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Culprit
Joined: 06 Feb 2003 Location: Port Melbourne
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One only needs to look at yesterday's question time to see how the major parties feel about refugees. Not one mention of the guy that set himself on fire in Nauru or anything about Manis Island. The media have made Refugees poison and keeping them out is a vote winner. Mainstream media equates Refugees to Terrorists and people wonder why no one really gives a crap what happens to them.
The boats haven't stopped they just don't make it.
A woman has set herself alight in Nauru, 70% burns to her body. They will try to keep this out of the media unless there is a good video clip. |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003 Location: Andromeda
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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David, we've had the debate many times before. You and I have different views on boat people in general and their refugee status in particular. I don't see any value in rehashing a debate that's been done ad nauseum.
I'm not changing my position, you're not changing yours, so continuing to rehash the same stuff is an exercise in futility that corresponds to the definition of insanity. While it's not beyond the realms of possibility that I would fit some definitions of clinical insanity, I'm not stupid and I'm not interested in repeating the discussion. _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003 Location: Andromeda
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http://www.crikey.com.au/2016/05/03/refugee-suicide-exposes-nihilistic-detention-system/
Quote: | Refugee suicide by fire our new eternal, nihilistic flame
Guy Rundle
There’s a certain brutal appropriateness at work. In the week of Anzac, an Iranian man sets himself alight in Nauru and dies of his wounds. Several days later a young Somali does the same and is now in critical condition. After the dawn services across the country, this is our new eternal flame — our country’s beacon to the world is now that of people who feel so annihilated by our “life-saving” refugee process that they now wish not merely to end their lives, but to do so in the most painful way possible. Such an act is not merely a desire to end one’s own suffering, nor simply a protest; it is a way of reclaiming an annihilated life through the manner of the death.
Such a reaction to incarceration on a desert prison for no reason, with the prospect that it may be a decade or more before there is any real release, if there is release at all, cannot be reduced to psychological categories no matter how much governments would like to class it as hysteria — or even more absurdly, as blackmail. There may be psychological meltdown surrounding it, but at its root it is an existential act, a reclamation of the freedom that is threatened by psychological disintegration. From the outside, it may seem something never to be chosen or endorsed, an understandable but terrible reaction to being wholly negated. But in circumstances such as our regime in Nauru, there’s no way to judge, from outside, when enough is enough.
People who undertake such acts do it not only for themselves, but for those around them. By reclaiming the meaning of their life through self-annihilation, they give others back a little of it too, enough to keep going. The pain of burning to death does not seem to be the point of it, though it is what preys on the mind most: the importance of self-immolation is the totality of the destruction, the body burnt alive by one’s own hand. There are few violent deaths that are not open to grotesque black humour: suicide bombers have their vest arranged so that their heads will blow clean off and roll away. Only from inside the cult that approves of such a bombing could one not see that as grimly funny. Man Haron Monis’ religious-political siege in a chocolate shop wasn’t funny, but it was absurd from start to finish. Doubtless the jokes will come about these events. But they never really impact. You can’t talk away someone burning to death by their own hand, which is something that people who do it understand, at some level.
Such an act is like an end-stop to moral debate, a place where any injunction comes into contradiction. Would you want someone to do such a thing? Absolutely not, still less urge them to do it. But would you deny the honour and meaning of the act? Equally absolutely not. Such an act is categorically different to hunger strikes, self-harm by cutting, sewn lips, and other acts, which mix protest with trauma. Death by burning is a way of making the nihilism of the current system wholly visible, making it impossible for it to hide behind language of rational management, incentive, utilitarian leverage, etc, etc. Whether this will have an effect remains to be seen. The Australian system, like other annihilating systems of incarceration — such as US solitary confinement regimes — denies that it is torture by relying on a too-narrow physical definition of torture. At the same time it deals out a horror that does not need to be spoken of: that of limbo, of meaninglessness, of nothingness.
In the case of Australia, this is done openly, as part of its process: see what will happen if you try and come here by boat. Self-harm by prisoners thus becomes part of the global PR campaign: we’ll drive you so crazy you’ll burn yourself to death! Because the policy is undertaken in the ostensibly humanitarian spirit of preventing drownings, almost any form of mental and spiritual depredation can be gleefully celebrated. As your correspondent has noted before, this system perfectly illustrates the moral slippage at the heart of disowning the difference between the morality of action, and the morality of inaction: to use what is now a calibrated and detailed system of torment to “prevent” events that have not occurred licenses an almost unlimited repertoire of horrors, and absolves Australian citizens of ownership of them.
It is not clear what horrific actions there would have to be en masse in these camps for there to be some sort of moral crisis, either within the two major parties or the wider public. Quite conceivably 10, 20 refugees in such camps could commit violent collective suicide, and the bulk of the population would remain unmoved. We have created a system in which people who are far less brutal, disdainful and sadistic than the new hard-right groupings of Europe can nevertheless countenance things that many of the followers of such groups would not tolerate in the treatment of refugees: a perfect hands-off system, for the systemic reproduction of everyday cruelty.
There has to be something significant in the fact that after textiles, footwear, appliances, cars, steel, the only thing we’re really good at manufacturing is the suffering of others. From here, anything is possible. We have become a global laboratory for this sort of doling out. Possibly, the application of it elsewhere will be subcontracted out to ex-public servants looking for a payday. Alternatively, the situation in Nauru will take other turns. It’s to the credit of those protesting that self-immolation wasn’t other-immolation — it would not be impossible to douse a guard with fuel, and take her or him with you. But there’s no guarantee that resistance won’t be turned outwards. At some point, Australia may have to acknowledge a crisis that requires the military to be sent in — at that point, the fiction of Nauru’s sovereignty will be abolished entirely.
