The term Genocide was first used in 1945 to describe the deliberate, targeted killing of Jews by the German Nazi regime. It was a very specific term coined to describe the Nazi policies of systematic murder during the Holocaust combining the Greek word for race or tribe (geno) with the Latin word for killing (cide).

The word was first used in a legal setting during the Nuremberg Trials by a young lawyer, Benjamin Ferencz who was a chief prosecutor at those trials. A fresh faced young lawyer, just 27 years old, a small man, 5ft 2inches or just short of 1.6metres tall had to stand on a pile of books when he addressed the court so he could look over the lectern. Apart from using the word genocide, the phrase ‘crimes against humanity’ was used to place the actions of 22 men who oversaw and commandeered the Holocaust were seen to be tried not just as war criminals but criminals in a far deeper sense. War crimes happen in war, soldiers kill soldiers and bomb places where there may be ‘collateral damage’, but the Holocaust was an action aimed at eliminating people based on their race, their religion and their ideologies.

The German military, including the SS under the control of the Nazis were thorough in documenting their activities and reporting to the various government agencies including the ‘elimination of Jews, Gypsies and enemies of the Reich’, and these records were carefully archived and then used as evidence in prosecuting the case against those senior figures who were still alive and able to face the court.

As a result of the Second World War and the exposure of the inhumanity, the organised slaughter of about 13million people who were not soldiers fighting a war, as evidenced in the aftermath of the war, the opening of the death camps, the written records of those who reported their work to their superiors and the conducting of the Nuremberg Trial, a criminal trial, not a war crimes trial before impartial judges, the newly formed United Nations Organisation commissioned the Declaration of Human Rights which was presented to the General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948.

A further flow on from the Nuremberg Trials and the work of Ben Ferencz was the International Criminal Court in The Hague which recently heard charges against the State of Israel from South Africa over the devastation of Gaza and the treatment of the Palestinians who live in that enclave.

Unfortunately, crimes against humanity have continued despite the Declaration of Human Rights that all nations have signed up to. We witnessed the horrors of the Vietnam war with indiscriminate poisoning using Agent Orange, a defoliant and poison that caused birth defects spina bifida, cleft palate, limb deformities, structural heart disease and hypothyroidism, the murderous Pol Pot regime in the Killing Fields of Cambodia, the Cultural Revolution in China with its re-education camps, Biafra, and so many more post-colonial wars, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. and on and on goes the list.

And most recently, the ongoing conflict in Israel.

The catalyst for the devastation being wrought on Gaza and the Palestinian people was a brutal attack on a Kibbutz and Music Festival which saw about 1200 Israelis killed and 240 taken as hostages by the armed militia, Hamas. An unspeakable act of terrorism.

Rarely however is there mention of the treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli government, the virtual imprisonment of two and a half million people in the most densely populated area in the world, the Gaza Strip, an area of 365 square kilometres. (The Perth Metropolitan area of over 6,300 square kilometres has a similar population.) Nor of the treatment of Palestinians who live on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem and the intimidation they are subjected to from settler communities who are building new settlements as the Palestinians are forced or bullied off their lands. Nor the intimidation of multiple security checks, sometimes a matter of a few metres apart, the constant sense of surveillance with soldiers, fully armed in battle fatigues patrolling the streets of positioned on rooftops. The buildup of frustration in both areas have since the Nakbah, or ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 which saw over 700,000 people displaced, and the taking of the West Bank in 1967’s Six day War led to various skirmishes and attacks on Israel people, like the suicide bombers who were active in 1989 and from 2002 to 2005, the First and Second Intifada.

Both attacks, the Hamas attack that was the catalyst for the current conflict and the suicide bombings which targeted Israeli civilians are illegal under international law and are rightly condemned. That said, the frustration of living in such oppressive conditions as in Gaza where all services, water, food, sewerage, electricity are imported from Israel and can be cut off at the drop of a hat, or the frustration of the constant harassment the people on the West Bank and East Jerusalem are subjected to leads to retaliatory actions.

