Australian blogger questions media policy to suppress reports of ethnic violence

A blogger writing at Afbluemountains from Perth, tells us more about violence between newly arrived ethnic groups in Australia and questions whether the policy of media silence on the immigrant angle actually causes the problem to fester.  He begins:

When violence is reported in the Australian mainstream media, rarely is ethnicity mentioned, due to a self-policing media code of conduct that is premised on claims the reporting of ethnicity risks inciting racism. The Australian Journalists Association code of conduct on this reads:

“2. Do not place unnecessary emphasis on personal characteristics, including race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, age, sexual orientation, family relationships, religious belief, or physical or intellectual disability.”

This seems sensible in order to prevent prejudiced reporting and inciting racism. However, this code has been recently abandoned by the mainstream media in the cases of recent violence against Indian students, probably in an attempt to highlight the particular racial problem. [We have reported on the Muslim immigrant vs. Indian immigrant crime here—ed]  But indeed, the media highlighting of this problem has snowballed into an international political hot potato, resulting in Australia’s Prime Minister flying to India and consequential increased policing in Melbourne and funding to deal with the problem. As a result, there has been a notable reduction in reported violence against Indian students in Melbourne. Politicians were embarrased into dealing with the problem, that the Department of Immigration had left to fester.

But otherwise reporting of ethnicity and race is suppressed. Read any report in an Australian newspaper about a violent incident and find mention of ethnicity or race obvious by omission. This is not to say that most violence in Australia has ethnic causes, but there is a lot that is yet remains suppressed from the mainstream public. the frequency of the problem is of course known to police and to the locals that live in what have become ‘psuedo’ ethnic ghettos.

And so Australia’s problem of ethnic tension is suppressed and allowed to fester until someone dies. The death last night of a man at Mirrabooka in Perth’s inner north is a case in point.

Read on about the murder and other cases of violence between groups of immigrants.  Blogger, John Marlowe, wraps up with this question:

Why suppress ethnic tension and violence when to do so does nothing but allow it to fester into murder and social division?

I think I know what he is saying, everyone gets angrier and tensions build when the truth is not reported.  Also, it’s ludicrous to think one could find solutions if the problem is not identified.

I don’t think we have it quite as bad here although to be sure, political correctness does keep the media quiet on the ethnic angle of a crime.  If a murder is involved we usually learn something about who the suspects are and where they came from, but I have laughed on many occasions when I read fraud stories (food stamp, medicaid, other welfare fraud) that the perps are not identified (sometimes even their names are not mentioned) as immigrants.

To the now spluttering critics who are fuming and wanting to throw things at me and saying ‘white people commit crimes too.’  Of course they do, but that is not the subject of this blog.  I recommend you start your own blog and call it something like—white people are bad.  I’m fine with that.  Ha! Ha!  But, how many readers would the blogger have, because we hear everyday from the media about how bad, exploitive and racist white people are?  It is everywhere in the news, one doesn’t need a specialized blog.

New readers may not know that one of the reasons that I write this blog is to balance the mainstream media and its gushy one-sided reporting on the joys of multiculturalism, and the insistence of most reporters (not all!) to report the ‘diversity is strength’ myth.  Indeed, if the mainstream media started to write and report  fairly about the good, the bad, and the ugly on immigration and refugee issues, I could retire.  But, they won’t anytime soon because in order to write fairly about immigration they would have to question their own deeply held (Leftist!) world view.

For more on Australia see our ‘Australia’ category here.

The Mexican border and the OTMs

OTMs are Other Than Mexicans coming across our southern border.  Most of the media is trying to spin the border issue as simply a case of economic migrants wanting jobs and a better life, however thousands of Other Than Mexicans from Muslim countries are also coming across the border each year—some are caught and some aren’t.  Some may just want jobs, but some may have intentions to do us harm. We have told you on several previous occasions (including here and here) about Somalis who are believed to have entered the US and likely have blended into Somali refugee communities.

Yesterday a reader sent me these Atlanta WSBTV Channel 2 investigations (here and here) into the issue of OTMs.  Watch them!

Iraqis still flowing to decaying Detroit

Just this week the Wall Street Journal published a story about how large sections of Detroit will be torn down as the population of the once powerful city shrinks.   At the same time, the Detroit area seems to be a mecca for Iraqis both Christians and Muslims who are staking out neighborhoods in the impoverished state.

This week also, the Detroit Free Press has a lengthy report on the Iraqi Chaldeans (Christians) who are flooding to Michigan.  Some refugee families are happy to be free of persecution at the hands of Muslims, others think living conditions here are so awful that they want to return to Iraq.   Below are just some sections of the Freep article that interested me, but I urge readers to visit the story and note too the sidebar statistics the reporters have included with this thorough report.

