ASYLUM SEEKERS AND AUSTRALIAN POLITICIANS - YET AGAIN!!

The above sign was seen in an upstairs window above a shop in High Street, Thornbury, Melbourne, and the sign reads:

BRING THEM HERE

CLOSE THE CAMPS

When one assesses the total number of human beings involved with this disaster, the number is so tiny in proportion to the refugee problems everywhere else in the world that it adds to Australia's shame that this has been allowed to happen at all, and to continue for so long without roars of outrage from the Australian population.

Which all goes to show how dulled are the senses and sensibilities of the Australian population.

And then think of the numbers who come by plane who outstay their visas and the responses of the politicians to the whole sorry saga.

It is all totally heartbreaking, and do you think anybody will read this and feel ashamed of their attitudes to asylum seekers? Of course not!


Peter Dutton makes one ashamed of the human race, together with his government and their loyal opposition.

Each time the federal government does or says something about asylum seekers that hasn't been done or said before, it doesn't take long to see they have all sunk to depths no one could have believed was possible.

Their cruelty is no different from the dictatorships and police states which we have seen so much of in the 20th century and which has carried on into the 21st century. It just reaches new levels of depravity all the time.

It is only a matter of time before politicians in Australia follow the lead of their zionist masters and start a genocide of sorts against asylum seekers who now seem to have no possibility of resolution to their problems after fleeing from the countries which were persecuting them.

THE NUMBER PLATE SAYS "VICTORIA THE EDUCATION STATE"

Various people have been blamed for the parlous state of education in the state of Victoria.

Who are actually to blame are a few generations of politicians.

Education in Australia has generally been somewhat on the slides for many years, so what is going on?

Part of the blame lies with the system of government and control - an uneducated population don't know enough to challenge the system, so by keeping state schools underfunded and keeping private schools overfunded, we breed those with a belief that they are born to rule. They themselves are taught to believe that they know best, not just in education, but in everything else.

The outcome of course is teams of politicians who are 'born to rule".

What happens then is that those education institutions which are deemed unnecessary such as TAFE colleges and schools which cater for those who do not want to be professional people like doctors or lawyers or architects or dentists - or even teachers - are underfunded and forced to close, leaving hundreds if not thousands of those who want different types of education with no available institutions and unemployed or underemployed teachers.

Then these same governments want to make more money out of property and other money-raising ventures and decide to ensure that more of the population are able to live closer to the cities by subdividing properties and making greater demand of schools which have been closed and the properties they were on very often sold - to further developers.

In the Melbourne suburb of Preston a primary school was closed about 8 years ago and now with development of medium density housing all over the suburb with attendant huge population increases, a girls high school was closed a few years ago and stands empty at the moment, with population increases all the time with all the new developments.

One doesn't have to be a genius to see that this is an exercise in futility and all governments are to blame for creating this situation.

VICTORIA THE EDUCATION STATE it is not and never will be!

AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION BEING DESTROYED BY THE GOVERNMENT

For as many years as one can remember, successive Australian governments and politicians on both sides of the political "non-divide" have criticised the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)[or Commission as it was all those years ago] for being too left, too right, too biased, too ..........(fill in whatever words seem suitable) and have tried to reduce funding in the regular budgets and updates in order to bring the ABC to its knees.

So far no politicians have succeeded, but now, at last, at the end of JULY 2014, it seems as if Tony Abbott and his loyal band of morons may have done it at last.

ABC Classic FM has just been decimated, and it seems many other programmes are about to follow suit. Funding has been reduced and costs have to be cut and SBS is no doubt having similar operations as I type!

Is this the way this government is going in Australia - to ruin any pretensions of cultural icons which have lasted until now?

Having lived through the devastation of apartheid South Africa on the media for so many years, are we now going to witness apartheid Australia follow suit?

In the lod days in South Africa we used to use short-wave and tune in to the BBC and other overseas countries in order to find out what was happening in the outside world. It looks very much as if it is happening now in Australia.

