You've got some bloody nerve Alex Kats, here we have yet another Jewish intellectual invoking the legend of the holy burning to try and shame White Australians, I'm sure those Jews who perished in WW2 would be thrilled to have such a eulogy.
Tens of thousands of White Australian "Racists" including my grandfather and great uncle fought the Germans, my people didn't turn their back on anyone, for better or worse my nation have always been willing to give their lives in defence of the of the weak and powerless.
You clearly don't see Australians as one people so why use the word "we" at all, you also express contempt for my nation so I suggest you desist from further commentary on our history and our affairs, after all, we're forbidden by law to cast any aspersion whatsoever upon your ethnic group aren't we?

Alex

I don’t have a family history of refugees like you, but I share your sadness that the generally tolerant and decent attitudes to migrants, and especially refugees, that I observed when I migrated here 25 years ago seem to be steadily giving way to callousness and, in some cases, outright bigotry. Of course there were always exceptions, but they are increasingly becoming the norm.

I think your article is a bit passive, though. Rather than hoping for change, we should perhaps be agitating for it (of course, your article is a contribution).

Each and every day is a good day for quitting patriotism. Just grow up and leave such infantile bad habits behind - why then wait for excuses?

Great article Alex.

On what the government is doing about people smugglers one hopes the government is being very active but not telling us or the people smugglers so as to get the jump on the people smugglers.

A particular problem is endemic corruption with lack of cooperation amongst officials of the countries where refugees come from and where they transit through - particularly Indonesia.

For some reason Indonesian customs, police and the Indonesian Navy appear to allow people smuggler boats to leave Indonesian shores - about three times a week.

Why are the Indonesians so cooperative to the people smugglers?

Is it people smugglers bribing Indonesian officials including Indonesia patrol boat crews and up the chain to Indonesian Admirals?

Or don't the Indonesians have any control - even of the majority of people smuggling boats leaving the main island of Java?

"Is it time to stop being patriotic?
A year later, after 9/11 and the political exploitation of the Tampa incident, xenophobia had crept into our happy society, and people started to be racially and offensively profiled."

Well Mr Kats:

The answer to the question is "No". Nobody in their right mind would wish to erode the sense of nationhood that keeps our country one of the most stable peaceful and tolerant in the world ...

In regard to "people being racially and offensively profiled", (a dramatic exaggeration) this is only in response to actions and attitudes of people themselves who, as a demographic, have drawn attention to their group - often 'cultural' rather than 'racial' through illegal actions, suspicious associations and cultural attitudes that don't fit in with Australian values.

It's like this - If you as an individual, regardless of race, sex, religion, dress sense etc are above reproach you have nothing to worry about.

As for the 'asylum seekers' and their frequent destructive riotous behaviour (not to mention the incidents which occur between the different 'racial' or 'cultural' groups within the detention centres because many of those we are supposed to tolerate are none too tolerant themselves) I and most of the rest of the country resent the assertion this is "examples of asylum seekers drawing attention to their plight". Do we see people in tents in African wastelands burning their shelters and turning on the people providing just enough for survival to "draw attention to their plight"? No! And they are real refugees ... So lets cut the BS and just call it for what it is - the work of criminals we DON'T WANT HERE!

Dear Divine_msn,

<<Nobody in their right mind would wish to erode the sense of nationhood that keeps our country one of the most stable peaceful and tolerant in the world ...>>

There's a hidden assumption here as if the latter is a result of the former - what makes you think so?

As I see it, the latter (our country one of the most stable peaceful and tolerant in the world) is so DESPITE the former (sense of nationhood), not because of it!

Yuyutsu,
That's not true, my nation was founded on Liberal and social democratic lines, my people still made up 98% of the population when the decision to open admission to other races was made on their behalf, my nation has consistently voted for multiculturalism ever since it's inception.
Mr Kats has deliberately hit below the belt with his references to the treatment of Jews in his plea for mercy for illegal immigrants, my nation has a clear conscience on the matter and a proud record of standing up to totalitarian regimes.
Mr Kats is also talking up "Racism" while ignoring Race, is he seriously putting high IQ Jews on a par with low IQ Afghans and Sri Lankans? If he's any sort of intellectual he'd know that his people succeed in European societies because of their unique biological traits, traits which are absent in South West Asians and Africans.
There will never be a Tamil or Hazara Frank Lowy or Sidney Myer, if you want that calibre of person then look to Israel and the U.S for migrants.

