Tuesday, December 13, 2005

More background to the Australian riot

Goes to show motivation. From The Australian, an article entitled "Racism is repulsive, but so is self-loathing":

YESTERDAY a colleague emailed me from New York. The young lawyer - her family lives in Brighton-Le-Sands, a bayside suburb north of Cronulla in Sydney - wrote: "While I agree there is no justifying excuse for the violence and breakdown in order that occurred at Cronulla, it needs to be put in context. Unless you live in an area like Cronulla, Brighton-Le-Sands or Bondi, you have no idea what it is like to have one's suburb regularly inundated with large groups of young Muslim men from the western suburbs who proceed to shoot people [as has happened in Brighton], intimidate people, regularly threaten people within their vicinity with violence, drive around in large groups screaming abuse at people from cars with their music blaring, regularly brawling, etc."

This young woman recounted that all of the girls in her family (except the youngest) have been "subject to harassment inflicted by groups of these men - comments on our appearances, racist comments on our Australian background, unwanted touching, being followed while walking home by groups of men in cars (I was once followed all the way home - have never been so scared in my life), sexually explicit remarks while alone, with friends or with boyfriends, unwanted called-out invitations to have sex with groups of them, etc".


And from the BBC:

Jason Lalor lives minutes from the beach and is pessimistic that there is a quick fix to the deeply rooted antagonism on both sides.

He says he has been harassed by groups of Lebanese youths on more than one occasion and says he is tired of being hassled in his own neighbourhood.

"It's not going to stop one day. It's going to keep going, which is what it's been doing since my father's time."


Henrik

Religious war in Australia

OK, I promised more than I could keep yesterday. Apparently I cant be bothered to stay away from the blog if something interesting happens.

The Australian reports:

Police are also now investigating bullet holes found in the cars of several staff members at St Joseph the Worker Primary School in South Auburn after a Christmas carols service on Monday evening. Parents and children were abused by a group of young men of Middle Eastern appearance and gunshots were heard during the service.

More from M&C News:

Sydney's Catholic Archbishop George Pell said parents and children were heckled and parked cars peppered with gunshots at a primary school popular with Lebanese Christians that was holding a Christmas carol service.

'The attack was apparently motivated by religious intolerance,' Pell said.

But wait.....wasnt this second night of rioting supposedly Lebanese "payback" for the racist riots the day before? If so, I failed to see the hundreds of Lebanese Christians that took part in the riot on the side of the Australians.

This is a war of religion. And its conducted by moslems against anybody who comes along.

Henrik

Some background to the Australian riot

First, I have to tell you that real-world things will keep me from blogging until the evening of January 3rd, 2006 (ie, for the next 3 weeks).

Secondly, a bit of background to the Australian riot Sunday and the follow-up Moslem riot Monday. Other than the assault on two Australian life guards that immediately sparked the sunday riot, I have only seen small bits on the background in Australian papers. This is to remedy that. Tim Priest, a pensioned Australian detective held a speech entitled "The Rise of Middle-eastern Crime in Australia" in November 2003. It has been printed in Quadrant in its January-February 2004-issue, and deals with how "reforms" in the Australian police led to a rise in Middle-Eastern crime. Some interesting bits:

The impact that this leadership team had on day-to-day operational policing was disastrous. In many of the key areas that were experiencing rapid rises in Middle Eastern crime, these new leaders became more concerned with relations between the police and ethnic minorities than with emerging violent crime. The power and influence of the local religious and minority leaders cannot be overstated. Police began to use selective law enforcement. They selected targets that were unlikely to use their ethnic background and cultural beliefs to hinder police investigations or arrests. It was mostly Anglo-Saxons and Asians that were the targets, because they were under-represented by religious leaders and the media. They were soft targets.

AN EXAMPLE of the confrontations police nearly always experienced in Muslim-dominated areas when confronting even the most minor of crimes is an incident that occurred in 2001 in Auburn. Two uniformed officers stopped a motor vehicle containing three well known male offenders of Middle Eastern origin, on credible information via the police radio that indicated that the occupants of the vehicle had been involved in a series of break-and-enters. What occurred during the next few hours can only be described as frightening.

When searching the vehicle and finding stolen property from the break-and-enter, the police were physically threatened by the three occupants of the car, including references to tracking down where the officers lived, killing them and “fucking your girlfriends”. The two officers were intimidated to the point of retreating to their police car and calling for urgent assistance. When police back-up arrived, the three occupants called their associates via their mobile phones, which incidentally is the Middle Eastern radio network used to communicate amongst gangs. Within minutes as many as twenty associates arrived as well as another forty or so from the street where they had been stopped. As further police cars arrived, the Middle Eastern males became even more aggressive, throwing punches at police, pushing police over onto the ground, threatening them with violence and damaging police vehicles.