There was recently a disaster when a plane was shot out of the sky over the Ukraine. 300 people were killed. In Gaza the Israelis have already killed over 1000 Palestinians and rising, but what do you get on the ABC? Constant bleating about the tragedy of the loss of 300 lives but not an awful lot about the tragedy of well over 1000 lives. Are any of all of these people more "guilty or innocent" than any others? What sort of distorted moralities do our politicians have, and are the citizens of this country so brainwashed that they are unable to do something about it all?

IN SUPPORT OF DR RODNEY SYME AND DYING WITH DIGNITY VICTORIA

My partner is 91 and I am 87. We are very fortunate in many respects, mainly concerning our physical and mental health.
We do not own a car and are fortunate enough to own our own house which we maintain in reasonable order - it doesn't get cleaned and vacuumed as much or as often as it probably needs - but it is tidy and clean enough so that when people visit us the house does not resemble a pig sty!

We do our own cooking and don't get any help for anything around the house including the garden, which is small, and when the grass needs mowing - which with our drought conditions doesn't happen as often as it used to when we moved to Melbourne from New South Wales 13 years ago - friends had given us an electric mower as a house warming gift and it has been a fantastic help!

The tram to the city is two corners away, there are two buses down the road, and if we need to, a train to the city is within a 25-minute walk from the house.

We have a post box at a post office which is now about 30 minutes' walk away - it used to be about 20 minutes in the old days! - and Preston Market is about a 25 minute walk each way and we do most of our food and grocery shopping once a week there - with a shopping trolley!

So, why worry about euthanasia?

Well, because we are the ages we now are, we have seen many friends and relatives dying of diseases which have caused untold pain and suffering and they have often died agonising deaths in terrible situations.

In the 1990s, when the AIDS epidemic was still at its height, we were both carers for people living with, and dying from AIDS-related diseases which were horrifying and frightening to witness - and to be part of the caring process for.

We are also aware that many doctors treating these patients were often in despair over how to alleviate the suffering of so many - mostly young - people at the time - mostly in their twenties and thirties - and when matters became desperate for the doctors and the patients, the patients often requested - and were helped with - euthanasia in one form or another.

At that time, from the mid 1980s to about 1997 when multiple therapies became available and converted inevitable death into a chronic but liveable condition, dozens of people with AIDS asked for and were given medications to hasten death.

If the people involved in these situations at the time had been prosecuted on the grounds of euthanasia - doctors, nurses, friends, relatives - the courts would have been over-crowded and the legal bills would have been inordinately large.

Authorities knew what was happening and chose to turn a blind eye to the events occurring virtually on a daily basis at the time.

We don't know what will happen to us in the time left to us, but we have done our best, under existing laws, to cover our requirements at the end of life period with such items as legal and medical powers of attorney and our requirements when life quality becomes unbearable and we feel we have had enough and don't want to suffer any longer.

We want euthanasia to be an option available to people in our circumstances and we support Dr Rodney Syme and Dying With Dignity Victoria and similar organisations and practitioners throughout the country.

Our politicians are cowards, and none have the guts to treat this matter as urgent and immediate.

SEE ALSO:

Euthanasia Part 1

and links to the following parts: 2,3,4,5,6,7,8

ASYLUM SEEKERS - CRIMES OF POLITICIANS, MEDIA AND OTHERS

Asylum seekers are people who, because of circumstances in the countries from which they have fled, are trying to reach countries where they might be able to live safely and without fear such as they have experienced elsewhere.

To demonise people in these circumstances, which is what the media and politicians have done, is to show total disregard for human rights, and much of this in countries such as Australia, which are signatories to many of the United Nations Charters on Human Rights and the rights of people to seek and obtain - asylum in other countries.

It must never be forgotten that so many of those fleeing are from countries which have been attacked and invaded by Australia and the countries with which it is in unholy alliances.

Because the media in Australia are willing participants in demonising these people, citizens of Australia see these people - as portrayed - as queue jumpers, economic migrants and people who want to enter Australia illegally.

All of these assertions are lies and mostly are done for political gain by most politicians who are each trying to outdo the other in their viciousness against desperate and helpless people who are then incarcerated in concentration camps and treated as criminals of the worst sort when they haven't committed any crimes.