So how many boatloads of Afghans, Iraqi's, Bangladeshis and Tamils is Israel welcoming at the moment, Alex Kats? It is really funny that so many prominent Jews endorse asylum seekers and multiculturalism in every western country, yet they avert their eyes to the fact that Israel only takes Jewish "asylum seekers" and that the Israelis insists that Israel must remain a Jewish state.

Racial/religious preferences in immigration is alright for Jews, but not for Goys? Defending the primacy of Jewish culture is alright for Jews, but not for Australians?

I am sure that a lot of Jews are smart enough to know that the importation of Muslims into western countries has made these societies a lot more unsafe for Jews. Why can't you figure it out? They must be so embarrassed that a Jew like you would have the presumption to wag your fingers at the country that gave your family asylum, and which you now say that you are "ashamed" of. One gets the impression that a lot of anti Semitism is created by Jews like you who have the audacity to tell the people who gave your family succour that we should not be patriotic and care for our own.

I have always admired the Jewish social cohesion and the fact that your people stick up for each other. But when Jews attack their host populations for doing exactly what Jews are renowned for doing for each other, we start to wonder who's side you are on?

When the Jewish state starts taking immigrants from anywhere then Jews can start preaching morality to my people. My apologies to any Jew who thinks that Alex is a drop kick who is an embarrassment to Australian Jews.

...Well LEGO, I like that idea; Why doesn't Israel take more refo's from the worlds' largest Jewish diaspora, China. That may take the pressure off Australia, as the invasion by the "Yellow Peril" from the North intensifies...

If I could have my way I would open the doors to people who are willing to leave their religious beliefs behind. A society that is not plagued by the nonsense of religion could be the best society imaginable.
And no it is not the time to stop being patriotic. This is a time when patriotism needs to be made a priority. The lack of patriotism is what got us into the situation we're in now.

Well LEGO, I was trying to be diplomatic about it but there you go, yes it is an insufferable, hypocritical and dare I say it "racist" article.
Sadly Alex Kats seems to have taken on a very distorted view of the world but one that's all too common in this country at the moment, it's appalling to think that he has worked as a bureaucrat.
It just doesn't fly anymore, turn things around and you get this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKDeyuM0-Og

"At the time my parents and their relatives arrived here, the intake was much greater, whilst the population, infrastructure and economy were much smaller."

Yes, there was still room to move, to grow.
There was a manufacturing industry that could use unskilled workers.

Australia was always "xenophobic", it was simply more jocular before.
It's becoming more serious now, because the demographic threat has become more serious.

In the 1940s, Australian-born Australians were 90% of the population, and the rest were mostly British/European.
We had a sense of security, identity and continuity.
We could afford to be a little loose.

Now Australian-born Australians are about 60%, and would be even less in the major cities.

In the 1940s, every 10th person you saw in Sydney might look or sound "foreign".
Now its every *second* person.

And you wonder why the change in mood?

"Policies would also need to make sense and be realistic."

Does that include the policy that says people from 6000 different cultures can all live in peace together in the same city?

"Genuine" Third World refugees don't have $10,000 cash to pay people smugglers.
They also don't bypass a dozen or more countries and all the embassies they contain to try setting foot on Australian soil.

These people don't *want* to be "rescued".
They want to slip unseen into their ethnic city ghettos, living and working there illegally and invisibly.

The people detained "months and years" are those who keep appealing decisions already made within weeks of arrival.

It is time to stop being "utopian".

Hi Jay. I love reading your posts.

I should have made a better job of my post, but I got so damned angry at the blatant moralising hypocrisy of Alex Kats, that I snatched up my keyboard and started banging away.

If there is one race on Earth who should know the value of seizing a territory to protect their own people, their own culture and their sense of national identity, it is the Jews. I certainly do not blame the Jews for creating a Jewish state in what was once their home territory anyway, and doing to the Muslims what the Muslims have been doing to them for the last 1300 years.

