IT was inevitable, given the prevailing mind-set within government and the media, that Sydney's beachside violence this week would be called race riots. The NSW Premier, his ministers and many newspaper headlines all used the term. However, a more ungainly but nonetheless more accurate description would have been multicultural riots. For the doctrine of multiculturalism is really to blame.
In earlier periods, Lebanese immigrants were not defined as an ethnic group. Lebanon is one of the oldest sources of Australian migration. People have been coming from that country since the 1880s. They were never defined as aliens under the old White Australia Policy and their numbers gradually grew from 601 in 1891 to 2670 in 1933.
Until 1975, almost all were Maronites or Christian Lebanese. They prospered here, married into the local community and, within two generations, became largely indistinguishable from the Australian mainstream. One of their offspring, Nick Shehadie, a former lord mayor of Sydney and the husband of NSW Governor Marie Bashir, captained the Wallabies in three of 30 Tests for his country. How Australian can you get?
After 1975, the onset of civil war brought Lebanese Muslims here on grounds of humanitarian resettlement. At the same time, the policy of multiculturalism was initiated by the Whitlam government and entrenched under Malcolm Fraser. Multiculturalism began and, until recently, was regarded by most Australians as a civilised concept to ease immigrants into their new environment.
But it became corrupted by partisan politics. As former Labor government minister Barry Jones has admitted, immigration became "a tremendously important element" in building up a long-term, non-English-speaking political constituency for his party. In the 1980s immigration policy switched from national interest to ethnic preference, from demographic and labour market need to family reunion. In the name of cultural diversity, the bureaucrats in charge used welfare and housing policy to promote ethnic community building. This concentrated non-English-speaking immigrants in western and southwestern Sydney.
Most affected were the post-1975 Lebanese Muslims. By 2001, 73 per cent of all Lebanese in Australia were living in these Sydney suburbs.
Multiculturalism is also at odds with the core tenets of liberal democracy, where rights inhere in the individual, not the collective, and where people's representatives are elected politicians, not self-appointed ethnic spokesmen or godfathers. Multiculturalism is a reversion to tribalism that is anachronistic in a modern, liberal, urban society.
In Sydney it has been plain for at least a decade that, instead of ethnic communities living happily in the diversity of social pluralism, multiculturalism has bred ethnic ghettos characterised by high levels of unemployment, welfare dependency, welfare abuse, crime and violence. The social engineers responsible should have been well aware of the likely outcome, especially for young men.
All the evidence from the numerous studies of similar ethnic ghettos in North America and Europe show they produce much the same result, whatever the colour or ethnicity of their inhabitants. Ghetto culture for young men everywhere is characterised by interpersonal violence, sexual irresponsibility, incomplete education, substandard speech, a hypersensitivity about being disrespected and a feckless attitude towards work.
The Lebanese assaults on the Cronulla lifesavers that led to this week's mass retaliation were nothing new.
This behaviour has been with us for more than a decade. When the former principal of Punchbowl Boys High, a school dominated by Lebanese Muslim youth, suffered a breakdown and sued the NSW government, he gave an insight to the local culture.
Between 1995 and 1999, students armed with knives had threatened classmates, teachers were assaulted and gangs invaded classrooms. On one occasion, the principal had a gun held to his head by a Lebanese gang member who threatened to shoot him. One of his students was convicted of murdering a Korean schoolboy and three other students were jailed for their roles in some of Sydney's most notorious gang rapes.
In 1997, during a house fire in another Sydney ethnic ghetto at Auburn, known as Little Lebanon, police and firefighters were attacked by youths hurling rocks. An ambulance had a window shot out, ensuring all future ambulance calls to the locality were accompanied by police escort. Little Lebanon was a concentration of Muslim families from the same rural district who had come to Australia first as refugees, then as chain immigrants.
At the same time as all of this was going on, however, most Anglo Australians were giving the lie to the stereotype of latent racism. Outside the ethnic enclaves, instead of racist or ethnocentric attitudes to newcomers, old Australians were working with, marrying and having children with them.
Studies by Monash University's Bob Birrell of the most revealing test of immigrant integration, the marriage rate, showed that by the end of the '90s less than 10 per cent of second-generation marriages of people of European descent were to someone from their parents' country. Much the same was true of immigrants from south and east Asia. Only 6 per cent of Indians married within their ethnic group, as did only 18 per cent of Chinese. In short, most immigrants, whatever their race, married Australians of other nationalities.
