Refugees and Immigration

This is not entirely a China topic, but if China continues to prosper, it will become so, I guess. Meanwhile, I'd like to hate on Tony Abbott (and all the middle-class motherfuckers in Australia that have for the last decade or so helped Tony Abbott, and similar people on both sides of politics, be such jackals).

Tony Abbott urges Europe to adopt boat turnbacks in response to refugee crisis

Europe's compassion towards refugees is leading it into "catastrophic error", former prime minister Tony Abbott warned a gathering of British conservatives in London on Tuesday night.

The professed Catholic, surprisingly, spoke against one of Jesus' greatest commandments.

"The imperative to 'love your neighbour as yourself' is at the heart of every Western polity … but right now this wholesome instinct is leading much of Europe into catastrophic error," Mr Abbott said....

The particular elements of his speech that stand out are these:

"Our moral obligation is to receive people fleeing for their lives," he said.

"It's not to provide permanent residency to anyone who would rather live in a prosperous Western country than their own. That's why the countries of Europe, while absolutely obliged to support the countries neighbouring the Syrian conflict, are more than entitled to control their own borders against those who are no longer fleeing a conflict but seeking a better life.

"This means turning boats around, for people coming by sea. It means denying entry at the border for people with no legal right to come; and it means establishing camps for people who currently have nowhere to go.

"It will require some force; it will require massive logistics and expense; it will gnaw at our consciences - yet it is the only way to prevent a tide of humanity surging through Europe and quite possibly changing it forever."

Now, for those who don't know, Tony Abbott is the newly ex-PM of Australia, deposed in a party spill and replaced by Malcolm Turnbull. Tony is, like a lot of Liberal politicians, riding on the economic creations of the last decade of Labour, and has little left to do except, perversely, try making Australia more anti-social. Or that is my impression from this far away.

For some time now, I've been hearing about the Australian policies with respect to refugees, and for several years now been growing increasingly horrified at what our bureaucracies have become. I mean, Australia now has refugee camps, and they were created by the government. The main purpose of these camps is not to house people while they wait for their status to be assessed. The camps are unpleasant, borderline lawless, and rife with distress, depression, and violence. I believe they are created and maintained this way so as to deter future asylum seekers. That is, aside from making people suffer, Australia is using people as a means to an end. What end? It looks a lot like the protection of white Australia.

I don't know if it's worth also discussing the impact of refugees on a nation. That doesn't seem to be what's really at issue. It might be in Europe where the scale is so much larger. But in Australia it's political, first and foremost. Or so I believe.

Goddamned country is making me ashamed.

Tony Rabbit is not indicative of the whole population. Please don't feel ashamed of being Australian. We are an ok people. All you have to do is go back to Aus for a couple of weeks and see how easily recent migrants have slotted into the community. You know 'the community' is not the politicians? (or ex politicians as in Rabbit's case)

I got some comfort today reading The Age and seeing that the Catholic Church has been horrified by Rabbit's spruiking about His ultimate solution to the world wide refugee issue. Fuck Him. When your own church doesn't approve of your mouthing off, there is a huge credibility problem.

I hardly think that European leaders will take one word of his tripe seriously, his own Party sacked him, the man is a complete dickhat and people outside Australia will realise that very quickly. He's just mouthing off trying to cement his future in the public speaking arena by generating controversy. Interest in him won't last.

This whole thing has made me think about nomenclature, when my family arrived ( 1955) all us 'wogs' were called New Australians. It sat well with the migrant population, we weren't different, needing special care or pity, we were considered 'new', there were just as many individuals then seeking refuge as there is now taking population percentages into account....but the language changed. Calling someone a refugee somehow makes them sound like an unwelcome guest sleeping on your couch and stopping there for a months instead of overnight.

Do you think that perhaps the renaming of migrant groups has helped Abbot's personal crusade for a white Catholic physically perfect nation.......oh, crikey that just made me think that he has modeled himself not on Bob Santamaria but a bloke with a very sad excuse for a moustache?

Rat, and her little dog - who comes from Pomerania x

Saw this:

World Leaders Patiently Listen As Man Explains How He Lost His Job.

Was amused.

But taking the mickey doesn't seem like enough. Australia has compulsory voting. That means with "everyone" voting, the Libs are still in power, still making Australia that much less pleasant a place - and for refugees-in-waiting, a squalid, sordid place of death by increments. Did you see the Abyan story? That was some ruthless nastiness right there. Australians voted for turn back the boats. Libs and Labs support it. They can't without the people actually wanting that kind of horribleness. What the hell happened?

I was back in Oz at the start of the year for a visit with the fam and there's a hell of a lot more types and varieties of people to see on the streets in South Australia now than there was when I was growing up. A whole host and variety of Africans, Asians, and Arabs. I detected tension. Walking down the street in the city center was all fine and normal and nothing happened, and what I was really detecting, I don't know, but people seemed watchful.

Actually, when I was in Sydney some years back now, I used to get Indian takeaway every so often on Oxford Street and maybe my social radar was way off from years in China, but I got the impression the staff found me threatening. White man, short hair, rides a bicycle, orders cheap. I don't know what I did.

Anyway, I may have been imagining stuff, but the news these days surely is nasty.

This whole thing has made me think about nomenclature, when my family arrived ( 1955) all us 'wogs' were called New Australians. It sat well with the migrant population, we weren't different, needing special care or pity, we were considered 'new', there were just as many individuals then seeking refuge as there is now taking population percentages into account....but the language changed. Calling someone a refugee somehow makes them sound like an unwelcome guest sleeping on your couch and stopping there for a months instead of overnight.

My father used to tell a story about his mother. She in her later years, and for reasons I never learned, travelled to Europe. Reportedly, one night she called the house and it being the middle of the night my father answered and didn't know what was going on. It went worse when she started explaining to him that she'd worked out the time difference and it was certainly daytime back in Australia when she called. He gave up the argument and asked her how Rome was anyway. She said, he swears, oh lovely, awful lot of New Australians though.

Does that make us New Chinese?

I wonder what China's refugee policies are. Can find little online, but I'm guessing that as long as China maintains the "just a developing country" line, then not too many of the world's humanitarian policies are going to feature hugely. In practice there must be people crossing China's borders who: "owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group of political opinion is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.” I just don't know what China does with them.

Meanwhile...

Australian officials paid asylum seeker boat crew, Amnesty investigation alleges

Australian government officials may have engaged in people smuggling, by allegedly paying the crew of an asylum seeker boat to return its passengers to Indonesia, an Amnesty International investigation has found.


This story started being talked about some months ago when it began to seem that, yes, Australian officials used money to "turn back [a] boat". It started seeming, if it hadn't already, that this "turn back the boats" line was fascist and I wanted to know where it had come from. Why do Australians support such policies? Where is the fear of "illegals" come from? (Seeking refuge is not illegal, but Australian politicians continually talk of queue jumpers and illegal entrants.) What's with the fear of the flood? Australia is not in the least bit overwhelmed by seekers of refuge. They are not flooding in. They're not "taking our jobs".



So, wtf, Australia? What are you doing?