Indian journal focuses on ‘hate’
MATT WADE, NEW DELHI
February 1, 2010

The cover of India’s Outlook magazine.

IT’S A magazine cover that will make the hearts of Australian university bosses and diplomats sink.

“Why the Aussies hate us” screams the front cover of this week’s influential Indian news magazine, Outlook.

The 10 pages of coverage inside has stories of young Indian victims of violence and racial abuse and describes how Indian students in Melbourne feel afraid on the streets.

Kevin Rudd’s nephew and anti-racism activist, Van Thanh Rudd, told Outlook the “dominant culture in Australia is a racist culture” and that he had no doubt the attacks had been racially motivated.

The magazine claims to have found “evidence that ‘curry-bashing’ is becoming a fun game for white Australians”.

Outlook, a centre-left news weekly published in Delhi, is one of India’s top selling English language magazines, with a circulation of about 1.5 million and a large online audience.

Outlook’s special report is the latest in a stream of negative publicity about violence against Indians that has done terrible damage to Australia’s reputation. With each attack, no matter what the circumstances, Australia’s image takes another blow.

There are signs the Indian Government is becoming increasingly impatient with Australia’s response to the crisis. External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna met Foreign Minister Stephen Smith twice in London last week to discuss the problem.

An Indian Government statement said Mr Krishna told Mr Smith it was becoming increasingly difficult to accept that the attacks were devoid of any racial motives, and complained there “has been no visible progress so far into most of the investigations into previous attacks, including in the fatal murder of Nitin Garg [last month]“.

Editor-in-chief of Outlook Vinod Mehta strongly defended the coverage and denied allegations that the Indian media were over-reacting to the attacks or exaggerating the danger to Indians in Australia.

“We sent two correspondents to Australia and they found that an overwhelming number of these incidents were racial and … that Indians in Australia live in fear,” he told The Age.

“There is tremendous outrage in this country. I don’t think the Australians realise that.”

Mehta said one reason for the anger was the “smug and superior attitude of the Australian Government for denying there was racism and then telling Indians not to hype this up”.

The Outlook story included comments by right-wing groups in Australia. Jim Saleam, NSW head of anti-immigration party Australia First, said Indians were “becoming a serious threat to white Australians in the job market”. Bob Vinnicombe of One Nation said the Government “should actively encourage bringing in Christians and white people from Zimbabwe and South Africa”.

Reports about attacks on Indian students in Australia last year have already contributed to a sharp fall in the number of Indians applying for student visas. The fresh flurry of negative publicity this year threatens to cause additional damage to Australia’s $15 billion a year international education industry.

Facebook urged to switch off hate sites
ALEX MCCLINTOCK
January 24, 2010

Facebook sites inciting anti-Indian sentiment continue to flourish despite protests from Indians in Australia.

Groups such as I think Indian People Should Wear Deodorant, Stop Whinging Indians, and Australia: Indians, You Have a Right to Leave, have not been removed.

Gautam Gupta, secretary of the Federation of Indian Students, said: “These sites must be shut down but, on the other hand, we must keep track of these hate groups being formed. They can be online or offline. When they’re offline we call them gangs. These are essentially online gangs.”

More than half a dozen Australian groups that are specifically anti-Indian are still active on Facebook. On top of that, there are many broadly racist groups, including F— Off – We’re Full and Speak English or Piss Off!!!, which has 54,000 members and is growing at a rate of about 2000 people a week.

“I don’t think it’s just a Facebook problem – it’s a social problem, a problem in the society,” Mr Gupta said.

Speak English or Piss Off!!! recently posted a note stating: “We are actually winning the battle with Facebook to keep this page up and running.”

Darrin Hodges, administrator of the group F— Off – We’re Full, was unapologetic and said Facebook was inconsistent in the way it dealt with groups.

“Our group has been shut down five times and defaced by internet trolls,” he said.

Alex Gollan, who set up the Facebook group Australians Against Racism & Discrimination, said it was not in Facebook’s interest to close racist pages that hosted advertising.

“Racism on Facebook is an overwhelming problem and it is massively out of control,” he said.

