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Why would Lebanese board the boat?

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=15529
http://bit.ly/18lyHUy
On Line Opinion, 1 October 2013

Why would Lebanese board the boat?

The tragic drowning of the Lebanese citizens in Indonesia should be a wakeup call for officials … Lebanese people cannot build their future in their own country.

Former Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora galvanised the tragedy to highlight the desperation of poverty-stricken parts of Lebanon.

But this sentiment may be music to the ears of Prime Minister Tony Abbott who has been singing the same tune that our primary responsibility in these tragedies is to stop the boats.

While Abbott may galvanise the tragedy to highlight the fatal ‘means’, the source countries are navel-gazing about the human ’cause’.

But in a new military model that is driven by Operation Sovereign Borders and immigration policies coupled with Border Protection, questions of why asylum seekers leave their home countries are off the political radar.

To seriously and simply ‘stop the boats’, we cannot afford to be simplistic. We need to stop the causes of the people inside the boats. This does not mean solving all the inhumane push factors that drive this desperation, but it does mean looking beyond the ‘people smuggling’ pull factors and looking more at the people than the boats.

Who were the people inside the latest boat tragedy?

We know that they were an estimated 120 people from Lebanon, Jordan and Yemen, of whom there have been only 28 survivors so far.

We know that they were at sea for five days before food and water supplies depleted before the two Indonesian crew became disoriented then decided to return to the Javanese coast in six meter waves.

We know that the Lebanese boarders were mainly from Akkar, the northernmost region of Lebanon bordering Syria.

We know that more than a million Syrians have fled the war to Lebanon which has placed enormous economic strain on this struggling neighbour of only four million residents. Stories of Akkar families struggling without affordable schools, electricity and food to feed themselves abound. Stories of Syrians resorting to cheap labour, crime and even prostitution abound. Stories of car bombs exploding near Lebanese mosques in August, echoing the seismic sectarian strife within Syria and threatening to widen the fault lines within Lebanese civil society abound. Stories of frustrated Lebanese crying out for some of the foreign aid that is sent to their new Syrian ‘neighbours’ abound.

Stories of people predators with promises of visitor visas to Indonesia then a ship to Christmas Island abound. Akkar families with ‘nothing to lose and everything to gain’ became the perfect prey, in the hope of a future life in Australia.
Their voices of desperation drowned out the voices of reason by their Australian relatives over the phone, discouraging them, warning them that there is no such ship – it is a suicidal fishing boat.

The rest is history repeating itself, as recovered bodies are identified then flown back to their village for burial, if indeed they are recovered.

The latest tragedy has sent shock waves throughout Lebanon, prompting introspection about poverty and safety for those who see no future for their children. Local MP Nidal Tohme blamed “the neglect of [Lebanon] to Akkar residents” claiming that “their deprivation and leaving them alone to face poverty and unemployment is what led the sad citizens to venture to the unknown.”

Legitimate questions have been asked about how the boat boarders could use communications technology as an SOS, but could not use communications technology to predict the rough seas or discern that the smugglers were lying about the safe ships. They paint a picture of the asylum seekers as illegitimate and unsophisticated. Compatriots from Lebanon are likely to be deterred by the news of this tragedy, and may attract more attention from their government, both of which may be constructive outcomes.

But our discourse in Australia and Prime Minister Abbott’s discourse with his Indonesian counterpart this week needs to extend beyond the boats per se.

The Abbott government’s decision to curb foreign aid by $4.5 billion to pay for infra-structure is an example of compounding the causes of the people inside the boats. By steering and supporting a political solution rather than a military solution for Syria in the UNSC, Australia could again be redressing the causes of the people inside the boats.
As UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon stated, “the burden of helping the world’s forcibly displaced people is starkly uneven … anti-refugee sentiment is heard loudest in industrialised countries”.

Speaker of Lebanese Parliament Nabih Berri called on authorities in Australia and Indonesia to launch an investigation to determine who was responsible for the incident.

But while Lebanon looks in the mirror, perhaps our prime minister can also look into his moral mirror and realise that his honourable mandate for humanity must always prevail over his political mandate for sovereignty.

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Carr Calls For Syria Assassination

http://bit.ly/QfnBXg
Published on newmatilda.com (http://newmatilda.com)
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10 Oct 2012

Carr Calls For Syria Assassination

By calling for the murder of Bashar al-Assad, Foreign Minister Bob Carr has shown both his hypocrisy and his lack of understanding about our “allies” in the Syrian uprising, writes Joseph Wakim

Public figures must think twice before commenting about someone’s death.

