3/8/05:Australian Racist-Mobs vilify migrant/muslim community(GLW/FWD).



fwd 12-Aug-2005

[AddedNote: Aftermath of 7-July London Bombing, the racist rats in
Australia, with the support of cockroach 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
Bombing 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Move over Pauline Hanson, you've been replaced by an aggressive army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 bombings, former National Party senator and
treasury secretary John Stone made six demands in an article entitled
"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 pass 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 bombings derive, is that Islam has
become a failed culture.

We would be insanely complacent to assume that even those moderate
Muslims now among us ... will not, over time, produce from their ranks
the equivalents of the London bombers ... 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 classic 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
bombings 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, class 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 terrorists are driven by a hatred of Western
"democracies" and liberal ideas, it's more than ironic that, in the
wake of the London bombings, 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
terrorist 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 Hassan, 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 canvassed 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."

Hassan 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".

Hassan said that the Islamic Council believed that there is a
"low-level anti-Muslim backlash" following the London
bombings. "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 bombings, Hassan 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 Association of
Australia, said that the Australian government's response to the
London terrorist 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 bombings. Rather, he says
what will have most impact is if the government stops ascribing the
actions of terrorists to a religion - Islam.

"We don't accept that young men blew themselves up because they are
Muslim. The bombings 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 bombings 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 fatal 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 terrorists".

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 terrorists to recruit young people to their
cause. "They see huge injustices and they become convinced that
[suicide bombing] 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 terrorist recruiters".

>From Green Left Weekly, August 3, 2005.

Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.
---
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emails: uneoo@xxxxxxxxxx druneoo@xxxxxxxxxxx
POST: Dr U Ne Oo, 18 Shannon Place,Adelaide SA5000,AUSTRALIA





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