Australia’s inhumane refugee policies are shaming us all and we all deserve that shame. Yes the Gillard Government deserve blame for giving in to the oppositions fear tactics and for not exposing their exaggerated claims about Australia being swamped with “illegal boat people”. Worst of all they adopted the cruel, impractical and expensive Liberal policies which both the media and the opposition are ironically now criticising them for. They caved in because the oppositions fear mongering was costing them votes.

The policies of our major parties are not designed to assist the refugees but to keep them out of Australian territory. Like the Wizard of Oz our political leaders have created a paper-mache monster to raise our fear levels. To ease our consciences we are of course not stopping refugees, we are “stopping the boats and the people smugglers”.

So what does that say about our courage and intelligence, especially those of us who have changed voting intentions on the basis of “border protection” , meaning not an invasion by malevolent forces but protecting us from men, women and children who are seeking our help.

Our response so far shows that when we hear unsubstantiated horror stories we give in to our fears instead of our using our reason. Furthermore it shows that in order to feel safe some of us are prepared to lock up innocent people and their children in harsh concentration camps out of sight, out of mind and with no end point to their suffering.

The most disappointing outcome of our blind fear is that we do not engage our intelligence in finding creative solutions to either the causes of the refugee crisis or how we can help the refugees to be settled in a new country without adding to their trauma.

Blind Freddy can see that most refugees are not coming straight from conflict to Australia. They are escaping from a lifetime spent in refugee camps with no identity no connections and little hope of an improved life for them or their families. No wonder they will risk their lives on a leaky boat, they have no life.

What can we do as a compassionate nation rather than a fearful nation to help their hopeless situation? Here are some ideas that would assist these people and help ourselves at the same time.

The first stage is to restore hope for people with no future and this may be achieved by diverting the massive funding from “border protection” and from shutting down our overseas concentration camps. With this funding the Government could build education facilities from primary to tertiary close to the major refugee camps.

By providing carefully targeted tertiary education and training to refugees it will make them more attractive as immigrants to Australia and to countries all over the world.

Another step would be to provide funding to speed up the processing of refugee claims and increase our refugee intake. Refugees who achieved required skill levels could be granted a speedier pathway to Australian citizenship.

The above measures would have a great impact on the morale of refugees by providing them a pathway out of their meaningless existence and lift their feelings of self-worth.

The advantages to Australia are that the flow of boats to our shores would be greatly diminished and when people arrived here as refugees they would be pre trained to take up employment meaning that they would not be welfare dependent for long periods.

A major bonus would be that our national psyche will be healed when the feeling of mean spirited, fear ridden, hatred and division that shrinks our imagination and diminishes our self-respect, is replaced by a new creative spirit of cooperation and connection to one another.

The teeth gnashing and squealing of Australias “free press” over the proposed media laws is a little like watching and listening to feeding time on a pig farm.

Acting as though they are the outraged agents of the God of Truth they line up to save the citizenry against the devils who would kill free speech.

And what is it the threat? The Government wants to upset the industries self regulation body by adding an independent overseer in the public interest. This, according to the Murdochracy puts us as a nation on par with Nazi Germany and Iran. Nothing brings out the baying dogs of the press more than a threat to their total supremacy in the market of ideas.

Lets get real there is no diversity of opinion in Australian media. The Murdoch empire dominates Australian media and the first edict of the Australian press theocracy is “ I am thy lord thy emporer and there shall be no other emporer beside me”.

When one media proprietor completely dominates the discussion there is no plurality of ideas being discussed. In Australia the lack of plurality is as evident as the dominance of Pravda in the old Soviet Union.

The Levenson inquiry in the United Kingdom showed that free speech looks more like corruption when fearful subservient politicians do the bidding of newspaper proprietors. It lead to an appalling lack of morality by British tabloids even criminal acts that trampled on the rights of privacy for many Britons. The Murdoch newspapers were the worst offenders.

In Australia the hegemonic powers of Murdoch,s Australian press is even greater. There is no doubt that it has been destabilising the Gillard Government with such fervour and lack of balance it competes with Fox news as the most dishonest media outlet in the Western world.