When the duty officer arrived, he immediately ordered all police back into their vehicles and they retreated from the scene. The stolen property was not recovered. No offender was arrested for assaulting police or damaging police vehicles.

But the humiliation did not end there. The group of Middle Eastern males then drove to the police station, where they intimidated the station staff, damaged property and virtually held a suburban police station hostage. The police were powerless. The duty officer ordered police not to confront the offenders but to call for back-up from nearby stations. Eventually the offenders left of their own volition. No action was taken against them.

In the minds of the local population, the police were cowards and the message was, Lebs rule the streets. For a number of days, nothing was done to rectify this total breakdown of law and order. To the senior police in the area, it was more important to give the impression that local ethnic relations were never better. It was also important to Peter Ryan that no bad news stories appeared that may have given the impression that crime in any area was out of control. Had these hoodlums been arrested they would have filed IA complaints immediately via their Legal Aid lawyers and community leaders. To senior police, this was a cause for concern at the next Op Crime Review. ...

By avoiding confrontations with these thugs, the police gave away the streets in many of these areas in south-western Sydney. ...

The most influential of the Middle Eastern crime groups are the Muslim males of Telopea Street, Bankstown, known as the Telopea Street Boys. They and their associates have been involved in numerous murders over the past five years, many of them unprovoked fatal attacks on young Australian men for no other reason than that they are “Skips”, as they call Australians. ....

The Middle Eastern cycle of violence is not local. It can occur on the central coast, around Cronulla, Bondi, Darling Harbour, Five Dock, Redfern, Paddington, anywhere in Sydney. Unlike their Vietnamese counterparts, they roam the city and are not confined to either Cabramatta or Chinatown. And even more alarming is that the violence is directed mainly against young Australian men and women. There is a clear and definite link between violent attacks on our young men and women being racial as well as criminal. Quite often when taking statements from young men attacked by groups of Lebanese males around Darling Harbour, a common theme has been the racially motivated violence against the victims simply because they are Australian.

It seems to me, that the assault on two lifeguards was the last straw that finally made thousands of people snap and take things into their own hands. The mass murder of 88 Australians by moslems on Bali in 2002 may also play in - 6 local women were among the victims, and a monument in memory of them was located where the riot started.

UPDATE:

manny c informs me that the monument for the six victims of the moslem Bali mass murder actually is "at Coogee, a little further up the coast from where the riots started (North Cronulla)". Lucky for me, I can point fingers at Australian liberal backbencher Bruce Baird for misinforming me.

Henrik

Sunday, December 04, 2005

DPP politician speaks his mind

From Jyllands-Posten:


Frevert's replacement: Islam is terror

The Danish People's Party's new spokesman on education affairs describes Islam as a terrorist movement A few days after the Danish People's Party (DF) punished its Copenhagen mayoral candidate for publishing racist remarks on her website, removing her from the post as the party spokesman on educational affairs, her successor went ahead and described the Muslim religion as a terrorist movement.

Defeated mayoral candidate Louise Frevert's website compared Muslims with cancer tumours in Danish society, causing a public outrage. Though she blamed the statement on her website editor, DF sanctioned her by removing her from a number of spokesman posts in parliament, including the one on educational policies.

Daily newspaper Berlingske Tidende, however, reported that new spokesman Martin Henriksen's website was no more positive towards Muslims than his predecessor's.

'From its beginning, Islam has been a terrorist movement,' Henriksen stated on his website, warning against letting Muslims run for office in parliament and municipal councils.

'It's well known that Islam is lying low, well-knowing that no Islamic group or state has the military power it takes to conquer us. The goal we know, the method is to quietly take over and infiltrate our democratic institutions,' Henriksen said on his website.

Danish converts to Islam get their share of the blame as 'moral criminals'.

'These young Danes, who turn their backs on their heritage and thereby all of us, are committing an indescribable moral crime,' the website stated.

The website was discussed in a DF parliamentary group meeting on Thursday, where Henriksen said he had received full backing from his fellow party members.

'It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that an MP from the Danish People's Party is critical of Islam. It's a part of the party's policy, so I'm not removing anything from my website,' Henriksen told national broadcaster DR.

Now, being a politician, he did change something in his website, of course. He exchanged "terrorist movement" for "ideology of conquest" (source: Jyllandsposten).

