Friday, April 28, 2017






"I was born in Australia and I don’t want to assimilate"  -- but integration and assimilation are not the same thing.



Koraly Dimitriadis does make an important point below but it may not be the one she has in mind. For a start, she is clearly reflecting the views of her Greek parents. Greek immigrants of yesteryear typically saw Australians as a low lot with no morals or standards. They fitted in very well to Australian society with the fish-shops, greengrocers and milk bars that they set up (among other things) but were very strong on maintaining their cultural separateness. "Separateness" in Afrikaans is "apartheid". So they were clearly racists in a loose application of that term and Ms Dimitriadis clearly has a similar view of "old" (Anglo-Celtic) Australians.

Amusingly, as time has gone by, the lack of "standards" that older Greeks deplored in Australia has turned up in Greece also. So young Greeks who return to Greece to absorb their heritage tend to find that modern Greece is much more like Australia than it is like the Greece of their parents' description. I believe that even "hooking up" has arrived in Athens, which would be anathema to older Greeks.

But the underlying fact that Ms Dimitriadis seems not to realize is that integration and assimilation are not the same thing. Australia has absorbed vast numbers of immigrants from Europe and Asia with only minor frictions. The migrants concerned often did not assimilate in that they retained much of their own culture and customs but they integrated into Australian society by working for their living and not making waves. They rarely did break and enters and they don't go around shooting and bombing people in the name of Allah. So no-one was bothered by them and very little was required of them if they wanted to become citizens.

So the recently proposed citizenship test is not remotely aimed at Greeks, East Asians or Hindu Indians. Almost nobody is concerned about them gaining citizenship. There is nothing to be concerned about. What the tests are aimed at is the two groups of recent arrivals that I mentioned: Africans and Muslims. It is they whom the government wants to crack down on. But in an era of political correctness, they do not feel able to be frank about their aims. If they made the citizenship test applicable to Africans and Muslims only, there would be a huge uproar about "racism" from the Left. So a test designed to restrict Africans and Muslims has to be made applicable to all immigrants.

And, reasonably, some people, such as Ms Dimitriadis, feel the test is not and should not be applicable to her or her relatives. Ms Dimitriadis is undoubtedly a good citizen of Australia and deserves no special scrutiny of herself or her culture. So what she has highlighted is the difficulty that political correctness imposes. It causes her and her relatives to be treated like some very obnoxious groups are treated. It removes an important opportunity to make reasonable distinctions.

Just a small aside in conclusion: At the end of her article, she says:

"I’ll be proud to call myself Australian, to follow Australian values, when I see some values I’d like to follow, until then, I’ll stick to being myself"

She might more frankly have said, "I’ll stick to being a Greek Australian". And there is no reason why she should not do that. Greek Australians have made great contributions to Australia. The only difficulty is that political correctness would have made that statement racist



ASSISTANT Minister for Immigration and Border Protection Alex Hawke said something on the ABC’s Q&A this week that did not sit well with me.

When asked about recent swift changes to obtaining Australian citizenship, he responded:  “… if you want to become Australian you have to assimilate and integrate into Australian society.”

I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I was born in Australia and I am not interested in assimilating.

Assimilate and integrate into what? Australian society? Isn’t Australia a multicultural society made up of different people, cultures and faiths? Maybe what the government actually means is Anglo Saxon Christian Australian society.

“Australian values” and fluency in the English language will be some of the revamps to the new citizenship testing. Anglo Saxon English migrants will do just fine then. Migrants where English isn’t their first language will be at a disadvantage.

Just off the back of the Senate rejecting the proposed changes to Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act and racist Australians crying out “freedom of speech”, in conjunction with the recent skilled migration visa changes, it seems our government this year has adopted Pauline Hanson-style discrimination politics.

While the list of questions for the test has yet to be finalised, whether or not it is appropriate to hit your wife is an example being thrown around. Apart from the ludicrous idea that someone applying for citizenship would tick “yes”, wouldn’t appropriate police checks be done when applying for permanent residency and citizenship?

“Membership of the Australian family is a privilege and should be afforded to those who support our values, respect our laws and want to work hard by integrating and contributing to an even better Australia,” Mr Turnbull said.