If the Jews want to create a Jewish state run by Jews who's first priority is protecting Jews and protecting Jewish culture, then good luck to them. But it sticks in my craw when a Jew in Australia tells Australians that we should not do the same thing as the Jews do in Israel. There seems to be some sort of strange logic from tertiary educated people, that every culture on earth must be protected, except that of European whites.

I do believe that one good reason for anti Semitism is because of the attitudes of Jews like Alex Kats. There has always been a presumption that Jews are only concerned for the welfare of Jews, and they will advocate any policy which benefits their own people. That is OK in Israel, but if you are a Jew and you live anywhere else, it means that your primary loyalty is to your own race and religion. So you can't complain if your host population suspects you of disloyalty and treats you with suspicion and mistrust.

Now along comes a Jew like Alex Kats who seems to confirms this suspicion. He advocates a policy which harms the Australian people and their economy, is designed to ultimately destroy the sense of Australian national identity, attacks Australian nationalism, but benefits his own people by making Australia a safe bolt hole for asylum seeking Jews.

LEGO, Thanks.
Most thinkers, including many Jewish intellectuals agree on the causes of Anti Semitism, genuine bigots do act out of ignorance but they never amount to anything in a European society, your Hitlers and Strassers came from a wholly different school of thought. In his essay "The Jewish State" Herzl lays out his views on the causes of Anti Semitism, you can read it here:
http://manybooks.net/titles/herzlt2528225282-8.html
I also ran across another discussion of relevance the other day between some bright young men, an atheist from the U.K, a non observant Jew from Australia and an American Negro convert to Islam:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lQW-1WZ9ZA&feature=c4-overview&list=UUzOnXvfwc32YEiwTe_8Nf-g

Articles like this exist in a void disconnected from the social reality.

Australia and other Western nations are free and open societies compared to others because of the legal and political structure which is a variation of the Westminster system. This system enshrines individual freedoms.

Many immigrants and nearly all the boat people come from societies which do not have individual freedoms and are in fact oppressed by islam.

Many of these Islamic illegal refugees do not support the Westminster system; in fact they oppose it.

It is alright to bleat about multiculturalism but if cultures within the multi oppose the multi the system is under threat.

That basic fact is not even being discussed in Australia; as the article shows the default position is whatever bad things are happening to the boat people it is our fault.

This is a pernicious view.

People can't be forced to be democratic; however they can be resisted from opposing democracy.

The boat people in particular and islam in general oppose democracy. Until that fact is understood and the main item for discussion articles like this are just an exercise in intellectual onanism.

That's true Cohenite, there's also the idea that Australia is moving toward what the Secular Party have termed a pluralistic theocracy, where a number of religions have been established in this country and are now dominating public life and government.
Be that as it may, the influx of Third world Muslims, Hindus and Christians make the continuation of a "progressive" social agenda far less likely than it would have been when this country had an overwhelmingly Australian born majority, the things "progressives" want will simply not be possible if they themselves are a minority in the electorate. Furthermore we also know for certain now that these Third World moral and religious viewpoints become further entrenched and of much stronger relevance to the identity and self image of the children and grandchildren of migrants. Look also at the way Alex Kats has adopted the Holocaust (or a version of those events at least) as part of his world view and I suppose identity, even though he was in no way personally affected by those events so distant in time and space from his own life.
So the results of the great multicultural experiment are in, after three generations there's nothing else to be revealed, we know the facts, what now?

Soon after the war started, when I was a pre-teen boy living in suburban Melbourne, a new kid called Ann came to live nearby. Making friends I asked where she was from. “Hitler’s country”. I was incredulous, but she really was. Ann, her parents and grandmother, a lovely family - Jewish refugees who had got out across Lake Constance to Switzerland. They had to hide on the Swiss side as the Swiss had an Abbott-style Stop the Boats policy and would have handed them back be murdered. The new family in our street befriended my family - even taught us German. How they got from Switzerland to Australia I don’t know but they weren’t in hiding here, just another working family living in our street. The German language teacher at our school was another Jewish refugee, arrived a couple of years later with the war still on. Refugees used to find their way to England which shunted them to Australia and possibly Canada not because they were Jewish but because they were German – enemy aliens – and England was fighting for its survival.

