(no subject)

Turnbull defends abortion!

To the Australian Christian Lobby! (Such as they are.)

And gay unions, though not gay marriage per se. "If you think about it, if you discriminate ... against a gay couple, between two men living together, do you really think that they're going to say `oh well, that's no good, we'll go off and get married to a woman'?" lol

Refugees and Asylum Seekers - recent Australian news

7 October: Rickety boat carrying 17 found off WA coast. The SMH described this terrifying horde as "a boatload of suspected Middle Eastern refugees", though it wasn't clear on whether they were suspected of being refugees, or suspected of being Middle Eastern.

23 October: Man brings house to a standstill: ten years in Australia, refused admission, but unable to be deported. Yeesh, just give the bloke and his eldery parents humanitarian visas already.

1 November: Beheaded after trying for asylum in Australia. Instead of saving this Afghan poet from the Taliban, we stuck him on Nauru and eventually sent him home, where they threw him down a well and threw a hand grenade in after him. (In June, a rejected Chinese asylum seeker was tortured by police and committed suicide.) Cases like these are not a tragic-but-unavoidable outcome of an imperfect system: they are the direct result of bad policies.

3 November: Falun Gong followers caught in dangerous immigration Catch-22: "The Immigration Department is endangering failed Falun Gong asylum seekers by forcing them to apply for travel documents from the Chinese consulate in Sydney, exposing their status to authorities and putting them in danger of persecution."

6 November: Fast action on boat people: Refugees' lawyers surprised and pleased by the new government's helpfulness. Said one, "I have to say it took a bit of adjustment."

Finally, today's news: Asylum seekers' fingerprints to go on criminal database. "If you haven't done anything wrong, you've got nothing to worry about," say police, apparently with a straight face.

Packing for the trip

XANAX YOU ARE MY BFF <3 <3 <3

The Doctor predicts the future

Hunter S. Thompson, writing in January 1974, speculated that Nixon might have an evil plan up his sleeve to avoid impeachment: a treaty with Russia to get its support of "an American invasion, seizure and terminal occupation of all oil-producing countries in the Middle East," solving both the energy crisis and unemployment via the draft. "... it would also crank up the economy to a war-time level and give the Federal Government unlimited 'emergency powers'." Then, posits Thompson, Russia and the US would cooperate in "a 'preemptive nuclear strike' against targets in China."

You can never be absolutely sure that HST is being completely serious, and in any case, Nixon resigned that August. But there are echoes of recent events there which gave me the creeps.