Running Shockingly Late Friday Evening Post

Fiona Uncategorized

(Image Credit: John Tenniel)

Oh my ears and whiskers. I’ve only just made it home, and have a million things to do. So this will have to do as the thread-starter for the moment. I will add bits and pieces as the evening progresses.

288 thoughts on “Running Shockingly Late Friday Evening Post”

  1. The UN is getting involved

    The United Nations high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) has weighed in on allegations that Australian authorities paid off people smugglers, as Indonesia issues Australia with a “please explain” notice.

    Allegations emerged last week that the Australian government paid people smugglers who were taking 65 asylum seekers to New Zealand to turn the boat around and return to Indonesia in late May.

    Indonesia seeks answers on claims Australian navy paid people smugglers

    The UNHCR has reportedly confirmed the allegations, after speaking with passengers aboard the vessel. Guardian Australia has sought comment from the agency’s representatives in Australia, but is unable to independently verify that any payments have been made to people smugglers.

    http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jun/14/united-nations-weighs-in-on-outcry-over-reports-australia-paid-people-smugglers

  2. CTar1

    “logistics of moving the troops back as ” ,
    .
    The “post party clean up” never much fun . Did a Google on the Type 42 and OMG! the irony. The only one still in service is with the …………… Armada Republica Argentina.

  3. CTar1

    The cover of Newsweek 19 April 1982 . Re the logistics. I remember at the time there were a number of reports before it really kicked off that the UK would likely/probably/possibly not be able to do it due to the distance and the probs that made for supply/support.

  4. I had an enjoyable and illuminating day yesterday at the Fabians forum “Progresive Reform, Ideas for Labor’s National Conference. Great speakers including Penny Wong, Andrew Leigh, Claire O’Neill, John Daley, Andrew Scott, Jenny McAllister, Nick Dyrenfurth, Luke Hilakari and Robert Manne, and intelligent discussion/questions.
    Could I also draw Pub patrons to an interesting article in the Saturday Paper (unfortunately not in the online edition) by Alex Frankel lamenting Labor’s (and progressives generally) failure to develop an effective narrative, thus leaving the field clear for the forces of unreason. He cites the specific example of the framing of the Clean Energy Act as the carbon tax, but demonstrates various other instances and the consequences which flow from this lack of a story. It reinforced for me the power of Paul Keating’s command of this skill, something which has been in short supply since his departure from the scene, and a vacuum filled by the empty slogans of the NE.

  5. tlbd

    You know, it’s not that long ago I would’ve have got interested in the UN having a go at an Australian Government. I have long since resigned myself to the fact that probably nothing will come of it.

  6. Oh well..finished the iron on the roof just in time..now it’s raining steadily…don’t think I’ll do much more this arvo’…maybe read a little.

  8. jaycee423

    As a kid I used to love the rain on tin roof sound. So much so that during real downpours would often dash out to the corrugated iron garage to listen to a real din. A cultural shock when arriving in Australia . NZ houses chocka with corrugated iron rooves , tiles were only seen on some of the rich people’s houses. 🙂

  10. Sky News’ lead story this afternoon – Abbott’s continuing refusal to say whether or not people smugglers were given payments. Dutton is also refusing to comment, after denying it ever happened a couple of days ago.
    http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stories/2015/06/14/calls-for-smuggler-payment-answers-grow.html

    Richard Marles on Insiders this morning .
    http://www.abc.net.au/insiders/content/2015/s4254629.htm

    CNN is also onto the topic.
    http://edition.cnn.com/2015/06/12/asia/australia-smuggling-payment-claims/index.html

  12. kk

    Yep. The USN said it couldn’t be done.

    The end of it involved some thinking.

    – US weapons systems needed on our still existing Type 42’s and 22’s (the 22’s have done fairly well but 42’s are definitely needed) – A big change and we were still building them; and

    – How to get both theirs and ours home.

  14. kk – The Chilean Navy still have a 22:

    It’s been given a nice new fast firing gun and been refurbished.

    It’s rated as No 1 to avoid in South American Navy’s.

  16. CTar1

    Saw this earlier. The chaps sound a little desperate for mo’ money . Or failed to notice The Empire and Pax Britannica ended quite some time ago .

