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| It's All Over Now: How Jewish artist Arthur Szyk (d.1951) depicted Britain |
On Sunday I dragged my jetlagged self to a book launch in the Shtetl-on-the-Yarra. The book in question is an anthology of translated-into-English articles by a noted Melbourne Yiddishist and Bundist who migrated to Australia in 1928. One of the speakers at the launch, a passionate Yiddishist whose political outlook does not, I'm sure, coincide with my own, spoke in glowing terms of the great multicultural city that Melbourne has become, seeing the subject of the book and the latter's fellow Polish-Jewish Yiddishists who arrived in the first half of the twentieth as the pioneers of this development. And certainly, in the decade and a half that I've lived away from Australia's shores, there are more "ethnic" communities than ever before in this, one of the most liveable cities anywhere in the world.
But there are drawbacks to the multiculturalism at whose shrine we are all expected to worship (or woe betide us with the inhibition-inducing designation "racist"). This very week (hat tip: reader Ian) the
Herald-Sun columnist Andrew Bolt
drew attention to one such drawback: the subordination of women in the Islamic community and the corresponding failure of the feminist sisterhood and the rest of the Left (with one or two honourable exceptions) to condemn it. Specifically, Bolt highlighted the fact that on the campus of one of Australia's most venerable and venerated seats of learning, the University of Melbourne, women attending lectures held under Islamic auspices have been shunted to the back of the room, with scarcely a pip of outrage of one of the Leftist honourable exceptions, Professor Shelia Jeffreys being an honourable exception among Leftists and feminists:
'University of Melbourne gender politics professor Sheila Jeffreys said she was shocked to learn that this “form of subordinating women” was taking place on an Australian university campus.
“There needs to be great outrage about this,” Professor Jeffreys said. “It is a Rosa Parks moment . . . Making women sit at the back in lecture theatres is sexual apartheid…
“Religious ideas that so blatantly make women into second-class citizens are not worthy of respect...”
Professor Jeffreys said the events at the University of Melbourne were part of a “wider trend” that was seeing women’s equality rights eroded under the mantra of religion and culture, even at the level of the UN.'
The university itself has been silent. To quote Bolt again:
'Interesting. [Federal Opposition Leader] Tony Abbott buys in:
Tony Abbott has condemned Melbourne University for allowing gender segregation at on-campus Islamic events, branding the practice “a leap back into the dark ages”.
“I just think it’s un-Australian what’s happened here and I can’t understand for a second why Melbourne University would tolerate it,” the Opposition Leader said.
No word yet from [Prime Minister] Julia Gillard who last year boasted:
"When I see sexism and misogyny, I’m gonna call ‘em for what they are."
So Gillard falsely slimes Tony Abbott as a woman-hater, but says nothing when she sees real sexism?'
It's not politically correct to say so, and indeed to do so is to invite the "racist" trope, but Australia has perhaps still time to learn from the sad and sorry state of Britain. Below are a few sad and sorry aspects of life in the Sceptr'd (some now dub it Septic) Isle.
During the1970s, the controversial anti-immigration right-wing Tory MP (and writer on Jewish history and affairs) Harold Soref was invited to Magdalene College, Cambridge, to participate in a forum on "Race Relations".
On sitting down to dinner with his hosts, Soref found that despite his Jewishness they had arranged a menu consisting of shrimps as a starter with pork chops to follow.
Struck immediately by the irony, given the forum's focus, and refusing the repast, he was at length given a piece of rather tired cod that the kitchen staff had somehow managed to conjure up.
Sensitivities towards "diversity" in Britain have come a long way since then, in the matter of cuisine sometimes much too far.
Take, for example, the roast beef of Old England. Chances are that nowadays that cow on the plate was slaughtered according to sharia methods, and the average consume is none the wiser: nor will they be, if craven MPs
have their way. Halal meat is already served up at school dinners in some state schools, and if non-Muslim parents don't want such meat for their children, well, hard cheese old chum.
The favoured place accorded to Islam (alone, needless to say, of Britain's immigrant religions) is reflected by the now ubiquitous and probably mandatory use by BBC presenters and newsreaders to "the prophet Mohammed" rather than, for example, "Islam's prophet Mohammed". (Just imagine the outcry were the phrase "Our Lord Jesus" to be used! But of course, it never would be.)
Then there's this, which I excerpt from
an excellent article by British columnist James Delingpole:
"My brilliant [11-year-old] niece Freya was talking to my brother the other day about the religious education curriculum at her predominately white, middle-class state school in a pretty English cathedral city. She happened to mention ‘Mohammed, Peace Be Upon Him.’ ‘Eh?’ said my brother. ‘It’s what we’re taught at school. After we mention “Mohammed” we have to say “Peace be upon him”.’