However, for the Lebanese, of whom most of marriageable age were Muslims, these figures were reversed. No less than 74 per cent of Lebanese brides and 61 per cent of Lebanese grooms married within their own ethnic group. Moreover, these figures had increased since the early '90s, when they were about six percentage points lower. This pattern may have fulfilled the community-building objective sought by Lebanese political and religious leaders, but it has been a disaster for their constituents' relationship with the rest of Australia.
Put this week's beachside violence into its political and social context, and the conclusion is clear. It is not race that is the problem but culture. Multiracialism has been a success in contemporary Australia but multiculturalism has been an abject failure.
In 1986 Gale Norton was 32 and working for the secretary of the interior on matters pertaining to the proposal to open a small portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge -- area 1002 -- to drilling for oil and natural gas, a proposal that then had already been a bone of contention for several years. Today Norton is the secretary of the interior and is working on opening ANWR.
But this interminable argument actually could end soon with Congress authorizing drilling. That would be good for energy policy and excellent for the nation's governance.
Area 1002 is 1.5 million of the refuge's 19 million acres. In 1980 a Democratically controlled Congress, at the behest of President Jimmy Carter, set area 1002 aside for possible energy exploration. Since then, although there are active oil and gas wells in at least 36 U.S. wildlife refuges, stopping drilling in ANWR has become sacramental for environmentalists who speak about it the way Wordsworth wrote about the Lake Country.
Few opponents of energy development in what they call "pristine" ANWR have visited it. Those who have and who think it is "pristine" must have visited during the 56 days a year when it is without sunlight. They missed the roads, stores, houses, military installations, airstrip and school. They did not miss seeing the trees in area 1002. There are no trees.
Opponents worry that the caribou will be disconsolate about, and their reproduction disrupted by, this intrusion by man. The same was said 30 years ago by opponents of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which brings heated oil south from Prudhoe Bay. Since the oil began flowing, the caribou have increased from 5,000 to 31,000. Perhaps the pipeline's heat makes them amorous.
Ice roads and helicopter pads, which will melt each spring, will minimize man's footprint, which will be on a 2,000-acre plot about one-fifth the size of Dulles Airport. Nevertheless, opponents say the environmental cost is too high for what the ineffable John Kerry calls "a few drops of oil." Some drops. The estimated 10.4 billion barrels of recoverable oil -- such estimates frequently underestimate actual yields -- could supply all the oil needs of Kerry's Massachusetts for 75 years.
Flowing at 1 million barrels a day -- equal to 20 percent of today's domestic oil production -- ANWR oil would almost equal America's daily imports from Saudi Arabia. And it would equal the supply loss that Hurricane Katrina temporarily caused, and that caused so much histrionic distress among consumers. Lee Raymond, chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil, says that if the major oil companies decided that 10 billion barrels were an amount too small to justify exploration and development projects, many current and future projects around the world would be abandoned.
But for many opponents of drilling in the refuge, the debate is only secondarily about energy and the environment. Rather, it is a disguised debate about elemental political matters.
For some people, environmentalism is collectivism in drag. Such people use environmental causes and rhetoric not to change the political climate for the purpose of environmental improvement. Rather, for them, changing the society's politics is the end, and environmental policies are mere means to that end.
The unending argument in political philosophy concerns constantly adjusting society's balance between freedom and equality. The primary goal of collectivism -- of socialism in Europe and contemporary liberalism in America -- is to enlarge governmental supervision of individuals' lives. This is done in the name of equality.
People are to be conscripted into one large cohort, everyone equal (although not equal in status or power to the governing class) in their status as wards of a self-aggrandizing government. Government says the constant enlargement of its supervising power is necessary for the equitable or efficient allocation of scarce resources.
Therefore, one of the collectivists' tactics is to produce scarcities, particularly of what makes modern society modern -- the energy requisite for social dynamism and individual autonomy. Hence collectivists use environmentalism to advance a collectivizing energy policy. Focusing on one energy source at a time, they stress the environmental hazards of finding, developing, transporting, manufacturing or using oil, natural gas, coal or nuclear power.