So what’s all this codswallop about Australia shutting its doors to Jewish refugees?

I've something to say about Australian liberty and the Westminster system but will save it for another post.

What makes Australians unwelcoming to immigrants? Here’s a clue. Australia is a wealthy community, and has a standard of individual liberty that far surpasses standards in much of the world. On the one hand Australians welcome people they know are coming to share prosperity and individual liberty, but would have to be damn fools to welcome people who come to take them away. Especially liberty. Australians have worked their butts off for their material living standards, and Australians and their mainly European antecedents have struggled for centuries and spilled a great deal of blood to win and secure the liberty we take for granted.

Liberty is NOT due to the Westminster system – it is as well established in France, Holland, Belgium, Scandinavia as it is here and in England. What all free countries have in common is the philosophical, moral and political gains made against religion-borne authoritarianism. We term this still ongoing process the Enlightenment.

Most Australians accept newcomers of any colour, appearance, ancestry, language once sure they are here to commit fully to our country and contribute to our material prosperity and to our liberty. But immigrants who carry even a HINT of cultural hostility to individual freedom are as good for Australia as cane toads. Liberty is too fragile to allow us to import colonies of its enemies, no matter how they arrive. They should be weeded out at the border, even if sometimes-well-meaning dupes call defence of liberty this-or-that-ophobia.

"Liberty is NOT due to the Westminster system – it is as well established in France, Holland, Belgium, Scandinavia as it is here and in England. What all free countries have in common is the philosophical, moral and political gains made against religion-borne authoritarianism. We term this still ongoing process the Enlightenment."

That's true EJ but I was talking about Australia specifically which has a form of 'enlightened' democracy based on the Westminster system. The key elements of that system are separation of powers, equality before the law, privacy and property rights and most importantly freedom from religious prescription. Your other examples of 'enlightenment' differ slightly from the arrangements of these attributes but all have the same base.

Islam does not share this 'base' and in fact opposes it. The boat issue is not about more people coming although the illegality of their methods and the usurpation of Australia's legal sovereignty by those methods are important issues. The issue with the boat people is that they are Islamic and are an invasion.

Idiots who write such articles as this and support the boat people through the prism of their own sense of moral superiority are betraying their own country and should be treated as such

What a rancid response to an innocent person who was helped by Australia after one of the world's most hideous genocides.

I don't think Alex is responsible for what Israel does, but we are responsible for what our own racist government does.

A very poor response, Marilyn. As a Jew, Alex Kats is perfectly aware that Israel is a state created by Jews, for Jews, and he knows that Israel does not welcome non Jewish immigrants or asylum seekers. He does not say that he approves of this, but he did not bother to condemn it, either. I think it would be a reasonable assumption to claim that most Jews support the existence of the Jewish state.

But if the Jews create a state where they openly declare that their culture will be uppermost forever, and they will only accept Jews as immigrants, then Jews like Alex Kats can hardly wag their fingers at Australians for wanting the same thing in their own country. Especially since Australia has absorbed the millions of people from unrelated foreign cultures, while Israel rarely accepts anyone not a Jew.

It is a clear case of hypocrisy.

Since self interest is the prime motivator of human behaviour, could I suggest this scenario? As a descendent of an asylum seeker Jewish family, Alex Kats would like for Australia to continue this tradition. Since Jews have always been big on seeking asylum, then Alex is opposed to Australia tightening up its immigration laws. It may be in his Jewish people's interest to prevent non Jews from immigrating or seeking asylum in Israel, but it is also in his Jewish people's interest that every other desirable country to live in should not emulate Israel's immigration laws to preserve their own culture.

But rather than just come out and say that he understands why Australians feel that they are being swamped by immigration and that this will lead Australians to become a minority in their own country (something that the Jews would never accept in Israel) he uses an emotive and racist argument that Australians are just awful and greedy people that he is ashamed of.

As I pointed out earlier, this tendency for Jews to support policies which benefit Jews but which cause problems for their host populations, is probably one of the primary reasons for widespread anti Semitism.

