Deport him.  See how he appreciates it.

Australia’s answer to Bill O’Reilly has done it again.  Reading his latest column, well you can see what I’m getting at.  Bolt tackles the mammoth subject of asylum seekers and refugees in an argument that amounts to a gross mischaracterisation of… pretty much everything.

In no particular order,

• Howard’s Pacific Solution was the shiz

Bolt insinuates, bluntly, that the Pacific Solution under Howard was the answer to Australia’s refugee problem.  Fewer refugees came to the Australian continent, therefore it must have worked.  Unless of course there was a global downturn in refugees towards the end of Howard’s reign while the Pacific Solution was in place.

• Deterrents will stop people from coming

Imagine for a moment that you’re a father.  Your wife is dead, killed in local unrest.  Your life is ruined, your home burned and the lives of your children and yourself are under threat.  You gotta be a man, stand up, take care of the family.  What are you going to do?  Get yourself on a boat and look for a new future.  That’s what drives you to leave.  Chances are, you’re not going to know how the legal system operates in whatever country you are destined for.  You don’t know your rights, what can or can’t be done.  All you know is that you need to try.  So called ‘push’ factors have a much larger role than any ‘pull’ factors that Liberal Party members, Nationalists, and Conservatives like Andrew Bolt seem to play on.  No matter how brutal you get on these people, they’re still going to give it a shot because it can’t be worse than being gunned down, blown up, raped, set on fire — or any of the other evils you suffer back home.  Which brings me to my next point,

• Queue Jumpers

It is safe to say that anyone who believes there is a ‘queue’ is seriously misinformed.  Simply, there is no queue and often the governments that have persecuted these people have no interest in giving them the passports and other documents they need to travel.  As I have observed before, if you have no documents, you have no soul and virtually don’t exist.

Many of the people who find themselves in refugee camps like Kakuma, where violence and hunger is still common.  For some strange reason, people seem to be under the strange belief that life in a refugee camp is safe, happy and temporary.  Something akin to a holiday camping.  People may live half their lives in these refugee camps before they are even offered the chance to settle elsewhere.  Half a life spent behind razor wire, under the threat of being raped or killed if you leave the boundaries, battling hunger and then the possible divisions that exist inside the camp.  Although I do not claim this is universal, given the alternative, it’s understandable why people will do whatever they can to leave.

• They can pay, so they must not be that well off

Bolt makes this observation, and in response I point out that asylum seekers may be able to pay for a people smuggler to take them across the water to Australia, but notice how they don’t bring much of anything with them?  I don’t know what Bolt imagines when he thinks of refugees, but I can guarantee you that they arent’ dipping into their savings in a Swiss bank to get out.

• We should turn the boats back.  They ain’t ‘genuine’.

Well, I hate to say it, but that would be a breach of Australia’s obligations under international law as we are party to conventions that state, strictly, that a country cannot turn back refugees that are seeking assistance.  That’s the whole point of the refugee convention when, you know, a lot of the world wanted to ‘turn back’ Jewish refugees when Hitler was causing a bit of a ruckus in Europe.

That is, and there is a catch, if they land on Australian soil.  So this is why the Australian government has sunk millions of dollars into building, maintaining and expanding a system where the navy intercepts boats and hauls them off to detention at Christmas island; they are offshore.

And it is worth mentioning that this underscores the difference between a ‘asylum seeker’ and a ‘refugee’ in international law; ‘asylum seekers’ are ‘refugees’ that haven’t had the chance to be processed by the UN.  The major reason why they haven’t been processed is, as I mentioned earlier, the fact that there is ‘no queue’ and, that these people had to flee their homes, in other words, they had to get out fast or die.  So much for not being ‘genuine’.

• Housing them at Christmas Island cost big $$$.  We should send them back.

The biggest irony about this argument made by Bolt, is that he cites statistics provides by a refugee advocate service, which are predominately used to explain why the excessive border control is absurd and impossible to defend.  Secondly, the source of the statistic has the effect of, potentially, leading people to believe that Bolt is being fair and balanced, and certainly if Bolt has been snooping around the publications and websites put up by refugee advocates, he most certainly would be familiar with their myth-busting work.

The biggest problem for Bolt, on the other hand, is defending the mega-money that is needed to fund the navy to patrol our waters, protecting Australia from the life-threatening, doom-bringing, vilest of evil, boat travelling asylum seekers.  Not to mention the ancillary costs that will need to be given to advertising, logistics, persuading foreign governments to go along with the plan, feeding/accommodating/deporting all those that arrive by plane (there are far more), the untold cost to Australia’s international reputation.  These all compound every time we decide to get ‘tougher’ on border protection.  Sometimes it seems it would be easier to just let them all in.