The concentration camps in places such as Nauru and Papua New Guinea - the Manus Island "detention" centre - are run by organisations employed under contract to the federal government and are renowned for the viciousness of their controls in these "camps".

On top of these human rights abuses - there is no end to man's inhumanity to men, women and children - many of the people assessed for security by ASIO and other arms of government, and "found" to be unsuitable for refugee status "because they pose security risks" are then returned to the countries from which they fled, facing arrest, torture, imprisonment and often murder.

Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Pakistan - just to name a few of those places where desperate people flee from - are countries in turmoil, having been invaded by foreign countries or have police state/dictatorship regimes and human rights abuse records where leaders of these regimes should be tried in the International Criminal Court.

Much has been recorded and written about human rights abuses in some of the countries mentioned, but for reasons which are not as yet clear, Sri Lanka seems to have escaped the media's attention until fairly recently, and when it does get mentioned, the Australian government staunchly defends it to the hilt, despite the appalling actions of its dictatorial and police state government. Memories of South Africa and the apartheid state? ....and currently Israel as another apartheid state - but we don't mention Israel!!! - it is always above reproach and one is an anti-semite if you mention the horrific human rights abuses against the Palestinians who, like the Tamils in Sri Lanka don't exist!

So to some articles which have at last started appearing in the main stream media, and here are two examples, one from Geoffrey Robertson, well known to many, dated March 2013, and the other from 28 April 2013:

ARTICLE NO. 1:

Justice crushed in Sri Lanka

March 6, 2013
By Geoffrey Robertson

Commonwealth countries risk a human rights nightmare if they capitulate to the Rajapaksa regime.

Illustration: Andrew Dyson.

The Commonwealth is sleepwalking towards a human rights disaster, if it goes ahead with November's Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Colombo, where it will be presided over by Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Perhaps emboldened by getting away with murder - the army slaughter of some 40,000 Tamil civilians in 2009 - his government has now moved to destroy the independence of the judiciary. It has sacked the Chief Justice for a decision that it finds inconvenient.

Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake, former dean of Colombo Law School and the first woman to be made a Supreme Court judge, is a highly respected jurist.

Last year she infuriated the government by declaring unconstitutional a bill introduced by the President's brother, the Minister for Economic Development, which would have centralised political power (especially at the expense of the northern, largely Tamil province) and would have given the minister wide-ranging powers to infringe civil liberties. So the government decided to remove her and 117 of its tame MPs introduced a bill to impeach her on 14 charges of alleged ''misconduct''.

The principle of judicial independence requires that no judge should be impeached for doing his or her duty, merely because the decision has upset the government. That is exactly what the Rajapaksa government has done in the case of Dr Bandaranayake.

Three of the charges accused her of misinterpreting the constitution. But it is a judge's job to interpret the constitution and she gave it a purposive construction with which most judges - in Australia and elsewhere - would have agreed. Indeed, with two colleagues who joined in her judgment she interpreted the meaning of a key word in the constitution by looking it up in the Oxford English Dictionary - a familiar source of linguistic enlightenment in courts throughout the Commonwealth. But not for these 117 MPs.

Before politicians sack a respected judge, they must at least afford her a fair trial. So to whom did the Speaker, Rajapaksa's elder brother, entrust this task? To a ''Star Chamber'' of seven cabinet ministers.

It sat in secret, refusing the Chief Justice's request to admit the public and refusing to have international observers. It declined to be bound by any rules about the prosecution bearing the burden of proof and it gave her no time to prepare any defence - she was presented with 1000 pages of evidence and told to be ready for a trial starting the following day.

The tribunal chairman told her expressly that it would allow no witnesses, whereupon she and her counsel walked out, despairing of any fair trial. The next day, in her absence and without notice to her, they called 16 witnesses whom she could not in consequence cross-examine.

The result was a foregone conclusion. She was found ''guilty'' on three charges of misconduct on evidence that could not stand up in any real court and could not in any event amount to ''misconduct'' under any sensible definition.

