Rhosty,

"....i.e., the Irish (Protestant and Catholic) left Northern Ireland and settled here, to leave the troubles behind them, not to bring them here!"

Where did you get that quaint idea?

Loud and Joe,

Thank you both for speaking out, for saying what needs to be said. For caring in an uncaring, insipid world.

Yes, a person may not like Islam, but personal abuse of Muslims is unacceptable. It is criminal. Doing it puts one on the same level as so many Muslims.

Moral standards are absolute. What is wrong for you is wrong for me and for everybody. Unlike so many here, I don't have to make excuses for my beliefs and standards. I don't pretend that attacking villages is bad when done by crusaders, Aussies or Americans but wonderful (or unimportant) when done by Mohammad.

Also, voicing one's opinion about an ideology that is brutal, oppressive and stupid is nor only a right but a duty.

Got to go.

This guy is in la-la land.

In 2011 House of Representatives Committee launched an 'Inquiry into Multiculturalism in Australia' .

It wasn't very widely publicised and as a consequence there were only 513 submissions.

The findings were released in March 2013 and basically hushed up, as the majority were found to be very negative.

During a panel discussion German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed with Prime Minister David Cameron when he said

“Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged Muslims and other immigrant groups to live separate lives, apart from each other and the mainstream. We have failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong.

Multiculturalism, was undertaken for the highest of motives. It was intended to create a more tolerant society, one in which everyone, regardless of colour, creed or culture, felt at home. Its effect has been precisely the opposite

Multiculturalism, entered into for the noblest of reasons, has suffered from the law of unintended consequences. By dissolving national identity it makes it impossible for groups to integrate because there is nothing to integrate into, and by failing to offer people pride in being British, it forces them to find sources of pride elsewhere."

This has been echoed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy

To Mr Ponder.

Human being have always formed self protecting communities of like minded people, usually among kinship groups with whom they feel safe. That is a cultural universal. It is part of our human DNA These communities have a general conception of what constitutes correct behaviour within their communities. The degree to which a united group will accept deviance from a cultural norm, or will accept the arrival of new citizens with differing concepts of behaviour, varies greatly from group to group.

My own group is the North European Protestant people, and our societies are probably the most tolerant that have ever existed in the entire history of the world. But no society is so tolerant that it welcomes it's own social extinction or the sublimation of it culture by incoming groups, who display total commitment to their own cultural or religious values, and total commitment to their own ethnicity. You are criticising my people for being extremely tolerant and not being absolutely tolerant. Even though we are beginning to understand that our unique and successful culture is going to be swamped unless we disregard our normal inclination to be tolerant and become intolerant. Many of us now have reason to fear our own racial and cultural extinction in our own counties, by high immigration numbers and high ethnic birth rates.

You say that your wife is Chinese and she does not understand racial hatred. China is one of the most racist countries in the world who's government refuses to concede that Chinese people evolved from Africans. Chinese law in China forbids Chinese women from having relationships with black men.
If millions of beer swilling, thong and singlet wearing, white Aussies were arriving as immigrants to China every year, and it those Aussies forms "Aussietowns" that looked more like Bondi Beach than a Chinese town, and if the platform at Shanghai Railway Station looked like a scene from Wynyard Station, and if the Aussies kept our national identities and refused to assimilate into Chinese values, do you think your wife might understand Chinese racism towards Australian immigrants in China?

LEGO

As with so many commenters here, you are arguing over the symptoms and not the cause. Until the Iranian Revolution (that overthrew a Western-appointed brutal dictator) and the 1980s war in Lebanon (caused mainly by the displacement of 100s of thousands of Palestinians refugees from Israel), Middle Eastern Muslim people barely registered in the refugee and migrant intakes of the Western countries. Most refugees and migrants to the West came from Europe, China, India and then later Malaya/Vietnam - all fleeing some kind of Western initiated war, totalitarian ideology or persecution.

No matter how many tribal and sectarian tensions existed in the Middle East, it rarely ever led to the decimated, destroyed, economically crippled failed states that pervade the area today. ME Muslim people mostly stayed in their homelands, amongst their tribal clans and ancient cultures. There was no reason for them to flee their countries, until the US-led Nato alliance started to target them for regime change, economic sanctions, destabilisation, proxy civil wars ('Arab springs') and 'intervention' (bombings and invasions).

You can't have your proverbial cake and eat it. If you are seriously alarmed at the tensions being created by Muslim infiltration of the West through refugee and migrant intake, then start learning a bit more about the self-appointed US mandate and Western proxy wars that are giving rise to so many Muslim refugees and migrants to the West.

Hi Killarney,

So you are suggesting that the US caused the increase in refugee numbers from Iran after the 1979 Islamist Reaction (let's not call it a 'Revolution') ? i.e. after an anti-US reactionary takeover ?

You're right about the Shah being a brutal dictator, like Assad I and II, Saddam, Mubarak, Gaddafi, etc. The Islamist alternative, over the past 36 years, has not been any better. Democracy doesn't get much of a look-in across the Middle East: as Bernard Lewis noted many times, the political alternatives in that vast region are a matter of either/or/or - secular dictatorship/or Islamist dictatorship/or [a very poor third] democracy.

So just to clarify: are you suggesting that the US caused all the brutality and tragedy across that vast region, the displacement of refugees from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, etc. ?

Like most people on the Left, in all its multitudinous variations, I also have a belief in the superhuman abilities of the US, its power to control all manner of forces in regions where it has limited overt influence. Deviously clever b@stards !

But is it just possible that there are other dynamics at play, within each of those countries, and across the region ? In other words, could it be that some of the problems are home-grown ? For example, that the vicious struggle between dictatorships and Islamists have little to do with the US ? Is that possible ?

Of course, it's far easier to blame outside forces for one's own problems. Look at that Hitler film-clip where he is beating his breast and weeping over the evil British and French who robbed Germany of its Empire. Real tears ! An unedited version show him just afterwards, smirking at his performance. A lesson there for any genuine Left who will take notice.

Yes, the US probably causes many problems, in its own interests, like other 'powers'. That's called geopolitics. But nations and regions may also have enough of their own issues and feuds and rivalries to keep them busy.

Joe