Blinded by the military medals  Australia’s mainstream media seems to have missed the clumsy sleight of hand by  Immigration Minister Scott Morrison.  Major Morrison, has stressed in his military style briefings that we need to keep all refugee information a secret because the people smugglers will get valuable insight into his military manoeuvers if he tells us the truth. “More importantly if the voters find out what a bungling fool I am I will be up for the order of the boot at the next election” he said..

On assuming his role as the Defender of Australian Faith from the Muslim hordes Major Morrison had told us that he wanted to send a message to people smugglers and would be “illegals” that there was no chance of getting into Australia by boat. How you send a message by keeping your actions a top-secret is difficult to understand.

Clearly the three boats that recently arrived at Darwin were either not aware of the steel curtain the Major has thrown around Australia or they have found some holes in the curtain that need darning. Loose lips bring ships may be the motto but the practice is harder.

Could it be the Australian voters that Major Morrison wants to keep in in the dark because what we don’t know won’t hurt him at the ballot box.

However we can be assured that the close relationship that Major Morrison, Mr Abbott and the Minister for Affairs Julie Bishop have built up with the Indonesian Government will ensure full cooperation in forcing Indonesia to hold onto most of the regions refugees rather than upsetting Mr Abbott’s re-election plan.

The recent revelations by Edward Snowden revealing that the Australia Government is spying on the Indonesian Government has been a hammer blow for the Abbott Government and for the mass surveillance program carried out by the USA.

Ironically it was the Labor Government who had entered into this spying venture with the USA but it is the incompetent Abbott who will pay the price.

Abbott’s refusal to apologise to the Indonesian President has meant that the Coalitions main election platform, “Stopping the Boats” is in shreds because. Indonesia’s foreign minister Marty Natalegawa responded  by saying all cooperation with Australia is off including on the issue of returning refugee boats to Indonesia.

This latest revelation follows the arrogant and stupid statement from Foreign Minister Julie Bishop that (in regard to turning refugee boats back to Indonesia) “Were not asking Indonesia for permission, were asking for their understanding”

Indonesia has understood very well that despite the Abbott Government repeating that Indonesia is our most important neighbor it is well down the list of our real friends like the Americans. They also notice that Abbott is fixated with two issues that are at odds with Indonesia’s best interest. That is preventing refugees passing through the region to Australia, and climate change denial which will result in rising sea levels and more typhoons and sea surges that will be devastating for small islands.

What Abbott does not understand or disregards is that the population of Indonesia will see his blank refusal to apologise as a deliberate insult to their President and therefor to their country. It is likely that this lack of nous by Abbott will set back Australia’s relationship with Indonesia for many years.

Abbott has also fallen out with the world view by supporting Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s war time atrocities against Tamils with a glib statement that things happen in wars. This phrase sounds very close to the phrase shit happens and is horrific in the context of mass murder and rape. 

Finally Abbott is moving backwards on climate change policy and at a crucial time in world negotiations has not even had a minister attend the latest round of talks. His actions are reprehensible to many especially as Australia currently chairs the UN Security Council and because Australia is one of the countries worst effected by climate change and is the largest per-capita emitter of greenhouse gas.

For Australia it signals a period of isolation from world affairs and from the critical discussions that shape the future of the Globe. While the previous government had attempted to expand Australia’s horizon the Liberal National Coalition is attempting to lock out the rest of the world.

After releasing records with 4AD for a large part of their career, Cocteau Twins decided to take a step towards independence and started up the Bella Union record label, through which they could release their own work as well as any collaborative efforts. The band split up not long after, but instead of letting the newly formed label go under, Robin Guthrie, Cocteau Twins’ founder and lead guitarist and Simon Raymonde, the band’s bassist since 1984, decided to take charge of it…more @ bellaunion.com

Liberal Immigration Spokesperson Scott Morrison has unleashed a new policy that shows that the Liberal Party has crossed a significant line into world of fascism. The Liberals will legislate take away the right of refugees to access the courts. In an effort to show they are tough on border protection, the Liberals, ably assisted by the Murdoch press, are using a classic fascist method of politics. It is the politics of fear. The proposed legislation will dismantle another group of protections  from the International covenant on Human Rights.

The first tool in the classic fascist toolbox is to create fear and confusion in the populace and that fear must have a face. For many Germans, the fear was economic uncertainty that was easy to understand because the long struggle for dominance between the Axis and Allied forces had resulted in harsh economic conditions for millions of Europeans.

In Germany the face of this fear was the Roma’s and the Jew’s for opposite reasons. The Jews were very successful in business and in the professions and in many cases they were easily identifiable because of their non European names. Also because they were not Christian Aryans like the great majority, their cultural behaviour was different.The Roma’s were seen as a drain on the community because they were poor and their cultural difference even more obvious than the Jews. Because of their poverty they were percieved as a drain on the majority and a threat to their Lutheran morality.

 Abbott and his shadow minister Morrison have employed the same deceptive language to deny judicial revue to asylum seekers as the Gestapo and the Nazi secret police Kripo used to imprison Jews, Roma’s, homosexuals and others they decided as unworthy to be part of the German nation. 

The United States Holocaust Museum described the situation in its online Holocaust Encyclopedia:

 The Gestapo was empowered to use “protective custody” (Schutzhaft) to incarcerate indefinitely, without specific charge or trial, persons deemed to be potentially dangerous to the security of the Reich. Protective custody had been introduced in the German general law code before World War I to detain individuals for their own protection or to avert an immediate security threat if there were no other recourse. Now the Gestapo employed protective custody to arrest political opponents and, later, Jews, as well as Jehovah’s Witnesses who, because of religious conviction, refused to swear an oath to the Nazi German state or to serve in the armed forces. Individuals detained under protective custody were incarcerated either in prisons or concentration camps; within two months of the Reichstag Fire Decree, the Gestapo had arrested and imprisoned more than 25,000 people in Prussia alone.

It is clear that the Labor Government and the Liberal National Opposition have swung Australian politics to the far right. After five years of fear mongering and abuse, Oppositions policies, relationships and tactics now fulfill 13 of the 14 characteristics of a fascist state.

(see article below)

Unfortunately the nation subject to this fear campaign and a dumbing down process by the media, is set to vote for their first fascist government. If Morrison can set a legal precedent in denying human rights to refugees, unionists, environmental activists and foes of an Abbott Governmenmt may experience a similar fate.