Now I know what you’re thinking: that Freya must surely have got the wrong end of the stick. ‘If this were a madrassa in Bradford, well maybe,’ you’ll be thinking. ‘But at a white, middle-class state school in a pretty English cathedral city? No way. Things aren’t that bad. At least not yet, anyway…’
But Freya is not stupid. That’s why, at the beginning, I referred to her as my ‘brilliant’ niece as opposed to my ‘incredibly thick’ one. Apparently, she assures me, they’ve been taught to use the ‘peace be upon him’ formula since Year 7 and though they’re allowed to shorten it to PBUH, they’re definitely not supposed to call him just Mohammed. ‘There’s sometimes the odd snigger when the phrase comes up but we’ve been conditioned pretty much to accept it as normal,’ says Freya. ‘It’s a bit weird, given that there’s only two Muslim kids in my year of 100.’ [My emphasis]
I find this scary for at least two reasons. The first is what it says about the death of our national identity....
But our failure to defend our culture is only the second scariest part of the PBUH story. The scariest, of course, is what it tells us not just about the growing dominance of Islamism but about our cowardice, fear and ignorance in so easily surrendering to it....'
Quite so.
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| Cultural enrichment in England's capital city |
And then there's a troubling governmental briefing which reveals the promulgation of extremism in Islamic faith schools. To quote the
Daily Telegraph:
'.... Among “schools of interest” are three run by the Islamic Shaksiyah Foundation in Haringey, North London and Slough, Berks. Reports have claimed the foundation is run by senior members and activists of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an extremist political group that campaigns for an Islamic state.... Another school, the Alif Academy in Forest Gate, East London, is also on the list. The local council has raised concerns about links with Hizb ut-Tahrir....
Another causing concern is the Darul Uloom school in Birmingham, associated with the missionary group Tablighi Jamaat, where an undercover documentary recorded children being taught a hardline version of Islam that criticised Hindus and Jews.... The document also mentions a proposal to set up a school attached to the Central Mosque in Rochdale, called Darul Ilm, which is also associated with Tablighi Jamaat.... The briefing document also highlights an application to set up a private school at the Green Lanes Mosque in Birmingham, which has links to fundamentalist “salafi” Muslims in Pakistan, and where another undercover documentary filmed preachers speaking out against homosexuals and non-Muslims.'
With the sentencing recently of fraudulentwork-shy layabout philanderer Mike Philpot, a singularly unattractive and unsavoury specimen of manhood who fathered 17 children by several women while sponging off state benefits and enjoying the favours of a live-in wife and mistress, the Cameron government has started talking tough about those who misuse the welfare system. Will that tough talk translate into action, and will it apply to the extra wives of the immigrants from polygamous Third World cultures who use state benefits to enjoy polygamous lifestyles in Britain, adding many offspring to the burgeoning population? (Read about the little matter of polygamy and welfare payments
here
Such payments include the handouts enjoyed by scroungers who preach Jihad against the very nation whose largess they take: see
here!) Don't miss
this (lucky for some. eh?) or
this or
this either!
Potty rulings by judges allow criminals to escape deportation: see
here and
here , and the European Court of Human Rights has the effect of placing the rights of dangerous Islamist extremists above those of the rest of the population, time and time again thwarting the Government's attempts to deport such men.
Anti-social foreign mendicants are blighting areas of London with makeshift camps that are eyesores, unhygeinic, and utterly illegal, Marble Arch, and along Britain's waterways swans, all the property of the Crown and as such a protected species, are being cruelly trapped and butchered for food by East European immigrants who don't know or don't want to know that their actions are unlawful (with that, and the
seemingly inexorable pattern of wage-undercutting economic immigration to a small already densely populated island whose ethnic British inhabitants are
predicted to become a minority in their own land by 2066, it's no wonder people are turning to the one non-racist political party that is willing to address such problems, Nigel Farage's United Kingdom Independence Party, known as UKIP, which wants to hand back that poisoned chalice known as membership of the European Union).
The European dimension to the British tragedy was splendidly articulated last year, following the bread-and-circuses Queen's Jubilee celebrations, by
Christopher Booker:
'....As we watched those little rowing boats processing down the Thames, I suspect
that some may have contrasted this with the spectacle at Spithead in 1953
when the Queen was able to review 300 ships and what was still one of the
greatest navies in the world. In all the accounts of how Britain has changed
in 60 years, one or two commentators did mention the incredible shrinking of
our Armed Forces, and how many of the famous companies that Britain could
boast in 1953 are either now in foreign hands or have vanished altogether.