It is interesting that the media as one push for an independent body to examine the police saying that because of their power, in a proper democracy the police cannot and ought not judge themselves. How often have we seen headlines saying “Who should police the police?”.

In an industry that wields an even greater power, the power to create new truths and realities, the power to destroy governments, the media ardently believes they should be their own police.

The concept of free speech is largely derived from the ideas of influential philosopher John Stuart Mill who said:

…the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection. … the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. (On Liberty ch.1 ¶9)[2

Mill never envisaged a mass media that would be dominated by few extremely powerful individuals and corporations,or that proprietors would happily destroy the good name of others for entertainment of their audience, or deliberately mislead their viewers about life and death issues like climate change.

Is it healthy for one individual to dominate political discourse to the extent that members of parliaments are so fearful of being politically destroyed that they bow to the will of that proprietor at the expense of their constituencies and good governance?

Despite the growth of online blogs there is not a healthy plurality of views being aired in Australia as the corporate monopolistic mass media drowns out alternative views and furthermore it has dependent governments hooked on its ability to give and take power.

At this moment a conga line of such politicians in the parliament are selling us out while bowing to their puppet master and clamouring for his anointment in the upcoming election. Even Craig Thompson has joined in the chanting of the penitential rites.

Priest (Abott): Have mercy on us, Lord Rupert
Congregation: For we have sinned against you.
Priest (Abott): Show us, O Lord, your mercy.
Congregation: And grant us your salvation.

Priest (Abott): May almighty Rupert have mercy on us, forgive us our sins, and bring us to everlasting life (tenure).

Congregation Amen

“On one side of the courtroom was Darryl Zanuck and half the corporation boys in America. On the other side was me, alone; I didn’t have a lawyer. I played it very English, very Ronald Colman.

At one point one of the lawyers jumped up and shook his fist at me and said, “you shook hands with Mr Zanuck on this agreement. You shook hands with Mr Zanuck in his own office.”

And I said, “I dont believe Mr Zanuck said that because he’s an honourable man. But if he did say it, then he’s a fucking liar. The place broke up in complete confusion…”

“We non-Aboriginal Australians should perhaps remind ourselves that Australia once reached out for us. Didn’t Australia provide opportunity and care for the dispossessed Irish? Did it not for the poor of Britain? The refugees from war and famine and persecution in the countries of Europe and Asia? Isn’t it reasonable to say that if we can build a prosperous and remarkable harmonious multicultural society in Australia, surely we can find just solutions to the problems which beset the first Australians – the people to whom the most injustice has been done.”

Paul Keating, 1992, then Australian Prime Minister,  gave a speech at Redfern Park – in an inner city suburb of Sydney with an historically large Aboriginal population – for the Australian Launch of the ‘International Year for the World’s Indigenous People’. 

Like a deep red river you flow through my existence

Collecting gentle raindrops that fall on distant mountains

Into a singing dancing torrent that rushes into life

Tumbling crazily through joy and pain and love

Carrying mysterious remnants of dark green jungles

And wild memories of animals and exotic ancient lives

You nourish my spirit as you pass through my heart

Linking my being to the fibres of the universe

Though time inexorably draws your life forward

Until you flow on to meet the great ocean

We have exchanged precious particles of our lives

That you carry with you beyond mortality beyond oblivion

To a distant fertile region outside of our imagination

There you will plant gardens to nourish new generations

Connecting their being with the beginning of time

Jim Scott

Recent conflicts in Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq have seen almost 1,200 drone strikes over the past five years, according to new data released to the Bureau.

The information, much of it classified until now, shows that US Air Force drones carried out most of the 1,168 attacks. However British crews are also responsible for a significant portion of the strikes in Afghanistan.
The Bureau has obtained data from the US armed forces, Nato and the UK’s Ministry of Defence. It reveals, for example, that more than a quarter of all armed Coalition air sorties in Afghanistan are now carried out by drones.
While only a fraction of those missions result in strikes, drone strikes in Afghanistan are now taking place on average five times each week

Afghanistan – the US’s most intense conflict
The US’s secret drone campaign in Pakistan and elsewhere is now in its eleventh year and is attracting increasing scrutiny, including academic studies, court cases and, soon, a UN investigation. Ironically, less is known about the use of drones in conventional theatres of war.