As we get the news flow from Israel and Gaza we are told that it is mainly women and children who are dying. Supplies of food and drinking water are in short supply and apart from people dying because the building they lived in are being blown to smithereens, they are dying of starvation and diseases that come from unsanitary living as over a million people are camping out in a cramped area without sanitation.

Women and children featured in the evidence and defence of the Nuremberg criminals. where the justification for killing children was that they would grow up to be enemies. And women give birth to children.

The Declaration of Human Rights was written as a response to the inhumanity of the Holocaust which saw the killing of 13 million people because of their race, their religion, their ideologies were not acceptable to the Nazi regime in Germany. The races targeted were Jews and Gypsies, two marginalised groups, marginalised not just in Germany, but in much of Europe, and marginalised for centuries, Jews for their religious beliefs, Gypsies were ‘the wandering spirits of the earth’. On ideologies, these included homosexuals and people with disabilities.

Palestinians are marginalised in Israel, but not just in Israel, also in Lebanon, in Jordan, in Egypt where they are placed in Refugee camps, denied employment, treated as second class people and have really nowhere to go.

It seems those who ignore history are likely to repeat it while those who know history can only look on in wondrous amazement.

A group of South Asian men arrived on our doorstep seeking shelter, seeking a place to be made welcome, seeking safety and security. We don’t know why they left their homelands, but they undertook a dangerous journey, finding their way from Bangladesh, Pakistan and India to Indonesia to board small, overcrowded boats and sail across to the northwest of Western Australia.

We don’t know what drove those men to leave their homelands, but to leave is never easy, the decisions usually are to escape one sort of tyranny or another, whether it be religious persecution or some other form of intolerance which is life threatening, racial difference, sexual orientation, or the consequences of natural disasters, but whatever the reason, they now find themselves on Nauru effectively imprisoned for an indeterminate period of time while various checks are made to determine who they are and whether their claim to seek asylum is legitimate, but are promised that they will never be settled in Australia.

They join a multitude of other stateless people, adrift in the uncertainty of having no home to go back to and no place for them to go to. According to the documentary film Human Flow made in 2017 by the Chinese artist and activist Ai WeiWei, about 68million people in search of a home, somewhere, anywhere as they have fled wars, famine, persecution and a life that the only certainty appeared to be death either through starvation or violence or imprisonment for daring to speak out on political differences. According to UNHCR that number has grown to over 110 million in 2023. That is about 1.375% of the world’s population are displaced for any number of reasons. (To make that number seem more real, that is more than 13 people out of every thousand, worldwide.)

Included in that number are internally displaced people who are not defined as refugees but have fled their homelands because of desertification due to climate change, flooding of regions to build dams to gain water security, rising sea levels or other environmental issues which have made the homelands uninhabitable.

These people, seeking somewhere to live are not criminal, they are not illegal, terms which seem to be flung around when defining refugees or asylum seekers, whether they arrive here by plane or boat. Many, according to the Australian Red Cross arrive here with a valid visa, as visitors, and then make claims for asylum. Neither is it illegal to enter a foreign country without visa, passport or other papers when seeking asylum. So the treatment of asylum seekers in Australia, effectively as criminals is not in accordance with the UN Declaration of Human Rights, to which we as a nation are signatories to. Article 14 affords the right to asylum in other countries from persecution.

We have politicised and effectively criminalised those who are some of the most desperate and disadvantaged people in the world and deny them the basic human rights as defined by that declaration which we are obliged to uphold.

And yes, we do have the right, in fact the obligation to confirm that the asylum seeker has a legitimate claim to asylum, and we can restrict their movements during the period of validating that claim. The wording of Article 14 stipulates that the right to seek and enjoy other countries asylum from persecution “may be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.” That does acknowledge that not all claims are legitimate and that at times criminals do try to get in ‘through the back door’, but the safeguards are there to ensure that those who are not legitimate refugees can be sanctioned, deported, returned to face justice from the place they have fled.

Listening to the political debate on refugees and asylum seekers, one could be forgiven for thinking that we have a severe problem.

We don’t.

