Dear Mr Tony Burke, MP,
I don't expect that this letter in and of itself will make a jot of difference to the decision you have made to support the Gunns pulp mill project.
The fact that you lifted and used, word for word, company propaganda which has been long since debunked as blatant confabulation in your sales pitch to foreign investors, suggests that whatever relationship you have with Mr Gay is well and truly established.
You appear to represent the forces that are behind the steady and conscious erosion of quality in our natural world.
You are short term fiscal gain at the expense of my kid's future.
You are the merchant mentality gone mad.
You are economic fundamentalism.
You are the sale of life and breath for profit.
This much is obvious and in that you are not alone. You are surrounded by peers of your own ilk. Why, you probably believe most people think like you because you might not meet those who think otherwise very often, and when you do, they are shouting their message at you from an AFP maintained distance.
Am I right?
Just know, Mr Burke, that you are not a representative of the majority. You might not care what happens to a world that you won't have to live in for more than a few more decades, but being a politician you might care how you will be remembered in history.
Make no mistake Mr. Burke, moves are afoot to ensure that men like you are forever connected, personally, with the decisions that they make whilst in the offices that we, the people, award them.
For too long your class of person have massaged the machinery of mnemonic impunity.
No longer.
You might have gone to school with or joined the same clubs as the men who run the corporations that are eating our future... However, for once, why don't you try something different.
Do what's right for all of our futures instead of hiding behind the pathetic and discredited pseudo-excuses of "jobs" and "economy" to justify your decisions to act in support of your peers investment portfolios.
The age of mnemonic impunity is past. You will be remembered Mr. Burke.
Will it be as the man who sold our inheritance for short term gain and favours to mates? Or will it be as a man in that rarefied strata of leaders who acted to protect something for those who are not yet amongst us.
Don't forget, they will remember you too.
Yours, very sincerely,,
Friday, July 08, 2011
Letter to 4 Corners.
A letter to the ABC "4 Corners" comments page in response to the Australian reaction to revelations about the serious mistreatment of Australian livestock being exported live to Indonesia.
We make many inferences about the nature of foreign cultures based on their approach to ethical challenges. We point our judgmental fingers at cultures who eat endangered wildlife. We cry foul at administrations who execute political dissidents. We have no time for traditions in which the abuse of women is endemic.
Recently, incontrovertible evidence came to light of pointless, gut-wrenching and routine torture of Australian cattle at the hands of our business partners in Indonesia.
The researchers who brought these facts to the attention of the Australian public randomly picked a handful of abattoirs from amongst hundreds of similar Australian built operations. What they found was the systemic torture of the animals being processed in facilities paid for by Australian tax dollars at the hands of Australian trained personnel.
To their credit, Australians everywhere were shocked into action and as a result, the live export industry was taken to task and the trade to Indonesia was put on hold.
In the age old battle between ethics and profit, it looked, for a day or two, like we took the moral high ground. Very rare in today's Australia.
How quickly the tide turns. Since the suspension of this despicable practice, the airwaves have been saturated with the plaintive wails of "poor bugger me" from representatives of the cattle industry. What are we to think of these people who present the argument that their livelihoods should take precedence over the welfare of the very creatures upon which their wealth is built?
Is profit a sufficient argument for the turning of a blind eye to what we know is occurring at the cattle's final destination?
The industry would have us believe that these randomly chosen facilities are anomalies that don't represent the otherwise excellent animal husbandry employed by the Indonesian side of their partnership.
Exactly how stupid do these spokespeople think we are?
It is not going to stop and it is not limited to the outfits into which the cameras were taken. It is in the workplace culture that this horrifying cruelty resides. It's built into the machinery that these animals are driven through; machinery that we helped to build and which we continue to feed.
If we, as a society, continue to permit these crimes of abject cruelty and worse yet, to supply the victims to these monstrous facilities, then we as a society belong in the ranks of the cultures who's civility we ourselves question.
For the first time since the dark years of Howard the Black Heart, I am feeling shame as an Australian.
I've also stopped eating beef. Not because I fear for the treatment of livestock in Australian abattoirs, but rather because I refuse to give a cent to an industry who would knowingly feed their animals into this ongoing atrocity and then seek to justify their choice of business partners without reference to the much greater moral question. If more of us make the same choice, how will that sit with your precious profits.
