* They aren’t ruthless. They don’t turn back migrants with flotillas of gunboats. The Aussies made it clear that no one would get through. So the illegal infiltrators immediately stopped coming (and stopped drowning).
In fact, the Aussies have saved countless lives by the simple expedient of growing a pair and a growing a backbone.
* Far from being “strikingly at odds” with Australia’s traditional policy towards immigration, Prime Minister Abbott’s approach is actually strikingly consonant with Australian tradition.
* Fifteen minutes ago, I was out working in my parents’ Bay Area yard when a middle-aged Hispanic neighbor (whom I don’t know) walked up and asked me about parking restrictions having to do with an upcoming street maintenance project. I mentioned that I saw a couple of vehicles towed earlier today. He immediately blamed someone living on another street “who doesn’t like Hispanics.”
It was so out-of-the-blue that I started to wonder if had something to do with Trump.
Street parking was one of those Nice Things that disappeared when the local apartment buildings filled up with Hispanic immigrants in the early 90s. (The houses were quick to follow.) Today local homeowners have to buy permits to park in front of their own houses, but the city never enforces the permits, so it’s just an extra tax and there’s still nowhere to park.
* When the crew of HMS Bulwark first fished immigrants out of the Mediterranean, they were expecting to find the world’s hungry, wretched and destitute. Instead, they found them relatively healthy, well-dressed and carrying mobile phones and credit cards, which they intended to use upon arrival in Italy.
The military learnt then what politicians are only slowly beginning to work out – that this is not simply a refugee crisis. The world’s poor are on the move because they’re not quite so poor as they used to be, and can afford to travel. A great migration has begun, and it could be with us for decades.
* The iPhone 6 is a helluva smartphone. If you are stuck with some Nokia piece of junk and all your cousins who went to went to Europe are posting pictures of themselves with their iPhone 6s, well, you might get the itch to travel too.
* Rupert comes back here every now and then to lecture us on how the USA is failing to re-elect a new people and as such will have no future, whereas us Awssssiessss have this once in a life time opportunity to replace ourselves with High IQ Asians (an HBDers wetdream come true).
Rupert Murdoch says Australia must embrace immigrants to boost economy
Rupert Murdoch says Australia needs to embrace high immigration to add dynamism to the economy, enhance its human capital and create strong bonds with the rest of the world.
…
The positive intervention on immigration was a significant theme of a lecture the media mogul delivered at the Lowy Institute in Sydney on Thursday evening.
“We think of the United States as an immigrant nation, and rightly so,” Murdoch told his audience in Sydney.
“But the percentage of foreign-born in the United States, a country currently racked by a self-defeating debate over immigration policy, is just about 12%. Incredibly, Australia is double that,” he said.
“That means Australia is on the way to becoming what may be the world’s most diverse nation. This is an incredible competitive advantage.
There’s obviously a fair amount of self-interest in his urgings, not just with his business ventures but, I suppose, maybe in case he needs to update his Asian wife to a newer model.
He’s been back again just recently and has declared: Rupert Murdoch calls for snap election in ‘almost ungovernable’ Australia
He thinks Abbott is the best PM for the job but doesn’t explain how having a snap election would get Abbott re-elected since all polls indicate the senate would be further “ungovernable”, Abbott would easily be defeated by Labor, and thus the boats policy the NY Times rails against would suddenly come to an end and the influx of refugees begin again.
Of course, Rupert doesn’t live here so it’s not his concern with those minor technical details.
On a side issue, probably a bit arcane for US folks to understand, but worthwhile to relay in order to show what Rupert is really on about, Murdoch at one stage started a Rugby League war. He started his own Super League in an attempt to take Rugby League viewers to his Fox Sports subscription.
There were two Rugby League competitions, Super League and the traditional League competition. Long story short, the bust up wasn’t good for the game but good for Fox subscriptions. Everyone made peace and Fox Sports got a great deal on the newly merged again competition (Fox actually owned some of the new clubs). The NRL was born (National Rugby League).
Anyway, recently the NRL got a bit uppity and started to make new contracts for television rights with other market players, did a deal that excluded Fox but was very good for promoting the game, as Fox had so many games locked from the public up on its pay channels.
Rupert, as magnanimous as ever, stated that:
“We’ve always believed this (AFL) is the premium code in Australia – it’s the national game,” Murdoch told reporters on Tuesday.
“We believe in the strength of the game and we will do everything we can to make it stronger.”
AFL, Australian Football League, is a completely different code to Rugby League, and supported mostly by non-NSW and QLD states. Effectively, Rupert has told the NRL to go fuck themselves, and that from now on he’s the biggest AFL man in town and if you want to deal with him deal with that.
