Please note that the Minister for Immigration in 1965 was no other than our own Alexander Downer's father... Both pictures from Gus' collection of old newspapers and stuff ups...

Tony Abbott refused to answer questions over the fate of two boatloads of asylum seekers on Thursday but said: “I want to make this observation, Sri Lanka is not everyone’s idea of an ideal society, but it is at peace.”

Speaking to radio 3AW in Melbourne, the prime minister refused to confirm reports that asylum seekers on board two boats have in recent days had their claims for protection assessed in a rapid interview process while on Australian customs ships. One of the boats is reported to have had 153 Tamils on board, including children.

He also refused to confirm if the boats had been turned back or if the asylum seekers on board were being handed over to Sri Lankan authorities at sea, as has been alleged in some reports. But he said that since the new Australian government was installed, “It’s no secret that some boats have been turned around.”

Abbott was not asked specifically about whether the two boatloads of asylum seekers were being returned to Sri Lanka, but his comments about the country are the strongest official indication yet that the government is returning Sri Lankan asylum seekers before allowing them to arrive in Australia.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/03/tony-abbott-wont-reveal-fate-of-asylum-boats-but-says-sri-lanka-is-at-peace

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Our navy doesn't belong to the Abbott regime nor to its awful policies.  The Australian Navy belongs to Australians and whatever the present government demands of it — secrecy and breaking international laws — the Navy should bypass the government propaganda channel and should report its own operations to the public.

It has a duty to do so — or it will be responsible for extra trauma and possibly death or imprisonment of some of the people on the boats. 

Only during war times can secrecy be a naval policy. We are not at war, I believe.

With the terrible Abbott policies, the Australian way of life is being altered way beyond decency... I know many young DECENT people who, now in age to participate in the Aussie community, are ashamed of being Australians... 

Not a good look. The young people who think that "the Abbott's regime is good" are, like him, psychopath. They seems to unfortunately carry the same idealistic views than those kids who enthusiastically joined the "Hitler Youth movement".

Senior Coalition Minister Eric Abetz says the Government is not "disappearing" asylum seekers, amid secrecy surrounding the fate of more than 200 Sri Lankans thought to have been handed to the Sri Lankan navy.

The Government is not revealing details about two asylum seeker boats believed to have been intercepted off Christmas Island more than a week ago.

Reports suggest those on board were screened at sea and transferred to the Sri Lankan navy.

Speaking on ABC's Insiders program, Senator Abetz told host Fran Kelly the details of the matter would be revealed "in due course".

When Senator Abetz said he would not discuss "operational" matters, Kelly pressed for comment, asking: "Since when does our Government disappear people?"

"We don't disappear people and with respect, that sort of description does you no credit," Senator Abetz replied.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-06/eric-abetz-says-government-is-not-disappearing-asylum-seekers/5575158

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Of course the senator has no respect for reality: no matter what he says, these boat people have been disappeared. The Australian public and the rest of the world have no idea what happened to about the same quantity of people that got vanished on flight MH370. But unlike MH370 for which the Abbott regime is desperate for glory in finding what happened, the Abbott Regime is hiding what it has done with these poor refugees... This is called "disappearing" Mr Abetz and I don't care whether you are a "senator" let me say your are a dishonourable ruthless bastard for allowing your mates to do this disappearing trick.

Germany Caught Off Guard By Surge in Refugees

The German government is expecting around 175,000 people to file applications for asylum this year, the highest number in two decades. Regional politicians are acting surprised, but there have been signs of this development for years now.

Last Friday, the state interior ministers of Germany's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) convened for a meeting at the stately Westin Bellevue in Dresden, with a view of the Elbe River and the baroque historic city center. But they weren't here to discuss the views -- the subject at hand was much grimmer: packed school gymnasiums, dwellings made out of shipping containers, cots and other logistical aspects of Germany's refugee crisis.