Darlene Ford, who teaches Indian students at Adelaide’s Cambridge College, said she followed Facebook procedure for reporting a group. She said she was frustrated by Facebook’s lack of action.

This month anti-racism groups and school principals condemned students from elite Melbourne private schools who joined the group Mate, Speak English, You’re in Australia Now.

Students from Sydney private schools Monte Sant’ Angelo, Trinity Grammar and MLC are members of Speak English or Piss Off.

Facebook declined to comment on the sites.

“They” are at it in Balmain

posted by Ebs from the Chip
Monday, January 11, 2010

Our anonymous friends who enjoy the odd letter drop (see Kris’ post in November 09) made their mark on Balmain this morning.

I for one am disappointed that this rubbish is still being distributed en masse in Sydney suburbs.

Racists love padding up the figures. The actual number of migrants to Australia in the last 4 years is 211,800, per DiAC.

Also, from the SMH:

Outrage over anti-immigration leaflet
ROSIE LEWIS
January 22, 2010

ANTI-IMMIGRATION leaflets posted in letterboxes in the inner-west have outraged ethnic community leaders and a senior Federal Government official.

The leaflets read: ”600,000 immigrants arrived in the last 4 years. That’s more than Tasmania. More than Aborigines. More than Newcastle. More than we need.”

They are part of a campaign led by an anonymous group identified only by a triangular design in the bottom right corner of the leaflet.

The chairman of the Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Council of Australia, Pino Migliorino, questioned the leaflet’s intentions. “It’s really interesting that in the lead-up to Australia Day you get such vagrant behaviour … It’s a day that’s supposed to unite us and it becomes a day that can manipulate.”

Mr Migliorino said the nation’s leaders should stand up for migrants. “The Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister need to take the front foot and show they appreciate migration … What we need to do is actively seek to lessen the incidence of racist violence.”

But the parliamentary secretary for Multicultural Affairs, Laurie Ferguson, said the Government supported immigrants. “The Prime Minister recently announced … a belief in Australia having a larger population.”

Mr Ferguson said the information on the leaflet misrepresented the attitudes of Australians.

The chairman of the Ethnic Affairs Commission of NSW, Stepan Kerkyasharian, said Australia Day should be about celebration, not racism. A recent survey by the Scanlan Foundation found 60 per cent of people supported the migration level.

Southern Cross used like swastika - filmmaker

A man getting a Southern Cross tattoo.
Picture: Troy Bendeich Source: news.com.au

WARWICK Thornton says he’s deeply concerned that the Southern Cross is becoming a symbol of racism for some Australians.

The filmmaker, who has been chosen as the Northern Territory’s nomination for Australian of the Year, wants people to spend Australia Day reflecting on the symbolic significance of the national icon.

“Aboriginal people have used the Southern Cross for the last 40,000 years as a beacon guiding them to travel through country for survival, and I’m starting to see that star system symbol being used as a very racist nationalistic emblem - and that is seriously worrying me,” Thornton said

“We don’t want to turn the Southern Cross into a swastika - that’s bloody important.

“We should think about that on Australia Day and the bigger issue of what it represents, why is it happening.”

A contender for 2010 Australian of the Year, Thornton said the accolade should be given to someone who saves lives, and not someone who “just asks questions”.

“I’ve got Buckley’s chance of winning it,” he said.

“I’m just really happy to win the Territory side of it and go to Canberra and have a beer with the PM - that’ll be pretty cool.”

Winning numerous Australian and international awards for his debut feature film, Samson and Delilah, Thornton said the film showed there was a darker side to central Australia.

“A lot of people around the world tell me they have been to Alice Springs and have seen the incredible landscape, but never knew about the sort of slight tragedy in that landscape, so (the film) really did open up a lot of eyes and minds and thoughts.”

Thornton is currently working on a three-hour ABC documentary series about contemporary Aboriginal art and writing a draft for a new feature film.

However, the PIF group was comprised of a number of neo-nazis who were well-known to FDB. The PIF group’s fascist expressions could not possibly have been more divergent from the tenets of the NSW Humanists. Thus, FDB offered our information resources to assist the Humanists with ridding the ranks of rats.