We make many inferences about the nature of foreign cultures based on their approach to ethical challenges. We point our judgmental fingers at cultures who eat endangered wildlife. We cry foul at administrations who execute political dissidents. We have no time for traditions in which the abuse of women is endemic.
Recently, incontrovertible evidence came to light of pointless, gut-wrenching and routine torture of Australian cattle at the hands of our business partners in Indonesia.
The researchers who brought these facts to the attention of the Australian public randomly picked a handful of abattoirs from amongst hundreds of similar Australian built operations. What they found was the systemic torture of the animals being processed in facilities paid for by Australian tax dollars at the hands of Australian trained personnel.
To their credit, Australians everywhere were shocked into action and as a result, the live export industry was taken to task and the trade to Indonesia was put on hold.
In the age old battle between ethics and profit, it looked, for a day or two, like we took the moral high ground. Very rare in today's Australia.
How quickly the tide turns. Since the suspension of this despicable practice, the airwaves have been saturated with the plaintive wails of "poor bugger me" from representatives of the cattle industry. What are we to think of these people who present the argument that their livelihoods should take precedence over the welfare of the very creatures upon which their wealth is built?
Is profit a sufficient argument for the turning of a blind eye to what we know is occurring at the cattle's final destination?
The industry would have us believe that these randomly chosen facilities are anomalies that don't represent the otherwise excellent animal husbandry employed by the Indonesian side of their partnership.
Exactly how stupid do these spokespeople think we are?
It is not going to stop and it is not limited to the outfits into which the cameras were taken. It is in the workplace culture that this horrifying cruelty resides. It's built into the machinery that these animals are driven through; machinery that we helped to build and which we continue to feed.
If we, as a society, continue to permit these crimes of abject cruelty and worse yet, to supply the victims to these monstrous facilities, then we as a society belong in the ranks of the cultures who's civility we ourselves question.
For the first time since the dark years of Howard the Black Heart, I am feeling shame as an Australian.
I've also stopped eating beef. Not because I fear for the treatment of livestock in Australian abattoirs, but rather because I refuse to give a cent to an industry who would knowingly feed their animals into this ongoing atrocity and then seek to justify their choice of business partners without reference to the much greater moral question. If more of us make the same choice, how will that sit with your precious profits.
Letter to ABC forum on live cattle export to Indonesia.
This letter was sent as a response to a forum discussion on ABC about live export in which someone commented on the new head of the RSPCA. The contributor felt that this person was inserted into the NGO executive to weaken the organisations ability to pursue their charter.
Well said. What we're seeing here is just another example of the "Howardian" subversion of ethical and scientific organisations for whom immediate profit is a secondary concern. These groups exist to take amoral, profiteering industries to task and force us as a society to consider our ethical position in the face of the temptation to abuse the creatures and environment from which we derive our wealth.
The CSIRO, the EPA, the WWF and many other public and private offices for ethical and scientific thought were openly and deliberately infected by Howard's apparatchiks who vetted the output of those offices so as to minimize the inconvenience to the rapacious agenda of that time. Many members of those organisations quit in disgust and despair as a result of the bullying and sidelining they experienced at the hands of those carefully recruited sociopaths managing their workplaces. It was and is a spectacularly effective technique for the taming of NGOs who's charter is to counter the greed-driven feeding frenzy that is our modern corporatocracy.
Why would those same forces not infect the RSPCA at this time of critical reassessment of our moral obligations to the animals we are driving, conscious, through the grinders to our north.
Well said. What we're seeing here is just another example of the "Howardian" subversion of ethical and scientific organisations for whom immediate profit is a secondary concern. These groups exist to take amoral, profiteering industries to task and force us as a society to consider our ethical position in the face of the temptation to abuse the creatures and environment from which we derive our wealth.
The CSIRO, the EPA, the WWF and many other public and private offices for ethical and scientific thought were openly and deliberately infected by Howard's apparatchiks who vetted the output of those offices so as to minimize the inconvenience to the rapacious agenda of that time. Many members of those organisations quit in disgust and despair as a result of the bullying and sidelining they experienced at the hands of those carefully recruited sociopaths managing their workplaces. It was and is a spectacularly effective technique for the taming of NGOs who's charter is to counter the greed-driven feeding frenzy that is our modern corporatocracy.
