Gentle rain and Islamophobia.

Jessica Whelan with Australia Prime Mister, Scott Morrison.

Our garden is getting a whisper of rain, gentle caressing the leaves and growing grasses quenching their thirst after a long and hot summer. The sky above is grey and coloured  lead with the promise of more to come. I can’t say that I dislike rain. It lifts the spirit of future growth and beckons the first of spring growth already noticeable amongst the withering Japanese windflowers. They are the Irises’ spikes that appeared  overnight when I wasn’t looking. We are having a most unusual autumn that so far has been more like a summer.

Between the gazing at our patch of growing and withering garden, and with the Manchurian pear now serious in dropping their crimson gold-leaf edged  foliage I undertook the task of cleaning our windows. It is not my most favourite domestic task which still is cooking of food. Mind you, with all the medical appointments, root canal treatment, hearing tests and cardiac investigations, we are now more likely to eat out somewhere. It seems appetites too get less with age, and with a lunch- out we might just forego a cooked dinner and instead have a salad with a piece of fish backed up by some crackers with Boursin before the comforting embrace by doona with pillow.

I have discovered that the spraying of the windows by the blue glass cleaner and wiping the glass with a soft cloth does a much better and quicker job than using the window wiper and bucket of water. Helvi swears I should not wash the windows with a sun bearing down on the glass. I refute that claim and reckon it is just an old house-wife’s tale. I proved it by blatantly (without further ado) cleaning a set of double glass doors in the full sun and they looked so sparklingly clean afterwards. No ovation from Helvi though. Does ageing make for better marital accords or do we become more entrenched in our believes, including prejudices?

Talk about radicalisation of our politicians. Who is responsible of the radicalisation of so many politicians who vent their hatred of Islam. We had this dreadful act of terrorism in New Zealand, killing 51 people and injuring hundreds, all of the Islamic fate… And yesterday the rant of a Liberal candidate in Tasmania. I am talking of Jessica Whelan.

Here some of the anti-Islam comments she made on Twitter and Facebook. “Round them up Donald, cut their clitoris’ off & sell them to Muslims in Muslim countries & cancel their passports. You’ll make a mint,” it stated.

Here another one of Jessica Whelan posts.

One called for a national vote on banning Muslim immigration and the other argued Tasmania should not accept refugees from Syria and Iraq. “Don’t bloody send them to Tasmania. We don’t want them,” it said.

And then there were those two men from One Nation Party, Pauline Hanson, who ventured to America to wax favours with the NRA in order be ‘donated money’  from the NRA in order to weaken Australia’s very effective gun laws while also making derogatory comments about Sudanese refugees raping and clubbing ‘decent’ Australians.

The question has to be asked who radicalised those politicians into this dreadful Islamophobic stance? Was it Dutton or Abbot with a nudge nudge from our PM Scott Morrison? It doesn’t come from nowhere. Who is behind it all and is it being investigated?

It seems the Liberal Party is riddled with Islamophobics and hatred.

Is the Second Amendment anti democratic?

The Pagoda of Buddhist temple near Sydney.

A long time ago now, my Australian friend was advised to make sure to be back at the hotel before 9pm. ‘It’s not safe in LA after that hour’, the hotel concierge told him. My friend did hear gun shots during the night. He very much enjoyed his visit to the US and thought the restriction of being back in the hotel before 9pm a somewhat quirky event that he still likes to regale to this day.

While the bearing of arms in the US is regarded as a democratic right protected by the constitution including the second amendment, I am beginning to wonder if it actually is so democratic. With a fear gripping the country where even children are afraid to attend schools. Is this freedom to bear arms now restricting the enjoyment of the free and democratic society that the US is so well known for?

“The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

This all very well, but what about the children? What about the children? This ‘freedom’ is killing them now and what are you going to do? You must know that more guns will kill more.  The statistics are apocalyptic and horrifying. It is now restricting your freedom, your people. You keep on putting trade restriction on North Korea because you feel they are a threat to your security, but what about your own internal security? The lack of security is rampant, and in the hands of assault weapons held by millions of citizens well within your own borders.

You are not a Cow-boy country anymore and the British ceased to be a threat. What and who are you so afraid of that makes you want to bear those Arms at forever increasing numbers? Just because it is in a constitution does that mean that no matter the effects to thousands of victims each year, this country is too lame now to change it?

I pray that at the next election the opponents of a US democracy,  including the NRA, will be taught a lesson they will never forget.

 

Obama and Gillards New Year resolutions. (Hope eternal)

The tasks ahead for Obama and Gillard.

 

The only way out, it seems, would be for Obama to go hard on the Gun toting and  bullet lobbing pro-kill-‘m Senators and NRA by saying ; Either do away with your lethal guns voluntary or, I’ll resign and let the nation make this choice for once and all. We go for another election with a change of the second amendment of the constitution. The second amendment has been given so many different interpretations; surely they can find one that will support changing this ‘bearing of arms” by all and sundry.

When the Amendment was first passed in law back in 1791 by James Madison guns were just guns which took time to load and fire, giving a fair chance of survival, while in 2012 guns are killers by just looking at them.  The founding fathers then sought to place trust in the power of ordered liberty of democratic government versus the anarchy of insurrectionists. Today, the cult by the manically adherence of the right to bear arms by the individualist has usurped the insurrectionist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

The issues in Australia are not less problematic by our obsessing with asylum seekers. How fortunate or unfortunate that we have islands that we can ship them to. Those poor European countries are being entered by refugees on trains, boats, swimming ,walking and heaven knows what else, even in containers, ’refugees sans frontiers’, they could be called.  They enter by the tens of thousands, weekly. There are very few isolated European islands that boat people can be isolated on and forgotten about. The obstinacy by our politicians on having blown this up by the hysterical ‘border protection’ mantra is now costing hundreds of millions for just a few thousand.

At least most European countries have been canny enough that the might of the millions of refugees from war torn countries is best handled by, at least making the best of a bad thing, and treat them humanely and, after due process, let them work and pay tax. Howard’s refrain of “we will choose who come here and the method by which they come” could not possibly work there.

Neither does it work here. They come, no matter what obstacles are put into place, not even the risk of getting smashed against rocks deters the helpless refugee. They have nothing to lose. Some of the boat-people haters say, they are filthy rich which seems odd; why risk getting smashed onto rocks or drown from leaky unseaworthy boats?

I feel sorry for Chris Bowen. He tries to be, unconvincingly, unyieldingly hard like the rest, steely and feigning resentment against those more humane. His heart isn’t in it. Hopefully his wife will whisper kind words when he is tossing and turning during guilt ridden sleepless nights. He looks quickly sideways whenever he has to give an expected heartless comment about ‘deterrent’ or ‘no advantage’ to journalists. A shocking portfolio.

The opposition has no such trouble; full blown hatred against refugees comes fluently natural and so does their concrete determination to do all in their power drunkenness to show, and straight into the camera, unflinchingly, as much empathy as the ‘arbeit macht frei’ consortium some seventy years ago at Auschwitz.

Morrison’s, C. Pine’s and Abbott’s public resentment against refugees is genuine and without artifice. They all seem to have ‘against everything’ in their genes. The headmasters must have given them more than just the strap on their backsides.

Julia will have to consider, after getting re-elected and with a mandate, change our position, process all boat people on-shore, give them permission to work and pay tax. This world is different now. We can’t forever thump our noses at the most unfortunate and UNHCR.

The neighbours might talk.