Terrorism in Toowoomba

Pic courtesy Toowoomba Chronicle

It's refreshing (and unexpected) to find the local paper calling this for what it is - Terrorism.

It's less unexpected to see it reported as arson in the News Corp media.

Obviously, as far as the MSM is concerned, only Muslims are capable of terrorism.

From the article -

I would like to be wrong - but I suggest to you, dear reader, that if the attack had been made on a different building on Friday morning, and if the perpetrator had a Muslim background - the headline would have read something like, "Terror reaches Toowoomba."

When somebody who is not of Islamic faith conducts an attack on a community or a building of significance, it is described as an "isolated incident of arson" - but when somebody of Islamic faith commits a similar crime it is described as "terror".

Suffer the Little Children

Pic courtesy Daily Life

There's been a great deal of media recently about the treatment of children in immigration detention centres.

Plenty of heat, and very little light has been generated, with opinion divided between those who believe that it's OK for kids to be banged up with their parents in these places for indeterminate periods of time, and those who believe that it's not.

The policy is bipartisan. There have been differences in its application in the sense that under Labor, there were many more kids in detention, whereas with the Coalition in power, there are far fewer, but they're in these gulags for much longer, and long enough to be severely traumatised.

It's rationalised justified as being cruel to be kind. Apparently almost anything can be justified in the name of border security.

Then there's a different issue - immigration as it applies to children with disabilities.

Another more insidious rationalisation is used in relation to immigration and kids with disabilities. The justification (although it's rarely aired) is that caring for them is too expensive. Basically on that basis they're simply not welcome in Australia.

This justification is rarely discussed in the public space by those in government. I'd venture to suggest this lack of publicity is quite deliberate. Most Australians, if you stopped them in the street and asked them for an opinion, would be dismayed - if not horrified - by the assumptions contained in that justification.

Apart from the fact that the policy devalues people with disabilities, it ignores the fact that it is completely out of step with pretty much all Australian public policy which bears on disability.

Put beside anti-discrimination legislation, which has been around since 1992 in this country, it appears bizarre. Kids with disabilities are included in regular schools, there is universal and basic consideration of disability access and there are a range of commissions and agencies who raison d'etre is to ensure fair and reasonable treatment of people with disabilities.

It does not add up. To quote this article in Daily Life -

If Vincent van Gogh, Ludwig van Beethoven, Helen Keller or Frida Kahlo were alive today and in a moment of wild-eyed madness decided to permanently migrate to Australia, would we accept them?
I suppose you could argue that they’re highly skilled and their social contributions are quite possibly monumental. But judging by the requirements of Australian migration law the odds are against them. Why? Because they all had disabilities: Van Gogh suffered depression, Beethoven was deaf, Keller was blind and Kahlo had polio.

The issue emerges frequently, and it must create enormous distress for those involved. Yet it's not the subject of serious debate in this country.

We continue to turn a blind eye to abject cruelty, operationalised in policies driven by the same evil set of values that led to the extermination of Gypsies, Jews and people who were called "unfit" in Hitler's Germany.

It's time to change it, and treat immigrant families with members with disabilities the same as everyone else.

Update -

Tyrone Sevilla has been allowed to stay in Australia, at least temporarily. 
Perhaps common sense has prevailed...........

Comedy Gold

Tricky! The halal certification is obviously in invisible ink.

Look closely at the pic.

Can you see a halal certification logo?

Nor can I, but then I'm aged and half blind. Younger members of my immediate family couldn't find one either, on either of the labels on this excellent bottle of Jacob's Creek Shiraz I enjoyed the other day.

Yet that paragon of truth and virtue, the Halal Choices Facebook page, was active not so long ago encouraging wine drinkers to boycott Jacob's Creek wines because someone, somewhere, alleged they were halal certified.

Now, given that devout Muslims don't drink alcohol, and that there is no logo apparent on the label, that allegation seems, to put it politely, bizarre.

That same Facebook page had, however a fair head of steam up with declarations, calumny and xenophobic rants continuing unabated.

