refugees

The media’s treatment of the recent tragedy of migrants drowning off the Italian island of Lampedusa was predictable. Whenever a local population—whether it be in Greece, Italy, or elsewhere—is inundated with a flood of refugees, a standard news template is applied.

The formula is to convert a broad social calamity into a heart-rending human-interest story that will provoke an emotional response trumping any sober analysis. The intended message is clear. Any number of refugees have an unreserved right to be accommodated by the host society, at whatever the cost.

And the host society and its politicians have an unequivocal moral obligation to meet migrants’ demands, notwithstanding the burdens of preserving a tattered social safety net in the midst of austerity measures and high unemployment in many Mediterranean countries.

Then we discover that most have fled in the night within a day of being landed on the Italian mainland and being offered six months accommodation, according to Rome Social Services. Many are though to be heading for the more generous benefit cultures in Northern Europe.

The fate of the Lampedusan boat people is tragic, but do the media and politicians seriously think that Europe can take in the populations of Eritrea and sub-Saharan Africa? Where and when will the line be drawn? Do not Europeans—indeed, any people—have the moral right to set limits to their generosity or to husband resources for the primary use of their own citizens?

These are the issues that so many journalists never raise. Apparently the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the BBC and many others do not acknowledge limits and refugees have rights. That is what we have been told and that is what many of us have come to believe.

Thus it is possible for an indigenous population to see its own displacement as a necessary and vital exercise in humanity, "diversity,” "tolerance,” "pluralism," and democracy rather blatant colonization. In many primary schools in the UK now, virtually 100 per cent of pupils are of foreign origin, where many translators are being hired at public expense to maintain communications in the classroom.

On CBC radio, for example, in a discussion with a French author who expressed concern about growing Islamification of Europe, it was possible for the CBC interviewer to say, without fear of challenge that "we" in Canada are proud of our great diversity of religions and cultures. The multicultural experiment has been a big success. Like the audience, he had lived in the CBC Matrix for so long that he could no longer distinguish between the reality of grassroots concern and the virtual reality that he and others have synthesized over time.

In October and November 2013 the BBC and the UK’s Channel 4 News, did several reports looking at the plight of 'migrant workers looking for a better life' in Athens, southern Italy and Sodertalje - a town south of Stockholm, where the Swedish government's 'remarkable humanity and generous welfare system' has enabled 1000's of immigrants to move in and soon be granted Swedish citizenship.

The Channel 4 news reporter, Matt Frei, noted that they didn't come across any white people while in the town. No mention was made of the views of indigenous Swedes to this social onslaught or whether it was a good policy for Sweden. In the cities of Oslo and Malmo crime rates and attacks on women have gone up significantly. None of this is covered by the international media. The would-be migrants are hardly ever referred to as illegals - always the positive term 'migrant workers', proffering a sense of legitimacy.

Now the Swedish government wants to spread the burden more fairly, pushing other EU countries to take their 'fair share' of this Swedish generosity to would be immigrants. The tone politically and in the media is to unquestioningly accept this continual pressure on the EU, Canada and elsewhere to accept its humanitarian duty, never questioning how this is increasing home grown terrorist threats, food insecurity and infrastructure pressures. It is blatant one-sidedness by a supposedly balanced media.

The migration of Europeans to North America and Australia in the 19th and early 20th century took place in a less crowded world, but large-scale migration now raises vital social, environmental and economic questions about where the world is going and how we deliver reform and a better life for people wherever they are born.

By Tim Murray and Brian McGavin

The Greens are at the crossroads as a political party — should they focus on the wider concerns of the electorate, or should they stick to environmentalism? For instance, the humanitarian crying out for the suffering of refugees needs to be focused on what drives people to become refugees, like our engagement in unjust wars, environmental damage and over-population. Dr Peter Cock says they need to stay green. [Comment from Candobetter.net editor: Some of us here think the Greens need to rebrand if they don't become green, but we appreciate the discussion in this article, which targets our concerns.]

Article by Dr Peter Cock. Originally published at Independent Australia, posted by admin on 26 April, 2013

POLITICAL DISCOURSE in Australia is dominated by jobs, deficits, refugees and living costs — and how these affect individuals. To tackle them well is to win an election. So, if the Greens want to remain relevant in Australian politics, should they respond to the issues that get media attention?

They seem to think so, having recently announced a “softening” of policies in preparation for the election. It’s the wrong course for the party.

The Greens need to accept their role as an irritating and educating core that challenges the political centre. To do so, they need to remain dedicated to applying a “green lens” to political issues and focus on educating the electorate about the impact of any proposed policies on our ecology.

The most difficult task is putting habitat before species and species before individuals. This difficulty is multiplied when the species in question isn’t our own.

Environmentalism has mobilised concern for human injustice and redirected it to other species. Live sheep trade is a good example. We are only just making connections between the well-being of other species and ourselves.

After forty years of environmentalism, “green” issues surround us. However, the focus has been to protect environmental victims. This has limited environmental advocates’ ability to challenge the values and social structures that create them.

The challenge of environmentalism is to educate citizens about deeper, harder issues and then turn that into support. Most donor and public resources help alleviate the suffering of human individuals and groups. There is little left for habitats, other species or future generations. While important, focusing on individuals limits our ability to create real change.

When environmentalism enters mainstream politics in the form of the Greens, the “green lens” of public advocacy is too caught up in humanitarian actions without reference to ecological impacts. For example, Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young’s focus is on immigration and refugees as a substrate of the primary question of a sustainable population.

Need to focus on unjust wars that drive refugees

The humanitarian crying out for the suffering of refugees needs to be focused on what drives people to become refugees, like our engagement in unjust wars, environmental damage and over-population.

The environmentalist aspiration is to make all political parties “greener” and not to claim it as their own. There are many shades of green, yet the Greens need to be accountable to ecological criteria as the basis for the assessment of all policies. The Greens’ point of difference as a party should be to make green criteria central to policy, whether this be gay marriage, a wealth tax, or hunting feral animals in national parks.

The natural care for our own species can be the main vehicle through which environmentalists promote caring about other species and shared habitats. If they are to make the few supporters into the many, they have to confront their attachments and lead them to connections between their individual interests, our species, and the role of other species in sustaining life.

Forty years of environmentalism have revealed a politics embedded in using accumulated resources to suppress change. However, there is increasing awareness that our relations with the earth are at a critical junction. While small groups are creating a transformative possibility, many despair.

Many people still may not grasp the arguments made by environment activists — that to have a chance of avoiding catastrophe, the human race needs to end its perceived war against nature and embrace change. The true challenge of environmentalism is to gain wide acknowledgement of the possibility for societal transformation and then achieve it, rather than just blaming particular groups or corporations.

As important as grassroots efforts, change at the top of green politics is necessary. Applying a “green lens” to policy is part of this. It has the potential to shape not only political discourse, but also to encourage environmental thinking in the general population. Doing so, they can be a source of hope and energy for transformation.

The Greens would be remiss to abandon their part in guiding the change, and inspiring the next wave of ecowarriors to bring it to fruition.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License

This is a fascinating video of a huge protest in Sydney on 5 August 2012 and we have put up a video of it with a number of interesting interviews from marchers, with comments from what they think of the Bashar Assad Government to how they don't like the Australian Greens policy on this matter and believe that we are risking World War Three by backing intervention in Syria. There is also some background on how Syria has been the long-term host one of the largest refugee populations in the world, which makes you wonder why it doesn't receive more support from Greens and Refugee activists. It must seem ironic that some candobetter.net EcoMalthusians are more inclined to give Syria that recognition! Please let us know if you have views on the democratic status of the Syrian government; we find it hard to judge. All comments and greetings welcome.

See also: Australians for Syria.

The video of this march also contains commentaries and is the product and published by Truth News with Reporter Hereward Fenton, who interviewed Naja (a Syrian Australian), Tim Anderson, and John Burgess (of the 911 truth movement). Thanks for your work at Truth News.

