The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
The Forum - On Line Opinion's article discussion area



Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Main Articles General

Sign In      Register

The Forum > Article Comments > An open letter from a reluctant refugee > Comments

An open letter from a reluctant refugee : Comments

By Thu-Trang Tran, published 29/7/2014

I am a refugee. I don't speak of it freely.The word has not sat well with me, except when I was a young girl in Vietnam.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. 6
  8. All
Thank you for your story and your insights.

If you look at history, similar difficulties in being accepted can be faced by any group, regardless of ethnicity.
Posted by Wolly B, Tuesday, 29 July 2014 8:32:35 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Tran,

<<In Vietnam, our family were 'nguoi vuot bien', literally, person exceeding boundary>>

We have 'nguoi vuot bien' in Oz too. They are usually outed under Section 18 of the Racial Discrimination Act (or its allied codes ). You might have observed a girl younger than you who was made a 'nguoi vuot bien' because she used ape in reference to a football player!
Posted by SPQR, Tuesday, 29 July 2014 9:19:47 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Thank you for writing.
Since the opportunistic abandonment of bipartisanship policy on boat people in 2001 we have embarked on a political brinkmanship of clamouring over whose Party is better at cruelling the boat people off our shores.
As a consequence the boat people have been demonised, demonised,and demonised to convince the voters that our gladiatorial leaders are doing the noble thing on our behalf.
Of late both sides have resorted to the convenient prop of "saving people from drowning at sea"! (by keeping those who do make it to land in hell holes bought in third world countries.) Such hypocrisy.
I await the rise of a movement to force our political bull elephants to get rid of the bile in their fermenting bellies, and start to see boat people as people and not convenient scapegoats for the altar of winning elections. We did enough of that in the 19th century with the feckless Chinese who came here for gold but got marooned, too poor and too much loss of face to return to their ancestral hearth.
Posted by Chek, Tuesday, 29 July 2014 9:41:15 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Be thankful you were labelled "refugee".

You could have been labelled "criminal".
As the Vietnamese government apparently understands, it is *illegal* to either leave or enter a country without appropriate authorisation.

"We had to".

Why didn't they "have to" stay and sabotage the new regime?

Your family could have been labelled "resistance members", "freedom fighters", "guerrilla warriors" or "folk heroes".

Instead of "cowards".
The same goes for every "boat person" today.
Posted by Shockadelic, Tuesday, 29 July 2014 11:22:18 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Thanks to the author for proving that a "refugee" who is actually a senior strategy manager in the Victorian Government, completing her PhD, can write in English, now a first language.

Very poetic.
Posted by plantagenet, Tuesday, 29 July 2014 1:02:20 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Thu-Trang Tran is a refugee. So am I. Why has she written this piece? Apparently because she thinks our government is ‘ruthless’. Let’s have a look at what Australia’s refugee policy actually is. Then we might get a clue as to whether it is in itself ruthless, or is just being implemented ruthlessly.

The immigration website says: “Australia's Humanitarian Programme is an important part of our contribution to the international protection of refugees. It is designed to ensure that Australia can respond effectively to global humanitarian situations and that support services are available to meet the specific needs of these entrants.” Hardly ruthless but otherwise not a great deal of help in judging how we are going. Most notable is the total absence of a guiding purpose for the humanitarian programme. That would be a good starting point.

Let me propose such a guiding purpose: "Australia’s humanitarian refugee program should offer refuge to those in greatest need." Surely that’s not ruthless but it definitely is a lofty ideal, difficult to put to practice. Could it be implemented without tough, even ruthless, rules, assessments and responses? I don’t think so, and that’s the root of Australia’s political problem.

Thu-Trang Tran’s story is moving. There are millions of humans with equally or more touching stories. We cannot help them all. There has to be a way, imperfect as it may be, of selecting those whom we do help. It will inevitably be tough on some. Could it work if there was a large influx of boat arrivals? Again, I don’t think so. That’s why we face a paradox; a truly humanitarian refugee policy must first stop the boats.

On a personal matter, would my family have been offered refuge in Australia under today’s ‘ruthless’ policies? Probably. They faced a 98% chance of dying if they stayed. I reckon that qualifies
Posted by Tombee, Tuesday, 29 July 2014 1:06:50 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
No one WANTS to leave their homeland. Their place of birth. Their heritage. No one WANTS their country to wracked by war and chaos.