But, amid the endless repetitions of how the celebrations made us "proud to be
British", and how "we still do pageantry better than anyone else", and how
much we admire everything the Queen has stood for, almost entirely omitted
was any reference to the most far-reaching of all the changes to the UK’s
status in the world during her reign – everything that has followed from
that day in 1973 when we became part of the new political entity then taking
shape in Europe.....
The reality of that great spectacle last weekend is that it was just an
outward show, a Potemkin village, giving us the illusion that we are still a
proud and historic nation, still able to hold our heads up high with an
unqualified sense of patriotism, still able to govern ourselves under a
splendid and dignified monarch. Indeed, the Queen may deserve admiration for
the way she has carried herself for 60 years. But under the Treaty of
Maastricht, she became, like the rest of her subjects, just another “citizen
of the European Union”.'
The
killing of foetuses of the despised gender (no identification necessary) is rife in certain ethnic communities. Sharia Courts, as numerous now as mushrooms after a heavy rain, undermine the law of the land and undermine, too,
the rights of women. Girls and women have been victims of "honour" killings, promping
this fine article in
The Commentator regarding multiculturalism.
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| Courtesy: Edgar Davidson blog |
As
The Commentator notes
here, fear of the "Islamophobia" tag hindered police enquiries into the Muslim sex gang activity that has plagued Britain.
A Birmingham Muslim who travelled to Nottingham to have sex with a 13-year-old girl whom he'd met on Facebook was spared gaol on the premise that he hadn't known the legal age of consent in England and Wales! (A rum excuse if ever there was one.) To quote the
Daily Mail:
"Rashid had little experience of women’ due to his education at an Islamic school in the UK, which cannot be named for legal reasons.
After his arrest, he told a psychologist that he did not know having sex with a 13-year-old was against the law. The court heard he found it was illegal only when he was informed by a family member.
In other interviews with psychologists, Rashid claimed he had been taught in his school that ‘women are no more worthy than a lollipop that has been dropped on the ground’." [My emphasis.]
Such ingrained contempt for the female of the human species finds expression in the disproportionate number of "Asian" sex gangs that groom underage girls, usually white, for sexual abuse including gang rape: in at least one case, a young victim aged eleven, whom it seems not inappropriate to characterise as a "sex slave," was
branded on the buttock with the initial of her "owner".
As Edgar Davidson (who
highlights the curious case of convict Conway, who criticised Islam) points out
here,
the term "Asian," the closest the mainstream media usually gets to
identifying the Islamic background of the men involved, unjustly slurs
Indians, Chinese, and Koreans, who are not noted for these crimes.
Hardeep Singh, a prominent member of the Sikh community,
has written:
'Obviously Sikhs and Hindus and other "Asian" non-Muslims, including Jains, Zoroastrians, Christians and Buddhists, don’t want to be associated with sexual grooming of vulnerable white girls. The vast majority of Muslims don’t want to either.
The girls targeted in Rochdale, Derby and now in Luton are all non-Muslim. This is nothing new for British Hindus and Sikhs, who have complained about targeting of their girls for decades; Indians refer to the practice as "love-jihad"....
It is for the Muslim community and its leaders to decide what is behind the trend, and what to do about it; but it is time for politicians and the press to bear in mind that in the context of these sex crimes, as with violent extremism, female genital mutilation, forced marriage and honour killings, the vague term "Asian" serves no purpose. Worse, it besmirches entire swathes of Britons with roots in the Indian subcontinent.
It’s encouraging to hear some brave voices filtering through the political minefield: Baroness Warsi [a Muslim Conservative life peer]recently hit out at the “small minority” of Pakistani men who see white girls as “fair game”; last year, Jack Straw [a Labour former Home Secretary]braved criticism for his claim that some Pakistani men see white girls as “easy meat.” But the problem continues: commentators are unwilling to label the perpetrators "Muslim", opting instead to hide behind the fudge of "Asian".
Lessons can be learned from Britain's own colonial history. The Empire's attitudes towards natives may have been problematic from a modern perspective, but it was careful to distinguish between the different inhabitants of the subcontinent....'
As Melanie Phillips
has observed of such cases:
"Of course, many Muslims will be aghast and revolted by the behaviour of these men. But the fact that Muslims are disproportionately represented among the perpetrators of this particular crime means inescapably that a cultural Muslim issue is involved. If this is not acknowledged, this terrible pattern of abuse will simply continue. And those who shriek ‘racist’ or ‘Islamophobe’ at all who point this out in order to stifle proper debate thus make themselves also complicit in these outrages.