Oh, and Bolt’s solution to the whole issue?

So here’s a simple plan to fix everything – a plan first suggested to me by Family First Senator Steve Fielding to stop the boats dead without being at all cruel.

Let’s announce that from today we’ll send every boatload of “asylum seekers” we intercept to some refugee camp in Indonesia, Pakistan or whichever other country we can persuade to take them.

Yes, you’re right. Those countries won’t want our rejects, so let’s make them an offer they can’t refuse.

For every single boat person they take from us, we’ll take two genuine refugees from their camps.

What could be fairer? We’ll be twice as kind, we’ll send the boat people to safety and we’ll reward not those who’ve pushed in but the refugees who have waited the longest in line.

Two refugees for every boat person. Guaranteed to stop the flood like nothing Rudd has ever tried.

Don’t you just love it when Bolt calls them ‘rejects’?  Nothing like a bit of callous disregard for human life to get you hot under the collar.

Recently, I told a self-confessed socialist that I opposed ‘nationalism’.  Her draw dropped.

The same day I somehow found myself in an argument with a person who can only be described as ultra-nationalist over the topic of refugees and asylum seekers.  I told him ‘nationalism’ was absurd and I rejected it.  His draw dropped and he stared at me for a good 10 seconds.

Such comments seem to shock people, particularly when I inform them I don’t regard myself as ‘Australian’.  However, most people are then pushed to ask whether or not identify as some other nationality.  I tell them my ethnic/cultural heritage and then tell them that I don’t identify with any of these either.  I have no interest in joining one team or another, and this is what seems so shocking to people.

‘Citizenship’, for me, is just a legal document that has no real meaning except that it is a hoop erected by the State for me to jump through in order to do certain things.  It’s necessary in this regard only.

‘Australia day’ is ‘invasion day’, because that’s what it was.  I have no interest in perpetuating ‘Australia Day’ as a celebration of the ‘founding of the nation’ and a collective celebration of ‘Australianism’, when that ‘Australianism’ was founded upon the blood and bones of the indigenous inhabitants of this continent.

My understanding of ‘Self’ is all important in this.  It’s how I identify and clearly my understanding differs from the vast majority of people or I wouldn’t shock them when I mention it.  But why does mine differ other peoples?

We create a particular stereotype by defining ourselves by what we are not.  We then draw arbitrary lines to divide ‘us from them’ in order reinforce that stereotype and perpetuate it.   But little do we realise that what this creates is a bunch of ideas and nothing more, because these ideas are abstract and not based on in reality.  What makes a thing or a person the ‘other’ is make-believe.

However the damage is done. We have created an idea of what we ought to be, or what we ought to do to be ‘Australian‘.  Governments are the catalyst in this process as they mould it, expanded it and promote it because they profit from it.  It allows them to inspire us to band together, to play as a team for the good of the nation, to go fight and die for some concept of this shared, national identity.

Once a particular way of ‘being’ is created, a pressure is exerted upon every individual to conform to that vast collection of memes; to be Australian.  But in reality, that stereotype is false.  It doesn’t exist.  Remove ‘what we are not’ and parts of ‘what we are’, are removed with them.

It’s this that I oppose because the individual tries to be something.  They are trying to ‘be Australia’ when the entire concept of what an ‘Australian’ is doesn’t exist.  Ask anyone to define what, exactly, is ‘Australian’ and then compare it to reality and you find that it’s indefinable.  Thongs, shorts, shrimp on the bare-e, green and gold and singlets may be the ‘average Australian’ to many — and many people try to ‘be’ this, because it is what they think being ‘Australian’ is.  But all it takes is to look around you at the people who pass you in the street to see just how wrong it is.  Even the idea of Australian’s being ‘layed back’ and ‘larrikins’ is a farce.  They may be personality traits for some, but I know many who are highly strung, humourless and depressed.

So then, the individual in pursuit of that identity of ‘Australian’, over compensates.  They alter their behaviour to conform to what they believe is ‘Australian’, when really it doesn’t exist.  A person with black skin may see being ‘white’ as a requirement for being Australian and so bleach their skin to gain acceptance.  In the statement, ‘I am Australian’, the ‘Australian’ part is meaningless and the statement becomes, merely, ‘I am.’  Anything after that is bullshit.  This same thinking can be extrapolated to all sorts of thought processes that designate ‘us’ and ‘them’, and ultimately ends in destroying the ‘other’ or an individual fundamentally changing their ‘Self’ to gain acceptance.

