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.

At the risk of stating the obvious, the danger of asking members of the public for their opinion is that they might just give it to you. This was illustrated perfectly in a recent edition of the Shepparton News, a regional Victorian tabloid.

A reporter and photographer ventured out into Greater Shepparton asking the following question for the newspaper’s “On The Street” section:

If you could learn another language, what would it be and why?

From the responses published, one can only assume (in order of likelihood) that:

1. The opinions editor has a wicked sense of humour
2. Of all the responses received, only six were (barely) fit to publish
3. There were only six respondents, and space and deadline constraints meant all of their answers had to be given a run.

A few stood out. The first was that of 38-year-old Stanhope resident Denise Bowyer who, despite possibly having told a porky-pie about her age, offered the following:

Japenese (sic) so I can understand most of them.

Either Stanhope has an enormous Japanese community whose Engrish is barely intelligible, or Denise believes all Asian-looking people (you know, the ones with the funny eyes) are Nips. I’ll let you decide which is more likely to be the case.

Clint Morris, a 14-year-old Mooroopna resident, puts an even finer point on Denise’s sentiment with his response:

Asian, because there are so many of them here.

Clint’s done away with the folly of trying to pin down these shifty immigrants to individual nationalities — and why not? Since they all look the same, it makes perfect sense that they’d all speak the same imaginary language.

Bill Huylands, 67, of Moama provided what, on the face of it, seems a reasonable enough response:

Spanish, because you can use it anywhere.

Except in Stanhope, of course, where the throngs of incorrigible little foreigners refuse to understand a word of anything but Japenese (sic). And would probably karate-chop you for your insolence anyway, amigo.

The most thoughtful response came from 12-year-old Steven Sutton of Invergordon:

Auslan, so I can understand deaf people.

A terrific answer. Which goes to show that youth need not be a barrier to commonsense and open-mindedness.

Well, well, well. I want to talk about that fantastic Daily Telegraph (online), the Sydney NewsLtd staple rag. You know, the one where Tim Blair is the Opinion Editor (with emphasis on ‘editor’).

Last night in Granville, a western suburb of Sydney, a young man was stabbed and sadly died sometime later. The Daily Telegraph duly reported the crime, with updates as to the identity of the murder victim later in the day.

I read the article and when I got to the final paragraph, which said, in part:

Police are appealing for anyone who may have witnessed the incident or noticed a group of black/African males in the vicinity…

Here we go, I thought. If the calibre of the Telegraph’s target audience is anything to go by, surely the comments will contain some elements of racism and xenophobia. Oh, and maybe Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, NSW State Premier Morris Iemma and the soft-on-crime judges and magistrates and the whole legal system might get a mention as well.

I’m going to show you some of these comments. Editing and bolding mine for length and emphasis respectively, and typos left alone for posterity. Let’s have a look at the first comment, shall we?

Another stabbing takes place, while this Iemma government sits on its backside and absoluutely refuses to ramp up legislation in reviewing the laws involving the use and/or carrying of knives. Tearful Magistrates and Lawyers who would tell the community that the attacker is misunderstood and would be given a menial sentence or another Good Behaviour Bond allow these people to attack again. legislation that takes away the discretion of the judiciary to refuse to impose very very hefty Jail time for these cretins is needed…NOW.
Posted by: Mike Knowles of Sydney

Ah, Mike Knowles of Sydney, alarmist extraordinaire. Expert opinion on how to run everything: schools, unis, prisons, courts, parliament, you name it, he knows how it should be run.

That aside, BINGO. Morris Iemma gets the blame, as do ‘tearful’ magistrates and lawyers. What’s the go with the capital letters for ‘Good Behaviour Bond’, though?

Crime is the biggest concern for this country.
Posted by: Paul of Central Coast

Young gangs –not global warming, not tax evasion, not money laundering and not war on terrorism–will soon create havoc and fear in Australia unless the government and justice system clean up their acts and get tough on these crimes.
Posted by: huskies of Parramatta

Gulp. Seems to me that Paul and huskies are diagnosing the country’s problems in two short paragraphs, with no regard for statistics, evidence, proof, studies, nothing. But they’re right, you know. When I catch the train home from work, I stand on the platform in a semi-orderly fashion with other commuters, allowing passengers to disembark before boarding. When I walk to the shops on Saturday mornings, I am assaulted by the chattering of a diverse group of people enjoying brunch. When I withdraw money from the ATM, people stand a decent distance behind and don’t wrestle me for my cash and shoes.