Intesar Najjar and her family are the latest of some 5,300 Iraqi refugees to move to metro Detroit since 2007, when the U.S. government, under pressure to protect Iraq’s minority Christian Chaldean community, eased visa restrictions.

Another 7,000 Iraqi refugees are expected by the end of 2011, the state’s refugee director said.

[…..]

This isn’t the America Zuhair Yaqo imagined.

He’s jobless, uninsured and unable to afford surgery to remove painful kidney stones.

If I have to continue living like this, I’m going to have to go back to Iraq,” Yaqo, 60, said as he slumped onto a mismatched sofa in his sparsely furnished Sterling Heights apartment, waiting for the nagging pain to end.

Yaqo is among more than 5,300 Iraqi refugees to arrive in Michigan since the federal government  in 2007 relaxed restrictions to allow more Iraqis fleeing their homeland to enter the U.S.

Another 7,000 are expected to arrive in Michigan this year and next, more than in any two-period year since at least 1995, according to estimates by the state Department  of Community Health. Yaqo, a Chaldean Catholic, was twice kidnapped and robbed in attacks directed at Christian minorities in Iraq by Islamic and other extremists. He and his wife arrived here last summer.

[…..]

In America, the refugees face an uncertain life in a state with a recession, few jobs and usually no more than eight months of benefits. For many, just being safe for the first time in years is enough to make the move and sacrifices worthwhile, though many hope for a better life here, at least for their children.

[…..]

Al Horn, refugee program director for the Michigan Department of Human Services, said Michigan received $1.8 million in fiscal 2010 to help refugees with housing, employment, mental health counseling and English language training, up from $1.1 million in 2009.

The money does not include spending by the federal government for welfare and medical care many refugees receive for a maximum of eight months. A family of four receives $597 a month for housing and other basic expenses, plus Medicaid and food stamps.

Horn said he hopes Michigan will get another $200,000 to $300,000 next year to serve the state’s growing refugee population.

Read the whole report, it is very informative.  As I read the article I couldn’t help wondering that since the Muslims persecuted the Christians in Iraq wouldn’t the same thing happen in Michigan some day?  Or, is it just assumed that the American melting pot will work its magic?

Be sure to check out the sidebar stories including this one with the stats for where Iraqis are resettling in the US.

Want to learn more about Iraqi refugees? Visit our Iraqi refugee category where we have archived 469 previous posts on the subject.

Barnett at CIS: Will there be any meaningful reform?

Don Barnett, an expert and longtime critical observer of the US refugee program, writing yesterday at the Center for Immigration Studies, wonders whether any of the so-called reviews of the program will improve conditions for refugees or for the communities in which they are placed.  Or (in my words) is it just one more federal boondoggle with no hope of reform?

A non-profit nation of hundreds of taxpayer funded 501(c)(3)s has grown up around refugee resettlement in the U.S. A recent government-sponsored study finds “U.S. resettlement communities are awash with ECBOs that exist in name only but provide little meaningful assistance.” (“Practitioner Lessons from Ethnic Community Self-Help Programs,” ISED Solutions, August 2009) Some of the ECBOs (Ethnic Community Based Organizations) apparently exist only to bring in grants and contracts for themselves.

But this will not be mentioned in the flurry of meetings, memoranda, and recommendations around an initiative to “help restore the capacity of the US Refugee Program to serve increased numbers of refugees with increasingly diverse needs, without overwhelming the resources of local receiving communities.” (The quote is from a memo to Scott Busby, Director for Human Rights for the national Security Council, from State Coordinators of Refugee Resettlement, August 26, 2009.)

The initiative, a review of refugee resettlement, involves the 10 refugee contractors such as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB ), the departments of HHS, State, and Homeland Security, as well as the White House Domestic Policy Council (DPC), the National Security Council (NSC), and the OMB. The UNHCR is also making its recommendations. In recent years up to 95 percent of the refugees coming to the U.S. were referred by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) or were the relatives of UN-picked refugees. Until the late 90s the U.S. picked the large majority of refugees for resettlement in the U.S.

[…..]

The transformation of the original civic organization- and religion-based refugee resettlement program into a fraud-prone federal contracting business has given birth to a global refugee industry and set off wildly escalating expectations around the world about opportunities for coming to America, bringing in its train more legal and illegal immigration. With much of the program looking like ACORN globalized, its intrusion in cities around the U.S. is raising its profile to the point where it can no longer be ignored.

Read it all!