That produced an interesting problem here, starting around the late 1970s, where migrants, predominantly from Italy at that stage but later from Greece and Turkey as those groups came later, returned to their villages to retire after working in Australia since the 1940s and 1950s.
The idealised life they remembered, and the family and social practices of which they had kept alive in Australia, was gone. For example, young women were getting around in mini skirts and going out with young men unchaperoned.
A lot of these migrants returned to Australia after a few months or years, caught in a confusing cultural no man’s land after spending all their adult lives maintaining a culture that was steadily disappearing in their country of origin while they were doing it.
I don’t know that the same situation applies to all Islamic countries as, as far as I can see, the remote parts of Pakistan and various Middle Eastern countries don’t seem to be adapting to the modern world. This is probably irrelevant to the present discussion as people who migrate from those countries to the West are generally from the better educated and more urbane groups, not that that necessarily means that they aren’t the group from which the dangerous fanatics will be drawn.
I think there may be a strong element of resentment and vengeance motivating some of these characters, such as the London bombers, who come from groups long resident in the host country. Their, and in some cases their parents’, experience or perception of discrimination by the dominant community and their contempt for the standards and customs of the dominant community may fuse conveniently with current extremist Islamic jihadi views to justify vengeful acts against the dominant community.
This exactly happened to many first generationTurkish immigrants here, they always planned to return someday, first they were living in portacabins shared with many other young men, just saving their money to eventually buy this village shop or garage back home, but then they got fed up of living with a bunch of blokes and stared missing their wives, they brought the wife over and moved into a cheap flat in the less desiable districts of town (old, pre WW1 buildings, with outside toilets and coal stoves for heating), then the children came and every time the return was postponed, until one day they realised that they don’t know anybody in their old village anymore. All their childhood friends went abroad as well, also their children grew up in Germany and know the village in Turkey only from holidays and have all their friends over here.
I don’t know that the same situation applies to all Islamic countries as, as far as I can see, the remote parts of Pakistan and various Middle Eastern countries don’t seem to be adapting to the modern world. This is probably irrelevant to the present discussion as people who migrate from those countries to the West are generally from the better educated and more urbane groups, not that that necessarily means that they aren’t the group from which the dangerous fanatics will be drawn.
I think there may be a strong element of resentment and vengeance motivating some of these characters, such as the London bombers, who come from groups long resident in the host country. Their, and in some cases their parents’, experience or perception of discrimination by the dominant community and their contempt for the standards and customs of the dominant community may fuse conveniently with current extremist Islamic jihadi views to justify vengeful acts against the dominant community.
I think it is both side’s fault. I can’t speak about the UK, but I’m quite familar with the German situation (and unlike most Germans, through my ex-wives I’m also quite familiar with immigration procedures, which normally only affect foreigners).
On one hand, by simply denying that immigration exists over almost 40 years, the various governments (both left wing and conservative are at fault) failed to provide proper integration infrastructures, like e.g. German language courses. Only a few years ago was it made mandatory to pass a simple spoken German language test to get a citizenship!
Now minimum language skills are mandatory even for a residence visa (due to the fact that many of the more conservative members of especially the Muslim comunities refused to let their wives learn German, out of fear that they might interact alone with the “sinfull” German surroundings). For a citizenship, the applicant has to prove basic knowledge about Germany’s history, political system and constitution.
Also, a closer look is being taken at marriages, to see if they have been voluntary or not (e.g. in the Berlin district of Neukoelln, years ago I translated when a friend was marrying his Filipino bride, who at this time didn’t speak German. Nowadays the translating must be done by a sworn court translator, because apparently people with connections to organised crime have been translating falsely, so that women got married who didn’t even know what was going on!).
Schools also failed to provide special help to make sure that the children of immigrants would get the education they’d need to find a job later. In some cases you can’t rely on the parents doing the job, especially if the parents are barely literate and understand very little German, and due to their hard manual work are not able to spend much time in educating their children.
This way we have two generations of young people, who are going straight from school to the dole line.
On the other hand I have noticed that many Muslim families (both Arab and Turkish) treat their first born sons (but also the other sons) like little princes. Once I installed a lighting system in a second hand furniture shop owned by a Lebanese businessman. During the week I was working there, I could observe much about how the family interacted. The father was a devout Muslim, observing his prayers etc., but the way he permitted his oldest (teenage) son to talk to the mother, well if I would have acted towards my mother this way, I would have gotten a major walloping from my dad.
