Trust "The Guardian"

"The Guardian" is the oracle of the British Left.  They have recently branched out with an Australian edition of their propaganda sheet. So you can almost write their stories for them:  The Liberal party is bad; Muslims are good etc. Their slant does however make them look ridiculous at times.  Below is what they reported about the Parramatta shooting by Farhad Jabar Khalil Mohammad on Friday.  Must protect those Muslims!

We are going to wrap up our live coverage of this incident here. But before we do, this is what we now know about the fatal shooting:

* A man, dressed in dark clothes, allegedly shot an unsworn NSW Police officer at close range as that officer was leaving work at the Charles Street police complex, Parramatta, at 4.30pm. The officer was killed with a single shot.

* That man remained outside the police complex and apparently fired a few more shots at a NSW Police special constable before a number of other special came outside the station. Police shot back and the man was killed.

*There is nothing at this stage to suggest any links to terrorism - the gunman appeared to have been acting alone and deliberately targeted the unsworn officer, although police aren’t yet sure why.

* The investigation will be treated as a standard coronial investigation and led by the homicide squad, but counter-terrorism officers will assist because police are “keeping an open mind”.

*The gunman has not yet been identified. The unsworn officer has not been named because his family is yet to be notified.
There is no ongoing threat to public safety.

SOURCE






Echo chamber magnifies sense of Muslim grievance

Henry Ergas

According to senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, Assistant Minister for Multicultural Affairs in the Turnbull government, the young Muslims who are being drawn into the extremism that led Farhad Jabar Khalil Mohammad to murder a NSW Police Force employee last Friday feel “disengaged” and “disenfranchised”.

No doubt. But it is also worth recalling the realities. And none is more important than the fact that Australia provides its young Muslims with opportunities that are outstanding.

The contrast to Europe could not be sharper. In Germany and The Netherlands, second-generation Muslims are twice as likely to leave school before completion than their native-born counterparts; in Australia, secondary school retention rates are no lower for second-generation Muslims than they are for the youth population as a whole.

Equally, in Germany and The Netherlands, young Muslims are only one-third as likely to complete post-secondary education as their native-born counterparts, with the result that barely 7 per cent of the children of Turks in Germany and 29 per cent of the children of Moroccans in The Netherlands gain a post-secondary credential; in Australia, the difference in entry rates is small, so that 43 per cent of second-generation Muslims have a post-secondary credential, compared to 52 per cent of the entire population aged 18 to 35.

The achievement is even more remarkable when outcomes for second-generation Australian Muslims are compared with those of their parents.

For example, a study of Sydney’s Lebanese Muslim community found that 45 per cent of the parents had left school before the equivalent of Year 10; in contrast, virtually all their children had completed upper secondary school, with the majority continuing to TAFE or university. Moreover, that difference in educational attainment has translated into sustained upward mobility: although 35 per cent of the fathers were manual labourers, only 10 per cent of the male children are; and while barely 3 per cent of the parents were in the professions, some 20 per cent of their children have professional jobs.

To emphasise those outcomes is not to ignore the problems. However, at least some of them reflect choice rather than necessity: the combination of very low rates of female labour force participation and relatively high birthrates — which then leads to strains on family budgets and welfare dependency — being a case in point. As for the other problems polls highlight, such as the perception of being in a job that falls short of one’s qualifications, they are by no means unique to young Muslims, with other young Australians suffering the effects of “credential inflation” every bit as acutely.

What is different about young Muslims is where those problems lead: to a sense of being hard done by, which others are responsible for and must redress.

For example, only 13 per cent of Australian-born Lebanese Christians strongly believe governments need to do more to advance the position of migrants; but 54 per cent of Australian-born Lebanese Muslims do. And though the majority of Australian-born Muslims say they have never experienced labour market discrimination themselves, they believe it to be relatively widespread and more so now than a decade ago.

It is that chasm between opportunity and grievance which needs to be explained; but its causes are not hard to find.

To begin with, young Australian Muslims, especially those of Middle Eastern extraction, are twice as likely as their Australian peers to have an identity in which religion plays a key part — and that religion, as practised in many Australian mosques, all too often preaches that Muslims are victims of grave injustice.

At the same time, they are highly likely to live in areas where a 30 per cent or higher proportion of the population shares their identity, such as Lakemba, Auburn and Greenacre in Sydney and Dandenong South, Dallas and Meadow Heights in Melbourne. And to make matters worse, their primary social networks in those areas are frequently narrow, with one survey finding that 40 per cent of young Muslims of Lebanese origin have never had any Anglo-Celtic friends.

The result is an echo chamber that does not merely confirm misperceptions but magnifies them, allowing dissatisfaction to meta­stasise, in extreme cases, into jihadism.

That process needs to be blocked; the risk, however, is that the government’s response will only aggravate the pathology.

For example, the Gillard government’s multicultural policy, with its emphasis on combating discrimination, could not but vindicate the belief that discrimination is a serious issue.

Equally, the greater the prominence given to the self-appointed representatives of the Muslim community, the greater the danger of entrenching Islam’s role as the community’s point of reference.

