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Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

The Australian solution

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In recent years Australia has seen a tremendous increase in what their politicians call ‘boat people’. Their refugees come from violence torn areas like Iran and Afghanistan as well as a number of other nations.

You know…brown people.

photo boatpeople_zps34fc25a8.jpg

Well, they can’t have that, of course, so Australia’s PM has Kevin Rudd has announced an agreement to ship them all off to poverty-stricken Papua New Guinea where they will have no opportunity; no way to make a living. Oh, and as a kicker, Australia had for years accepted female asylum seekers from Papua New Guinea because of sexual violence there. But none of that apparently matters because, you know…brown people.

The opposition leader, of course, doesn’t like this approach.

Opposition leader Tony Abbott – whose party looked on course to trounce Labor at the polls before the leadership change – has said he will turn boats back to Indonesia when safe to do so.

Responding to this agreement he said: “While this certainly is a very promising development in offshore processing, it is about processing boat people, it’s not about stopping the boats and that in the end is what we have to have.”

‘Offshore processing?’ Weren’t we referring to people here? Desparate people?

Does any of this sound familiar?

I live in Red Virginia, right near the West Virginia border and I do understand the recent hard racist push. There are a large number of white folks who realized with Barack Obama’s election that the growing non-white proportion of America’s population means a decrease in white power dominance…unless that is, they can keep ‘them’ out or stop ‘them’ from voting. So efforts on those have redoubled.

We’re actually regressing in civil rights and voting rights, and it seems to be open season on young black men without legal consequences again. Did I stumble into a time machine when I wasn’t paying attention?

Australia, it turns out, is experiencing much the same thing. And reacting much the same way.

OK, my fellow white people. WTF is wrong with us?

And everyone: what on earth can we do about it? Because at this point I can’t decide whether to be more sickened or frightened for the future.


Categories: Uncategorized.

/ 5 Comments

5 comments

  2. princesspat

    Like you Iriti I am deeply concerned. This article by Thomas Edsall in the NYT has been on my mind…..

    Has the G.O.P. Gone Off the Deep End?

    Thomas Doherty, patronage czar and political enforcer for the former New York governor George Pataki, reached the breaking point last week when he read that House Republicans were preparing to “slow walk” the Senate immigration bill to death.

    Doherty turned to Twitter:

    If Senate Immigration bill gets ripped apart and ultimately defeated by House #GOP I’ve decided to leave my political home of 32 yrs #sad.

    Doherty told me that he has

    “come to the conclusion that my party has elements within it that dislike homosexuals and think America is still in the 1940s. And while we talk about freedom and liberty, that liberty and freedom only seem to be acceptable for some.”

    Doherty, no liberal, is representative of the growing strength on the right of the view that the Republican Party has gone off the deep end.

    Awarness and a willingness to speak out re the GOP’s destructive politics is growing, but the continued ability to put onerous policies into law is disheartening.

    WTF indeed!

  3. bfitzinAR

    It’s based on some 1930s research I read once and have never managed to find again, so…

    20% of any given population are good, caring people who do the right thing because it is the right thing – whether we’re talking about feeding the hungry, recycling, or supporting good but unpopular laws, whatever.  They try not manipulate because manipulation is an infringement on the rights of others.

    2% of any given population are greedy socio- and psychopathic bastards who have most of the money and power because they take it without regard for who, other than themselves, gets hurt or dead in the process – they are prime manipulators.

    That leaves 78% – the manipulated 78% who are good-hearted and will start to do the right thing but stop immediately if mocked or frightened (and unfortunately can be almost as easily frightened into doing the wrong thing).

  4. jlms qkw

    w/ military-industrial complex benefits is wrong.

    here in the USA.

    illegal visits from people:  flying into our country, boats on the west coast, etc.  

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