Bottom line is, when bigotry, ignorance and hate are the driving forces, reality and common sense don't stand a chance.

It does, however, have a funny side.

 

Peak Stupid

On my recent overland trip to Adelaide (from Toowoomba) gentle reader, my dashcam picked up a sequence of total lunacy.

I wasn't sure what to do with it. Perhaps the responsible action would have been to email it to the SA police. But then, I doubt they would have followed up. Nobody was actually harmed as far as I can tell.

I'd prefer to put it out there (on this blog - and on You Tube), and see what happens.

After all, the cretins involved managed to get away with arrant stupidity on this occasion without actually killing anyone.

Anyway, this piece of video was captured on the Princes Highway, on a wet and busy Easter Monday, on the last 5 kms of my nearly 2000 km journey.

The upside is that that this was the only ratbaggery witnessed on the whole journey. That's good.

By way of explanation ......the drivers of the small dark car and the light colored Toyota Camry were passing an object back and forward as they raced down the freeway at speeds of 100 km/hr plus.

The object was, I think, a dildo. The actual transfer occurs at about the 20sec point.

They may have been under the influence of some substance. Nobody in complete possession of their faculties would drive like this.  

Mission Accomplished

The boring car has been delivered to Adelaide.

Boring is good when you're travelling 1924 kilometres.

Boring is good when it's bucketing down with rain (as it was on the first and last days of the three day trip).

Boring is good when the roads are infested with bogans towing boats, browned off and cranky because they haven't been able to get them in the water because of the weather.

Toyota does indeed build boring cars, but reliability, comfort, and simplicity are boring, and that's OK. My $750 car didn't miss a beat. The hours put into it seem to have paid off.

And being the cantankerous old codger that I am, I derived a kind of savage satisfaction sharing the roads with cashed up bogans in their $50000 dollar SUVs towing all manner of expensive hardware. I was probably as comfortable as any of them, and 8lit/100km (which is what the boring car averaged) isn't half bad.

It actually seemed to run better the further it went. Cruising at 110km/hr was a doddle.

The audio was great. I got to listen to a lot of 70s music on cassette tapes that have been languishing in our attic because we didn't own anything that would play them. A 1996 Camry has an excellent tape player.

The HVAC system worked a treat, as did the wet weather gear (wipers etc), and now I know that there are no leaks.

The only downside was losing my banana. I had rationed myself one banana per day, but the last one was confiscated at the SA border by a fearsome woman in uniform who is a trifle lacking in interpersonal skills. The young policewoman who asked me to blow into the machine at Forbes on day two was much more courteous.

I should have eaten the damn thing in front of her. It was a very good banana.

We Are All Boat People

Pic courtesy Catholic Leader

To celebrate St Patrick's Day the Tuesday before last, today's Catholic Leader ran a report which reminds us that many early Irish settlers were refugees, and boat people.

Like the people in the report, I have no problem identifying as a descendant of these boat people. My ancestors came out on the actual boat mentioned in the Leader. That  boat was the Erin-Go-Bragh.

Here is an extract from the story -

“It was a long journey, a six-month journey, the longest journey to Australia of any boat, with 54 deaths, one of the highest deaths of any boat,” Mr Nayler said. “The passengers nicknamed her the ‘Erin-go-Slow’.”

The Erin-go-Bragh has close ties with the Brisbane archdiocese, having been helped by the city’s first bishop.

“The incredible story of the Erin-go-Bragh was perhaps our archdiocese’s earliest efforts at supporting economic refugees and helped to develop our great state of Queensland,” Mr Nayler said.

In 1861, during a potato famine, Irish families in Country Offaly were forced to leave their land but, being poor, “begged” a local Catholic priest Fr Paddy Dunne to send them to Australia.

Fr Dunne contacted the Brisbane Bishop James Quinn and, with help from the Queensland Immigration Society, organised a passage from Ireland to Moreton Bay.

Erin-Go-Bragh. Artist Rodney Charman.