There are, in that respect, lessons to be learned from Malek Boutih, a French politician of Algerian extraction who prepared the official report on last January’s terrorist attacks in Paris.

Boutih finds no evidence that radicalisation was related to disadvantage: rather, many French jihadists come from well-off backgrounds.

And he has long argued that the policy of promoting community-based Islamic organisations has proved counterproductive, legitimising the perception that French society is structured on religious lines and strengthening young Muslims’ sense of segregation and victimhood.

The consequence of “communitarianism”, Boutih contends, has been to make radicalisation more, rather than less, likely.

None of that is to suggest there are easy answers. Nor is it to deny that most Muslims are appalled at the senseless violence being wreaked in Islam’s name.

But this is an area in which woolly thinking and “feelgood” policies literally kill.

With the grim reality of the latest outrage sinking in, tough-minded deterrence must be the primary response.

As it reaffirms its commitment to that deterrence, the government’s message to Australia’s young Muslims should be clear: count your blessings, for they are truly bountiful. And instead of shredding them, now is the time to be in the frontline of their defence.

SOURCE






Asylum seekers at Nauru detention centre to come and go as they please

ASYLUM seekers at the Nauru detention centre will now be able to come and go as they please.  The Nauru government has confirmed the facility has become an open centre, in line with the recommendation of a recent Senate inquiry report into allegations of sexual and child abuse.

Nauru’s Justice Minister David Adeang said 600 asylum seekers’ outstanding refugee claims would be processed within the next week.

Mr Adeang flagged that more Australian police assistance would be forthcoming.

The Nauru government has increased the number of community officers from 135 to 320, including 30 refugees, to help with the transition.

Extra lifeguards will be appointed to patrol beaches to ensure the water safety of refugee families, some of whom may not have strong swimming skills.

A Pakistani refugee drowned last year while swimming at the beach, along with a Nauru citizen who attempted the rescue.

The Nauru government is also in talks with Australia about ongoing health care and overseas medical referrals for refugees.

SOURCE






Why are we so afraid of an anti-abortion activist?

Miranda Devine

SO AUSTRALIA has become one of those countries that ban people whose views are not acceptable to the feminist establishment, and then locks them up.

This is the stunningly illiberal position of the new Turnbull government which banned American anti-abortion campaigner Troy Newman from coming to Australia last week.

He arrived on Thursday, anyway, to begin a speaking tour to Right to Life groups around the country, and was promptly detained by Border Security officers at Melbourne airport before being transferred to Maribyrnong Immigration Detention Centre pending deportation.

Newman has no criminal record, is not a threat to national security or to good public order.

He just has an opinion the “#ShoutYourAbortion” crowd don’t like. He believes abortion is murder.

Newman is on the board of the Center for Medical Progress, which has released 10 videos detailing horrendous practices at abortion provider Planned Parenthood, including the sale of foetal organs and body parts.

That makes him public enemy number one to abortion activists who will do whatever it takes to suppress the ugliness of the lucrative global abortion industry.

Whether you agree with Newman or not, his views are not illegal or even very remarkable. There are plenty of Australians who agree abortion is murder and many more who, while believing abortion should be safe and legal, are uncomfortable with the large number of abortions performed each year.

Surely the women who celebrate their abortions on twitter with the hashtag “Shout your abortion” are more out of step with community sentiment.

Whatever your view, banning uncomfortable opinions puts us on a dangerous path. Yet how few Australians are willing to uphold basic liberal principles when it comes to defending views they find distasteful.

The Turnbull government has caved into twitter lynch mobs in order to demonstrate its new feminist agenda. Incredibly, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton even took at face value a deceptive letter from Labor MP Terri Butler.

As the Australian Christian Lobby points out, Butler is a member of the pro-abortion group Emily’s List, who “receives campaign money from Emily’s List because of her pro-abortion views.

“That is fair enough in a free society, but it is a relevant motivating factor in her campaign to stop Mr Newman from speaking in Australia.”

Emily’s List is menace enough in the Labor Party, but now the Coalition has bowed to its autocratic ideology.

Did Dutton bother checking Butler’s claims before cancelling Newman’s visa at the last minute?

Her letter was a farrago of half truths and exaggerations. She claimed Newman advocated the execution of abortion doctors, implying he incited vigilante violence. Her evidence was a 2000 book in which he wrote the US government’s “responsibility rightly involves executing convicted murderers, including abortionists, for their crimes.” Note the word “convicted”. The death penalty is law in some US states.

Butler further claimed, “There is a real risk that Mr Newman’s conduct may cause discord within the community and disrupt the ability of women to access lawful reproductive medicine.”

In the High Court on Friday Justice Nettle reportedly found it had not been proven that Newman had advocated the death penalty for abortion doctors nor that protests he had been involved with in the US had been violent.

But because Newman had defied Australian law by flying here without a visa, he lost his challenge and had to leave the country.

Now he’s gone, all that has been achieved is that Australia is notorious as a country that does not tolerate unfashionable views.

What’s next? Do we ban anyone who dissents from PM Turnbull’s opinion on climate change, or same sex marriage or radical Islam?

So much for the broad church.

SOURCE