Oh it’s a big, huge, massive problem blighting the nation, alright. AND I’M A VICTIM!

I wonder if they have heard of the term moral panic, just out of curiousity? Hmm. Ya reckon they have? No? OK, then.

another life taken through crime - when is this going to end. I think the Rudd government should do something about this before it happens again. we have seen enough crime and violence in this country..
Posted by: jr of nsw

Yeah, so get cracking, PM Rudd. Just ignore all that state intervention and constitutional stuff, and crack down on crime, pronto!

Zero Tolerance is well overdue for NSW. If it worked for New York city, it’ll work here. Considering the utter incompetance of the Carr/Iemma Governments on Policing, I’m surprised the Liberals have not picked up this ball and run with it yet.
Posted by: Pacman of Ryde

Sigh. How little ‘zero tolerance’ is understood. For a start, although crime rates in NYC may have dropped under Giuliani’s ‘zero tolerance’ era, “many criminologists question the precise part played by the police in this process. They point out that the reductions in crime in New York City must be viewed in the context of a general reduction in the major US cities in recent years. A diversity of causes are said to lie behind these developments, including the sustained period of economic growth in the US in the 1990s and the changing nature of the drug market in this period…”

Not only that, but as criminologist Chris Cunneen has argued, implementing a ‘zero tolerance’ policy in Australia would lead to, inter alia, civil liberties violations, court jams, more people in prison (which are already overcrowded, as it is), and there is little evidence to suggest that it would reduce crime and drug use. The get-tough tactics of the New York police look a lot better from a distance. It doesn’t mean that the alleged success of ‘zero tolerance’ in NYC would be just as successful in NSW, or elsewhere. (1)

Anyway, back to the pathetic comments. They get nastier, the comments (admist all the blame Rudd/Iemma/legal system). Like this one:

What nationality (or background) this time? Western Sydney is a Crime Capital - thuggery criminal behaviour that has proven in the past will spread to other innocent suburbs! Be assured, these people are low life scum and do not care who they hurt. Crime is not being managed at a state or federal level….but wait……we had the 20/20 summit and we may get our not wanted republic!
Posted by: hazy of Chatswood

‘What nationality or background this time?’ Did s/he really ask that?! What if the answer came back as Caucasian, white, pure as the driven snow? You know, like the Morans or the Williams, those murderous white boys.

Fuck you, hazy, for even asking.

But there’s worse:

Well, considering where it happened and who the police are looking for, I can’t say I’m terribly surprised… Guess who’s moved in? Any guesses why I’ve moved out?
Posted by: Michelle

Come on, Michelle, say what you really want to say.

Wow, I thought the africans in our country were generally pretty cool and peaceful. Racial gangs have to go. Its not worth it.
Posted by: PW of Surry Hills

An incident in Granville involving a small number of ‘blacks/Africans’ and all of a sudden, all the Africans in ‘our’ country are not cool and peaceful anymore, is that what you’re honestly saying, PW?! And just WHAT THE FUCK are ‘racial gangs’? And when you’ve answered that, they have to go where?

C’mon.

Anyway, as bad as all the above comments are, this one has to take the cake for sheer stupidity:

…Why won’t Dr Brendan Nelson do something to help the crime? He ought to be struck off the register.
Posted by: Wassa

I’m the last person to defend Dr Brendan Nelson (actually, The Editor might be the last in the line), but this comment is just so obviously asinine and ridiculous, I’m sure I don’t have to point out why.

I think I’m going to have to give up reading the Daily Telegraph online, for my sanity.

(1) Cunneen, C. 1999. Zero tolerance policing and the experience of New York City. Current Issues in Criminal Justice 10 (3):229-313.

*Title of this post is a line from the Billie Holiday song, “Strange Fruit” - a song that condemned American racism and lynching.

UPDATE: Yes, I know it’s a long post. There’s a LOT OF SHIT TO GET THROUGH ON THE DAILY TELEGRAPH, OKAY?!

UPDATE II: Almost Always Wrong reckons this post is too scholarly for Grods. Bollocks, I say. One, it’s not scholarly - not if you’re critiquing a tabloid’s online comments. Two, if them RWDB from you-know-where are pissed off by my leftist rant (or in the very slight chance that they rethink their silly ideas on crime and race), then I’ve reached nirvana.