The nations hosting the most refugees are Iran, Turkey, Germany, Pakistan, Uganda, Russian Federation, Poland, Bangladesh, Sudan, Ethiopia, Lebanon… and Australia does not even appear on that listing from stastista.com. Iran according to UNHCR for over 40 years has been host “to the largest and most protracted urban refugees in the world and has provided asylum to refugees for over four decades.” Iran currently hosts over 3.4million refugees and asylum seekers. The small nation of Lebanon, almost half a million refugees, many dating back to the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine/Israel.

Why are we afraid of showing some humanity? Fear of these strange, desperate people drives the political argument, but when I look at our history as a nation, we are an immigrant nation. Starting 236 years ago were undesirables from Britain, prisoners and their guards, followed by wave after wave of settlers and more convicts, after both world wars more immigrants seeking a new life away from wore torn Europe settled here, developing this nation to be at that time an essentially European nation but that changed in the 1970s when we welcomed people from all over the globe. After the Vietnam war we welcomed more boat people, Vietnamese escaping from the re-education camps of the winners of that conflict or the repression of those who had sided with the losing side, and with each successive wave of immigrants we saw new economies flourish, rather than being a burden on this country, these immigrants all have made great contributions to Australia, cultural diversity, new businesses, each wave adding to the economic and cultural development of Australia.

The reality is that each of us who does not claim First Nations status is an immigrant or can trace their ancestry to another country at the most ten generations ago, each of us have either arrived as immigrants, leaving our birth countries, or our parents, grandparents or great grand parents did, for reasons not dissimilar to those who arrive here, whether through the airport carrying a visitor’s visa or through unofficial channels, arriving by boat at great risk to escape whatever the threats and dangers of their homelands.

Diane Armstrong in her book The Voyage of Their Life, records the lives of over five hundred people who arrived in Australia in 1948 on a poorly prepared, dangerously inadequate ship, the SS Derna, and interviewed many of them fifty years later, recording the lives they have created in their new country, many are success stories, business people who have made significant economic contributions, others in the social and political spheres, from people who settled in all parts of Australia, from Western Australia to Far North Queensland, in other words like any other immigrant, arriving, seeking a better life for themselves and the families they formed.

Why do we continue to look to newcomers with such fear, instead of going through the validation of their claims for asylum as refugees and welcoming them so they too can start a new life and contribute as so many have before them.

How sad to see the image of Barnaby Joyce on the pavement, cursing at himself as he talks to his wife on the phone.

Dear Barnaby is not the first politician to find himself in an embarrassing situation after having enjoyed one or two too many drinks, in fact the list is long of politicians who seem not to be in full control while enjoying the company of a few drinking buddies, or perhaps leaning lonely on a bar after every one else has retired for the night. In fact, the list is a long one including Prime Ministers and dating back to the very first Federal Parliament and the first Prime Minister, Edmund Barton.

Adam Brereton wrote in The Guardian of 29 December 2015 of Jamie Briggs who resigned from the Turnbull ministry over “an error of professional judgement” in a Hong Kong bar.

Listed in the article are former Prime Ministers Malcolm Fraser, discovered wearing a towel instead of trousers and missing a very expensive Rolex watch and a wallet with $600 spare change.

Apparently drugged.

And a memorable story about John Gorton who on boarding a VIP jet in Melbourne to take him to Canberra, fell asleep and was woken by the noise of engines and vomited… apparently airsick but the plane was still on the tarmac.

Who can forget the confession Kevin Rudd made of visiting a strip club in New York but being too drunk to remember the details.

And John Barton, and Tony Abbott… the list goes on.

But drunken shenanigans are not restricted to politicians in Canberra when we look at the sad case of Brittany Higgins on a fateful night drifting from pub to club with a work colleague.

The wheels of power it seems need the lubrication of the odd drink now and again, from kids just out of their teens seconded to helpful roles assisting the parliamentarians to the most senior members within the ranks of government and opposition.

Politics can be a brutal game, where the image and trustworthiness of the politicians are grist for the campaign mill, and yet we see that alcohol and the subsequent lapses of demeanour are all too frequently used to undermine the credibility of politicians. Or as with Christian Porter allegedly behaving inappropriately while drinking with young female staffer. The incident had been photographed by another staffer but fortunately Alan Tudge was on hand to delete the photograph from the phone, so the story goes.