Since when is knowing fluent English proof you’re a true blue Aussie? Isn’t the language of Australia the hundreds of indigenous languages? Lucky Section 18C is still intact and the words “insult”, “offend” and “humiliate” were not replaced with “harass” because I am terribly offended right now.

Many members of my extended and immediate family who migrated to Australia in the 70s don’t know fluent English and they are prouder Aussies than I am and I was born here. From the day their ship docked, they have worked hard creating flourishing businesses, they have purchased their own home, educated their children to university level, and contributed not only to the economy but to the face of Australia’s multicultural society. It seems when it comes to appreciating different cultures, Anglo’s are good at appreciating the cuisine, not so much the customs and language.

See, this is why I don’t sing the Australian national anthem. Why would I want to pledge my allegiance to a racist country? The only Australia I am interested in is multicultural Australia. Not racist Australia, not Anglo Australia, but multicultural Australia. But all this government has shown me is they are interested in fuelling segregation. Just from the changes to the skilled migration visas and citizenship changes, racist Australians are getting validated by our government.

I can just hear it already: “Stop stealing our jobs, learn English or go back to where you came from, and give us our freedom of speech to offend you out in public rather than discretely behind closed doors.”

If the government really wants to keep jobs for Australians, maybe they could start by banning big companies from outsourcing their call centres to third world countries.

The government needs to realise that the words “assimilate” and “integrate” can be highly offensive to people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Because assimilate means integrate into the dominant power and that dominant power is Anglo.

The entire parliament of Australia needs a lesson in multiculturalism, in unifying communities rather than tearing them apart. I’ll be proud to call myself Australian, to follow Australian values, when I see some values I’d like to follow, until then, I’ll stick to being myself.

SOURCE





The One Lesson of the Holocaust

Yom HaShoah comes and goes. A day for looking back at what has happened and a day for looking away from what will happen.
Millions of dollars have been spent building memorials to the victims of the Holocaust, even as Iran is spending its millions on building another kind of memorial to the Holocaust, in the form of nuclear technology that will be used to finish that piece of history that the Islamic terror state claims never took place.

Millions more are spent, by some of the same groups that claim an interest in Holocaust education, on bringing Muslim migrants to America and Europe to carry out the promise of an Islamic apocalypse in which, as the Hadith states, "The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him." That is what the Islamic Holocaust looks like. And it's underway.

A Jew is murdered in France. Another in Jerusalem. And another and another.

The Final Solution, with its immediate extermination of the Jews, has been replaced by the Two State Solution, an intermediate process in which the land on which Jews can live in security is partitioned into smaller and smaller pieces.

The Lebensraum of Islam demands ever more breathing room. And fewer breathing Jews. Israel is carved up into smaller indefensible ghettos. The number of places where the world decides that Jews can be allowed to live, shrink. The rest become "settlers" who must be evicted for the sake of peace. Even if the place they're "settling" is Jerusalem. The oldest Jewish city on earth.

And this Two State Solution, this intermediate process, has the almost universal backing of the major Jewish organizations who are so very deeply concerned about the Holocaust. It has the backing of the diplomats and politicians who put out canned statements urging that we learn the lessons of the Holocaust. The only lesson they have learned though is that another Holocaust needs better marketing.

It is comparatively easy to build a memorial. You hire the architect, raise the money, buy the land and then cut the ribbon. It is a much harder thing to do something about the need for those memorials in the first place. That is what learning the lessons of the Holocaust is about.

It is easier to build another memorial than to look into your heart and ask why two generations later, the majority of the American Jewish community was still too cowardly to stand up to a liberal icon in the White House... when the lives of millions of Jews were on the line.

From FDR to Obama, American Jewish leaders had two opportunities to stand up to a liberal icon and save Jewish lives. No amount of memorials can disguise the fact that they learned nothing.

The reassurances from American Jewish leaders that Obama meant well, that he will not sell out Israel and that he cares sounded familiar. The American Jewish leaders of the 30's and 40's echoed the same sentiments. Even as the St. Louis was turned back and its passengers were sent to the gas chambers, even as every effort made to aid or save Jews from the Holocaust was frustrated and shut down with the active complicity of the liberal American Jewish leadership who were loyal to FDR.

