I know I haven’t written anything about the major news story of the week, mainly because I’m just disgusted by most of the soundbites coming my way. I don’t care that the two major parties haven’t been able to pass a bill setting up a new Pacific Solution, because all of the proposed Pacific Solutions are disgusting and none of them will “stop the boats” (Howard-Shmoward – correlation does not equal causation).
Everything about the way that our pundits are demonising boat-arriving asylum seekers while pumping out crocodile tears over drowned families is disingenuous,the way that most of our politicians are pandering to them is despicable, and the debate this week is framed around not even asking the right questions.
As usual for media circus threads, please share your bouquets and brickbats for particular items in the mass media, or highlight cogent analysis elsewhere, on any current sociopolitical issue.
Bouquets to Sunili for Saving lives and the asylum seeker debate (bonus points for use of INTERROBANG).
Thanks tigtog, and for the Piping Shrike post – I hadn’t seen that.
It’s been a week where former Howard Ministers get to seriously speak in Parliament, with a straight face, about human rights.
Perhaps time for some old-fashioned campaigning, outside of the media fish bowl.
My meagre thoughts at http://bluntshovels.wordpress.com
Thanks tigtog – it’s been a week of historical revisionism to quite an astonishing degree. The sight of Andrews and Ruddock talking about human rights was sickening.
My meagre thoughts – http://bluntshovels.wordpress.com/2012/06/29/and-so-now-what-to-do/
Jessica Irvine has a fairly excellent piece in the SMH on how increasing legal avenues to asylum would undermine the black market in people smuggling.
To ‘stop the boats’ we need to stop the things making people flee their homes, like civil war. No one wants to spend decades in a refugee camp or risk their lives on a leaky boat to spend months in detention. Why politicians can’t get that through their heads is beyond me. If someone is found to be an ‘economic’ refugee we are allowed to send them back. But they are few and far between.
My own opinion on the matter:
http://megpie71.dreamwidth.org/30060.html
Drag0nista’s regular news round-up is always worth a look:
No Crap App: w/b 25 Jun 2012 – her highlighted issues for the week link to various articles on asylum seekers, the future of Fairfax, and the upcoming activation of the carbon price.
Clive Palmer’s solution which is compassionate, would actually stop the boats and never be adopted by any of the major political parties.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/let-asylum-seekers-fly-in-palmer/story-e6frf7l6-1226412973378