As I said before the difference between Israel prescribing non-Jewish immigrants and the situation Australia and other Western nations face is that all immigrants are welcome by Australia including immigrants who want to destroy that pluralistic structure which welcomes all immigrants.

By comparison if you are a non-muslim try and go to an Islamic nation and be actively non-muslim.

I cannot comprehend the illogic, unreasonableness and vindictive moralising of people like Ms Shepard except in terms of an infantile egoism couched in moral certainty. It is unfathomable to me that any woman would defend islam, a cult which so oppresses women that it makes them invisible physically and socially.

Variety is the spice of life.
If you don't like being rained on you can try dodging raindrops or you can welcome them.
We don't get to choose when it rains nor where the rain comes from.

Well 'Carnivore' if this is the case, can you please make me a bloody great big tarpaulin?

Thanks

Geoff

Dear Jay,

<<That's not true, my nation was founded on Liberal and social democratic lines,...>

Let me assure you that I do not and never have denied that.

My comment was of a very general nature, unrelated to the specifics of this article, unrelated to questions of immigration, boat-people, Jews, etc.

What I wrote is simple: nationalism is an infantile bad habit and it's better to get over it, if one can. Nationalism does not contribute to liberalism, peacefulness and tolerance. The fact that Australia is and always has been more liberal, peaceful and tolerant than others, I don't attribute to its nationalism, but claim that it is in place, luckily so, DESPITE nationalism. Perhaps if we investigate further, we may even find that Australia's tolerance is because it shares less of this folly than other people.

Without nationalism we'd be being treated like the West Papuans by now. Independent nations within defined and defended territory are the only known habitats for democracy and liberty. Necessary even if not sufficient.

Dear Emperor,

There is no need for nationalistic feelings - all you need is practical common sense. You can still have an independent group of people within a defined and defended territory without that silly group-identification and fanfare, flags, emblems, anthems, parades, figureheads, history-worship, Olympic teams and other nonsense, without assuming (and enforcing) any common goals other than to defend each other so to remain free from external invasion.

To Yuyutsu.

Racism is a product of inter group rivalry and hostility, and everybody knows one group or another that they hold in contempt. Nationalism is exactly like racism, everybody does that too. Nationalism is simply group identity based upon a territory called "a nation", and every person on planet Earth has several group identities with national identity being one of the most important. You can no more prevent people forming group identities based upon race, religion, territory, or gender, than you can tell teenagers to stop thinking about sex.

Human beings should have become extinct a million years ago. Lacking teeth, spines, armour, claws, fangs, or size, we should have been easy prey for every other carnivorous species around. The reason why we survived, was because we instinctively formed self protecting groups and took on all comers, as a group. This instinct is part of our DNA and it can not be simply discarded in order to conform to the latest social theory on how to prevent human hostility.

Please look at your own post and see the obvious contradiction. How do you defend your "defined territory" if you have no concept of who that territory belongs to? A 'territory" is a geographic location with resources needed for survival that is claimed by somebody or something. Every sedentary species on planet Earth claims a territory which it will defend. A stickleback lizard might tolerate a chipmunk invading it's territory, but it will not tolerate another stickleback lizard doing the same thing. Your thinking presumes that you can have a planet with national borders which no defined group owns.

Every nation on Earth has a defined territory and it represents its national identity with a flag. That flag represents a distinct community which is supposed to have a shared concept of what constitutes correct behaviour within that national group.

Thinking that humans can conform to utopian theories which are completely against human nature is an infantile bad habit. Human beings are tribal and territorial. Any social theory which tries to ignore that is fairyland thinking that is doomed to failure.

Good post, Lego.

If everyone was happy to live a very basic existence then Yuyutsu's idea would be a good one. Because there aren't the resources to give everyone a standard of living enjoyed here, the human characteristics you noted explain observations. So we end up with a conflict of instincts to coexist amicably and to preserve our resources.

Doug Stanhope talks about some of the myths and attitudes surrounding nationalalism and immigration:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UStr7iNm1A4

Excellent answer, LEGO:

Our genes, indeed, have no interest in our own welfare, but are programmed to serve their own ends.

