The other day, The Editor lamented racism and bigotry implicitly and explicity rearing their ugly heads again after Camden Council voted unanimously to oppose a proposal to build an Islamic school on the outskirts of the town, south-west of Sydney, “on planning grounds alone”.

Local resident and bigot, Kate McCulloch, caught media attention with her garish green and yellow dress and an abominable Akubra adorned with Australian flags, as well as her openly prejudiced remarks, such as:

We don’t want [Muslims] not only here, we don’t want them in Australia. They’re an oppressive society, they’re a dictatorship… The ones that come here oppress our society, they take our welfare and they don’t want to accept our way of life.

Days later, she’s back in the news. The Sydney Morning Herald has interviewed her (why?), and her comments reveal a cretinous dimwit who is now talking about following the footsteps of Pauline Hanson and entering politics. Says she:

“Look, scores of people are coming up to me and saying, ‘Good on you, Kate … you’re saying what we’re too scared to ‘cos of racial vilification laws, but we all think it.’ I would like to keep our place like it is and I guess [joining the] Liberals would be natural,”

She conveniently forgets — or doesn’t know — that Pauline Hanson was kicked out of the Liberal Party for her extremist racist views.

Having said that, however, the Liberal Party is still nevertheless home to many other bigots. The most recent notable being fomer Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews. The Age today writes that a confidential Immigration Department report (obtained under Freedom of Information laws) found that racial harassment of Africans increased following Andrews’ claims in 2007 that they were engaged in crime and failing to integrate.

Desperate political point-scoring at its most detestable. And Kate McCulloch might find a home within the Liberal Party after all.

Anyway, back to Mad Kate. She makes another bizarre comment about the “victory vote” by Camden Council:

She said the victory vote was in keeping with the spirit of Camden’s status as the birthplace of the nation’s wool industry. “The Macarthurs will be proud of us,” she said.

Huh? What’s the wool industry got to do with any of this?

What else did she say?

“I want Muslims in Australia to attend our schools so their children can grow up with our values, and more importantly, so that their mothers can meet Australian mums and see how they don’t have to put up with the sort of treatment they sometimes endure.”

Meanwhile, across all geographic areas of Australia and in all socioeconomic and cultural groups, a conservatively estimated 36% of women experience domestic violence and a conservatively estimated 19% of women experience sexual assault (2005). And they’re just the women who report the assaults, with God knows how many more going unreported.

Oh, but Mad Kate conveniently ignores that. Only Moozlim women are under some kind of terrible “treatment”.

And what does Pauline Hanson think of this new myopic ignoramus upstart?

The Herald called Mrs Hanson about her would-be successor. She hung up without offering a word.

O come, all ye bigots, I shall be your racist mouthpiece.

Note: a bigger article about Mad Kate and the Camden outrage, plus the lead-up to the vote and the involvement of racist groups such as Australia First and the Anglo-Australian National Community Council and their cowardly midnight actions can be found here.

I was going to say that the uproar over a rejected Islamic school in Sydney was unAustralian, but I’m beginning to think that — sadly — it is Australian.

The Camden Council has voted unanimously to oppose a proposal to build an Islamic school on the outskirts of the town, south-west of Sydney.

[…]

In a unanimous decision the council voted in favour of a recommendation of council staff who overwhelmingly rejected the proposal on planning and development grounds.

I will make no comment about the council’s decision to overturn the application on planning grounds because I have no knowledge about the proposed development, the area in question, or any other contextual circumstances, but I think the residents’ campaign and reaction to the decision based on religious intolerance, fear, xenophobia and insularity is shameful.

Let me just say, however, that I understand and accept that some people are uncomfortable with Islam and feel threatened by its growing presence in areas that have long been very white and very Christian. And who can blame them with Islam’s name being sullied by a tiny majority of Muslims around the world plus an over-zealous media who treat the religion and its followers with suspicion? But there is still no excuse for the kind of shit we saw in Camden last night.

It’s religious intolerance, pure and simple. And it has no place in the Australia that those same people claim to represent and protect.

“Our grandfathers fought and died for this suburb“

In covering last night’s council meeting the media has focussed mainly on residents who didn’t even try to conceal their hatred and fear of Islam, like Kate McCulloch (above).

We don’t want them not only here, we don’t want them in Australia. They’re an oppressive society, they’re a dictatorship… The ones that come here oppress our society, they take our welfare and they don’t want to accept our way of life.

But other residents attempted to sound reasonable by making token referrals to planning concepts, only to fail a little more miserably at reasonable as each new clunking sentence came out of their mouths.

CAMDEN RESIDENT 4: We don’t need the traffic, environmental damage and everything else that goes with it.

REPORTER: To what extent was it because it was an Islamic school that was being….

CAMDEN RESIDENT 4: It’s got nothing to do with Islamic, if it was a Catholic school, Buddhist, whatever, it’s not an appropriate area for a 1200 student school.

There’s a school East, North, West all around here, don’t need anther 1200 kids school and the opinion that my kids can go there? My kids can’t read Islamic, how are they going to go to that school?

“My kids can’t read Islamic”? If this issue wasn’t so serious that would easily be GrodsCorp’s quote of the week. Oh, and by the way, Camden Resident 4, would you oppose a Jewish school if your kids couldn’t read Jewish?

At least we now have two place names to use when we want to discuss ugly Australian intolerance, and bigotry seems to be fond of alliteration: Cronulla and Camden. A shameful day for Australia.

For all the crap I throw Timmeh Blair’s way, I really didn’t think he was capable of something as base as this:

EXTERNAL COMBUSTION

Mohammed gets a motor:

Malaysia, Iran and Turkey plan to build an “Islamic car” fitted with a compass to find the direction of Mecca, and a compartment to keep the Koran in, the Malaysian state news agency said.