On the other hand I have a high respect for the girls. From a very young age they have to take over responsibilities and to work.
This makes them usually much more mature than their brothers.
The problem is now, no matter how the boy treats his mum or his sisters, but if he challenges his dad (who is basically the clan leader and has to uphold the image of the guy who controls everything) he’ll get a major beating.
Now imagine a boy like this in a public school, where most teachers are female. He got taught at home that he has to act the tough, supermacho, who readily will use violence if something doesn’t go his way, but at the same he has been taught that he doesn’t have to take orders from women (this doesn’t apply just to school, at the airport I’m working at on a few occasion I had to step in, getting ready to get physical, because some Arab young macho in his late teens or early 20s on a Morrocco flight was getting agressive towards one of our stewardesses, because he didn’t like to take orders from a woman. On one occasion, it looked as if two guy were about to beat one of the girls. I was outside, just starting with my walk around inspection and had therefore my MagLite in my hand. I just shouted to the captain (through the open cockpit window) that there was trouble in the cabin and stormed up the airstairs. If the guys would have hit the girl I would have wacked them, I was fully ready to get torn in. But my presence and the presence of the captain coming out of the cockpit at the same time cooled the guys down. Apparently they got up, while the plane was still taxying and the purserette told them to sit down again, upon which they became agressive. They tried to appeal to some male solidarity with us, but the captain ordered the first officer to radio for police, so they got arrested.).
This is exactly the problem, a very agressive attitude, considering any criticism as an attack on some kind of honour, while on the other hand being a failure in modern life, which requires education for success, but still demanding status symbols and plenty of money in the pocket.
This is exactly the group the religious fanatics try to recruit. Either they fall for the fanatics or just become criminals.
Right, it’s not the muslims who try to censor, they don’t have that power yet. It’s our own corrupt politically correct ruling elite that pulls stunts like relocating a D.A. and a police officer after they stated correct numbers on crime rates in an interview. Or majors preventing citizens from executing their civil rights, like freedom of assembly or speech.
We took a different path by implementing something called ‘multiculturalism’. Precisely what that term means depends upon the commentator’s standpoint. At one extreme are those who regard it as the worst thing that ever happened to Australia (naturally, none of these people are Aborigines, who might have a rather different view of what was the worst thing to happen to Australia on the immigration front) because the government funded and encouraged separate identities based on migrants’ homelands rather than encouraging assimilation. At the other exteme are people who think it’s a great idea to value and support and encourage people to maintain their foreign cultural heritage in a new country and that the taxpayers in the dominant community should support this mild form of cultural apartheid. Like most things, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
And, like a lot of well-intentioned ideas that came out of the sixties and seventies, there was probably more cuddly feely sentiment than sound research to support the program.
Here, most of the wogs do it, starting at Greece and moving clockwise around the Mediterranean.
It used to drive my feminist wife nuts in the 1970s and early 1980s when she taught in a slum school here to see little Greek boys in the first few years of primary school walking to school followed by mum or grandma lugging their schoolbags, and mum or grandma turning up at school at lunchtime to feed the little princes, to the extent of placing food in their mouths, and mum or grandma treated by these kids as if they were servants, which they were.
And as you indicated, these attitudes spilled over into contemptuous attitudes by these little princes towards female teachers, which provoked some interesting confrontations with Anglo-Celtic Aussie sheilas who weren’t prepared to be treated that way. Which of course then provoked the arrogant dads to turn up at the school and try to bully the female teachers, because they were just as incapable of handling women in positions of authority and, worse, women who were substantially better educated than them.
By the time they’re in their mid-teens, a lot of these boys are strutting little (and not so little with the body building and steroids) shits obsessed with proving their manhood by violent conduct, into kickboxing and martial arts and street gangs before the clever ones graduate to being nightclub bouncers and drug dealers while the dumb ones just create havoc on trains and streets. Some are Muslims, but there is a fair sprinkling of Lebanese Christians, Greek Orhtodox and sundry other religions among them.
I don’t know what causes such conduct to be so common across so many racial, ethnic, and religious groups, but I suspect that part of it is the migrant experience for the first generation born or arrived very young in a new country because they’re the ones who behave like that when, at least publicly, most of their fathers don’t. I think there is an element of trying to be the top dog in a foreign environment. What goes with it is an exaggerated sense of identity with their parents’ culture and perhaps religion to anchor them in the foreign environment. Magnify those aspects in some vulnerable Muslim individuals and that’s probably half way to a suicide bomber.