Interestingly, despite the allegations, Malcolm Turnbull considered Porter of enough upright character to appoint him as Attorney General a couple of weeks later.

Simmering in the background had been stories of misogyny, alleged rapes and a group of senior male members who proudly proclaimed themselves to be members of the ‘Big Swinging Dick’ club.

The drinking culture within Parliament House was addressed in a review the workplace environment within Parliament House by Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins in 2021, and while the review focussed very much on workplace bullying, sexual harassment and sexual assault, it was noted that the significance of drinking and a drinking culture were risk factors in the prevalence of the issues addressed in the report.

But alcohol is still available in Parliament House, in the dining room and at very reasonable prices.

It would be difficult to actually ban people who work in Parliament House from drinking, but it surely would be a good idea to limit drinking, ban it completely within Parliament House. Parliamentarians would doubtless say that would be impossible since there are many official functions held which may well include meals with toasts and so forth, so limit the alcohol to those functions but ban alcohol at all other times.

A most noteworthy book on the topic of drunkenness and the inevitable lapses in demeanour is the aptly titled ‘The Psychology of Stupidity’ in which, through various contributors it is pointed out that even the most gifted, talented, intelligent people do stupid things, and to see a drunken politician berating himself while talking on the phone to his wife and admitting that he should not have been drinking because of his prescribed medication is an absolute act of stupidity. The other qualifiers mentioned above, gifted, talented, intelligent, I will leave to the reader’s judgement, but one would be forgiven for thinking that the lessons of previous alcohol fuelled indiscretions appear to have not been well learned, at least by some.

In the Bible book of Exodus, chapter 20 gives the people of Israel the Ten Commandments, the sixth says “Thou shalt not kill” and the eighth says “Thou shalt not steal”.

Through the rise of Christendom in Europe these commandments were well known and became part of the legal structure in all European kingdoms and later nation states.

The Ten Commandments also form the basis of laws in Judaism and Islam.

But to whom do the laws apply? Who is protected by those laws?

It is interesting to place them on a timeline of sorts, starting with the story of Moses meeting with God on Mount Sinai shortly after the Israelites had escaped from slavery in Egypt where God inscribed those laws on rock tablets for the people to learn what God’s will was for them.

40 years later, the next generation of Israelites are near the city of Jericho and a command is given that the city be sacked and all living things in it be killed except for Rahab and her family because she had sheltered the spies sent to case the city. The silver and gold and articles of bronze and iron were placed into the treasury.

Reading this account of the destruction of Jericho and reflecting on the acquisition of the ‘New World’ by the European Colonists from the time of Columbus in 1495 or there about, it seems that the law applied only to those considered to be ‘God’s people’.

Early explorers commented how they were experienced hospitality and kindness from the Indigenous peoples they came across, especially those who had not encountered the explorers previously. There is a story from the early days of settlement in Western Australia where an explorer in need of water had befriended a couple of Aboriginal boys, fed them salted meat and tied them down in the evening, setting them loose in the morning so they could be followed as they sought to quench their thirst. The explorers were greeted in a friendly manner, but the boys were abused to satisfy the explorers’ need for water. They were probably more fearful of the strangers after that encounter.

There is the amazing story by Robert Macklin, Castaway, the story of a French cabin boy who is abandoned in 1858 and is taken in by the local Aboriginal people, adopted and initiated into the tribe, and is eventually ‘rescued’ and returned home to France. The story tells of the protocols of living in tribal territories and the punishments for not following those protocols, the respect afforded to territorial rites and customs. The story is set in the Daintree region of Far North Queensland, and the young man’s ‘rescue’ in 1875 was at the time of the colonial land grab which ignored the Indigenous protocols and wrested the land and spiritual connections from the Aboriginal inhabitants.

Much the same in Australia’s early exploration. When the Batavia ran aground at the Abrolhos islands in 1628 several teenaged boys who were involved in the mutiny on that ill-fated journey were put ashore on the main land, and when 200 years later settlers arrived in the Geraldton region it was noted that the were blue eyed, blonde Aboriginals and a rock painting inland near Mullewa depicted a skeleton of a sailing ship swell as more permanent structures that found elsewhere in region, following a European building style, rock walls and beams used for a roof.