    The military might of Britain has been rendered “feeble” in the face of threats from around the world, some of the country’s most senior military commanders have said.

    Four former leaders of the Armed Forces issue a passionate warning about the decline of British influence, saying they are deeply concerned by the UK’s failure to act as crises grow in Iraq, Syria and Russia.

    ……………., Sir Nigel, a former First Sea Lord, says there are “disquieting parallels” between Britain’s unwillingness to arm itself now and in the 1930s when it failed to prepare to combat the growing threat from Hitler until it was “nearly too late”.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/11673410/Defence-chiefs-UK-feeble-on-world-stage.html

  19. The contrast is to stand underneath a thatched roof when it is pouring…you hear only the rain that hits the ground…it is deathly silent under the thatch…very strange!

  20. leone

    Re – R Marles

    He mentioned that the AS were heading for NZ. Could PM Key also be involved in the turning back?

    After all, why would the govt have bothered returning them at all?

    Also, Marles will never mention Julia Gillard having had to go through the RC, but now defends Shorten.

  21. gigi

    Don’t forget those nocturnal marsupials with big round eyes and bushy tails.

    Them too.

    I’ve often stayed with a friend in the Adelaide Hills. It was a standard thing that they’d go past twice during the night.

  22. Richard Marles always does a fumbling interview…I think it is because once the qs’ get into deep water on social issues, his right-wing thinking gets bogged down in bottom-line pragmatics and he flounders.

  24. I don’t think we need bother with any admittance on the govt’s part re; smuggler payment..the Indo’s and the crew confessions have already resolved it!

  25. Here’s a trick the NE hasn’t come up with – yet

    The remote Bangladeshi island of Thengar Char disappears completely under several feet of water at high tide, and has no roads or flood defences.

    But that hasn’t stopped the government from proposing to relocate thousands of Rohingya refugees living in camps in the south-eastern district of Cox’s Bazar which borders Burma to its marshy shores.

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/14/un-concern-at-bangladesh-plan-to-move-thousands-of-rohingya-to-flooded-island

  26. gigilene
    I don’t have much time for Marles. I’d like someone much stronger in that portfolio, but I posted the link anyway because he was OK this morning and mentioned the possibility of Dutton having to resign and the NZ thing.

    Marles was a Rudd supporter, he is also aligned to Shorten, so he would never have defended Julia Gillard when she was appearing before TURC.

  27. I always “enjoyed” the koalas trampolining on the water tanks at Rosedale, south of Batemans Bay.

  30. I take it he missed since he hasn’t been charged with assault

    A Queensland man has thrown his shoes at the immigration minister, Peter Dutton, to protest the federal government’s refugee policies.

    Dutton was about to speak at a festival to welcome refugees at Annerley, in Brisbane’s west, when 33-year-old David Sprigg threw both his shoes.

    “I think he should be ashamed for what his government is doing and how asylum seekers are being treated in detention centres,” Sprigg said after being released from the Brisbane watch house on public nuisance charges.

    http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jun/14/queensland-man-throws-shoes-at-peter-dutton-in-protest-over-refugee-policies

  32. Interesting to compare the wistful note in Mr Joe Bullock’s voice regretting that Mr De Bruyn of the SDA is being pilloried in the media for his stance on the same sex marriage thing when ‘he has done so much for shop workers’, and the reports that the Industrial Commission is not overly impressed with the SDA’s agreement with Coles. An agreement that was probably nutted out while Mr De Bruyn was the responsible SDA party.
    I cherish the small memory that I did actually manage to tell Mr Bullock that I thought he, along with many in parliament, was guilty of “dead white guy thinking” and most Australians expected better of them.

    I wish I thought it might have made an impression, but as an ex-wife of a local politician observed to me once “All politicians are narcissists. It’s just that some are worse than others … and when they are particularly narcissistic is when other people get hurt.”