The result? Rat-free ranks.

The President of the NSW Humanists, John August, writes:

Final statement by John August, President Humanist Society of NSW, regarding Humanist House and the PIF

There’s been controversy around [meeting hall] hiring practices at Humanist House. We’ve recently had a Special General Meeting to give control of day to day operations of the Society to the Executive. It was a very difficult meeting, and I thank everyone who turned up and supported the resolutions, and I particularly thank those members who helped with meeting process.

A recent meeting of the executive has terminated the hiring of Humanist Hall by the Public Information Forum.

I’ve also communicated with our members through our newsletter, the Humanist Viewpoints - which means I now have more freedom to communicate with the public, and make a full statement. How many times have people complained about hearing something through the media first ?

Things have settled down to a large degree, though there are still a few hurdles to overcome.

The Humanists have a long and noble tradition, of advocacy on behalf of voluntary euthanasia, separation of church and state, and access to abortion. These are the sort of issues I would like to promote, a heritage I am trying to continue. Public interest in these issues has been growing of late. While we are not the only group focused on these ideas - I am nevertheless positive that we can contribute something.

Our membership is diverse politically, and some of our committee have had a strong commitment to freedom of speech. We’ve been attracting a good number of new members recently with a strong commitment to humanism.

Along the way, however, we’ve also attracted a group of people whose commitment to all humanist principles - including equal human rights for all and a disdain for racism or any form of xenophobia - has been questionable.

The group in question, known as the “Public Information Forum” (PIF), or “Klub Nation”, did previously meet at Humanist House. After concerns were raised about the group, hiring was discontinued.

At some later stage, another group began hiring the hall, under the name of “Mark Pavic’s Group”. This group later became the Public Information Forum, and it was only recently that we realised that it was in fact the same group which had previously been banned.

Sometime after the “Mark Pavic Group” hired Humanist House, but before the group became known as the “Public Information Forum”, the NSW Humanists were in turmoil as the status of a long time member, Ann Young was challenged by the then President. At about the same time, we had to contend with the machinations of another group trying to take us over. It was at this time that I stepped up to become President. It was a problematic time, but I felt that I could contribute to the progress and stability of the society.

Some members were concerned about other members of the Society, and one initiative was to introduce an endorsement of Human Rights and equality into our Rules (constitution). Statements against racism and xenophobia have been put forward by the International Humanist and Ethical Union, not to mention Australian Humanists; but nevertheless, we felt the need to incorporate such references into our *own* Rules as a bulwark.

At that time, following past turmoil, we did not properly understand what the “Public Information Forum” was. Mark Pavic strongly defended the group, and was able to take advantage of his forceful personality and understanding of committee process. We have since realised that he sometimes made erroneous claims about committee process, which he made up for through force of personality.

Perhaps in response to this growing concern, or perhaps with other goals, our last election resulted in a committee which included many PIF members who had not previously attended social gatherings or committee meetings, contributed to the Humanist Viewpoints or otherwise taken an interest in the NSW Humanists. The election was itself problematic, with no scrutiny of candidates before the election, and confusion about preferential voting.

Some committee members were investigating our options within our Rules. It was a tense and stressful time. In the middle of all this tension, a group decided to protest the presence of PIF at Humanist House.

My position about this group has been previously put forth. While I was willing to endorse the right of democratic protest, I do not endorse these protests, as they became violent. While the protesters were organised enough to field a good presence at Humanist House, they were not organised enough to contact us before the protest, nor have they taken the initiative of contacting us since. Instead they just pushed flyers noting their protests through our letterbox - effectively, anonymous harassment. Their actions seem to more those of people who stand in the shadows and throw rocks - that is to say, coercive disruption of other’s freedom of expression and assembly.

If things were tense prior to the protests at committee meetings, they became worse. Mark Pavic and other PIF members on the committee accused myself and others of collaborating with the protesters, and claimed that the police would be investigating the damage which resulted to Humanist House. They made some quite strong claims about the protesters - that they tried to enter the building, after which they could have caused who knows what damage. I know from Ann Young, a local resident and member, that the protesters were striking Humanist House, and we know that a glass panel inside Humanist House was damaged around this time.