Nationalism then, is simply a weapon for Governments who can increase their control by propagating this idea that somehow ‘our team’ is better and/or under threat from ‘their team’.

However, the biggest issue at hand then, is how to square with ‘positive’ nationalist movements which help to re-establish a marginalised or suppressed identity, such as indigenous peoples from around the world.  After all, these movements are positive in that they create a sense of solidarity among minorities and help them talk back to the privileged majority.  Nationalism re-establishes the oppressed as a cohesive unit and says, ‘we exist and you won’t walk over us.’  How could an anti-nationalist, such as myself, recognise, support and even work with nationalist movements such as these that seek to protect and established an oppressed minority as equals?

To be sure, there seems to be a contradiction.  But, I think, it needs to be recognised that such nationalist movements are positive and present a benefit to those they try to help.  That should be supported, but there is a limit on that support, as nationalism as a theory is not an ends in itself.  As a matter of course, nationalism requires the individual to bend and change the Self in order to accommodate it.  A person will over-compensate in order to gain acceptance and prove that they are more, to use previous examples, ‘Australian’ than you or the other, and I believe this is where the limit lies.  Acceptance is a powerful tool and weapon.  When a movement changes from re-establishing and fighting for the fair treatment and safety of a minority, to being one where the granting or removal of acceptance becomes contingent on the individual trying to ‘be‘ something more than themselves (eg, more hardcore than you), than support should be withdrawn.  Equally, when those movements call for the hatred or destruction of the other, support should be withdrawn.

No support should be given to any movement, organisation or theory from a point where it demands that a person hates their Self and attempts to destroy their Self for acceptance or where it demands that a person hate and destroy their friends, loved ones and supporters on the basis that they belong to ‘the Other’.

Soon South Australian’s everywhere will go to the polls.  It’s election season and politicians are out kissing babies and visiting places they would normally avoid like the plague to score cheap votes.  Signs have been erected at bus stops urging people to ‘Vote4You’ and all those annoying posters have been put up on street lamps around the place, with the particular candidate in a suit, sporting the faux grin, looking confident and, most importantly, competent.

And it’s that slogan, ‘Vote4You’ that’s the object of my current distaste.  You’ll see it around the place, on the static posters as bus stops and on buses, or you’ll see it on TV with the people jumping and pulling rebellious rock and roll-esque poses in order to connect with the young people of South Australia.  And just think about it for a moment; Vote–4–you.

Really?

Because last time I checked, I wasn’t the one going into parliament to vote on things such as whether or not the State government can attack freedom of association by first targeting unpopular groups such as the Bikies.  And let’s face it, we don’t get much choice in the matter.  Mike Rann has run the state with an iron fist since coming into parliament.  With an excellent Public Relations team preserving his public image, keeping the papers quiet, keep journalists on their toes so their too busy to be assignment with real issues and then allowing them just enough time, in a controlled environment, for Rann to get a final rebuttal to some opposing argument on a key issue.

Add into this the obscene focus on rebuilding the State’s hospital in front of the UniSA CityWest Campus, which has been the cause of so much mud-slinging between the two major parties, and it makes me sick into my own scorn — bottom line, lot’s of money is going to be spent either way.

Which brings me Isobel Redmond, who has just about as much charisma as Rann, zero.  She makes a point of walking Hindley Street late on Saturday nights to meet and greet all the youngsters out there and talk to them about her policies.  She even went so far as to be visiting Tea Tree Plaza to do the same to young people while they shop and suck their boost juice.

Rann has now promised ‘police-trained security guards’ for trains to improve the use of public transport.  They are to be armed with guns, batons and pepper spray.  Because placing armed, trained ‘officers of the law’ on public transport in a confined space is not going to get anyone killed, at all.

Yeah, that’s really going to go down well.  And I’m saying this as someone living in the Salisbury/Elizabeth area.

Which brings me to my point.  These people don’t care.  They’re focussing on getting re-elected so they can continue to enforce their particular brand of morality of morality on the rest of us.  Sometimes that morality comes in the form of Trevor Grace, other time’s it’s Rann kissing a baby somewhere in a city park.

So I end this by saying, simply, that I do not accept any of these candidates as my leader.  I do not want a leader and refuse to legitimise their positions.  In fact, our political leaders are no different to the Gang of 49, the Bikies Rann loves to hate and the ‘NewBoys’ street gang.  Only difference is that they wear less tattoos, more suits and employ a media management team.

So, when it comes time to perform my ‘encouraged’ democratic duty I will truly Vote4Me and by not casting a ballot.

Because only I can.