The upshot is, whatever Murdoch is for is in your interests, even your national interests, and if you disagree he will destroy you.
* He who pays the piper, calls the tune.
If we are going to accept the premise that the better off countries of the world (US, EU, Australia) have a moral duty to accept migrants from the less well off countries of the world, then it should follow that the better off countries of the world should be able to dictate the conditions in the less well off countries, beginning with birth control.
The alternative is an absurd situation in which we allow laissez-faire life choices to everyone, until they fail, after which they get to move into our house and sleep on the couch.
Naturally a situation like that is bound to awaken all kinds of instinctive rage and chaos, which will lead to even more stratification, violence, militarization of police forces, and brutality. So it follow that the most humane solution is to nip it in the bud, and that is why Australia’s policies are correct.
We are getting to the point where neo-colonialism will be the only hope for the West. The Camp of Saints model is cute, because it assumes passivity all the way down. But even Obama isn’t going to accept 1,000 refugees into a White House that could probably house twice that number, if you stack the bunks high enough.
* It is amazing the NYT failed to notice Israel has an immigration policy similar to Australia’s. Really just an amazing omission that will surely surprise every reader.
* What exactly do the refugees want? I can understand their immediate goal is to get out of the war zone. Well once they hit Turkey, they accomplished that. But apparently they don’t like Turkey. So they move on to Greece. As in Turkey they are safely out of the war zone, but like Turkey they don’t wish to stay. So they move on and on. And along the way the Hungarians and Czechs try to stop them. They clash with the Hungarians and Czechs and say they just want to get to Germany.
OK, so what do they want in Germany? Are they going to Germany because it is culturally similar and they feel they will better fit in? Are they going to Germany because they feel there are plenty of jobs waiting for them that they are qualified to fill? Or are they going to Germany because they are expecting generous handouts and living accommodations?
Now let’s imagine the Germans don’t give them the generous benefits and living accommodations. Will the refugees be OK with that since all they ever wanted to do was get to Germany?
Now we all know the Germany government will take care of these people. They have no Donald Trump for the time being. But it is depressing to see these refugees clearly descending upon Germany to take advantage of the social safety net built by the German people to care for their own. And it is more depressing that the German government will give them what they want at the expense of their own people.
* It’s interesting that so much anti-immigration opposition past and present boils down to economics/class. You had Kearney in California, and various Cornish, Irish, Finnish, Swedish, and English miners out west opposed to Chinese labor specifically because of wage disparities. Yet the slave power has been masterful at re-branding their money lust as anti-racism. There was a balance between labor and capital that kept things in check. If people want things back in check, they should consider being a tad more supportive of labor. This libertarianism nonsense is a total disaster.
* What really got on the tits of the Australians was the way their nation was being cynically and ruthlessly targeted by hard-nosed, cunning, professional people traffickers.
Basically what they had were Iranians, Afghans, Sri Lankans and others, from thousands of miles and clear blue oceans away, – impersonating ‘desperate’ persons fleeing for their very lives, using well planned and well provisioned ocean going boats – stopping over in Indonesia for supplies and r and r amongst other things, more or less planning fake, bogus, little excursions to Australia, whilst blatantly bypassing umpteen ‘safe’ countries.
There is only so much piss-taking people can take.
* Past Aussie opposition to Asian immigration was economic. It was not based on notions of racial superiority. Most opposition to immigration is economic, not racial, yet it has been successfully painted as stemming from the latter.
* Australia is unique among white majority countries in that it was formed from the dregs of another white society. Other places like the US, Canada and New Zealand attracted a large number of entrepreneurial and already wealthy people looking to expand their holdings.
Australia was created by low level criminals and the people unlucky enough to be their jailers. Sydney was not a particularly great place to live in the early decades of settlement it was not a desirable assignment.
The cultural difference between Australia and other white countries is large. It is the only one where the working class has actual political clout – the “Aussie Battler” is seen as something politicians must make allowances for. In all other similar countries the working class is an abstraction. The fact that blue collar and white collar workers have very similar incomes in Australia and nowhere else is a striking outcome of this national trait. In fact, blue collar workers often out earn white collar workers. White collar work is more of a personality choice. In other English speaking countries blue collar vs white collar is the difference between an awful life and a comfortable one.
Australians are (proudly) unsophisticated. They are not “clever” enough to see that destroying the fabric of their society is a good thing.
* Australian political climate is characterized by saying things that are as mean as possible while maintaining a thin veneer of decorum.
