Tony Abbott moralises over asylum seeker deaths

Tony Abbott, who has never been averse to flavouring his politics with his extreme religious views, has set his dearly-held Christianity aside for a minute or two to score some political mileage from the drowning of twelve or more Sri Lankan asylum seekers when their boat sank near the Cocos Islands. This from a man whose government faced substantial and inadequately investigated allegations that they ignored the plight of a sinking boat full of asylum seekers in waters patrolled by Australian border protection surveillance aircraft just prior to the 2001 federal election. Of those people 353, including 146 children, drowned. That has not prevented Tony Abbott from accusing Kevin Rudd of being responsible for the deaths of the 12 or so people feared drowned in this latest incident, despite there as yet being no evidence that the government did not act to help as soon as it was aware the boat was sinking.

Don’t get me wrong. The display we’ve seen from Kevin ‘hardline’ Rudd of late has ensured his government will never see another preference vote from me until the day he stands up and apologises to the people he has wronged as part of this despicable political stunt. And given the consummate politician and slimebag he has proved to be, I really don’t see that happening. I don’t wish to defend his recent treatment of asylum seekers (of whom around 99% are inevitably found to be genuine refugees) in the slightest. But watching one of the men whose government was likely responsible for the deaths of 353 innocent people in an even more heinous politically-motivated disregard for vulnerable human lives try and score points off the moderately less despicable actions of the Rudd government just makes my blood boil.

Additionally, I'm glad to see the Rudd government has taken its first real hit in the polls since it was elected two years ago. Part of the reason it was elected was because a significant proportion of the community (albeit, sadly, a minority) was not ok with the further abuse of the human rights of vulnerable people who come to Australia seeking help. Hopefully this shows that they're not all willing to put up with the perpetrators of these kind of abuses no matter what the perpetrator's political stripes might be.

Learning disability no excuse for Fielding's lack of moral fibre.

The federal senate's most ostentatious christian, Steve Fielding, yesterday voted with the Liberals and Nationals against the Rudd government's move to abolish the barbaric practice of billing refugees at a rate of $125 a day for their involuntary incarceration at the hands of the government. It's a long time since I've been to church... maybe Jesus really would want to persecute refugees and bill them hundreds of thousands of dollars for being locked up in the desert behind razor wire against their will... I'm sure Fielding would know better than I would, being one of the more rabidly evangelical varieties of christian.

Thankfully one person on the opposing side of politics (let's put aside the ongoing pretence that Fielding is not in fact a Liberal), senator Judith Troeth, had enough moral fibre to cross the floor and help ensure the legislation passed.

Not five minutes later, we have Fielding showering himself in self-pity over his 'lifelong learning disability' that he blames for causing several verbal gaffes. Nice try at a distraction, Fielding, but no learning disability is going to excuse your lack of backbone and overwhelming moral failing on this issue, you despicable, hypocritical prick.

National Day of Action for Same-Sex Marriage

August 1 is a national day of action for same-sex marriage in Australia. Every capital city is hosting some kind of event or rally (including Brisbane, for once!), so everyone who's not a bigot should show up and lend their support.

Join the Facebook group, sign up to email updates or whatever- just find out where your nearest rally is being held and head on down on August 1 :)

Dear Liberals

Two Australian citizens are captured and detained without trial by a foreign government. They are charged with serious crimes and look set for a decidedly unfair legal high jump. What should the Australian government do?

A) Jump up and down in a disgusting, arrogant orgy of grandstanding with only the barest concern over the welfare of an Australian in dire straights.

B) Assume they are guilty and abandon them to their fate, they've been arrested by a major ally and trading partner after all, we support their right to defend themselves by any means necessary. If possible, slander them in the media.

C) Work quietly and diligently through established channels to get the best outcome for the person, there are established protocols for this sort of thing and we don't want to go off half cocked.

D) It depends which one is David Hicks and which one is Stern Hu


- Edit: I just want to point out that although my name is at the bottom of this post, Gam is actually the author... I (naughtily) signed on using his computer because my own was temporarily dead and forgot to sign out! The inherent cleverness of the post ought to alert everyone to this fact anyhow :)

-S

Stay and get executed. Go, and be crucified.