How longer are we to listen to and obey every whim of those little tyrants?

Yes, human beings are tribal and territorial - human beings are in fact animals: yet we need not come down to their animal level, we are able to rise above it - and so we should endeavour to do, each as best one can!

Dear Fester,

<<If everyone was happy to live a very basic existence then Yuyutsu's idea would be a good one. Because there aren't the resources to give everyone a standard of living enjoyed here, the human characteristics you noted explain observations.>>

Certainly, having allowed our genes to order us around for that many generations, having told us to be fruitful and multiply while we obeyed like sheep, now human numbers are such high that a reasonable standard of living for everybody is unattainable. That forces the lucky minority of 'have's to close their borders to the unlucky majority of 'have-not's.

The only long-term solution is to reduce human population. Meanwhile, we can become a bit more intelligent and drop such excess nationalistic baggage (eg. the pomp and fanfare part), considering carefully how to keep only those elements of nationhood that are truly necessary in order to avoid barbarian invasions.

To Yuyutsu.

Genetic programming of human behaviour can only be ignored up to a point. Have you ever heard of homosexuality? There is no biological reproductive imperative that would justify male or female homosexuality. But there is no way in the world that you are going to convince a homosexual that they should ignore their genetic programming and become heterosexual, just because some religious moral puritan says that it is against God's will or because some rationalist says it is illogical.

Sigmund Freud was the first person to make the connection between mental illness and the suppression of instinctive behaviour. Some of his patients (who were homosexuals) exhibited bizarre behaviour which even they admitted was irrational. Freud deduced that the reason why these patients were acting strangely was because of the very strict conformist morality at the time which these patients agreed with, and which they willingly conformed to. The desire to conform to societies expectations by suppressing their natural desires caused these patients to engage in self destructive acts like attempted suicide, or just plain crazy behaviour.

Freud coined the word "neurosis" to explain this phenomena.

The problem with the utopian view so enamoured of tertiary educated elites, is that the creation of their Aquarian state depends upon the complete suppression of normal instinctive behaviour and its total replacement with a new age ideology. This ideology is no less strict in it's moral Puritanism than that of Victorian and Edwardian England. Socialists once claimed that human beings could create a class blind society, and they failed. Their ancestors now claim that they can create a race blind society, and they will fail also.

Unfortunately, they are going to destroy the social cohesion of your country and bankrupt it before they realise that they were wrong. And when they do wreck it, they will claim it was all the Right's idea, and that they were so smart that they always knew it would never work.

Dear LEGO,

The mistake of the Aquarian movement was in assuming that all flowers can blossom at once, advocating a revolution instead of evolution.

Each individual can only grow in their own time and pace. While it is possible to assist another to grow, growth itself must come from within. Suppression is the attempt to force growth on another prematurely.

Re homosexuality, in his book "The Selfish Gene" (a piece of depressive reading), Richard Dawkins explains why a certain (small) percentage of homosexuality within the general population is in fact desirable by the genes, so let us assume that the genes 'know' what's good for them.

Our spiritual challenge is not to overcome our homosexuality (should that be the case), but to overcome sexuality altogether as well as free ourselves from the other impositions of our genes - including patriotism. It cannot be stressed enough that this is an individual process and that it doesn't happen overnight, but may in fact take many lifetimes to accomplish.

Hey guys, I’m not sure the author deserves some of the vitriol that is being served up.

OK, so he is left of centre and you have every right to disagree with his ‘open door’ migration policy.

But I think he was just trying to say that he wishes other people were given the chance that his family was given to settle in this great country. He is being slammed as being a hypocrite, when I think the opposite – he is saying others should get the chance he got…?

I don’t think wishing for a more humanitarian approach to asylum seekers should trigger the kind of response this article has. I’m a bit surprised (maybe I shouldn’t be) by the anti-immigration, anti-Islam, anti-Asian,, anti-Israel, pseudo Anti-Semitic, virtual White Australia Policy kind of responses that have popped up.

Anyway, maybe I should go back to hugging some trees....

