Peter, I'm not devaluing your pleas at all. I don't disagree with you. All I will ask is, if we drop our barriers, will more boats leave Indonesia? Will more boats sink off Java? The policies of both parties are mixed and confusing, but it's not cut and dried. If we had a land-based border it would be more simple. The "no boats" policies are more complicated than just not allowing asylum seekers. Unfortunately there are people who seek to make a profit from sending people in leaky boats. They need to be stopped! Does it mean sending Hercules aircraft or naval vessels to the sources? Maybe. On Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 12:19 PM, Petros <Petros.Listig@fdrive.com.au>wrote:

Quoting "Russell Coker" <russell@coker.com.au>

...

Petros was not referring to controlling our borders (which is done in a legal and humane manner when white people arrive by plane) but to the illegal and inhumane treatment of nonwhite people who arrive by boat. The analogy seems appropriate to me as many white Australians claim not to know what is being done in their name.

''I have lived in war zones, with bombs and explosions. I have never experienced what I am experiencing here with the uncertainty … If we had died in the ocean, that would have been better.''

This is from an Iraqi refugee hanging out to dry on Manus Island.

Since we set up the camps processing of asylum claims by boat people came to a halt. Since then, over the last months, only one or two claims were processed.

That means we send people in a hole without a way out. They may rot there forever - they do not know, we don't know, our government will not say what their intention is.

This treatment is inhumane and against international law.

What bugs me, that I experienced an optimistic country in 1997 when hitchhiking from East to West, while since 2001 we have a political atmosphere of fear and hatred that is plainly insane.

It is draining my heart, as it does for my German friends. Nobody of us understands why it is so dark here now. One mailed me last week: "we have a press Goebbels would be proud of", "it wants to make you vomit", "we only can hope that nobody looks at us, nobody finds out how low we have sunk" - No, I am not the only one who thinks it is dark here..

Why are "stop the boats" a main concern for all, for every election campaign, while most of us barely will meet a boat-person himself?

Why are we so insane to lose our international reputation completely for the sake of kicking a few thousand people in a butt and treat them that poorly?

Our poor Northern neighbours must think we are completely insane.

Why the hell do we continue to behave like ogres: "Get out of my swamp!" ?

I don't get it, really. Can't we not just stop being that mean and mad? It's 12 years of madness - the voices are shrill than ever - and did anything of it help to get "the problem" away?

It is inhumane, damaging and killing people.

And it is time for everybody to stand up and get counted. Otherwise we are guilty as well.

I was in mail conversations with Melissa Parke, MP from Fremantle who was not voting for some of the deals Bowen pushed through parliament.

Feel free to read her speech when she was standing up for her conscience in parliament, talking about her own background as well:

http://www.melissaparke.com.au/speeches/469-melissa-speaking-in-parliament-o...

Let's have more people like her being in parliament, not this miserable pack of people just good in hating others.

Let's make plans with them. We have a special skilled migration program to develop regional, non-capital areas where people with "lesser skills" can go there to help build our nation. Why not using refugees to do that too?

Have a development approach towards our Northern neighbours that helps them (not just grabbing their ore and oil and gas). It takes a while - but having neighbours that aren't poor is a very good way to decrease the likelihood of people risking their life to get out of misery.

They don't come to get rich. The Vietnamese hair-dresser here in Kensington is happy to have a decent life now, being sent as a 8 years old on a boat to Hong Kong where she spent 5 years in a camp before taken to Australia.

They all want to have a decent life, as you want. They do the risky journeys because they had to flee persecution and could not find another place that gave them hope.

The approach we have now is the Dead Kennedys "Kill The Poor" approach.

Please stop it.

I don't know whether it is "valid" to compare with Hitler or Apartheid or whatever.. at the end it is the same disease: hatred and greed and lack of humanity.

I remember a little dance tune from the 80ies, called Gimme hope Joanna. Finally it changed, thanks to people like Mandela.

Start dreaming.

Thank you Peter

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