Beijing Olympics likened to Berlin under Hitler

I've been pressing the case for some time that Howard and Downer's blind dalliance with the China trade juggernaut, at the expense of human rights considerations, does not bode well.

Labour abuses, poor product quality control, exploitation of and discrimination against ethnic minorities, inadequate pollution and waste management systems, are just a few of the concerns surrounding China's rapid economic expansion.

Its military build up, ongoing threatening posture toward Taiwan and other regional players, and deepening persecution of dissidents such as Tibetan activists and Falun Gong practitioners are clear indicators of the growing threat the Chinese regime presents to global peace.

ABC reports the former head of the international and strategic divisions of the Defence Department, Allan Behm, told an APEC seminar at the Fabian Society last night that Australia does not understand China.

"Chinese strategy is built around a zero sum game - that for every winner there is a loser, and it is very important to understand that," he said.

"That is what is taught at the PLA academy of science in Beijing, and this is how fundamentally China thinks."

China wants a good relationship with Australia because it needs our resources.

But Mr Behm argues Australia is lazy and complacent about China.

"I think what worries me so much about our current policy is that we don't foresee a future where it may not be as rosy as it is now and we will be ill-prepared for that," he said."

The losers in the Chinese zero sum game are mounting. Calls for boycotts of the Beijing Olympics are getting louder.

"Australia's former human rights commissioner, Dr Sev Ozdowski, has likened next year's Beijing Olympics to the 1936 Berlin Olympics under Adolf Hitler, saying it is a similar display of economic power despite millions being persecuted in the background.

"There is no freedom of speech," he said.

"People get arrested and sent to jail because of the content of their private emails."

Wake up Australia!

Alert & Alarmed: Downer calls for uranium sales to Russia, warns of Rudd election danger!

Human rights for Australia - 'cringers' unite

New Matilda has updated its campaign for a Human Rights Act. "The spirited comments from international lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, speaking to the media industry’s Right to Know alliance reminded us just how far back Australia has fallen..."

Stung by the criticism, AG Ruddock jumped into the fray with his usual rationale for defending the indefensible, only politicians like him really understand freedoms and their defence.

As New Matilda put it so concisely: "Ironically, Phillip Ruddock doesn’t appear to recognise that the upsurge in human rights activism in Australia, indeed the prime motivation behind the New Matilda Human Rights Act for Australia campaign, is largely attributable to his very own actions, first as Immigration Minister and now Attorney General. Many of us do cringe at the way he has undermined Australia’s international reputation for fairness and humanity in respect of refugees and asylum seekers. Ditto the reintroduction of archaic sedition laws, the recent suspension of indigenous land rights - the list goes on."

I cringe every time I see this self-serving rhetorician pop up to drone on about 'matters' before the court of public opinion. This court needs to be given voice shortly to pronounce judgement on Ruddock's tenure of 'objectivity'.

Human Rights in Australia - Sri Lankan refugees in Nauru on a hunger strike

" The Sri Lankans detained on the Pacific island of Nauru went on a hunger strike yesterday in protest of the six-month stalemate on their claims for asylum in Australia.

“We have undertaken the hunger strike as we are deeply hurt and disappointed by the fact that the Australian Government has been delaying the decision about our plea for political asylum,” an asylum seeker, A. Sujee told the Daily Mirror on an email interview.

“We are just living corpses,” he added.

“Although we faced certain visa application interviews, we don’t have a clue about our visa status. No one has given us information as to whether they are being processed and what is causing this delay,” he added.

50 of the 83 refugees are participating in the hunger strike. “Eating three meals a day does not mean living? It is for this reason we have decided to avoid the three meals and face whatever is in store in respect of our future,” stated a letter sent by the asylum seekers to the Australian Foreign Affairs Minister,"

The Age reports "Refugee advocate Susan Metcalfe, who has spent the last month on Nauru, said she had urged the men to reconsider the hunger strike.

"Some of the men involved have health problems, and at least one to two are diabetic," she said.

