The Greens effectiveness on gay marriage and euthanasia: why not on boat people!

While the Iraqi asylum seeker, Ahmad Al Akabi, was swimming in his blood inside Villawood detention centre after giving up on humanity of department’s officials and the total lack of courage inside the federal parliament to end his and his fellow detainees ordeal.

And while Ahmad’s fellow detainees were protesting inside Villawood detention and in other detention centres around the country over the gross negligence that led to his death, by declaring hunger strike or burning some furniture.

And while we were busy trying to mobilise public opinion, inside Australia and around the globe against the inhumane treatment of asylum seekers inside Australian detention centres that led to death of 2 detainees in the last 2 months only.

While we were all busy in doing all this, the Greens MPs were busy fighting for gay marriage.

As if the Greens MPs are living in another country or on other planet.

During these extremely sad moments, The Greens MPs were jumping up and down inside and outside the federal parliament demanding approval of same-sex marriage.

The blood of detainees could not move any feeling with the Greens MPs.
The lips sewing of many and the hunger strike of hundreds protesting the inhumane treatment inside detention centres, did not win them any sympathy among the Greens MPs.
The dead body ready to be sent to homeland did not convince the Greens MPs that solving the impasse should be the absolute priority to prevent catastrophe from happening within the detention system.

During the last week we only hear the Greens MPs talk about one issue: same sex marriage.

As if the homosexuals will be extinct if the marriage will not legalised.
Or as if the homosexuals will face detrimental fate or total psychological collapse or jail for long time if the marriage will not be legalised in this week.

All this despite the reality that if all facts are taken into account, the Greens MPs should have camped outside detention centre day and night, with deep threats to the minister if he does not change current regulations to prevent deterioration of situation inside detention centres.

We should all remember that the issue of boat people and the Greens empty rhetoric of promising of supporting their rights and working on relieving their suffering was the single issue that increased the popularity of this party and brought it out of wilderness inside Tasmanian forests to the point of controlling the balance of power after this year’s election.

And the issue of boat people was the issue that gave the Greens some credibility as serious political party and diminished the perception of being one-coloured party that supports only environment and anti moral and anti family agendas.
To the opposite of this, the issue of gay marriage and euthanasia did not win the Greens any federal seat since the foundation of the party in the mid of seventies of last century to the first year of this century.

The issue of gay marriage (even if it has a support from large sections in the society) is not concerning many Australians and not many would change their pattern of voting merely on parties’ stance on it.

Political pragmatism should have seen the Greens uprise and demand immediate action to release detainees immediately after they were successful in increasing their representation in the parliament.

We expected that the Greens should have respected its voters who voted for this party after they swallowed its deceptive promises to take action against mandatory detention system. Even if it would threaten of withdrawing from the government which could lead to government collapse and going to very early election.

We have expected that the Greens will treat the highly humanitarian issue of indefinite detention of boat people as important issues, on the same level of importance as the issue of gay marriage and euthanasia. And we have witnessed how the Greens were successful in changing the Labor stance on these issues and now considering allowing continuous vote to pass these legislations.

We have expected that all Greens MPs and members will go the streets to show the Labor party the Greens deep commitments of this issue, to enforce immediate fundamental changes.

But if we take into account the shy response of the Greens party to the many deaths in detention, we can realise that the Greens has no real commitments towards this highly humanitarian issue. On the contrary. We would realise that the Greens is indeed enjoying these sad events to torture and exhaust the Labor party and extract more voters from it. It is very clear that Greens know very well that closing the chapter of boat people suffering would deprive the party from high-profile platform that could win it more seats in the next election.

We do not know how the Greens would face its voters from highly progressive people who support multiculturalism and human rights in society if it could not enforce changes to the harsh treatment of asylum seekers inside detention centres. While it could knee the government on issues of gay marriage and euthanasia.

May be the Greens will resort to its usual of climbing our back and the back of highly progressive people who campaigned very hard and will enforce the government to change its harsh treatment of boat people.

And the Greens have strong record of doing this on this issue and other human rights issues.

Related link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrqDjE6BmXI&feature=related

Why was the Greens leader, Bob Brown, happy yesterday?!!!

The Greens leader was very happy yesterday. He was jumping up and down the whole day. And he was smiling in front of the media cameras. So why he was so happy?

He was very happy that Burmese opposition leader, Ms Aung San Suu Kyi was released from home arrest.