Indeed, we did find out about the protest through distant overlapping activist channels - but did not directly know anyone involved. It had us completely spooked. Perhaps we should have notified members of PIF of the protest, but we thought it would be small, peaceful affair - nothing like the large, violent protest which developed. I turned up, hoping to communicate with the protesters and maybe get some new members - but seeing the police presence and tense situation, immediately saw this was a bad idea. In fact, if we’d not have known at all of the protest at all, maybe we would have been better off, given the accusations that started flying around.

I did in time talk to police at Redfern Local Area command, and managed to persuade them of my version of events. The protesters knew that the group went by the name “Klub Nation” - news to us - and it seems had been protesting elsewhere. PIF members thought that the only way protesters could have found out about their meeting was through us - but some internet research would have yielded the necessary information. Others don’t just sit around like stunned mullets - they take the initiative to their own thinking and research.

If the protesters would have met with us, things might have been different. In the absence of any communication, the PIF version of events went unchallenged - we did not know any better. On the one hand, I do feel PIF’s narrative was overstated. At the same time, I acknowledge they were genuinely fearful as events unfolded. The protester’s careless and ill-thought out actions exacerbated an already difficult and stressful situation. Great work, guys.

Showing how people were shooting from the hip, a group associated with the United Nations Association of Australia met at Humanist House had their meeting disrupted by another group who thought they had other sympathies. Perhaps they could have bothered to actually do some research ?

What to do ? We were doing our best to conduct our fight privately, and did not really want to air our troubles in public. However, there were critical postings on Sydney Indymedia, and so I did one of the things that I, as President, can do - I issued a statement.

This was a very difficult time. I was trying to make a statement, in the meantime dodging accusations on committee. I was harassed on the phone by someone who identified themselves as being from Fairfax digital. It was not pleasant.

As things progressed, we realised that PIF had been attending Humanist House, and had been banned but had since managed to re-arrange access (as previously noted). When this was brought up in committee, the original past motion was rescinded by the PIF aligned bloc with perhaps three other committee members voting as a majority.

This was a setback. But, over time we developed sufficient support from committee members allow scrutiny of PIF members, doing some internet research on the “Stormfront” website. In fact, as the weeks progressed, some posts were deleted from that site, suggesting a response to our scrutiny. We considered Jason Rafty, whose internet postings identified him as “Klub Fuhrer” of the PIF - and in spite of committee tensions, had a sufficient majority to have this recorded in the minutes. We also scrutinised the connections of committee member Ken Cratchley to racist postings on the internet.

We also received communications from the “Fight Dem Back” (FDB) group, whose communications were moderately polite to start with, though they did border on patronising / threatening at times. We found out about some past involvement of Mark Pavic and others on the committee with the British - Israel World Federation ( http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinodisp/au/cases/nsw/NSWSC/2002/12.html ). That was appropriate to consider, and relevant to our situation, as it went to Mr. Pavic’s behaviour in groups, on committees and to his status as a “Meeting Procedure Advisor”. However, FDB note other events from Mr. Pavic’s history - from 20 or more years ago. FDB should discuss the ethics of this promotion with another activist group, Justice Action.

In any case, in addition to helping us with our understanding of the group involved, FDB also pointed us towards a web interview with “Pastor Ken” of the Christian Separatist Church Society, also identified as “Pastor Bullets” on the Stormfront website ( see http://www.nsm88radio.com/pastshows.html ). The voice is recognisably that of Ken Cratchley, one of the PIF aligned committee members - and on review it becomes apparent that Christian separatism is a combination of both religious and racist sentiments, something antithetical to Humanism.

While we were making progress, it was going to be long struggle. It became clear on consideration of the Rules that the result of the last election, given there was no introduction of candidates and confusion about preferential voting, should be considered null and void. We went about organising a Special General Meeting to make the election results null and void, which would allow proper scrutiny of the PIF.

