Sorry sharkfin but that isn't exactly true. The Northern States used slave labour in their predominately industrial society. While the Southern States as predominately agrarian society could not survive with out a source of cheap labour. Before the slave the early Americas were built on British debtors living in tenure to work off their debts and transportation. The revolution and a developing Canada and Australia put paid to that source of cheap labour and the farmers took up the habits of the gentle class of having coloured slaves. Trade with the Caribbean and the knowledge of established barracoons gave easy access and inexpensive transportation. Pretty much the Southern States were dependent on a single crop, cotton, a labour intensive crop, for their wealth and financial survival. The idea that the North did not use slaves is a misnomer, like the Civil War was fought to free the slave. Nice thought but not the whole truth.

*SUSTAINED APPLAUSE*....for Sharkfin.... who seemingly alone cut thorugh the 'crap, woffle and semantics' and went straight to the CORE issue of the human dilemna and the central problem of 'tolerance' and 'multi'culturalism.

THE MAJOR PROBLEM of using the idea of "all men are created equal and have inalienable rights" is when this is applied to the area of competing cultures. If culture B (newcomers) practices certain things, and these are anathema to Culture A (Existing culture) in the context of migration, then who is to decide WHO'S inalienable rights and equality are to prevail ?
If culture B practices female genital mutilation, and you ask a mother from that culture if this is a good thing, they will invariably answer YES and what business is it of yours to question it..it's OUR culture.
http://islammonitor.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=755&Itemid=0 (*WARNING* graphic content)

RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE is a good thing, but if the 'new' religion is not tolerant of the prevailing or existing, to the point of screaming its doctrines at the ANU interupting classes..well.. do we tolerate it ? not a chance..as RAGE BOY found out. (I think he looks like the now rather infamous 'rageboy' from 'rent-a-radical' Pty Ltd in Pakistan)
http://islammonitor.org/

So, clearly mens equality and inalienable rights include the right NOT to be harassed, or mutilated and to 'preventing' such outrages in your community.

As long as we understand this, all will be well.

THE DANGER though, is that if alien cultures are left unchecked, we will gradually find a dilution of our own to the point where the water is so muddy you cannot tell one from the other and the idea of unacceptabilty of one over the other will be academic and contested.

Undoubtedly, perhaps a little ironically, the quite fathomable logic behind the ideal of Multiculturalism may result in legal outcomes not at all surprising – as the ‘Official Richard Dawkins website’ points out. Even if you aren’t much of a Dawkins admirer, David, maybe you’ll consider this a worthy addition to your repertoire - or perhaps not, on reading the whole article :)

Given the judge is a woman, one almost wonders, “Is the article for real - or does it actually demonstrate multiculturalism as something quite inequitable?”:

“Do you believe in the rights of women, or do you believe in multiculturalism? A series of verdicts in the German courts in the past month, have shown with hot, hard logic that you can't back both. You have to choose.

The crux case centres on a woman called Nishal, a 26-year-old Moroccan immigrant to Germany with two kids and a psychotic husband. Since their wedding night, this husband beat the hell out of her. She crawled to the police covered in wounds, and they ordered the husband to stay away from her. He refused. He terrorised her with death threats.

So Nishal went to the courts to request an early divorce, hoping that once they were no longer married he would leave her alone. A judge who believed in the rights of women would find it very easy to make a judgement: you're free from this man, case dismissed.

But Judge Christa Datz-Winter followed the logic of multiculturalism instead. She said she would not grant an early divorce because - despite the police documentation of extreme violence and continued threats - there was no "unreasonable hardship" here.

Why? Because the woman, as a Muslim, should have "expected" it, the judge explained. She read out passages from the Koran to show that Muslim husbands have the "right to use corporal punishment". Look at Sura 4, verse 34, she said to Nishal, where the Koran says he can hammer you. That's your culture. Goodbye, and enjoy your beatings..."

http://richarddawkins.net/article,966,How-multiculturalism-is-betraying-women,Johann-Hari-The-Independent

Perhaps the Australian brand of MC simply doesn't follow a similar logic...

The taking up of the socialist idea of multiculturalism was not to eradicate racism. The socialist championed MC as a way to rule society with out having to be elected government. The highest moral standard of victim is being set by the politically correct and fellow apologist. Australia has become a land of victims unable to all equally re-establish culturally in Australia what they fled a mere couple of years ago. Multiculturalism is the prime tool of cultural marxist to destroy that which they feel is theirs by right, but can't have. Power over others with out having to go to the people to ask for the privilege to govern. No democratic nonsense for them. They'll use the back door, thank you very much.

Sobering, relda, thanks. Defence of liberty (against tribalism) is the only justification for multiculturalism! I f-cking-well hope multiculturalism doesn't follow the logic of those German judges *anywhere*. They're compensating for Germany's historical xenophobic hysteria, I suppose, but they may as well use "Aryan moral concepts" to extenuate the Holocaust as say "Anatolian moral concepts" extenuate wife-murder!

Were we at cross-purposes before? I don't dispute scientific method, nor even classification into "natural" and "social" sciences (if only because people are less predictable than inanimate objects, plants and even other animals), but that demarcation is no impenetrable boundary.

As for that claim: "... man ... is unable to control his own mind", it's rubbish. *All* the manipulations of man [sic] begin in his mind. Moreover, nothing about the mind puts it outside the reach of scientific understanding. Its basic morality is not territorial but tribal and humane; each of us is free to decide where our "tribal" loyalty lies.

Sharkfin, war and genocide are not inevitable; they are premeditated crimes which rulers force upon the ruled using psychological manipulation. Most people are intelligent enough to understand that fighting and killing are the most wasteful acts we can commit; a prosperous peace is always preferable. War is a cynical act of capitalists and madmen. It is *sold* using lies, rhetoric and tribalism. Modern war is theft of a higher order than mere lust for land, loot and women.

War fever is curable by exposing lies and broadening tribal loyalty to humanism.

"Territorial fear" of Jews in Germany and throughout Europe was manufactured by propaganda justified in explicitly religious terms. Jews in Germany *never* posed a territorial threat, nor even an economic one, and any intelligent 20th-century German knew it as well as Australians do. It was no justified fear but insane extremes of patriotic fervour that made anti-semitism law.

I might add that most "cultural" aberrations from humanism, such as slavery and the subjection of women, are likewise the result of self-perpetuating propaganda, usually religious in nature.

aqvarivs, I gave you the benefit of the doubt before. Now I'm convinced you're a nut.

"It was no justified fear but insane extremes of patriotic fervour that made anti-semitism law."

Bingo. Thank you xoddam. I was waiting for my post restriction to expire so I could say exactly what you said - and it was said rather eloquently too.

It is through tolerance and understanding of other cultures - which is encouraged by direct contact with them - that people learn there is little founding to the irrational fears and prejudices that a select few use to inflame hatred and war.

"A series of verdicts in the German courts in the past month, have shown with hot, hard logic that you can't back both. "

What a ridiculous (to the point of being comical) statement.

Relda, using the decision of one particular judge as a basis for your claim is as ridiculous as me suggesting sex is wrong because it leads to rape. In the example you provided the woman's individual liberty was infringed upon and the law should have recognised that. She has a right to live her life the way she chooses within the law, without coersion - physical or otherwise - by others.