Why would those same forces not infect the RSPCA at this time of critical reassessment of our moral obligations to the animals we are driving, conscious, through the grinders to our north.
Thursday, June 09, 2011
This letter was posted on Skeptical Science, a website designed to address the points that climate science deniers throw up in their debate. The site is full of excellent and measured information which succinctly debunks the standard toolkit of the deniers. Unfortunately the site's owners are still operating under the delusion that the deniers are honest interlocutors who simply need to be shown the facts to be brought on board and everything will be alright. The Sceptical Science website comments policy strictly forbids; politics, ad-hominem commentary, accusations of fraud or dishonesty and pretty much anything that addresses the real problem, namely the politicization, the fraud and dishonesty and the individuals who, paid and otherwise, inject mud into the waters of the debate to prevent the very resolution of the problems we have on the horizon. This post was removed for failing to remain in the safe and noninflammatory territory of selling the hard scientific facts of climate science to the converted.
The interests behind the global warming denial camp are not under any illusions that they are winning their argument, or even that their argument can in fact be won.
They are not interested in “winning” anything as mundane to them as this abstract treehugging argument.
The forces behind climate science denial are interested only in perpetuating the debate in the public domain. This is in spite the fact that the debate is long since settled in the fields of science relevant to the understanding of the issue. They know this. They also know, only too well, that the public perception of controversy is all that’s required for the maintenance of the obscenely profitable status quo.
In the cases of tobacco, DDT, CFCs, asbestos and slavery, science and ethics predicted great harm and immediately, the techniques of science denial have swung in and granted a stay of execution, often for decades, to industries who have continued to reap the rewards while society procrastinates. For every extra day that these businesses get to ply their deadly trade, billions of dollars of profit and dizzying bonuses accumulate in the hands of the rapacious executives at the helm. Their entire model of economic enrichment is predicated upon the ability to go ahead with business as usual and the only thing that puts that at risk in the near term is society becoming convinced of the need for change. For that to happen, society needs to trust that the harm these industries do is understood and beyond doubt. Only then will the community overcome the terrible inertia inhibiting their activism and only then will the gutless twerps we call our “leaders” respond by limiting the potential for these industries to damage our future.
It should be no surprise that the P.R. firms who developed Big Tobacco’s highly successful, multi-decadal campaign of science denial are the very same firms who now support Big Carbon’s efforts to spread mud into the clear waters of the message science is sending us. We need to stop wasting precious time trying to convince industry of the scientific truth and start informing the public of the black-hearted techniques that the industry deploys in managing their opinions about these big issues.
The reader may experience a certain amount of cognitive dissonance at the thought they could be victims of “opinion management”. This might cause a person to resist accepting the notion that their reaction to the climate debate has been engineered by unethical but well demonstrated and powerful P.R. techniques.
Do yourself a favour, take an interest in the history and techniques of the P.R. industry and read some of the many published accounts of that industry’s “success” stories, published by the industry in their own journals and widely on the web.
Do yourself a favour, take an interest in the history and techniques of the P.R. industry and read some of the many published accounts of that industry’s “success” stories, published by the industry in their own journals and widely on the web.
I've heard more than a few people exclaim, “no-one in high office would deliberately drive the planet into climatic and ecological jeopardy for individual gain! These captains of industry and government are intelligent, educated people who would never put profit before the good of humanity!”Not to burst their bubble but these Utopian dreamers need to see the vast body of reliable, peer reviewed work that demonstrates the capacity of humans to ignore evidence that sits in opposition to their worldview however unsupportable that worldview or incontrovertible the evidence might be. Changing your worldview is like changing your OS. A pain in the ass. This is the essence of the term “cognitive dissonance”. As Upton Sinclair said, “It is very difficult to make someone understand something when their salary relies on them not understanding it.” The clever PR person can use the power of cognitive dissonance as a blunt instrument or a scalpel.
If that gives you a chill, then go to the various studies that demonstrate the fourfold concentration of psychopathic personalities in the highest offices of our corporations and government.