We also are happy for this result. And we do not agree on any political arrest.

But immediately after Greens leader sudden happiness, it came to our mind few questions.

Why the Greens leader was not vending support for more than 45 Palestinian MPs arrested by Israeli occupation forces for the last 4 years? Why the Greens leader, and all his Greens colleagues, did not jump up and down from happiness when the Palestinian parliament speaker, Mr Aziz Duweik, was released from Israeli prison last year? Why the Greens leader do not care about arbitrary arrest of more than 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners, most of them in jail (not home arrest) without charges.

Mr Brown happiness did not stop on just jumping up and down. He also vowed to travel to Burma to visit Mr Suu Kyi and pay tribute to her.

If we compare this with the Greens stance on Israeli brutal treatment of Palestinians, we note shameful comparison. Mr Brown and all his Greens colleagues refused on several occasions to join solidarity delegations to Palestinian occupied territories. On 2002, for example, the Greens leader and his colleague, Ms Kerry Nettle, refused utterly to join solidarity and fact-finding delegation to West Bank in the aftermath of Israeli massacres in Jenin, Nablus and Ramallah. The Greens leader and his colleagues were not concerned about the home arrest of Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, for more than 3 years.

We note that the Greens leader is only vocal and active on criticising socialist regimes:
- He is very vocal on criticising Maoist rebels in Nepal. But he was not critical of brutality of the Nepalese monarchy.
- He is very critical of FARC, the Colombian Marxist rebels, but was never quoted criticising American-puppet regime of Colombia, which conducted worse crimes than the Marxists.
- He is very critical of Chinese socialist government.

Bob Brown is very interesting creature.

On the night of NSW state election, 2003, I approached him and asked him why he never criticised Israeli illegal and inhumane occupation of Palestine. He replied: “I do not know anything about this issue, can you provide me with more information, and then we will discuss taking action”. On earlier occasion, Ms Nettle, made similar admission and asked me to provide her with any literature about the Palestinian - Israeli conflict. And I did.

Imagine that the representative of the left in Australia do not know anything about the issue that is widely considered as the major threat of global security!!!

I remember when the Greens leader, Bob Brown, led noisy demonstration against Chinese president, Jiang Zemin, visit to Australia. Such noisy demonstration that was nearly resulted in his arrest.

But when a war criminal Israeli president, Moshe Katsav, visited Australia, 2005, Bob Brown and all his Greens MPs refused even to participate in protests against this visit. The Greens officials refused even to endorse such protest.

Few thoughts come to my mind when I saw Bob Brown very happy to see political prisoner released.

But it is very interesting to understand what the Greens classification of “political prisoners” is.

Last question for Bob Brown and his Greens party: would not the Australian Muslims arrested and jailed after mock trial based on medieval “Anti-Terrorism” laws, qualify to be classified as “political prisoners”?

Open letter to Julia Gillard, PM: Time to wake up before you lose next election!

Dear Hon Julia Gillard, our PM
We have watched you for the past few months. And we were disappointed by your government’s performance. We are not few. At the last election, millions of us have expressed such disappointment at your government’s performance.

In this letter, we would like to express to you why we are disappointed and will try to give you some ideas about what we expect from your government.

We have noticed that many in your party are talking now, rightly, how to stop the rise of the Greens vote. Your government’s inaction on many vital issues has left many voters with no option but to vote for the Greens. Such move that is not based on any concrete achievements of the Greens. They just believed that they do not have any other options. But in doing assessments of the reasons behind the mass voters’ change of voting pattern, your party’s strategists and MPs are reaching wrong conclusions

Let me tell you with high confidence that the voters, especially in the high multicultural suburbs like suburbs of Melbourne seat, did not change their vote from Labor to the Greens because of:
1- Carbon Tax
2- Gay marriage
3- Euthanasia.
4- Legalising drugs and promoting prostitution.

We, and any neutral political analyst, deeply believe that even if Labor changes its position on these above mentioned issues, it (Labor) will not win back many of its traditional voters departing it to either the Greens or informal voting.

On the contrary. By changing Labor stance on the above mentioned issues, you risk losing more voters.

As someone who is from marginalised community and lives in marginalised suburbs, I want to mention to you some issues that we need your government to act on:
1- Attacks on Multiculturalism, growing racism and all kinds of discrimination, including Islamophobia.
2- Housing crisis
3- Crisis in health system.
4- Crisis in welfare system.
5- Deteriorating life style.

