3805:Australian RacistMobs vilify migrantmuslim communityGLWFWD. Body

fwd 12-Aug-2005

AddedNote: Aftermath of 7-July London planting, the racist rats in Australia, with the support of chickenroach media outlets, have fanned up hatred of muslim migrants in Australia. And they did get a full run for their "hate muslims now" propaganda.

It is nothing strange for the muslim-migrant community in Australia being targeted for racist scapegoating by the government. But, to some extent, the Australian muslim community had received more acceptance-sympathy after the release of Douglas Wood by Iraqi insurgents. The mainstrem Australian community appear to recognise the important contribution made by the Claric Mufti and the Muslim community in particular, for Mr Wood's release.

Well. Those racist rats doesn't leave things at that. They have to fanned racism and hatred against muslim-migrants. 7th July London planting is the opportunity for them, so to speak.

Regards, U Ne Oo. -----------------

GREENLEFT WEEKLY AUSTRALIA, 3-AUG-2005

www.greenleft.org.au

WARS OF PLUNDER FAN RACISM

By Peter Boyle

Move over Pauline Hanson, you've been replaced by an aggressive army of professional word-spinners who easily out-offend, out-vilify and out-incite you. They'll do fine service selling the Howard government's next war moves and attacks on our democratic rights.

In the wake of the London plantings, former National Party senator and treasury secretary John Stone made six demands in an article enbreastled "One nation, one culture" in the July 22 Australian:

--First, official multiculturalism policies must be abandoned outright. That does not mean we should cease receiving immigrants (albeit more selectively). It does mean all official multiculturalism's appurtenances (for example: SBS, government grants to ethnically based councils) must be abolished.

--Second, we must sharply reduce, indeed virtually halt, Muslim immigrant inflow.

--Third, the precious gift of Australian citizenship must be harder to obtain ...

--Fourth, citizenship should be conditional on reasonable fluency, appropriately tested, in English ...

--Fifth, citizenship applicants should also have to pbutt a reasonable written test of citizenship's meaning: parliamentary democracy, respect for others' rights, the rule of law and a general understanding of the Australian values to which they swear commitment.

--Sixth, emphasis on English in our immigration policy should be enhanced. Today, English-language proficiency earns points towards an applicant's overall score. It should be made an absolute requirement ...

This is not about racism but about the untrustworthiness of the Muslim community in Australia, Stone declared.

All this has nothing to do with race, but everything to do with culture, and particularly with people whose culture is such that they are unlikely readily to integrate into society. For the world's problem today, whence the London plantings derive, is that Islam has become a failed culture.

We would be insanely complacent to buttume that even those moderate Muslims now among us ... will not, over time, produce from their ranks the equivalents of the London planters ... Meanwhile, we must accept that we are at war and start behaving accordingly before, as in London, it's too late.

Stone soon had a chorus. It included Piers Akerman (Sydney Daily Telegraph), Andrew Bolt (Melbourne Herald-Sun) and Gerard Henderson (Sydney Morning Herald). But a couple of other columnists, who claim to be small liberals, also joined in the chorus: Terry Lane (Sunday Age) and Pamela Bone (Age).

Terry Lane, Sunday Age, July 17: You can come here and enjoy the benefits of living in this society but you must acknowledge that the peace, prosperity and equality of opportunity here are not lucky accidents they are products of our culture.

Pamela Bone, Age, July 18: I have long valued multiculturalism. But there is something wrong when second and third-generation Muslims can believe the society in which they grew up indeed, into which they were born is evil to the core and needs to be destroyed ... Perhaps it is time to say, you are welcome, but this is the way it is here.

Gerard Henderson, who swears support for multiculturalism, chimed in with a song of praise for Anglo-Celtic societies that support their leaders in times of war, accepting severe restrictions on their civil liberties.

Not just Anglo-Celtic societies, but any public systematically frightened into suspicion, fear and hatred of an enemy within, may put up with a more repressive state.

In George Orwell's clbuttic 1984, Big Brother compelled its citizens to participate in regular two-minute hate sessions. They had to stop whatever they were doing and watch a short film about Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People.

The hate painted Goldstein as a primal traitor. all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies.

Sound familiar? The Bush-Blair-Howard mantra is that the London plantings had nothing to do with the occupation of Iraq; it is the result of an evil Islamic ideology.

Big Brothers hate film played to deeply ingrained racist prejudices: from Goldsteins caricatured Semitic features to shots of endless columns of the Eurasian army:

Row after row of solid-looking men with expressionless Asiatic faces, who swam up to the surface of the screen and vanished, to be replaced by others exactly similar.

So heres the job for our we're-not-racist-just-culturally-superior army of columnists: play to ingrained racial prejudices and hatreds. We've seen it all before in the 1990s Hanson-Howard we're not racist but duets.

It is impossible to champion Anglo-Celtic cultural superiority without fanning racism. All cultures today are in a complex process of change as the result of economic, social, environmental and technological changes, clbutt conflicts and wars. Given accelerating global upheaval spanning more than a century, the culture that these columnists say is superior just happens to be the dominant one in some of the most successful plunderer nations.