Part of the job of state interior ministers in Germany is to ensure that refugees who make their way into country are provided with acceptable accommodations. If you travel through Germany's cities, you can often see evidence that state governments haven't been doing their jobs well -- and that they've been overstrained by the sheer number of people seeking assistance, which has risen dramatically for months.

Officials had been hoping that Thomas de Maizière, Germany's federal interior minister and a member of Chancellor Merkel's CDU, might present a realistic solution at the Dresden meeting. Germany's federal parliament passed a new law penned by de Maizière on Thursday that defines Serbia, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina -- the sources of a massive wave of refugees to Germany during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s -- as "safe countries of origin" and expedites the process of rejecting asylum applications for citizens from these countries.

Although de Maizière praised the law at the meeting, it is unlikely that it will be approved by the Bundesrat, Germany's second legislative chamber, which represents the interests of the states -- the CDU and SPD do not have a majority in the Bundesrat, and the Green Party has already expressed its displeasure with the proposed law. And even if it is approved, it isn't clear if the new rules can slow the influx of refugees.

During their consultations, the ministers gave the impression that developments have caught the country by surprise -- almost as if they were being overrun by it. But in fact, large numbers of refugees have been making their way to Germany from the world's crisis zones for two years now.

Officials Moved too Slowly to Address Problems

The refugees in Germany are fleeing many things: the civil war in Syria, the recent wave of terror in Iraq, torturous regimes but also, in many cases, a life of poverty and no prospects, be it in Africa or as a member of the Roma minority in Serbia. Germany's Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) estimates that as many as 175,000 people will apply for asylum in Germany this year alone, the highest number seen in the past 20 years and double the figure for 2013.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/surge-in-refugees-catches-german-leaders-off-guard-a-979633.html

The peace in many countries has been mucked up by stupid conflicts, many still being remnants of colonial days, and some new ones being created by covert religious currents. Many countries are breaking up. Some countries are becoming under the influence of religious extremism or army dictatorship. Would you live there? No. Whatever my "philosophical" views about life, which I can profess in the luxury of a decent country, despite its present stupid government, should I'd been a citizen of such countries at war, I would have to find ways to "fight" against the tyrannical impost. But for most people, regardless of ethnicity and the complexity of family, fleeing is the only way to avoid death, slavery or having to submit to an unfair extreme religious system, in which we would be living in fear.  

my thoughts are with the australian navy sailors who in their own conscience have to do the dirty work of a government gone mad ... as well as with the people that our turdy NASTY government are traumatising beyond belief...

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Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has been secretly kidnapping children and sending them to where they are certain to be arrested by a regime famed for its torture, extrajudicial killings and genocidal tendencies.

How many children he has kidnapped and sent there is not known.

He has boasted that by doing this and keeping the details from us he has "stopped the boats".

But two boats have come in the last month.

One from India, whose child passengers he has kidnapped also and proposes to send, not back to India. but to the same semi-genocidal regime.

The other came from Sri Lanka and its 41 people – 37 Sinhalese and four Tamils – have been sent back there and arrested on their return. Their crime is having left there, and some, we are told – ‘the ringleaders’ – will serve two years in a prison as ill-reputed as Abu Ghraib.

Implausibly, Scott Morrison thinks that doing these things has been in our national interest.

He calls it "taking the tough decisions" — that kidnapping and traumatising children who may then be killed by their eventual captors "sends a message" to the "people smugglers" who are, he proclaims, much worse people than himself — though they try to bring children to a good place where they might prosper, while he sends them to a bad place, where they might be orphaned, ostracised, impoverished, or killed.

‘Orwellian’ barely covers what S&M has been up to, and ‘Kafkaesque’ also seems, as an adjective, insufficient.

He has been kidnapping children and women – including pregnant women – and sending them into harm’s way and, in Parliament, boasting that his method is working and assuring the national good.

read more: http://www.independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/scott-morrison--child-kidnapper,6651

Yes, this episode in Australian history is changing our way of life, now bordering on nazi.