December 10, 2006

Riot Boyz Clash, So No Bikini Atoll

Sadly, the much anticipated the Great Australian Bikini March (GABM) has been cancelled... or at least postponed till next month. The organizers of the event blame this largely on irresponsible, drive-by media reporting:

During the month of the campaign, most media were respectful, reported the facts, focused on the issue and agreed that publishing personal details about organizers was unnecessary.

However, during the last few days there have been an increasing smear campaign in an attempt to sensationalise or discredit us....

Apparently some in the media are intent that the GABM should not be allowed to proceed.

Some people are very powerful. It would appear that free speech in a 'tolerant' society is not tolerated. [Emphasis in original]

The level of hostility against us even included verbal abuse and threats to publish our personal details. This culminated in one media outlet doing so and placing a family at risk.

In addition, some allegedly white-supremacist group horned in on the march, which certainly did not help things; in fact, that is probably why the Australiain "elite media," even more left-leaning than ours, went to such great lengths to stop them.

Australian leftist-anarchist blogger Slack Bastard, who has been critical of the march for some time, claims to have the details:

I first became aware of "The Great Australian Bikini March" via the blog of Perth-based convicted neo-Nazi criminal Ben Weerhym, and my first blog entry on the subject is dated November 14. (Ben Weerhym’s promotion of the event had commenced on the previous day, November 13.) His blog entry on the subject, titled "Bikini Babes, No Hijabs - Saturday Dec 9, 2006," named Hawkins and Smith as the organizers, and included their mobile telephone numbers as contacts for the March.

(As usual for left-wing blogs, Slack Bastard did not bother linking to the supposed "neo-Nazi" site. So I did some digging, and here is the "neo-Nazi's" GABM promotional page. I neither confirm nor deny that he is a neo-Nazi; I have no idea; make of it what you will.)

Notwithstanding repeated denials from the GABM organizers, Christine Hawkins and Chris Gemmell-Smith, the Australian media and assorted left-wing bloggers continue to caricature the bikini march as a "white-supremacist"' event. It may be a smear campaign, but in fact, the media does have some small grounds to link the march and the Australian white-supremacist movement. To understand how, we must look back to December 2005.

When I first read about the Great Australian Bikini March, originally planned for Dec 9th, I thought this light-hearted assembly was an Aussie way of protesting the much more serious problems which many other countries face today: culture-aassault by extreme Islam. Comparatively speaking, Australia is dealing with their Moslem invasion much better than Europe; but until I read about the background of this story, I did not realize how much extremism (of both white and Arabic fringes) threatens local communities, even in Australia.

Planning the march for this time of the year (deep summer in the Southern Hemisphere) was not a coincidence: December 11th is the first-year anniversary of the infamous Cronulla riot, which began on Cronulla Beach in New South Wales, near Canberra.

A riot in Australia? I never heard about that!

Evidently, before the riots, beach-goers had been attacked and harassed for quite some time by "Middle Eastern youths" and "Arab youths" -- mostly Moslem Lebanese immigrants, or "migrants," as they're called in Australia.

According to the Wikipedia link above, a few days prior to December 11th, 2005, a couple of white Australians were assaulted by a dozen Moslem youths at Cronulla beach; one man was beaten, as was another man who tried to come to his aid; the attackers are said to have shouted "we own this country" during the assault. A few days later, three lifeguards were also assaulted and seriously injured at the same beach, also by a dozen young Moslem males (thought not necessarily the same ones):

On Sunday 4 December 2005, a group of male youths of Middle Eastern descent were playing soccer on a Cronulla beach when the North Cronulla surf lifesavers are reported to have asked them to stop, as it was disturbing other users of the beach. The response from the youths was: "Get off our beach. This is our beach. We own it."

Gerard Henderson, columnist at The Sydney Morning Herald, alleges that the surf lifesavers then provided the youths with "a degree of verbal provocation", and "reminded the south-western suburb inhabitants that they could not swim". Shortly thereafter three surf lifesavers (aged 15, 19 and 20) were confronted by initially four, and then later up to twelve individuals, and in the process were allegedly assaulted. Not all of those present were directly involved in the melee, and several of the larger group were reported to have attempted to break up the altercation.

Police later claimed that there was no apparent racial motive behind that assault. [Isn't it interesting that this is always the first thing they claim? But note that the police don't mention whether there was a religous motive behind the assault.] A teenager was later charged with assault in company occasioning actual bodily harm.

According to Wikipedia, these incidents (and likely the repeated claim that the migrants owned the country) ticked off local Aussies of "Anglo-Celtic" descent. Wikipedia goes on to say that the Australians heard "inflammatory comments" and some rhetoric that could be taken as racist by radio hosts Alan Jones and Steve Price.

The following weekend, more than 5,000 Australian activists showed up at the beach to protest against Moslem violence; but the party atmosphere soon morphed into a mob mentality, or so says Wiki. When a Middle-Eastern looking man was chased to nearby hotel, the actual riot erupted. Several Middle-Eastern looking people, without regard to their actual nationality, were attacked, their property vandalized. Even an ambulance was attacked.

That night and the following few days, "Arab youths" roamed the street, looking for "revenge" on the whites and sporadically attacking people and burning and vandalizing properties. The violence continued to December 15th.

At the tail end of a Christmas carols service at St Joseph the Worker Primary School drive-by shots were fired into cars and parents and primary school students were verbally abused by men described as Middle Eastern. Furthermore, a total of four Churches in Sydney's South-West were attacked during the evening. The Uniting Church hall in Auburn, which is next to an Islamic centre, was set ablaze about 1.30 a.m. (AEDT) on 15 December. Premier Morris Iemma stated that "it may be" linked to the ongoing riots.

Because of this incident, many anti-bikini-march people from the media and the sinister blogosphere accused this year's bikini marchers of being racially motivated, despite the fact that the organizers of GABM put up a stern warning against violence and alcohol consumption during the march.

I do not condone violence against innocent people, regardless of whether they look different or they come from another country. But this kind of response is bound to happen when the government fails to protect its citizens.

If ordinary beach-goers are constantly harassed and assaulted by "Arab youths" who loudly insist that they, not their hosts, own the country or the beach; if the majority Australians believe nothing will ever happen to the assailants; if the cops won't stop the assaults -- then it's hardly surprising that the majority population will take the law into its own hands. Vigilantism is not necessarily a bad thing, if the only alternative is survival of the loudest and most enraged. But when some fool injects racial prejudice into the mix, and innocents are abused, things get more complicated.

I believe the GABM organizers' intention was sincere. Alas that extremists on both sides hijacked the peaceful march. In the racially and religiously tense society of Australia, a peaceful, lighthearted "bikini march" would have done a world of good. And it can still be done... if the Australian peace officers can finally get serious about securing the peace.

I hope they will be able to march peacefully in January.

Hatched by Sachi on this day, December 10, 2006, at the time of 12:41 AM

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The following hissed in response by: Baggi

The above hissed in response by: Baggi at December 10, 2006 2:40 AM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

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