However this is but one of Capt. Shindy’s many achievements after 26 years of service in the ADF. Last year she was named as 2015 Telstra NSW Businesswoman of the Year. She was on active service during the 2003 Iraq War. She holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree and is Head of the Guided Missile Frigate System Program Office. In the 2015 Australia Day Honours she was awarded the Conspicuous Service Cross.
Conspicuous Service Cross
The CSC is awarded only for outstanding devotion to duty, or outstanding achievement in the application of exceptional skills, judgment or dedication, in non-warlike situations.
So it was with a good deal of concern that we read this report in today’s Guardian dealing with the sudden removal of the Navy’s Islamic Twitter account (@navyislamic).
And how and why was the Twitter account removed?
“The head of the ALA (Australian Liberty Alliance), Debbie Robinson, who has previously described Islam as “a dangerous ideology” incompatible with Western society, wrote to the chief of the Australian defence force, Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin, on 10 December asking the navy to distance itself from the account or delete it.
“It is completely unacceptable for an official defence Twitter account to criticise any registered political party in Australia,” Robinson said in a press release.”
We also went through them and through the MSM carefully trying to find an achievement – any achievement – to mention.
All we could find in the MSM was that she was married to an orthopaedic surgeon, a notion we find quaintly Mad Men in its 1950s aspirational tone.
And hubby is a tad shy about his political leanings but it seems he too does have some association with Fascist foreigner Geert Wilders’s latest offshore embryonic party branch (see Perth Now)
We’d like to think that newly minted Defence Minister Marise Payne may not have been informed of this preremptory response. In case she was not you can contact her via the links here
A small but noisy group of anti-Muslim campaigners are targeting Aussie businesses in their obsessively stupid warfare against Australian Muslims.
Despite labelling themselves as hateriots “patriots”, their latest strategic move as they rattle and bob across the media landscape is the undermining and trashing of Australian small business – specifically those businesses which want to cater both to Australian customers and to potential markets in our region.
No matter that Australia, without the trading opportunities available in the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region, will travel on the road to becoming an isolated, dull, backward, intolerant, inward-looking enclave of the suspicious, the xenophobic and the down-right crackbrained.
Much like this run-down white supremacist enclave in South Africa.
To those pig ignorant droogs who shut down a South Australian business because it had halal certified yoghurt selling to Emirates (Airlines)—what stupid, stupid people! If they really think this money goes to terrorists, they should stop buying petrol
– Malcolm Farr Political Editor News.com.au
Now here’s ABC 7:30’s report from November last year.
Transcript LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Across Australia, a vicious campaign against halal-certified companies is gaining momentum. A halal product is one that doesn’t contain any traces of pork, blood or alcohol, meaning it’s OK for Muslims to eat. Many products are halal-certified, even Vegemite. But anti-halal activists say they’re fighting back against creeping sharia law, claiming the label is a tax on non-Muslims and the money for certification goes towards terrorism. Here’s Alex Mann.
ALEX MANN, REPORTER: Six months ago, Fleurieu Milk & Yoghurt Company gained halal certification to supply a $50,000 yoghurt contract with Emirates Airlines.
NICK HUTCHINSON, FLEURIEU MILK & YOGHURT COMPANY: It was a requirement of Emirates. We had to pay a $1,000 fee. It opened up a business market to continue to become viable. It was a necessary step.
ALEX MANN: What do you understand halal to mean?
NICK HUTCHINSON: To be honest, up until a couple of weeks ago, my understanding wasn’t great on halal certification. We knew it was a fee we had to pay around $1,000 a year that allowed Muslims to consume our products on Emirates Airlines. Now, since then I’ve done a bit of research and so forth and we now know that halal certification doesn’t need to be – you don’t need halal certification for milk and yoghurt if it doesn’t contain gelatin, which ours doesn’t.
ALEX MANN: Keeping food and drink halal means no pork, blood or alcohol can be allowed anywhere in the production process.
The trouble began last month when Nick Hutchinson received an email asking to confirm whether his company had halal certification. His response was posted and shared across a network of anti-halal Facebook sites, unleashing a barrage of online hate.
FACEBOOK POST (male voiceover): What a crock of s**t. Cease halal certification now. You want halal? Go live in a Muslim country. Simple.
FACEBOOK POST II (male voiceover): It is sharia law that says these rag heads must eat halal food. We don’t have sharia law here, therefore no halal products are required in this country!!!! It’s all a scam to raise funds for terrorism!!!!!
FACEBOOK POST III (female voiceover): Screw halal and all who make it.
ALEX MANN: What exactly were people saying to you?