My ancestor on the Erin-Go-Bragh was my Great Great Grandmother. Here is the narrative as my dad wrote it after some research he did a few years before he died -

On the 1st August 1862, the sailing ship Erin-Go-Bragh anchored in Moreton Bay. She had previously been known as the Florida and was the first fully Irish immigrant ship to arrive in the Australian colonies. It was known popularly as the Erin go Slow because of the length of time the voyage from Cork (Queenstown) had taken. It had left Cork for Brisbane on the 7th February 1862. It was 1111 in tonnage, its length was 250 feet and it carried (officially) three hundred and eighty-seven passengers. I say officially, because from what I have read, it carried quite a few more unofficial passengers as well. Its master was George Borlase.

The issues of the Brisbane Courier of August 2nd and August 11th 1862 reports on its arrival and the voyage. It had left Queenstown with 431 migrants. On the fourth day after leaving, Typhoid fever and Scarlatina broke out on board. During the voyage, as a result, fifty-four deaths occurred, most of those dying being children. The winds were light and variable, and there were other mishaps besides the sickness.
 
At Liverpool, a religious bigot managed to get on board, with an augur, after lifting the copper lining in places, bored holes in the fervent hope that the ship would go down with its papist cargo. Legend has it (and it is true, according to Father T P Boland, a well qualified historian of the Catholic Church in Queensland), the man responsible was a Scot named Douglas. He himself later became a migrant to Queensland, and married here. The irony was that when he did “fall” for a girl, it was for an Irish Catholic. The children were reared as Catholics, and they and their descendants provided Catholic barristers, judges, doctors and priests who made great contributions to Queensland over the years. Pumps had to work continuously on the voyage. Off the Cape of Good Hope, fire broke out on board. As a result of this, the ship ran short of water and had to put in to Capetown to replenish its supply. This added a thousand kilometres to the voyage.

So long was the ship in arriving in Botany Bay, that the Archbishop of Brisbane, Bishop Quinn, wrote to Queensland’s Colonial Secretary, R. G. Herbert, stating his concern about its whereabouts.

When it did arrive, after almost two hundred days, it was held at anchorage (because of typhoid fever) near St Helena Island. After eleven days, the passengers were transshipped and landed near the present Customs House in Queen St.

The Erin-Go-Bragh did not make it back to Ireland. The last heard of the ship was that she was seen in Calcutta in October 1863.
 
One of the passengers on board the Erin-Go-Bragh was a nineteen year old orphan girl from Tullamore named Catherine Ryan. She became my Great Grandmother.

The Queensland Immigration Council was formed by Quinn, Queensland’s first bishop. He had arrived in Brisbane in May 1861, bringing five priests and six nuns with him.
 
At that time, there were thousands of people homeless near Tullamore. Many were, like Catherine Ryan, orphans. Orphans were common in Irish famine times and the great famines had occurred in the forties. Neighbours reared the orphans, because among the poor, there appeared more kindness than was apparent in industrial, political, or court circles of the time.

The reason for the number of homeless people near Tullamore was that Lord Digby, an absentee English landlord, wanted to rear sheep on his estate there. This meant that the tenants were expelled. These Irish tenants, unlike tenants in England, had no legal rights.

In Tullamore was a priest named Paddy Dunne. He had been in Ballarat in Victoria but returned to Ireland after a dispute with a bishop. It was he who suggested to James Quinn that these displaced people should go to Queensland.
There are a number of historical parallels between the boat people on the Erin-Go-Bragh and those who arrived in this country a few years ago, and are now banged up in detention centres.

They were, like the Irish, forced out of their native lands as a consequence of disaster. In the case of the Irish - a famine. In the case of the Vietnamese and people from the Middle East, war and persecution.

The British (who ran the colony at the time) had a moral responsibility for the parlous state of Ireland at the time. We (Australians) have responsibilities for the Vietnamese and refugees from the Middle East because of our military involvement. There is a very clear historical thread running through this issue.

The Irish were feared and hated, much in the same way that Middle-Eastern refugees (and to a lesser extent the Vietnamese) were feared and hated. The Irish were regarded as dirty, would out breed the British, and they were Catholic. The term in use was "dirty Tykes".