A Muslim community disproportionately involved in criminal behaviour targeted at non-Islamic people but which refuses to acknowledge any communal responsibility and claims instead to be the victim of a conspiracy; a society that refuses to acknowledge the religious and cultural wellspring of that behaviour and which condemns instead those who express concern about its consequences; where have we heard all this before? Whether in response to threats to life and liberty from within or without, Britain is still sleepwalking off the edge of a cliff."
Entire neighbourhoods have been transformed, through the unforgivable
policy of Open Door immigration instituted by the Blair Government,
into zones that are unrecognisible, if not actually unwelcoming, to the
original inhabitants (see, for instance,
this article and
this).
But you don't have to be white to feel threatened. I know personally a
young Indian man who, walking along a quiet street in a quiet town
minding his own business, was physically assaulted by two Muslim
strangers who decided to punish him for being a Hindu! He is well aware
of which streets in his own bustling Midlands city are virtual no-go
zones not only to whites but to people like him. In Bradford,
people selling Remembrance Day poppies have been attacked by the usual suspects, and of course, in a certain London area the
Islamic vigilantes interfering with the freedoms of citizens by attempting to force their cultural norms upon them.
Here
is footage from a car ride through what the video makers call "The
Occupied Territory". Not Gaza and the West Bank but the English city of
Birmingham, where one of the two guys grew up. The guys are from a
rightly stigmatised political party, but I suspect that these two were
driven to membership not from an inherent nasty racist mindset but out
of sorrow for their vanishing heritage and because the mainstream
parties have failed to address the issue of mass Third World immigration
in any meaningful way.
Here,
from the capital of England's once green and pleasant land, is as
vicious and hysterical a rabble-rousing speech against the Zionist
Entity as ever there was - by a BBC favourite, "moderate" Muslim, Dr
Azzam Tamimi, who calls Israel "a cancer in the body of humanity" that
must be eradicated; note the frequent cries of
Allahu Akbar.
Well might
Netanyahu express misgivings about the British. Well might Melanie Phillips warn about the
price of financial aid from Saudi Arabia.
Regarding the exponential rise in the number of foreign-born in the 2011 Census, and consequent demographic revolution, the fearless young public intellectual Douglas Murray excoriates recent governments
and says
'.... The Labour government, like the Conservative governments before them, and the coalition government since, did everything it could to ignore the real concerns expressed by the majority of the public. But with no decent mainstream party to vote for, the public kept voting for the same parties as usual. Fooled by the occasional speech saying that there was going to be some"'tough" new approach, the country got stuck in a debate that has been played on repeat. Yet all the time that debate-loop was going, the ground beneath us was changing unrecognizably.
.... There are those who wanted this change to happen, and there are those who did not. The former now occasionally notice that their plan has caused troubles of which they were barely aware when they set out. The latter are reviled as backwards, racist, bigoted and out-of-touch with their new country. In reality they are simply people who once had a country and have seen it changed irrevocably, and simply hold on to a feeling of sadness that nobody thought about where this would take us, or whether we the people should ever be listened to in the little matter of our own future."
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| On the funeral route of the great Margaret Thatcher (photo: Jason Taitz) |
Last summer New York journalist Kyle Smith
wrote:
'Don’t be fooled by the pomp and dazzle of the Queen’s royal Diamond
Jubilee flotilla easing past the tourists, celebrity-spotters, and
pickpockets on the Thames. Britain is a country rotting from the inside,
the first nation on earth that elected to destroy its culture with
political correctness.
Asks British columnist Rod
Liddle, “Who are the people who have made Britain what it is today, the
ones who ensured that we became a limp-wristed and decrepit,
post-imperial satrapy of incompetence, sanctimony, self-obsession and
self-loathing?”
Who indeed? (By limp-wristed, Liddle
means lacking in conviction, not gay). The short answer is the new
aristocracy, the bien pensant, well-shod, culturally aloof types who
watch the BBC, read The Guardian, and vote to nudge the country ever
farther along its current trajectory, which has not even slightly been
altered by the return of a Conservative to the premiership. Against the
wishes of the average citizen, Britain has a government that is
simultaneously abdicating its core functions and pretending to take
responsibility for other duties for which it is spectacularly
ill-suited. It has abandoned a proud, concrete culture in pursuit of a
hazy dream of a transnational ideal....
....What Hitler
and Napoleon couldn’t do, the dull Eurocrats and their silky-voiced,
terribly respectable media cheerleaders are intent on doing. But then
again, Britain is already dead, it just hasn’t been buried yet.'