NICK HUTCHINSON: The money goes towards terrorism, the – it’s impacting on Australia’s well-being, our standard of life is being taken over because you’re paying these fees, allowing people of Islamic heritage to rule us. It come out of nowhere and happened quite quickly, because with one copy and paste onto these sites, you’ve gone from nobody knowing you’re a halal certified to 100,000 people that are extremely against it. And when they work together, they can impact quite heavily on small businesses such as ours.
ALEX MANN: Within two days, Fleurieu Milk & Yoghurt Company decided to ditch its certification, forfeiting its contract with Emirates.
NICK HUTCHINSON: Yeah, it sucks. I hate saying it, but there’s no other way to describe it. We gave in and decided that the negative publicity and the bullying outweighed what we were gaining from the halal certification.
ALEX MANN: The attack against Fleurieu was part of an organised online campaign against companies with halal certification.
KIRALEE SMITH, FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR, HALAL CHOICES: Hi, I’m Kiralee Smith, founder and director of Halal Choices. I love the freedom we have this nation. … Don’t be shouted down. You’re not a racist or a bigot because you have concerns about fundamental Islam or halal certification. Talk, share and discuss this important issue with your family and friends.
ALEX MANN: Across Australia, a loose collection of anti-halal, anti-Islam and nationalistic groups has been targeting halal-certified food companies. The groups identify businesses and direct users to swarm their social media sites.
MIKE HOLT, RESTORE AUSTRALIA: First of all, this is Australia. We are not Islamic. We’ve also been – we’ve had this imposed on us without our permission. Did you ever vote in a referendum to allow halal certification of just about everything in the supermarket? I didn’t. If they don’t change their ways and start acting as patriotic Australians, they deserve what they get. It’s market forces.
ALEX MANN: Mike Holt is an anti-mosque campaigner and a former One Nation candidate. He works with the other boycott groups to target companies like Fleurieu Milk.
MIKE HOLT: We are targeting various groups. We’ve been targeting Byron Bay Cookies. One thing you have to understand is Restore Australia works legally and we do not agree with abuse or threatening people, but we have no control over our supporters. There are people out there who get very, very passionate about this and they have made threats, which is unfortunate, but these companies have brought it on themselves.
ALEX MANN: The biggest anti-halal group, with more than 35,000 followers, is Boycott Halal in Australia. It claims certification costs push up prices and that the money for certification goes towards funding terrorism.
BOYCOTT HALAL IN AUSTRALIA FACEBOOK POST (male voiceover): One halal product = the next bullet that kills or maims. If you buy halal, you are indirectly funding terrorism.
NICK HUTCHINSON: One lady phoned me and asked if I was happy that we contributed towards the 9/11 attacks where she lost a few family members. Outrageous claims, something that – yeah, never expected, but yeah, it’s quite ridiculous.
TRISH DELANEY, BOYCOTT HALAL IN AUSTRALIA: Companies ask for feedback, but it appears they don’t like negative feedback, alright? I mean, I think it’s fair to say that people from all walks of life should be able to ask, “Are you halal certified?” It’s not a hard question.
ALEX MANN: Trish Delaney is one of Boycott Halal in Australia’s resident keyboard warriors. She spends up to four hours a day online co-ordinating the campaign.
TRISH DELANEY: Myself, lots of the 34,000 people have written to the Government and asked the Government to please, do something about this and label it so that people can know that they have a choice. We don’t mind or have anything against people eating halal food. We don’t want to pay for it. We don’t need it and we don’t want to pay for it.
ALEX MANN: So why do you say that we’re paying for it?
TRISH DELANEY: Because of the fees attached to the certification. Some companies say, “No, we absorb the costs,” and we say, “Well you’re not much of a business because businesses don’t absorb costs, they pass it on to consumers.”
ALEX MANN: On the NSW north coast, Byron Bay Cookie Company knows all about anti-halal campaigning. For months the company has suffered under the same sustained abusive campaign that targeted Fleurieu Milk Company.
KEITH BYRNE, BYRON BAY COOKIE COMPANY: When we’ve got the likes of our shop here in Byron Bay and we have a receptionist who has taken some of the phone calls which could – which were quite abusive and also emails that were quite abusive. That’s when we had to say, “Hold on a second, we now need to get some more support on this,” and we did have to actually bring in the police at that stage.
ALEX MANN: In spite of the opposition, he’s decided to keep his certification.
KEITH BYRNE: Cookie Company is exporting to 40 countries worldwide. So, it’s a huge benefit to us and it means that we can not only sustain our existing workforce, but we’ve expanded that over the last years and we’re now one of the biggest employers now in Byron Bay, with 65 people. We decided to keep the certification because if we were to not have that certification, that would mean that we could lose multiple global contracts, which would mean I’d have to downsize my operation here in Byron Bay. That would mean I would lose employees.
