Friday 29th of March 2024

turdy bomber prepares to make more refugees from syria...

turdy bomber

Prime Minister Tony Abbott says he is prepared to "step up to the plate" and increase the number of refugees Australia accepts from war-torn Syria, but within the current humanitarian intake.

Mr Abbott was urged to increase Australia's refugee intake after photos of drowned Syrian toddler Aylan Kurdi on a Turkish beach shocked the world and put a human face to the dangers refugees risk trying to reach safety.

This afternoon the Prime Minister told a press conference he was moved by the images of Aylan, and was prepared to lift the percentage of refugees Australia takes from Syria.

But he said the increase would not mean Australia's overall yearly intake of refugees, which stands at 13,750, would go up.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-06/abbott-vows-australia-will-help-syria-refugees/6753220

 

cuddly border farce...

The Federal Government has been criticised for spending $15,000 on Border Force dog soft toys intended as "corporate gifts" for dignitaries and volunteers.

Greens immigration spokeswoman Sarah Hanson Young questioned the spending, given the funding needed to cope with the humanitarian crisis in Syria.

"Australia could go a long way to helping to fill that gap urgently," she said.

"I saw today that we're spending $15,000 making soft toys to promote Border Force."

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-06/border-force-to-spend-thousands-on-soft-toys-as-corporate-gifts/6753676

 

This news item did not come from the Betoota Advocate but could have...

diagnosis of dementia pugilistica...

 


From Bob Ellis


What Abbott has done in the past month beggars belief.

He has defended the right of Bronwyn Bishop to misspend half a million dollars. He has agreed that Dyson Heydon should be paid over $3,000 a day to "root out union corruption", but none in the Liberal Party. He has held up gay marriage for three years. He has decided to bomb Syria and thereby help the monster Assad, mass murderer of a quarter of a million of his own people. And he has said no Syrian will be allowed to come here, though a few days of Dyson Heydon’s wage would sustain a family of them for a year.

He has declared that the boats that crossed the Mediterranean in the greatest mass movement of desperate, fugitive peoples in world history should have been turned back, as others were, by him, in the Arafura.

Is he mad? Is the joke diagnosis of dementia pugilistica true? He has certainly shown worse political judgment than any Australian leader in a century.

He continues to spend $40,000 a day on the search for MH 370, though it has been found, and not on Syrians fleeing beheading and crucifixion. Though an assisted migrant himself, he thinks no child should be saved from death by Daesh if he comes in a boat that is paid for. He gave, however, Transfield a billion dollars on Monday to continue tormenting children in partnership with the police state Nauru, which New Zealand will not fund any more, and not a penny to the victims in the Middle East of a new genocide.

He says they are none of our concern. He reduced the numbers of refugees we would take last year, from 20,000 to 13,750, including some Iraqis and Syrians, and that surely is enough.


Julie Bishop, Mike Baird, Craig Laundy and Barnaby Joyce have said we should take more. Richard Di Natale has proposed a figure, 20,000, that most Australians would think fair. It is, per capita, one tenth of what Germany is taking. Yet Abbott holds that Dyson Heydon is worth a million dollars and ‘these people’ not a penny.

Crazily, he thinks there are votes for him in this. That by bombing Syrians and letting none of them come here to safety from slaughter he will win, or maintain, some votes in Canning and the western suburbs. He does not realise what these images of multitudes walking down superhighways to freedom, and crowding stalled trains and shouting "Freedom!", and drowning under capsized ferries, are doing to the conscience of the world.

Can he be mad? It looks like it. He cannot win Canning now and he will be out of office by November. He will be denounced and reviled by his party, which may not survive his toxic interregnum. Xenophon’s party may replace it, or Palmer’s, or Katter’s, or Windsor’s. Or Laundy’s. Or Di Natale’s.

And all he had to do is agree to take some Syrians — ten or twenty thousand.

And it is too late now.

He is doomed – and shamed – forever.


Editor's note: This article was written before Prime Minister Abbott announced today Australia would increase the intake of Syrian refugees by taking less refugees from other countries. 

As you may be aware, Bob Ellis is suffering from a serious illness. If you'd like to help him make a full recovery, you might like to consider making a contribution by subscribing to his blog, Table Talk, HERE.

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Note from Gus: Like any other countries where there are many "dissidents", Syria has been under pressure. The Sunni component of Syria has been led by the Saudis into a revolution which Assad has been trying to stop. Helped by the West against the "nasty" Assad, the revolt has grown into a major stupid conflict. Now the West is helping "moderate" fundamentalists against Assad but the West is bombing "extremist" fundamentalists (IS) who are against Assad. Makes sense? No. Had Assad let the Sunni elements take over government in Syria, the death toll would be far greater than the 250,000 that Assad is supposed to have killed in his own country. As well instead of "tolerance" of religious beliefs, the Sunni would soon install an exclusive Wahhabi style religious government. Christians would be persecuted, Shiites would be persecuted.

