Nail in the Coffin...
6 Comments Published by Tom Gara on Thursday, November 22 at Thursday, November 22, 2007.
The Australian election happens this Sunday, and the currently Liberal coalition government, in power since 1996, is pretty much certain to lose. The finishing move for John Howard might have come in the form of this dirty little piece of anti-Islamic fearmongering:
This one seems to be getting little defense from anyone - even Andrew Bolt, whose political orientation is slightly to the right of Ghengis Khan, is panning them for it - although not without some weasel words about "faint elements of truth" that are "legitimate" election issues. But there really is no defense for this kind of craziness, and as far as I can see, noone is offering one.
It's fun watching the death throes of a dying government - and hopefully a dying ideology - but scary that these people, presumably political professionals, believed that associating their opponents with Muslims was the best way to win votes. I hope they were wrong.
"PRIME Minister John Howard's re-election campaign has been dealt a devastating blow two days before polling day by a hoax pamphlet distributed by Liberals in a marginal Sydney electorate...It's actually much worse than the fairly pro-government Australian newspaper makes it sound - check out a PDF of the flyer here. It is deliberately written in bad English (because we know those damn Muslims can't spell), features a crescent-moon flag overshadowing a much smaller Australian flag (because we know where their true loyalties lie) and claims to be from the Islamic Australia Federation, who want to show "christian Australians the glorious path to Islam"....the address was overshadowed by the pamphlet, dreamt up over a few beers by the husbands of outgoing Liberal MP Jackie Kelly and the woman who wants to replace her, Liberal candidate Karen Chijoff.
Gary Clark and Greg Chijoff designed and distributed the flyer, which purports to be from the fictional Islamic Australia Federation and says the ALP wants the Bali bombers forgiven and backs construction of a mosque in western Sydney."
This one seems to be getting little defense from anyone - even Andrew Bolt, whose political orientation is slightly to the right of Ghengis Khan, is panning them for it - although not without some weasel words about "faint elements of truth" that are "legitimate" election issues. But there really is no defense for this kind of craziness, and as far as I can see, noone is offering one.
It's fun watching the death throes of a dying government - and hopefully a dying ideology - but scary that these people, presumably political professionals, believed that associating their opponents with Muslims was the best way to win votes. I hope they were wrong.
A fitting end to an era of small-time, fear-mongering and tepid nationalism.
Part that hurts the most is the "Ala Akba" (sic) in curvy word art...
This kind of stuff only emboldens terrorists to use word art and poor spelling and in their own faux-liberal propaganda. Someone, somewhere is pasting the beany man into a faked prochoice leaflet featuring an all clip-art depiction of a Hollywood gay wedding/abortion clinic.
it's actually " Allahu Akbar"
is this another sign that the melting pot has stopped melting?
Luli - I don't think the guys who made this particular pamphlet paid much attention to the subleties of arabic-english transliteration...
the melting pot in australia is doing fine, but as we all know, politicians across the world will always use racial/nationalist fearmongering when all else fails.
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my favourite part was the immediate response of: "it was a set up by Labor looking to paint the Liberal party as anti Islamic fear mongerers, the Liberal party would never be stupid enough to do something like this so close to an election"
*CRUNCH*
it was only a few weeks ago they dumped this beauty: "[the decision to halt African migration to Australia] is not in any way racially based but the program is just going to be rebalanced and one of the consequences of that is the reality that there will be no more people coming from Africa until at least July of next year," Mr Howard told ABC Radio."
The idea of the 'melting pot' slowly fading is a media beat up. They like to link it to the death of Australian values and the collapse of life as we know it... makes good headlines.
up until a couple of years ago australia was never heard of in the news to have trouble with it's muslim population. recently there had been more than one incident, which leaves the impression that it's now joining the west. even though it's in the furthest east possible it's being positioned at western (where islam makes good headlines).
and we all know the west is too cold to melt anything. to me it just sometimes feels like australia's following that trail