Tonight, I’ve been catching up with my reading at the online American magazine, Slate. I was particularly captivated by their slideshow on the anti-busing rallies in Boston in 1976 (long after the Civil Rights Movement began). It was an ugly episode, it goes without saying. The nightmarish photo below earned the photographer, Stanley J. Forman, the 1977 Pulitzer Prize. As you look at it, you can see why the photo, called The Soiling of Old Glory, won the prize - it captured a white youth transforming the American flag into a weapon directed at a black lawyer.

You would think that, in this day and age, the issue of segregration and desegregation was no longer an issue. Wrong. As the slideshow points out:

In 2006, when Deval Patrick became the first black governor of Massachusetts, the Boston Globe expressed hope that his inauguration would “finally wash away the shameful stain of that day in 1976.” Last June, however, a Supreme Court ruling forbade school districts from assigning students based on their race, and Patrick’s administration has been forced to find ways to avoid dismantling desegregation programs throughout Massachusetts. The issue, and the photograph, continue to haunt Boston, and the nation.

Here’s hoping that if Barack Obama wins not only the Presidential nomination but the Presidency itself, America might finally realise that being dark-skinned is not an abomination or evil or whatever silly story it is that white supremacists and other racist ratbags peddle.

As for the other photos in the slideshow, the one that made me look at it for ages was the picture of the woman and child freefalling out a window when their apartment block caught fire. There is a cruel beauty in that particular photo, and I wonder what you think.

I’m reading a pretty good account of Bob Hawke’s prime ministership at the moment — The Hawke Years: The story from the inside (1993) by former Hawke speechwriter Stephen Mills — and thought I’d share a couple of interesting passages with you, seeing as I found the book at a garage sale and it’s well and truly out of print.

In the first passage, Mills is attempting to explain why Hawke — whose diplomatic skills were regarded highly among world leaders at the time — was never quite successful at “breaking through the starch and reserve of the Japanese”. It made me laugh out loud on the train:

Perhaps his style and abrasive vernacular puzzled them. On one occasion he told Japanese businessmen they would be ‘out of their cotton-picking minds’ if they didn’t support him in the pilots’ dispute; another time he assured the Japanese that Australia wouldn’t play ‘funny buggers’ on protectionism. He was told later that the phrase had been translated for the audience as ‘humorous homosexuals’.

The second passage describes a moment on Brisbane talk-back radio where Hawke “veered back to indiscipline” during the otherwise meticulously managed 1990 election campaign. Indiscipline aside, Hawke’s rebuke serves as a stark reminder of just how far John Howard’s latent racism and cynical opportunism later degraded the moral authority of the prime ministerial office:

On this occasion, when a caller offensively urged Hawke to hold a referendum on Asian immigration, he embarked on a passionate assault on racism. ‘I happen to believe profoundly in the concept that I learned from my father, and that is if you believe in some concept of a God, then if there’s a fatherhood of God then we are all brothers and sisters in this world. So I reject you profoundly in terms of fundamental patriotism for the future of this country, and I reject you with total contempt on moral grounds.’

Sadly, I’m pretty sure we’ll never again hear a prime minister publicly reject a bigoted citizen with “total contempt”. But with any luck we’ve also seen the last prime minister who will treat so many citizens with contempt, while enjoying the shameful cheerleading and apologetics of a most viciously partisan commentariat.

Australians are not at all racist.

Step 1: Listen to this podcast (if you can — it’s pretty turgid stuff and is quite hard work) by Prodos on the topic of racism and racialism.

Step 2: Read this post by Prodos on the inferior “stone age” indigenous people of Australia.

Step 3: Listen to Prodos’ anti-Islam tune Under Sharia Law, or if you value your eardrums read the lyrics.

Step 4: Decide whether Prodos is a racist, a racialist, or neither. Give us your conclusions in comments.

Self-proclaimed logician, tireless defender of racism and bard (Dr) John “Tingtong” Ray has taken GrodsCorp to task* over this post, which he incorrectly describes as an “attack”:

And note that they attacked ME, not any of the facts and arguments that I have put forward. What they have written is, in short, a confession of complete intellectual failure. They hate the truths that I have highlighted but they were so unable to refute those truths that all they could manage was an attempt to shoot the messenger.