This meeting was the most difficult meeting I have ever attended, with a great deal of hostile interruption and heckling - and I was the one chairing. Fortunately, I had the assistance of various members in the audience who supported me and kept things on track. However, as the meeting progressed, the interruptions from Mark Pavic became ever more unwieldy and disruptive, and I had to call the police to support my removal of him from the meeting.

The police attended promptly and supported his removal. It put the police in a different light. These were the same police who lined up in front of Humanist House to defend it from protesters. This was criticised by some internet commentators at the time, as somehow “supporting” the PIF. This shows lack of understanding how the law works - perhaps a wilful misunderstanding. I certainly supported their defence of Humanist House. It was these same police who were crucial in allowing the progress of the meeting towards an eventual reduction in the influence of the PIF.

I’ve also had a chance to get to know the police as they investigated the protest at Humanist House, and have been able to answer the of accusations which were flying around. Look. I don’t wish to give the police free license. I’m sympathetic to the concerns of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties about the use of Tasers and possible covering of the Taser cameras. However, at a fundamental level, the police are human beings who are often doing their best in difficult circumstances - and they made an important contribution against the PIF.

Of course the police will not say the were deliberately working against the PIF - they would most likely say they were responding to a request from the person with authority over Humanist House, without picking sides - no more than they were “supporting” the PIF against the protesters. The point is, though, it was unfair to claim the police were “supporting” PIF against the protesters in the first place. They were doing their job as best they could in a difficult situation.

Following this meeting, we were then able to hold an executive meeting where we were able to properly scrutinise PIF. We have an obligation to do things properly and thoroughly, while others have had the luxury of unaccountably mouthing off on the internet.

I’ll now summarise my position (there will be some repetition of previous content) :

Public Information Forum / PIF have attracted the attention of several activist groups around Sydney, including the group “Fight Dem Back”. While other hirers of HH have a public identity and often a webpage (one example is the “Spartacist” group, a previous tenant, which have a regular publication, website and entry on Wikipedia), there is no similar such information available on PIF. Instead, there are some references on the “White Pride Worldwide” website, Stormfront. These postings refer to the discriminatory attendance policies of the group. Further, postings by attendees of the group are often racist, and the group’s convener is described as its “Klub Fuhrer”. The only reasonable conclusion which can be drawn from this is that PIF are a racist group.

The NSW Humanists has in its objectives “To encourage respect for the universal human rights of men and women free from discrimination on the basis of race, class, disability, gender, age, nationality or sexual orientation.”. Further, the International Humanist and Ethical Union, which we are a part of, has made statements against racism and any sort of xenophobic intolerance. Consistent with these principles, the Executive recently cancelled the hiring of Humanist House by the PIF group.

Our rules also mention “freedom of expression”. In fact, PIF are a private group, which has not make any public statements that I’m aware of. One issue is support for the freedom of people and groups to make statements in the public sphere. The freedom of people to discuss matters privately is separate issue, while there is some overlap with “freedom of expression”.

In making this cancellation, it does not mean we endorse censorship or the coercive limitation of freedom of expression - be that by Government or private groups. It does mean, however, that we choose not to support the expression of ideas - be that public or private - contrary to our principles.

So, we are now at the stage of preparing for the elections foreshadowed in the last Special General Meeting. There are still some hurdles to overcome. However, I have reason to be positive about the future. About the possibility of the NSW Humanist Society to pursue the things it was founded to do - to challenge the hold religion has on our laws and behaviour, limiting people’s freedom to pursue their own lives.

John August

President,

Humanist Society of NSW

www.hsnsw.asn.au

0419 683 353

Race hate scandal rocks some of nation’s most elite schools

* By James Campbell and Eliza Sum
* From: Sunday Herald Sun

MORE than a dozen elite schools are embroiled in a race hate scandal as many of their students join a Facebook group calling for immigrants to get out of Australia.

The group’s page, which features a picture of the Australian flag with the words “F— off we’re full” written across it, tells non-English speakers “if you wanna speak your crappy language, go back to were (sic) you came from”.

The Facebook group is called “Mate speak english, you’re in australia now” and has more than 5000 members from across the nation. It is growing by more than 300 people a day.

Anti-racism groups and school principals yesterday condemned the site, started as a prank, and called for Facebook to delete it.

