Australia: New clamp on Muslim haters

Oddly enough there is nothing similar going on here to counter the BDS demonstrations at the Max Brenner Chocolate stores, nor is much being done about the attacks on Hindu cab drivers!

It is always the same group of people who get special treatment, and the more special treatment they get the more people are going to get irritated!

Talk about the Law of Unintended Consequences!

MUSLIMS are being urged to report hate crimes under a special disaster plan to deal with the fallout from terrorist attacks.

Under the Muslim Emergency Management Plan, backed by the state and federal governments, Victorians will be given advice on how to react to anti-Muslim incidents, even if they are considered minor.

Muslim victims of abuse are encouraged to save evidence, take photos and report any incident to police and their local mosque or Islamic organisation.

And in another initiative, Victoria Police is introducing new strategy to deal with violence and threats motivated by prejudice.

It comes amid growing concern over inter-racial tensions in Melbourne's suburbs and against the backdrop of fears of further terrorist attacks that could strain relations further.

Police are being asked to develop databases on crime motivated by race or religion, so that offenders can be prosecuted.

The "prejudice-motivated crime strategy" focuses on crimes linked to race, religion, sex, age, disability or homelessness.

Muslims told the Herald Sun they faced increasing abuse on the streets because of their religion.

"A lot of women get yelled at and told 'Go home', or 'There's no place for you here', especially women wearing the burqa," a Muslim source said.

"It happens in shopping centres, at the park or just when you are walking along in the street."

Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria director Ross Barnett said the new police initiative was needed.

He said judges had the power to take into account hate-related issues in sentencing, but police were not equipped to provide the evidence.

"The elements of the strategy include training for officers, capacity to start collecting data so they've got a sense of what is happening, how often it happens, and what the extent of it is," he said.

The Muslim Emergency Management Plan, financed by the state and federal governments, was devised by the Islamic Council of Victoria with support from the Department of Premier and Cabinet's Office of Multicultural Affairs and Citizenship.

Islamic Council general manager Nail Aykan said there was no doubt Muslims would suffer a backlash in the event of a terrorist attack.

"Hate crimes can originate from a multitude of matters but in the case of, God forbid, a terrorist attack, of course, you end up with repercussions," Mr Aykan said.

State Multicultural and Citizenship Minister Nick Kotsiras said the emergency plan arose from a deal struck by the former Bracks and Howard governments.

By John Masanauskas

masanauskasj@heraldsun.com.au

With thanks to The Herald Sun

Cross-posted at Act For Australia

Australia: Robert Spencer interviewed on ABC radio

Eloquent as ever!

I would say he had a very sympathetic interviewer which is unusual for the ABC . This is the tax-payer funded broadcaster that is essentially an arm of the government propaganda machine.

Listen here

Julian Assange: Acceptance speech for Walkley Award for Excellence in Journalism

Assange Acceptance speech for Walkley Award - 28 Nov 2011

You Tube clip uploaded by lesleyblooddotcom on Nov 28, 2011

Julian Assange says thank you for winning Walkley Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism.

I have always seen Julian Assange as a doubled-edged sword. To give him a prize for journalism defies any concept of journalism I have ever had.

Maybe I got it wrong! Maybe not!

However, listening to his little diatribe against our wonderful Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and the Obama Administration, because that is what is currently governing the USA,,,,well,, I might give him a few brownie points!

Let's hope this religion is dying - no, not that one, the other one!

Stephens: The Great Global Warming Fizzle from the Wall Street Journal.

Actually it would be great if the ‘other one’ would suffer a similar fate. Maybe the facts will help its demise as with this ‘religion’?

In these days of 24/7 news, blogs, and the internet people are waking up and no longer relying on the 6 o’clock news.

They know they can’t trust the MSM any longer.

And they know they can't trust their own elected officials!

How do religions die? Generally they don't, which probably explains why there's so little literature on the subject. Zoroastrianism, for instance, lost many of its sacred texts when Alexander sacked Persepolis in 330 B.C., and most Zoroastrians converted to Islam over 1,000 years ago. Yet today old Zoroaster still counts as many as 210,000 followers, including 11,000 in the U.S. Christopher Hitchens might say you can't kill what wasn't there to begin with.

Still, Zeus and Apollo are no longer with us, and neither are Odin and Thor. Among the secular gods, Marx is mostly dead and Freud is totally so. Something did away with them, and it's worth asking what.

Consider the case of global warming, another system of doomsaying prophecy and faith in things unseen.

