Spleen

31 December 2001

Sucker. Sucker. Sucker.

Don't be a sucker.

Remember. Uncritical patriotism can be fascism's backdoor.

10 November 2001

Well, another election day is here, and the chance has arrived to dump the current government, or to carry on with the current coalition. But in the last two months, recent events have changed everything. The refugee crisis has taken over as the main election issue, to the extent that all over issues rarely seem to be of concern, if at all. Almost a year ago, the coalition government was at its lowest point ever, enough to cause worry within their ranks. Now however, the Prime Minister has played his trump card, and played it well; and it worked. The approval has now soared to such an extent, that if the election was to be held a few weeks ago, the current government would be returned in a landslide. Only now is the ALP regaining ground to make it a very close call.

However, how the coalition is handling the refugee crisis deserves closer examination. Now lets put aside completely whether or not the refugees determined to enter Australia are in fact genuine refugees. Are they actually true refugees? So what if they're not. Should they be allowed to stay in Australia? That's not the issue. The fact remains that even those falsely claiming refugee status deserve much more humane treatment that policies of the coalition have been giving them. Instead, they either detained in a few remote locations, with what can only be called harsh authority. While those trying to get in the past two months are passed over, and dumped in one pacific island after the next, regardless of how capable they are or not of handling the influx. So, we have people being passed around like the proverbial buck, but whether or not they actually are true refugees just doesn't enter the picture. And what happens? The majority people in aust actually support this complete lack of respect and compassion. Whats more, its looking very likely the coalition will be returned, because of such a so-called 'tough stand'. So, now a government can mean-spirited and xenophobic as it chooses to be, and still be rewarded for it.

Today, I am becoming very ashamed of being an Australian.

Update:

An update on an earlier entry - the count of refugees who had drowned was about 350, not 170, and that the boat sank shortly after embarking from Indonesia. For once, the Howard government is completely innocent in this case. However, the comments uttered by some people utterly disgusts me as much now, as they did then.

23 October 2001

Today I learned today that some 170 or so refugees have drowned after being boarded into a boat, well over it's carrying capacity. And quite frankly, I am utterly disgusted with the comments of some people. Some of the words I hear in response? 'Tough', 'They're just putting on act, surely you don't expect me to think anyone drowned, as all the ones that survived are the men' and other words to the effect of 'oh, my heart just bleeds' in sarcastic tones. It sounds to me as if they're actually glad they drowned, so at least then they'll never reach Australia now. Regardless whether or not they are actually genuine refugees, noone, I repeat NOONE, deserves to die just because of their desire to enter on any grounds. But I honestly doubt that this incident will change much. So compassion has been put in distant second place, just because of the need to 'get tough'. I am so fucking disgusted with the human (disg)race.

17 October 2001

Much of a song and dance act has already been arranged for Windows XP, and it hasn't even been released yet. But really, what can XP do that Windows 2000 not do? Other than having a pretty face and being the long awaited convergence between two separate platforms under the name 'Windows' (ok...actually abandoning the old DOS based Windows), not a great deal much is actually new. The upcoming release should really be more seen as the end of an era, rather than the start of a new one. As for the massive push to get as many to switch over, I can say that the world doesn't exactly work that way. There is always the possible of some resisting the pressure to make the change to XP, and those who despise the excessive amount of hype, prefering to remain understandably sceptical. I myself am now running win2000, as a result of statements of it's stability a year after it's release in it's final production version. So all in all, word of mouth has done more to convince me than Microsoft's marketing can even hope to do. One thing that Microsoft needs to keep in mind. Not everyone believes the hype.

No bollocks, please.