In what could be a legal test case, Nathan Michael Wilkie, 19, faces one charge of offensive behaviour after police arrested him while he was listening to music by underground rapper Kid Selzy on his car stereo.

Wilkie was parked outside a supermarket in Timboon, near Warrnambool, waiting for his mother, when he was arrested.

The Warrnambool Magistrates Court heard Wilkie was listening to rap with explicit lyrics such as “shut your f . . . . . . mouth bitch, f. . . motherf. . . . .”

The court was told the arresting officers found the music offensive and derogatory to females.

Mr Wilkie allegedly told officers: “You’re a joke, go do some real police work”.

The teenager is believed to be the first person charged under Australian law with offensive behaviour for listening to music.

Wilkie plans to plead not guilty when his case continues on June 11.

In a statement, Wilkie said he was thankful to have the support of Kid Selzy, who planned to attend the June hearing.

“As Selzy said, `I know what I mean and the people who buy it know what I mean, and that’s what really matters’,” Wilkie said.

“I have lost two of my best mates in the last couple of years in tragic circumstances and I feel that listening to his music relates to life.”

Kid Selzy, who gave his real name only as Jack, said he was astounded at the arrest. “It’s a joke that some kid’s been arrested for doing something that’s not illegal,” he said.

“It’s not illegal to have your windows down or to buy a CD. It seems to be a waste of taxpayers’ dollars. If profanity’s not your thing, don’t listen.”

And South Australian Attorney General Michael Atkinson, gets his Christian religious crazy on, yet again.

A GROUP that says video games and violence are like smoking and lung cancer has received tens of thousands of dollars in funding from SA Attorney-General and outspoken R18+ game critic Michael Atkinson.

An expert from the Australian Council on Children and the Media this week told a TV news program the link between violent games and youth violence was stronger than tobacco and cancer.

“It’s much greater than the effect of smoking on lung cancer,” psychologist Dr Wayne Warburton said.

It’s the strongest claim yet in the war of words over video game ratings which has heated up after a call for public input on the issue that drew 55,000 submissions.

A spokesman for Mr Atkinson told news.com.au his department provided an annual grant to the council under its trading name Young Media Australia.

The grant is to support a project called “Know Before You Go” that offers parents information about which films are suitable for children.

Relevance, you may ask?  Well this ties into the whole attitude of Australian instititutions towards censorship and expression.

Looming elections always bring the crazies out of the walls and especially so in Adelaide, notorious for its quiet, rigid, conservatism.  No one else seems to epitomise the more… extreme end of that conservatism than Trevor Grace, self-proclaimed saviour to the ‘unborn’, ‘pro-life’ fanatic who runs the website AbortSA.com.  The website uses bad science, scare tactics and horrific imagery in order to denounce ‘Abortionists’ and implicitly defame any woman who has sought and/or undergone an abortion.  Reading the section on ‘Rape and Abortion’ is so condescending and infuriating but when Mr Grace finally comes to make his point we are provided with the following nugget of wisdom;

“Practically, there are numerous legal problems with rape exception clause in an anti-abortion law; in that rape and incest pregnancies are easy to fake and hard to prove. After considering this problem and the statistics, a New Zealand commission in 1977 (on contraception, abortion and sterilisation) which suggested a significant liberalisation of New Zealand’s abortion law, recommended against allowing abortion for rape because the incidence of such pregnancies was too low, and the likelihood of false reports too high, to warrant a rape exception.

The appropriate response to rape and incest pregnancy is not abortion, but counselling, support and creative caring, to minimise the damage done by the crime rather than adding the evil of taking life to the crime of rape.“

Not even sure if I can be bothered explaining why this is, how should we say, ‘bullshit’.  Any talk of ‘minimising’ the ‘harm’ caused by rape is absurd, and especially when, like Mr Grace, you want the woman to give up her life, her time, her youth, her money, her freedom to give birth to, raise and care for the baby of the man who assaulted and raped you.  But then Mr Grace wouldn’t really understand, since he can’t get pregnant if someone decided to force themselves on him.

Anyway, there you have it.  Debunk, ridicule and insult at your leisure.

Care of the ABC

Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has described sex as “one of life’s great pleasures”, but says it is often difficult to find the time for it on the campaign trail.

Speaking just weeks after he courted controversy by making comments about women’s virginity, Mr Abbott said he did not subscribe to a “hair shirt” view of the good things in life.

“It is one of life’s great pleasures,” he told Launceston’s The Examiner.

“Let’s face it, it’s almost impossible to have when you are on the campaign trail.

