Wonderful idea Alice. Why don't you go back to the middle east, be the change you want to see & take all the other Muslim immigrants with you.

It would do wonders for our crime rate.

Having experienced what it is like to live in a peaceful, western, capitalist democracy, maybe you can teach the neanderthals, how to be good little communists?

While you are at it take all members of the Red/green/getup/labour coalition with you.

Wow formersnag, what a nice fellow you are! Take your tablets, crawl back under your rock, or do whatever else you need to do. Fancy lecturing others about being peaceful, or calling someone a neanderthal with an ugly attitude like yours.

The author comments: "Nations with strong civil societies can much better negotiate their rights against an imperial power, and make better use of their own natural resources for the common good."

Their own natural resources are already overstretched. It is a tough ask of the “Promised Land” to provide an adequate lifestyle for the 22 million people jostled together in and around it. More alarming, at present rate of population increase, the number will increase to 26 million by 2020. Neighbour Syria (22 million people and doubling in a generation or so) also has access to the river.
Not only a Jesus will be able to walk dry-footed across the Jordan River in the near future; and water is but one of the resources which are already scarce, and diminishing.
Israel, at present rate of increase, will double its population in one and a half generations; Jordan (presently of similar numbers) doubling in about one.

The place is one of warring tribes; Jewish, Christian, Islamic. With fundamentalists having an excess of power in each and all of them, the prospects there for the rise of strong civil societies in the face of scarce, and diminishing, resources are grim

Alice...(in wonderland).....

The Serbs and Croats and Bosnians allll got along great with their neighbours...until Bosnia wanted independance...*oops* we all know how that turned out...don't we.

OZLAN,

Yes, I know about Iran - I detest Jimi Carter because he decided that rather than help the Shah - who was brutal for sure - he'd stop funding him.

And what happened....Iran got worse leaders.

I used to be like you. No, don't take that as something negative, I mean it. I used to be anti-US, anti-western, that we were imperialists, and so on.

But after studying history and philosophy and politics (and law although that didn't help the same way, looking at the laws of such countries show you what sort of values they have, i.e. we have anti-discrimination laws, and they have things like (in Iran I mean) stoning for adultery based on male testimonies. Now....I do know that these countries are actually all signatories to the UN conventions on human rights, that is, the Saudi's, well, basically all non-western cultures. Point is, they sign it, yet ignore it. So yes, I know some laws on books don't mean much in the real world - I think Australia even has blasphemy laws still somewhere in the Crimes Act, which was written in 1900).

My main point is that I NOW understand why it is the US armed a tyrant like Saddam Hussein to the teeth in the 1980's, in his war with Iran.

Why should we meddle at all?

Because two reasons - don't believe it if you want but there is truth to the claim that the US & Britain are champions of human rights. Think about slavery....they stopped it themselves. They did not need to be forced to stop it like they forced the Spanish and Portugese (who were heaps worse. Incidentally, the Arabs were by far the worst, with about 80% of all slavery markets run by them - makes sense, they share a land bridge with Africa).

Second reason, open markets. West Germany opened markets after WWII, East Germany closed them. How many jumped from the west into the east over the wall? And also North and South Korea another good example.

JBSH,

I see your point about the anger, but people are angry.

It is hypocritical for a person who would have little or no rights in her tribal, racist homeland (or land of parents origin) to lecture the west - the only cultures who are liberal and tolerant - about how it should take MORE people from cultures ores that CLEARLY do not work.

What is wrong with saying that? What we have in the west, of individualism, of real choice, of being able to spurn the beliefs of your parents without being killed, of having a homosexual relationship, of criticising the government, is unique to the western world.

And the problem is we have invited all these people from cultures and religions that really have no time for liberalism or individuality, but only for group rights - that is, they only care about their own kind. We see it in Alice writing about middle-eastern issues. We saw it openly when Chinese-Australians living in Bennelong openly, and astonishingly without shame, admitted they were voting for Rudd BECAUSE he spoke Chinese.

Those like Alice, with her identity issues - it would be very difficult coming from any non-western culture to overcome one's tribalism - but then again, Hirsi Ali did it, so she should be able to as well - find it very hard to take the side of someone who looks different to herself.

There is a kinship with those who are of the same ethnicity. It's truly bizarre. I mean, I don't vote for a leader because they are Anglo, or from the same state as me. In the US, we had over 90% of blacks ADMIT they voted Obama because he was black. Here, we saw Muslims taking the side of Sheik Hilali after his 'cat meat' sermon, even though such comments were sickening.

Cultural genocide, nothing short of that will work for the illiberal hordes in the middle-east. We have led by example on human rights and they do not follow because they are so extremely tribal.

Liberalism cannot coexist with totalitarian cultural value systems.