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December 27, 2005
Signs of stress?
Over the last couple of weeks I have watched international news casts on the rising tensions in Sydney and other parts of Australia between various ethnic groups with some alarm. Not least because I know - indeed have "family" - people living in some of the areas which seem to be affected. At this distance it is sometimes a little difficult to get a handle on what is really going on, what underlies it, and what is being done about it. One news cast spoke of the police being given "special powers" to deal with riots. Given that they are armed and are generally pretty tough types (even for Australians) I would not have thought that they needed much more. But, as ever with politicians, now that they have "a situation" to deal with, they will undoubtedly meddle and make it worse.
The Australians - the original settler Australians, you know, the one's we Brit's shipped out there in the 18th Century - are a pretty tolerant lot. Their record on absorbing immigrants is, on the whole, pretty enviable, but there is now a situation where European immigrants are a minority - in fact the original "First Families" of Anglo-Saxon descent are now a minority in the country they built. This has been a deliberate policy decision by the politicians over there, to "encourage" Asian migration and discourage Westerners. As ever, when things get deliberately slewed in favour of one group or another, the outcome is resentment in whichever group considers itself to be disadvantaged. This is, in effect, what is fuelling tensions in Britain and the EU at the moment, as "positive discrimination" is encouraged by "targets" set by the faceless wonders who serve their political masters in capitals across the Western world.
As I understand it, the Australians have an additional problem, in that there are distinct tensions between Vietnamese immigrants and Cambodian immigrant communities. Add to this a large dosage of "Tong" involvement from the Hong Kong and other Chinese communities, a fully fledged Cambodian "mafia" and you have a recipe for "light blue touch paper and stand well back". In addition there seems to be a powerful group in Canberra whose guilt trip on "all white settlers are evil" and deprived the real Australians of their wealth, country and nation and you have a recipe for tensions being fanned into flame that could burn quicker than the legendary bushfires you get there.
Now, before I get accused of pontificating about the politics of a country I know only as a visitor and observer of the Australian lifestyle, let me make it clear that these are just my thoughts, assembled from observation and conversation over quite a period of time. It struck me rather forcefully that the malaise in "Liberal Western Politics" is not confined to any one country - the UK is a prime example of the sort of lunacy that is being forced on us all by well meaning ideologues who simply cannot accept that their burning desire to correct the "wrongs" of the past by meddling with the present and future, is not just compounding the problem, it is actively making it worse!
The last time I had the pleasure of visiting Australia I was amazed to discover that the politicians there have almost managed to create a new form of Apartheid for the Aboriginal population - who number some 300,000 in total out of a population of 17.5 million - by setting up a system which allows the Aboriginal population to "opt out" of anything they do not think fits with their culture. While I would never support the enforced separation of families and the policy of enforced adoption that was practiced there in the 1950's, I can see that the authorities were trying to bring the Aboriginal population into some sort of "mainstream" and to bring them into the 20th Century. It simply does not work to have two levels of civilisation occupying the same borders and my impression is that the Aboriginal "councils" have the power to stop major urban and industrial developments which are essential to power up the Australian econmy.
Coupled with that is the "positive" discrimination "immigration" policy, which has changed permanently the demographic profile of the population - as is happening in the UK - which is probably fuelling at least some of the tensions which have recently boiled over in Sydney. "Social Engineering" is one of the great evils of the 20th Century - it finds outlets in Hitler's "final solution", in "ethnic cleansing", in "apartheid", in "affirmative action" or "positive discrimination" - and all it achieves is to create a new set of disadvantaged players whose resentment boils over into violence against those they see as having been given an unfair advantage.
Above all, I hope that the Australians, one and all, new and old, can sort this out among themselves and at least make a start to working out a truly free and fair society, rather than one dreamed up by left-wing politicians for the sole purpose of entrenching left wing politics in power. That is the real threat to civilised society, not racial, ethnic or cultural differences, but the creeping imposition of left wing ideologues where they can distort the concepts of freedom and fairness to their hearts content without fear of ever being ejected from power.
Our society is under stress as never before - and it is largely due to the deliberate attempts to "engineer" it to create "fairness". You cannot force or legislate changes to attitudes or cultural differences, that road simply creates more anger and a hardening of attitudes. The only real soltuions in this are to create integrated societies where everyone has the right to succeed or fail on their own merits. No other society can work, certainly no society that tries to embrace cultures where bribes to officials to do their jobs can exist alongside one where bribing officials is not acceptable, is ever likely to succeed. That, unfortunately, si what has happened in many countries where the political masters have decreed "multi-cultural" societies are achievable. The result is that everyone finds themselves lumbered with the worst of all cultures - and conflict.
I am sure that time will bear this out, in the meantime, I hope and pray that the Australians can find a solution to their immediate problem and perhaps show "the rest of the West" how to manage this properly.
Posted by The Gray Monk at December 27, 2005 10:35 AM
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