Can I just say, for the record, ew.  Seriously.  If Mr Abbott wants to correct his public image and appeal to ‘modern day Australia,’ going from good, wholesome, Catholic values to free lovin’ hippy probably isn’t the way to do it — particularly when you consider this PR is about astransparent as George W Bush standing on an American battle-ship to declare ‘victory’.

And there is also the fact that he is a politician that wishes to assume control of the greatest, most violent institution for his own personal benefit and the benefit of his politicial allies and supporters.  Kind of puts a negative spin on… well… the ‘glory’ of it all.

Mr Abbott also told the Examiner he disliked the “Captain Catholic tag” that had been ascribed to him.

“The only one of the Ten Commandments that I am confident that I have not broken is the one about killing, and that’s because I haven’t had the opportunity yet,” he said.

Don’t worry, he’ll get his chance to drop bombs on the rest of the world if he wins the next election.  Then it’ll be 10 for 10.

This is the choice we’re given for the next PM.  Abbott or Rudd.  And we’re supposed to like it?

As of today, new laws will come into force in South Australia, allowing the Police Commissioner to crush the cars of ‘hoon drivers’ that have been impounded.  Why this even deserves a mention is that a great number of people apparently support such moves to punish ‘hoons’, a group which are characterised all too often as another one of those great, foreboding, malevolent forces which plagues the great state of South Australia.

But.

The potential for harm is huge.  The idea behind the scheme is that crushing the cars will provide a deterrent to all those rev-head’s out there driving their done-up cars at a speed for exceeding any limit.  Of course, that’s not how it works out here in the real world.  Hoon drivers can be broken up into either those with money who can afford the expensive cars as if they were toys, in which case the crushing of the car will have no real effect anyway, or those young men and adolescents who have no real direction or purpose in life and so spend what money they earn on enhancing their car — their pride and joy.  A majority of these people are from the North.

To put it bluntly, many of those in this category aren’t that bright.  They’ve never been academic or sporting heros.  These are the, mostly, young men who have dropped out of high school or finished it with no real idea of where they want to go or what they want to do.  Many work as mechanics, on factory lines, as removalists or occasionally in retail.  Some are in gangs.  With no purpose in life, these people have their cars and their girlfriends.  All their money is then funnelled into improving the car.  Making it go faster, look better, sound like it has more balls.  The car becomes their pride and joy, the reason for their existence.  When they drive, they drive it fast, granted and I make no apologies for this.

Enter laws that allow their cars to be crushed.

Imagine if you can, the line of logic these ‘hoon’ drivers are going to follow the moment they are discovered driving at 110kmph in an 80 zone.  You know something about cars being crushed.  You’ve heard about it.  Your friends have talked about.  One’s even had it happen to them.  If you pull over, your car will be crushed.  Your pride and joy, the very thing that drives you to get up in the morning to go to work, to see your girlfriend, to eat even.  If you pull over, it will be taken away and crushed by guys in a blue uniform.  What are you going to do?

The answer is simple; run.

You will run.  You will see those red and blue lights and you will plant your foot on the accelerator and take off as fast as you can.

If you ask anyone commonly classed as a ‘hoon’ their opinion on the subject, and more precisely what they will do, they will give you the same response every time;  “I will run.”

Then ask yourself, what happens when these people run?  Their speed increases exponentially.  They become not just a serious threat to themselves, but their passengers and anyone else on the road.  Every second that passes their speed increases and they become even more of a threat than they were when they were speeding just to get from point A to B.  They will exceed the the 110k’s you were doing moments before.  They are panicked, arrogant and dead-set on getting away.  The chances of an accident occurring increase to 99%.  They are almost guaranteed to kill someone else on the road, themselves or at least crash, come out alive and be thrown in prison for the rest of their lives for a series of driving offences.

And if they actually pull over and their car is crushed?  If they weren’t in a gang before, they’ll certainly join up soon enough.

So enjoy South Australia.  In the process of trying to fervently to cure a problem like hoon driving with authoritarian laws, you are exponentially increasing the chances someone will wind up dead, not to mention ruining the lives of your least advantaged members.  Oh wait, but they don’t particularly matter when all they do is build your houses, fix your pipes or work on a car assembly line.  Besides, they’re evil, rotten, criminal hoons anyway.  They deserve it.

Normally, I don’t do movies.  Especially hyped blockbuster movies which everyone tells me how great is.  9/10 the ‘groundbreaking’ new film is another mass-produced two hour flick with no real meaning, substance or essence, unless, of course, it is somehow reasserting the status quo.  But I went to see Avatar after reading the review ‘Avatar’s [...]

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