As with religion, it is presided over by a caste of spectacularly unattractive people pretending to an obscure form of knowledge that promises to make the seas retreat and the winds abate. As with religion, it comes with an elaborate list of virtues, vices and indulgences. As with religion, its claims are often non-falsifiable, hence the convenience of the term "climate change" when thermometers don't oblige the expected trend lines. As with religion, it is harsh toward skeptics, heretics and other "deniers." And as with religion, it is susceptible to the earthly temptations of money, power, politics, arrogance and deceit.

This week, the conclave of global warming's cardinals are meeting in Durban, South Africa, for their 17th conference in as many years. The idea is to come up with a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which is set to expire next year, and to require rich countries to pony up $100 billion a year to help poor countries cope with the alleged effects of climate change. This is said to be essential because in 2017 global warming becomes "catastrophic and irreversible," according to a recent report by the International Energy Agency.

Yet a funny thing happened on the way to the climate apocalypse. Namely, the financial apocalypse.

The U.S., Russia, Japan, Canada and the EU have all but confirmed they won't be signing on to a new Kyoto. The Chinese and Indians won't make a move unless the West does. The notion that rich (or formerly rich) countries are going to ship $100 billion every year to the Micronesias of the world is risible, especially after they've spent it all on Greece.

Cap and trade is a dead letter in the U.S. Even Europe is having second thoughts about carbon-reduction targets that are decimating the continent's heavy industries and cost an estimated $67 billion a year. "Green" technologies have all proved expensive, environmentally hazardous and wildly unpopular duds.

All this has been enough to put the Durban political agenda on hold for the time being. But religions don't die, and often thrive, when put to the political sidelines. A religion, when not physically extinguished, only dies when it loses faith in itself.

That's where the Climategate emails come in. First released on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit two years ago and recently updated by a fresh batch, the "hide the decline" emails were an endless source of fun and lurid fascination for those of us who had never been convinced by the global-warming thesis in the first place.

But the real reason they mattered is that they introduced a note of caution into an enterprise whose motivating appeal resided in its increasingly frantic forecasts of catastrophe. Papers were withdrawn; source material re-examined. The Himalayan glaciers, it turned out, weren't going to melt in 30 years. Nobody can say for sure how high the seas are likely to rise—if much at all. Greenland isn't turning green. Florida isn't going anywhere.

The reply global warming alarmists have made to these dislosures is that they did nothing to change the underlying science, and only improved it in particulars. So what to make of the U.N.'s latest supposedly authoritative report on extreme weather events, which is tinged with admissions of doubt and uncertainty? Oddly, the report has left climate activists stuttering with rage at what they call its "watered down" predictions. If nothing else, they understand that any belief system, particularly ones as young as global warming, cannot easily survive more than a few ounces of self-doubt.

Meanwhile, the world marches on. On Sunday, 2,232 days will have elapsed since a category 3 hurricane made landfall in the U.S., the longest period in more than a century that the U.S. has been spared a devastating storm. Great religions are wise enough to avoid marking down the exact date when the world comes to an end. Not so for the foolish religions. Expect Mayan cosmology to take a hit to its reputation when the world doesn't end on Dec. 21, 2012. Expect likewise when global warming turns out to be neither catastrophic nor irreversible come 2017.

And there is this: Religions are sustained in the long run by the consolations of their teachings and the charisma of their leaders. With global warming, we have a religion whose leaders are prone to spasms of anger and whose followers are beginning to twitch with boredom. Perhaps that's another way religions die.

Write to bstephens@wsj.com

Robert Spencer in Melbourne, Australia, November 26, 2011

It was a great night! Spencer shone!

We really loved it.

It was terrific to meet up with some fellow Aussie bloggers and to be able to speak freely as mentioned in the article below. Looking forward to seeing the video.

by PJG (longtime Jihad Watch commenter)

On a day of relentless spring rain, Melbourne – or a select contingent thereof - welcomed Robert Spencer for his first talk in his first ever visit to Australia, courtesy of the Q Society of Australia. The 250-seat room was full to capacity, booked out well in advance of the day.

For a change I decided to put aside my old habit of taking notes. After all, the event was being filmed, and I would have access to the film. But afterwards, Robert asked me to write about the event for Jihad Watch, so what follows is a brief snatch of snippets.