"On 5 August 2012 a rally was held in Sydney in support of the Syrian government by members of the Syrian community and Australians. Some four thousand people gathered peacefully at The Sydney Town Hall to express solidarity about the tragedy in Syria. A number of speakers, from various sections of the community, addressed the audience concerning the external forces that have invaded Syria and are fighting the [...][1]government. The people then marched peacefully to The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs in the Sydney city area, where more speakers addressed the people. Appreciation for Russia and China voting against the US proposed UN-NATO involvement were expressed. The meeting then peacefully dispersed." (Source: Commentary under video on Truth News)

Naja, Syrian-Australian protester speaks

Naja, a Syrian-Australian protester said,

"I would just like to say one thing to the Australian Government. The Syrian president - 75% of the people elected him and only the Syrian people can impeach him. I just want to say another thing, that Barack Obama ought to go back home. Hands off Syria! We just need to raise our voice and we're sticking with the President! ... He is a very popular leader, he's a doctor and he studied in England. He doesn't kill his people. We've got militants in Syria. They're terrorists. They're not free Syrian army. They're killing people. I've got my family back home. They're kidnapping people. After they kill them, they amputate their body parts and they send them home to - bodies without heads, without arms - and we've got to put a stop to it. We want him to stay in power. That's my message. "

Tim Anderson spoke powerfully on behalf of the Syrian Government

"People in this country are very ignorant of what's going on in Syria. That's understandable. That's not a crime in itself, but, what is not acceptable is the unethical use of this ignorance. All of those people from Hilary Clinton through the media through all sorts of silly people in this country - those people saying Assad must go - they have no ethical basis to make that sort of claim. They haven't understood that it's the foundation of the post colonial era, it's the foundation of human rights that a people have a right to self-determination and the Syrian Government is only for the Syrian people and no-one else. We see the result across the border in Iraq. What a tragedy in Iraq. What a great tragedy in Iraq! But we can't allow that to happen in your country. So I'm here just to say as a non-Syrian Australian, at least some of us here are in solidarity with you today."

Tim Anderson, author of Take Two, The Criminal Justice System revisited has the remarkable history of having been completely exonerated after erroneous conviction for the Hilton Bombing in 1978 (Fraser Government). The real perpetrators have never been found. Evidence that Australian security forces may have been responsible [in a false flag attack] led to the New South Wales parliament unanimously calling for an inquiry in 1991[1] and 1995.[2] The Government of Australia vetoed any inquiry. You can read more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Hilton_bombing or here in an pdf file at http://www.reasoninrevolt.net.au/pdf/a000803.pdf with an interview of Anderson published in July 1991 that contains some very interesting comments on Asio and Special Branch activities in NSW leading up to this time.

Tony Backhouse on Australian Greens policy on Libya and Syria

Tony was also marching. Interviewed by Truth News, he said that he had originally joined the Greens because of their stance on Iraq and policy of peace and non-violence, which is a platform of the NSW branch constitution, but he has just resigned from them over their support for UN Nato intervention in Syria. He stated, "I see this as akin to starting World War Three in Syria. I find it totally hypocritical and that's why I've left."

Tony said that, to him, it seems this position was taken initially by Bob Brown and then by Christine Milne (NSW) and Adam Bandt (in Victoria) and that perhaps the Federal Greens are falling into line with the European Greens. It was what had been going on in Aleppo that got him to make his mind up. He added that he nearly left the Greens over their position on Libya especially after Gaddafi's house was bombed and his granddaughter and other members of Gaddafi's family were killed. He noticed in the week of this Australians for Syria protest in Sydney that Leon Panetta [23rd and current United States Secretary of Defense] had actually threatened Assad's family: "And I thought, this is just ridiculous. I can't support this. I mean, my party is supporting a military intervention basically in Syria against their own constitution!"

Commentary on Democracy, Refugees and the Australian Greens - Please contribute if you can

The beginning of this article was taken from Truth News and we left out these words, [1] "elected democratic." Whilst we support non-intervention in Syria and basically support the current government, we disagree that the Bashar Asaad Government was elected democratically, since there was no opposition. Maybe we are wrong. Please educate us. You can read more about the Syrian government here. Nonetheless we agree that Bashar seems to be a very popular president and Syria did recently hold a very well supported referendum in which Syrians voted yes for to have multiparty government recently, to remove the constitutional definition of the B'aath Party as the ruling party of Syria, and to limit the time a person could remain president to 14 years.

Bashar Asaad himself seems to be pretty enlightened in a terrible region where colonial intervention has from the 19th century consistently preferred dictators and continuously reduced the self-organising ability of peoples. Bashar Asaad's father was a more severe dictator but, still, his people were provided for, in an area where there are far worse, far more brutal dictatorships. To illustrate the unbalanced basis of foreign intervention encouraging civil war in Syria, the Western powers currently include Saudi Arabia as their ally against the Syrian Government. This is not just ironic, but it is shocking, because the Saudi Government is incontestably depraved, yet able to get away literally with murder, mutilation, suppression of subjects and shocking, institutionalised, bizarre ill-treatment and disenfranchisement - enslavement really - of women. It is truly unacceptable that the United States and NATO hob-nob with this monarchy. There has to be a better and more globally cooperative way to power down with oil than this.

With regard to the Syrian Government, a Syrian-based Catholic nun recently said,

I am not Syrian, but I have been living in Syria for today almost 20 years. Syria was under a kind of totalitarian regime but not in only a way a repressive way but it was that all the decision would be taken by few persons. But there was security, there was food, education and people were living - of course not in ... kind that they would say their thinking in a loud voice.

Now, this totalitarianism is not good, and it's obsolete, but if the armed insurrection is implementing another totalitarianism which is maybe worse because there is blood, they can behead you, they can cut your - in last week in our village they cut the fingers of a so-called 'collaborator', who is not ev[en] from the village. Then they behead him, they cut him in piece and they left him in the street, where even children would see it.

So this kinds of acts of atrocities cannot help people to really believe that what is happening is a strive for freedom.

The majority of the Syrian population, I say, is taken as hostage, and sometimes as a tool, as [?enemy] by these armed, insurrection armed...armed insurrection people. They come and they take place in the civilian areas.

Australians, particularly Greens and Refugee Action supporters, logically should be speaking out in support of Syria which has taken in and managed to deal fairly with an extraordinary number of refugees and asylum seekers from this tumultuous region where, bizarrely, the Greens have been supporting NATO backing for civil war.

According to the 2012 UNHCR country operations profile on the Syrian Arab Republic,

The Syrian Arab Republic hosts one of the largest urban refugee and asylum-seeker populations in the world. The Government and people of the Syrian Arab Republic continue to maintain a generous open door policy that allows Iraqi refugees to seek asylum and gain access to basic services such as education and primary health care. Moreover, the normalization of relations between Iraq and the Syrian Arab Republic in early 2011 has led to a simplification of the visa process for Iraqis wishing to enter the Syrian Arab Republic.

UNHCR, with the support of the international community and in active partnership with the Syrian authorities, was able to maintain the protection space granted to refugees and asylum-seekers. With the assistance of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, it has continued to provide them with essential services and assistance. Source: http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49e486a76.html

If nothing else, the counter-intuitive stance on Syria of the Greens is yet another indication that the people leading the Greens these days are career politicians with ideas and principles a very long way from the original participants and founders of Green Party's in Australia. As to where Bob Brown stands or ever stood... some of us do wonder. For those among us who care about our country and realise that overpopulation will quickly deprive us of ecological conditions and human rights, it is baffling that the Greens, who have so let us down in matters of ecology and population policy, do not stand up for Syria and its generosity to refugees.