ALEX MANN: Nick Hutchinson warns that boycott campaigners are damaging local companies.
NICK HUTCHINSON: If they were to take us down, being a local – all our profits remain in SA. If our businesses disappear, you’re being run by companies in Japan or in Europe and these multinationals and is that better? Is that – our money going back there, is that a better option? Well, I’m sure most people agree it’s not.
The Q Society, responsible for bringing out and hosting international bigots like the floridly excitable Pamela Geller, the pseudonymous self-styled religious expert “Robert Spencer” and the languid Dutch blond Geert Wilders permeates the anti-Muslim movement like a noxious smell.
Wonder if the Qs have secret handshakes, blindfolds and stuff? Or goats? Or funds which they direct to the Three Stooges featured above?
And here they are pretending to be normal. We know better.
In its eternal hunt for candidates, One Nation certainly digs down the bottom of the dumpster. Here’s yet another one to join the departed and unlamented Stephanie Banister.
Marella Goodwin-Harris might even be marginally more intelligent, though an association with thuggish street gang the ADL does not help any perceptions of either intelligence or sound mental health.
Here she is bubbling with excitement as she announces her “endorcement” (sic) as a One Nation candidate to a bunch of ADL desperates huddled in one of their noisome Facebook groups, as they explode in a frenzy about the potential for enlisting signwriters for the coming struggle against normal mainstream Australia.
ADL sign-writer at work
Marella is no newcomer to hate politics. Here are some of the groups she “likes” on Facebook. We are still processing the notion of an EDL group for gender- diverse people.
Sounds like these Fascist street thugs want to attract them over so they can more readily beat them up and harass them.
She is already a member of weirdo conspiracy theorist coven the Q Society and has a disturbing obsession with halal.
Here’s a lovely shot of Marella fighting the good fight against those lethal hordes of Muslamic terrorist schoolkids watched by a handful of what we presume are locals.
We are very familiar with Resident Action groups and can say that most of them are a good thing – an opportunity for locals to band together and to fight the encroachments of greedy developers and environmental vandals.
We are not so sure about HPRAG. We find no evidence of any ongoing concerns from them for sustainable development or for the preservation of high conservation value areas in this fast-growing area of Sydney.
So we are pretty much convinced that it is a front for Islamophobia.
This is a new and disturbing trend with the far right as they attempt to cloak their ratbaggery in legitimacy by attempting to hijack respectable causes such as the environment. Or secular humanism
entryism
World English Dictionary
entryism (ˈɛntrɪɪzəm)
— n
the policy or practice of members of a particular political group joining an existing political party with the intention of changing its principles and policies, instead of forming a new party
‘entryist
— n , — adj
Want more evidence that it wasn’t “just about” development?
We don’t have to spend much time talking about Geert Wilders. He is already an experienced self-publicist.
Geert Wilders as a child
He is also coming to Australia at the invitation of the shadowy mini group the Q Society. Among the activities of the Q Society was an apparently failed attempt to bully a suburban council in Melbourne who were allowing Muslims to use a Council-owned community centre for prayers.
Anyway here’s a brief bio for those interested in international Fascism’s latest pin-up boy.
And a Dutch fan has actually crafted a glamour shot.
Meanwhile, supporters of Geert in Australia were somewhat taken aback when the proposed Sydney venue for the fash fest pulled out, obviously having second thoughts at the low quality of the expected participants.
Well fan boys, there’s always Nicky’s pied-à-terre in Rozelle, which seems to be the regular venue of choice in Sydney for the far right to celebrate its irrelevance. Especially with someone as charismatic as their Geertjie.
The charisma of Geert Wilders
Friends of Geert get together at a US hate fest
Q Society’s Perth-based den mother Debbie Robinson with US nut Pamela Geller and “Robert Spencer” mauling our flag
Meanwhile Australia’s own pet Eurofash Welf Herfurth pulls out.
When not running a paintball business Welf can be found with a fistful of yoof called the National Anarchist Movement – best known for contradicting itself in the first two words of its name. Nice to see Welf wants to protect his lads from “teh_Zionists”.
UPDATE
Looks like it isn’t just the other fash who are keeping Geertje at arm’s length.
Fake soldat Sargent KoranFlusher is devastated by the refusal of those beastly function centres to play host to a foreign fringe politician and his fan club of kooks, haters and wacko conspiracy theorists patriots, as reported by Farts of Jihad’s Werner Reimann.
Oh dearie me, when you are Geert Wilders having the dates doesn’t stop the desperation
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 kameradUncle 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:
you said it... 