For example, the fact that her bank had addressed her as ''Chief Justice'' on her statements was regarded as an abuse of office justifying her removal. The Supreme Court quashed the Select Committee's findings of guilt, but the President refused to obey their orders.

The President sacked her and appointed the government legal adviser, who had no judicial experience, as Chief Justice in her place. Her impeachment was celebrated with a fireworks display from the Sri Lankan navy and with entertainment, feasting and fireworks supplied by the government.

The prospect of the Queen travelling as head of the Commonwealth to Sri Lanka to provide a propaganda windfall - a royal seal of approval - for the host President after his destruction of judicial independence would make a mockery of the core democratic values for which the Commonwealth is meant to stand.

Canada has already signalled it may refuse to attend what will be a showcase for the regime, but Bob Carr is determined that Australia will be there, a position that is sure to damage Australia's standing on human rights. Mauritius, an exemplary democracy, is willing to host CHOGM, and that's where it should take place.

Geoffrey Robertson, QC, is a former UN appeal judge and the author of Crimes Against Humanity. Read his report at

barhumanrights.org.uk

ARTICLE NO.2:

'Hypocritical' government ignoring Sri Lankan abuses: Greens

By Chris Johnson
April 28, 2013

Greens leader Christine Milne has accused the government of placing domestic politics ahead of human rights by refusing to boycott the coming Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Sri Lanka.

And Amnesty International says the violations there should be more seriously considered when Australia is forming refugee policies.

Its campaign co-ordinator, Ming Yu, said a new Amnesty International report to be released on Tuesday, titled Sri Lanka - Assault on Dissent, provided ample evidence that violations were escalating.

''We would encourage the Australian government to properly consider all the credible evidence that exists on this issue and take it into account when making their asylum seeker polices,'' Ms Yu said.

''Amnesty International would like to see Australia and the whole international community insist that if these kinds of human rights abuses continue then the government of Sri Lanka not host CHOGM or be awarded the Commonwealth chair.''

The Greens leader said it was hypocrisy on Labor's part to be sending asylum seekers back to Sri Lanka when its government continued to sponsor human rights violations - and turning a blind eye to those abuses by attending CHOGM was appalling.

Senator Milne said the Australian government was taking a ''hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil'' approach to events in Sri Lanka.

Her rebuke follows Foreign Minister Bob Carr's insistence on being at the November summit despite increasing rights violations.

Senator Carr told ABC's Lateline he was not convinced the Sri Lankan government was engaging in human rights abuses.

''I think some of the stories that have been put to us, when we've checked them out haven't been sustained,'' he said.

He also pointed to evidence of improvements in the country when it came to human rights and said boycotting CHOGM would be counter-productive. ''I think the concerns we've got about human rights in Sri Lanka are best met through engagement with that country,'' he said.

But Senator Milne, who last year visited Sri Lanka and heard of some of the atrocities committed there, said the Australian government's position could not be sustained.

She said Australia should follow Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's example and refuse to attend the summit unless there were dramatic improvements in Sri Lanka.

Mr Harper does not believe claims made by the Sri Lankan government that it killed only Tamil Tiger rebels and not Tamil civilians.

He told his country's question period last week that without major reform in Sri Lanka he would not personally go to the meeting in Colombo.

''I know we are deeply troubled by the direction in Sri Lanka and the fact that Sri Lanka is, at this point, the host of the next Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting,'' he said.

''I know suggestions have been made of any number of countries who would be willing to host that.''

Senator Carr appeared to dismiss Canada's position and said all Commonwealth countries were expected to attend the summit.

''Apart from Canada, I can identify no other country in the 55-member Commonwealth that would not be represented at Colombo,'' Senator Carr said.

But Senator Milne said the government's excuse for not taking a stronger stance was weak.

It was trying to bring about change by engaging with Sri Lanka, which would work only if Australia was prepared to be blunt.

But the government wanted asylum seeker issues ''off its plate'' before the election and so would not properly engage Sri Lanka, she said.

''It really is a closed loop between the Australian government, the Sri Lankan government and the churn of asylum seekers, and no questions asked about what actually is going on in Sri Lanka as we speak,'' she said.