There was no organised political exploitation of the issue in 1862 and in the 1970/80s. It took Howard's grubby use of the Tampa incident and Labor's acquiescence to his shameful policies to destroy what was a proud and noble record.

It was probably just as well that my dad wasn't alive to see it. He would have been deeply ashamed.

We are all boat people.

Iraq in Hindsight

Pic courtesy Daily Maverick

It's groundhog day - we're back in Iraq.

That's hardly surprising looking at recent history. After all, Vietnam set the template.
We follow the Yanks.

Our own strategic interests are subsumed to those of the US. You know, I'd be OK with that, if we got to vote in US congressional and presidential elections. Most Yanks couldn't care less - so they don't vote.

Again, given that I wasn't considered worthy of having a vote as a conscript on his way to an American inspired conflict back in 1969, I should not be surprised. Get used to it - that's the way it was........that's the way it is. At least these days the diggers are volunteers.That is a change for the better.

What hasn't changed is that we persist in fighting other people's wars.

Anyway, I came across this piece by Ron Paul in Townhall.com

There are two rather surprising aspects of this article. One is the journal in which it was published. The other is its content.

In summary, Paul (an arch-conservative) is saying that involvement in Iraq was a great strategic blunder. I couldn't agree more, and of course, we're still reaping the whirlwind of Bush's Texan Machismo (because that was what was driving him).

The piece in full -

 Twelve years ago last week, the U.S. launched its invasion of Iraq, an act the late General William Odom predicted would turn out to be "the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history." 

Before the attack I was accused of exaggerating the potential costs of the war when I warned that it could end up costing as much as $100 billion. One trillion dollars later, with not one but two "mission accomplished" moments, we are still not done intervening in Iraq. 

President Obama last year ordered the U.S. military back into Iraq for the third time. It seems the Iraq "surge" and the Sunni "Awakening," for which General David Petraeus had been given much credit, were not as successful as was claimed at the time. From the sectarian violence unleashed by the U.S. invasion of Iraq emerged al-Qaeda and then its more radical spin-off, ISIS. So Obama sent the U.S. military back. 

We recently gained even more evidence that the initial war was sold on lies and fabrications. The CIA finally declassified much of its 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which was the chief document used by the Bush Administration to justify the U.S. attack. According to the Estimate, the U.S. Intelligence Community concluded, "[W]e are unable to determine whether [biological weapons] agent research has resumed... the information we have on Iraqi nuclear personnel does not appear consistent with a coherent effort to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program." 

But even as the U.S. Intelligence Community had reached this conclusion, President Bush told the American people that Iraq, "possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons" and "the evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program." 

Likewise, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's "bulletproof" evidence that Saddam Hussein had ties with al-Qaeda was contradicted by the National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that there was no operational tie between Hussein's government and al-Qaeda. 

Even National Security Advisor Condolezza Rice's famous statement that the aluminum tubes that Iraq was purchasing "are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs," and "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," was based on evidence she must have known at the time was false. According to the NIE, the Energy Department had already concluded that the tubes were "consistent with applications to rocket motors" and "this is the more likely end use." 

It is hard to believe that in a society supposedly governed by the rule of law, US leaders can escape any penalty for using blatantly false information - that they had to know at the time was false - to launch a pre-emptive attack on a country that posed no threat to the United States. The fact that they got away with it simply makes it all the easier for Washington's interventionists to try the same tricks again. They already did with Libya and Syria. It is likely they are also doing the same with claims of a Russian "invasion" of Ukraine. 

Last week President Obama correctly blamed the current chaos in Iraq on the Bush Administration's decision to invade. He said, "... ISIL is a direct outgrowth of al Qaeda in Iraq that grew out of our invasion. Which is an example of unintended consequences. Which is why we should generally aim before we shoot." 

However, if the U.S. intervention in Iraq created the "unintended consequences" of ISIS and al-Qaeda, how is it that more US intervention can solve the problem? 

A war based on lies cannot be fixed by launching another war. We must just march home. And stay home.