@ferrisb

<<I think he was just trying to say that he wishes other people were given the chance that his family was given to settle in this great country... he is saying others should get the chance he got…?>>

What everyone, the whooooooooooooooooooooole world?

<<Anyway, maybe I should go back to hugging some trees..>>

Yep! start with a honey locust tree: http://tinyurl.com/k5u498s

ferrisb,

" I’m a bit surprised (maybe I shouldn’t be) by the anti-immigration, anti-Islam, anti-Asian,, anti-Israel, pseudo Anti-Semitic, virtual White Australia Policy kind of responses that have popped up."

You shouldn't be surprised.....it's what OLO does best.

...With a comment such as that #Poirot# maybe you should get a life before you lose it to immigration policies.

...So, when the balance of 60/40 white Australians tips below 50/50; yourself and Christine Milne will be happy will you?

Poirot, are you PRO (really, not as a theoretical dream):
1. The individual liberties listed in the UN Declaration of Human Rights?
2. The personal liberties arising from the Enlightenment?
3. The right of peoples to self-determination in the lands in which they are born?

If so, you fulfill two of your "antis" and thus fit your own ridiculous definition of "virtual White Australia Policy" and thereby have insulted yourself.

If not, political correctness has robbed you of any moral compass.

Ferris and new friend,

Yes of course, let me apologize to any "progressives" who have blindly dropped into this site. The administration should really have a sign out front saying: "Warning this site has not been approved by the PC brigade and may shock" -very remiss of them!

You see, OLO is not like most of those other blogs or broadcast services which have their scripts vetted and approved by the one-eyed
PC commissars before publication. It reflects the raw opinion and emotions of the grass roots.

So, if you cannot stomach challenges to your cherished prejudices please move on to one of those other venues further down, such as SBS, the ABC or New Matilda which cater exclusively to your delicate progressive sensibilities.

PS: I'm not sure where you've found these attributes: " anti-Asian... pseudo Anti-Semitic, virtual White Australia Policy" but I guess as with most progressives once you start rolling off the cliches it hard to stop at one or two!

ferrisb, you should have seen it a few years ago.
When I first encountered OLO, it was Progressive City.
Nationalists need not apply.
The Progressives would gang up on you like starved dobermans.

The change to a more nationalist, less utopian perspective may be a reflection of changes in our general society.
We are more honest now. And more willing to speak up.

What may I ask are "pseudo Anti Semitic" and 'Virtual White Australia Policy" responses?
I will protest when a writer says "As a Jew I believe" and then proceeds to make assertions about other ethnic groups, especially MY ethnic group.
The most obnoxious thing one can do is turn to another ethnic group and say "YOU ARE!...." If Mr Kats had any manners he'd respect the fact that the law in this country prohibits criticism of Jews and Judaism by Gentiles and he'd hold his fire. We White Nationalists have had to grow up and learn to operate within the rules of a multi racial society, maybe it's time Mr Kats and the other loudmouths within his race did the same, nobody likes this situation but there's no need to go out of our way to make it worse.

I believe that most Australians, whether they will admit it or not, wish that the boats would stop because of fear of Islam.

With few exceptions, the boat people, Islamic mainly, are fleeing from Islamic terrorism of one form or another. They choose Australia because of its freedoms, as well as its high living standards, and yet, unknowingly perhaps, bring with them the seeds of the same terrorism. This can be seen all through Europe, where the native peoples despair at the rising levels of Islamic intolerance.

Oslo, for example, is now the rape capital of Norway, where young Muslim males account for almost all attacks on women, although still only a small percentage of the population. Jews in France have been advised to emigrate to Israel for their own safety, and even the secular - Christian? - population are feeling cowed by growing Islamic intolerance in many English cities. This century may well be more violent in Europe than in any previous century, with full scale civil wars, merely because they lacked the will to stop immigration.

It is not a sin, or a weakness, to wish defend one's culture, especially against a violent and intolerant seventh century religion. We should seriously consider closing Mosques and Islamic schools, and taking other actions to make us a less attractive destination for those who are certain to cause us terrible grief in the future.

Dear Beaucoupbob,

Defending one's culture is a poor excuse for developing nationalism - isn't that exactly what Muslims do, which you hate?