The best way to stop refugees is to stop invading and blowing up their countries.

FIGHT WAR NOT WARS!
Posted by mikk, Tuesday, 29 July 2014 1:18:39 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Mikk

<<No one WANTS to leave their homeland. Their place of birth. Their heritage...>>

You are surely delusional MIKK.

If you went any south Asian location, you could recruit hundreds of thousands of wannabe newOzzies within hours
Posted by SPQR, Tuesday, 29 July 2014 2:00:17 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
The article’s author claims she often sensed a conflict of interest at work regarding refugee policy since she herself was one. Yet did that fear existed in the real social world [other people’s minds] or just in her own head.

She says due to this fear she often stayed neutral or even away from any possible conflicts. I would now say after reading her piece . . . . . your initial gut instinct to stay silent was the truest and most authentic coarse of action.

But instead of getting over her over-convuluted sense of thinking her entire being is composed of those elusive ‘refugee particles’ making her existence a rotational of the great migrant [i.e. non-western] axis of Being . . . . this person or ‘refugee’ [as she calls it] now thinks she should have always and forever been fully involved in the trenches of all things non-white, non-western and ethnic.

From her tone of obvious one-sided perspective on the issues of refugee policy and multiculturalism, I am again dismayed and disappointed to be eternally cursed with never finding even ONE person of refugee or migrant [non-white but] background who actually comprehends and recognises the real and whole situation, rather than the small and self-centred pocket universe created by western leftist twits which is the coloured person realm of semi-beings [semi to leftists, not to me. I think all people are worth equal in existential senses].

What many like this “refugee” as she calls herself forget is that none of the nations and cultures and ethnic identities she nor other refugee and immigrants come from . . . . have EVER came to even thinking of the notion to have their own nation transformed over decades into one where her host group becomes less than half the populace with rest being composed of hundreds of different peoples/cultures from all over globe, and where the laws and customs of that host people will also be greatly altered to take focus away from their own tribe and disperse it amongst ALL peoples now equal citizens under their system.
Posted by Matthew S, Tuesday, 29 July 2014 2:32:34 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Dear Tombee,

<<We cannot help them all.>>

Of course we cannot and nobody is expecting it, but what Australia does instead is to physically stop them.

- Let there be no help, but then let there be no hindrance either. The idea as if certain people own a whole continent (just because centuries ago their ancestors had better gun-ships) and have a right to kick everyone else out of it, is sickening.
Posted by Yuyutsu, Tuesday, 29 July 2014 2:58:19 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Until a “refugee” can –

come to be open and honest and recognize not just what they perceive to be bad things happening to them and refugees all . . . and can also admit and know that the host people and culture who had their actual laws and common notions revolutionised to accept massive numbers of refugees and imigrants from all over the world and continuing from 70s to present . . . . . and that as the FIRST and ONLY peoples, culture and nation in history to ever make such good willed changes . . . they might have genuine grievances about the changes and maybe about some of the peoples and practices they have adopted to be co-citizens which any decent honest person refugee or not should have reason enough to understand.

. . . then we will only anger and frustration usually poorly expressed and understood by no-one anywhere from some of those host peoples who may have been adversely affected by the massive changes.

This author was a Vietnamese refugee who had her entire life impossibly improved via the generosity in moral nature and in actual resources which the Australian system but mostly its common people but she still complains. Why?

Why is the mind structure of those like this author so fragile and so unsure of its grounding that ANY comment or remark which depicts some person of refugee or ethnic status as being wrong in some matter or even bad as an individual . . . will shock her back into the shell of small mindedness and defensive posturing? That is just because some white person claims that 7 Indians who came on boat claiming to be refugees were in that indivual white person’s opinion . . . . not genuine but maybe just advantageous?

I aks this – DOES THERE EXIST ANY UNIVERSE in which ANY ethnic person can be bad or criminal or corrupt and can this apply to a refugee? Further, if so does this scenario ALLOW for a white person to be the one who points it out?
Posted by Matthew S, Tuesday, 29 July 2014 3:06:03 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
This is exactly what is wrong with our refugee policies.

Here we have someone who has been allowed into our country, supported no doubt by our welfare for a considerable time.

She has then had an expensive education, most of it paid for by the parents of Oz born prospective student she prevented from gaining a place, & is still bitching.