My post was, in fact, ridiculing the messenger — or, more precisely, linking to some writings of his that took care of that task more than sufficiently.

In any case, it’s hard to identify the “facts”, “arguments” and “truths” Ray claims to have highlighted in his unintentionally uproarious post, Stray thoughts about my life**, so refuting them is doubly difficult. But since he asked so nicely, I’ll humour him:

1. Being “so pro-Indian that my house is full of them” is no refutation of the multitudinous claims that you are a racist.
2. Your son is indeed a lucky man, bequeathed as he has been with your secret to stockmarket success — I’ll keep an eye out for his name in BRW’s Rich List. But comparing yourself to a “certain wise Jew”? You’re not remotely Christ-like, Tingtong, and it’s fair to say Jesus would be convulsing in his tomb Heaven if he were silly enough to read your blogs.
3. Begging for food or money requires a certain abandonment of dignity, which can be justified in many cases by necessity. Begging shamelessly for an honorary degree is among the most pathetic things I’ve ever witnessed a grown man do.

As for this:

And it is therefore MOST amusing that one of my recent Leftist critics had obviously trawled at great length through my autobiographical data looking for “dirt” and was able to come up with? Can you guess? Can you guess what he found to criticize? He criticized my POETRY!!

The link to Ray’s treasure-trove of poetry is displayed prominently in the sidebar of this website, which is named (ironically, one would assume) “John Ray’s academic writings”.

Finally, we have this declaration:

So you might see why I don’t take attacks on me personally very seriously.

And this cavalier shrug-of-the-shoulders is found floating in a swamp of how many words? Two-thousand one-hundred and forty-four***.

.

Yes, readers, you read that headline correctly. And here’s why:

HAVE we gone mad? A few drunk Sudanese louts bash a policeman yesterday and we carry on as if we’ve never seen such savagery on our streets.

Never, bellow the talkback callers to an eager ear, until we let in these uncivilised Africans.

With all due respect, Mr Talkback Caller, you are an idiot. We’ve got thugs of all colours—white in particular—now punching police and anyone else they find, and the Sudanese aren’t the worst of them.

While you were on the phone panicking about a few Africans, 50 extra police were this very week deployed into the city to deal with the grim fact that scores more people are getting bashed in the heart of our state’s capital, and not by Africans. Panic about that, sir.

And panic, too, about two other scary things we haven’t been short of lately: drunks and underparented children. Both of which, I suspect, have contributed to an alarming rise in violence—and a crime rate in Victoria that’s worse these past few years than anything seen since 1934.

Take the half a dozen white beer-brains at a Mornington Peninsula caravan park, who an hour after the Sudanese scuffle were pushing around police sent to shush them, and had to be sobered up with pepper spray and a trip for three to the cells.

Never accuse GrodsCorp of being incapable of giving credit where credit’s due.

Kevin Andrews on why gang-forming types shouldn’t be allowed into Australia:

Under pressure to explain his latest reasons for closing the door to new African refugee applicants until next year, Mr Andrews yesterday blamed gang-based violence…

(source)

Some recent gang violence:

[P]olice in the western suburbs [of Melbourne] yesterday appealed for witnesses to the bashing in Melton on Tuesday of 17-year-old Ajang Gor.

The Sudanese-born high school student was riding his bike home from his job at a fast-food restaurant with his brother at 4pm when he was set on by four men, who shouted racial slurs, then punched and kicked him and hit him with a bottle.

The attackers stole his wallet and phone, then sent racist text messages and made abusive phone calls to Ajang’s brother, cousins and friends.

(source)

Kevin Andrews talking about the importance of English proficiency for life in Australia:

“[T]he bottom line is if you wish to achieve your aspirations in Australia then it is quite crucial that you can speak English… the language of this country is English and we encourage people to actually be able to competently speak English.”