A similar situation could be said about Hun Sen, Prime Minister of Cambodia. Hun Sen fought the Pol Pot regime with the help of the Vietnamese army. At one stage he became joint-Prime Minister with the Prince who, eventually, was preparing for a coup and bring back a Pol Pot style regime. Hun Sen had a coup beforehand and took over. Some people got killed but far less than would have, had the Prince got full control. 

 

is turdy bigoted?... is turdy ready to bomb sumpthin'?...

 

Islamic leaders have lashed out at suggestions by the federal government to preference Christian refugees fleeing war-ravaged Syria for asylum in Australia.


On Tuesday senior government ministers indicated priority would be given to Syria's Christian minorities and Yazidis in any increase in the country's humanitarian intake.



Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/syrian-migrant-crisis-australian-islamic-leaders-label-christian-refugee-preference-as-bigoted-20150908-gjhvjl.html#ixzz3lBWEZxP7 
Follow us: @smh on Twitter | sydneymorningherald on Facebook

 

bombing wide of target to avoid casualties...

Ultimately, the decision to conduct air strikes in Syria will prove much more politically dangerous for the Abbott Government than how it responds to the thousands of people pouring into Europe, writes Karen Middleton.

With Cabinet poised to rule on the request to authorise Australian air strikes on Syria, a good opening line might be that Australia has a big decision to make.

But in truth, the decision is effectively already made.

Whatever dissent there might be around the Cabinet table, there is now no chance the answer won't be "yes".

In recent decades, Australia has never not said "yes" when America called. There's an understanding that a formal request won't even be made if the answer might be "no".

But Prime Minister Tony Abbott will likely place restrictions on the RAAF's activities and link them very directly to the existing mission in Iraq.

That's for both practical and political reasons.

We can expect the RAAF to be approved to conduct missions that are very limited in scope and geographical reach, targeting what are known in the business as "rat runs" - the insurgent supply lines - from Syria back into Iraq.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-08/middleton-the-politics-of-air-strikes-may-haunt-the-government/6756896

 

The major casualty in this escalation of the conflict should be the Turdy government...

more bombings and more refugees...

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has confirmed Australia will extend its campaign of air strikes into Syria, at the same time as announcing plans to "move quickly" to accept an extra 12,000 refugees affected by the conflict in both countries.

Key Points
  • Australia to accept 12,000 refugees
  • Will give $44 million in financial aid
  • RAAF to get go ahead for air strikes in Syria

The extra permanent resettlement places will almost double this year's refugee intake, and the boost is expected to cost the federal budget $700 million over the next four years.

A senior government official has told the ABC it is hoped the first refugees will arrive before Christmas, but the department also has a significant existing caseload.

The Government will also provide $44 million in financial aid for refugee agencies — in the form of food, supplies and cash — as people living in refugee camps prepare for the winter.

The extra measures have been warmly received by the Opposition and refugee groups.

"The Prime Minister's announcement comes at a crucial time when UNHCR is stretched to capacity in meeting the needs of the most desperate," the United Nations refugee agency said in a statement.

Mr Abbott's announcement on accepting an extra 12,000 refugees comes just days after he ruled out such a move.

He also stressed the need to move beyond a purely humanitarian response, and ramp up military action in Syria.

"We have to act with our heads as well as with our hearts," he said.

"As a free and democratic country, we must stand against those who wish to destroy life and to build a terrorist state."

The Government maintains the legal basis for the extended air strikes is the "collective self-defence" of Iraq, and predicts Australia could begin contributing to the campaign in Syria within a week.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-09/australia-to-accept-additional-12000-syrian-refugees/6760386

 

Can't stop himself from bombing sumpthin'... Why don't you go and bomb Saudi Arabia, Turdy?

bombing willy to get nilly...

 

We're told that dropping bombs on Syria fulfils our legal, moral and practical obligations. But our refusal to learn from past experience guarantees the seeds of future wars are being sewn by our approach to winning the current one, writes Michael Bradley.

So we're going to war in Syria. Not really war, we haven't technically been at war with anyone since World War Two.

But we will be dropping bombs on Syrians. The decision has three dimensions: legal, moral and practical. The Government's rhetoric glosses each of them as boxes that tick themselves.

The rolled up logic goes like this: Islamic State doesn't respect borders (so why should we); IS is evil; there can be no safety or security for the millions of displaced Syrians and Iraqis until IS is degraded and ultimately destroyed. Also, Obama asked us (not sure whether that goes in the legal, moral or practical box).