From The Australian:

FEARS that ex-Tamil fighters may be passing themselves off as refugees will lead to the latest boatload of unauthorised arrivals - believed to be Tamils - being subjected to a particularly rigorous security screening process

WTF? What threat do they pose here, exactly? Given that ex-LTTE fighters are typically executed on the spot if identified by the Sri Lankan army, how can they not be considered refugees? When some top LTTE officials tried to surrender, a move negotiated by a top UN official, shortly after the end of the official fighting (but surely not the brutality), the Sri Lankan Army shot them in the head.

Until the Sri Lankan government is held to account for its behaviour and is forced to clean up its act, any Sri Lankan who makes claim to being a refugee upon arriving here should have their claim accepted.

Anti-gay bigots cop a serve in mainstream paper

Fairfax's Lisa Pryor, one of the only opinion writers worth reading, pwns the anti-gay-marriage bigots in her latest column. Pwns. It's so rare to see bigots served a big helping of dripping sarcasm like this in a mainstream paper. Go Lisa!

Isn't it heartening to see both sides of politics united in their determination to protect a vulnerable minority from the whims of the majority? Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull both oppose gay marriage against the wishes of the majority of Australians.

This week a poll was published showing 60 per cent of Australians supported the idea of equal marriage laws. Another 4 per cent were undecided, leaving just 36 per cent opposed to gay marriage. Among young voters, support rose to 74 per cent. The poll was commissioned by a lobby group, Australian Marriage Equality, and conducted by the pollster Galaxy.

The stance Rudd and Turnbull are taking may be unpopular, but not everything in politics is about popularity. Obviously they have decided in this case it is more important to protect the persecuted minority of Australians who identify as bigots, a minority whose lifestyle is under attack.

Read on...

Why Rape is Everyone's Problem

I started writing this as a response to MB's post and it turned into an enormous rant so I thought I'd spare her comment box. It's only tangentially related to what she wrote, it's more a comment on the perceptions informing the article she linked to.

"On the subject of rape, when will people realise it is not a form of entertainment?"

Even for women who are turned on by what we would see as sexualised violence? I'm always wary of the, 'it exerts a subtle influence' argument.

Society is what makes rape acceptable. A media that pillories an entire ethnic group because of a few rapists while giving socially important rapists a pass is what makes rape acceptable. In that you can see the concepts of 'our women' being possessions that can be protected from some and given to others. That's what makes rape acceptable. It's the same kind of chauvinism that insists that women are so fragile in society that they must be 'protected' even from imaginary sexual violence. Culture and art of all kinds is largely a *reflection* of society as opposed to a director of it.

There is a well known perception that people hold. It's that media of all kinds is always more influential on the minds of others than themselves. You can completely ban all sexual expression deemed to be inappropriate, but you will still be more at risk of sexual violence in Saudi Arabia than in Japan because they are different societies with different things being acceptable in each. Japan isn't necessarily perfect either but the point here is that when a society determines something should not happen, it will not happen, regardless of imaginary depictions. Just look at paedophilia. 20-30 years ago, the most common way to deal with a paedophile was to simply get kids to avoid them, "don't let person x alone with the kids". Now it is completely and totally beyond the bounds of even inadvertent tolerance in society.

Rape games would be illegal in Australia and yet we have adolescent kids forming rape gangs and sexually assaulting a young girl on film and then selling copies for $5. As far as I can tell, none of them went to prison. I think that says much more about rape as entertainment in our society than the existence of any kind of depiction of rape ever can.

Rape is tolerated in our society and it is all but encouraged as part of our sexist society (we rank only behind the US in the developed world in measures of benevolent sexism). This means that a significant number of women hold the same attitudes towards rape as well. Focussing on games, books, ideas of rape etc. is at best dodging the issue and at worst a flat out waste of time and detrimental to the shared cause of every sensible person who values human rights.

There's no point messing about worrying if this or that depiction of women leads to a society condoning violence against them. We already know the facts. In developed nations at least, when there are high levels of benevolent sexism, people will be more likely to blame a person who is raped by someone they know as opposed to someone they don't know. When the victim is judged to have violated gender roles (this is a benevolently sexist society) people will be more likely to blame the victim. And when the perpetrator has high status compared to the victim, the victim is again more likely to be blamed. This is no mystery. there are mountains of evidence that describe this aspect of our society.

