"We should tolerate everything except intolerance, and even that we should try to tolerate as far as possible".

Linus Pauling, Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Yvonne: "The real threat to Australian values is the path towards pure Capitalism we are taking, where we are in service of THE ECONOMY. Not new citizens of whichever cultural background. We are becoming a dog eat dog society, and if somebody looks a bit different to me, or speaks differently, so much the easier to trample on him and make me believe it is deserved. "

Amel: "The conflicts with Muticulturalism in Australia shed some light to the world on how racist some Australians really are. "

Riddley Walker: "We should tolerate everything except intolerance, and even that we should try to tolerate as far as possible".

FrankGol: "I believe in democracy, freedom of speech and religion, and the rights of the individual - AND I believe in multiculturalism. Let's have no more of these false and deceptive dichotomies."

Hear hear! Nice to see some sanity breaking out in the thread.

Boaz should really take his medication, and his odious fellow travellers could do us a favour by scuttling back under their rocks. What positive effect can the promotion of hateful ideas possibly achieve?

It was obviously a good article, the reactions to it have been very revealing.

Boaz, your business and livelihood are clearly under threat, which puts a sympathetic context around your observations. But you have said some very strange things along the way.

>>What absolute and total ROT ! I've seldom heard such blatant self contradictory statements as this "Multi"(Diverse) + "Unifying" (bringing together)<<

In logic there is absolutely nothing contradictory about "unifying" and "diverse". A population can be diverse in terms of their individual affluence, for example, but that doesn't stop attempts to unify them under a single - for example, political - banner.

>>I'll repeat my own mantra again "When was the last time you saw a Union marching chanting "The Workers Divided, will never be defeated"?
Thats right..NEVER.. what you DO hear is "The workers UNITED will etc"

The objective of the chant is to point out that unity is strength. Otherwise, being a typically diverse bunch - a few RCs here, some Prods over there, some Commies in this corner and a bunch of recent immigrants in that - they would stray from the central message.

So the process is to move them away from diversity, towards unity, bound by some very specific constraints: the ability to negotiate collectively.

Afterwards, they go back to being Micks and Prods, Commies and so on.

People are different, have different life goals and aspirations, support different footy teams and even different footy codes, like different food and wines, believe in different gods or the absence thereof and so on.

Diversity is a natural part of being a human being on this planet.

That you fear it, is clear:

>>cultural development as Australians since European settlement is now ... subject to the various ethno/linguistic/cultural pressures from all the various migrants as they compete to establish their own culture as top dog<<

You are concerned that "they" will take over. That has absolutely nothing to do with cultural diversity, just a normal expression of paranoia from someone who believes absolutely that his way of life is the only one that is "right".

oooooKK.. polarizaton is the stuff of good debates !

Now we can move toward a position of better understanding.

The whole POINT of my posts is to direct our attention to that overall focus point and goal which we SHOULD have as our objective.

The question is..WHAT is that overall objective ?

To Pericles and others, it is our diverse unity where we can all carry on our merry ways in different directions, but suddenly when there is a threat.. we all will miraculously pull together and be ONE.

Lets test that ?

The threat happens to be a massive influx of Chinese capital buying up properties in urban areas, causing the price of land and houses to skyrocket out of the reach of ordinary Aussies. One particular ethnic group with close cultural and racial ties to China, has been aware of this for some time, and has proceeded to buy up property in advance. When the crunch comes, its no headache for them.

UNITY ?

The Saudi government decides to make Australia the next major recipient of 'aid' in the form of funding for massive 40,000 person mosques in prominent locations so as to highlight the religion of Islam in the skyline of say Melbourne. In fact..they bought up the property next to St Pauls Cathedral and the plans for the mosque show it will dwarf St Pauls considerably.

There is an outcry by 'rednecks' who claim it will negatively impact on our cultural fabric, but they are fobbed off as intolerant racists and ignored. Tolerance rules the day, and the mosque is approved by the cities enlightened and progressive council.

UNITY ?

Angkor Wat is experiencing massive numbers of Thai migrants. The redneck racists warn "If you let too many Thais in they might seek to take over" of course these racist rednecks are rebuked in the name of tolerance and nothing is done.
HISTORICAL FACT : In 1431 the Thais sacked Angkor itself. The Khmers had abandoned the city completely by 1434. Eight hundred years of Khmer authority in the region came to an end.
http://goasia.about.com/cs/azsiteindex/a/aa031700_3.ht

Boaz, what you are afraid of is not a person of a particular race or religion, it is capitalism. Capitalists without any thought of the social capital of a society, making a profit, the larger the better is the bottom line without any regard to the consequences.

It is Australia's elected government and their belief that making money is the most noble of all pursuits and will bring happiness to all. Anyone who may query that is immediately relegated to 'looney left' , 'against business', 'longing for a nanny-state', etc.

Chinese people are not the only people with a love of making money and disregard for society. Wealth means power to make more money.

Many Anglo Australian developers and investors have made obscene amounts of money in the property development. Housing unaffordability is not the fault of Chinese people.

Australians are a wonderful mix of people. I'm European, but give me Australia's vibrancy any time over monotonous monoculture. Long live multi-culturalism.

BOAZ-David

Your brain flipped a couple of post ago when accusing Jieh-Yung Lo of being racist twice over because he was an Officer of the Ethnic Communities’ Council of Victoria and Executive Member of Chinese Culture Monthly.

'Ethnic' means pertaining to people. We are all ethnic - we all have an ethnicity - whether we be of Chinese, Greek or Anglo-Saxon heritage. Is a person of Scottish heritage being racist when she joins the Highlanders Pipe Band? When she's doing that she isn't pursuing the intrests of the WHOLE community, as you put it.

On your logic, you would have to say the editor of the magazine, "This England: Britain's Patriotic Heritage" (Australian office in Sassafras, 3787) is to quote you "clearly an example of the building up of ONE_ethnic community rather than_ALL_of_Australia-thus is racist".

Speaking of examples of racism, you say Jieh-Yung Lo "being Chinese, of ALL people should know exactly how his own mob have taken over the economies of most south east Asian countries !" When you ascribe to one (presumed) member of a 'race' ('his own mob') the presumed characteristics of every member of that 'race', then I think you are not only being racist but you are also being an intellectual clot for such confused logic and poor research. I think you need a month in the sin-bin and to use the time in a clear thinking course.

You could spend the time doing some basic homework on the Ethnic Comunities Council of Victoria (http://www.eccv.org.au/). Have a look at the breadth of membership of Staff and Executive of the EECV. Look also at its statement of purposes - it's not at all like you describe it.

Not one of your better posts David. Try harder!