Even worse she is a policy adviser, when her life experience means she comes from an entirely different perspective from those with long roots in this country. I can not believe her advice would be from the perspective of the majority in my community.

I guess anyone doing a PhD at the university of Melbourne would not have a perspective anything like "real" Ozzies, but a this refugee would not even know anything about how we live.

No wonder we get such hopeless policies from leftie governments.
Posted by Hasbeen, Tuesday, 29 July 2014 3:39:47 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
I wonder what people think of the Green’s Sarah Hanson’s strong remarks about the Indian Government being like the terrorist group ISIS?

Is this racist? What if the Indian populace take offense at some white privelleged women calling the government and leaders they all democratically elected to be their representatives, filthy names and accusing them of being immoral, corrupt and murders of the persecuted who flee their grip?
What if Indians in Australia started to openly express they are offended and they feel Sarah Hanson’s comments are racist and bigoted? Would the leftists maybe at that stage still not see through the haze they mostly manufactured to deal with their own class’s guilt from massive colonial crimes their direct forefathers committed?

Also – does the average Sarah Hanson leftwit comprehend that such claims are very similar to those that many normal white Australians may have made about third world cultures and systems as well as about those leaderships in our now mix of tribes that may parallel the same ones overseas like the Indian leadership the Greens despise and believe corrupt and criminal, perhaps even genocidal.
Posted by Matthew S, Tuesday, 29 July 2014 6:57:44 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
mikk "No one WANTS their country wracked by war and chaos."

And presumably you support our massive pancultural immigration program?

Social chaos and its inevitable consequence, war, will come to this land too, thanks to such utopian nonsense.

I don't want to leave Australia either.
But "Australia" is leaving me.
It's vanishing before my eyes.

Yuyutsu "The idea as if certain people own a whole continent (just because centuries ago their ancestors had better gun-ships)"

Why does anyone own anything?
Because they can defend their property, either by themselves, or through a proxy (courts/armies/etc.)

Groups of people, not just individuals, own things or are entitled to them because of ancestry.
Otherwise you couldn't inherit your great aunt's jewelery.

Such a notion of collective ownership (especially by ancestry) exists in all cultures and eras.
It is a universal human concept.

"a right to kick everyone else out of it"

Keeping people out is not kicking them out.
They're already out.
They were never in.

Matthew S "Why is the mind structure of those like this author so fragile and so unsure of its grounding"

Because lurking somewhere in their unconscious is a little smirking monster whispering "You don't belong here. These are not your people".

He will never shut up, their entire life.
Stressful, no?
Posted by Shockadelic, Tuesday, 29 July 2014 7:04:46 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Hi Matthew

At first I thought Ms Sarah Hanson-Young - that nice Green lady with the lovely, lovely, Eyes http://sphotos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-xap1/t1.0-9/p526x296/10927_145655865605178_8458557958425717917_n.jpg - must have been talking about Sri Lanka.

But no, that unimpeachable source, The Australian, reveals http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/green-sarah-hansonyoung-slammed-for-slur-on-india/story-fn9hm1gu-1227004879747 :

"AUSTRALIA’s Indian business community has slammed Sarah Hanson-Young, saying it is “completely inappropriate” for the Greens senator to trash India’s reputation and compare it to terrorists because for decades it has offered refugees a haven."

I think the only recourse is an erotic spanking - if Sarah (of the lovely eyes) asks my very, very, nicely.

Cheers
Posted by plantagenet, Tuesday, 29 July 2014 7:40:20 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Pete,

<<I think the only recourse is an erotic spanking - if Sarah (of the lovely eyes) asks my very, very, nicely>>

LOL

When Jacqui Lambie got castigated for being too graphic about her preferences in a recent radio interview. I did a little thought experiment as to how people like Sarah or Christine (if they were being as equally upfront) might have handled the situation...quite entertaining, but I couldn't print it on OLO
Posted by SPQR, Tuesday, 29 July 2014 8:08:42 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Dear Dear Hasbeen, you are such a sad person with such a weird and twisted point of view. May I suggest you get some therapy? Here is a great refugee story; a young woman coming to Australia and making good. And by the way her taxes probably pay your pension
Posted by fancynancy, Wednesday, 30 July 2014 9:18:59 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
There is absolutely nothing stopping Thu-Trang Tran from giving 90% of her income towards helping those less fortunate than herself on this plantet. The country that has given her such a good life also gives her the opportunity to do so and I would be the first to admire her for it. To demonise Abbott or our Government while cashing in on the spoils is gross hyprocrisy. Somehow Thu-Trang Tran seems to have adopted the leftist mentality that it is great to spend tax payers money as along as they can still be on the public purse.
Posted by runner, Wednesday, 30 July 2014 10:08:01 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Come on now fancynancy, it is the taxpayer, my kids, who pay this ladies salary, so it is they who pay any tax that is taken from that salary.