This is why you are fucked if you go out for a good time, wear a short skirt, pash a footy player and wind up being raped by 20 of his mates. Because the people around you will blame you and our society will turn on you like a pack of rabid animals because you stepped out of the bounds of the role that had been defined for you.

Certainly we can screw around with porn, etc. but until we cut through the bullshit and realise that rape happens because someone you know thinks it's excusable under certain circumstances, we're all just wasting our time.

Another horrific reminder

I read this article a couple of weeks ago- another horrific reminder of the kind of callous, inhumane treatment of refugees that occurred under the Howard government- and still occurs, albeit with some significant improvements, to this day.

IMMIGRATION staff plotted to distract a seven-year-old girl with toys so they could take her away while her father languished in solitary confinement.

The father was duped by a former manager of the Baxter Detention Centre, which closed in 2007, when the manager asked if he and his wife could take the child shopping.

"No problem, yes, go and enjoy yourself," the father replied.

In the meantime, another staffer made sure the father would never see his child, dubbed Y, again, and clandestinely spirited her back to Iran.

"If Y requests to say goodbye to her father I will advise her that it is not possible as it could stop her from being returned to her mother in Tehran. We will have several toys for distraction purposes," a file note said.

The "disturbing" case from 2003 was highlighted in a report by the Commonwealth Immigration Ombudsman, Professor John McMillan, which was tabled in Parliament on Tuesday. It has prompted the minister, Chris Evans, to seek ways to compensate the family.

Sickening, no?

So why, on the rare occasion that John Howard pops his slimy little head out of whatever hole he's been hiding in since he was booted out in the 2007 federal election, don't journalists confront him, hound him, and demand to know how he could have created and defended a system where such a disturbing act of cruelty could be carried out?

But if you think it couldn't be worse than the scenario described above, read on. All these acts- and if none of this is a crime then it should be- were carried out on the same man.

The plot to distract the girl - who had arrived on a boat with her father in 2001 - was revealed among a string of other callous acts against the asylum seeker.

The girl was probed by child protection services after they received a tip-off from the government-contracted detention company at the time, Australasian Correctional Management, that she was being sexually abused by her father.

Checks by youth services and child protection officers found no such thing.

By contrast South Australian Family and Youth Services recommended the girl be returned to her father's care and the pair be moved to another detention centre immediately.

Again the Immigration Department ignored the advice, even though the father went on a hunger strike to support his wish to move.
By August 2003, two months after his daughter was taken away, the man was diagnosed as severely depressed, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and prone to anxiety attacks. In October that year he slashed his wrists with a razor blade.

The department also ordered a psychiatrist not to tell the man his daughter had been taken from Baxter.

Stomach-churning, yeah? Utterly indefensible, you'd think. Anyone who took part in this shit needs to be named, and if they are still working for the department they ought to be deprived of their jobs with immediate effect. God knows there are enough psychopaths active in that particular section of the bureaucracy, and the opportunity to remove them should not be passed up if we never want such an incident to happen again. Anyone with any credibility and even an ounce of humanity would have refused to take part in the abuse of this man and his daughter by the Australian government. They would have blown the whistle.

To top it all off, the Howard government applied its famous 'pay for your own indefinite mandatory jailing' to the guy, who has not seen his daughter since she was stolen.

The man was later charged with a detention debt of $288,000, including the cost of his daughter's removal from Australia. The debt has since been written off.

He was given a temporary protection visa in 2005, thereby owed Australian protection - and he now lives in Melbourne.

The department has since apologised to the man and will soon issue an apology to his daughter.

Oh, all better now! Thankfully, current immigration minister Chris Evans is looking at ways to compensate the guy for his mistreatment at the hands of the Howard government. He has also instructed them to assist the daughter and the mother if they wish to apply for visas to join the man. However much they fork over in compensation, it's unlikely to be enough.