(source)

The English spoken by the (presumably white) Australian gang members who attacked Sudanese migrant Ajang Gor:

Wats up u black dogs ya mate jst got knocked da fuk out we jst jackd him welcome 2 australia u jigaboo fuks melton blood gang we from melton u pieces of shit

Caller: Alan, um, just saw some snippets from the news, Channel 9, of the horrendous bashing…
Alan Jones: …appalling
Caller: …or if you like, gang attack on the beach in Cronulla yesterday. I mean what type of grubs do we have in this … (indistinct)
Alan Jones: What kind of grubs? Well, I’ll tell you what kind of grubs this lot were. This lot were Middle-Eastern grubs.
Caller: There we go.
Alan Jones: And, you’re not allowed to say it, but I’m saying it…

_____

Caller: If the police can’t do the job, the next tier is us.
Alan Jones: Yeah, good on you, J…
Caller: Now, my grandfather was an old digger and he used to say to me when we were growing up, ‘Listen, shoot one, the rest will run’.
Alan Jones: [laughing]
Caller: Right?
Alan Jones: …yes [laughing]

_____

Alan Jones: ‘J’ has a good answer, he says police and the council are impotent here all rhetoric and no action. My suggestion is to invite the biker gangs to be present at Cronulla Railway station when these Lebanese thugs arrive, the biker gangs have been much maligned but they do a lot of good things – it would be worth the price of admission to watch these cowards scurry back onto the train for the return trip to their lairs…and wouldn’t it be brilliant if the whole event was captured on TV cameras and featured on the evening news so that we, their parents, family and friends can see who these bastards are…Australians old and new should not have to put up with this scum. Peters of Kensington…

_____

Alan Jones: Yeah, let’s not get too carried away ‘B’, we don’t have Anglo-Saxon kids out there raping women in Western Sydney. So let’s not get carried away with all this mealy-mouthed talk about there being two sides. I can tell you, because my correspondence here from mums and dads I am inundated, and I don’t hear people complaining about Catholics and Protestants and Anglicans, I’m sorry, but there’s this religious element in all of this and we’ve got to make sure that we welcome people into our community but we welcome them in on certain terms and certain standards and those standards are not being met. So let’s not have this mealy mouth talk about oh well, everyone’s to blame. All across Sydney there is a universal concern that there are gangs, the gangs are of one ethnic composition…

(source — PDF)

I am not going to get involved in comments on individual decisions, but let me say this: I think Alan Jones is an outstanding broadcaster. I don’t think he’s a person who encourages prejudice in the Australian community, not for one moment, but he is a person who articulates what a lot of people think.

(source)

After being reported missing yesterday Kim Beazley has been sighted on the opinion pages of The Age. Accusing Amanda Vanstone of distracting attention from work visa issues by calling him a racist, Kim does the same, distracting attention from his being called a racist by focusing on work visa issues. Apparently it’s a race to the bottom in the brave new world of WorkChoices — and I can’t much argue with that.

So some ticks for Kim’s efforts to turn the debate around and have it on his terms, but some crosses for his continued oversimplification of the IR debate with lines such as this:

And in the end, this is not about xenophobia or rogue bosses — this is all about the Prime Minister’s wages race to the bottom. Labor will halt the race to the bottom by ripping up the mechanism that allows it — Australian Workplace Agreements.

And Kim even found the space in his article for an opportunistic plug for his pathetic and xenophobic values pledge policy:

But I am strongly of the view that workers who come to Australia should understand the Aussie work ethic, and a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.

It’s one of the reasons I want these workers to sign up to these values when they come to Australia.

But most offensive is Kim’s ongoing pursuit of mediocrity, with his continued pitching of all policy to “middle Australia.” The article was bookended with claims that John Howard and WorkChoices are “delivering a one-two punch to middle Australia.” Can’t really argue with that, but I’d like to think that a Labor government would govern for all Australians, not just the middle, with a vision for greatness, not ordinariness.

Amanda Vanstone called Kim Beazley racist today and after the Bomber’s comments this week I wasn’t falling over myself to disagree with her. However, I do think that both sides of politics are a bit too keen to throw accusations and smears such as racism back and forth at each other. All day today Labor MPs were screeching “pot, kettle, black” at Mandy while John Howard refused to specifically distance himself from her comments, saying only that “this country is not a racist country.” However, the purpose of this post is not to wade into the murky waters of what constitutes racism and who are its practitioners.

My point is where the hell was Kim today? He’d been branded a racist person with racist policies and he couldn’t haul his arse out the front of Parly House for a quick retaliatory doorstop. At least, I don’t think he did. There was no sign of an interview on either SBS or ABC news tonight so I think my assumption is safe. He found the time yesterday to speak out in support of his stupid immigration values test policy but couldn’t be bothered defending his character today.

Kim Beazley’s gotta go.