Its provocative and poorly spelled page features racist rants against Muslims, non-English speakers and migrants.

The group includes students from Scotch College, Melbourne Grammar, Geelong Grammar, Trinity Grammar, Lauriston, Mentone Grammar, Ivanhoe Grammar, Camberwell Grammar, and Haileybury as well as a number of Victorian government schools.

A 16-year-old Berwick Secondary College student told the Sunday Herald Sun the group had been founded by his friends a few months ago as a joke after hearing other languages spoken on trains.

He said they made him an administrator, but he now bitterly regretted his involvement with the group.

“I’ve got friends from all different cultures,” he said.

“People started posting racist stuff. When I caught on, that’s when I exited.”

The youth said he had contacted Facebook three times asking for the page to be deleted.

“Because there are no administrators left, only Facebook can delete it,” he said.

Dr Chris Hayes, Principal of Xavier College, said anyone who had joined the group had broken the school’s rules.

“The school abhors this sort of behaviour because it goes against everything the school stands for,” he said.

Principal Ross Bevege of Berwick Secondary College said the site was disgusting and offensive and that he had contacted a student’s parents about his involvement.

No victor in fight over inflammatory talkback

Alan Jones’s legal case over anti-Lebanese comments has been lost, but inflammatory jocks might not change their tune, writes David Marr.

Though a good deal less than a day’s pay for Alan Jones, the $10,000 he and 2GB were ordered to pay last week for vilifying Lebanese in Australia is the first punishment inflicted on either the talkback king or his station for attacks on Lebanese Muslims that reached their depths in the days before the Cronulla riots in the summer of 2005.

Jones and 2GB have been ordered to mend their ways in the past but never punished until a few days before Christmas, when the Administrative Decisions Tribunal of NSW upheld a complaint of racial vilification brought by the Sydney Lebanese identity Keysar Trad. The three-member tribunal ordered Jones and his station to pay damages of $10,000 within 21 days and to prepare over summer a form of apology acceptable to Trad.

Trad has promised the cheque to a Muslim charity: the respite centre run by the Australian Council for Women’s Affairs. It has yet to arrive. Negotiations on the apology have not begun. On past form, Jones seems someone not happy to admit he’s in the wrong. Saying sorry isn’t easy for Alan Belford Jones.

Trad’s brawls with 2GB and Jones over nearly five years have seen his own reputation shredded in the NSW Supreme Court and Jones dogged by investigations and hearings, all strenuously defended by 2GB. These aren’t over but at this point the scorecard reads: one devastating loss for Trad in the courts and two losses for Jones before tribunals. The legal fees paid by 2GB must now run into millions.

What’s different this time is the political silence. When the Australian Communications and Media Authority ruled Jones broadcast material in the days before the Cronulla riots ”likely to encourage violence or brutality”, the prime minister, John Howard, leapt to the defence: ”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.”

But last week’s decision by the NSW tribunal seems to have brought no high-powered supporters out of the woodwork. Perhaps they are busy with Christmas but the silence has been telling. Indeed, the decision has been only briefly reported but it’s quite a tale, and the tribunal’s 64-page critique of the broadcaster’s methods looks destined to become prescribed reading for lawyers, students and anyone wanting to know how talkback radio works to excite its audience.

This episode in the tangled saga of talkback and Islam goes back to April 2005, when the Muslim zealot and boxing champ Sheik Faiz Mohamad held a meeting in Bankstown town hall in which he made a number of appalling pronouncements about rape victims. Each woman has, he declared, no one to blame but herself. ”She displayed her beauty to the entire world. She degraded herself by being an object of sexual desire and thus becoming vulnerable to man, who looks at her for gratification of his sexual urge.”

Reporting this rant in The Sun-Herald, Miranda Devine made it clear that Mohamad represented an extreme point of view in his own community. It was something Jones obscured when he leapt on to the story over the next few days. The tribunal was to accept that Jones’s target became all male Lebanese Muslims. Into the mix the broadcaster brought “car hoons” racing through The Rocks and louts seen on television sniggering at Anzac Day. He declared that the nation’s security was in peril.