  33. curioz

    Joe Bullock’s – De Bruyn-SDA = A cancer upon the Labor politic …………. and Australia’s

    Labor preselects former Abbott ally in WA

    This is an excerpt from David Marr’s recent Quarterly Essay on Tony Abbott,

    …In those summer days in early 1976 the course of his (Abbott’s) political life was set. In the heady atmosphere of that secret forum young Tony was recruited for Bob Santamaria’s Movement. The men who did the work Peter Samuel, the Bulletin’s cranky political correspondent; Warren Hogan, the embattled professor of economics at Sydney University; and Joe de Bruyn, a hard-line Catholic union official about to assume lifetime (national) leadership of the shop assistants’ union (the SDA)…………. The Democratic Clubs (of which Abbott and Bullock were members) were small and their membership carefully controlled. The correct line was strictly enforced. They used tactics Santamaria developed to fight Reds in the unions: provocative campaigning, ceaseless leafleting and infiltrating rival organisations. They called themselves moderates but their position was extreme: as far to the right as the Maoists and Trotskyists on campus were to the left

    http://trevorcook.typepad.com/weblog/2013/04/labor-preselects-former-abbott-ally-in-wa.html

  34. Abbott would have copped a number of boots by now if he’d had the guts to move around the crowd; he even cowardly avoids Q&A.

  35. LRO..: ” …You guys heard of zincalume?”…no, but hum a couple of bars and I’ll see what i can do!

  38. He could be the Artful Dodger except for one little thing

    Prime Minister Tony Abbott has rebuffed Indonesia’s request for a response to claims Australian officials paid a people-smuggling crew money to turn back to Indonesia.

    Indonesia launched its own investigation into the claims made by asylum seekers on the boat and its foreign minister, Retno Marsudi, said she asked Australia’s ambassador in Jakarta about the matter.

    Mr Abbott again dodged questions on the claims on Sunday, after refusing to confirm or deny the allegations last week.

    “There’s really only one thing to say here and that is that we have stopped the boats,” he said.

    “That’s good for Australia, it’s good for Indonesia and it’s particularly good for all of those who want to see a better world.”

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-14/abbott-dodges-questions-again-about-boat-turn-back-claims/6544558

  39. And, of course, it’s Labor’s fault

    He criticised the opposition for being hypocrites on the issue.

    “The people that got the people smuggling trade going again, the people that gave the biggest ever cash injection to the people smugglers’ business model was the Labor party when they dismantled the successful border protection policies of the previous Howard government,” Cormann said.

    http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jun/14/tony-abbott-sticks-to-stop-the-boats-in-face-of-claims-people-smugglers-paid#comments

  41. Well, Fiona..he must be upsetting some there, because old Judi Sloane got hot under the collar about his article!

  42. “…and it’s particularly good for all of those who want to see a better world.”..he’s been “liver-lipping” the kool-aid again!

  43. Le Figaro – re tony’s smugglers:

    Indonesia, meanwhile, opened an investigation after statements of a captain and five crew members of a ship carrying 65 asylum seekers who wanted to win Australia. These six smugglers claimed to have received more than 4,000 euros each from the Australian immigration services to return to Indonesia with their passengers. Remarks corroborated by migrants who were on the boat.

    http://translate.google.com.au/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2015/06/12/01003-20150612ARTFIG00210-immigration-clandestine-l-australie-choisit-la-strategie-payante.php&prev=search

  44. The danes are on to it as well

    http://www.b.dk/globalt/baadflygtninge-australien-betalte-smuglere-for-at-vende-om

    Google translate

    AUSTRALIA: Boat people coming to Australia has told the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the crew on their boat was paid by the Australian navy to turn around and sail back. It writes the British broadcaster BBC.

    Friday, the Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abott, admitted that there used ‘creative’ strategies’ to stop the migrants boats, but he refused to go into details. Australia’s Minister for Integration and Foreign Minister rejects both that have payments being made.

    Spokesman for the UNHCR James Lynch says, however, that all 65 passengers on the boat was questioned and said that the crew received a payment.

    Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry declares himself “very concerned” about the alleged payment. The Indonesian Navy also informs that the arrested boat crew who said they had each been paid the equivalent of around 26,000 dollars to turn back.

  48. TLBD

    The Danes have ‘form’ when it comes to paying boats to go away. Saw a doco about the Viking chappies turning up in scores of boats to besiege Constantinople . Boss cocky paid shedloads for them to go away.

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