What's most galling about all of this is that we paid for it. We paid to have this guy and his young daughter thrown into a prison, we paid the sons-of-bitches who carried out the kidnapping and deportation of his daughter. We paid the people who posted out letters to the man, informing he owed the Australian government a quarter of a million dollars in spite of all they did to him- or because of it. We paid the salary of possibly the most inhuman sicko to become prime minister in at least the last 50 years, and we are paying compensation for the despicable acts carried out under this man's orders.

I won't ever forget the things that were carried out in our name, and I will never vote for someone who supports or attempts to justify treating a person like that.

UN engages in mild hand-flapping over Sri Lanka civilian deaths

With untold thousands of innocent people dead and the Tamil Tigers backed into a corner, the recent shelling of a civilian 'safe zone' and resultant 378 civilian deaths has finally drawn the ire of the UN down upon the Sri Lankan government. Oh and don't forget the 45 dead in the bombing of a hospital by the Sri Lankan government (who as usual deny all knowledge and blame the Tigers for, erm, deliberately murdering the people they're fighting to protect). They're calling it a bloodbath, and that's strong language from those quarters. But where is the real action? You know, sanctions and whatnot? I mean, it's pretty much all over. This has been going on for ages and the UN has scarcely said 'boo'. Calls for 'restraint', which have been the strongest 'criticism' emanating from the UN and Western governments so far, is tantamount to condoning every single action of the Sri Lankan government- it's what western governments do when it's a case of "We're perfectly happy for you to keep doing what you're doing, just please manage the PR side of things a bit better".

After all, the UN is happy to slap a new sanction on Iran every time someone in that government draws breath, yet Iran isn't committing mass murder. And sure it locks up the odd journalist, but it doesn't actively hunt them down and shoot them or blow up their offices like the Sri Lankan government does. Sri Lanka, thanks to its litany of murder and intimidation of any member of the local press who dares question the status quo, is ranked 165 out of 173 countries- lower than any other democracy- on the list of press freedom produced by Reporters Without Borders. The three British journalists recently deported from the country probably ought to thank their lucky stars that as foreigners they are merely abused and not murdered in cold blood.

So where is the West in all this? Why are our governments compelled to engage in nothing more than vigorous hand-wringing on this issue when so many human lives are at stake? I haven't even heard so much as threats of diplomatic sanctions and restrictions on travel of Sri Lankan government ministers and their families to Western countries. Zimbabwe was slapped with sanctions of exactly that sort the minute it started reclaiming the immense tracts of land owned by white farmers in that country. Somehow that was worse than mass murder. How far will the Sri Lankan government be allowed to go before we lift a finger?

Australia: failing to scrape together a collective ounce of humanity since 2001

From the New York Times:

KAKINADA, India — Fleeing the bitter end of a quarter-century-long war, the refugees turned to a boat. It was first a shelter from artillery shells, then a frail craft to safety. Finally, it became a coffin.

The boat was adrift on the Indian Ocean for nine days. Jaya Niranjana’s 3-year-old daughter died. M. Yesudas lost his father, sister, nephew, brothers, and uncle — six in all. An 8-month-old baby, Kuberan, survived only because his mother somehow managed to breast-feed him until just hours before she died.

By the time these refugees fleeing the war in Sri Lanka reached Indian shores last Wednesday, 10 of the 21 original travelers had died or jumped overboard. They had nothing to eat and only saltwater to drink. The scorching sun beat down on their heads. Diarrhea struck. The first child died on April 24, then the others. S. Indira Meenan, 25, recalled it in halting English: “One by one. Dead babies, children. No food, no drink.”

“Twenty-fourth, dead; 25th; 26th,” he went on. “One by one. Dead.”

Guys, give Kevin Rudd a call! Clearly the solution to the problem is to turn back the boats! Or better still, to ensure people are never able to leave the place in which they are being bombed and brutalised. After all, that's what I've been hearing from both the Rudd government lately, with Kevin Rudd repeatedly boasting of his 'hardline' stance on refugees 'people smugglers', and (of course) the opposition who have a policy along the lines of 'if in doubt, resort to stirring up racial hatred'.

India should take a leaf out of Australia's book: if innocent men, women and children are dying before your very eyes, if you see people in desperate need, in dire circumstances, just look the other way. I mean, if a tree falls in the woods...

Success in Afghanistan!