This is difficult for many to accept, partly because most of us have a very limited picture of the psychopath as "the bug-eyed, axe-wielding maniac" of our nightmares and movies. That kind of psychopath is the kind that gets taken out of circulation quickly and dramatically. The rest of them live amongst us at a density of around one in one hundred in the general population. They are intelligent, often above average as a result of their abnormal brain. Again as a result of their abnormal brains, an entire network of processing lies unstimulated. In brain imaging tests this region just doesn't light up when the rest of the brain does ethical testing exercises. This is the part of the brain that seems to deal with moral and ethical issues. The fear processing areas are similarly feeble With no fear of repercussions and no internal behavior watchdog the impulsive ones qet removed from circulation quickly. The smart ones learn to fake social graces and to willfully learn a fear of getting caught, academically as a substitute for real fear..If they are smart enough to manage that, they are smart enough to remain in the community as “free range psychopaths”. Out here they run riot over their competition on their way to the top of their various games, unbound by the ethical and moral limits the rest of us elect to be bound by. In the halls of high office their numbers are estimated at as high as one in twenty five. In prison it's one in ten, the only place with a higher concentration of psychopaths in its population than in high office!
If that gives you a chill, then go to the various studies that demonstrate the fourfold concentration of psychopathic personalities in the highest offices of our corporations and government.
This is difficult for many to accept, partly because most of us have a very limited picture of the psychopath as "the bug-eyed, axe-wielding maniac" of our nightmares and movies. That kind of psychopath is the kind that gets taken out of circulation quickly and dramatically. The rest of them live amongst us at a density of around one in one hundred in the general population. They are intelligent, often above average as a result of their abnormal brain. Again as a result of their abnormal brains, an entire network of processing lies unstimulated. In brain imaging tests this region just doesn't light up when the rest of the brain does ethical testing exercises. This is the part of the brain that seems to deal with moral and ethical issues. The fear processing areas are similarly feeble With no fear of repercussions and no internal behavior watchdog the impulsive ones qet removed from circulation quickly. The smart ones learn to fake social graces and to willfully learn a fear of getting caught, academically as a substitute for real fear..If they are smart enough to manage that, they are smart enough to remain in the community as “free range psychopaths”. Out here they run riot over their competition on their way to the top of their various games, unbound by the ethical and moral limits the rest of us elect to be bound by. In the halls of high office their numbers are estimated at as high as one in twenty five. In prison it's one in ten, the only place with a higher concentration of psychopaths in its population than in high office!
It’s is these same people who wield the tools of opinion management and who call the loudest shots in our society. It is these same people who are driving us to the point of no return in our delicate dance with the well understood chemistry of our atmosphere.
Friday, August 26, 2005
Letter to Cairns Post and Mossman Gazette, 25th August, 2005
One by one, and to our lament each time, our costal communities are converted into the same kind of land rush based, overdeveloped feeding frenzies.
Humans doing what humans do?
Every time it happens we have the same arguments and air the same grievances and make the same platitudes about how “it’s gotta be managed differently this time”. Yeah Right. Maybe we can’t help it. Maybe free will is an illusion or perhaps it can only appear in individual persons and not in The People.
Every now and then we hear about some community in Holland or Tasmania or somewhere, who have stepped outside the square of undirected human swarming behaviour. They have consciously decided to take control of their local futures to the universal satisfaction of the community. You know exactly what I mean. You also know that these communities are prosperous.
However, everyone wants to make a buck now and how better to get richer quicker than to sell the cane farm or subdivide the lifestyle block. The landowners in areas under the spotlight know the potential to make quick cash and they also know that local government restrictions work at odds to their development options. They’ve seen it happen elsewhere and they are chomping at the bit to have their go. They are the old guard, who have seen the region in the heyday of its agricultural history and they have seen the world overtake their traditional interests. The economic focus has shifted from land under service to land left alone. That notion is incomprehensible to the limited intellects who are driving the lobby for unrestricted development. They remark with amusement that people would come and spend perfectly good money to look at scrub. They see tourism and conservation as a silly fad which will pass when people come to their senses.
They sell to the city based developers and marketers who have no connection to the area whatsoever other than that some desperate cane cocky sold him the farm. They can’t sell land to the locals so they market it to the cities and so runs away the population.