Law first. It is illegal in international law to engage in military aggression inside another country, unless the government there has asked you in, or the UN Security Council has authorised it, or in self-defence.

The Syrian government is Bashar Assad, who has been quite dedicated to the task of murdering his own people. Since he is supported and armed by Russia, UN consent is off the table. Assad is happy for the US and friends to come in and bomb IS, but he isn't going to say so.

That leaves self-defence. We're in Iraq, bombing IS there, at the Iraqi government's request. The argument is that IS is crossing the border freely and using Syria as a base for operations in Iraq. As part of our participation in Iraq's self-defence, we need to cross over too and hit IS where it hurts.

Law is changeable; international law very much so. The traditional rules for when it's OK to invade were written at a time when global-scale terrorism wasn't in contemplation.

The precedent for an expanded self-defence justification was set by the invasion of Afghanistan following 9/11, when the US and allies went in to destroy Al Qaeda. The legal theory, that it's OK to reach inside the borders of another country to get at terrorists who are being harboured there by a rogue regime, has a lot of merit. The Taliban was actively hosting and protecting Al Qaeda, so it made sense.

The precedent doesn't work in Syria, however. Assad isn't harbouring IS, he just doesn't control most of his own country and can't get rid of them (apart from being more personally focused on killing civilians). To justify going into Syria, the legal principle has to be further expanded to encompass going after terrorists who are hiding out in a country whose government doesn't support them but isn't asking for help. That's a rather more slippery slope and a potentially problematic precedent.

 

A legal case could be made for this intervention in Syria; it's troubling that the Australian Government has not bothered to properly argue it or to bring the question before Parliament. This lazy approach is what led us into Iraq in 2003, illegally and disastrously.

The moral justification is at first glance clearer: IS is a murderous group exemplifying all the worst traits of humanity, and stopping it is a moral obligation. Tony Abbott's comparisons of IS with the Nazis are as inapt as they are offensive and bone-stupid, and it'd be really nice if he stopped doing that. Nevertheless, IS has no redeeming features and must be fought.

The problem is that the argument presupposes that IS is a self-created entity. The truth is that we are partly responsible for its emergence, by invading Iraq and destabilising the entire region.

The Middle East is a long-term mess, not anyone's fault entirely, but if we keep approaching each disaster with the perspective of, "Oh look, isn't that dreadful, let's shoot some bad guys", instead of acknowledging that what's happening now is part of a continuum in which we are deeply enmeshed, then we'll just keep making it worse.

That's not an argument for leaving IS alone; it's an argument for honesty as a precondition to the assertion of morality.

Finally, practicality. Abbott says we must degrade and ultimately destroy IS. What he doesn't admit is that we can only ever achieve the first part of that equation, and that only temporarily.

There are two elements to this. First, is it possible to achieve the military aim of permanently degrading or destroying an armed insurgency from the air alone? Secondly, can you destroy an ideology?

Both these questions are answered by history. No war has ever been won from the air. Ground forces are always required, one way or the other. A lot of IS fighters have been killed, and maybe eventually it can be fought to enough of a standstill that the remainder give up the cause. The cause will still exist. Our refusal to learn the lessons of past experience guarantees that the seeds of future wars are being sewn by our approach to winning the current one.

If IS is the bastard child of Al Qaeda, it's not pleasant to imagine what the grandkids are going to look like.

Michael Bradley is the managing partner of Marque Lawyers, a boutique Sydney law firm.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-10/bradley-the-slippery-slope-of-just...

 

We need to hurt the sponsors of IS where it hurts. We might have to use less and pay more for oil. But this is where the real equation is. Rich Sunnis are paying IS to conquer the Shiites. Simple. WE need to ruin the rich Sunnis. But then we do not have the balls to do this because overall we are no more than hypocrites with bombs in our budgie smugglers.

 

canada removes the jets...

 

Canadian Prime Minister-designate Justin Trudeau has confirmed he will withdraw Canadian fighter jets from the air strikes against Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria.

He informed US President Barack Obama of his decision hours after leading his Liberal party to victory in the polls.

As part of his election campaign, Mr Trudeau pledged to bring home the CF-18 fighter jets that were deployed to the region until March 2016.

He has not yet given a timescale.

Justin Trudeau's Liberals swept to power in Monday election, ending nearly a decade of Conservative rule under Stephen Harper.

Mr Trudeau, an ex-high-school teacher, is the eldest son of late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.

Jets and refugees

In his first telephone conversation with the US president as Canada's prime minister-designate, Mr Trudeau informed Barack Obama that he would make good on his election promise to withdraw the fighter jets.

 

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34589250

 

See toon at top....