IanHamlett wrote:I don't think the UK's foreign policy can be blamed for the people leaving Eritrea. The UK hasn't done the best job in encouraging their human rights record but it's done the usual amount of badgering and (I think) there's some investment coming to Eritrea if they tidy up a bit.
Only just seen thus. I know. I was using that joke as the basis of another joke.Diluted Dante wrote:He was doing a bit about tourists.
Jost looked back at this and think you've misunderstood me, I'll blame it on the hasty re-type.SpaceGazelle wrote:Poor you. Lack of empathy is a significant problem.
If people have a shitty idea and then do a shitty thing that does seem to make them a bit shitty. It might not be their fault they're shitty but they most definitely are shitty.IanHamlett wrote:People do shitty things, fuelled by shitty ideas, but I don't think people are shitty.
Highlight mine. Apologies for the extended triple post, but see the highlighted. Given Abbott has just recently given you lot a literal Thatcher lecture arguing the opposite.It was with disbelief, and finally contempt, that I watched excerpts of the Al Jazeera interview with former Prime Minister Julia Gillard on the topic of her government’s treatment of waterborne asylum seekers, particularly women and children.
Gillard, now a global advocate for the education of girls and women, employed what has disturbingly become a normalised justification for Australian governments’ increasingly callous torment of women and girls in off-shore detention: we do it to stop people drowning at sea.
I have yet to get my head around the psychopathology of those who believe the torment of one group is justified in order to discourage another group from undertaking a particular action. I think such justifications are teetering precariously on just about every ethical and moral ground I can think of, beginning with the Kantian argument that it is reprehensible to use people as a means to an end, and that people are an end in themselves. To treat them in any other way is to dehumanise them, and ultimately, ourselves.
However, Gillard, Rudd, Abbott and now Turnbull apparently have no difficulty with treating waterborne asylum seekers as a means to an end, and justifying their hideous treatment of them as a necessary deterrent in order to save the lives of others.
It has been said more than a million times: arriving in this country by boat, seeking asylum, is not a crime. Indeed, as we are signatories to the UN Refugee Convention, we actively invite people to arrive here by whatever means they manage to employ.
If we want to save people from drowning at sea, and if we care about the humanity of those we already have in detention, we would cease to use the detained as scapegoats, and as examples of what will happen if you legitimately arrive here by boat. We would instead withdraw from the Refugee Convention. People come to Australia because we invite them, through our participation in the Convention, and our agreement with its principles.
Of course, we aren’t about to take that step. So instead we will continue to ill-treat asylum seekers in off-shore detention. We will continue to justify this crime against humanity by claiming it’s done to save lives.
And Ms Gillard will continue to strut the world stage advocating for the education of women and children but not, regrettably, those she imprisoned in mandatory indefinite dentition in tropical hell holes where they are abused, raped and made mad.
Women for Gillard? Non, merci.
IanHamlett wrote:Morally it's quite easy to decide what to do with people when they get here. Treat them with respect and see what we can do. I'm just having genuine difficulty seeing a morally righteous way to deal with the boats and smugglers. It's like one of those questions with a bunch of people on a train track.
I 100% agree with first bit.IanHamlett wrote:I agree. Tackle the reasons they want to leave in the first place, with aid and negotiations, maybe even military intervention. But that won't help the people leaving now. For them we should be picking them up from closer to home.
djchump wrote:I hear there's some spare land the Palestinians aren't utilising...
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