Bureaucrats don't pay tax, they just go through a pretend game, so real taxpayers don't get upset quiet enough to start demanding those bureaucrats are paid what they are worth.
Posted by Hasbeen, Wednesday, 30 July 2014 12:33:17 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Aren't some comments revealing? Demonstrate a complete lack of any awareness, not to mention experience-their own or other's, of courage. The self satisfaction says it all. Combined with a complete lack of ability to walk even a meter in someone else's shoes makes for an angry bitter human. Some of you need get out of your comfort zone and have some conversations with people other than those who you love to feel all self righteously indignant with.
Still, amazing an article like this is posted on this site and hail to the author for wanting to do it.
Posted by yvonne, Friday, 1 August 2014 10:24:13 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
yvonne "Aren't some comments revealing?"

Yes, and yours reveals you have nothing to offer.

"a complete lack of any awareness, not to mention experience-their own or other's, of courage."

It doesn't take courage to run away.
It takes cowardice.

Get out of *your* comfort zone, yvonne.
Have a conversation with someone other than your smug leftie pals and their cookie cutter "correct" opinions.
Posted by Shockadelic, Friday, 1 August 2014 10:46:06 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
@Yvonne

<< Some of you need get out of your comfort zone and have some conversations with people other than those who you love to feel all self righteously indignant with.

ROFLMAO

The most polished exponents of "self righteous indignation" I have seen on OLO are in the open-borders/we-owe-the-world camp.

Actually, the whole article,"An open letter from a reluctant refugee" --when viewed from a distance --is a sneaky bit of self righteous indignation.
Posted by SPQR, Friday, 1 August 2014 10:50:48 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Yvonne, been there done that love.

I spent years in the Pacific islands. Some of my friends are so black that they look almost dark blue. So what I'm colour blind when it comes to people. That doesn't stop me seeing a rip off of our youth.

You know, those friends never wanted someone else to pay their way.
Posted by Hasbeen, Friday, 1 August 2014 12:08:00 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Some of you who responded to my posting, are so emotional. Be a bit more rational and try not to flame up as if you've been prodded by a hot poker.

Shockadelic, do try to talk with some people who do not agree with everything you say without immediately classifying them and then dismissing everything they have to say. Isn't that what an open forum is all about? To test your beliefs and knowledge of different subjects? I know it might make your world not quite as certain and as neatly coloured in black and white as it is right now, but it does make it so much more interesting.

Hasbeen, you've been one bitter one for all the years you've been posting on this forum. Good for you, knowing people who are so black, they are almost blue. I'm not altogether sure what value that bit of info has, but I'm sure it does in your world view.

SPQR has always been really easy to ignore. You're not even trying. ROFLMAO? You're one cool with it dude....; Use LOL a lot too?
Posted by yvonne, Friday, 1 August 2014 3:56:47 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
yvonne, I have been *trying* to talk to people like you for years.

You (plural) are not interested in an honest debate about anything.
Why should you debate? You already have all the answers.

"dismissing everything they have to say."

You didn't have anything to say.

You didn't "disagree" with me, you just insulted me.
You made no actual contribution to the discussion.

"it might make your world not quite as certain and as neatly coloured in black and white"

How typically presumptuous of you to presume I'm your invented boogeyman: the cookie cutter conservative/fascist orthodoxist.

My world is already plenty "interesting" and overflowing with uncertainty, ambiguity and complexity.

I am a gay, agnostic but believe in paranormal, fortean, absurdist/surrealist, culturally eclectic, anti-abortion, pro-voluntary euthanasia, pro-drug decriminalisation non-user, gun-neutral, non-smoking pro-smoker, anti-seatbelt/helmet, pro-capital punishment but minimalist law, moderate ethnic nationalist, anti-fascist/communist, pro-direct democracy, classical liberal, single taxer, who loves strong women but can't stand feminists.

So no honey, NOBODY "agrees with everything" I say.

