Gran Torino: a review

A film produced and directed by Clint Eastwood, distributed by Warner Bros. In cinemas now

Gran Torino is produced and directed by Clint Eastwood and he is also the star of the film, but this may be the last Clint Eastwood film.

Migrant bashing, the next Tampa

Bob Gould  at 10:27 am on Saturday, November 4, 2006

Rehosted from Leftwrites

Alan Ramsey in today’s Sydney Morning Herald rounds up the parliamentary debate on the Howard government’s new citizenship laws. It hasn’t had much attention in the media.

Peter Costello, Muslims and sharia law

Bob Gould

In a February 23 keynote speech at Gerard Henderson’s conservative Sydney Institute, federal Treasurer Peter Costello positioned himself in the leadership contest well to the right of Howard. No dog-whistle politics for the new Costello. More like foghorn politics intened to appeal to a perceived popular racism in Australia about Muslims. Costello concentrated on the proposition that Muslims who advocate Muslim sharia law should be deported from Australia.

A Saturday night incident in Newtown

And some musings on Hanson’s racism

Bob Gould

Like thousands of other Australians, I run a small business, in my case an unusual one, combining the normal local newsagency with possibly the most diverse new and secondhand bookshop in Australasia.

Racism and the Australian Labor Party

The ALP, the labour movement and racism

From The Bulletin and White Australia to Terry Muscat, Jennie George, Mick Costa, Henry Tsang, Nick Bolkus, Steve Bracks and Kim Beazley

Bob Gould

Humphrey McQueen, in his influential book A New Britannia emphasises the racism endemic in the Australian labour movement at the start of its development in the 1890s. Iggy Kim, of the Green Left Weekly, in his pamphlet, The Origins of Racism, locates the early Labor Party as the prime source of racism in Australia and then draws a very long bow to argue that you should vote in current elections for his small socialist party, because the Labor Party has these racist roots, and in his view, is still hopelessly deformed by them.

Deconstructing Ghassan Hage

How postmodernism and “critical theory” are obstacles to a useful political practice in opposition to the racism of Pauline Hanson and the right-wing populism of Paul Sheehan

A critique of two books: White Nation by Ghassan Hage and Ghassan Hage’s contribution about ethnic eating to Home/World, Space, Community and Marginality in Sydney’s West, by Helen Grace and others; and a short comment on another book, Race Daze by Jon Stratton.

Bob Gould

How to handle Pauline Hanson

And how Bob Gould was accused of losing Labor the 1966 elections

Bob Gould

Pauline Hanson has announced her itinerary in advance. Her minders obviously hope to get her some mileage out of the inevitable demonstrations against her. Her whining, scapegoating racism and her attacks on such people as single mothers, will ensure her a very hot reception from the youth of Australia and many thousands of others wherever she goes, particularly in our wonderful, cosmopolitan cities like Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth, Wollongong, Newcastle, etc.