The same people who let millions die went on to light candles and issue their hypocritical sanctimonious statements of mourning for the dead.  More candles have been lit. More memorials have been built. But the lessons of the Holocaust continue to go unlearned.

Regardless of which administration is in office, the Two State Solution and any support for the Islamic terrorists seeking to exterminate the Jews, as they have already exterminated many of the Christians in the region, must be fought. When we fail to do this, then whatever our politics are, we abandon our obligations to the dead and to the living.

The most important lesson of the Holocaust is that the details of how it happened don't really matter. Had Hitler not come to power, had Germany not turned National Socialist, the Holocaust would have happened anyway. Stalin had one planned too before his death. Had it not been Hitler or Stalin, it would have been someone else. It still might be.

The Holocaust did not happen because of intolerance or fascism, as most liberals would like you to believe. It happened for the same overriding reason that any person or group of people is murdered. Because the Jews lacked the means of defending themselves against it.

There have been two Jewish responses to the Holocaust, on the one hand promoting tolerance and assimilation and on the other hand the State of Israel. Tolerance has done nothing to prevent the hatred and murder of Jews. In many cases it has actually served to promote it.

Every Muslim attack in Europe and America can be laid at the door of tolerance. When a Jewish woman is thrown out of a window in Paris or a Rabbi is beaten in Brussels, the true perpetrator is "tolerance".

The State of Israel stands as the only meaningful response to the Holocaust. Rather than building stone memorials and going back to business as usual, the State of Israel is not only a living future for the Jewish people, it is a response to the fundamental lesson of the Holocaust. The Holocaust happened because it could happen to a people who couldn't defend themselves. The State of Israel with its armies and borders was the best physical defense against it happening again.

Today the two responses to the Holocaust are battling out to the death, Tolerance and Assimilation vs the State of Israel. And the State of Israel is getting the worst of it. The teachers of tolerance blame Israel for the failure of their own ideology, manifest in the rising hatred of Jews around the world. If Israel wouldn't exist, somehow Jews wouldn't be hated, their thesis goes. As if Anti-semitism had been discovered lying around in a dustbin sometime after 1948.

But it is tolerance meanwhile that is killing Israel. The left has pushed Israel to the wall, because it represents the inversion of their ideology, it represents the reality that the best hope of the persecuted is not in multiculturalism or in tolerance classes, but in taking responsibility for their own safety and survival. 

SOURCE





Merkel Will Pay Migrants Millions To Leave Germany

Chancellor Angela Merkel is setting aside €90m (£76m) in taxpayers’ money to create a fund which will pay migrants to withdraw their asylum applications and leave Germany voluntarily.
The handouts will form part of a 16-point plan to speed up the removal of rejected asylum seekers, after Tunisian migrant Anis Amri murdered a Polish lorry driver, hijacked his vehicle and drove it into a Christmas market in Berlin while awaiting deportation.

U.S. president Donald Trump told The Times that Merkel made a “catastrophic mistake” when she opened the doors to an unlimited number of migrants in 2015. Her vice-chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, later admitted that his superior had underestimated how difficult it would be to integrate migrants on such a grand scale, and that Germany had been plunged into a kulturkampf, or “cultural war”, as a result.

Germany rejected 170,000 asylum claims in 2016 but, according to the Mail, just 26,000 were repatriated. 55,000 more decided to leave voluntarily – apparently leaving 81,000 bogus applicants unaccounted for.

“We rely heavily on voluntary departures,” admitted Chancellor Merkel, who was announcing the package after falling behind the Social Democrats in polls for Germany’s upcoming elections.

Martin Schulz, the former President of the European Parliament who has been nominated as the Social Democrat challenger to Merkel, said he backed the proposals to speed up deportations.

Schulz has previously insisted that “the people who are arriving [in Europe] are refugees who have been threatened [and] we should welcome them” – a statement which is at odds with the Vice-President of the European Commission’s admission that at least 60 per cent are economic migrants.

As a leading figure in the European Union, Schulz was a strong supporter of the compulsory migrant quotas. These were forced through by the bloc despite strong opposition from central and eastern European member-states, which did not agree with Germany’s unilateral decision to throw open the borders.

