From the Oz:

Warning over racist website.
By Dan Box
March 13, 2006

A RACIST website where extremists fantasies about gassing Arabs has been allowed to operate freely for months, despite warnings sent to state and federal authorities that it breaks laws prohibiting the incitement of racial violence.

The blog site, “avoiceofdissent”, has been used by members of Australia’s “White Nationalist” group to threaten physical violence and single out targets for intimidation by publishing their photographs, telephone numbers and addresses. Posts include a detailed fantasy of rounding up Lebanese men in a bus, then filling the interior with poisonous exhaust fumes.

“Imagine the sight, if you will, of all those oily dune coons gasping for air and clawing vainly at the windows,” the post reads.

After receiving a written warning from the Uniting Church of Australia that the site might breach Australian state and federal law, Google, the company that hosts the site, added a disclaimer that stated the content might be “hateful”.

Google Australia, which wrote to the church to say it did not consider itself legally bound to close the site, could not be contacted yesterday.

In December, Mark Cox, a lawyer for the church, wrote to the federal and West Australian attorneys-general and police commissioners to warn them of potential racial vilification and racial hatred expressed on the site. This hatred included a call to “white nationalists” to “physically arm” themselves and “expunge the filth of internationalist mongrelisation from this globe”.

In a written response, dated December 16 last year, West Australian Attorney-General Jim McGinty said “such behavior cannot be tolerated in our democratic society” and said he had referred the site to the state’s Director of Public Prosecutions for investigation.

To date, no action has been taken by state police against the site. A spokesman said state Police Commissioner Karl O’Callaghan was “unaware of the progress of that inquiry”.

Almost three months after receiving his original letter, Mr Cox said the federal Attorney-General’s office wrote saying it had lost the first page and asking him to send it again. The office did not return calls yesterday.

A spokeswoman for the Australian Federal Police said the force was “still evaluating” the letter and said no decision on whether to take action against the site had been made.

Mr Cox, who also acts for a number of those individuals targeted on the website, will write again today to state and federal authorities.

“I’m forced to rely on the public authorities with a duty to protect Australian citizens, who so far have failed us,” Mr Cox said.

The site’s authors, a group called the Patriot Alliance Down-under, include Ben Weerheym, a former member of the racist Australian Nationalist Movement, whose Perth home was recently raided by police hunting escaped racist Jack van Tongeren.

Mr Van Tongeren, the ANM’s former leader, jumped bail on February 20 while awaiting trial on charges of conspiring to firebomb four Chinese restaurants in Perth in 2004.

Nothing was seized by police who searched Mr Weerheym’s home. No arrests were made. Mr Weerheym did not return calls yesterday.

While the more explicitly violent material on “avoiceofdissent” was recently deleted by the site’s authors, much of this can still be publicly accessed.

Records of this material include photographs of recently married interracial couples, described as “race traitors”. Postings from this month include a photograph of a black man with the caption: “You going to get raped.”