“If ever there was a clear example that Lebanese males in their vast numbers not only hate our country but our heritage, this was it,” Jones raged. “They’ve got no connection to us. They simply rape, pillage and plunder a nation that’s taken them in. No one who’s written to me could believe what they saw. Without exception, you asked what did we do as a nation to have this vermin infect us like this. And what about the sacrifices of our war dead, made for this country to make it what it is today, and to have these mongrels laugh at them on national television?”

The tribunal called this ”reckless hyperbole calculated to agitate and excite his audience”. It condemned Jones’s broadcasting technique in a single cool sentence: ”Rather than dispassionately analysing the evidence and commenting on it, Mr Jones appears to have been induced or stimulated by his own preconceptions to place highly exaggerated and distorted interpretations on the few objective facts apparently known to him.”

Listeners had supplied much of Jones’s anti-Lebanese rhetoric in what the tribunal described as ”a stimulatory effect working in both directions”. They said: ”He stimulates, urges and agitates his listeners and correspondents with his emotive editorials and, unsurprisingly, often receives as feedback highly inflamed and inflammatory comment more or less echoing his provocative commentary.”

They condemned Jones’s toying with vigilante solutions. ”It is difficult to imagine circumstances in which it is reasonable for a commentator in a society ruled by law either directly or indirectly to endorse, or imply endorsement of, violent solutions to social issues or problems.” In the view of the tribunal, Jones failed to condemn listeners’ talk of tracking down the ”hoons” and ”dealing with them”. The tribunal found: ”Mr Jones’s support implied a partiality for a vigilante solution to the problem.”

Overall it concluded that Jones’s comments in those days after Mohamad’s sermon ”could only be regarded as an incitement to listeners to hate and hold the Lebanese Muslim community and Lebanese males in serious contempt”. It upheld Trad’s complaints of racial vilification against both Jones and 2GB and decreed damages be paid and apologies made.

Trad, then a leading member of the Lebanese Muslim Association and spokesman for his friend the cleric Sheikh Taj el-Din al-Hilali, had complained immediately about the broadcasts, but it took from April 2005 until August 2009 for the Administrative Decisions Tribunal to hear the complaint. Much of the delay was due to intense - but largely fruitless - legal skirmishing by 2GB.

Meanwhile, the riot erupted in Cronulla after a week of vilification from a number of radio commentators. Jones called Lebanese ‘’scum” and ”grubs” and appeared to welcome the suggestion that bikie gangs should confront Lebanese as they arrive at Cronulla railway station. Once again Jones and his listeners were feeding each other’s excitement. Once again the shock jock only sometimes expressly condemned talk of vigilante action.

In the immediate aftermath of the riot, Trad himself came under attack from 2GB’s Jason Morrison. Trad had attacked the role of the media at a public meeting and next day on air, Morrison called him ”a disgraceful and dangerous individual who incited violence, hatred and racism” and went on to accuse Trad of being ”responsible for more misinformation about the Islamic community … than any other person”.

Trad sued the station. In July this year Justice Peter McClellan of the NSW Supreme Court delivered a withering judgment that analysed in detail Trad’s role as a spokesman for the Lebanese community and for Hilali. McClellan declared most of Morrison’s criticisms of Trad were substantially true.

The judge accepted Trad was, indeed, a ”disgraceful individual” because he ”encourages others to support attitudes repugnant to the Australian community or encourages violence against women, homosexuals or various ethnic groups and supports child suicide bombers and acts of terror or when given the opportunity fails to condemn these views …”

Trad has appealed. He acknowledges this judgment has done him great damage. He has been all but silent as a public commentator since. ”The judge defamed me worse than the radio station,” he said.

But six months later, with the verdict of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal under his belt, Trad is waiting to hear what apology Jones and the station propose to make. And the women of the respite centre are waiting for their cheque. 2GB would not return calls for this story. I’d wanted to ask if Jones might make a Christmas gesture of it and present the cheque in person.

The Southern Poverty Law Center reports…

A federal jury today agreed with some but not all of the government’s allegations that former neo-Nazi leader Bill White made threats against various people with whom he disagreed.