Marriage counselling in the new, free, democratic* Afghanistan

Good news, the Afghan government we now partly own, headed by the nattily dressed Hamid Karzai, has passed a law on rape in marriage and women's rights in general. Afghanistan now has something it never had under the Taliban, marital rape and women's rights legislation. Of course it's legislation that legalises rape in marriage and strips women of their right to work or even leave home without permission, but it's a step in the right direction, if that direction is completely the opposite direction from where we were going.

This law represents the official failure of our adventure in Afghanistan. Anyone who supported it has now officially lost the argument and can go pound sand. Thankyou, you will be contacted next time we need someone to miguidedly support a pointless war with unclear aims as a kneejerk reaction to an incident.

*democracy refers to NewDemocracy, now with 30% less democracy

Refugees no longer charged $125 a day to be jailed

The Rudd government, thankfully, has finally introduced legislation that will scrap the inhumane and downright scummy practice of billing detainees $125 a day for their involuntary incarceration in detention centres. Bear in mind that this practice applied even to those detainees who were found to be in the country legitimately as refugees, leaving some of our nation's most vulnerable people with debts of over $100000.

Does the legislation scrap existing debts and pay back any money taken from people who came to Australia and were later found to be genuine refugees? No. So no recompense for the scumminess that was inflicted upon them, but some comfort in the fact it won't happen to anyone else.

The debts had impeded spouses seeking permanent visas, prevented former detainees from being reunited with family members, even on occasions when the former detainee had been found to be a refugee.

Just lovely. The legislation has been in place for nearly two decades (since 1992) and no Australian government has seen fit to scrap it. They were all happy to let that policy stand. It says a lot about the calibre of people who hold power in this country.

Holocaust deniers welcome in Benedict's house.

I just love how Pope Panzerfaust is fiiiiine with welcoming a holocaust-denying bishop back into the Catholic flock, meanwhile a Brisbane Catholic priest has been sacked for focusing on issues of social justice not hating on the gays as much as official Catholic policy says he should- and all in spite of Fr Peter Kennedy having the full support of his remarkably unbigoted congregation.

Man, I don't think I need to say anything more. The Catholic church's stance on these issues says it all.

Murugathasan Varnakulasingham

His life had taken him from the northern tip of Sri Lanka to a pebble-dashed semi in north-west London and finally to a cold square in Geneva. But it is for his death that the 26-year-old Tamil, Murugathasan Varnakulasingham, is likely to be remembered.

A little after eight o'clock last Thursday night, the computing graduate and part-time Sainsbury's shelf-stacker doused himself in petrol in Geneva and set light to his body outside the United Nations complex in the Place des Nations. Police officers rushed to try to save Murugathasan, who stood "burning like a torch", but he was too badly injured. A few metres away, they found a letter typed in Tamil and English explaining why he had chosen to die: "We Tamils, displaced and all over the world, loudly raised our problems and asked for help before [the] international community in your own language for three decades. But nothing happened ... So I decided to sacrifice my life ... The flames over my body will be a torch to guide you through the liberation path."

From the Guardian.

I remember reading about a prominent rabbi who committed suicide after trying fruitlessly to draw attention to the plight of the Jews in Europe. It is the last and biggest gesture someone can make. No-one listened to him, either, and decades later we still say 'never again'. We say it while the Palestinian people are slaughtered in their thousands, starved and deprived of the necessities of life. We say it while the Sri Lankan government engages openly in yet more brutality, its final solution, against a section of the population in that country who have been historically discriminated against and victimised. The Tamil Tigers are designated a terrorist group by western governments. The Sri Lankan government openly commits murder of journalists and others in the country who support the Tamils' cause, its actions never coming under scrutiny by the international community.

If humanity can't learn from the Holocaust, what scale of cruelty, murder and disaster will it take to make us learn to value human life?

Thailand toxic on human rights

The recent flow of news concerning Thailand has left me thinking that the government of that place is little better than Burma, the baddie of the Asia-Pacific region.