These people will be dead soon. They are old and frail in body and mind. They are corpulent and corrupt. Their interests are undisguised and personally assimilative. They aren’t equipped to understand the issues we are now realizing, matter deeply. They are also entrenched within the decision making machinery of the region. Their immediate interests work at odds with the sustainable maintenance of a healthy, happy community living in relative harmony with the living treasure on its doorstep.
Think about that word, ‘treasure’, please, and know it for the literal truth I intend it to convey.
The fundamental consideration that the environment in its current condition, is the new basis for the existence of any community in this region, should never be overlooked for even a second. I’m not using the word in its airy fairy greeny context as an emotional hook for a very special place. It is that too. But, as the fundamental economic basis for the very existence of this community, our landscape is the definition of treasure. If you think your existence in this shire, in this day and age, is independent of the new global interest in your area then you are a very special kind of fool.
If the forces for development are appeased we will have sold to them our continued ability to trade with the world market. We will become obsolete. The appeasement of some individuals now will bankrupt this community. We are rapidly trading away our treasure without ever having had it valued.
Why do we crave homogeneity? Why do we need to go through the same cycle we know without a doubt will lead to the destruction of that which supports us here? Don’t disappoint me by pretending that you don’t know what I’m talking about.
Douglas Shire could be a truly landmark community, with our abundant water, our pristine forests and marine environment. We have a tiny population which is very wealthy even by Australian standards. We are the best placed community on the continent to showcase a truly sapient relationship with our landscape. The set of small valleys that is our shire is already legendary around the world. Many millions of people’s idea of Paradise is the view out of your window every day. Think about that for ten seconds each day. Look out your window. If you think I’m exaggerating then pull your head out of wherever it’s in.
Despite the obviousness of these facts we are still debating whether to fritter away this magnificent asset on a strategy for which we already know the long term consequences. This is a one of a kind slice of the luckiest country on the planet, and we are seriously entertaining the debate as to whether or not to open the floodgates to its inevitable demise.
We have a few men, individuals with their own agendas, who are constitutionally incapable of understanding the importance of curbing human growth in areas like this. I say this because if they could understand, they would be ashamed of themselves and they are not. These people, some of whom are on the council and in business, are simpletons. But like Dustin Hoffman’s, Rainman, sometimes a simpleton can be brilliant in specific ways. The gang of four, and others driving the push for more of the same, have an intelligence which is more like rat cunning and Machiavellian understanding.
If you don’t know Machiavelli then shame on you and google him now before reading further.
Men like these, understand viscerally how to win favour with the nervous and insecure and how to ensure that there are plenty of nervous and insecure to win favour from. They understand how to find and close deals and that their position is better the more deals they make. But what they can not do is think on a scale sufficiently large as to introduce them to more important and permanent concepts.
It is this type of human who is hijacking this shire. You know it and so does anyone who cares to look.
Would you be as selfish as to permit the destruction of that which most likely brought you here and absolutely supports you simply because a reaction would cut into your beer time or the footy? Make your opinion known and make your vote reflect your ability to see beyond your next mortgage payment.
One by one, and to our lament each time, our costal communities are converted into the same kind of land rush based, overdeveloped feeding frenzies.
Humans doing what humans do?
Every time it happens we have the same arguments and air the same grievances and make the same platitudes about how “it’s gotta be managed differently this time”. Yeah Right. Maybe we can’t help it. Maybe free will is an illusion or perhaps it can only appear in individual persons and not in The People.
Every now and then we hear about some community in Holland or Tasmania or somewhere, who have stepped outside the square of undirected human swarming behaviour. They have consciously decided to take control of their local futures to the universal satisfaction of the community. You know exactly what I mean. You also know that these communities are prosperous.
However, everyone wants to make a buck now and how better to get richer quicker than to sell the cane farm or subdivide the lifestyle block. The landowners in areas under the spotlight know the potential to make quick cash and they also know that local government restrictions work at odds to their development options. They’ve seen it happen elsewhere and they are chomping at the bit to have their go. They are the old guard, who have seen the region in the heyday of its agricultural history and they have seen the world overtake their traditional interests. The economic focus has shifted from land under service to land left alone. That notion is incomprehensible to the limited intellects who are driving the lobby for unrestricted development. They remark with amusement that people would come and spend perfectly good money to look at scrub. They see tourism and conservation as a silly fad which will pass when people come to their senses.