"They could do irreparable damage to their bodies and we could see disastrous consequences."

Ms Metcalfe said the men's anxiety and frustration had been exacerbated by the uncertainty of the election outcome and whether processing would be suspended during the caretaker period.

The men have been banned from leaving the immigration processing centre during the day following the alleged rape and indecent assault of a local Nauruan woman by six of the Sri Lankan asylum-seekers."

Siev X Memorial Project

In 2002 a nationwide student art collaboration was announced. Every one of Australia’s three thousand secondary schools received a letter inviting art teachers to send student concepts for a national SIEVX memorial. The only stipulation was for a design that could be built on the lakeshore of the national capital Canberra. Read more about the project.

The Siev X Memorial Project has been given permission to install the memorial poles in Weston Park, Canberra, for 7 weeks in September, October 2007.



The memorial will be launched on September 2nd at 2pm, in Weston Park. Project originator, Steve Biddulph will be talking, and Mr Jon Stanhope, ACT Chief Minister, will again be officiating.

Howard's NT safari

Would'nt you know it, Howard's used his first visit to remote aboriginal communities in NT since he announced his new paternalism to tell local communities that they'd better get with the program or face a bleak future.

It is a little difficult to grasp just what the joys of joining Howard's version of the 'mainstream' hold out to remote communities, but we have it on his authority and in his own words: "Unless they can get a share of the bounty of this great and prosperous country, their future will be bleak". That is probably true, but how does signing up to this bizarre intervention guarantee them a fairer share of our country's 'bounty'?

From a distance it seems a recipe for further marginalization, disempowerment and impoverishment. Are all those resources currently encamped in the NT to become a permanent and expanding feature of the remote landscape? For the life of me I can't recall one instance where local communities have been properly consulted and made genuine partners in this exercise. Their views have been ignored, their leaders sidelined and their rights ignored or trampled upon - all in the cause of treating this 'national emergency'.

The great white leader has visited, spoken, and, in a sad tradition of great white leaders promising much and delivering little, will return to his mainstream comforts to ponder his great beneficence and compassion. Again, we see the 'man of the people' being tough on the weakest groups - refugees, Muslims, black fellas and the poor.

"The Pacific Solution: A $1 billion ‘living hell’" - Oxfam report

Six years since the Tampa crisis of the 2001 Federal election, urgent reform of Australia’s asylum seeker policies is called for after a new report published on August 27 found that the Pacific Solution had so far squandered $1 billion of taxpayers’ money, exacerbated mental illness of refugees and was operating without scrutiny.

‘A Price Too High: The cost of Australia’s approach to Asylum Seekers,’ a joint report by Oxfam and A Just Australia, presents new research that found since 2001 it has cost the Australian taxpayer more than $500,000 per person to process fewer than 1,700 asylum seekers in Nauru, Manus and Christmas Island. By comparison, the latest estimate from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship suggests that the cost of holding asylum seekers in a mainland Australian detention centre is only 3.5% of the running costs of the Pacific Solution.

Australians Against Racism - "Rainbow Bird" Project to say never again to another Tampa

Sunday was the anniversary of the day the MV Tampa rescued over 400 people at sea, only to give John Howard the wedge by which he not only won the 2001 election, but tormented and harmed men women and children from then to now with the mandatory detention regime.

Australians Against Racism, in collaboration with Wakefield Press, published Rainbow Bird on the 26th of August to mark Tampa Day. Written and illustrated by 14 year old Adelaide teenager Czenya Cavouras, Rainbow Bird is a picture book that is thought provoking, disturbing, and inspiring.

AAR hope Rainbow Bird will stir, enrage, and move people. They hope it will be a powerful memento of these dark times. We hope people will treasure it as a beautiful work of art.

Please forward this information as widely as you can. The more people to have this book in hand the better, because it will also help us to say collectively on election day: 'Never again'.

Rainbow Bird is available now in bookshops and from Wakefield Press.

Profits from Rainbow Bird go to AAR. All who worked on the Rainbow Bird project volunteered their time and skills.