You're more likely to have the Manichean black and white perspective and the cloned groupthink friends.

Diversity good (no matter how destabilising), Kin-bias bad (if you're White, but good if you're a Coloured/alien minority).

Now if you'd care to actually *share* an opinion, I'd love to "debate" with you (i.e. whistle in the wind).
Posted by Shockadelic, Friday, 1 August 2014 5:57:49 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
"I am a gay, agnostic but believe in paranormal, fortean, absurdist/surrealist, culturally eclectic, anti-abortion, pro-voluntary euthanasia, pro-drug decriminalisation non-user, gun-neutral, non-smoking pro-smoker, anti-seatbelt/helmet, pro-capital punishment but minimalist law, moderate ethnic nationalist, anti-fascist/communist, pro-direct democracy, classical liberal, single taxer, who loves strong women but can't stand feminists."

Thank you Shockadelic. I haven't laughed so hard in a long time. You one interesting full of contradictions honeybun you.

I am clearly much, much older than you and therefore feel quite comfortable in my skin without needing anybody else to give me a label or to require outside validation of any labels I might give myself. Gender, sexual orientation, nationality, race and, arguably spiritual beliefs or the lack thereof, have nothing to do with a debate on what it means to be a refugee, a human being in a situation they find unacceptable. They are all man made constructs and should be chipped at until they disappear. At the basic level it is about a discussion on human beings, no different from you or me.

By the way, you state you are gay. Are you Okay with what is happening in Uganda? There are people risking their lives helping homosexual persons escape. People who face death simply because of sexual orientation, as does anybody who knowingly associates with a homosexual. But this being about non Caucasians it is of no concern to you right?

And just between you and me. By identifying as male and gay, what business do you have having an anti-abortion stance?
Posted by yvonne, Friday, 1 August 2014 7:59:12 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Yvonne you've got that completely wrong love.

I'm a very happy little vegemite, totally happy with my lot & my country.

That is why I will fight tooth & nail to stop fools like you stuffing up our country, so you can feel proud of your humanity. Try feeling for the existing population, rather than someone who wants to jump in mid stream, & grab a chunk what we have built, without having done anything for it.

I have reaped the rewards that I & my predecessors have sewn, & I am not about to let you your type give away my kids heritage to any blowins that want a chunk.

I don't give a damn what any refugee feels, not my problem. I am always disgusted with those who run away abandoning their fellows, wanting to grab someone elses good life.
Posted by Hasbeen, Friday, 1 August 2014 8:35:57 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Hasbeen, sweetie, your predecessors were also blowins escaping some hardship, grabbing chunks of what people who were here before had already built. Disgusting cowards who couldn't cut it where they were to make it a better place and ran away, in your very own words. They might have come very comfortably on a great big boat
Posted by yvonne, Friday, 1 August 2014 10:28:06 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
yvonne "Gender, sexual orientation, nationality, race and, arguably spiritual beliefs or the lack thereof, have nothing to do with a debate on what it means to be a refugee"

No, but they have everything to do with your presumption/accusation that I'm a homogenous "black and white" stereotype.

"They are all man made constructs and should be chipped at until they disappear."

I'm afraid not.

*Everything* in society is a human construct.
Including all those "rights" you no doubt demand.

You cannot live amongst humans without dealing with constructs, labels, definitions, categories *all the time*.

If you wish to live alone in a cave eating raw food, you can chip away every "construct" you want, sweetie.

"People who face death simply because of sexual orientation"

Actually, they faced life imprisonment.
And the law has now been overruled by the high court.

Extrajudicial violence by individuals would itself be a criminal offence.

Of course I'm not "okay" with this, but this kind of thing exists everywhere.

It is more prominent in more backward/primitive peoples.
Precisely why I don't want them migrating here.

"By identifying as male and gay, what business do you have having an anti-abortion stance?"

I'm a human being.
So are foetuses.

I can have a stance on anything affecting humans.

Gay men can father children, you know.

I'm not a cow or giraffe.
Can I have an opinion on abattoirs, circuses and zoos?

Any more inane comments?
Posted by Shockadelic, Saturday, 2 August 2014 7:54:52 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Shockadelic, you have very fixed opinions. I've learned not to be as sure as you are as I got older. Working for many years in Intensive Care Units coming across many different people from many backgrounds, not to mention my family's experiences, have exposed me to the full gamut, up close, to all of humanity's courage and fears. Cowardice? I can't judge.
Both my parents and many family have been Prisoners of War, both as soldiers and as civilians. I have 2 sons currently serving in the ADF. All my life I've been surrounded by people who have had unimaginable experiences. Not to mention my own journey.