Let me assure you that most of us in the poor high multicultural suburbs did not form yet an opinion on Carbon Tax (and we believe that the majority of Australians did not form any concrete opinion on this issue).

We also in the suburbs have too many problems and we are occupying with too many daily crises that gay marriage does not concern us. It does not come on the priority list, even for homosexuals living in these suburbs.

The same with euthanasia.

So, if you think that you can compete with the Greens on these issues by following their suites to win back the hundreds of thousands of dissatisfied voters, we can safely tell you that you will lose more.

Your party problems are coming from your bid to compete with other parties, to stop bleeding of your voting pools. And you are miserably failing.

Australians need a government that lead, not being led. What makes things worse is that your government is trying to follow (or even compete with) morons that have no ideology or concrete agendas.

While the Liberals have concrete destructive agendas and ideologies, the Greens have no such things, except for destructive agendas to destroy family and moral values. But they were successful in extracting many of your traditional voters, because you seemed to lose your path.

So far, your strategists’ assessment and soul searching resulted in wrong conclusions.

By their bid to avoid taking actions to quell racism and Islamophobia, and instead engage in debate over gay marriage, you send more disappointing signals to your traditional voters.

By ignoring taking actions to generate affordable housing, and instead talk about Carbon Tax, you again send wrong message and risk losing more votes.

By caving in to racists and ignore the suffering of poor and marginalised people at the hands of your departments (Centrelink, Immigration and Citizenship….) and instead talk about allowing conscious vote on euthanasia, you only send wrong signal about your lack of commitments to marginalised people.

Your bid to compete with the Greens on only these issues is something both naïve and hopeless.

Remember that the Greens have campaigned on these issues (promoting drugs and prostitution, gay marriage, euthanasia,…) for more than 4 decades, but won no more than 3% of Australians heart. It was only when they started to vend their lies and empty rhetoric about the issues your party was strong on (public services, workers rights, human rights, etc…) that they started to attract votes.

Hon Julia Gillard.
We expect you to take actions to end the racist debate about boat people. Such debate that aims to spread fear, racism and Islamophobia. And with the recent High Court ruling and increased community support for more humanitarian approach, you have golden opportunity to reform the policy on this issue.

We also expect that your government takes actions to stop deteriorating life style. This includes taking action to build more public houses and improve public health and education.

We also expect that your government (in cooperation with state government) would take actions to curb skyrocketing power bills.

And we can safely send you warning that if you do not take actions on these vital issues, you risk losing the government. And if you lose the government in such way with no legacy, you can expect staying in opposition for long time.

When we decided not to vote in the last election, we took this decision when we started to feel that there is no big difference between Labor and Liberals. While we understand that the Greens is no more than a machine to manufacture lies, deception and empty rhetoric, we notice that many in the society was fooled by the Greens empty rhetoric.

If we do not regain any confidence that your party is better than the opposition, you should expect that you will not get our vote in the next election. And our definition of “better” is different than the Greens definition. We more care about correcting injustices in the society, than taking action about dismantling family and moral values and vending lies and empty rhetoric on vital issues.

I am writing to you this letter because I cannot imagine Tony Abbot to be our next PM. But if Julia will be exact copy of Tony, who will care who will govern this country.

We hope that we will write to you next time praising your government for progressive steps to improve Australians life style. But if you insist on current policies and approaches, we assure you that you will fail to keep your job.

The Greens unique attitude: “We can dig dirt on rivals but rivals cannot do the same”!

I decided to write this piece after I had enough of the Greens unacceptable hostility against anyone who dares to criticise them. And anyone dares to do so will open himself for all kinds of abuses, attacks (both verbal and physical) under many headings, especially being Labor member or paid by Labor to do so.

From my own experience, I should mention here that during the last decade I managed to criticise many politicians by writing letters, opinion pieces (in English and Arabic), petitions, and letters to editors and many other forms. These criticisms were directed to many politicians from wide range of political parties. None of these politicians faced our campaigns of criticism by such hostility like the Greens politicians, members and supporters did.

We campaigned, for example, very hard against previous PM Howard and his ministers. We even tried several times to block their way to functions, meet them with high hostility and accusing them with all kind of accusations (most were right anyway). We never received email, letter or phone call asking us to stop these campaigns. The Greens hierarchies and politicians encouraged us to keep this campaign, and even sometimes participated with us. And that is their right anyway.