They sell to the city based developers and marketers who have no connection to the area whatsoever other than that some desperate cane cocky sold him the farm. They can’t sell land to the locals so they market it to the cities and so runs away the population.
These people will be dead soon. They are old and frail in body and mind. They are corpulent and corrupt. Their interests are undisguised and personally assimilative. They aren’t equipped to understand the issues we are now realizing, matter deeply. They are also entrenched within the decision making machinery of the region. Their immediate interests work at odds with the sustainable maintenance of a healthy, happy community living in relative harmony with the living treasure on its doorstep.
Think about that word, ‘treasure’, please, and know it for the literal truth I intend it to convey.
The fundamental consideration that the environment in its current condition, is the new basis for the existence of any community in this region, should never be overlooked for even a second. I’m not using the word in its airy fairy greeny context as an emotional hook for a very special place. It is that too. But, as the fundamental economic basis for the very existence of this community, our landscape is the definition of treasure. If you think your existence in this shire, in this day and age, is independent of the new global interest in your area then you are a very special kind of fool.
If the forces for development are appeased we will have sold to them our continued ability to trade with the world market. We will become obsolete. The appeasement of some individuals now will bankrupt this community. We are rapidly trading away our treasure without ever having had it valued.
Why do we crave homogeneity? Why do we need to go through the same cycle we know without a doubt will lead to the destruction of that which supports us here? Don’t disappoint me by pretending that you don’t know what I’m talking about.
Douglas Shire could be a truly landmark community, with our abundant water, our pristine forests and marine environment. We have a tiny population which is very wealthy even by Australian standards. We are the best placed community on the continent to showcase a truly sapient relationship with our landscape. The set of small valleys that is our shire is already legendary around the world. Many millions of people’s idea of Paradise is the view out of your window every day. Think about that for ten seconds each day. Look out your window. If you think I’m exaggerating then pull your head out of wherever it’s in.
Despite the obviousness of these facts we are still debating whether to fritter away this magnificent asset on a strategy for which we already know the long term consequences. This is a one of a kind slice of the luckiest country on the planet, and we are seriously entertaining the debate as to whether or not to open the floodgates to its inevitable demise.
We have a few men, individuals with their own agendas, who are constitutionally incapable of understanding the importance of curbing human growth in areas like this. I say this because if they could understand, they would be ashamed of themselves and they are not. These people, some of whom are on the council and in business, are simpletons. But like Dustin Hoffman’s, Rainman, sometimes a simpleton can be brilliant in specific ways. The gang of four, and others driving the push for more of the same, have an intelligence which is more like rat cunning and Machiavellian understanding.
If you don’t know Machiavelli then shame on you and google him now before reading further.
Men like these, understand viscerally how to win favour with the nervous and insecure and how to ensure that there are plenty of nervous and insecure to win favour from. They understand how to find and close deals and that their position is better the more deals they make. But what they can not do is think on a scale sufficiently large as to introduce them to more important and permanent concepts.
It is this type of human who is hijacking this shire. You know it and so does anyone who cares to look.
Would you be as selfish as to permit the destruction of that which most likely brought you here and absolutely supports you simply because a reaction would cut into your beer time or the footy? Make your opinion known and make your vote reflect your ability to see beyond your next mortgage payment.
Letter sent to Warren Entch and Radio National 16th June 2005.
Looking out for the underdog was once a characteristic held in the highest regard as a fundamental aspect of our character as a people. It was part of our identity.
No longer, is this the case.
It has been made desperately apparent in recent years that the underdog is no longer a priority in our increasingly mercenary culture.
In the face of profit and economic gain, the underdog is a liability, an un-needed distraction which must be dealt with as a burden to be shed at the first opportunity.
It is with this new relationship to the 'worse off', that we have approached, amongst many other things, the current fiasco of the Chinese defectors whose lives are currently in our hands.
It would be paranoid to think the fuss surrounding this issue is a smoke screen to keep our eyes off a more important ball. Therefore we must assume there is substance to the story.
