The smear tactics used by Malcolm King and Andras Smith are directly copied from those used against immigration restrictionists in the US, most notably the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The Center for Immigration Studies explains the smear tactics, the whole business about Tanton, and what it would be like if the immigration restrictionists behaved in the same way as King and the SPLC:

"If FAIR [Federation for American Immigration Reform] chose to adopt the tactics of the SPLC and its allies, it would seek to divert attention from the substantive issues of immigration. It would probe for suspect motivation and association. It would take out full-page ads in Roll Call and Politico, taunting La Raza for controversial moments in its history, such as its selection of the recipient of its 1994 'Hero Award.'66 The honoree, Jose Angel Gutierrez, said this in 1969, at a high point of Chicano radicalism: 'We have got to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to the worst, we have got to kill him.'67

"In 1994, when he was a political science professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, Gutierrez added this to the discussion of national demographic change: 'We are millions. We just have to survive. We have an aging white America. They are not making babies. They are dying. It’s a matter of time. The explosion is in our population.'68 The Washington Post reported that Gutierrez 'led a delegation to Cuba in 1975, publicly praised its Communist government, and predicted that many more “little Cubas” would be created in south Texas'.69

"If FAIR adopted the SPLC’s diversionary tactics — probing for sinister motives rather than debating policy concerns — it would steer every conversation and refer every reporter to such statements, and it would demand to know why La Raza continues to cling to a name that derives from the “raza cosmica” concept, which is explicitly based in the racist and eugenicist theories of its author."

http://www.cis.org/immigration-splc

At least Birrell acknowledges publicly on his profile that he has contributed to Tanton's journal TSCP http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc0702/article_615.shtml but produces peer reviewed research, or merely essays base don personal preferences?

'Betts, Birrell et al are at least consistent, without knowing what objective conclusions their data or research about immigration, population or society could conclude, one is safe in the knowledge that it will be either directly or indirectly negative about non Europeans……'

Birrell's research i.e. methodology etc. has been criticised and dismissed by experts in various fields e.g. Health Workforce:

'“HWA clarifies Dr Bob Birrell’s claims about the Health Workforce 2025 report....."

The report (from Birrell) challenges the view that there is a shortage of GPs in Australia, and includes some criticism of the findings in Health Workforce 2025: Doctors, Nurses and Midwives (HW2025), the first long-term, national projections for the health workforce to 2025.

Health Workforce Australia (HWA) has completed a thorough analysis of the criticisms and has found a number of inaccuracies and issues with Dr Birrell’s report.

In summary Dr Birrell has misinterpreted or misunderstood HWA’s methodology and scenarios at various points, has used incorrect GP data, makes inaccurate claims that HWA has understated the number of immigrant doctors, draws conclusions from government initiatives such as bulk billing that are tenuous at best, prefers simple measures of oversupply/undersupply, states inaccurately that the HW2025 report suggests that the government should not limit the flow of IMGs into the GP workforce. There is absolutely no such claim in the report and also suggests that all domestic and international graduates from Australian Medical Schools should enter the medical workforce, etc.

Birrell's own journal 'People and Place' claimed to be 'peer reviewed':

'Hard data analysed by Birrell and widely reported in the media helped to remake the rules for skilled migration..... The journal was given the lowest possible ranking for the ERA...' http://tinyurl.com/kbrehpo

Further, one of Birrell's colleagues at Monash university, Prof Stephen King has written a critique of Birrell 'Pass me the sushi and damn the immigrants' http://economics.com.au/?p=5320

Regarding issues that Tanton, FAIR, CIS et al have about SPLC Southern Poverty Law Center, they're a little misleading and economical with the facts....

SPLC was formed at the start of the civil rights movement "The Southern Poverty Law Center is dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of our society."

Tanton et al should not be so modest as they are in esteemed company, the SPLC and its resources have been used successfully for decades against the Klu Klux Clan and various related offshoots....

SPLC publishes a 'hate list' http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/groups which includes FAIR and TSCP, plus many other usual suspects....