A quarter of a century of this tactic applied to ANWR is about 24 years too many. If geologists were to decide that there were only three thimbles of oil beneath area 1002, there would still be something to be said for going down to get them, just to prove that this nation cannot be forever paralyzed by people wielding environmentalism as a cover for collectivism.
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/15/2005 09:54 ||
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Those us that Live in Alaska already know this. It's the eco-nazis and the LLL that have turned this into an emotional screaming match.
And John Q. area too stupid to ague the case on merits.
#2
"Opponents worry that the caribou will be disconsolate and their reproduction disrupted by, this intrusion by man."
Will, once again, is spot on. The caribou debate is a red-herring. When pressed, the enviromentalists "in-the-know" admit that a pipeline and infrastructure, if built correctly, disrupts migration in terms of only "miles". It is the avoidence with human activity that is of concern. But ask anyone who has ever worked on the construction or exploration in Alaska and they will tell you as soon as there is even a hint of the calving season it's time to fold the tents for the year.
#3
There are so many images of ANWR that show the area south of the Brooks Range, and not the flat North Slope. Also, the issue is BIG Money for non profits. Slap some emotion, coffee table book pictures, and a reply envelope with lines for your VISA card and you have a cash cow for the director and staff. What a friggin racket.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
12/15/2005 23:29 Comments ||
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. . . One of the things I think the president communicated most effectively, if mostly between the lines, was the sense that some decisions a president faces don't promise good outcomes no matter which way he comes down. These are decisions that carry deep implications, and promise real difficulty.
And one such was: To move on Saddam or not?
Do nothing about Saddam, or nothing that hasn't been done before, and you keep in place a personally unstable dictator who has declared himself an avowed enemy of America, who will help and assist its foes at a crucial time, and who has developed and used in recent memory and against his own citizens weapons of mass destruction. Do nothing and you face the continuance of a Mideast status quo encrusted by cynicism and marked by malignancy.
But remove Saddam and you face the cost in blood and treasure of invasion, occupation and the erection of democracy. It's all a great gamble. It could end with the yielding up of a new ruling claque as bad as or worse than the one just replaced. You could wind up thinking you'd bitten off more than you could chew and were trying to swallow more than you could digest.
No matter what Mr. Bush chose, what decision he made, he would leave some angry and frustrated. No matter what he did, the Arab street would be restive (it is a restive place) the left would be angry (rage is their ZIP code, where they came from and where they live), and Democrats would watch, wait, offer bland statements and essentially hope for the worst. Imagine a great party with only one leader, Joe Lieberman, who approaches the question of Iraq with entire seriousness. And imagine that party being angry with him because he does.
Mr. Bush chose to remove Saddam and liberate Iraq from, well, Saddam. And maybe more. Maybe from its modern sorry past. Pat Buchanan said a few months ago something bracing in its directness. He said a constitution doesn't make a country; a country makes a constitution. But today, in the voting, we may see more of the rough beginnings of a new exception to that rule. News reports both in print and on television also seem to be suggesting a turn. They seem to suggest a new knowledge on the ground in Iraq that democracy is inevitable, is the future, and if you don't want to be left behind you'd better jump in. One senses a growing democratic spirit. A sense that daring deeds can produce real progress.
'Tis devoutly to be wished, and all of good faith must wish it. . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
12/15/2005 12:51 ||
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The corner wasnt turned now was turned long ago when Al-terror resorted to attack Police stations as a means to stop Iraq-US cooperation.
by Matt Bollinger, Wall Street Journal EFL; go read it all.
When people ask why I recently left The Wall Street Journal to join the Marines, I usually have a short answer. It felt like the time had come to stop reporting events and get more directly involved. But that's not the whole answer, and how I got to this point wasn't a straight line. . . .
A year ago, I was at my sister's house using her husband's laptop when I came across a video of an American in Iraq being beheaded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The details are beyond description here; let's just say it was obscene. At first I admit I felt a touch of the terror they wanted me to feel, but then I felt the anger they didn't. We often talk about how our policies are radicalizing young men in the Middle East to become our enemies, but rarely do we talk about how their actions are radicalizing us. In a brief moment of revulsion, sitting there in that living room, I became their blowback.
