>Posted by Johnny Rotten, Saturday, 21 August 2010 12:44:22 PM
>we may eventually eradicate the dreaded screaming bigot.

I find this comment highly offensive. Talking about eradicating people because of their beliefs, is not only unacceptable, it is threatening behavior which is illegal.

@ ALGOREisRICH
You asked the question if it is possible to have a balanced rational debate about this issue.

I responded that I thought it was.

It is equally clear from subsequent posts that any attempt at a rational debate gets drowned by the myths fueled by fear.

What we haven't learned from post war cultural diversity is that superficial differences of skin colour and cultural practices are no obstacles to living together.

We have failed to understand that cultural diversity is in effect a strength - culture is essentially a survival mechanism; it is a tool that people use to respond to the particular challenges posed by their unique environment.

The strength of cultural diversity has been that we have used these various unique insights to develop a more complex understanding of how we as a humanity can solve the problems of living on this planet.

We have also failed to understand that we cannot wind the clock back and pretend that we are not living in a global society.

Basically if we fail to understand that the world is not about us and them but that there is just us - a global mass of humanity facing increasingly complex challenges, a global mass of humanity that either cooperates regardless of race colour or creed or, if that rapprochement cannot be achieved is doomed to collapse.

If recent posts reflect human sentiment globally then we are facing collapse.

Well stated Baygon

"Basically if we fail to understand that the world is not about us and them but that there is just us - a global mass of humanity facing increasingly complex challenges, a global mass of humanity that either cooperates regardless of race colour or creed or, if that rapprochement cannot be achieved is doomed to collapse."

I find white supremacist comments like "Tell me Johnny, ARE YOU PRO WHITE OR PRO WHITE GENOCIDE?" - very threatening, a racial 'my way or the highway'.

I am neither, I am in favor of dealing with the reality that the world has many different shades of people - not different races, or we would not be able to interbreed.

I also find taking a single line out of my posts and placing it completely out of context highly threatening as well - an attempt to silence my comments. Obviously, if more people mix their genes there will be less very dark skins and may be less very white skins - big deal. Skin colour is the most superficial of differences between people and to use it as a divisive tool is nothing more than an example of bigotry at work.

Scream away JoM and DS - your views are anachronistic and self-defeating.

While I think that Andrew Jakubowicz is drawing a rather long bow in linking sustainability with multicuralism, his point that the current population debate is likely to alienate many immigrants is quite valid. We can see why in some of the deranged responses to his article.

My view is closest to that expressed by BAYGON in the first post of the thread. Surely we can have a discussion about sustainable population which includes immigration, but which doesn't merely serve as a platform for the racist and xenophobic contingent?

@CJ In other articles Andrew Jakubowicz links immigration, population and the Holocaust, he must have a cupboard full of bows that are stretched beyond breaking point.

@ Johhny Rotten.
You genocidal monster!How could you say such things in public!
Follow me if you can.
When White looking people just like you arrived on this continent they said "Oh well, there's no such thing as Aboriginal culture, they don't seem to have a country as such,in fact let's just bring millions of non Aboriginals here to "assimilate with them"
I mean the White looking people who were just like you thought that the Aboriginals were dying out anyway, white not just mix them all up with the the "scum" Whites and breed them out of existence?.
Then when Aboriginal men DARED to get angry about the destruction of their race and started screaming about your evil you shot,imprisoned and exiled them. Death to the Screaming Tribesmen!
Now White looking people JUST LIKE YOU are saying, "Wait a minute, all these "Scum" Whites think it's their country now! That won't do!"
"Let's bring in millions of non Whites to interbreed with the "Racist Scum" and wipe them out"
After all there are no White countries are there Johnny?
There's no White culture?
White people are dying out, not having babies so let's just push them over the edge, get them out of the way then everything will be right in the world"

You ought to be ashamed of yourself.

JoM

You don't know anything about me - let alone my skin colour. So give your white supremacist clap-trap a rest will ya?

We live in a multi-cultural world, get over it. I understand you can't leave, space flight not being as advanced as we'd like yet, so learn to GET ALONG WITH PEOPLE - its not hard, you can do it, man. Deep breath and say, "I will treat people as I would like to be treated myself - with respect".

Now quit trying to create arguments with me that just don't exist.