Not only have they managed to outdo our former PM, John Howard, in the brutal mistreatment of refugees (towing over 1000 Burmese Rohingya refugees out to sea without food or water in rickety boats lacking engines, leaving most of them to die), they've also locked up at least one Australian on trumped up 'les majeste' charges of insulting the monarchy- a convenient reason to lock up anyone who says anything that rankles members of Thailand's elite.

I've always pictured Thailand as a sunny place of beaches and idyllic islands, lovely people, buddhist religion, a rather exciting red light district and generally a nice place for Australians to go on holiday. Not so much at present. The treatment of Australian author Harry Nicolaides should be reason enough for Australians to boycott Thailand as a tourist destination or even a stop-over. Their treatment of Burmese Rohingya refugees, however, is something that needs to be given serious attention by the International Criminal Court.

Documenting more Israeli war crimes

A pattern of behaviour. From The Weekend Australian:

THREE witnesses have claimed that Israeli soldiers shot in cold blood two civilians who had their hands in the air on the second day of the Israeli offensive in Gaza.

In an investigation by The Weekend Australian in Gaza, the three people making the claim were on a tractor that was stopped by Israeli soldiers about 4 o'clock in the afternoon of January 4 in northern Gaza - the second day of Israel's ground operation.

Two of the witnesses were on a trailer being pulled by the tractor and the third was sitting on one of the wheel coverings.

They say Israeli soldiers who had taken over a house they were driving past shouted from a balcony for them to pull over.

When two of the men, Matar Abu Halima, 18, and Mohammed Abu Halima, also 18, got off the tractor with their hands in the air, they were shot several times in the chest. One died instantly, the other shortly after. A few minutes later, two others on the tractor, Nabeela Abu Halima and Omar Abu Halima, were also shot, but did not die - a woman says she was shot in the arm because she refused to leave the scene, saying she wanted to help the injured, and a man says he was shot through the arm because he refused to strip naked.

Israeli Defence Forces are investigating the allegations, but said the two people shot dead had been terrorists.

The tractor was taking to hospital two injured people and the body of a 15-month-old girl who had died shortly before in a fire following an attack by an Israeli rocket.

The witnesses say following the incident with the tractor, the charred body of the girl lay by the side of the road for eight days. Her legs and stomach were eaten by dogs.

The Weekend Australian has seen a picture of the girl taken by medics who finally picked her up - her head and torso are recognisable, although black with burns, while her legs are stumps with only the bones remaining.

Her brother is keeping a copy of the photograph in his mobile phone.

The incident occurred outside a primary school in the northern village of Beit Lahiya, which the IDF had taken over as a base for tanks.

The woman, Nabeela Abu Halima, says soldiers also violated her house, defecating in her pots and pans by cutting the seats out of furniture and placing pans underneath.

She says they wrote graffiti on the walls, including, in Hebrew, "Next time it's going to be harder" and "You have chosen Hamas!!!", a map of Israel with a fist next to Gaza and the drawing of a naked woman.

Twenty-four hours after The Weekend Australian put the allegations to the IDF, spokesman Captain Benjamin Rutland said the IDF was investigating the matters raised. "They are working on this .. issue. It is more important to the IDF to conduct a very thorough investigation than to complete it speedily."

Captain Rutland added: "The IDF trains its soldiers to minimise injuries to civilians and to respect all civilians on the battlefront."

Later, the IDF issued a statement saying: "In this incident, two armed militants were spotted riding a tractor along with an infant's body. The militants opened fire on IDF troops, and both the terrorists were killed in the following exchange of fire."

An IDF spokesman would not provide an answer to why, if there were two armed militants on the tractor, four people were shot - two shot dead initially and two shot through the arms later - and why the body of an infant was left by the side of the road for eight days.

And he would not say what the preliminary investigation found about whether the soldiers had defecated in Nabeela Abu

Halima's kitchen utensils, drawn graffiti and stolen her money.

Human rights investigators have begun working on the incident, which they say fits the definition of a war crime.

The two who survived both say they would give evidence about the incident to any official inquiry.

Nabeela Abu Halima is the mother of Matar. She said that as well as watching her son shot dead, her other son, Ali, 15, who was in the tractor, also saw his brother killed.

She said they had been travelling to the hospital when Israeli soldiers shouted from a balcony, "Stop! stop!"

