A bit of a grab-bag entry... bits & pieces of the last little while. Written at work, as my PC is having an extended stay at its doctor's, trying to cure a bout of blue-screens-of-death
First & foremost - the spark for this entry, is
this heartfelt & pretty darned accurate op-ed from Craig Foster, a former 'Socceroo' - that's Australian National Football player to the rest of the world... He was recently very involved in the case of a Bahraini refugee who had been granted asylum in Australia, got married & went to have his honeymoon in Thailand, where he was promptly detained by Thai authorities acting on a tip-off from 'someone' & under pressure from the Bahrain 'government'
(for want of a better word, like 'monarchy', 'dictatorship', or 'despotic regime'... okay, that's 2 words), thrown in jail & kept there for a few months while extradition proceedings were started, debated, contested, decried & ultimately dropped - mostly because of international pressure from other countries, including Australia, as well as the F.I.F.A. & high-profile sport ambassadors... All brought to bear at the pointy end by Mr Foster & his tireless support for the poor guy
Now that Hakeem is safely back in his adopted country, Craig has written this piece, calling on Australia to up its game when it comes to refugees & basic human rights - an area where both sides of our politics seem to be out of touch with the opinions & desires of the majority of the population. I say majority, because there is an extremely vocal & somehow influential right-wing minority who would rather peddle fear, xenophobia & racism, than allow multicultural integration to run its usually quite peaceful course - like it did when war-damaged Europeans came here in the 40s & 50s, like it did when the Vietnamese came here in the 70s. Like it should, now that more war-torn refugees are looking to get the hell out of what's left of their home & homeland. We gladly accepted German & Japanese migrants after WWII, so why not a bunch of innocent, displaced & largely persecuted Muslims?
The 'M' word seems to be the sticking point here... May I point out that, according to history, the Crusades were hundreds of years ago & weren't started by Muslims. It seems depressingly fitting that the 2 most recent 'Crusades' didn't go too well for the Christian soldiers either. It would appear that, if you want to be a World Leader, you need to have either not taken, or simply skipped, history lessons at school & university
On a different note... it's the little things that make me happy. Like 2 days of cloud & drizzling rain... getting a discount on my morning coffee... L-SP & I will be going on a technology-free holiday in about 2 weeks... & the Calvin Klein store I walk past every day has
finally replaced the large photos of the Kardashian clan with generic models for its new advertising. Good riddance to the whole KKKKKKing lot of them
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