I think also that there is a fundamental divide between the modern West and much of the rest of the world that revolves around a different attitude to the place of women in society. As long as a society automatically makes half of the population subservient to the other half, members of that society who agree with such a position are incapable of thinking and acting in ways consistent with modern Western ways. Worse, they see our ways as decadent and think that this decadence entitles them to treat us as less worthy. Rather like the reverse often happens with Westerners looking at those societies. Unfortunately, I doubt that there is any middle ground which can be reached to allow both sides to respect the other’s beliefs and practices. It sure as hell ain’t gonna happen in my case as long as so-called ‘honour killings’ and other forms of male-dominated rubbish are acceptable in certain cultures.
Or, as happened in one our states some years ago (might still be in for all I know), police were banned from issuing descriptions of suspects as of Asian / Middle Eastern / African / Southern European / or whatever appearance as that was a form of racial profiling or stereotyping. So, if there was a major bombing by a crew of X ethnic appearance, police would just have to say that they are looking for two males about 1.75cm tall of average build, rather than adding the helpful identification information that they were a couple of blokes of X appearance. :rolleyes:
But that’s not to be laid at the feet of Muslims or anyone other than the politically correct zombies who have got their hands on the levers of power, or to whom those who have their hands on those levers are beholden.
It’s the same sort of rubbish that says children shouldn’t have books in school which have mum and dad in a family because this is discriminatory towards lesbians where there are two mums in the family, or kindergartens shouldn’t celebrate Xmas or children shouldn’t have ham sandwiches because it might offend Muslims. :rolleyes:
In my experience, the people being ‘protected’ from these things by the self-appointed guardians of the social conscience (who almost invariably come from the dominant Anglo-Celtic culture) are considerably more robust than, and often embarrassed by, such pedantic attempts to ensure that minorities are respected.
I don’t have a problem with the pharmacist’s action, any more than I do with a Muslim or Jewish butcher refusing to stock pork or a Catholic doctor refusing to prescribe the contraceptive pill or perform an abortion.
We currently have a parliamentary debate here about legalising abortion which is about a bill (draft legislation) which requires a doctor with a conscientious objection to abortion (up to 24 weeks, which despite my willingness to decriminalise abortion is way too late for me) to give an ‘effective referral’ (i.e. to a doctor who will perform the abortion) to the woman. I don’t see why the doctor should have to compromise his or her conscience to participate in what is, to the doctor, a grave moral crime. The Yellow Pages is widely available and it’s not hard for the woman to find other doctors.
Just because someone wants something that might be acceptable to the community in general doesn’t mean that everyone is obliged to supply it.
Although I did them in first half of my career, as a practising lawyer for 30 years I won’t act for people, almost invariably men, accused of sex crimes against children. This is partly because one case (in which I would have happily pulled the lever on the gallows to drop my client and his mongrel wife into eternity) put me off doing any more, and partly because having children of my own gave me a new perspective. I subscribe to the principle that everyone is entitled to a lawyer to defend them, regardless of the enormity of the crime with which they are charged, but that doesn’t mean I should be compelled to provide that defence.
I am entitled to my freedom of choice just as much as a pharmacist or doctor or anyone else providing goods or services is entitled to theirs, and just as much as a woman is entitled to choose the contraceptive or morning after pills or an abortion.
The problem with some noisy proponents of freedom of choice, not a few of whom I’ve had a bit to do with in radical political circles, is that their view of freedom of choice is that everybody else is free to agree with them. I think everybody is entitled make their own choices and that nobody’s exercise of choice should override someone else’s right to choose their own actions.
Isn’t Tesco a chain of some sort? That dude was an employee and whether that woman takes the pill or not is none of his business. The store sells the pills, so he has to sell them or he should quit. Same goes for alcohol or pork. Who do those religious nerds, be it muslim, jew or christian think they are. Freedom of religion also includes freedom from religion and I am slowly but surely fed up with their annoying demands for special treatment and it’s not just me.