The US military and its allies have carried out almost 1,200 drone strikes since 2008 in Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq. 

Click here to visit the Bureau’s Covert Drone War project
When the Bureau first approached the US military in August seeking drone data for recent conflicts, we were told the information was classified. Central Command (Centcom) later relented after the Bureau argued there was a strong public interest in releasing the information.
Centcom now says it is committed to publishing statistics on the number of missiles fired by drones in Afghanistan, as part of its monthly reports.

There Is No God Higher Than Truth

Gandhi on the Palestine conflict — 1938

“Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French…What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct…If they [the Jews] must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs… As it is, they are co-sharers with the British in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them. I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regard as an unacceptable encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds.”

Mahatma Gandhi, quoted in “Land of Two Peoples” ed. Mendes-Flohr.  Pic from danielleford.com

After losing the vote on Palestinian observer status, Susan E. Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations, was dismissive of the entire exercise. “Today’s grand pronouncements will soon fade,” she said. “And the Palestinian people will wake up tomorrow and find that little about their lives has changed, save that the prospects of a durable peace have only receded.” (New York Times)

In his response, the Israeli UN Ambassador, Prosor said, “The truth is that 65 years ago today, the United Nations voted to partition the British Mandate into two states: a Jewish state, and an Arab state. Two states for two peoples. Israel accepted this plan. The Palestinians and Arab nations around us rejected it and launched a war of annihilation to throw the “Jews into the sea”. 

This of course is not true the Palestinians were not consulted and it was the Jewish militias that began the carnage.

Israel has also announced further illegal settlements in Palestinian areas and other punitive measures in an effort to maintain their long-term program of humiliation and demoralisation of the Palestinian people.

These angry and ridiculous comments from the the UN Ambassadors for Israel and the United States of America and the follow up threats against the Palestinians for gaining UN observer status clearly shows that the game is up for Israel’s long-standing repression and state sanctioned land theft. In fact Susan E Rice will wake up tomorrow and find that the world has changed and the USA is being left in its wake.

It has become very obvious to the world that the actual position of successive Israeli Governments as opposed to its stated position is to make life so unliveable in Gaza that the Palestinians are forced to leave. It is ethnic cleansing by stealth. They have had no intention of ever handing back Palestinian land.

Israel has a long record of disingenuous negotiation on the two state solution. They have combined placatory words with a continuation of dispossession, assassination and humiliation. There can never be a fair solution to the plight of Palestinians under the current unbalanced situation where Israel holds all the cards and has the power of the USA standing behind it.

The Israeli Government has been able to mute criticism of its brutal repression of Palestinians by using a massive well funded international lobby to build on international world sympathy and guilt stemming from the terrible criminal treatment of Jewish people by the Nazis. Israeli Government spokespersons brand critics of Israel as anti-Semitic. Today for many people who were born long after the terrible days of Adolph Hitler, the criminal behaviour of the Jewish State towards Palestinians has almost dried up that sympathy and support.

The overwhelming nature of the UN poll makes the USA a big loser because the massive yes vote shows that the rest of the Western world is fed up with US support of countries whose actions are so extreme and so obviously unfair that they are an embarrassment. In fact it appears many outside the USA not indoctrinated by the Murdoch Press have had the blindfold removed. The game is up and the repression and the lies must stop.

The UN which was the overseer of the partition process was a guilty player in the disposession of the Palestinians. The UN breached its own conventions when it failed to consult or give the people of Palestine a say in the breakup of their country.

The UN must get off its numerous backside and insist on a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians that provides fairness and justice to the people on both sides and which restores the dignity to the people who continue to be cruelly dealt with by their oppressors.