Veteran broadcaster Alan Jones has learned this lesson after “cyber democracy” took Australian decency into its own hands. They have inscribed an epitaph for his career: you reap what you sow.

But it appears that Foreign Minister Bob Carr has learnt nothing about the volatility of the “death sentence”. His “brutal and callous” call for the assassination of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on ABC Four Corners on Monday was utterly un-Australian, and warrants immediate sanction by Julia Gillard.

Our foreign minister represents a liberal democracy where murder is a crime and the death sentence has long been outlawed. Assassination should not be part of Australia’s strategy to end the proxy war between Iran and Israel that is fought on Syrian soil.

Carr’s comments are yet another example of the foreign minister is trying to force-fit the Libyan template over Syrian territory.

Carr’s rationale that “an assassination combined with a major defection … is what is required to get, one, a ceasefire, and, two, political negotiations” smacks of dangerous naivety. It ignores the fact that to the president and his supporters, Syria is fighting its own “war on terror” and defending its sovereign territory. This religious war has been proudly sponsored by the US and its Gulf allies — the undemocratic kingdoms of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Rather than creating a cease fire, an assassination would escalate the war beyond the five volatile Syrian borders. Does Carr seriously think that Iran, Russia and China would sit idly by as yet another regime is militarily toppled?

Carr concludes that “we’ve got nothing to do but trust the spirit of the Arab Spring”. The embers of the Arab Spring were actually extinguished long ago by what he himself calls “religious fanatics … who want another form of dictatorship”. The “jihadists,” who answer to fatwas from Saudi sheiks for a holy war to ethnically cleanse Syria from non-Sunnis, want a Salafist theocracy, not a secular democracy. Ironically, Carr’s call for an assassination aligns him with Sheikh Muhammad al Zughbey — “your jihad against this infidel criminal and his people is a religious duty”.

When asked about the presence of Islamic extremists or al Qaeda in the uprising, Carr insists that “the truth is … nobody knows … outside Damascus, observation doesn’t exist”. His sources are all sworn enemies of the Syrian regime — The Friends of Syria, Gulf leaders and Western leaders — and of course they will not concede that extremists have hijacked the uprising.

Inside Syria, observation and monitoring does exist and the al-Qaeda presence has been repeatedly revealed. Journalist Robert Fisk interviewed so-called Syrian rebels inside a Syrian military prison in August, only to find that most were “recycled” foreign mercenaries. Inconvenient facts and counter-narratives such as this cannot be dismissed as pro-Assad propaganda, although Fisk’s piece in particular has drawn some criticism, including from Syrian political dissident Yassin Al-Haj Saleh.

Moreover, Carr has an immediate opportunity to be enlightened by a visiting Syrian nun who has been at the centre of the violence, tending to the war wounded. Despite repeated requests to meet with him, Mother Agnes-Mariam from St James Catholic monastery in Homs has been shunned. She has been forced to flee to Lebanon after being warned that the rebel forces, our allies and future assassins, plotted to abduct her.

Why? Because she was outspoken about the “aggressive armed gangs … abducting people, beheading, bringing terror even to schools”. Like Fisk, she confirms that only about one in 20 rebels are Syrian. She has witnessed how the uprising “steadily became a violent Islamist expression against a liberal secular society” and testifies to a “hidden will to empty the Middle East of its Christian presence”. This darker truth belies the “spirit of the Arab Spring” in Carr’s fantasy.

Unlike Carr, Mother Agnes has a peaceful solution that is gaining momentum — Mussalaha (reconciliation) — a grass roots movement for dialogue and negotiation among Syrian citizens of all ethnic and religious backgrounds who “reject sectarian violence and are tired of war”.

Unlike Carr, her method not assassination and defection, but disarmament — “freeing them of this massive foreign interference and this media instigation for violence”. As part of her international peace mission to the Vatican and the EU, she will lead a delegation of Nobel Prize laureates to Syria next month.

It is abhorrent that Carr links assassination with “what Kofi Annan said was essential”. Like Mother Agnes, Annan promoted disarmament.
Above the negotiation table, the US-Saudi-Qatar axis talked about a political solution, but under the table they sabotaged his “peace plan” with a lucrative supply chain of arms, while criticising those who vetoed more military solutions.