Schulz hit out strongly at these countries in 2015, accusing them of “national egotism in its purest form”.

Polish interior minister Mariusz Blaszczak described at Schulz’s words as “an example of German arrogance”.

SOURCE





Palestinians Fume After UK Gov’t Rules Out Apology For Jewish Homeland Declaration

A Palestinian campaign to secure an official British apology for the 100-year-old Balfour Declaration has hit a wall, with Prime Minister Theresa May’s government saying it has no intention to do so.

“We are proud of our role in creating the State of Israel,” the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said in a written response to a petition calling on the government “to openly apologize to the Palestinian people for issuing the Balfour Declaration.”

In the context of the time, the FCO said, “establishing a homeland for the Jewish people in the land to which they had such strong historical and religious ties was the right and moral thing to do, particularly against the background of centuries of persecution.”

In response, Palestinian envoy in London Manuel Hassassian reaffirmed plans by Palestinian Authority (P.A.) chairman Mahmoud Abbas to sue Britain in an international court, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported Tuesday.

Hassassian said the legal action would only not go ahead if Britain backs down, apologizes to Palestinians for the 1917 declaration and recognizes the “state of Palestine.”

The lawsuit plan was first raised by P.A. delegates at an Arab League meeting in Mauritania last July.  At a Palestinian solidarity event at the U.N. four months later, Abbas letter by Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour voiced government support for the creation of a Jewish homeland in the area known as Palestine – then a part of the disintegrating Ottoman Empire, but soon to be entrusted as a mandate to Britain by the League of Nations.

In 1948, the State of Israel was declared in the area in line with a U.N. General Assembly resolution, and the British mandate ended. Palestinian Arab leaders rejected the U.N. “partition plan” and, rather than establish an Arab state alongside Israel, joined five Arab armies in what the head of the Arab League described as “a war of annihilation” against the Jewish state.

The British government has invited Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to attend events commemorating the Balfour Declaration centenary in November this year.

The “Balfour apology campaign” was spearheaded in Britain by the Palestinian Return Center (PRC), a U.N.-recognized non-governmental organization which denies Israeli accusations of having ties to the terrorist group Hamas.

As of Wednesday, its petition on a U.K. government website had obtained a little more than 13,500 signatures – far below the 100,000 required by a May 3 deadline for the House of Commons to debate the issue.

The PRC-led campaign reacted sharply to the government’s response to its petition, calling it “humiliating, arrogant and emphasizing the British government unconditional endorsement to the brutality of the Israeli governments against the Palestinian people.”

The campaign described as “alarming” the reference in the government statement to the Jews’ “strong historical and religious ties” to the land in question, saying that would “only fuel the conflict as it gives religious motivation for the creation of Israel.”

After the P.A. raised the Balfour issue at the Arab League meeting in Mauritania, then-Israeli foreign ministry director-general Dore Gold said the initiative “demonstrates yet again the continuing refusal of the Palestinian side to recognize the legitimate and indigenous connection of the Jewish people to their ancient homeland.”

Gold argued that the Balfour Declaration had not created the historical rights of the Jews to their homeland, but rather “recognized pre-existing rights that the Jewish people never conceded.”

Many Jews argue those rights go back thousands of years, pointing to profuse historical and archeological evidence – and to the Jewish and Christian scriptures.

Addressing the U.N. General Assembly last September, Netanyahu suggested that if the Palestinians plan to sue Britain over the Balfour Declaration they could go back even further in history.

“The Palestinians may just as well sue Iran for the Cyrus Declaration, which enabled the Jews to rebuild our Temple in Jerusalem 2,500 years ago,” he said. “Come to think of it, why not a Palestinian class action suit against Abraham for buying that plot of land in Hebron where the fathers and mothers of the Jewish people were buried 4,000 years ago?”

In similar vein, Jonathan Feldstein, an Israeli non-profit professional living in Efrat, south of Jerusalem, offered another proposal in response to Abbas’ initiative launch.

“If the Palestinians are preparing to sue the U.K.,” he commented in a Facebook post, “they may as well sue God, because it’s not the U.K. that gave us the Land.”

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, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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