''If Australia, being on the UN Security Council, wants to be taken seriously in this region as a middle power, then we've got to be seen to be putting at the head of our agenda the strengthening of human rights.

''It should not be pushing it to the bottom of the agenda beneath domestic political considerations in relation to an election and asylum seekers.''

Prime Minister Julia Gillard did not comment, a spokeswoman saying there was nothing to add to Senator Carr's remarks.

Asylum seekers have been political footballs to politicians and human rights abuses have been ignored along the way. Concentration camps are run under contract by some of the worst organisations in the world - Serco and G4S are the two which come to mind - and everything that goes on in the camps is, as it were, behind closed doors - literally. People who have tried to go to Nauru and Manus Island to see for themselves what is going on there, find it almost impossible to get access, and this is yet another example of the way the federal government wishes to hide their disgrace from the public gaze.

They prefer to treat asylum seekers as "others" - people who are "different" from us - they are not white middle class anglos - they are - what???

Through our media and politicians we tell the Australian population that these people will take away their jobs, that they have these strange religions and customs which are alien to our "way of life" and we will become tainted by them!

The fact is, this is a country of migrants and asylum seekers and was ever thus after displacing and killing off the indigenous population and treating them with apartheid disdain to rot in their own "outback" concentration camps.

I started this petition some time ago when the federal government and its friendly opposition were vying with each other to see who could torture people who had already been traumatised by their persecution due to wars which Australia had been busy fighting in countries with which it had no right to be involved in.

People quickly lost interest in the issue because of other scandals blowing up around that time and subsequently the two concentration camps used by the Howard government were found to be useful for incarcerating those managing to get to Australia alive!

It is time to resurrect the petition and ask you to get your friends to sign it too. Thanks for your assistance in this humanitarian crisis.

Stop Australian Incarceration of Asylum Seekers

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/13/stop-australian-incarceration-of-asylum-seekers/

Target: Australians and International communities
Sponsored by: Mannie De Saxe, Lesbian and Gay Solidarity, Melbourne

Australia is trying to negotiate an off-shore solution to Asylum Seekers coming to Australia in boats which are not seaworthy, and which have already been responsible for many drownings offshore. The latest attempt is the so-called Malaysian solution involving Australia sending 800 asylum seekers to Malaysia in exchange for 2000 refugees in Malaysia. Both the Australian Government and its parliamentary Opposition are demonising people fleeing desperate situations in their countries of origin, mainly because of Australian military intervention in those countries.

The total numbers of asylum seekers trying to enter Australia is a miniscule number in terms of refugees and asylum seekers around the world, and most of the people in Australia illegally have arrived by plane!

Australia is signatory to United Nations conventions on refugees but is ignoring these UN documents in its political attempts to stop the demonised "boat people" ever setting foot in Australia.

Help to obtain justice for Asylum Seekers in desperate situations.

The situation has worsened with the federal government reopening the concentration camps on Nauru and Manus Island.

Get the government to close these camps now.

____________________________________________

To highlight the crimes committed by our governments in the name of "border protection" - lies if ever there WERE any! - come some more alarming stories from our infamous concentration camps. The following item was in The Age newspaper on 29 APRIL 2013:

Refugee advocates push to end detention

By Thomas O'Byrne
Demonstrators demand refugee rights.

Refugee advocates have rallied outside a Broadmeadows detention centre following two suicide attempts at the facility last week.

More than 200 people assembled outside the Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation site on Sunday, pushing for an end to mandatory detention. Organisers said their action was precipitated by the two attempted suicides last Wednesday, one involving a 17-year-old Iraqi boy.

Among the crowd was a former asylum seeker who said public support, in the form of letters and rallies, helped his fellow detainees deal with depression and suicidal thoughts. ''I did not have a name. I was number 27,'' he said, declining to be named. ''We were dehumanised.''

Rally organiser Lucy Honan said it was unfortunate it had taken the tragedies at the detention centre to shine a light on the issue. ''We want to send a message to the two major political parties that there are members in the community for whom this is an election issue,'' she said.