Open letter to our PM: Please stop supporting Al Qaeda terrorists in Syria

Dear Hon Julia Gillard, Australian PM

I am writing this letter in disgust of your government support of Al Qaeda in Syria, by adopting the lies and deceptions vended by its armed faction, Syria Free Army. This disgust grew very significantly after your government recent decision to expel two Syrian senior diplomats on very flimsy basis. Your government took a decision before any credible side take thorough investigation of what actually had happened in Houla last Saturday and who is actually responsible for the horrendous crimes. The initial facts point responsibility clearly towards the Al Qaeda terrorist groups operating publicly in Syria.

In this letter I, on behalf of many Australians, would like to raise alarm about possible devastating impact of such policy of your party to support and praise the Al Qaeda actions.

I am sure that you have been briefed last February that Al Qaeda operatives in Sydney shot fellow citizen Ali Ibrahim. Mr Ibrahim was crippled because he opposes Al Qaeda crimes in Syria. We believe that the Al Qaeda operatives who shot Mr Ibrahim took the green light from your government’s line of supporting terrorist acts in Syria and always blaming the secular regime of conducting them. The operatives are enjoying great support not only from your government, but also from ALL opposition parties and almost every mainstream media outlets. Such support that gave them indication that they can carry on terrorist attacks against opponents here in Australia.

We are aware that members of your party have participated in fundraising dinners where organisers declared before the events that the money will go to buy arms and ammunitions to Al Qaeda operatives (under the umbrella of Free Syria Army). Can you imagine that your colleagues in the parliament are attending and donating to buy arms and ammunitions to terrorists groups??

I am also very sure that you know of the wave of threats we, active community members who opposes Al Qaeda terrorist activities in Syria, have been receiving for the last few months. We did not only receive threats to kill us and our family members, but I am sad to tell you that we were assaulted on many occasions by extremists who declare publicly that they support Al Qaeda and its extreme teachings.

And what did your government do to curb this wave of extremism in our streets? Nothing. On the contrary. Sending members of your ruling party to donate money to Al Qaeda operatives did send the opposite message.

After yesterday’s verbal and physical assault, I hold you responsible of any harm to me or to my family in the future. Not only this. I did not insist to report to police that details of the assault because we are very sure that if your government continues to support, praise and aid AL Qaeda operatives in Sydney, things would get out of hands.

Your government irresponsible policy would (and indeed already did) import sectarian and religious hate into our country. All what we are waiting now is the break of violence and counter violence in the streets of the suburbs.

Walking in the streets of Lakemba, Punchbowl, Auburn or Bankstown would give us feeling that we are walking in the streets of Qandahar. And if you attend one of the many religious ceremonies in some of the mosques or musallas, you would think that you are listening to Bin Laden or Al Zawahri. The same terrorist rhetoric happening here in our streets and under surveillance of our security agencies, including ASIO. Such agencies that seem to be more busy with writing unsubstantiated reports on poor asylum seekers arriving by boats, instead  of following and interrogating terrorists and their leaders.

I know very well that you do not feel what we are feeling. At the end of the day, you and your government are on the side of the terrorists. We believe and feel that we are left alone to face and counteract terrorists in the streets of Sydney.

Instead of kicking out Syrian diplomat and so lose any influence on the crisis, your government should have arrested and publicly condemned the terrorists that shot fellow Australian Ali Ibrahim, attacked and vandalised foreign embassies, threatened fellow Australians and assaulted all opponents.

In this letter we would like to condemn in the strongest possible words your government extreme position to support extreme groups. We wonder why you and your government did not take such extreme position when Israeli military massacred publicly and in front of all media cameras, hundreds of innocent Palestinians who took shelter in school operating under UN agency control. The UN agency (UNRWA) indicated very clearly that Israeli soldiers carried out the massacre in cold blood. Many Israeli soldiers admitted that they had orders to shoot at any moving Palestinian, regardless if they were armed or not.

Your government which is proving day after day to be the worst government in Australian contemporary history will not make any new friend by supporting terrorists. On the contrary. Many Australians from different communities who believe that Syria needs help and not further punishment to end the civil war changed their voting intensions in the aftermath of your government’s policy of supporting terrorist organisations.

 I will wait for any reply from your office explaining to us that our assumptions are wrong. We welcome any evidence you have that the regime is solely responsible of the wave of terrorist acts. Otherwise and if you do not have such evidence, we can provide you with tons of material that would cast serious doubts about such claims of regime’s responsibility of these crimes.

