Open Letter to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd

We have read your new policy on asylum seeker boat arrivals. It is an audacious policy which no doubt took your colleagues and the rest of the ALP by surprise.

Without necessarily supporting what you did we understand why you made the arrangements you did with PNG Prime Minister Peter O’ Neill. In that one gesture you apparently shored up your racist and bigoted constituency in marginal seats, wedged Tony Abbott and his three-word bogan slogans and attempted to appease those ethical and compassionate people with genuine concerns about unsafe boats full of asylum seekers attempting hazardous voyages.

We will not go into the details of the policy. It has been thoroughly reported by the media somewhat starved of controversy in the last week or so, along with the usual commentary from the usual media suspects such as conservative commentator Paul Sheehan, who has spent the last three years telling people what a dreadful government we have but has suddenly discovered that asylum seekers sometimes drown, so desperate are they to find a safe place to live.

We are somewhat surprised that a country your government’s own DFAT travel advice website has warned Australian travellers is a security risk should be deemed acceptable for asylum seekers as a place of settlement. There seems to be a bit of careless racism implicit in that.

So while you tick those boxes off may we remind you that the ongoing hysteria about asylum seekers is not going to go away. That same constituency which you think you have placated will continue to hate and vilify new arrivals, no matter how they arrived in this country.

• They will continue to defame the small population of Muslims in Australia, those who were born here as well as those amongst the new arrivals.
• They will continue to abuse women and men in religious garments in the street because they “dress differently”.
• They will target the 13% of the population who either emigrated from Asia or who are the descendants of those of Asian descent who have lived in Australia for many years, along with the many Asian students here for an education.
• They will continue to racially abuse people, including children, on buses and trains because they “look different” or “speak different”.
• These individuals will continue to gather in vile hate groups on social media, and to infest the comments columns of newspapers.

So Kevin we need an undertaking from you that you are going to address this xenophobia, because you and the government are the only ones who can do so.

We want an undertaking that you and your MPs will explicitly address and overturn the unfounded fears and festering hatred of this misguided sector of the electorate, because you are supposed to govern on behalf of normal Australians, not just expediently at election time for the passing whims of the haters.

Then we may again be a fit country to receive and welcome newcomers to a safe and secure life, because at the moment we are not.

In anticipation

theantibogan

E mail: theantibogan@gmail.com

www.theantibogan.wordpress.com

Twitter:     @theantibogan

Geert Wilders in Australia, February 2013

slackbastard

Posted on February 2, 2013 by @ndy

Update : Fairfax has an article on Wilders’ tour titled ‘White supremacists ready for fight’ (Natalie O’Brien, The Age, February 2, 2013). It refers, inter alia, to the ‘Australian New Nation’ website — established several years ago in order to replace the White Pride Coalition of Australia site — and the Internet radio show ‘Australia Calling’. ‘Australia Calling’ is produced by Brisbane nazi Carl D Thompson, who briefly came to public attention some years ago when he lost his job editing the One Nation newspaper after publishing some anti-Semitic material.

Muslim-hating Dutch rightist Geert Wilders is gonna be touring Down Under in a few weeks. The Flying Dutchman’s tour is being organised by an anti-Islamic group known as the Q Society, and Wilders is scheduled to speak in Melbourne on the 19th, Perth on the 20th and Sydney on the 22nd of February, with the venues only being announced a day or two prior.* Unsurprisingly, having already roused controversy, Wilder’s tour is expected to generate some opposition, but also a good deal of support, especially among the far-right fringe. To that end, a number of individuals drawn from racist and fascist groups will be attending Wilder’s events :– some ostensibly in order to protect them from disruption.

Or were . . .

Within 48 hours of declaring that it was the sacred duty of White racialists to attend Wilder’s event in Sydney — largely in order to show the dastardly Reds who’s boss — Welf Herfurth — the leader of the minuscule forces of the New Right (NR) in Australia — changed his mind, and declared it to be a positively dreadful idea, one which risked aligning the NR with Zionists (ergo Jews).

Well, kinda . . .

Actually, the former NPD, ON and Democrats (!) member was admonished by his master, Troy Southgate, to pull his head in and think a li’l moar about the implications of aligning his handful of followers with The Jew. Thus:

Note that Herfurth’s mob last reared its head in Sydney back in November, when police provided them a platform at a Palestine solidarity rally; Herfurth himself is a Holocaust denialist and strong supporter of his kamerad Uncle Fred Toben.

Australian Protectionist Party & Conservative Islamophobia

Of course, support for Wilder’s message also extends deep into the conservative heartland, and includes prominent Muslim-baiters in the Tory party as well as handsomely-paid hacks in the corporate and state media. Further, the conservative embrace/promotion of paranoid fears over Muslamics has stolen a good deal of oxygen from a number of racist, right-wing fringe-dwellers, including Anders Breivik’s friends in the Australian Protectionist Party (APP). Just five short years after its foundation as a more ‘moderate’, less anti-Semitic version of the Australia First Party (AF), the APP has undergone its first major crisis, with the entirety of its Sydney branch decamping in order to establish yet another marginal bunch of kooks, this time modelled on Wilder’s Freedom Party (the APP modelled itself on the BNP). Whether or not the handful who spat the dummy can actually assemble another party remains to be seen, but given that they were the only active members the APP possessed the Protectionists seem doomed to disappear back into oblivion.

Or perhaps not.

Andrew Phillips, APP National Chairman, has relocated himself and his PO Box to Tasmania, while the party continues to nominate two others as contacts for NSW and VIC. Having lost perennial losers Darrin Hodges and Nicholas Hunter-Folkes, Phillips is now begging someone — anyone — to nominate themselves to undergo the humiliation of losing another popularity contest. Those interested can write to P.O. Box 170, Dover, Tasmania 7117 (which also functions as the postal address of Meals On Wheels in that part of the world).

*According to Q, “Details will be advised to paid-up patrons 48 hours prior to event. Expect a function centre within easy reach of the CBD. Photo ID is required to enter; only one small handbag per patron permitted into the venue.” Paul Sheehan writes for the defence here and you can read more about the Q Society on their webshite.

(More) Bloody Foreigners Making Trouble

Overseas: Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka ‘Tommy Robinson’ aka ‘Paul Harris’), the leader of the E E EDL, has been sentenced to 10 months jail for ‘possession of a false identity document with improper intention’, viz entering the US to attend an anti-Muslim gathering using a false passport. (Tommy’s troubles mirror those of Martin Brennan, another whinging Pom and the former leader of the A A ADL, forcibly expelled from Australia in August 2011 for immigration offences.) Also in attendance at the gathering in New York in September last year was Yanqui crackpot Robert Spencer. Spencer is described as ‘VP Islamic Scripture and History’ for the Q Society and runs a loon website called jihadwatch; the Coordinator for Victoria/Tasmania and Secretary of the Society is Ralf Schumann; Andrew McDonald is their Administrator in NSW while in Perth Debbie Robinson coordinates teh stoopid. Anyway, here’s a picture of the patriotic sheila from Perf (Debbie Robinson) and two foreign loons (Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer) holding the Strayan flag at SION:

More on Geert’s tour later maybe . . .

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