Isn’t there a saying: Be careful what you wish for …
You are mixing up several different things there. In respect of the Muslim or Jewish butcher not providing pork one you might as well defend your position by saying that you would support the right of the pharmacist, in the same way you would defend the right of a vegetarian organic healthyfood shop not to sell Mars Bars fried in animal fat. If a retail organization has a stated policy that it merchandizes certain products that it basically just a fact of how it operates. The issue as I understand it, is that the product was carried by the pharmacy but the pharmacist refused to supply it, that is an entirely different matter. If the Pharmacist knew that the Pharmacy retailed such products and they were contrary to his moral beliefs why did he not seek employment with a pharmacy where such products are not retailed.
Even if a doctor does not wish to perform an abortion under any circumstances, I do not have a problem with that.
In the way you have presented things, it looks like to me that you may be suggesting that a Wahabi Muslim in Australia could get a job at a state municipal swimming pool knowing that it was a mixed pool and it was his responsibility to provide lifeguard protection to both men and women bathers and then say it was not his responsibility that a woman drowned because he did not wish to pollute his mind by looking at women in bathing costumes and stayed in his office rather than being beside the pool, because that way he was sure not to seem any females in bathing costumes and you would regard his position as legitimate.
If you did not wish to act on behalf of people accused of sex crimes against children, that is your own personal choice, however under the British, Australian and American legal system people accused of a crime are presumed innocent until proven otherwise. Furthermore with cases of sexual abuse of children, society is operating to a double standard in that the likes of insurgents who plant bombs in busy streets and murder children are often regarded as heroes by the exact same people who would be most vociferous in condemning child sexual abuse.
Well not if you were running a solictor’s practice and you were advertiseing a service, that you then refused to provide to a client, for the reason it was the policy of the practice not to provide that service.
Your argument would be fair and reasonable had the lady in question went to a pharmacy that did not supply the morning afterpill because it was operated according to “Islamic” principles, it is my impression she did not.
I missed the chain store aspect and was treating it as if it was an independent dispensary.
Yeah, if someone doesn’t agree with what their employer does then they shouldn’t be there.
There is also a degree of hypocrisy, and stupidity, in working for someone who offends your moral principles and expecting them to change their business for your convenience. Not unlike people who buy cheap houses near airports and main roads and then want to shut down the airport or road because it interferes with their enjoyment of the property.
In our last national government we had a nasty turd of a health minister who is a rabid Catholic (although he fathered a bastard with whom he had no contact) and is opposed to abortion, but it didn’t stop him presiding over a ministry and department which funds tens of thousands of abortions every year. Because that was the price of him having his position of power. Prick!
Could you elucidate on (a) the spin I have put on things and (b) how it produces that result?
So? Did I say anything to the contrary?
I’m not, and I don’t. And what sort of idiot would run a practice spending money on advertising for clients for a particular type of work and then tell those responding to the advertisements that it was the policy of the practice not to provide the service?
Maybe it happens in Dublin, but not where I am. The cost of advertising alone militates against it.
Hi Drake I have lost the logic of your argument, if the Islamofascists want something and the ruleing elite gives the Islamofascists what they want it e.g. censorship, even if it is the case the Islamofascists are not sufficently strong to achieve the desired result without the co-operation of the ruleing elite, the Islamofascists are still engageing in censorship.
About ten years ago I had exactly the same problem in rural Ireland (County Sligo)with Catholic pharmacists, when I was on a trip with my then girlfriend (now fiancee), who refused to sell me condoms (one said clearly that contraceptives were against his belief, so he doesn’t sell them).
Similarly, when I was living in Shannon, Ireland, I met a German couple who already had three children and decided it was enough. At this time they were living in Clifden, Connemara, Co. Galway, also a beautiful, but very rural region. The woman went to the only gynaecologist within 30 km, who told her that she wouldn’t prescribe contraceptives due to her religion and, anyway, three children were by no way enough. She should come back when she is again pregnant.
No wonder that Ireland has one of the highest numbers of teenage pregnancies in Europe. The attitude I mentioned above clearly sucks when you are livng in a rural area with the next pharmacy / gynaecologist 30-50 km away and you don’t own a car yet.
BTW, I never encountered this attitude in the bigger Irish cities, like Limerick, Galway or Dublin. I have been living in Ireland for 2 1/2 years and, isince my missus still lives there, I’m regularly visiting there.
