Yabby

"Terrorism has nothing to do with it, thats a religion problem."

On the contrary I believe the issues I referred to relate very closely to terrorism which is why I mentioned it.

The reasons people resort to terrorism are inextricably bound up in land, poverty, alienation and exploitation. Terrorists are not fighting for religion. That's a myth of convenience peddled by US power brokers to justify their so-called war on terror. Religion is just the lightning rod through which terrorists conduct their real fight which, misguided as it might be, is all about achieving political freedom and economic justice. Terrorists afterall don't have access to a powerful state-sponsored military to do their dirty work.

Scout

Thank you for your kind words. Yes I might cut and paste if a point seems relevant to another thread. Please feel free to do the same - anything to give these ideas some wider currency.

"I find it perplexing that those who would shut the doors on refugees are frequently proponents of the Global Market."

Do you? I actually think the two attitudes fit together fairly closely on the ideological spectrum. I agree though it's unfortunate that this thinking seems to have the ascendancy at the moment. We can only hope that one day we live in a saner world where fairness and sustainability are no longer sacrificed in the name of profit.

Always enjoy your down-to-earth posts and hope to read many more of them.

I disagree with you. Read what Bin Laden actually wrote and where his philosphies come from. For that you need to understand Islam a little, its lots of divided groups. Terrorism comes from the salafist/muslim brotherhood version. Sayd Qutb's "Milestones" is on the net, to give you an idea what its about. He had a huge influence on the extremist forms of Islam. The Saudi's follow an extreme form,
Wahabism, which teaches hate etc, but nothing like Qutb and Co.
Bin Laden clearly stated that Taliban Afghanistan was the the closest to a perfect Muslim State in his view. All that stuff has nothing at all to do with the CIA etc.

The problem really stems from Saudi Arabia. The Sauds run the oil and treasury, the Wahabs run religion. Huge petrodollars were spent
financing radical forms of Wahabist teaching at Madrasses around the world, thats where extremism has been taught. The Sauds didn't really care, they are busy doing their thing, the agreement with the Wahabs kept relative peace in SA, now its biting them in the arse.

Yes Bin Laden thinks oil should be 120$ a barrel and that Muslims are exploited because its not, but that has little to do with the worldview of the Muslim brotherhood. Zawahiri, bin Laden's no 2
is an Egyptian straight out of that school

Yabby,
Excellent post! I suggest Bronwyn ask F_H if extremists are motivated by poverty or religion.

Bronwyn, thankyou for your well-considered response.

You write; “But with over 20 million refugees worldwide and us being part of the global village I don't see how we can put up the barriers indefinitely” and “I don't advocate free borders, I think we need controls”.

It seems to me that these two statements are contradictory. Is a barrier different to a control? Anything other than free borders means erecting barriers. Its as simple as that.

“I feel this gives us some sort of obligation to the refugees we helped to create, don't you agree?”

I agree that Australia should be doing its fair share to help the world’s most needy. This means giving aid to those in desperate need in their home countries, and perhaps bringing a small number of those under real threat of losing their lives to Australia. Money and physical assistance is many times more efficient spent at refugee sources than on setting up immigrant refugees with all the things they need to get by in Australia. To quote Leigh from the very first post on this thread; “In a nutshell: help people in their own countries.”
I still think there is some merit though in increasing our refugee intake to perhaps double the current level, but only within a much-reduced total immigration intake (about 24 000 within a 30 000 pa total). More importantly, I wish we would increase our international aid budget to at least the UN recommended 0.7% of GDP and direct it to where it is really needed. But despite this monetary shortfall, Australia has had a reasonable input into international aid issues for many years, being one of the world’s leaders on a per-capita basis.

Bronwyn, I am not sure just what you envisage with border control. Can you tell me what you would like to see.

So that’s two crucial points briefly touched upon – border control and our national effort to assist refugees and the desperately poor.

More below

The other really significant point is my previous no 1; The number of arrivals was about to really escalate. This is crucial, because, if there had not been ominous signs of an escalation in arrivals, I too would have seriously questioned the need for such a different approach over the Tampa compared to previous arrivals. I recall a great deal in the media about the mobilisation of asylum seekers. It certainly wasn’t just coming from Ruddock, or the government.

Perhaps someone else reading this thread, who is a whole lot more internet-friendly than me, can point directly to some articles pre-dating August 2001 that express this increase in asylum-seeker movement.

I can very easily imagine a scenario where Beazley was in power, vacillating while the number of boat arrivals increased and increased, until the number of people caught up in the mess was ten or a hundred times greater, with thousands on their way. What would we have done then?

Bronwyn, you wrote; “I feel you've succumbed to the scare mongering put out by Howard, Reith, Ruddock et al around Tampa”. Not at all. I think it is very much the other way around; those who so strongly opposed Howard’s actions couldn’t see the big picture. This is why I am so furious with Bob and Nattie; they couldn’t see the bleeding obvious – if a small number of asylum-seekers come to Australia and we let them all stay, we will soon have to deal with a large number. And that the larger the number, the more strictly they would have to be dealt with.

Regarding Bob Brown; I have a high regard for him (It used to be a very high regard). He is indeed “one of the few truly decent and inspirational politicians Australia has”. This is why his one-eyed stance over the Tampa and the razor-wire and mandatory-detention saga that followed, affected me much more than it otherwise would have.

“if a serious conservationist such as yourself can't vote green, who the hell is there?” No one. And isn’t that the pits.