"So we stopped," she said. "We raised our hands. Mohammed and Matar raised their hands too and got off the tractor, but Israeli soldiers shot them."

She said most of the bullets were in the chest of the two men; Matar appeared to die immediately but Mohammed was still alive.

He died some time later.

"An Israeli soldier shouted 'Leave! leave!' and I said 'Just let me take Mohammed and Matar.' They kept telling me 'Leave! leave!' and I said again, 'Just let me take Matar and Mohammed.'

"After that, they ordered Mohammed (a second Mohammed on the tractor, the brother of Omar Abu Halima) to take off his clothes. He tore his clothes off and was completely naked."

Nabeela Abu Halima said they then ordered Omar Abu Halima to strip naked and he refused. She said they then shot him through the arm. When she again refused to leave, she says they then shot her in the arm.

She said other people in the village said after they left, a tank turned the tractor on its side then ran over it, crushing it.

She said the incident and what she said Israeli soldiers did in her house have turned her from opposing Hamas to supporting them.

Apart from the graffiti, she says Israeli soldiers broke a cupboard and stole her life savings - about 30,000 Israeli Shekels (about $12,000).

She said she kept the money at home because "we don't know how to deal with banks or investments".

She said only a year ago she confronted Hamas fighters in her street who wanted to fire rockets into southern Israel, saying they should not because it would bring retribution upon her neighbourhood and that it would be people like her who suffered the consequences, not the fighters who would leave the area.

She said Hamas had threatened her when she had said this.

She added: "Now if Hamas members come back, I swear to god I will help them fire rockets into Israel."

Is there anyone who thinks they wouldn't, in her shoes?

Again, this is happening on our watch. We are in league with a government, the US, that actively supports the government of Israel, financially and militarily. Australia abstains from votes condemning Israeli war crimes in the UN. Why? What kind of monster do you have to be to be ambivalent about whether the kind of actions detailed above constitute gross crimes against humanity?

Happy January... Gaza

While we were sleeping drinking...

Apologies for the posting drought- I came down with a virus a couple of days after Christmas and have mostly been too tired to do anything (and I'm now back at work) and Gam has been back at work since the 2nd. So, a belated happy new year to everyone... Well, everyone except the poor sods stuck in the hellhole called Gaza. We all have a responsibility to stay aware of what's happening there. The world still pretends people didn't know what was going on during the first Holocaust, but there should be plenty of people alive to call the bastards liars when they finally claim not to have known the true extent of the humanitarian catastrophe being perpetrated upon the Palestinian people this time around.

People who actively supported the killing of these small children:

• George W. Bush, President of the United States of America
  
• Dick Cheney, Vice-President of the United States of America
• Harry Reid, Democrat Senator, Nevada
• Dick Durbin, Democrat Senator, Illinois

... god the list would be a long one if I included everyone who has voiced support for Israel's actions in its war on Gaza. The entire staff of The Australian, it seems, for one.

If I were to include everyone who has tacitly supported the wholesale slaughter of Palestinian civilians- women, children and men, despite the apparent assumption by Israel and every member of the western media that every male over the age of 14 is a terrorist- the list would be even longer. Most members of the Rudd government would be on it, most members of Malcolm Turnbull's Opposition would be on it. Barack Obama, who has also failed to condemn the state-sanctioned mass murder of Palestinians, would be on it.

The excuse de jour for Israel's 'collateral damage' seems to be the old 'Hamas are hiding in civilian areas' bullshit. What no-one in the western media sees fit to point out is that Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. There are no wide open spaces, Hamas has no tanks, no planes with bombs to drop on Israeli houses or troops- they have ordinary guys with guns and pathetic rockets that kill one or two Israelis per year. Complaining that Hamas is 'hiding' behind civilians when they exist in this tiny, densely populated ghetto created by Israel, is a bullshit excuse for blowing up children. Those deaths can never, ever be justified, and it takes a special kind of inhuman scum to even try it.

UPDATE: Good article from Online Opinion by Greg Barns, who comments on the rank hypocrisy of the Australian and US governments in their positions against Hamas and the Palestinian people:

In Australia you can go to jail for donating money to a cause like Hamas, which runs the lives of 1.5 million Palestinians on the Gaza Strip.