It also stops working five times every day. For prayers.

Malaysian automaker Proton’s managing director Syed Zainal Abidin Syed Mohamed Tahir said during a visit to Tehran that the vehicle would be aimed at the global export market.

“Aimed at.” Unfortunate choice of words.

“The car will have all the Islamic features and should be meant for export purposes,” he said, adding that it would feature a compartment for keeping the Muslim holy book the Koran, and prayer scarves.

Via Alan R.M. Jones, who suggests a naming comp: “My vote is the Martyrmobile.” Well, seeing as nine eleven is already taken …

Stereotype, vilify, smear. Muslims = terrorists; Islam = dark ages. Build it (the post) and they (the rednecked, racist commenters) will come.

“Jihadi Quattro”
– Ricardo

“Martyrmobile”
– paco

“Please tell me why there’s no compartment for explosives.”
– Harry Bergeron

“Mohammed Atta-mobile”
– Steve Skubbina

“Da Bomb”
– missred

“What about EFP—Explosively Formed Parking-spaces?”
– richard mcenroe

“the Moslim Oriented Totalitarian Arab Radical Drive Car (MOTARD Car)”
– Grimmy

“Will rocket launchers and remote detonation capability be standard equipment or will Achmed have to pay extra for those? God, I love capitalism!”
– Kyda Silvester

“The new jihadi mohammadore - blows away the opposition at the lights. In fact blows away everyone everwhere, everytime. Coming soon to your local jihadi dealer. (Option up to the paedophile pack and get a free child booster seat, wink wink).”
– Surfmaster

I could keep going but you get the idea.

In 2006 Catch The Fire Ministry’s Pastor Danny Nalliah was awarded the “Annual International Capitalism Award for Melbourne” by Prodos‘ Celebrate Capitalism project for supposedly standing up for free speech in the face of a religious vilification charge (that was later dropped). How slagging off Islam is standing up for capitalism I’ll never work out. But Prodos was so enamoured with Nalliah that he immortalised him in his alarming anti-Islam tune Under Sharia Law.

Today The Age revealed that Pastor Nalliah addressed a meeting of the extreme right-wing and proudly anti-Jewish League Of Rights in 2005, despite being warned about their racist views. Prodos, proudly pro-Israel (just this morning he posted a piece on his blog that ended with the line “May Israel Prevail”), must be spitting chips that he has publicly supported somebody who has been dumping on the wrong religion. Will Prodos now retract the Capitalism Award? We wait with our collective breath held.

Proving yet again that he has no idea what he is talking about, ex-lefty and moron Tim Blair has written yet another ghastly opinion piece in the 100% unbiased Daily Telegraph.

The basic idea behind this waste of ink is surprisingly stupid, even for him. For some reason, he asks us to imagine that various quotes about Global Warming are instead attributed to Islam, where, suddenly, they make sense….or something. It really is a bad idea. The basic feel of the piece is that Tim was sitting up the night before, smoking crack, racking his brains trying to think of something to write. Or maybe it was a bet gone horribly wrong.

Typical stuff really, Sideshow Tim tries to discredit Global Warming using Bolt-style methods, but he does give us some cracker quotes.

There are plenty of reasons why climate changelings overwhelmingly emerge from the left. The main one would be that, having failed to constrain capitalism by any other means, the left now seeks to impose barriers in the name of science (well, almost science; it more closely resembles a type of liberation theology).

Oh yes, that must be it. It’s another evil leftist plot to control the world! More truths of the left!

In fact, the left stands to lose far more, given extreme Islam’s hatred of their pet causes (feminism, gay rights, art, tolerance, music, diversity, everything).

Meaning, of course, that Tim opposes feminism, gay rights, art, tolerance, music, diversity and everything. Maybe Tim should be glad that we on the left want Islam to take over, and Australia to adopt Sharia Law, because he won’t have to put up with any of those horrible things anymore.

Music? Who needs that?
Gay rights? Why do those fags deserve anything?
Diversity? I don’t want a bunch of darkies living in my street!
Tolerance? What’s that?

This has been John Surname, for GrodsCorp - trying to take away your personal freedoms since 2004.

Update - Tim Blair wrote the piece on a plane, which explains the ludicrousness of it. The high altitides had a devestasting effect on his brain.

Since Peter Costello is so keen to tell Muslims what governmental model they should aspire to, perhaps he should urge Australian government to follow that same advice. And since Pete thinks that Turkey is the perfect example of Islamic government, with its complete separation of church and State, I look forward to Mr Costello lobbying for the abolition of daily Christian prayers in parliament and the end of government ministers continually pandering to the Christian lobby.

I know Costello’s trying desperately to broaden his policy scope beyond his portfolio but all he’s managing to do is broaden the view that he’s a bumbling, ignorant and divisive fool.

On September 11 the slippery argument of whether Australia is safer or not after five years of “war on terror” was always going to pop up. John Howard says yes, we are safer and has called on Muslims to learn English, integrate, and denounce terrorism. Kim Beazley says no, we’re not safer and has called for tourists and immigrants to sign up to Australian values (”respect for each other, mateship, fairness, freedom and respect for our laws”), along with the teaching of Australian values to immigrant children in schools.

You see, if only all of them Muslims would become more like Steve Irwin everything would be okay and you could throw your fridge magnet out. Steve Irwin was so Australian he even died like an Australian. Does anybody else find this populist and xenophobic attitude offensive that “if only they were more like us, instead of more like them” our Way Of Life™ wouldn’t be threatened?

And what is this Way Of Life™ anyway?

But back to the point, and the superiority of Australians and Australian values. All Muslims should became Australian (because, you know, Muslim is a nationality, not a religion) because no Australian’s ever done anything contrary to our Way Of Life™ before.