Refugees...and their plight on many levels

With Australia having just installed a new PM - well, the old one thrown out by his own colleagues - she has been attempting to head off, by effectively racing it to the bottom, the Opposition's policy on illegal refugees. It is a slippery slope and does neither party any credit let alone Australia as a true democracy and humane peoples.

Greg Barns comments on the ABC's online Unleashed:

"It comes as no surprise to this writer that newly minted Prime Minister Julia Gillard would quickly succumb to the politics of the low road on asylum seekers.

I predicted as much a fortnight ago on this site, and sadly Ms Gillard has not proved me wrong.

Her policy position on asylum seekers announced today, a key feature of which is that Australia palms off its responsibilities to one of the poorest countries in the world, East Timor, and a smaller neighbour that we treat with contempt because we are the big boys in the schoolyard, New Zealand, is as immoral and cruel as the nonsense being peddled by a desperate Opposition."

And what does become of those refugees who are returned to their supposedly safe countries? The Independent wondered the same thing and reported in "Special Investigation: Abused, humiliated and abandoned. What really happens when the UK deports failed asylum-seekers".

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Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives? In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t

The NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) goes on hold.....because of one non-Treaty member (Israel)

Isn't there something radically wrong here? Israel, a non-signatory to the NPT has, evidently, been the cause for those countries that are Treaty members, notably Canada, the US and the UK, after 4 weeks of negotiation, effectively blocking off any meaningful progress in ensuring the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. IPS reports ..... "After nearly four weeks of negotiations, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference ended in a predictable outcome: a text overwhelmingly reflecting the views and interests of the nuclear-armed states and some of their nuclear-dependent allies. “The process to develop the draft Review Conference outcome document was anti-democratic and nontransparent,” Ray Acheson, director, Reaching Critical Will, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), told IPS. “This Review Conference has demonstrated beyond any doubt that continuing to rely on the nuclear-armed states or their nuclear-dependent allies for l

#1 Prize for a bizarre story.....and lying!

No comment called for in this piece from CommonDreams: Another young black man: The strange sad case of 21-year-old Chavis Carter. Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas stopped him and two friends, found some marijuana, searched put Carter, then put him handcuffed behind his back into their patrol car, where they say he shot himself in the head with a gun they failed to find. The FBI is investigating. Police Chief Michael Yates, who stands behind his officers' story, says in an interview that the death is "definitely bizarre and defies logic at first glance." You think?

Mahler's Prodigal Son

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