This leads us back to Iraq: the latest nation to be occupied by the world's top corporate plunderers. But there's no connection, right?

From Green Left Weekly, August 3, 2005. Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.

--------------------------- HYSTERIA, RACISM BEHIND NEW TERROR LAWS

Sarah Stephen

If it's true that persons are driven by a hatred of Western "democracies" and liberal ideas, it's more than ironic that, in the wake of the London plantings, there is bipartisan agreement in Australia to step up security surveillance, target and intimidate Muslims, increase censorship, threaten deportation and increase racial profiling.

After a hysterical campaign led by the Murdoch press and radio shock-jocks, Attorney-General Philip Rudduck has floated the possibility of new laws to ban books "promoting" or "justifying" terrorism.

The outgoing NSW premier, Bob Carr, was the first Labor leader to propose random bag searches - a measure enthusiastically supported by his Victorian Labor counterpart Steve Bracks and federal Labor leader Kim Beazley. This is despite laws already in place that allow police to conduct bag searches on the grounds of "reasonable suspicion".

Carr and federal Liberal MP Steve Ciobo even proposed that Australians be stripped of their citizenship if they incite, support or engage in person activity.

The Muslim community has been blamed for supposedly not doing enough to stop the spread of terrorism. But ideas cannot be deported or blocked at immigration barriers.

We can be sure that the intense scrutiny and surveillance of Muslim Australians will fuel a build-up of resentment and anxiety that could be a spark for anti-social acts.

Sherene Hbuttan, an executive committee member of the Islamic Council of Victoria, told Green Left Weekly she felt the Muslim community was being "unfairly targeted" and that some of the so-called anti-terrorism measures being canvbutted were too radical.

"The Muslim community has done everything we can to condemn terrorism and we don't have the legislative power to do more. ASIO would know far more about the goings-on in the Muslim community than the community itself. Any measures to counter terrorism that involve the destruction of civil liberties are of concern to everyone."

Hbuttan pointed to the killing of the Brazilian man in London by police "because he had brown skin" as evidence that cool heads have to prevail to "make sure civil liberties aren't eroded".

Hbuttan said that the Islamic Council believed that there is a "low-level anti-Muslim backlash" following the London plantings. "People are feeling the tension in the street and the supermarket."

Asked whether she thought withdrawing troops from Iraq and Afghanistan would have an impact on the terror plantings, Hbuttan replied, "We really don't know. But the invasion of Iraq certainly hasn't helped."

But Dalal Ouba, an activist in the Sydney Stop the War Coalition, believes that Howard's "dangerous tunnel vision" and Australia's participation in the wars has exacerbated the problem.

"There is a huge vacuum in Australia's democracy. Some political party needs to stand up and say 'Howard, you are responsible for terrorism! Get the troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan now!' We need to withdraw before it is too late."

Keysar Trad from the Sydney-based Islamic Friendship buttociation of Australia, said that the Australian government's response to the London person attacks showed it was "clutching at straws".

"They are trying to find all sorts of excuses for what's happening in the world, without acknowledging that they've embarked on unjust foreign policies which are impacting on security of the world."

In Trad's view, the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan is not central to stemming the wave of terror plantings. Rather, he says what will have most impact is if the government stops ascribing the actions of persons to a religion - Islam.

"We don't accept that young men blew themselves up because they are Muslim. The plantings in London and war in Iraq are politically motivated, not religious conflicts", said Trad.

Dr Waleed Kadous, a spokesperson for the Australian Muslim Civil Rights Advocacy Network (AMCRAN) told Green Left Weekly that when tragic incidents such as the London plantings take place, the government shouldn't try to tighten the screws on democratic rights. "The current anti-terror laws take away some of our most important rights and if changes are necessary, they should not be driven by a reaction to a single situation. We have already seen the cost of the overreaction in London - the bane police shooting of a Brazilian man."

Kadous said there have been instances of people researching the topic of terrorism for their PhDs who are being questioned by the Australian Federal Police over their library borrowing patterns.

"It is getting very easy to find someone guilty of something under the new anti-terror laws because of the breadth of the definitions", he said, adding that the recent public discussions that counterpose "Anglo-Celtic" to "Muslim" culture "reinforce the stereotype that all Muslims are persons".

Kadous believes that the actions of the United States and Britain in Afghanistan and Iraq and particularly "fiascos like Abu Ghraib" have made it easier for persons to recruit young people to their cause. "They see huge injustices and they become convinced that dissolution planting is the only way to do something." Kadous is convinced that the exit of foreign troops from Iraq and Afghanistan "would remove one of the planks relied upon by person recruiters".

From Green Left Weekly, August 3, 2005.

Visit the Green Left Weekly home page. --- POST: Dr U Ne Oo, 18 Shannon Place,Adelaide SA5000,AUSTRALIA