Congruity (Home)

Die, wild country, like the eaglehawk,
dangerous till the last breath’s gone,
clawing and striking. Die
cursing your captor through a raging eye.

Die like the tigersnake
that hisses such pure hatred from its pain
as fills the killer’s dreams
with fear like suicide’s invading stain.

Suffer, wild country, like the ironwood
that gaps the dozer-blade.
I see your living soil ebb with the tree
to naked poverty.

Die like the soldier-ant
mindless and faithful to your million years.
Though we corrupt you with our torturing mind.
stay obstinate; stay blind.

For we are conquerors and self-poisoners
more than scorpion or snake
and dying of the venoms that we make
even while you die of us.

I praise the scoring drought, the flying dust,
the drying creek, the furious animal,
that they oppose us still;
that we are ruined by the thing we kill.

- Judith Wright (as relevant today as in 1970)

is a total non-truth. Please stop saying this! I’m sorry, but the only war that Australia had any business being in was World War II. If anything, the reason why Australians went to Gallipoli was so that the British had some extra bodies to expend. That’s the reality. It angers me because people honestly seem to think that war is a ‘necessary evil’ or something absurd like that. It isn’t (possibly WW2 excepted?).

There was a great article posted in Overland yesterday in which the author, Jeff Sparrow writes: ‘Anzac Day celebrates forgetting.’ Even though we say ‘Lest we forget’ ceremoniously, there seems to be a lot of confusion about what happened in World War I, and in Gallipoli especially. Here’s a quick history lesson: Gallipoli was a complete failure. Many people died and in the end Australian forces withdrew by escaping under the cover of darkness, pretending that they were still there through the use of the drip rifle (which is a really cool invention and does say something about the resourcefulness of the Australian armed forces). Hopefully they weren’t fighting for our freedom, because we would have lost it. As Sparrow points out, most of us don’t even know what Gallipoli, or even further, WWI in general, was actually about.

It’s very sad (sad isn’t even a strong enough word, it’s senselessly miserable, it’s unjust) that so many young people, in the prime of their lives, were convinced to go off to war and died. It is a tremendous waste of talent and energy. It prevented many from being able to go back to their friends and families and able to forge a long, happy life for themselves.

The tragedy of ANZAC day is that most war is pointless, not that the soldiers were fighting for something meaningful like freedom. They were not martyrs (and even if they were, how dare anyone say that the sacrifice of human life is ever justified, even for freedom?), they were taken advantage of and executed by insane governments.

ANZAC day is a cold reminder of the danger of war, of the brutal methods wars use to ‘solve problems’, and how very easy it is for us to approve of a war when we’re safe away from its dreadful and dangerous reality.

(note: I’ve also emailed him a copy. If you feel similarly as I do, please write to him, his email is: chris.bowen@immi.gov.au)

Dear Chris Bowen,

I voted in my first election in 2007, and I did so for the ALP. I figured that after the conservatism and the xenophobia of the Howard government, a Labor alternative would be a breath of fresh air. It would bring progression and compassion back into Australian politics.

I am disappointed. If anything, your policies on asylum seekers are worse than that of the Howard government, a feat I would have thought impossible. I will not be voting for your party again any time soon. But what is at stake here is more than votes. You and your ALP colleagues will soon be directly responsible for killing Ismail, an asylum seeker from Afghanistan. You insist on sending him back to Afghanistan, alleging that he is in no danger there. This is despite that his father was killed by the Taliban and that his family have sought asylum to Pakistan. He has said that ‘I told Immigration it’s OK if they send me, you can send my dead body to my country because either way I’m dead.’

Now, think with empathy for a moment. How would you feel if you were detained for two years despite not having any criminal charges, let alone convictions. How would you feel if in detention you witnessed three suicides and a riot? And how would you feel if a government literally sent you to death? If those two years in detention were in vain, if the final moments of your life had nothing - no knowledge, no freedom. And for what? So listeners of talk-back radio can feel happy? For the saved $400 a fortnight in Centrelink payments? So that a crumbling government can win a few votes? For what? That’s what I want to know, and what Ismail deserves to know, and what you should be responsible for telling him.

The complete and utter disregard for human life exemplified by the ALP’s policies deeply sickens me. And indeed, so does the way in which asylum seekers - especially those arriving by boat - have been bandied about in discourse to score political points, to create an unnecessary atmosphere of fear, and to create demons in people smugglers where in fact terrorists and oppressive governments are the true villains. This issue is precisely why Australia is a frustrating place to live in for those who have some semblance of empathy (not to mention common-sense).

You are lucky that the media, in its duopolistic and deeply conservative way, is unlikely to make a huge fuss over this. This is your gain. But it is at a huge cost to the world.