That in mind then, we must acknowledge a few simple facts.
Three high ranking officials from a notoriously oppressive, Juggernaut regime, come forth with a plea that we protect them from the inevitably terminal repercussions of their decision to step forward with matching accounts of an assortment of nefarious activities directed towards this nation.
In response to their provisioning us with this information and the full knowledge of their unpleasant fate if returned, we have all but given them or driven them to the very forces they have sought to evade.
This is a new low point in our status as a supposedly civilized people.
Are the stories of the bureaucratic nightmare inflicted on these men true? If they are, I am calling for every executive in the relevant departments to be immediately sacked for criminal ineptitude and a flagrant disregard for the safety of those whose lives are literally in their hands. Not that this issue is the only, or even best, example of the same kind of ingrained incompetence from the same names and faces.
If a foreign diplomat on our soil seeks protection from their own government, there is a very good chance that they are in serious risk of persecution. If they are made to feel compelled to seek refuge in the civilian world because of their treatment by our administration, then we have a very deep problem that has to be analyzed at the level of the personalities making the decisions.
This is because the decision to feed a man who is pleading for the help that only you can give, to what all evidence suggests is his persecutor, requires a special kind of black eyed callousness which must be recognized and apprehended. It must be removed from any executive positions which place it in command of situations where morality and honesty are required.
There exists then, a moral responsibility for those who are capable recognizing the amoral, to do their best to expose them. The actions or inaction of an executive are a reflection of their moral code and character. The actions of readily nameable members of the government and public service have revealed them to be without the moral fibre that should be requisite of anyone placed in the positions they currently hold. Start at the top and work your way down defense and immigration to start with. They must be removed immediately or risk dissolving in the minds of the impressionable public, any sense of need for the values upon which civil society is built.
Looking out for the underdog was once a characteristic held in the highest regard as a fundamental aspect of our character as a people. It was part of our identity.
No longer, is this the case.
It has been made desperately apparent in recent years that the underdog is no longer a priority in our increasingly mercenary culture.
In the face of profit and economic gain, the underdog is a liability, an un-needed distraction which must be dealt with as a burden to be shed at the first opportunity.
It is with this new relationship to the 'worse off', that we have approached, amongst many other things, the current fiasco of the Chinese defectors whose lives are currently in our hands.
It would be paranoid to think the fuss surrounding this issue is a smoke screen to keep our eyes off a more important ball. Therefore we must assume there is substance to the story.
That in mind then, we must acknowledge a few simple facts.
Three high ranking officials from a notoriously oppressive, Juggernaut regime, come forth with a plea that we protect them from the inevitably terminal repercussions of their decision to step forward with matching accounts of an assortment of nefarious activities directed towards this nation.
In response to their provisioning us with this information and the full knowledge of their unpleasant fate if returned, we have all but given them or driven them to the very forces they have sought to evade.
This is a new low point in our status as a supposedly civilized people.
Are the stories of the bureaucratic nightmare inflicted on these men true? If they are, I am calling for every executive in the relevant departments to be immediately sacked for criminal ineptitude and a flagrant disregard for the safety of those whose lives are literally in their hands. Not that this issue is the only, or even best, example of the same kind of ingrained incompetence from the same names and faces.
If a foreign diplomat on our soil seeks protection from their own government, there is a very good chance that they are in serious risk of persecution. If they are made to feel compelled to seek refuge in the civilian world because of their treatment by our administration, then we have a very deep problem that has to be analyzed at the level of the personalities making the decisions.
This is because the decision to feed a man who is pleading for the help that only you can give, to what all evidence suggests is his persecutor, requires a special kind of black eyed callousness which must be recognized and apprehended. It must be removed from any executive positions which place it in command of situations where morality and honesty are required.
There exists then, a moral responsibility for those who are capable recognizing the amoral, to do their best to expose them. The actions or inaction of an executive are a reflection of their moral code and character. The actions of readily nameable members of the government and public service have revealed them to be without the moral fibre that should be requisite of anyone placed in the positions they currently hold. Start at the top and work your way down defense and immigration to start with. They must be removed immediately or risk dissolving in the minds of the impressionable public, any sense of need for the values upon which civil society is built.
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