In the meantime, we should take comfort in the fact that, though we can’t get a decently “agile” post-mining economy active, we are dab hands at the creation of an earthly Hell — if by Hell we mean the total separation of hope, meaning and the possibility of happiness, from the brute biological/existential life force that keeps one going on.
For by any reasoning, that it was hell is: the presence of a Will to live, with the absence of any possibility that life will have meaning. Hell, whether it’s US solitary confinement, or the West Bank, or a Chinese factory, or Nauru, works its way by confronting the inmate with the torment of continuing to exist, as nothing other than a mute will to live. In such circumstances, suicide, with optional homicide attached, is a ticket out of hell, not into it. How many thousands of lives have to be subject to that regime, to save other lives only potentially at risk, before the policy has lost the last figments of its morality remains to be seen. But we will find out, I guess — that and a lot more besides is going to be thrown into the pyre. |
_________________ All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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Culprit
Joined: 06 Feb 2003 Location: Port Melbourne
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David, the voting public say NO and they simply don't care. Out of sight out of mind. |
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Lazza
Joined: 04 Feb 2003 Location: Bendigo, Victoria, Australia
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Culprit wrote: | David, the voting public say NO and they simply don't care. Out of sight out of mind. |
What I find REALLY weird is that we hear ad nauseam how the right wingers don’t want boats arriving in Australia because of the risk of refugee drownings but don’t give a shit about the very same people dying in refugee detention centres.....
Why this selective concern when it comes to refugees dying and the WAY they die???
Please give me an opinion or answer as I usually don’t get one when I ask such logical questions. _________________ Don't confuse your current path with your final destination. Just because it's dark and stormy now doesn't meant that you aren't headed for glorious sunshine! |
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Wokko
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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Lazza wrote: | Culprit wrote: | David, the voting public say NO and they simply don't care. Out of sight out of mind. |
What I find REALLY weird is that we hear ad nauseam how the right wingers don’t want boats arriving in Australia because of the risk of refugee drownings but don’t give a shit about the very same people dying in refugee detention centres.....
Why this selective concern when it comes to refugees dying and the WAY they die???
Please give me an opinion or answer as I usually don’t get one when I ask such logical questions. |
I care about both, I don't want people getting on boats and drowning and I accept that there needs to be a deterrent level of harsh treatment for those who do arrive that way. I also don't think that deterrent needs to be keeping them locked up overseas for years. I like the idea of settling people safely in less desirable countries, not sure about PNG though, that place is a shithole. Too many of these people are migrants who are welfare shopping; see the European experience with hordes of people bypassing perfectly safe European nations to head to Sweden, Germany, France and the UK.
I also think that while someone is being vetted by ASIO they do need to be kept in detention. I think the balance at the moment is pretty close to right, maybe something needs to be done to make detention more bearable; kind of like staying in a nice (fenced) motel instead of a minimum security prison. |
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Culprit
Joined: 06 Feb 2003 Location: Port Melbourne
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Lazza wrote: | Culprit wrote: | David, the voting public say NO and they simply don't care. Out of sight out of mind. |
What I find REALLY weird is that we hear ad nauseam how the right wingers don’t want boats arriving in Australia because of the risk of refugee drownings but don’t give a shit about the very same people dying in refugee detention centres.....
Why this selective concern when it comes to refugees dying and the WAY they die???
Please give me an opinion or answer as I usually don’t get one when I ask such logical questions. | Wrong, they don't want Refugees full stop and if one dies that's one less freeloader. |
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Lazza
Joined: 04 Feb 2003 Location: Bendigo, Victoria, Australia
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^^^^
I have always thought this to be the case but then you get right wingers stating this drowning issue as a major factor. I reckon it's absolutely bloody bullshit. No fisherman will ever go fishing in Asian countries and return home alive if this were the case but the fact is that they do this everyday in sad old boats because that is their living. They have NO other options.
And Wokko, thanks for taking the time to reply dude. _________________ Don't confuse your current path with your final destination. Just because it's dark and stormy now doesn't meant that you aren't headed for glorious sunshine! |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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Where did they get them? |
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Wokko
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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No worries, I'd also add that I agree with the point about a lot of people just not giving a shit. It's what makes holding the position I do difficult, because I know that while I thought my way there weighing up morality, practicality and ethics and studying push and pull factors. I know I'm sharing common ground with some not very nice people, or sometimes those who like Culprit said just don't care.
There is also an equating of this issue with immigration as a whole. People wanting to cut back immigration have been fooled into thinking THIS is the important issue for them, it's dog whistling without actually having to face the issue. |
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Culprit
Joined: 06 Feb 2003 Location: Port Melbourne
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Mainstream media are as much at fault as our politicians. The community as a whole has been brainwashed so much so that they just switch off when it comes to tragic events. Unless there is a video watching someone die. They love that but don't care about the individual who is nameless, faceless. We have decenitised society so far, people just switch off. I find what's worse are the draw bridge refugees. As soon as they get here, it's stuff the rest. |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003 Location: Andromeda
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005 Location: somewhere
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what if that single worker was your son? _________________ You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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When was this exactly? |
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