However, it is not an offence for you to support organisations in Israel, which actively disrupt the lives of Palestinians by ripping up their olive groves or financing illegal settlements in areas of clear dispute between Israel and the Palestinians.

Hypocritical? You bet.

Israel's latest assault on humanity

I'd been thinking that the media coverage of Israel's war on Gaza was rather woefully inadequate, and figured maybe it would take a few days for Gaza's side of the story to start trickling out. Stuff like this.

Tonight, however, I discovered why the coverage has been so damn poor. According to the BBC:

Israel is not currently permitting international journalists to cross into Gaza

Now, you'd think that that particular fact would be a pertinent one for, say, the Sydney Morning Herald to mention in the news articles on its website that pertain to Israel's attack on Gaza. Apparently not.

I was disgusted to read this piss-poor piece of reporting in the SMH yesterday, containing a quote from Israeli PM Ehud Olmert:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert pledged Israel will do its utmost to avert a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

"The people in Gaza do not deserve to suffer because of the killers and murderers of the terrorist organisation,'' he said, referring to Hamas.
He insisted that Israel had only hit Hamas targets, including command structures and rocket manufacturing installations.

I have two things to say about that:

A) There already is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza because of Israel's blockade of food, fuel and medical supplies. Something like 50% of children are malnourished, people are dying unnecessarily because of a lack of access to proper medical care, and there is running water only once per week. Israel has created a ghetto full of Palestinian people and is slowly starving them. 'Never again'? It's happening right under our noses and we're doing nothing to stop it because Israel uses the mantle of the Holocaust to deflect criticism for its crimes against humanity.

B) Bullshit only Hamas targets are being hit. In these situations there is always what the Americans like to call 'collateral damage'. The only reason we don't yet know about Israel's little 'whoopsies' that have ended in the bloody deaths of innocent civilians and children is because Israel is doing its best to keep journalists from the scene of their crimes. Here's something from a better-than-average article on the issue in the Guardian:

Ali Abu Rabia was a student at a UN vocational college for Palestinian refugees in the Rimal district of Gaza City. He sat an exam on Saturday morning, his father said, and after the first Israeli air strikes decided to go home. He was standing in the street with others when an Israeli missile struck, at around 1.30pm. Reportedly it had been aimed at a policeman seen nearby with a walkie-talkie.

"It was a place full of students. It was not a military base. But in spite of this they still attacked, all because of one policeman," said Ali's father

A single Hamas policeman in a public area filled with people certainly doesn't sound like a valid target to me. Nope. What Israel is doing is committing yet another round of crimes against humanity, with no regard for civilian life. Already it is being reported by the UN Palestinian Refugee Agency that at least 57 of the 300-odd victims were civilians.

The reporting on Israel's attack on Gaza is fucking disgraceful, as has been their way for years. Journalists who fail to do their job bear moral responsibility in the crimes they help cover up.

UPDATE 31/12/2008: At least 25% of all fatalities (390 and counting) in Israel's war on Gaza have been civilians. 42 children have been killed by Israel so far. God knows how many more are going to die unnecessarily because Israel continues to prevent medical supplies from reaching Gaza.

Homosexuality for Christians in two sentences:

Nomnomnom or no no no?
Christians, don't be hypocrites.

The 'eternal truth' is that you should love your neighbour as yourself. The 'truth' is not to be found in the minor reaches of Leviticus, where eating prawns and sleeping with a man are matters of moral concern.

Actor Sir Ian McKellen, quoted in the Guardian.

Stuck on Stupid

I thought we didn't have any money left? We're having to rethink paid maternity leave and many of the new govt.'s election promises might not be met because they just aren't economically feasible. Yet somehow there's enough cash to spend to the tune of $500,000 a person to detain them on an island. 37*500,000 = $18,500,000. Could it perhaps be cheaper to get a community organisation to look after these people? Even if we did that and paid each of them $10,000 a year, it would take around 50 years to reach the same level of exorbitant, flagrant idiocy of building a high security prison on an island.

This is the same government that called the Christmas island detention centre a white elephant (which it was, along with the "Pacific solution") before it got elected. Can't they just let someone with a brain have a crack at the problem?