Why is Carr afraid to meet with Mother Agnes? Because she will disarm him of his “just war” theory, and force him to face the facts that he has put us in bed with the terrorists. She may even enlighten him that it was not Libya that endured 17 years of civil war, as he stated, but Lebanon — for 15 years. Like Alan Jones, he should know better, but chooses not to.
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Source URL: http://newmatilda.com/2012/10/10/carr-calls-syria-assassination
Links:
[1] http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/radio-broadcaster-alan-jones-blames-cyber-bullying-for-commercials-being-pulled-from-show/story-e6frg996-1226490322476
[2] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-04/interview-with-bob-carr/4302980
[3] http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/syria/120814/syria-us-proxy-war-iran-saudi-arabia-qatar-sunni-shiite
[4] http://mideastmedia.blogspot.com.au/2011/07/provocative-sheikhs-views-aired.html
[5] http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-syrias-road-from-jihad-to-prison-8100749.html
[6] http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContentP/18/51930/Books/Syrian-writer-Robert-Fisk-is-indoctrinated-by-Syri.aspx
[7] http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/christians-emptied-from-middle-east/story-e6frg6so-1226489418086
[8] http://www.un.org/apps/news/infocus/Syria/press.asp?NewsID=1236&sID=41

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Pay rise good for workers and men

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/opinion/editorial/general/pay-rise-good-for-workers-and-men/2444471.aspx

Pay rise good for workers and men
Published in Canberra Times

6 Feb 2012

Fair Work Australia’s decision to incrementally increase the pays of community sector employees over the next eight years is not just good news for women. It is good news for men.

When I completed a post graduate Bachelor of Social Work at the University of Melbourne, 95 per cent of the students were female. After working in the profession for seven years, a number of factors compelled me to leave. It was grossly underpaid for the over 60 hours per week that were worked, often without lunch breaks. The very nature of the caring profession attracts people who are not clock-watchers.

Those of us who were multilingual were too often misused opportunistically as interpreters instead of getting the ”real” professionals. Instead, we could have been consulted on cultural practices and beliefs. The men in this profession were often the primary breadwinners of their families and could not afford a reliable car or to buy their own home. The fact that more women are now the primary breadwinners compounds the standard of living issue.

The profession suffered a hangover from its original days as church volunteers or religious vocations where benevolent work was done for altruistic rather than financial fulfilment. Past attempts at seeking fair remuneration and treating this work as a livelihood were silenced and smeared as immorally capitalising on the misfortunes of the have-nots.

“Community work” was meted out as part of a suite of penalties by magistrates in lieu of fines or imprisonment. It was humiliating and ironic that one man’s profession is another man’s punishment!

When comparing the salary entitlement for a social worker compared with my fellow graduates who had also completed at least four years of study, mine was at least 30 per cent lower than those who entered male-dominated professions such as accounting, ostensibly because of the dominant gender of the profession.

The demands on male social workers were high given their shortage and the need for gender-sensitive services, especially those servicing specific cultural communities. It is this last point that may be overlooked in the ”victory for women” euphoria. Indeed, the traditional disparity between female- and male-dominated professions is discriminatory.

I acutely recall that men in this profession could not make ends meet, so they ambitiously sought senior management roles or jumped ship to another profession, like me. Either way, our society was losing trained men who were valuable for face-to-face work with male clients.

These men are as precious and sought-after as male teachers in schools. As a social worker, I was inundated with referrals to counsel men who were violent, homeless, alcoholic, depressed, abusive, suicidal, unemployed, immigrant, refugee, imprisoned, etc. Or simply men who preferred to confide in their ”fellow man”, just as women may prefer a female doctor. Some men were reluctant to ”open up” to women, while others found the entire concept of social work foreign. I could not keep up with the waiting list and when I announced my resignation, my colleagues and clients were devastated.

It was not financially viable to maintain this lowly paid job and establish a family. Something had to give, or I needed a second job, which would consume what little was left of family time.

With this news of greater pay parity, men may be more likely to stay in this profession and treat it as a sustainable career. The pay parity is not only an overdue relief for men in this profession, but indeed men in society in need. With census data showing that more of us are living alone and living longer, with family support networks fragmenting, we clearly need to care for those who will be caring for us.

