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Alan Jones: I'm the person that's led this charge
THE AGE (Melbourne) December 13, 2005
BY THURSDAY last week Alan Jones was screaming like a race caller whose horse was coming home. "I'm the person that's led this charge here. Nobody wanted to know about North Cronulla, now it's gathered to this."
The riot was still three days away and Sydney's highest-rating breakfast radio host had a heap of anonymous emails to whip his 2GB listeners along. "Alan, it's not just a few Middle Eastern bastards at the weekend, it's thousands. Cronulla is a very long beach and it's been taken over by this scum. It's not a few causing trouble. It's all of them."
Sunday's trouble did not come out of the blue. It was brewing all week on talkback radio — particularly on 2GB.
Radio doesn't get much grimmer than Alan Jones' efforts in the days before the Cronulla riot. He was dead keen for a demo at the beach — "a rally, a street march, call it what you will. A community show of force."
He assured his huge audience he "understood" why that famous text message went out and he read it right through again on air. "Come to Cronulla this weekend to take revenge. This Sunday every Aussie in the Shire get down to North Cronulla to support the Leb and wog bashing day …"
Daily he cautioned his listeners not to take the law into their own hands, but he warmed to listeners who had exactly that on their minds.
Last Thursday Charlie rang to suggest all junior footballers in the Shire gather on the beach to support the lifesavers. "Good stuff, good stuff," said Jones.
"I tell you who we want to encourage, Charlie, all the Pacific Island people because, you want to know something, they don't take any nonsense. They are proud to be here — all those Samoans and Fijians. They love being here. And they say, 'Uh huh, uh huh. You step out of line, look out.' And, of course, cowards always run, don't they?"
When John called on Tuesday to bluntly recommend vigilante action — "If the police can't do the job, the next tier is us" — Jones did not dissent. "Yeh. Good on you, John." And when he then offered a maxim his father had picked up during the war — "Shoot one, the rest will run" — the broadcaster roared with laughter. "No, you don't play Queensberry's rules. Good on you, John."
It was horrible stuff, larded with self-congratulation. And pity poor Berta — "not of a Middle Eastern family" — who tried to argue there were two sides to this story. When she reported hearing "really derogatory remarks" aimed at Middle Eastern people on Cronulla beach, Jones cut her off: "Let's not get too carried away, Berta. We don't have Anglo-Saxon kids out there raping women in western Sydney."
Yesterday, 2GB broadcasters claimed two-thirds of calls coming into the station supported "what happened" at Cronulla on Sunday. But Alan Jones is not around to deal with the aftermath. He's having a well-earned holiday.

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Originally posted by Tuppence:
Good Lord. This is such a complex issue that I don't know where to start, except to say that one comment of his particularly stood out. Anglo-Saxons aren't raping women? Oh, *really*?!

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I feel like a rube arriving in Amsterdam...of course, there are legal brothels in Aussie too -- is the tolerance of hate-speech just another aspect of a highish degree of liberty?

Jones' behaviour isn't just hate-mongering....it is war-mongering.

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Originally posted by Tuppence:
Yeah, I know, and what those men did was abhorrent. I just get so frustrated when people turn things into an us-and-them issue. Not to mention the fact that a huge percentage of sexual assaults go unreported, so it's not even as if he knows for a fact that there were no retaliatory attacks.

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I read the Sydney papers almost daily. Wasn't there more than one gang rape? I read some pretty disgusting things that the perpetrators said in open court to one of the young girls that was viciously raped.

As for the radio talk show host, it does sound like incitement.

[ 14 December 2005: Message edited by: white rabbit ]

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Originally posted by trevor j.:

For what it's worth, Alan Jones here is referring to a recent notorious rape case, which, for a variety of reasons, pitted Sydney's Lebanese against the WASP community. The controversy surrounding it was, ultimately, one of the root causes of the riot.

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I wonder if it might be possible to indict Alan Jones in a jurisdiction outside Austrailia. Since he's whupping up on Lebanese wouldn't it be grand to him extradicted to Lebanon to face charges?

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IANAL, but I don't think that would really be possible. As far as I know, one country does not have the right to prosecute another country's citizens for crimes commited in the latter country, regardless of where the victim is from.

I think a country can prosecute its OWN citizens for certain crimes commited overseas, for example it seems to me that some nations are prosecuting their nationals who visit underaged prostitutes overseas, upon the return of those nationals to their homeland. But the radio talk show host is an Australian national, so no other country can claim jurisdiction over any crimes he commits in Australia.

[ 15 December 2005: Message edited by: voice of the damned ]