Both sides of parliament are saying that the problem is asylum seekers dying at sea as they attempt to reach Australia. Other groups claim that we are "racist" and "xenophobic" for being heartless, and that we have the capacity for an open-door approach of the Greens. There are probably millions, if not billions of impoverished, persecuted peoples who see Australia as a "rich" country and an ideal soft target for resettlement. This is despite the pressure on jobs, housing, infrastructure, food security and environmental concerns. If we need to make a deal with Malaysia, or Indonesia, we should be free to do so. The solution is to discard our alliance with the UN Refugee Convention.

Julian Burnside: Australia does not want boat people, dead or alive

The Australian government is currently embroiled in a heavy debate over asylum seekers in light of the recent tragedy. Both sides of parliament are saying that the problem is asylum seekers dying at sea as they attempt to reach Australia but, "they just don't want boat people getting here at all, dead or alive," the Australian barrister Julian Burnside told ABC radio.

Of course our government doesn't want asylum seekers. It prefers the well-heeled and educated immigrants. Burnside says Australia needs to set up a fair dinkum, fair processing system in Indonesia with the co-operation of the Indonesian government.

The safe and off-shore selection of approved refugees being settled orderly into Australia is the obvious solution to the problem but one that doesn't want to be mentioned or accepted.

Other groups claim that we are "racist" and "xenophobic" for being heartless, and that we have the capacity for an open-door approach supported by the Greens.

According to a recent Monash report, the Australian Government is running a record-high migration program, which it intends to increase in 2012–13. Just over half of the migrants are locating in Sydney and Melbourne, rather than in the resource industry states. At the same time as the Labor Government is permitting employers to sponsor an unlimited number of temporary entry 457 visa holders.

It means we will have the highest annual permanent entry level since World War Two.

The 2012–13 immigration program: record numbers, city-bound by Bob Birrell and Genevieve Heard

Population pressure already on Australia

There are probably millions, if not billions of impoverished, persecuted peoples who vie Australia as a "rich" country and an ideal soft target for resettlement. This is despite the pressure on jobs, housing, infrastructure, food security and environmental concerns.
Already Australia has shortages of public housing, hospital beds, public funding for education, and health care. The "Lucky country" has been exploited for its full extent, and housing is either un affordable or people are under mortgage stress.

The carbon tax will exacerbate the heavy costs of energy infrastructure that continually must expand for our burgeoning population.

The Refugee convention

Australia is one of 147 signatory countries to the Refugees Convention. In the 2010–11 program year, the Humanitarian Program delivered 13 799 visas. This number included 8971 visas granted to persons offshore and 4828 program countable visas granted to people seeking protection in Australia.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres warned in May 2012 that factors causing mass population flight are growing and over the coming decade more people on the move will become refugees or displaced within their own country.

"The world is creating displacement faster than it is producing solutions," said Guterres.
Guterres said displacement from conflict was becoming compounded by a combination of causes, including climate change, population growth, urbanization, food insecurity, water scarcity and resource competition.

Australian political fixation with asylum seekers

Australia’s fixation with asylum seekers arriving by boat has cost taxpayers nearly $2.4b since 2000, according to Budget and ANAO documents. The expenditure includes spending to deter, process and most of all detain asylum seekers who have arrived by boat. The cost also does not include hundreds of millions spent on border security measures adopted under the Howard Government.

We simply cannot afford to increase our humanitarian settlement while we are forced to devote a disproportionate amount of resources to dealing with boat arrivals, which is a very expensive proposition. For the first four years of any increase in our Humanitarian Program, every additional 1000 resettlement places would cost the Australian Budget around $216 million. By extension, an increase to 20 000 would cost the Budget around $1.35 billion over the first four years. (Minister for Immigration, Chris Bowen 2012).

If we need to make a deal with Malaysia, or Indonesia, we should be free to do so. The solution is to discard our alliance with the UN Refugee Convention. All the costs and debate could easily be solved.

Refugees in a changing world

The UNHCR said last year that 43.7 million people were displaced by conflict, poverty, famine and persecution — the highest number in 15 years. Our planet is not a series of endless frontiers, but a fragile spaceship with limited resources, already overloaded by humanity. There are no new colonies so settle in, no new frontiers to invade and conquer.

Mr Burnside said Australians seemed to be unable to accept the premise of the UN Refugee Convention which states that countries have some obligation to offer protection to people facing persecution and violence.
"Unfortunately, I think Australia has not quite worked out whether it's willing to carry that burden."

Mr Burnside is obviously speaking from a position of privilege and wealth! It's assumed that Australia is a vast brown and empty land with room to share for any millions of people! There's no consideration for our environmental "carrying capacity" - and social and economic constraints. Already we are under population stress, and we already have the record as the biggest wildlife exterminator in the world.

Australia should withdraw from outdated UN Refugee Convention

We need to withdraw from the outdated 1951 UN Refugee Convention. The UN should not dictate how we manage our diplomatic affairs. We are a sovereign nation. This is a relic from a different era when peoples were displaced by World War 2 and the holocaust.

The Vietnamese boat-people came at a time when Australia has room to spare and we were still a wealthy nation. Population pressure and globalization has eaten into and diluted our wealth.

The world today is a vastly different place than it was in 1951, and the ability of the Convention to address increasingly complex drivers of displacement and migration is limited. Many experts argue that the current framework is ill-suited to meet new drivers of human mobility, but the prospects of a new international agreement are few.

Need for a more equitable immigration system including humanitarian intake

In response to the demands of responsible global citizenship, and a more equitable system of immigration, we should slash our unrealistically high economic immigration levels, invest in skills training and tertiary education, and increase our humanitarian intake - selected off-shore only. The random arrival of boats, and the shipwreck disasters, would ultimately decline.

REFERENCES

Source for part of this information and opinion was an Age article, by Rachel Olding, "Asylum seeker impasse 'pathetic': QC's plan to stop the boats," June 29, 2012.

This article argues that Australian Refugee Activism has been used to divert the public eye from attacks on Australian democracy and away from questioning the very wars that cause refugees. If we judge this political movement by its outcomes, then the Australian "refugee rights" activism has been worse than a total failure for all but a very few international refugees, specifically those who arrive clandestinely on boats.

See also: UN's outdated Refugee Convention - an immigration smoke-screen

A defense might be raised by refugee activists that the absence of serious discussion of the causative issues is the product of biased mainstream media reporting. A look at the blogs strongly associated with the movement, however, reveals that they also fail to seriously confront the causes. See for example socialist-alliance.org and directaction.org.au and greenleft.org.au

The writer contends that Australians and the rest of the world have had to put up with very poor coverage and discussion of the events described below which have given rise to huge numbers of refugees:

* The Hawke 'Labour' Government's support for the 1991 war against Iraq, based upon fraudulent pretexts including the "incubator babies" lie and the set-up of Saddam Hussein by then US Amabassador to Iraq April Glaspie.

This war and the 2003 wars which followed it produced many Iraqi refugees and continue to do so. The focus of refugee activists helped to disorientate Australians politically because it concentrated on only a few landed asylum-seekers rather than protesting against the causes, which lay in war. This probably made it easier for government to wage these wars.

* The Howard Government's re-election in 2001 in spite of broken 1998 election promises, its failed attempt to break the Maritime Union of Australia in 1998 using mercenary strikebreakers and the imposition of its regressive and unpopular Goods and Services tax (GST).

Howard's re-election in the face of all these handicaps was only made possible because of the political disorientation caused by the Tampa 'boat people' incident of 2001, combined with 'refugee rights' activism.

Here is how it happened: When the election was approaching there were a lot of things the Government had done since its election in 1998 that the Australian public should have been thinking critically about. Instead, everything preceding was sort of swept away with the blow-up over the Tampa incident just before the election. This focus on one event allowed the media to ignore many other issues which would have done the Howard government a huge amount of damage if canvassed in the election.

* The Howard Government's support for and participation in the invasion of Afghanistan based on the fraud of the September 11 false flag terrorist attack.

This illegal invasion has cost the lives of 27 Australians and of considerably more Afghanis so far. It has also helped increase to record levels Afghan production of opium, which the overthrown Taliban regime had tried to stop.

Press coverage of the activities of refugee activists distracted people from the really important issues of the time, which included the fraudulent use of the false-flag terrorist attack of September 11 to start the Afghanistan war. The upshot was a whole nation of people turned into a basket case, of which many could qualify as refugees.

* The Howard Government's support for, and participation in, the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The main pretext for the invasion, the claim that Iraq was attempting to build nuclear weapons has been shown to be a lie. The truth about the WMD lie can be found in the Hollywood movie Fair Game which concludes with live footage of former CIA agent Valerie Plame, (played by Naomi Watts in the movie), testifying to US congress about the WMD lie. Howard's election in 2001 was helped by press diversion onto refugee activism.

The same thing happened again in 2004 when the press should have been drawing public attention to the WMD and Iraq invasion fiasco and international debacle, which itself has also produced many refugees, quite a few of whom have arrived on Australian shores.

* The re-election of the Howard Government in 2004 with outright Senate and House of Representatives majorities, in spite of the most massive anti-war demonstrations since the 1960's demonstrations against the Vietnam war, prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

This re-election left the Howard Government free to pursue its participation in the Iraq war and to pursue other regressive domestic policies. The ongoing issue of refugee and asylum-seeker procedures, as represented by refugee activists, continued chronically to hold the front pages, again dwarfing a major world conflict and creator of many refugees.

* The 'Labor' governments of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard continue the Howard Government's Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

This is an ongoing consequence of the Australian media's failure to adequately question the rationales of these wars, whilst continuing to feature refugee activism day after day.

* The current 'Labor' Government of Julia Gillard further fanning the flames of civil war in Libya by, at one point, recognising the US/NATO backed National Transitional Council as the legitimate government of Libya.

Australian procedures for dealing with asylum seekers continue to overshadow the necessary public debate and press coverage of our poorly justified recognition of and support for the dubious representatives of the National Transitional Council.

Over the period that 'refugee rights' activists have been able repeatedly to reach large sections of Australian public opinion with their message, the Australian Government has succeeded in helping its US, UK and other allies inflict unprecedented harm in the world, causing the world population of refugees to rise by many millions.

It is not the intention of this article to disparage the cause of individual refugees or the good work of people who help them. The author wonders, however, why the refugee action movement has so little to say about the wars that give rise to much of its existence. Why is it so uncritical and apparently disengaged in regard to the wider political issues that produce refugees?

Fear of 'boat-people' coming in massive numbers will continue to be stoked by the Murdoch and Fairfax media and tv and radio. Some people will therefore continue to fear the Greens as agents of the 'boat-people' bogeyman. Others will fear them as politicians who would see their countrymen dispossessed by a strange and unaccountable rhetoric.

Vivienne Ortega's article, "No human being is illegal?" draws our attention to one of the great political mysteries of our time.

Political dissonance

The views expressed in the Greens' policy for "Immigration and Refugees," are quite extreme. If successful they would actually give substance to the grotesque threat that the media have cultivated of endless hoards of 'illegals' overrunning the country. Real 'Greens' scratch their heads and seek ideological or mystical explanations for the persistant coexistence of such policies with ordinary member expectations, but maybe they should look for more practical reasons for this enduring internal dissonance.

Some writers on candobetter.net think that the Greens and the Socialist Alliance are pretend parties, designed to confuse the electorate. Even a pretend party, however, needs an income.

Why do unpopular policies survive?

There is an old political method for working out why unpopular policies survive despite costly impacts. Look for focused benefits and diffuse costs. The people who benefit financially from population growth in Australia are well organised to keep it going, whereas the rest of us, who pay for it, lack the support of the press or the banks which are in favour of this jugganaut for inhuman reasons of profit. Using this logic and method, we can reasonably infer that if unpopular policies survive within the consensus community of the Greens, it is because they benefit some people in the Greens enough to make their time there very worthwhile.

If you look at them in that light, the Greens' unrealistic and extreme immigration and refugee policies bear the hallmarks of a strategy to attract finances from the growth lobby to the party.

Where else can you read views on immigration as extreme as this? You can read them in the writings of flag-bearers for property development.

How do corporate take-overs happen?

In fact it sounds like the growth lobby may have already taken the Greens party leadership over. It would not be difficult. It would start with bullies from socialist alliances, earth-sharers and dodgy refugee action coalitions moving in on the finances.

Indeed, we hear of this.

Later signs could be where architects, planners, and solicitors start to hold leadership positions.

In the face of this kind of anti-democratic extremism, bullying, naive posturing and studied nuttiness, reasonable people who want to preserve the environment and democracy will leave the Greens, which seems to be what the Greens want. This doesn't mean that the Greens started out like this; it's how they have become.

This exodus of bona-fide members has happened to the decimated ALP already, and probably to the Liberals as well. Toothless political parties make it easy for the corporates to run our political system.

There have been many attempts by many members of the Greens to get a rational population policy over the past two decades. Pseudo-left forces in the Greens have however suppressed these democratic attempts quite savagely and continue to do so.

I repeat that these views bear the hallmarks of a bid for corporate funding from the growth lobby. Yes, folks, I don't think this is about refugees or asylum seekers. I think it is about money and advantage from the growth lobby. Why? Because the growth lobby will be the beneficiary and democracy will be the victim.

Ironically these policies don't benefit refugees and asylum-seekers

Policies which focus exclusively on benefits to non-citizens don't make sense in a democracy. They don't benefit citizens.
The asylum seekers themselves also won't benefit because of the predictable reaction which the designers of the policy
must be aware of and which, I would argue, some of them actually courted.

The newsmedia will orchestrate a public perception that the "Green threat" of being "overrun by asylum seekers" can only be combatted by increasing "skilled migration"!

Fear of 'boat-people' coming in massive numbers will continue to be stoked by the Murdoch and Fairfax media and tv and radio. Some people will therefore continue to fear the Greens as agents of the 'boat-people' bogeyman. Others will fear them as politicians who would see their countrymen dispossessed by a strange and unaccountable rhetoric.

Children overboard

Cast your mind back to the time of the Children Overboard. (Mr Howard's time.) So-called Greens raised the alarm that asylum seekers were being discriminated against. This cry was taken up by the newsmedia, which conducted a campaign of community polarisation, so creating two largely fictitious extremes. The community was presented with the idea of an uncontrolled hoard of people from god-knows-where streaming in through our coastline demanding economic support versus a moderate stream of highly educated willing workers selected by skilled bureaucrats for the exclusive benefit of our economy.

In reality it was the numbers of legal immigrants that were out of our control and being ramped higher and higher by forces that benefited financially from this influx. It was the presence of huge numbers of legal immigrants, not that of asylum-seekers that was
pushing up the costs of land, power, water and education. The government was inviting them through advertisements in every state.

These quite viciously false pictures drove wedges between Australians, making the issue of immigration and the consequence of population growth so inflammatory that people were afraid to speak of it.

And the "Greens" cooperated with Murdoch et al by hammering in the wedges.

Who benefits?

Now, did asylum seekers and refugees benefit from this growth-lobby orchestrated electoral division and conquest?

Nauru. Christmas Island.

A situation had been engineered or a crisis had been created, probably with the planned objective of moving our sea-borders further out whilst artificially boosting demand for property and resources by importing masses of wealthy legal immigrants. Mission
successful.

Does it quack like a duck?

The concept of a Green government is a beautiful one that I personally long for. But that doesn't mean that a Party that calls itself Green has any intention of living up to that concept. Look at the evidence.

Does it look, feel, sound, smell and taste like environmentalism or democracy?

They say that patriotism is the refuge of a scoundrel. Well, these days Green seems to cloak some very mealy-mouthed growth lobbyists who are probably laughing all the way to the bank.

We need to turn away from the official political parties and their masters in the mainstream media. We need to look for our similarities, not our differences, and to eschew wedge politics. We should identify and embrace our grass-roots community activists and begin to recognise our own heros by the relevance of their actions to democracy and environmental wholeness. And we should
loudly point out those professional politicians and NGOs whose actions actually undermine our democratic voices, our shelter and our natural ammenity, for all their soothing, slimy slogans.

New wave of asylum seekers could be coming our way

As the nation panics over a small number of asylum seekers, we're left to wonder how Australia will respond to the millions of anticipated "climate change” asylum seekers?  How are we to respond?

According to the Australian Greens, Australian society, culture and the economy has benefited, and will continue to benefit, from immigration of people from around the world.   We won't continue to benefit if immigration continues to drive our population growth beyond sustainable limits. The environment, and ecological forces, and Nature's devastating powers transcend humanitarian concerns and economic requirements of an economy that needs to be fed by constant growth. We still haven't, despite advances in science and technology, solved the limitations of nature, and we still can't harness extreme weather or reign in natural disasters.

The Australian Greens are being inconsistent with their environmental and climate change policies by supporting limitless population growth.

Australia's fragile food security

The Chief Scientist's report to PMSEIC (Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council Oct 2010) on food security, reported that we currently feed nearly 40 million people on top of our own 22.5 million. If our population grows to 35–40 million as planned, and climate change reduces food production, we can expect to see years where we will import more food than we export.

We can no longer rely on increased water, land and energy use to drive the transformation of food production systems.

The PMSEIC report suggests increased challenges to the important food exporting industry including land degradation, population growth, long-term climate change, competition for arable land in peri-urban areas, scarcity of water, nutrient and energy availability.

With the high level of foreign investment in agricultural production much of our food production is committed to overseas consumption. There are now a large number of properties owned by middle eastern companies using them as feed lots to prepare animals for the live stock export trade. WA is responsible for 50% of live animal exports. There is also feedlot livestock for export to Indonesia and the USA.

In 2008, following prolonged drought, our wheat exports dropped to nearly match the level of our domestic consumption. Wild fish catches are declining in Australian waters and productivity in the agricultural sector declining.

Status of Refugees – at present

According to the United Nations Convention and Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees (the Refugee Convention), a refugee is someone who is outside their own country and cannot return due to a well-founded fear of persecution because of their:  This definition does not at present include those fleeing from climate change, overpopulation or natural disasters.

From the Australian Human Rights Commission webpage:
Governments have traditionally approached climate change as an ecological problem, or more recently, as an economic one. So far, the social and human rights implications of climate change have not been widely recognised .....As a signatory to the major international human rights instruments, Australia has an obligation to protect people against the threat that climate change poses to human rights. But the challenge is to develop a response to climate change that distributes rights and responsibilities equally.

...a human rights-based approach to policy development could, and should, be adopted to provide a standard for evaluating policy and resource allocation.

Under the 1951 Refugee Convention, a refugee is a person with a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. Environmental and climate change factors are largely irrelevant.  Will it be changed?

Surely there needs to be a lot more emphasis and policies, on "responsibilities" , not just rights.  There is a lot of talk and words related to "sustainability" and mitigating climate change, but little is being done in real terms, especially in Australia.

The Hon Tony Burke MP is Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities. He is not a minister for Sustainable Population any more! There is a lot of use of the word “sustainable” but little action.

Australian Greens – “No human being is illegal”

The Australian Greens want an immigration program that is predominantly based on family reunions and other special humanitarian criteria as defined by international human rights Conventions.  They want migrants to be given access to a full range of culturally sensitive, appropriate health services including a comprehensive medical examination on arrival.

"No human being is illegal"

They are also lobbying for the planning for climate change refugees with a particular focus on the Asia-Pacific region.

It is vital that Australia needs to develop a considered, long-term approach to asylum seekers and refugees because many of them could be heading our way. 

Australian Greens Deputy Leader Senator Christine Milne thinks so. Australia is historically one of the biggest contributors to the climate crisis. Whether we are legally obliged to or not, we certainly have a moral obligation to help those who climate change will hurt or displace. However, we are not responsible for their over population, their unsustainable environmental use, or their cultures that encourage fertility. 

Environmental refugees set to increase six-fold

Norman Myers of Oxford University has estimated climate change will increase the number of environmental refugees six-fold over the next fifty years - to 150 million. 
Australian climate scientist Dr. Graeme Pearman, has predicted that a 2°C rise in temperature would place 100 million people “directly at risk from coastal flooding” by 2100.

Asia Pacific region

Most of the 22 nations in the Pacific are low-lying atolls, with limited land space, small populations and little financial resources. More than 50% of Pacific Islander people live within 1.5 kilometres of the shore. They are all under threat of natural disaster and rising sea levels.

The Asia Pacific region is home to over 60% of the world's people, of which according to the United Nations two-thirds of whom live in extreme poverty. With such large proportion of the current population living in poverty, climate variability already has a significant impact on the health and livelihoods of people across Asia.

Climate change will exacerbate natural disasters, health problems and threats to water and food security.  It  will undoubtedly affect the lives of those who are without social and economic resources to adapt to the changes in climate.

At the Copenhagen Conference in December 2009, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), António Guterres- G-Magazine report , predicted that climate change will become the biggest driver of population displacements within the not too distant future. The numbers we're talking about are astronomical. His agency predicts between 50 and 200 million people to have moved by 2050.

A report suggests billions of people will starve by the year 2050 - ABC online , unless farm productivity lifts around the world. 

Food production must be lifted or many people could go hungry, and there is a lot of pressure on food industries and farmers to increase their efficiency and output.  Australian food security expert Professor Peter Langridge has similar views. However, there are limits to what Nature can continue to provide.

Listen to the MP3

Norman Borlaug – the father of the “green revolution”

Norman Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1970 for his "green revolution" that revolutionised food security for millions of people and for many nations. In his acceptance speech, he warned the world in the clearest terms that his breakthrough had not tamed what he termed the "Population Monster". He merely bought us about 40 years respite in which to do something about it.

"Big Australia"

With bipartisan support for a "big Australia" and ongoing economic immigration, there seems to be little empirical or pragmatic difference between the Australian Green's altruistic and moral justification for population growth, and the demands of our capitalistic economic growth argument.

Is it because Australia’s political elite, including the Australian Greens,  can no longer say ‘NO’ to immigration or accepting asylum seekers?   Our sovereignty is not being given due respect, or being sufficiently honoured.

Our first priorities should be to the Australian voters, citizens, our descendants, and any obligations to help other nations should be primarily through aid, crisis assistance, providing skills ( not poaching them!), health and family planning advice, training towards permaculture farming.

Who is a refugee?

The 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (and its 1967 protocol), to which Australia is a signatory, defines a refugee as:
Any person who owing to a well founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his/her nationality and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself/herself of the protection of that country.

However, the terms "refugees" and "migrants" are frequently used interchangeably. The two words refer to very different groups of people.

Boat people threats?

There's never been any credible evidence of a particular threat to national security. 
Five thousand arrivals a year by boat seeking asylum is a drop in the Pacific Ocean of a migration program of hundreds of thousands.

The number of refugees Australia accepts is set each year and has remained between 13,000 and 14,200 since 2003. This year the number will be 13,750, regardless of the number of boats that arrive.

Over 3 million people have arrived by plane in the last 20 and about 50,000 over-stayed visas etc thus making them illegal immigrants. Boat people in numbers terms are a lot less than numbers by plane for illegal immigrant status. The media and political parties play to the fear of “boat people” and illegal immigrants.

The illusion of control

An Australian born citizens who marries a foreigner will find it difficult to bring his/her spouse to Australia. This injustice enforces the illusion that Australia is seriously in control of who and how many people arrive at our shores.

Our politicians are deliberately making political use of the "security threat" from boat people and creating a smoke screen to hide the main source of our our population growth - skilled economic immigration!

The hype of the “boat people” and “border security” is a smoke screen to draw attention away from the real source of the drain on our resources, and an impediment to our obligation to the resettlement of genuine refugees – economic migration!

Challenges of settlement

Statistically, women from refugee backgrounds have the highest unemployment rates in the Australian labour market. Along with our own unemployed, and those who lack opportunities to gain skills, they need to be protected from being replaced by the skilled imported here from overseas.

Becoming economically integrated and maintaining financial security is difficult for newly-arrived immigrants to Australia, who in some cases are excluded from the social welfare system for a significant period after arrival.

Refugees tend to be in higher risk low skill jobs and tend to be employed in industries more affected by economic downturns. Some may have been tortured or experienced other trauma either before or during their journey.

There are also a significant number of entrants whose qualifications are not recognised in Australia and they need time to make adjustments. There is also the issue of learning English.

It is important that we recognise their specific needs and address these.

The challenge for Australia is to assist newly arrived refugees to process the experiences of their past and rebuild their lives in Australia.

In terms of global rankings, Australia comes in at 68th in terms of refugees per 1000 inhabitants and 77th in terms of refugees per gross domestic product per capita. In real terms, this is 1.1 refugee per 1000 inhabitants and 0.6 refugees per GDP per capita. This makes us mean-spirited and misers in regards to taking refugees.

According to the Green Left, nations like Australia need to throw open their doors and pay for the mass relocation of people who now have no choice but to abandon their homes to survive.

Climate change refugees

It is predicted that there will be millions of climate change asylum seekers in the future. Oxford University's Norman Myers believes that the number of climate refugees could be as high as 200 million by 2050. It will be the poorest countries that will be the worst affected. How many of these will also be from the impacts and direct consequences of overpopulation is also unknown.

More refugees will knock on Australia's door unless rich countries help poorer nations cope with climate change, a key UN scientist has warned.

Professor Martin Parry - a prominent UK scientist who chaired the last United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment of the impact of climate change - said wealthy countries such as Australia had “good, selfish reasons” to
spend money helping the developing world adapt to global warming. Not selfish, just realistic.

Professor Parry said there are likely to be significant population shifts away from areas severely affected by global warming, but the process will be "manageable" if it takes place over a number of decades. Really?

In July 2008 the World Bank warned Australia that future climate change refugees present the government with a major policy challenge. in August 2009, Pacific members of the Alliance of Small Island States (SIS) underscored 'serious and growing threat posed by climate change to the economic, social, cultural and environmental well-being and security of the SIS countries'.

In July 2009, an Oxfam report warned that:
By the year 2050, about 75 million people could be forced to leave their homes in the Asia-Pacific region due to climate change. Pacific island governments are already tackling climate change-related relocation and resettlement.

Policies based on Compassion?

Australia's system of immigration detention is failing on many fronts, and the Greens believe a more commonsense and compassionate approach is needed,
Greens Senator Hanson-Young said. However, environmental limitations don't respond to “compassion” but to “commonsense” and being responsible for keeping ecological balance.

Artificially replacing nature's bounties is energy consuming, costly or even undiscovered. There are limits to technology.

Our own carrying capacity could easily be compromised if we take the route of compassionate response and try to accommodate them all. Our environment, our ecological "services", have no obligation to increase their outputs, their bounties, to accommodate more people, no matter how urgent and pitiful their plights are.

Tight guidelines

Thus, we need some very tight and water-proof guidelines to how we treat asylum seekers to avoid the floodgates being opened, under the assumption that we have limitless land and resources here in Australia.

Politicians do not have the capacity to paint broad strokes even on such a large canvas!
The UN should be trying to advocate a global responsible human population challenge to limit family sizes, but the "sacred cow" of population growth still roams at large!

Clearly, our limits to growth are already being stretched, and we have a high reliance on oil and a globalised economy! Prime Minister Julia Gillard must make some tough, long term, policies and put the interests of Australians FIRST while maintaining a limited humanitarian intake!

Whose responsibility?

The problem is not just overpopulation, and it is not just of “non-whites”. It is a global responsibility.

The majority of Australia's growth, 66 per cent, was due to overseas migration, with the remainder, 34 per cent, due to there being more births than deaths. Australia's population growth is double the world's average!

People settling in Australia adapt our lifestyles, our consumption levels, and add to the local/global population pressures.

Carrying capacity

According to Paul Kelly, Editor-at-large of The Australian , the idea that Australia could not "carry" 36 million people is absurd, and the idea of a “carrying capacity” is loopy!

He believes that environmentalists will “construct principles that make this seem untenable”. Thus, environmental science is not tangible, substantive or concrete?

NSW premier Bob Carr has told a forum that Australia's population should be capped at 28 million. Back in January this year, Tony Abbott's “instinct” was “to extend to as many people as possible the freedom and benefits of life in Australia.” Should such serious policies be left to “instinct”?

Professor Tim Flannery believes the long-term human carrying capacity of the Australian continent and Tasmania could be as low as 8 million people. It looks big on the map but its mostly desert and non arable land.

The idea of a “carrying capacity” has been buried by the growth lobby and other deniers of reality.

Whereas most farmers have an accurate understanding of the carrying capacity of their land, we really have very little idea of what level of population this land can support.

Solution?

The solution to the world's displaced is left for politicians driven by economics, philosophical and idealistic arguments. What we can deduce from our current knowledge is that our present population in Australia is already more than enough, indicated by our lack of fresh water, the demise of our food bowl, and lack of arable land.

What is the answer to the escalation of our looming humanitarian crisis of countless refugees?

We have no new colonies to plunder, and the capacity of developed countries to accommodate millions is doubtful. It's like changing the deck chairs of the Titanic. Once a vessel is full, it is reckless to keep adding more passengers.

Do we start to turn away the haunted, the rejected, the persecuted, the homeless? It's a serious ethical challenge, a dilemma!

One of our CanDoBetter commenters, 'RichB', has highlighted the site Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. This is a visionary site! The movement seems to have gone to some considered endeavour to explore the issues. I like the question toward the bottom of the site:

'What will the world be like when our population starts getting smaller?'

As more globally-aware people begin to question the 20th Century 'growth-only' tenet, alternative ideals such a 'Low Population Planet', deserve to be considered and debated. But where to start?

One practical moral campaign that would immediately start curbing the out-of-control human birth explosion would be to lobby against the funding requests of charities supporting countries that have high birth rates. Now before readers jump to questionning the morality of this, this is not to stop funding emergency life support needs, but to make non-life-support funding conditional on recipient self-change.

These are some dominant charities in this field.

* UNICEF

* World Vision
* Feed the Children

* Save the Children

* Food4Africa

While it would be callous to allow people to die from hunger and malnutrition, the charity donation system seems to only perpetuate welfare subsistence and not address overpopulation poverty in undeveloped countries. For time immemorial, the starving of Africa and India have been dumped on our television screens to make us feel guilty.

Why has the problem not been resolved since television was invented and before?
The starving message has become a cliché to the point that it has become a permanent human condition. This is unacceptable. The charity system needs overhaul.

Charities need to be held accountable for fixing the problem not perpetuating it.
Donations need to be channelled through independent organisations that require conditional offerings. Donations can end up anywhere and do, like in arms purchases. The charity donations must stop and be replaced with:

1. Physical shipments of emergency food, shelter and medical supplies

2. Conditional relief funding linked to population control measures - family planning and birth control measures should be advocated - female education, contraception, changing cultural traditions of excess children (more than 2), and UNHCR funded free and professional male vasectomies. Perhaps even a free dwelling could be offered to male heads of families that undertake vasectomy and have only two children. Think of this as an incentive in impoverished countries!

On issues of fundamental cultural change, financial carrots seem more effective and ethical than punitive sticks.

Until then those donating should boycott charities until donations are conditional on and accountable for birth control.

As for wealthy developed nations with high birth rates, they have the financial means to address their own population excesses. Any country over 3% annual growth rate is irresponsible and so a target priority.

According to Nation Master website, the top 20 highest ranked developed countries by population growth rate are:

We should refer to them as the G20 - 'The Greedy 20'.

Rank Country Growth Rate (2008)
1 Maldives: 5.566%
2 United Arab Emirates: 3.833%
69 Saudi Arabia: 1.954%
81 Malaysia: 1.742%
82 Israel: 1.713%
107 Bahrain: 1.337%
114 Australia: 1.221%
116 Luxembourg: 1.188%
124 Ireland: 1.133%
131 New Zealand: 0.971%
137 United States: 0.883%
139 Canada: 0.83%
140 South Africa: 0.828%
144 Iceland: 0.783%
151 Liechtenstein: 0.713%
153 Thailand: 0.64%
154 China: 0.629%
156 France: 0.574%
160 Hong Kong: 0.532%
165 Netherlands: 0.436%

These wealthy countries extravagantly impose a selfish disproportionate burden on the planet's capacity. They have wealth capacity and as global citizens and members of the UN, have an obligation to pay a Greedy Population Levy to fund underdeveloped countries in controlling their excess population growth. The wealthy with an excess problem need to be supporting the poor with am excess problem, because the poor do not have the means to do it themselves. Let's make it means tested and charge say 0.01% of each countries GDP.

As for those poor displaced peoples caused by civil unrest and arms conflict, why does not the UN with the support of developed nations impose a 10% levy on each item of weaponry sold globally, so that the revenue is channelled to allow the UNHCR manage humanitarian and peace-keeping operations for the civilians affected?

International arms sales is the world's largest and richest discretionary industry. It can easily afford such a levy.

A case in point is the plight of millions of Yemeni refugees having fled civil conflict and currently starving in al-Mazraq camp, Yemen:

'Millions of Yemenis starving as donors fail to meet pledges, says UN'

• £70m needed this year and next to feed poor and hungry
• Traditional donors, including Britain, have yet to offer aid

Email from Alison Thompson sent to her parents in Sutherland Shire (Sydney)on 24 January 2010.
Alison is due to receive an Australia Day award. Candobetter knows nothing about Alison; we just published this letter because it came from a reliable source. We would like to know more and to have a picture of Alison if possible.

Hell in Haiti

Hi mum and dad,

I won't be around when they announce my award on January 26th. I am with Sean Penn, Diana Jenkins, Oscar and 15 doctors embedded in the 82 Airborne ( USA) Dante would describe it as hell here. There is no food and water and hundreds dying daily. The aid is all bottlenecked and not reaching here. The other day I assisted with amputation (holding them down) while they used a saw to cut a young boys leg off with no pain killers. Today I went with a strike force and army patrol in hummers into the streets and walked 5 miles through the camps set up on every street corner. Sewage and bodies stench is everywhere. As I attend to a patient 30 people crowd around me and it's hard to breath. I nearly fainted today as the sewage smell went straight down my throat. I went white and dizzy but couldn't sit down as sewage is running through the streets. There is much infection and it feels like the job is too big. No antibiotics anywhere.

Good news, today our new york doctors evacuated 18 patients with spinal injuries out to Miami and we're all so excited. Our mash unit is in the 82 air base overlooking a refugee camp of over 50000 people. The refugees start singing Christian songs at 4 am and line up for food until the army hands it out at 8 am. (That's if there is any food).

On the first night I was in the nearby jungle camping under the stars with my team and woke up to the beautiful music drawing me to them. I thought it was a church and we went to find it and came across the 82 Airborne camp and the refugee camp. (That's how we ended up here) as it wasn't safe to stay where we were even though we had our own security force. We are totally self sufficent with food, gas and medicines and have a private donor (Diana Jenkins who was a refugee in camps in Bosnia as a child - her family died of starvation in the camps. ) Sean Penn is here purely as a volunteer and is cutting through bureaucracy to get aid moving and food water and medicines to the people. There is no agenda but to save lives. Helicopters fly over head and it feels like Vietnam. That night 50,000 people sung me to sleep and they sing every night for the world to save them. There is always hope but she's not here right now.

Alison xxx

My writing is a mess as it's on iPhone and keeps changing my words and the generator is on for a few hours but I know it's important to tell the world. Please send to any press who may call or family and friends.

Australia Day Award update

Ms Alison THOMPSON of Cronulla NSW 2230 today (26 January 2010) received the Order of Australia for service to humanitarian aid, particularly the people of the Peraliya region of Sri Lanka following the Boxing Day
2004 Tsunami.

SOURCE:

This was sent to me by the Women On Boards list, with the following message:
"It is rare that Women on Boards publicises a cause, however the following email is from a woman who will be in tomorrows' Australia Day Honours List - and is a sobering reminder of our very great fortune to live in this country. Please pass it on if you wish."

Candobetter Ed: I have edited some typos out and put in a bit of punctuation.

"No apology"!

Is this "Newspeak" for a decision the Australian PM feels uncomfortable about?

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says he makes "no apology" for believing in a "big Australia". he also said " I make absolutely no apology whatsoever for taking a hard line on illegal immigration to Australia."

But Mr Rudd should apologise !

Rudd is socially-engineering Australia's population growth

He presides over a massive rate of population growth which his government has engineered. He should apologise to the present population and also to the future population that will be so much worse off than we are now as the Australian environment inevitably declines . Australia's environment right now suffers from population overload. It's the number of us and the way we live, the way waterways are interfered with for human activities, the way natural habitat is taken over for human habitation, the impact on our environment of human wastes both domestic and industrial, mining extraction and agricultural..... the sheer scale of our activities !

Optimism without foundation may doom Australians

Rudd's optimism reported by the ABC at the growing population seems to be founded on no real data. It appears as rhetoric, no more than a declared belief. The serious concerns of continuing population growth expressed by Treasury Secretary Dr. Ken Henry - water availability , biodiversity welfare of wildlife are waved away by Rudd as mere "challenges" (in "Newspeak" challenge =problem)

Australia is the driest inhabited continent on Earth with thin fragile soils and relatively little arable land.
Australia's environmental indicators- climate,waterways,land and biodiversity indicate stress right now from increasing human impacts.

.......but Rudd has set his reckless course and will not be diverted.

He makes no apology.

Orderly immigration or Organised invasion?

Would someone please fill us in about this claim that Australians have agreed to what seems to many to be an organised invasion of legal immigrants for the profit of the housing, finance and infrastructure moguls?

Sheridan writes,

"Paul Kelly argues in his The March of Patriots that there is a bargain between the Australian people and their governments. The Australian people accept a big, diverse and in many respects generous immigration program, so long as it is orderly and well controlled by the government." (Population growth lobbyist, Greg Sheridan, The Australian about his 'esteemed colleague' and fellow population-growth barracker, Paul Kelly of the Australian.)

I don't know anyone who was actually asked and the subject wasn't on the menu during the elections (which were mostly conducted by the mainstream press as usual).

This article "Boatpeople paint PM into corner" by Greg Sheridan is a rich source for a researcher into population growth lobby tactics and media propaganda.

Boat people and racio-ethnicity line a distraction from oversized legal immigration

Firstly we should note that boat people are again hitting the headlines, just at the time when MP Kelvin Thomson and others are coming out criticising high legal (but undemocratic) immigration and its unmanageable and disorderly consequences.

We've been here before.

This is probably no coincidence. It is useful to take our minds off the real issues.

Sheridan's article manages to talk about immigration at length as if the only real problems associated with it might be those related to asylum seekers arriving by boat. Never does it mention the terrible human overpopulation and infrastructure expansion stretching Australia's natural systems to breaking point. The comments allowed under the article favour the racial-ethnic criticism line, which sophisticated readers might be able to work out is a way for the growth lobby to stigmatise most discussion about high immigration as motivated by racial intolerance. That is, if you only publish comments objecting to the racial or ethnic composition of Australia's immigration stream, then you can give the impression that only racist Australians object to high immigration.