Of course, a single emotional moment does not justify a career change, and that's not what happened to me. The next day I went to lunch at the Council on Foreign Relations where I happened to meet a Marine Corps colonel who'd just come back from Iraq. He gave me a no-nonsense assessment of what was happening there, but what got to me most was his description of how the Marines behaved and how they looked after each other in a hostile world. That struck me as a metaphor for how America should be in the world at large, and it also appealed to me on a personal level. . . .
Friends ask if I worry about going from a life of independent thought and action to a life of hierarchy and teamwork. At the moment, I find that appealing because it means being part of something bigger than I am. As for how different it's going to be, that, too, has its appeal because it's the opposite of what I've been doing up to now. Why should I do something that's a "natural fit" with what I already do? Why shouldn't I try to expand myself?
In a way, I see the Marines as a microcosm of America at its best. Their focus isn't on weapons and tactics, but on leadership. That's the whole point of the Marines. They care about each other in good times and bad, they've always had to fight for their existence--even Harry Truman saw them as nothing more than the "Navy's police force"--and they have the strength of their traditions. Their future, like the country's, is worth fighting for. I hope to be part of the effort.
Good luck, hood hunting, and come home safe.
Posted by: Mike ||
12/15/2005 12:46 ||
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Reminiscent of Jenjis (sic) Khan. OK, maybe Jenjis Khan on a really good day ... like his birthday ... I remember Ter.rez.za bought me a new sports car on my birthday ... ummm ... but it got good gas milage. I blame high gas prices on THIS ADMINISTRATION!!
by Michael Rubin
Wall Street Journal
December 14, 2005 Iraqis will go to the polls tomorrow for the third time this year. Their actions mark both a triumph for the Iraqi people and a warning for Arab autocrats. Not only has the Iraqi march toward democracy proved naysayers wrong, but Iraqis' growing embrace of democracy demonstrates the wisdom of staying the course. Iraqis are changing political culture. Howard Dean and John Murtha may believe that the U.S. military has lost. Brent Scowcroft may think Arab democracy a pipe dream. They are mistaken.
The greatest impediment to progress in the Arab world is not terrorism or Islamism; both are recent phenomena. Rather, it is lack of accountability. Instead of accepting responsibility for lack of progress, many Arab regimes blame outsiders. In 2002, the U.N.'s Arab Development Report found that the Arab region has the lowest value of all regions of the world for "voice and accountability." In his seminal article "Why Arabs Lose Wars," Col. Norvell De Atkine, an observer of Arab military training, found that "taking responsibility . . . rarely occurs." Arab soldiers seldom admit, let alone learn from, mistakes. In recent discussions with U.S. diplomats and military officials, Iraqi insurgents and former regime elements say that order can be restored only with the empowerment of the former officer corps. They speak of the army's glories but, under Saddam Hussein, triumphs were limited to parades and posturing.
Western scholars have long idealized Iraq's--and even the Baath Party's--past. Some suggest that, at least under Saddam's early leadership, Iraq was a paragon of affluence and stability. In "The Future of Iraq," for example, British scholars Liam Anderson and Gareth Stansfield write that "Regardless of the oppressive (or 'evil') nature of the regime . . . in the economic and social sphere its achievements were truly impressive." They are not alone, but rather project a common myth. The reality is quite different: Saddam's rule was marked by uninterrupted decline. According to Patrick Clawson, the International Monetary Fund's desk officer for Iraq at the time, Iraq's standard of living declined to about one-quarter of its peak from the time Saddam took power. In the same period, Iraq went from being among the least corrupt Arab states to among the most. It is important to recognize the truth, especially as the resolve of our politicians wavers. There should be no whitewashing of history.
Excuses can be made to absolve Saddam of responsibility. Multiple wars and sanctions contributed to the decline, but the failure to recover was the result of mismanagement and misallocation. The cavernous marble palace, confiscated by coalition forces to serve as the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, was built almost entirely under sanctions. Oil for Food money disappeared into foreign accounts. Saddam did not take responsibility for his failings: Iraq's travails were not his fault, but rather the result of internal disloyalty or outside plots. Tens of thousands ended up in mass graves so that the leader could save face. Margins of election victory hovering near 99% completed the illusion. Rather than defend the Iraqi people, Western peace activists amplified the dictator's rhetoric. The Baath Party should be held responsible for its record. And today it is. Saddam sits behind bars. De-Baathification remains popular among many Iraqis, even as they debate the nuance of its implementation.
