In Reply to: Any attention is good attention hey? posted by sherbert on Tuesday, 20. August 2013 at 07:15 Bali Time:
but I am with you on this one Sherbs, so I thought better of it. I am sick of and somewhat bored with the demonisation of refugees and for that matter asylum seekers too. does anyone actually care that somewhere around 90% of asylum seekers turn out to be genuine refugees? Of course it is easier to believe they are not to justify this demonisatiion.
If I hear these sort of comments my usual reply is something like "Oh you don't like *Africans? (*insert whatever, including muslims) What is it about the ones you know that you don't like?" Invariably they don't actually truly know any of whichever demographic they are spouting hate about.
I do partly blame the media for some of the stuff I hear. Do people really not know that we, in Aus. have it so easy with refugees or asylum seekers compared with the rest of the devoloped world?
Hey while I am having a cleansing Tuesday rant. It is illogical to demonise a whole racial or religious group because of the actions of a few. Otherwise it would be OK for me to assume that all Catholics abuse kids. All Mormans have multiple wives. All Muslims are terrorists. All South Africans are racist. All Indonesians will rip you off, all refugees are bludgers, etc. etc. These concepts are illogical, simplistic and well, just plain wrong.
Also, and I am enjoying this now, It is possible to be a refugee and still have some money or jewellery or whatever. If you are killed for your ethnicity, religion or gender you are still dead regardless of how much money you have in your pocket.
Since when does Australia not "do it's bit" along with the rest of the developed world? Does anyone actually believe that Indonesia has any easy solutions for the thousands of refugees they have? As for towing boats back to Indonesia????? How would we feel if Indonesian navy boats started towing boats into our waters? International incident coming up.
If you want to follow Uncle Sam and stamp around the world invading other peoples countries uninvited then there will inevitably be a price to pay. The removal of evil dictators may well be laudable, if in fact that is the reason for it. Was it do you think? However when the evil dictator(s) are removed a void is left because they also kept law and order so more innocent people die than would have otherwise. Just different people. If, when "we" pull out of Afghanistan the Taliban get back control, can anyone make a case for every girl and woman not being a genuine refugee, as they certainly were before but now the "escape routes" are more well known and familiar so look out if you think this is a big refugee problem at the moment.
Ahhh! That was good if somewhat off topic but I did mention Indoesia a couple of times and Bali is a part of Indonesia..ooh I mentioned Bali too.
This has been another rant by Hillary and I don't supposed the post will last long. Brickbats and bouquets equally welcome. Sometimes I feel like a lone voice crying in the wilderness so I am quite used to, and unmoved by the former.