There are few postures quite as serpentine as that of the bully who disguises his cruelty as some kind of love. Sadistic teachers of old were fond of it - the furrowed brow and fraudulent look of regret as they caned you “for your own good” - and the history of xenophobia is rich with creeps who dolled up their barbarism as a humane sympathy for the very people they sought to oppress. The asylum seekers who drowned off Christmas Island last night had barely taken their last breaths when such ghouls began riding their waterlogged bones, boastfully declaring the tragedy a vindication of their own contemptuous beliefs, their allergy to foreigners camouflaged behind a sick exhibition of concern for the very lives they couldn’t give two $#@&s about.  
The argument - which you’ll find all over this very news portal - is that our Government today has the blood of the dead on its hands, Australia’s relaxation of its policy towards asylum seekers having lured such wretches here in the first place. The more “compassionate” policy, they say - one that would allegedly have prevented this tragedy - would be to make life more difficult for such unfortunates, to turn their boats around while at sea, to harass and intimidate them with such rigor as to make traveling to Australia by boat an entirely unattractive proposal.

This argument is lanced by the very incident such frauds are opportunistically using to mount it, for there is no greater deterrent to illegal immigration than death at sea. If deterring asylum seekers is what it’s all about, then last night’s sinking - engineered, apparently, by our Government’s soft hand - will be a far more foreboding advertisement than the prospect of simply having one’s time and money wasted by being turned around. Those who believe in tough love should be applauding the tragedy, if they can work out how to clap with iron fists in velvet gloves.

But the truth is that there’s no love in those voices at all. It’s a pretense. They speak of “deterrent” as some sort of insecticide, the creatures it’s made for mere flies and roaches that scurry about with no more determination than vermin. As if anyone who makes a journey such as this is no more desperate and intelligently resolved than a pigeon looking for somewhere to crap. Put up a scarecrow and they’ll go somewhere else. What despicably ignorant and lordly thinking.

They make a lofty distinction between “genuine asylum seekers” and those who apparently embark on treacherous one-way journeys around the world for fun, or whose efforts to enter our country are fueled by the same base desires as those who attempt to jump the queue at the supermarket. As if the responses to poverty and oppression have ever had anything to do with greed. And as if those who trumpet for the protection of “our way of life” are driven by anything more noble than small-minded avarice and jealous self regard.

The issue of immigration routinely becomes perverted by fanciers of political statistics - whether Australia is taking its “share” of asylum seekers, or at what point Australia’s population becomes “unsustainable”. The heart of the matter has nothing to do with these things. It’s a moral question about whether we have the right to declare a piece of earth our own to the exclusion of all humanity but those we deem “appropriate”. Anyone with a brain capable of a fleeting moment’s existential thought knows that we cannot possibly have that right. Whittled down to the bone, it’s a question of how many - and how much - Australians can’t tolerate wogs. The answer is evidently not a pretty one.

Since our colonial inception, Australia has been a home for the wretched, the unfortunate and the brave, those courageous enough - or stupid enough - to find themselves leaving it all behind in the pursuit of a life on the other side. That the sons and daughters of those very people are slamming the door on beggars is onerous enough. That they’re claiming to do it in the name of “compassion” - today, of all days - is a sick joke, and the sick jokers peddling it should never be taken seriously again.


http://blogs.news.com.au/jackmarxlive/index.php/news/comments/showboat/

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Yes it is.


And more will be coming.
And more children will be placed at risk, thanks to Julia Gillard.
Why, because Julia Gillard has now made it so families can come out as Julia Gillard said that families would be released into the community rather than be placed into detention centres.

darkhall67 wrote on Dec 16^th, 2010 at 3:26pm:





Shame Australia, shame! I heard a man on the radio today, he said that it brought back memories of when he came to Australia on a rickety old boat 15 years ago. He is an anaesthetist working at one of our major hospitals, spoke good English too, better than many of our home bred. An asset for our country, many don't see this though.

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Why can`t you be honest and sensible for once. When you play your dodgy, cheap little games you only disgrace yourself.  People are dying because of weak Govt policy, this isn`t a silly little game.

Secret WikiLeaks US cables criticise Kevin Rudd on boats

   * December 16, 2010 2:13AM

SECRET US embassy cables have criticised the handling of asylum seekers by former prime minister Kevin Rudd.

The cables released by WikiLeaks also accused Labor and the coalition of playing partisan politics with the issue, Fairfax reported today.

The cables show that a close adviser to Mr Rudd failed to persuade him to use the government's powers "to calmly and rationally put the issue in perspective" by acknowledging that only a small number of asylum seekers were arriving by boat compared with tens of thousands overstaying their visas each year.

A cable obtained by WikiLeaks and provided to Fairfax says an unnamed "key Liberal Party strategist" told US diplomats in November last year that the issue of asylum seekers was "fantastic" for the coalition and "the more boats that come the better".

US diplomats reported that Labor insiders regarded it as "politically dangerous" for the party that had promised a more humane approach before the 2007 federal election.

"The Labor Party - which was burnt by this issue at the 2001 election - is fearful of being viewed as 'soft' on border security," the embassy reported to Washington last year, according to WikiLeaks.

The embassy also reported that in parliamentary debate on the issue Mr Rudd had "returned to tedious spin and bureaucratic jargon, making him look evasive and out of his depth".

The cables also revealed federal Labor MP Michael Danby told embassy officers that Mr Rudd had "played the politics badly" and "completely misread" the issue, while coalition strategists were reported as saying the issue was "significant because it was the first time Rudd had been exposed for a lack of leadership and for 'trying to be all things to all people'."

"A cable obtained by WikiLeaks and provided to Fairfax says an unnamed "key Liberal Party strategist" told US diplomats in November last year that the issue of asylum seekers was "fantastic" for the coalition and "the more boats that come the better"."


Even if this is true, it would only reinforce the ALP`s guilt in the upsurgance of people smuggling, and the resultant deaths at sea.

aussiefree2ride wrote on Dec 16^th, 2010 at 9:02pm:



Of course it is true - one only needs to look at the Liberal Party's election platform in 2010 for the divisive spin "STOP THE BOATS"!

Ditto re all previous Federal elections in living memory...

Ditto re the ever-present anti asylum seeker rants by right whingers on these and other Aussie forums...

What I don't get, is why the source is purportedly 'unnamed' in this instance - do the Wikileaks documents not contain the name of the braggart or are the right-wing media protecting their Lib mates when they've shown a propensity to release names with controversial Wikileaks quotes by Lab pollies...