Nemesis

                  AUSTRALIA PROTECTS ITSELF

                  FROM DISLOYALTY OF MUSLIMS

                   Con George-Kotzabasis February 30, 2006

The Treasurer Peter Costello, is to be congratulated for his insightful and replete with reality comments made in his address to the Sydney Institute, on February 23, 2006. Citizens who are not willing to accept, respect, and be loyal to the laws and values of Australia, and who hold dual citizenship, should be stripped of their Australian one.

Australia is one of the most decent and tolerant countries in the world. It treats all of its citizens and immigrants of all ethnic backgrounds, justly, fairly, with its proverbial “fair-go”, and with no discrimination. But while this is so, it would be a great folly to tolerate any sectarian creed that does not tolerate the values of the majority of Australians, and whose goal is to undermine and erode these values by devious and deceitful means.

Muslim fanatics-and some are in our midst- that have converted The Holy Crescent of Islam into the unholy scimitar of Jihad that is ready to fall and “behead” our Western values, must not be allowed to practice their nefarious activities in our country.

The stalking horse of Muslim fanaticism that has been placed in Europe by the terribly mistaken immigration policies of past governments, is now threatening parts of the Continent with destruction. Either by internal terrorist attacks, as in Spain and Britain, or by the upshot of demographics, as a result of the high birthrates of Muslims. A smaller stalking horse is also in the midst of Australia. And it’s as dangerous, at least to our values, as the one in Europe. This is the issue that governments in Australia have to countenance and resolve. Costello’s robust, no munching words of the problem, opening of the issue that citizens must be loyal to Australian values first, has to be applauded.

What was the reaction of the leaders of the Muslim community? All of them in their “square” unity denounced Costello’s comments as being incendiary and fomenting division between Muslims and the general community, especially when his comments painted the whole Muslim community as being radical and disloyal to Australian values. Costello’s comments did neither, but as usual their leaders raised phantoms to argue their case. More revealing, however, were the critique of the Treasurer by The Montreal Muslim News in Canada, of which one of its prominent hosts is Salam Elmenyawi, the President of the Muslim Council. On February 24, its moderator said, that “if we look deeply into the sickness that passes for ‘western values’ one can see why we chose Allah over human made systems of morality and conduct”. This statement in itself speaks volumes of how many Muslims view Western values.

But what was the reaction of the liberal media in Australia? The “dowager” of the liberal commentariat Michelle Grattan, considered the comments of Costello as imprudent as they will incapacitate moderate Muslims to change the views of radicals, and hence, community tensions will remain escalated. She posed the rhetorical question-which she deemed to be unanswerable, indeed, it was, but more to her than to Costello, as we will explain-if you deport the father of a five year old child who was born in Australia, how do you explain to him the reasons of his father’s deportation? Certainly, one has to consider the family of its deported father, but to place it first? If the innocent father of an Australian child was murdered in a terrorist attack, as it happened in Bali, or as it might happen in the future, how would Grattan explain to this child the innocent killing of his father? Thus inadvertently, and as a result of her lack of imagination, Grattan ranks the family of a potential terrorist first and the families of Australia second.

One would expect that the media as the Fourth Estate of a democratic society has the moral and intellectual responsibility to make its audience aware of the great dangers posed by internal terrorism, instead of obfuscating this danger with rhetorical questions as those of Grattan. But history will not be kind to its pundits and commentators. It will condemn them for their marshmallow position toward terror and for the betrayal of their own vocation.

Con George-Kotzabasis (Former Director of SBS TV 1986-96)

February 27, 2006 Melbourne AUSTRALIA          

STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS

Arguing with Bush Professor Juan Cole

INFORMED COMMENT– January 1, 2006 http://www.juancole.com/

A retort: Con George-Kotzabasis

Professor Cole’s piece is contaminated with incurable negativity. It shows him to be a sturdy contestant for the Bush hate trophy from which so many academics of the Left “rake” their inspiration to make their comments about the grave political issues au courant. He argues that for Bush to state, that the elections in Afghanistan and in Iraq are an achievement of self- government, “is the height of hubris” as such “self-government” is laughable and cannot be constructed under an American military occupation. However, only by distorting the context within which Bush made his statement, can he cogently vindicate his contention against the President. And this is exactly what he is doing. Both in Afghanistan and in Iraq the elections were a massive demonstration of their people of their unquenchable desire for “self-government”, within the context of recently toppled dictatorial regimes. And it’s precisely within such a context that one who is intellectually objective should interpret Bush’s statement.

He claims furthermore, that the invasion of these two countries, especially of Iraq, were not legal. But who defines the legality of the invasion? The UN, which for many years now had lost the plot and resolve to deal effectively with the crises of the world, e.g. Rwanda, the Congo, and presently Darfur in Sudan, not to mention others, and which was steeped in the corruption that Saddam had set up with the food-for-oil scandal? Or would it be the French, the Russians, and the Germans, who were in cahoots with Saddam, whose ingrained envy as politically miniscule and morally petty rivals of the US hegemon induced them to obstruct all the reasonable defensive actions the latter was forced to take, in the aftermath of 9/11, against the two rogue states that sponsored global terror?

But this chapter of history is not yet closed, and the academics that cannot see anything positive emanating from this “illegal invasion” might eventually have a lot of egg on their face.