Even if the regime is responsible for every single crime happened in Syria for the last year, we believe that your government is responsible of protecting our rights to live in peace with no fear. We also believe that your government has the responsibility to enable us to exercise our rights for freedom of speech and believes.

Thanks

Yours

Jamal Daoud

Berala, NSW 2141

Note: I already made my mind to vote against your government and your party. And we will campaign to encourage all peace loving progressive people to send your government to history dust bins.

NSW Political Donations Law: When eating my wife’s cooking is a crime!!

The Local Election seminar last Thursday turned to circus when activists and possible candidates for the election listened to the details of the lunatic NSW Political Donations Law. We discovered (and we admitted responsibility by the end of the seminar) that we have committed offences and crimes under the above mentioned legislation.

By the legislation, every effort to interfere in any election in NSW is classified as “donations”. And for the purpose of serving the legislation, every cent spent by any person taking these efforts must be registered and reported to the Election Funding Authority (EFA).

So, if a local hairdresser during election time talks about election, who to vote for and why, this is considered by the legislation to be “donation” for the candidate the hairdresser supports. The hairdresser is obliged to appoint Official Agent and report how much money he spent or received in his “election campaign”.

The angry protestor, who climbed the Harbour Bridge few months ago to send a political message against current family law, is required by the legislation to appoint Official Agent. He is required to report who helped him, how much money they spent and the name, address and work of the donors. And he should be careful. If one of the donors is a worker in Tobacco Company, entertainment industry or Property Development Company, he would be liable for prosecution under the legislation. In other words, if one of the donors are one of the above mentioned categories, he is not entitled to take any action, legal or illegal.

The man will not prosecuted only for disturbing public peace, but also for electoral fraud offences.

And if an angry resident prints few hundreds of leaflets and distributed them to local homes, he would be under the same obligation of reporting. And if the money is more than $1,000, he needs to operate specific bank account, appoint Official Agent to operate the account and reporting system. And if the amount is more than $2,500, in addition to all these, he will need an auditor (who will probably charge him between $300 – 900).

If a teacher at school tries to educate the children (or adults at migrant language centre) about the political system in Australia, he would need permission from the Election Funding Authority. He/she will need to be registered for funding reporting.

We did not understand what the situation of the media is!!!

So if a journalist is angry form the Greens during election campaign and wrote an article or two against them, would this be classified as “election campaigning”? Would that journalist need to be registered with the EFA? Does he/she need to appoint Official Agent and open separate bank account for the purpose of writing this article?

What a chaos!!!

What amazes us (all the active community members in the seminar) is that the system (in addition to its lunatic nature) is so flawed, impractical, discriminatory, undeomcratic and draconian.

The legislation prevents any person who is either not registered on the electoral roll or is non-citizen to talk about politics. The system allows only citizens to be active in political participation. The more than 1.5 million permanent residents and temporary residents should remain silent. They also need to remain passive, cannot donate their times, efforts and money to the prosperity of this nation.

There is other side of the discriminatory nature of the law. The workers in specific industries are required to be silent, politically stupid, have no say in the future of their nation and remain neutral of decisions that could destroy their lives. The workers of only Tobacco company, gambling industry and property development industry should be regarded as thieves, crooks and irrelevant to the political process. But the workers of sex, pharmaceutical, retail and export and import industries can do whatever they want.

The system is not allowing non-citizens to donate.... So how would we, as campaigners at a street stall, know if the by-passer donating 5 cents is in fact on the electoral roll or no!!!

Most importantly, how would the Electoral Funding Authority prove that they were non-citizens!!!

Not only this. I discovered that I really committed big offence under the legislation. But I will repeat this offence in all next elections. In the last election and to feed the volunteers on the pooling booths, my wife made them delicious sandwiches. According to the legislation, my wife is a donor. We should report this donation to the authority. But my wife is non-citizen and not on the electoral roll. So and by the legislation, my wife cannot cook and feed me. She cannot cook and feed volunteers.

Whoever was behind this law (and we understand that the Greens are proud themselves to be behind the introduction of the law) should know that it will not work. Not only this. It did not help improving our political system. On the contrary. It reduced the political participation. The law makes it very hard for independents to think about even just giving opinion on the current candidates, their political parties’ policies and the future of this nation. The law in fact suffocates democracy, kills political debate and reduces political participation (especially from marginalised groups). And most importantly, the law is impractical.

We know that the Law-and-Order arm of the authority to implement these laws is impotent to enforce these laws. All what the politician could achieve is to encourage people to lie and make false claims.

How would you prove that the sandwiches we ate on the Election Day were made by my non-citizen wife??? Who did give the politicians the authority to prevent wife from feeding her politically active husband??