Joseph Wakim is a Sydney writer and a former social worker.

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Our humanity must prevail over our sovereignty

The High Court’s ‘Malaysian solution’ decision points the way.

Published in The Canberra Times, 6 September 2011
http://bit.ly/srklTw

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Last week’s High Court decision vindicated what human rights advocates have been pleading for years: humanity must prevail over sovereignty.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard assures us that a ”genuine sense of Australia’s national interest and our national spirit” is what guides the Government’s charter on boat arrivals seeking asylum. Yet this is exactly what was at stake with the Malaysia solution.
Our national anthem sings in joyful strains: ”For those who’ve come across the seas, we’ve boundless plains to share”. Indeed we have been ”renowed of all the lands” for our fair and welcoming character.

The Malaysian swap deal is a remnant of the condemned Pacific Solution: the cruel logic of dispatching desperate people to poorer neighbours: ”out of sight, out of mind”.

John Howard may have trumpeted about our right to ”decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come”. But the High Court decision implicitly reminded us of our moral, humanitarian and legal obligations.

The Pacific solution demonised asylum seekers and dropped every dehumanising name onto them ”short of bombing them”.

While the High Court has effectively detonated the Malaysia solution, a new book will trace the fuse that ignited the Pacific solution. Overboard was written by Wallkey-winning journalist Ghassan Nakhoul, the first Australian to have interviewed people smugglers. It reveals that it was a convicted ring leader of people smugglers who ironically vowed that if we ”turn back a boat, just once, no one will be coming”.

Overboard reveals that the then attorney-general Phillip Ruddock twice affirmed that ”the strongest message that has ever been given was the message to turn around boats”. In an interview on SBS radio in July 2001, one of the most notorious – and now prosecuted – people smugglers, Keis Asfoor, had this to say: ”If Australia closes the door and … a ship is turned back, I will stop this thing’.

Five weeks later, the government became ”accomplices in the conspiracy of alienating rejected humans”. The asylum-seekers who were rescued by the Tampa were turned back with spectacular media theatrics that guaranteed international headlines to ”send a strong message to people smugglers”.

In the light of this contaminated conception, the Gillard Government should distance itself from any offshore ”solution”.
To find a sustainable solution, the Government needs to redefine the problem.

The problem is not the dishonesty of the desperate humans who risk their lives to seek asylum. In Australia, more than 90per cent of these ”boat people” are deemed genuine refugees, unlike those who arrive by plane. The problem is not the people smugglers, many of whom see themselves as saviours, as they will always feed on the desperation.

Unlike the Howard government , which vilified the asylum-seekers, the Gillard Government treats them as victims of the real villains – the smugglers. But a different description emerges from both Overboard and the recent report by the Centre of Policy Development, A New Approach: Breaking the Stalemate on Refugees & Asylum Seekers: the latter states ”smuggling enterprises are innovative, entrepreneurial and easily move between legitimate and illegitimate activities”. Shifting the blame from asylum-seeker to people smuggler will never break the stalemate.

The problem is not the pull factors and the need to market Australia as inhospitable. All the money spent to prove that we are not a soft touch was misguided as asylum-seekers kept coming. There may have been fewer boats during the Pacific solution, but there were more people per boat, which meant that the voyage was more treacherous.

We cannot keep escaping the global problem of people fleeing from inhuman conditions, whether it is war, occupation, genocide, torture, persecution, famine or sinking islands.

Rather than a paranoid protection of borders, this requires global and regional cooperation, headed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The real problem is more the push factors than the pull factors. And the inconvenient truth is that we participate in military operations in favour of regime change in the name of human rights, which inadvertently and inevitably ”push” citizens to run for their life.

The Gillard Government should heed the warnings in the book and the recommendations of the report: maximum 30 days’ detention for adults, and 14 days for children, especially as 60per cent of those resettled in Australia are under the age of 25.

With rigorous on-shore processing, it is also recommended that mandatory detention is phased out and replaced with less expensive and less damaging alternatives.

The taxpayers’ money spent on inhumane detention centres is better spent on programs that arrange repatriation and resettlement.
With Australia only receiving 1.04per cent of the global total of asylum-seekers, we could take a fairer share off our poorer regional neighbours.

Refugees are among our most loyal and peace-loving citizens who take nothing for granted.

But the High Court reiterated that human rights should be taken for granted, and that this is genuinely our national spirit.