I'm envious of your certainties.

If you are a reader, read "Silence" by Shusako Endo. He's a Japanese Catholic author, which isn't really the point in this story. It's a great book to open any amount of discussion. The main issue is remaining true to one's beliefs. Granted, the particular beliefs/values in this book I personally wouldn't suffer a moment of inconvenience for, but are there any I have I would?
Posted by yvonne, Sunday, 3 August 2014 8:21:04 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
yvonne "The main issue is remaining true to one's beliefs."

But not if you're certain about them?

I don't have "certainties".

It is precisely because of DOUBT that I question the leftist agenda.
They are the reigning political paradigm.
They are the Manichean propagandists of today.

It is only because of doubt and uncertainty that I have the mental freedom to question that "authority".

If I wanted certainty, I'd be blissfully chanting along with the utopian placard-wavers.

So you had a laugh at my "contradictions" (what were they exactly)?

I'm sure if you actually bothered to *voice* your opinions, I'd have a good chuckle too.

It seems you've decided not to have any opinions.
If so, why are you here on a political discussion forum?
Posted by Shockadelic, Monday, 4 August 2014 10:26:13 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Look ALL –

If u find yourself in the midst of some smoke and loud high pitched audio waves of party like madness, ask yourself this – IS THERE ANY POSSIBLE UNIVERSE OR TIMELINE IN WHICH YOU CAN EVEN BEGIN TO GIVE BIRTH TO THE NOTION THAT – YOU MIGHT ACTUALLY BE EXPLAINING TO SOME NON-WHITE PERSON THAT THEY MAY BE SOMEHOW BAD OR IMMORAL OR CRIMINAL OR [GOD FORBID IT] . . . RACIST?

If you see in those visions scenes where u easily scorn and burn the souls of ANY white person who seems immoral or dumb or backward or superstitious or RACIST . . . . . BUT . . . u NEVER envision a possibility where u do same to some non-white or non-Anglo Being –
\ - jump up and down, pinch your eyeball and smash your skull against a hard wall of steel. Then cry and go to the Head police/doctors.

TWIT

Welcome to your realisation of being a neophyte coward, bigot, selfish and racist self aggrandizing.

But guess what - u a mere ant like all creatures
Posted by Matthew S, Monday, 4 August 2014 2:36:06 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Matthew, someone at that loud, smoky party slipped something in your drink.
Just calm down, the hallucinations will subside.

We're mere ants, eh?
And how many types of ants are there?
Can ants from one nest just enter another and be accepted?

Your comment shows just how misanthropic the supposed lovers of all humanity (multiculturalists) really are.

YOU are the "hater".
Posted by Shockadelic, Monday, 4 August 2014 9:43:09 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
No way Yvonne, mine came out with the governor.

Could they have been guarding yours?
Posted by Hasbeen, Monday, 4 August 2014 10:33:47 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Shockadelic,

I gladly hate Nazis.

No I qualify that – I hate the fact that things are such that I must hate certain things.
However do not conflate my hatred of a racist and immoral act with my feelings for the individual[s] that is the source of the racism.
I NEVER hate a person as such but only any actions or behaviours they may exhibit that are worthy of hatred and condemnation. Please understand that I believe strongly that ALL people are of equal existential worth and value and therefore EVERY individual regardless of ill deed is essentially redeemable. Even Hitler I am afraid to say.

Everyone already knows this innately to be true since in our law [and most law] a criminal of any order is considered capable of improvement and that is why we call prisons “correctional centres”.

If someone actually believed there was some really bad person that was pure evil and not savalgible then you automatically are saying u think such a person is basically dead or not alive. That is because any creature alive and intelligent is potentially able to learn and grow, only the dead cannot.

That is why murder to punish a killer is seen by our laws to be mere revenge and not justice.
Do we hate a lion for killing a baby deer?

But I will forever as a decent loving person hate and feel anger at anything that hinders freedom and fairness for all things in time and space.
Posted by Matthew S, Sunday, 10 August 2014 2:25:55 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. 6
  8. All

About Us :: Search :: Discuss :: Feedback :: Legals :: Privacy