Further, subjects of their investigation can often still be cited or referred to by 'academics' and 'researchers' in other countries, whose negative memes are then transmitted by compliant mainstream media e.g. Robyn William's Ockham's Razor on ABC recently featured John Guillebaud patron of Population Matters UK, another part of the Tanton network, whom went on to cite Garrett Hardin http://tinyurl.com/p6wcy7n

Hardin in his own words via SPLC:

"Promoters of more diversity maintain that the more immigrants the better; and the greater the variety the richer America will become. Many of these promoters are ‘Europhobic' — fearful of, or revolted by, European civilization and values. They say we should stop taking in North Europeans, urging us instead to solicit the Filipinos, the Taiwanese and the Salvadorans… . Diversity is the opposite of unity, and unity is a prime requirement for national survival.”
—“How Diversity Should be Nurtured,” The Social Contract, 1991' http://tinyurl.com/knzqa2f

If anyone is serious about environment and climate Ian Angus wrote good article in 'Climate and Capitalism': 'The return of the population bombers. Overpopulation ideology undermined the environmental movement in the 1970s, diverting social protest into harmless channels. To prevent a similar setback today, we must understand populationism’s conservative role, and why it is attractive to a growing number of green activists.' http://tinyurl.com/c6qaco

A reference from some whom also have a negative view of SPLC 'Jewish terrorist gang SPLC attacks John Tanton (FAIR et al)' http://tinyurl.com/lhfc63x from 'Storm Front' for "White Pride World Wide".

Also congratulating Tanton et al for being included in the SPLC 'hate list'.....

Warning, by clicking through the link above you maybe confronted by racially offensive content.

Andras,

You are really scraping the bottom of the barrel with SPLC.

There have been a number of exposes of SPLC with reference to their tactics and dubious financial dealings, starting with one in the Montgomery Advertiser in 1994, which was a finalist for the 1995 Pulitzer Prize. Ken Silverstein was the author of another expose of SPLC in Harpers Magazine in 2000. Note that Silverstein has said that he is not an immigration restrictionist.

http://harpers.org/blog/2010/03/hate-immigration-and-the-southern-poverty-law-center/

Here is his original article for Harper's (behind a paywall unfortunately)

http://harpers.org/archive/2000/11/the-church-of-morris-dees/

Here is a more recent expose from the Weekly Standard

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/king-fearmongers_714573.html?nopager=1

"A perhaps more serious objection to the SPLC’s hate list is the loosey-goosey criteria by which the center decides which organizations qualify as hate groups."

The American Institute of Philanthropy's Charity Watch gave SPLC an F rating (poor) from 1999 to 2009.

Labeling your political opponents as "hate groups" or "haters", a standard SPLC tactic, is a good way to discredit them and shut down debate, as Ken Silverstein said.

You rely on insinuations, not links to racist material by the person or organization in question. John Tanton made a racist remark to a friend in 1965 or thereabouts. Bob Birrell or whoever once met Tanton or had an article in a magazine founded by Tanton. Therefore, Birrell is a racist and taking orders from Tanton, even if he hasn't said, written, or done anything racist. Presumably, Tanton has also got at Prof. George Borjas at Harvard and the respected economists who wrote the House of Lords report in the UK. The links between La Raza and SPLC are a lot closer than this sort of thing. OK with "Kill the Gringo", are you, Andras?

The SPA/SPP actually embraces Tanton and Beck’s racist philosophy. I believe the head of the SPA actually had Tanton stay with her some years back. It’s important to remember, that the depopulationists only pay lip service to the notion of democracy.

The genesis of the depopulation movement in its current form started with the publication of William Vogt’s Road to Survival back in ’48. Vogt favoured sterilisation bonuses to be paid to the shiftless. His chief concerns — cheaper contraceptives and linking food aid to population control — was adopted by the SPA/SPP. Voigt showed that even though everyone shared the same “road to survival”, those that survived would be white, male and from the West.

Far from being environmentalists, watermelon lefties or fire twirling tree huggers, they are in fact hard line right wing social engineers – to the right of the American Republicans, which is saying something - and a blight on the Australian political landscape.

I recognize that a political party which has less than .04 per cent of the popular vote is not really front page news. But it’s one of the strengths of Opinion Online, is that it allows arguments to be put direct to the public and to create a historical record, detailing how the SPA/SPP’s regressive and reductive ‘arguments’ were defeated.