The article also states that he was a locum, therefore it wasn’t his normal place of work. If he was upfront with Tescos and stated that he would not be willing to sell certain medication for reasons of conscience (which seems entirely plausible from the reaction of the manager) then I can find no objection to his behaviour. Indeed, it is quite likely that Tescos had the option of a pharmacist unwilling to sell the morning after pill, or no pharmacist at all.
Frankly, I think the woman in the article doesn’t have a leg to stand on…
Well that would of course be idiotic, but no less idiotic than your apparent position that Tesco offer products to the public which they would then refuse to sell to the public.
Well probably does happen if a Leprauchan would be running the practice.
This is exactly what happened here. The whole immigration issue got caught in between the “keep Germany white and Christian” crowd from the conservative side and the cuddly, let’s- sing-Kumbayah-people-everybody-is-welcome from the leftwing side. As a result NOTHING was done.
To make it clear: We need immigration, but it needs to be regulated. Regulated in as far as our economy can digest it and to get people, who’ll contribute to the country, and not social freeloaders.
Regulation means NOT in accordance with ethniticy, religion or country of origin. Obviously it should be expected from applicants to respect the local legal system, especially the rights and dutiers written down in the constitution.
Maybe we should just call it a Mediterranen attitude (though many western mediterranean countries, like Spain and Italy, have modernised by now, but I remember similar attitudes from there 30-40 years ago).
IMO, these attitudes stem from countries, where traditionally life was organised in family, clan or tribal groups, with a patriarch at the top who had absolute power. The government was eitherb weak or corrupt, so differences betwee the clans were regulated internally (hey, up to a few decades ago vendettas in Sicily and Sardenia were legendary).
In Germany, the different groups of immigrants settled in different regions, mainly due to faith. The Roman-Catholic and Greek orthodox immigrants mainly settled in Catholic southern and western Germany, while the majority of Turks settled in former Prussian Berlin (due to historical links). Later they got augmented by Arabs, mostly Lebanese. The oldest Muslim cemetary (and mosque) in Berlin (right beside Tempelhof Airport) is almost 300 years old. The land was given to the Muslim community by the Prussian king Frederik II after the Ottoman ambassador unexpectetely died while being in Berlin. According to Muslim customs he needed to be buried within one day, so the king donated the land. Today there is no more space for additional graves on this cemetary, but the mosque is still being used.
The refugees we had form Iran after the Islamist revolution actually fitted themselves in very nicely, probably since most of them came from the educated middle to upper class.
That is people exercising their rights and if you want to enjoy living in the beautiful scenery of Connemara rather than in the Ruhr valley don’t expect that everybody is going to be right on liberals and or that the nearest doctor will for sure not think anybody who would have an abortion should not be consigned to the lowest depths of hell anymore than one would expect to live in the Ruhr and expect it be an unspoiled oasis of nature.
I would rather think the high level of teenage pregnancies in the Irish Republic would have a lot less to do with any perceived lack of contraceptives and the common practice of female Irish teenagers to consume so much alcohol that, they can not remember the events of the previous night, the morning after and whilst intoxicated are in no position to make rational decisions.
In fairness to the individual pharmacist concerned. I have had a personal experience of being in a Tesco store in which they were selling products which were unfit for consumption or use by human beings. They had a tinned product in which the tin was extensively bashed, a cereal product in which the package was open and a packet of plasters in which the package was open. As these goods were being offered at lower price than the undamaged goods, they had been specifically selected as damaged goods, so it was not just an oversight that the store had damaged goods for sale and had not realized the fact. When I brought this matter to the attention of the Tesco store manager he refused to remove the goods from sale and fetched the store security with the implication I was some sort of crazy and dangerous person and that is despite pointing out to him that all of the goods were unsafe to be used by the public and in the case of tin food goods in which the tin has been damaged, this risks poisoning with botulism toxin which is one of the most potent poisons in the natural world. I also sent an e-mail to the then chief executive of Tesco about that matter and received no response. So in the circumstance, I would have to allow for the possibility that the pharmacist told Tesco that he could not supply certain products and Tesco told him the issue would not arise since e.g. he would be working with another pharmacist and they would supply such products.
Boys you drifting the topic very badly, the menace of a pharmacist not selling contraceptives is not comparative with the menace of a large group tovel heads blewing to pieces women, children and men alike in name of a perverse faith and with a smile of their dirty faces, there is no point of comparison so… please men, get a grip.:rolleyes:
