Pixelated Semantics

A schizotypical inventory

For how much longer will we tolerate human rights abuse by the Australian Government?

Australians seem strangley tolerant of the idea of being detained in Baxter, and interrogated and deported, even if you are a citizen or at risk as an asylum seeker. The Gulags are not just American, and they are not just Chinese. The Australian "government" (you remember, the "moderate centrists" that emerged at the last election from their cocoon) is very happy to sink Saddam's Iraki dictatorship when no longer convenient, while it helps the Chinese dictatorship as there is still much money to be made there. To facilitate persecution by a foreign power on our own soil is beyond tolerance, it really stands at the heart of an ethically corrupt system of governance. Almost verbatim from the SMH:

Almost 50 Chinese people held in Australian immigration detention centres were put in isolation for up to 2 1/2 weeks last month and interrogated by officials of the Chinese Government.

Refugee advocates say it raises disturbing questions about the Federal Government's complicity with China and whether its actions have endangered the detainees and their families.

Some of the detainees interviewed were political dissidents and [...] in the middle of asylum claims..."

As if any further underlining is needed, the ABC has a report that also clearly shows the Liberal party are willing to use "terrorist" as a smear against even their own dissidents in Parliament (currently trying it would seem to overturn the immigration regime that allows human rights abuse to happen here), an extraordinary statement against a fellow "centrist" that shows just how far down the road to intolerance we have progressed:

"If you spit the dummy because the vast majority of people in your own party won't agree with you, and you in effect behave as a political terrorist, then I think you lose credibility - I don't think it's a bad sign for the party at all"

It's a bad sign for the rest of the country though that such violent defamation is regarded as acceptible.

Interesting that this "terror" libel and the coverage erupt just in the nick of time to draw attention from the utter disgrace of the Chinese interrogations here. The Courier Mail also interprets "balanced coverage" as finding 5 Conservatives who support or avoid criticising the libel, against 2 "less-than-conservative" Labor MPs, whose strongest quoted comment is that its "silly" (strange, their identical phrasing), and one strong critical comment from Bob Brown. [Typical that a Murdoch publication could see quoting 5 supporters balances 1 critic, or at best 3. If you think this is fair and unbiased journalism with a strong sense of social responsibility, then the Courier is your kind of media.]

Senator Brown, as always, provides the decent and accurate perspective in response to claims the "terror" libel arose from "inexperience":

"It is not inexperience here, it's an underlying nastiness which is out there on the right of politics and which needs to be reined in."

If the kind of dissent that supports human rights makes us "political terrorists", then Mr Howard, you'd better start on some bigger concentration camps.

Item posted by AutoEditor at 9:36 am ::