The coalition's ouster of Saddam may have created a template for change, but it is Iraqis who have pressed forward to hold not only Saddam, but also subsequent politicians, to account. On June 28, 2004, Coalition Provisional Authority administrator L. Paul Bremer appointed Iyad Allawi as interim prime minister. Mr. Allawi, a former Baathist, was a favorite of the U.S., British and Jordanian intelligence services. He projected an image of strong leadership to an Iraqi audience craving security. He promised to jumpstart reconstruction. But he failed. Corruption exploded. Iraqis blamed his empowerment of senior Baathists for the spread of insurgency and decline in security. Furthermore, he treated U.S. diplomats, not Iraqis, as his most important constituency. He campaigned surrounded by American security agents. Iraqis had enough. On Jan. 30, millions braved bombs to bounce him from office. Even with the trappings of incumbency--media coverage and a bully pulpit for his campaign--he barely mustered 14%. As Egyptians, Libyans, Tunisians and Syrians watched with envy, Iraqis held a failed incumbent to account.
They will do it again tomorrow. Like Mr. Allawi, current Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari has failed. Local humor is telling. A popular Baghdad joke tells of how he walks into his office to find a rooster, dog and donkey. "I'm here to wake you up so you can do your job," the rooster crows. "I'm here to provide security," the dog barks. "Why are you here?" Jaafari asks the donkey. "I don't know. I'm no different from you," the donkey brays.
Under Saddam, and in other Arab autocracies, such jokes were dangerous. But in the new Iraq, the public translates its mood into action. Mr. Jaafari may try to blame his failings on others, but hundreds of newspapers, and a proliferating network of radio stations and TV networks, will not allow him. Ash-Sharqiya has won wide audiences with its political satire. Iraqi editorial cartoonists are merciless. Those surrounding Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani may give a lukewarm endorsement to the United Iraqi Alliance religious slate, but the clerical leadership realizes that they cannot push too hard. Iraqis may respect religion, but they are not willing to forgive militia abuse, even in the name of religion. The Shiite slate may still win a plurality, but its returns will decline. So too will that of the Kurdish list, as disgust with Masud Barzani's conflation of business and politics is escalating.
Even some insurgents have come to realize the power of democracy. I traveled to Jordan last month to meet a senior insurgent leader and unrepentant Baathist. He conceded that "resistance" activities had hurt too many Iraqis and turned many in the hotbed Sunni province of al-Anbar against them. Sunni Arab groups that last year placed their hope for empowerment on U.S. or Arab League intercession recognize that their best hope for empowerment is through the ballot box, not boycotts and bombs.
The process of democratization may be messy--but it is working. Iraqis are frustrated with their situation but, unlike elsewhere in the Arab world, they can now hold their government to account. In Brent Scowcroft's world of realpolitik, Arab regimes are unaccountable to their people. There are no constituents. Hatred festers, and autocrats blame outsiders. Instability and, in the case of the Arab world, a half century of intermittent warfare results. In the face of stagnant government and corruption, Tunisians, Egyptians and Palestinians have turned toward Islamic radicals who seek to restrict freedom and promote terror. But Iraqis have an alternative. Their vote has meaning. Arab regimes expect citizens to serve the ruler. But in Iraq, voters insist that politicians serve the people.
Mr. Rubin, editor of the Middle East Quarterly, is an American Enterprise Institute scholar
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
and their reproduction disrupted by, this intrusion by man. The same was said 30 years ago by opponents of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which brings heated oil south from Prudhoe Bay. Since the oil began flowing, the caribou have increased from 5,000 to 31,000. Perhaps the pipeline's heat makes them amorous.
Iraqis will go to the polls tomorrow for the third time this year. Their actions mark both a triumph for the Iraqi people and a warning for Arab autocrats. Not only has the Iraqi march toward democracy proved naysayers wrong, but Iraqis' growing embrace of democracy demonstrates the wisdom of staying the course. Iraqis are changing political culture. Howard Dean and John Murtha may believe that the U.S. military has lost. Brent Scowcroft may think Arab democracy a pipe dream. They are mistaken. 
