"We really want to help you, but you need to help us too," he told one man, who said he'd been afraid to speak up and express moderate views during the meeting.

And a local black resident, who didn't want to be identified by name because of fears for his safety, pleaded outside with the departing Muslim crowd not to start targeting blacks in retaliation.

"Don't take your anger out on everyone. Don't keep saying it's black, black, black, black. Don't take this too far," he declared, street preacher-style, after abusive comments were directed at him. "I've lived and worked here seven years alongside you. I don't want to be afraid to walk down that street now. Don't make me afraid, because I didn't do it, man."

Several witnesses outside the hall, who like the dead men had taken up crude arms and manned the sidewalks in hopes of keeping the invaders at bay. None expressed confidence that the police would bring justice.

"We will avenge our brothers. This is a tight community, and someone in their group will brag about how they attacked the Muslims," said Waseem Hussain, 24, who joined the defense of the shops.

Hussain said several carloads of would-be shop raiders began casing Dudley Road, driving cars up and down the road before midnight, as scores of locals were still in the mosque observing the night's final Ramadan prayers.

He said one carload stopped at the local gas station and convenience store - which had been ransacked the night before and was now closed with metal shutters - and asked a few youths whether there was "anything new to rob."

He said locals threw stones and bricks at the cars, whose occupants had their windows rolled down. The two sides traded verbal abuse as the cars repeatedly passed, Hussain estimating at least a dozen times. The Muslim crowd grew as prayers concluded around 12:30 a.m.

After the cars canvassed the crowd once again under a hail of rocks, Hussain said, one of the occupants shouted a threat at them: "Are you asking for it?"

Two of the cars did a U-turn at the top of the road, he said, and gunned their engines, shifting their gears rapidly as they reached a speed he estimated at 110 km/h.

"The first car cut extremely close to the crowd but didn't hit anyone. We all were running for cover, but there were too many people and nowhere to go," he said.

"Some people didn't see the second car coming. It went deeper into the footpath and struck these three men, all standing in the same spot," he said. "They must have flown 20, 30 feet. One, Shazzad, was dead when he hit the ground. All of them were bloody and unconscious. They never had a chance."

SOURCE



British rioters the spawn of a bankrupt ruling elite

Theodore Dalrymple

THE riots in London and elsewhere in Britain are a backhanded tribute to the long-term intellectual torpor, moral cowardice, incompetence and careerist opportunism of the British political and intellectual class.

They have somehow managed not to notice what has long been apparent to anyone who has taken a short walk with his eyes open down any frequented British street: that a considerable proportion of the country's young population (a proportion that is declining) is ugly, aggressive, vicious, badly educated, uncouth and criminally inclined.

Unfortunately, while it is totally lacking in self-respect, it is full of self-esteem: that is to say, it believes itself entitled to a high standard of living, and other things, without any effort on its own part.

Consider for a moment the following: although youth unemployment in Britain is very high, that is to say about 20 per cent of those aged under 25, the country has had to import young foreign labour for a long time, even for unskilled work in the service sector.

The reasons for this seeming paradox are obvious to anyone who knows young Britons as I do.

No sensible employer in a service industry would choose a young Briton if he could have a young Pole; the young Pole is not only likely to have a good work ethic and refined manners, he is likely to be able to add up and -- most humiliating of all -- to speak better English than the Briton, at least if by that we mean the standard variety of the language. He may not be more fluent but his English will be more correct and his accent easier to understand.

This is not an exaggeration. After compulsory education (or perhaps I should say intermittent attendance at school) up to the age of 16 costing $80,000 a head, about one-quarter of British children cannot read with facility or do simple arithmetic. It makes you proud to be a British taxpayer.

I think I can say with a fair degree of certainty, from my experience as a doctor in one of the areas in which a police station has just been burned down, that half of those rioting would reply to the question, "Can you do arithmetic?" by answering, "What is arithmetic?"

British youth leads the Western world in almost all aspects of social pathology, from teenage pregnancy to drug taking, from drunkenness to violent criminality. There is no form of bad behaviour that our version of the welfare state has not sought out and subsidised.

British children are much likelier to have a television in their bedroom than a father living at home. One-third of them never eat a meal at a table with another member of their household -- family is not the word for the social arrangements of the people in the areas from which the rioters mainly come. They are therefore radically unsocialised and deeply egotistical, viewing relations with other human beings in the same way as Lenin: Who whom, who does what to whom. By the time they grow up, they are destined not only for unemployment but unemployability.

For young women in much of Britain, dependence does not mean dependence on the government: that, for them, is independence. Dependence means any kind of reliance on the men who have impregnated them who, of course, regard their own subventions from the state as pocket money, to be supplemented by a little light trafficking. (According to his brother, Mark Duggan, the man whose death at the hands of the probably incompetent police allegedly sparked the riots, "was involved in things", which things being delicately left to the imagination of his interlocutor.)

Relatively poor as the rioting sector of society is, it nevertheless possesses all the electronic equipment necessary for the prosecution of the main business of life; that is to say, entertainment by popular culture. And what a culture British popular culture is!

