<H2><b>ASYLUM SEEKERS - DISEASE IN AUSTRALIA'S BODY POLITIC - AND MEDIA!!!!!</b></H2>

The numbers of asylum seekers trying to arrive in Australia is miniscule in relation to what is happening elsewhere in the world, but one could be forgiven for thinking, in view of what goes on in the Australian federal parliament and the Australian media, that Australia was about to be swamped by millions of undesirable people from countries which don't want them any more.

The few thousand people who approach the Australian shoreline come mostly from countries which have been invaded by Australia or which successive Australian governments have aided and abetted in their nefarious wars with military training and/or military equipment.

Australia is a very rich country and its treatment of its indigenous population compares with its treatment of asylum seekers. Australia is a NIMBY country - that is, we are happy to cause people to have to flee their poisonous regimes and seek safety elsewhere, so long as it is not in OUR country.

Compare the few thousand arrivals in Australia with the tens of thousands fleeing Mugabe and other dictatorships in Africa and trying to enter South Africa which has an inept government, one fifth of its population infected with HIV, unemployment at record levels around 40 to 50 per cent and the enormity of Australia's terrible asylum seeker problem falls into perspective.

South Africa, like Australia, is a very rich country, although if one sees how many of the country's estimated 45 million live, one might think otherwise. Yet it has borders which are easier to penetrate than fortress Australia, and so it indeed IS penetrated by desperate people from Zimbabwe and elsewhere. The significance of the refugees fleeing Mugabe is the irony of the fact that ex-president Mbeki continued to prop up Mugabe's murderous regime despite pleas from other countries for him to alter his stance and assist with sanctions to bring Mugabe to justice.

In Australia it has made no difference which political party has been in power, they have all behaved disgustingly, aided and abetted by a media owned by a few reactionary right-wing bigots, some of whom, like Rupert Murdoch, who is not even an Australian citizen, think they have the right to dictate "who comes to this country and the manner in which they come here"!!!

Cry all the beloved countries!