White was found guilty of threatening a Citibank employee, intimidating tenants of a Virginia Beach, Va., apartment complex, threatening a University of Delaware administrator and threatening a Canadian human rights lawyer, according to The Roanoke Times. He was acquitted of threatening the Citibank employee with the intent to extort, threatening Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Leonard Pitts and threatening a New Jersey mayor.

The jury reached its verdict late this afternoon after deliberating for less than four hours. During the eight-day trial in U.S. District Court in Roanoke, Va., the jurors heard testimony from victims who said they were terrified by the blog posts, telephone calls and E-mails that White used to target them. The defense, which did not call any witnesses, argued that White’s communications were protected free speech under the First Amendment.

White, 32, was the self-described commander of the American National Socialist Workers Party, a neo-Nazi group, and ran the hate website Overthrow.com until his arrest last fall. He could be sent to prison for up to 40 years.

As our American comrades, the One Peoples Project, like to say, “Hate has its consequences”.

Jones, 2GB ordered to pay Trad $10k

The radio broadcaster Alan Jones and his employer 2GB have been ordered to pay $10,000 in damages to the Muslim leader Keysar Trad.

Mr Trad, who was born in Lebanon but now lives in Sydney, complained to the Administrative Decisions Tribunal in New South Wales over a series of broadcasts in which he said that Alan Jones had racially vilified Muslims and Lebanese people.

The tribunal says a number of themes emerged during the broadcasts, which took place at the end of April 2005.

They included Mr Jones’ view that Australia is not a mutli-racial but a monocultural society and this monoculture was under threat from the “enemies within.”

Mr Jones also spoke about “car hoons” - which he identified as “Lebanese Muslim youths” - and their disrespect for police.

The tribunal says Mr Jones also interpreted an allegedly inflammatory speech by a Lebanese-Australian cleric as an excuse for or incitement of sexual assaults by Muslim men upon non-Muslim women.

The tribunal says Mr Trad was invited on to the programme and, despite distancing himself from the comments of the cleric, was subjected to vigorous criticism by Mr Jones both during the interview and when he was not able to respond.

Mr Jones said Mr Trad was part of the “Muslim leadership” which had failed to do anything about the cleric or car hoons.

The tribunal found that the broadcasts had the tendency or capacity to incite hatred or serious contempt for Lebanese Muslims and Lebanese men.

Police recover stolen Auschwitz sign

Cut in three: the original sign above the entrance
to Auschwitz (www.flickr.com: peuplier)

* Video: Auschwitz sign stolen

Polish police say they have recovered the “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign stolen on Friday from the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp in southern Poland.

“We have arrested five men aged from 20 to 39 in the north of Poland. The recovered sign has been cut up,” Dariusz Nowak, spokesman for the police in southern Krakow, said.

Police had offered a reward to anyone who could help track down the thieves who stole the infamous sign from the arch at the entrance to the Nazi German death camp.

The sign, which translates as “Work sets you free”, came to symbolise the horror of the camp where some 1.1 million mainly Jewish prisoners died during World War II, some from overwork and starvation, but most in the gas chambers.

As rewards were offered totalling more than 25,000 euros for information, police said they believed the theft may have been ordered by a private collector or a group of individuals.

“A worldwide symbol of the cynicism of Hitler’s executioners and the martyrdom of their victims has been stolen. This act deserves the strongest possible condemnation,” Polish President Lech Kaczynski said.

His Israeli counterpart Shimon Peres expressed “the deepest shock of Israel’s citizens and the Jewish community across the world,” saying the “sign holds deep historical meaning for both Jews and non-Jews alike”.

Rabbi Marvin Hier from the US-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre said the sign was “the defining symbol of the Holocaust because everyone knew that this was not a place where work makes you free, but it was the place where millions of men, women, and children were brought for one purpose only - to be murdered.”

Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum spokesman Jaroslaw Mensfelt said that thieves carried out an expert operation to take the metal sign just before dawn on Friday.

The five-metre-long sign was forged by prisoners on the orders of the Nazis, who set up the camp after invading Poland in 1939.