Vickie Janson, Vice-President of the Q Society and candidate for the Christian Democratic Party, led off with a sobering disclaimer, mindful as we all are now of local laws restricting free speech, and – with a winning smile – invited anyone with ultra-sensitive feelings or a plot to use those laws against us to kindly leave. She then gave us a run-down on what is happening vis a vis the encroachment of Islamic laws and norms, that is, the steady road to control of us by them, here in Australia in schools, universities, workplaces and elsewhere. As keeping up with Islamic advancement and its enabling and funding by our government is now virtually a full-time job, much of what she informed us in her inimitably cheerful style shocked the audience.

Vickie quoted a Muslim cleric who said that there was no “clash of civilizations, but instead a rise and fall of civilizations.” It is clear that to many Muslims here and abroad their religion constitutes the “rising civilization” and ours the falling (not that they would prefer to stop at ours; Hindu and Buddhist civilizations are in their sights for being given a helping hand to disappear…)

Another member of Q called Warren then gave a talk about what he has seen in recent years in Europe, including the car-burning in France and a memorial (!) devoted to the young Muslim car thieves who were accidentally killed when they hid from pursuing police in an electricity compound and whose deaths were “avenged” by Muslim anti-police rioting. These were stories of immigration-related events our government smugly believes cannot happen in sunny Australia, where it is constantly proclaimed that multiculturalism is an outstanding success story and caution is brushed aside.

When Robert Spencer took the floor, it was clear from the enthusiastic atmosphere that few in the room were new to his views and that his message was seen as acutely urgent. He talked of the responsibility of Western people to learn and respond to the Islamic perspectives which are giving rise to Muslims’ so-frequently misinterpreted words and actions, and expanded on the theme that terrorism and da’wa (the call to Islam) are but two sides of the same coin and directed at the same result, the imposition of Shari’a law. Quoting from Maududi’s commentary in a Koran given to him by the Finsbury Park mosque and using Koran 9:5 as an example, Spencer demonstrated that what Muslim apologists claim to be a misleading absence of “context” proves to be from their own side a misleadingly invalid argument, “context” being at least as alarming as verse and backed up by respected Muslim commentary.

He spoke of many topics which will be familiar to JW readers: the Mafia-like dhimma pact, the absence of the “clash” factor as we in the West politely accede to Muslim demands, the campaign of erosion of our free speech which is central to the Islamic agenda, the existence of self-protective Western laws which are being ignored or under-utilized in the interests of political correctness, and the highly successful phenomenon of contrived Muslim victimhood which has the effect of causing us to rush to make further accommodation for them after every terrorist attack and every expression of grievance.

This last aspect was in reply to one of the many spirited questions asked of him in the latter half of the evening. Many questions reflected the helpless frustration people felt in the face of the plethora of tactics employed by Islamic organizations and individuals and shameful capitulation by our own political parties. Spencer advised not only being persistent in our efforts to inform governments and fellow citizens, but to emulate his colleague Pamela Geller’s creativity, for example her “copycat” bus and taxi advertisements which forced public enquiry into Islamic human rights abuses such as death for apostasy and honour killings.

When pressed as to the vexing question of whether President Obama is a Muslim, Spencer could only surmise that if he were, he would not be doing anything differently; the outcomes of Obama’s policies have been extraordinarily helpful to zealots in the Muslim world – both outside and inside America.

As for Iran, it is important that we understand the Iranian Shi’ite view about the Twelfth Imam and about how Muslim “victimhood” can exist in a most threatening and sinister form on a national level as a tactic of war.

And lastly, about “moderate’ or “secular” Muslims about whom so many nurture great hope, Spencer wasted little time. Of course there are many, many Muslims who pose no threat and are not determined to impose the supremacist aspect over us their religion demands they do, but he did caution, in view of fatally naïve exercises of US soldiers teaching Afghani soldiers, against playing with guns with Muslims.

We may not all be able to dazzle people with erudition and quickness of wit the way Spencer can, but at events such as this one we can develop arguments and tactics based on stated intentions of Muslims which are derived from their texts and their own tactics based on principles within those same texts. Robert Spencer and the Q Society on this night helped and encouraged us to work harder, and to devise means in the vital job of defending the uniquely free and prosperous civilization we have inherited through the blood, sweat and inspiration of others before us and which it is our sacred duty to deliver untarnished to our descendants. They will have their own battles, as we have had ours; let us at least spare them the vice-like grip of Islam.

Oh, and a good time was had by all before and after the talks. So many conversations with so many people; the freedom to speak one’s mind; not once being glared at or called a racist/bigot/Islamophobe…!

Thankyou, Q and Mr Spencer!