UPDATE:

Darwiniangirl requested I post links to the two webpages mentioned above. Here they are:

Louise Freverts homepage

Martin Henriksens homepage

I havent been able to find neither "terrorist movement" nor "ideology of conquest" in Martin Henriksens site, though.

Henrik

Death threats and a bounty on the heads of illustrator

From Jylland-Posten:

New death threats against Mohammed cartoonists

Demonstrations in Pakistan have escalated into death threats against Danish illustrators who drew pictures of the prophet Mohammed The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has warned Danish travellers to Pakistan of increased hazard after a Danish newspaper's decision to publish cartoons of Muslim prophet Mohammed escalated into a bounty being placed on the heads of the cartoonists.

Daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten published twelve cartoon drawings of Mohammed in September, sparking angry reactions from Denmark's Muslim population and a number of Muslim countries.

A bounty of DKK 50,000 (A bit more than 8.000$ - Henrik) had been put on the head the cartoonist responsible for the drawings, daily newspaper Berlingske Tidende reported on Friday. The Pakistani group offering the reward mistakenly believes that the 12 cartoons were created by just one person.

Danish Ambassador to Pakistan Bent Wigotski said the bounty had been promised by religious party Jamaat-e-Islami and its youth organisation, which had also demanded Danish representatives expelled from the country.

Danish authorities immediately informed the Pakistani government about the death threats and bounty promised by the party, which is described as nationalistic and fundamentalist.

Ever since the demonstrators marched through the streets of Islamabad, the party has been spreading its message through the media and flyers.

Wigotski said he had no plans to leave Pakistan, despite hundreds of angry protest letters from Muslims around the world.

'But the situation is of course serious,' he said. 'They might want to get to the Danish illustrators, but if they can't reach them, they could make to with a scapegoat.'

That scapegoat could be anybody, the embassy warned..

Henrik

Convenient outrage and unconvenient pasts

Turkeys islamist government is currently trying to exact a wee bit of revenge over the printing of 12 pictures of the alleged prophet Mohammed. The means the Turks have chosen is to complain incessantly about Denmark allowing the Kurdish television station ROJ TV to broadcast from Denmark. So far, the culmination was when Turkish prime minister Erdogan stormed out of the country when told that ROJ TV had a journalist present at the press conference scheduled with him and Danish PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Problem was that he hadnt had any problems with her attending former press conferences, and it seems he wasnt the only Turkish politician who had no problem with ROJ TV until they needed a pretext to condemn Denmark (source: Hürriyet):

Following the revelation that ruling Justice and Development (AKP) Party MP Faruk Unsal had appeared on controversial PKK-linked Roj TV in Denmark, it has also been revealed that AKP MP Mehmet Elkatmis spoke by telephone on a Roj TV program.

MP Elkatmis, who is also the head of the Turkish Parliament's Commission to Examine Human Rights, spoke by telephone on a broadcast of Roj TV's "Rojname" program, answering questions posed to him by program presented Sinan Ozturk.

There are others

As it turns out, there are many politicians from Ankara, which is trying to get Roj TV taken off the air in Denmark right now, who have either appeared on or participated in Roj TV programs. From opposition CHP, Algan Hacaloglu, Kamer Genc, and Husamettin Cindoruk have also spoken on Roj TV. Former Supreme Court prosecutor Sami Selcuk participated in a broadcast of MED-TV, Roj TV's British counterpart, subsequently shut down. From opposition ANAP, Sebgetullah Seydaoglu is also revealed to have been a studio guest at Roj TV, as well as former SHP party members Fikri Saglar and Murat Karayalcin.

UPDATE:

The Turkish press tried out another tactic to get back at those horribly offending Danes: counter-caricature. Problem is, they dont seem to get that they are making total asses of themselves (Hürriyet):

The issue of Tempo magazine which is scheduled to hit the stands today carries an striking caricature: Danish Prime Minister Rasmussen and now-imprisoned PKK leader Apo, lying in bed together, completely naked! And what's more, they are watching Roj TV from their bed.

This is a very carefully drawn caricature.

The editors of Tempo are claiming that they are running a caricature like this in order to "test freedom of the press."

And I am really curious about what will happen. Let's see how Denmark, which spends much time championing freedom of the press, greets this caricature!

