:: Wog Blog ::

:: WHAT AM I THINKING ABOUT? ::

:: Sunday 24 July 2005 ::

433 refugees on the Tampa?

ABC, Australian Film Commission has a hagiography going to air tonight on the ABC 'Compass' show and it is a lie. It is called "The QC, the Artist and the Refugee".

They were not refugees on the boat. They were people who wanted to get into Oz from Indonesia without permission.

From Indonesia.

Urgh, I do not even want to go on. I mean 'refugee' is a legal status earned through a legal process. What is legal about sailing into somewhere without authority?

Jeez. Oh, no there's more.

"....Australian's most famous asylum seeker is Alladin Saleem?" Exsqueeze me?

Australia's most famous asylum seeker is Ali Bakhtiari, full stop end of story. The bullshitter from Pakistan.

What this show is trying to create is an alternative history where Alladin - the guy left alone, the last applicant on Nauru - is the most famous asylum seeker.

Sorry alternative history wankers, but that will not wash. I am afraid a Bakhtiari beats a Saleem hands down in the game of oz illegal entry poker.

"Some aslyum seekers have been detained for over 2 years."

Yah. Some. How about explaining that 2 years is what it takes for the legal process, constant appeals, to go through.

Nah, cannot be attacking the lawyers in this lawyer hagiography.

Julian Burnside's wife is an insufferable artist Kate Durham and get this, she gave up her work as an artist to become an activist.

What a trooper for the wogs, eh? Gave up her work as an artist. I for one am ever so grateful.

Apparently now she is going back to her art. God help us. Just what the world needs, more oversized and ugly jewellery, and more Chagall-like paintings of drowning people.

Urgh.

Wonder if the Caring Kate can even put 2 and 2 together and recognise she does not need to be an activist no more - she can go back to her art - cos the boats are not coming any more cos the horrors of people smugglers have effectively been shut down - not for want of anything Kate or Julian have done - nope. But cos our govt, the Howard govt, has done the heavy lifting with the 'Pacific Solution' of setting up detention centres off shore (like Nauru)thereby removing any argument horrible people smugglers could make to their desperate clients, such as 'I can get you into oz easy'.

Not believable any more. Hence the drop off in business.

Natch SIEVX gets the mention on this stupid show, the sinking and drowning of loads of folks who were herded cruelly, venally, appallingly onto an unseaworthy boat from Indonesia which sank. And the use of this fact in the hagiography show? The sly reference to the Australian Navy refusoing to save these folks - utter bullshit - and a superbrief reference to no boats coming after that.

For 4 years.

Well, yeah it has been 4 years. But SIEVX was not the sole reason - although you can imagine the people smugglers would find it hard to sell services to paying customers with that sort of horror blotting their record. But how could this awful program not spare a moment to make clear the sinking was not related to oz. Not mention the fact that the sinking was in Indonesian water or international but not Oz, it involved an Indonesian vessel, it was herded with depserate people by horrible people smuggler folks in Indonesia.

I mean, a whole show about asylum seekers in Oz and not a single mention of people smugglers.

Incredible.

Look, to be clear. These people - Burnside and Durham - make me puke, cos they infantilise wogs.

Which I cannot stand.

And I will state clear and loud the wogs they were dealing with on the show - Alladin and anoither Afghan guy whose name I didn't catch - seem to me to be top wogs. Alladin likes Alfa Romeos. Good guy.

So it is terrific they are here. No question.

Burnside and Durham are not bad people. They are earnest fucks who save up all their care and concern for people who have to be dependent on them. To hear Durham say that "for some peope Sept 11 changed everything, well for me it was August (ie Tampa)" just shows how horribly focussed she is. Cos Sept 11 and Tampa were inevitably connected. How? By the reactions of Oz and the US and the UK and others to Sept 11. To remove the Taliban, the very reason for Afghans to flee their blighted country for fresher brighter zones.

A whole show about asylum seekers, including one Afghan who Burnside and Durham have generously housed with them for over a year - that is a good thing they have done so credit where it is due - and not a mention that since Sept 11, since removing the Taliban, over a million Aghan refugees from around the world have gone home because it is their home and blighted and broken as it is, it can be rebuilt and will be by Afghans.

A show like tonight's show is literally misleading. It lionises a lawyer and his artist wife and infantilises an adult man who happens to be in Oz on refugee status. He is a person. Seemed to me the most honourable bloke in the whole show. A good tonic to Bakhtiari.

Might have been better if the producers just went with Alladin as the subject.

Urgh.

Anyhoo, as a complete change of pace there is now a show on some other channel which is seriously hilarious. I am too ashamed to explain the detail except to say narcolepsy and a dream to be a ballerina....

Oh dear. Giggles.
:: WB 5:19 am [link+] ::