We also directed all kinds of criticism to Labor opposition during Howard for not standing against government’s harsh policies. We protested outside Labor conferences, protested outside Labor election campaigns launches, wrote letters and opinion pieces and wrote letters to editors. Also none of Labor politicians or supporters asked us to shut up and stop criticising them. We did the same when they won 2008 election and formed government. We never stopped our criticism, and they never asked us to stop doing this.

The same happened to the Democrats, before its disappearance.

But the Greens is different story.
When they became real player in Australian politics after 2004 election, we started criticising some aspects of Greens politics and behaviour.

So what happened then?
First we were accused of being paid by Labor to discredit the Greens.
When we refused to budge, we were subjected to verbal attacks and threats of physical attacks.
Suddenly our cars were vandalised, abusive letters received and things got nastier.
Suddenly we started to receive threats of persecution for supporting terrorist groups (namely Hamas and Hezbollah), complaints to authorities for alleged violation to Australian constitution …
And recently our website was hacked twice in the last few weeks.

Since we started criticising the Greens, we became “enemy of the progressiveness”, “enemy of masses” and even “servants of imperialism”.

When the Green criticised the Liberals and described Howard and his minister as Nazis, Fascists, xenophobic and racist, this was freedom of speech.

And when the Green viciously attacked Labor and branded them as racists, regressive, force form 20 Century, all this was legitimate as freedom of speech, again.

But when we started to criticise the Greens politics, a criticism that is based on facts and aims to open debates on vital issues, the Greens started to scream up and down and described such criticism as “hate” “ranting” slanders” and lately as “sectarian” attacks on the Greens.

We can note clearly here that the Greens is the only non-metaphysical idea that forbids people from discussing, debating and criticising its experience. The Greens, who consists largely from atheists who refuse to acknowledge the ideas of metaphysical forces, are appointing themselves as divine forces that do not make mistakes. Hence they demand shutting up any criticism.

And anyone who dares to criticise them deserves to be condemned and expelled from the Greens paradise

If we take into account that the Greens idea is not metaphysical, but at the same time is insisting on shutting up any debate and criticism, would not this remind us of Stalinism dark era? That was the only non-metaphysical ideology that practiced the Greens-like claim of monopoly on truth and progressiveness.

The Greens who brand themselves as the only progressive force of the 21 century because they promote anti-moral and anti-family values, on the basis that family idea is very old idea stemming from pre-civilisation era that needs to get revolutionarised and civilised, had actually added nothing progressive so far to the Australian politics.

The Greens did not, for example:
1- Introduce any politicians from ethnic and religious minorities (to promote real Multiculturalism).
2- Condemn Israel and regard Zionism as a form of racism. This include never issuing even one clear media release blaming Israel for the cycle of violence in the middle east for the last century.
3- Take practical steps to prove their verbal commitments to issues, including support public education, public health, public housing,... On the contrary. During the last few years, they opposed strengthening public services and even offered to support selling public assets.

So for the Greens, progressiveness means only promoting prostitution, drug abuse, abortion, assisted suicide …etc. The Greens regurgitate (without any practical evidence) claims of fighting to improve marginalised people’s lives. We do not understand how promoting drug abuse among new migrants, unemployed or very poor will reduce their marginalisation or feeling of social isolation. We don’t understand how promoting prostitution will restore the dignity of needy women and men who were enforced to sell their dignity to the point of selling their bodies.

While we cannot understand (nor accept) the Greens logic and definition of progressiveness, but we deeply believe that we are living in democracy. And in democracy, everyone has the right to participate in political process, including participating in debate and criticism of political parties. While we highly condemns the Greens Stalinist-like bids to shut up debate in this country by claiming monopoly on truth and progressiveness, we will insist on exercising our rights. We will harshly criticise the Greens if they continue their political prostitution of turning the suffering of innocent marginalised sections of the society into political football for cheap electoral gains. We will not hesitate to continue our campaign to expose the empty rhetoric the Greens is spreading before each election in the last decade, which is a clear evidence of “ideologless” Greens party.

And the Greens should respect the democratic environment in the country.

We fought before against Stalinism, until it was disintegrated to the history rubbish bin. We will continue fighting against the destructive agendas of the Greens party, until it will disintegrate to the history rubbish bin, too. Unless the Greens become party of democratic nature.