In other mediums like candobetter.org, there is, however, plenty of evidence of political and environmental pressure in response to high legal immigration rising like a bubbling stream of magma seeking the surface. The Australian, however, gives very little exposure to comments and protests about these impacts of legal population growth, thus giving a false impression to readers.

How to tell the difference between Rudd's and Howard's policies

Apart from the fact that Kevin Rudd and John Howard look different from each other - a child could probably tell them apart physically - the average adult might already have some trouble telling their asylum-seeker policies apart. In his article, Sheridan sets about trying to establish some difference, but the words are clumsy and unconvincing:

"Rudd is absolutely right to take a tough line against illegal immigration. Those who criticise him for doing so and saying so, such as the normally sound Labor MP Michael Danby, or those who cannot bring themselves to embrace the Prime Minister's language, such as Foreign Minister Stephen Smith in a remarkably evasive and feeble performance on Lateline, merely show how much better, shrewder and braver than the Labor Party Rudd is.

There is a reason this government is so dominated by its PM."

It doesn't matter if the job is hard and the materials poor. If you repeat that Rudd is 'right to take a tough line against illegal immigration' often enough, people will begin to think that this is somehow the crucial point of Australia's population policy.

There is a gem here, though, which you might miss if you began to nod off before you got to the end of the article (and who could blame you)?

Right at the end, Sheridan writes this amazing assertion, that Rudd is

"much better, shrewder and braver than the Labor Party"

What does this tell the alert observer? Well, it sounds to me like a message to the old Liberal-National voters who worry that the ALP has got in and that dear old Howard got the boot. It's telling them, "You don't need to worry. Rudd isn't really the Labor Party. It isn't really a Labor Government as long as Rudd 'dominates' it.

Clearly the Murdoch Press is pleased with Kevin Rudd's performance to date and they don't regret the departure of Howard, although they know that some of their readers still do.

On the other hand, what should Labor sympathisers think about this?

In my opinion, they should be worried! If they weren't already. But not because of Rudd's attitude to asylum seekers. They should be worried that Rudd is overpopulating this country legally to the satisfaction of the growth lobby. As if that were not bad enough, he shows contempt for refugees by allowing a gigantic stream of legal immigrants in but almost no refugees. If that doesn't tell you that the main interest the growth lobby has in immigrants is their money, then you are not reading the signs correctly.

At the same time we can see that Mr Sheridan has become an apologist for geographically distant refugee determination detention facilities because Mr Rudd is running into problems accommodating asylum-seekers.

"There are hard truths in this debate. Let me confess my own sins. When the Howard government introduced the Pacific solution, I was virulently opposed to it. I thought it was inhumane and wouldn't work. In fact, it did work. It also became clear to me the vast majority of people intercepted were not refugees but illegal immigrants."

Mr Rudd is also running into problems accommodating Australians, so perhaps we will soon hear that a few gulags will be built to house the more unruly homeless and unemployed, not to mention those who demand democratic government, under those Howard government terrorism laws that the Rudd government also embraces.

Now in Southern California, soon in place near you

The link http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/702.html provides two short videos that starkly illustrate the ultimate results of unsustainable growth, as it is unfolding right now in Southern California, and as it is likely to unravel anywhere that continues too far with an economy based predominantly upon land speculation, urban construction and retail.

Extensive areas riddled with debt and without productive function or options

This growth model produces extensive areas that are riddled with debt and have no genuinely productive function or options by which to repay that debt. The extremity of circumstance shown in these videos also presents a new, terribly real, but currently unreported wave of refugees - the repossessed homeless.

The same situation developing and compounding in Australia

It can happen anywhere in Australia, but I will talk about a situation near my area, Rainbow Beach in Queensland. A world heritage area, and the last small town on the coast, it has been subjected to waves of developer proposals and attempts to massage opinion now for several years.

Bringing the issue closer to home in Cooloola (an obsolete term since Council amalgamation but how else do you quickly describe the region around Gympie, Queensland, Australia), what will happen to the many local families whose debt makes up the rapidly escalating amount of unpaid Council rates? Just prior to the recent rate rise this figure was $3m, up after last year's rate rise from $1.8m only two years ago. The new rate rise of 15-25% plus levies, a 30% increase in electricity costs, fuel on the rise, etc. will all combine to make this situation even harder. Yet local jobs, and all plans to 'increase' them, are focussed on land development and the retail that spins off of it.

Councils have no business getting their constituents into debt

How is Council prepared to deal with these contingencies? It couldn't happen here? That's exactly what they thought in California only two years ago. Denying physical reality didn't help them avoid it. Fringe and regional suburban areas in Australia are structurally very similar to the depicted Californian situation.

The last thing Rainbow Beach (or any other small town) needs is to become a regional suburb. That is not development. In the light of current knowledge, it is socio-economic suicide.

The second last thing we need is for our Council to continue taking the region down this doomed urban development pathway to increasing debt, under-employment and overall infrastructure deficiency.

It's all a hard message to grapple with for some of us but we ignore it at our peril.

The U.K. government is planning to review its immigration policies, in a move likely to make it more difficult for foreigners to become British citizens. The move comes as unemployment is now at a 12-year high and as concerns about terrorism have fueled a surge in protectionist sentiment in the U.K., long one of the world's most open countries. Once-marginal anti-immigration politicians have been gaining ground.

Home Secretary Alan Johnson plant to announce a points system ('PBS') will be modeled after one in use in Australia and introduced last year, that grades workers and students hoping to enter the U.K. on criteria including education, age and need for their skills. Immigration minister Phil Woolas said the scheme would stop the population reaching the 70 million predicted by Whitehall statisticians and bring "control" to the migration system. The number of passports handed out to migrants is on course to hit a record of almost 220,000 this year. Critics in UK say the recent increases to their population, through heavy immigration, are placing a huge burden on public services as hospitals and schools face increased demand but no increases in their budgets.

Traditionally, foreign workers boost both the economies of the countries they work in as well as their home countries. But studies say that the current global economic crisis has sapped much of such cross-border monetary exchanges. The short-term benefits of growth are evident, but the long-term implications are severe.

Other European countries are clamping down on immigration as their economies slow and citizens complain that too many people are being allowed in.

In future migrants to the UK would have to spend five years as temporary residents, before becoming "probationary citizens". Points could also be deducted and citizenship either delayed or withheld for those found breaking the law or engaging in anti-social behaviour.

With record immigration levels to Australia, and so-called "skills shortages" in areas such as hair-dressing and cooks, this system hasn't reduced the number of foreigners entering Australia! Citizenship to Australia is extremely easy to aquire. The "skills shortages" hasn't translated into full employment or increased training courses. HECS and loans are escalating costs for university and now TAFE loans in Victoria and more Australians trying to aquire skills will become casualties of excessive fees.

Assisted by higher birth rates and heightened net overseas migration, Australia added a record 406,000 residents last year. The previous record was 375,000 in the year to June 2007. Bernard Salt: Clusters of growth excite property developers and concern planners. They localise demand for property and intensify demand for infrastructure. Our growth is determined by the property market!

Political lifecyles last until the next election. Australia must try to survive, intact, until at least the next generation and remain "sustainable" after that!

It’s time Australia cut immigration, apart from genuine refugees. Anti-immigration is not racism! It is about having an optimum population plan, a sustainable limit to how our environment, society and economy can equitably cope with the projected number of people.

John Howards "go for growth" mentality, and that record numbers of births implies confidence in the economy, still hasn't been re-evaluated. Developing countries have high birth rates too, to ensure an income in old age!

The points based system is trivial and has done little to reduce our immigration numbers, and legally discriminates against genuine refugees.

Bernard Salt: Population growth at record levels