Perhaps Amy Winehouse was its finest flower and its truest representative in her militant and ideological vulgarity, her stupid taste, her vile personal conduct and preposterous self-pity.

Her sordid life was a long bath in vomitus, literal and metaphorical, for which the exercise of her very minor talent was no excuse or explanation. Yet not a peep of dissent from our intelllectual class was heard after her near canonisation after her death, that class having long had the backbone of a mollusc.

Criminality is scarcely repressed any more in Britain. The last lord chief justice but two thought that burglary was a minor offence, not worthy of imprisonment, and the next chief justice agreed with him.

By the age of 12, an ordinary slum-dweller has learned he has nothing to fear from the law and the only people to fear are those who are stronger or more ruthless than he.

Punishments are derisory; the police are simultaneously bullying but ineffectual and incompetent, increasingly dressed in paraphernalia that makes them look more like the occupiers of Afghanistan than the force imagined by Robert Peel. The people who most fear our police are the innocent.

Of course, none of this reduces the personal responsibility of the rioters. But the riots are a manifestation of a society in full decomposition, of a people with neither leaders nor followers but composed only of egotists.

SOURCE



Wisconsin cops say blacks who targeted whites will not be charged with "hate crimes"

West Allis, WI police have released a statement saying that incidents at the Wisconsin State Fair, where many witnesses say large groups of black men attacked white fair patrons, will not be prosecuted as “hate crimes.” TMJ 4 reports on the new information released by police:

“The police department issued a statement with details of arrests, saying ‘None of these incidents possessed elements that would compel the pursuance of a ‘hate crime’ prosecution.”
Witnesses reported attacks on the opening night of the fair that seemed to be racially motivated with young African Americans beating up white fair goers, but police say at this point there is not enough evidence to support such claims.”

The Blaze reported Friday on the mayhem that ensued at Wisconsin State Fair on Thursday night. Here are some accounts of what witnesses claim to have experienced:

“I had a black couple on my right side, and these black kids were running in between all the cars, and they were pounding on my doors and trying to open up doors on my car, and they didn’t do one thing to this black couple that was in this car next to us. They just kept walking right past their car. They were looking in everybody’s windshield as they were running by, seeing who was white and who was black. Guarantee it.”

“I saw them grab this wide kid who was probably 14 or 15 years old. They just flung him into the road. They just jumped on him and started beating him. They were kicking him. He was on the ground. A girl picked up a construction sign and pushed it over on top of him. They were just running by and kicking him in the face.”

The Justice Department defines hate crime as the “violence of intolerance and bigotry, intended to hurt and intimidate someone because of their race, ethnicity, national origin, religious, sexual orientation, or disability.”

“The purveyors of hate use explosives, arson, weapons, vandalism, physical violence, and verbal threats of violence to instill fear in their victims, leaving them vulnerable to more attacks and feeling alienated, helpless, suspicious and fearful. Others may become frustrated and angry if they believe the local government and other groups in the community will not protect them. When perpetrators of hate are not prosecuted as criminals and their acts not publicly condemned, their crimes can weaken even those communities with the healthiest race relations.”

Do you think police made the right call in interpreting the motives of attackers at the Wisconsin State Fair Thursday night?

SOURCE



Australia: Some discrimination is OK, apparently

Gay and lesbian retirement village goes ahead at Ballan in Victoria

AUSTRALIA'S first gay and lesbian retirement village is being built on Geelong's doorstep at Ballan in Victoria.

The 120-unit complex for over 55s is being built on the Ballan-Geelong Rd, and it will include an indoor heated spa, bar and croquet lawn.

Work is expected to start on the complex early next year, and interested people will be able to buy units off the plan in two months time, the Geelong Advertiser said.

Developer Peter Dickson has billed the $30 million Linton Estate retirement village as a haven for the gay, lesbian and bisexual community.

Mr Dickson said he had expressions of interest from 226 people from across the world including Turkey, England and the United States as well as from Victoria and interstate.

He also said there had been some interest from people in Daylesford, 20 minutes up the road, which has a sizeable gay and lesbian population.

The retirement village, at the junction of Old Melbourne and Ballan-Geelong roads, will be built in five stages.

Ballan newsagent Ian Ireland said the retirement village would be a welcome addition to the town, which was experiencing rapid growth.

Mr Ireland said the area in question along the Ballan-Geelong Rd was formerly farmland which had been subdivided into large allotments of about 12 hectares. "They are just semi-rural properties," he said. "It should be good, it will mean having more people around it's growing anyway so this is no different. "It's virtually a retirement-style village development and there's nothing wrong with that."

The State Government recently confirmed it would be funding an upgrade of the Ballan Hospital to the tune of $2 million.

Moorabool Shire Council granted a planning permit for Linton Estate retirement village in 2008, but a project redesign has delayed construction.

Mr Dickson said they had hired an engineer and were now meeting with potential builders.

A spokesman for Moorabool Shire Council said the project was first mooted some years ago and he could not recall there being any objections.

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, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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