Tempo apparently thought Denmark was an authoritarian islamist state, where journalists who dont follow the party line are routinely thrown in prison - much like they are in Turkey. Had the magazine had an even cursory knowledge of Denmark, they would have known that PM Fogh Rasmussen is routinely subjected to much worse (including insinuations about homosexuality) in the press without any government action. Indeed, the Danish reaction was a collective shrug and a bit of ridicule of just how clueless the Turks were. Desperate of some reaction, the Turks had to make up their own reality (Hürriyet):

Denmark shows no tolerance over Tempo magazine's cartoon

A Turkish magazine, Tempo, published the controversial cartoon of a naked PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan and Danish Prime Minister Andres Fogh Rasmussen watching TV in bed together, in reaction to the Danish stance on PKK mouthpiece Roj TV, on Saturday.

In reply to the cartoon, Denmark showed no tolerance with dailies complaining about the Turkish reaction. Danish daily Ekstra Bladet says that the cartoon had been published in retaliation for Danish refusal to ban Roj TV, and Danish daily Politiken

So if Danish papers dont tow the Turkish party line, they are "not showing tolerance". Sounds like something we have heard before, doesnt it?

Henrik

Friday, December 02, 2005

More on Siddique and Khan

From the paper Weekendavisen (my translation):

The Siddique-family belong to the Malik clan, which has its base in the western part of the Punjab in Pakistan, and to the party Muslim League N, which is considered moderate. Wallait Khan belongs to the Gullar clan and the party Muslim League Q. This party is more fundamentalistic, and is part of the government in a border province close to Afghanistan, that has closed music shops and forbidden women to go outside alone. ..

The question that has plagued the Radicals is still, whether Wallait Khan in reality is a fundamentalist, or whether he first and foremost is an opportunist, who talks with one tongue in urdu to his countrymen, and with another in danish. Or whether he - as he says himself - just is a good democratic, pakistani immigrant.

If you look at one of the central persons supporting Khan during the election and the following negotiations over governing the capital, it isnt the democratic disposition that jumps in your face, though. When Wallait Khan arrived at Copenhagen Town Hall to sign the deal to govern together with the Social Democrats, Radicals and Socialist People´s Party, he was accompanied with the pakistani Raja Ghafoor, who has supported Khan during the election campaign. Sources in the pakistani community to Weekendavisen describe Raja Ghafoor as Khans "spin doctor"

He is the leader of an important pakistani radio station in Copenhagen, Radio Aap kiawaz, and also publishes the periodical Aap kiawaz. In an issue of the magazine, Ghafoor himself has explained, how "we" have helped with a donation drive in support of the now overthrown Taleban regime in Afghanistan.

We have to go back to February 2000, when the then talebani deputy foreign minister Abdul Rahman Sahig was on a five-day visit to Denmark. During this visit, which was part of a taleban roundtrip to several european countries to gather money, he was accompanied by the radio executive Ghafoor on his trips around Copenhagen, according to Weekendavisens sources.

On October 10th, 2001, TV-Avisen (Danish public television´s news show) aired a piece with a video of the visit of the deputy foreign minister´s visit to the mosque in Brønshøj, during which he made death threats against resident afghan refugees: "They have to be killed, for they are the root of all evil. They live as intellectuals, clean-shaven (...) We will cut their throats," said the taleban, and added about democracy: "This is a country of unbelievers, and they alsways defend other non-believers in the name of democracy and so-called reforms. They reject us of the taleban, and dont respect our human rights. In reality, they resist our work to institute sharia. We will not let them succeed."

Henrik

More trouble in Copenhagen

The outing of two Copenhagen councilmen as supporters of the radical islamist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir, one social democratic councilman has finally had enough - he has left the party after 37 years of loyal service (Source: DR, my translation):

Surrounded by press photographers, journalists and quite a few angry social democrats, the local politician Finn Rudaizky explained, why he had left the party. His decision can pull the rug from under the agreement to govern that Ritt Bjerregaard has made with the Socialist People´s Party, Unity list (communists - Henrik), Radicals and the Liberal defector Wallait Khan.

- It is with a bleeding heart, that I after 37 years as a social democrat have decided to leave. All persons from time to time have make up their minds about what they want to be part of. My limit has been clearly reached when you make deals with people, that have anti-democratic vies, a sad Finn Rudaizky said. ..

By that, he was alluding to Wallait Khan but - most of all - to the social democrat Sikandar Malik Siddique, who during the election campaign was accused of having ties to the extreme moslem organsiation Hizb ut-Tahrir. ..

- Why does a newly elected social democratic party member go to meetings with Hizb ut-Tahrir, Finn Rudaizky asks, at the same time kriticizing the leadership and Ritt Bjerregaard for having shown a wishy-washy attitude towards the problem:

- As a party it isnt enough to hold hice speeches about democracy, when the concrete problem with anti-democratic forces has to be faced in our own rows, said Finn Rudaizky.

Henrik