As with most Indigenous peoples, strangers were initially greeted in more or less friendly manners but that changed when bullets were fired from guns or the visitors seems to want to stay, taking land. Ironically, the flag raising ceremony at Sydney cove 236 years ago included a worship service thanking God for the safe passage and asking for His blessing on the newly founded settlement. The land was effectively being stolen and the Aboriginal people who resisted were killed, a pattern which was repeated time and again as the settlement expanded… well maybe not with calls for God’s blessing, but murder and land theft were the principle means of acquiring the land, followed soon after by missionaries to preach the gospel of grace to replace the spiritual connections the Indigenous had with the land, the cycle of life, everything coming from Mother Earth and returning to Mother Earth.

Essentially, Aboriginal people were not considered to be God’s People, and so the laws did not apply, killing those who resisted the theft of their land could be killed.

That is a pattern which was repeated throughout the period of colonisation, Indigenous people were not God’s People and could be taken to be enslaved on the sugar plantations of the Caribbean, or displaced in the quest for farmlands rather than the wasteful hunter gatherer means of sourcing sustenance.

Likewise, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1835 of the condition of the American Indians that “By dispersing their families, by obscuring their traditions, by disrupting their chain of memories… European tyrannies made them more unruly and less civilised than they were before.” (Joe Keohane: The Power of Strangers. P60)

The impact of the loss of identity, the arrogance of colonisers not respecting the cultures of Indigenous peoples, the replacement of cultures through removing people from their lands and placing them in missions to learn about a foreign God and to prepare the people for subservient roles in the invading society. In essence, a ‘lesser minds’ situation, where the Indigenous peoples are considered less than the invader, less to the extent that they may be considered sub-human, dumb, not like ‘us’. Or to take them from their lands in chains to be slaves in the new agricultural industries, whether sold as slaves in faraway places or forced labour on what used to be their land.

We cannot turn the clock back, and I am not suggesting that we should, however when we look at the ‘Closing the Gap’ failures we see that the paternalism of ‘in-group favoritism’ is applied, where lip service is paid to the very obvious needs of the Indigenous population but the money and structures used to deal with them are controlled by politicians and bureaucrats, well-intentioned but essentially self-serving and falling short of respecting the real needs and real cultural imperatives which are denied because they are seen as ‘lesser minds’.

It is interesting to note that the problems addressed in the ‘Closing the Gap’ initiative are similar to most colonised peoples, high rates of imprisonment, drug and alcohol abuse, family violence, lower life expectancy and so on, and are linked very closely to the denial of original cultures, the stripping away of language and the spiritual elements which formed so much of Indigenous way of life, whether Australian First Nations people, North American Indians, Inuit people or any other we could name. Their lands were stolen, dissenters were killed, identity disparaged, people dehumanised and missionaries took over the role of educators and culture replacers which without any sense of irony taught the Ten Commandments as the basis for the new laws of the land.

It seems that not a lot has been learned when we view the ongoing crisis in Palestine/Israel, where since the late 19th Century Zionists have sought to colonise, take back the land promised to Abraham by God in the book of Genesis. Since 1948 the explosion of the Palestinian peoples has been an ongoing activity, culminating in what we currently see, the devastation of Gaza and the perpetual dehumanisation of those living on the West Bank, with the rhetoric from the Israeli Prime Minister quoting Biblical calls to destroy the Amalekites (Exodus 17:8-15) for the annihilation of Palestinians.

It really does seem that the laws, you shall not kill, you shall not steal only apply to those who are ‘God’s People.’

I wish that God would give me an answer to that deep conundrum.

Headlines repeated the line endlessly, the cost-of-living crisis, again, again and again, ad infinitum.

So real action is taken to address the cost-of-living crisis on a number of fronts, but the main measure was to make amendments to the stage 3 tax cuts which were to come into effect on 1 July.

Need we go through it again?

All people who earn money will pay less tax from 1 July 2024.

Easy. Good, fantastic.

Apparently not.

The Australian Industry Group has asked the fair Work Commission to include the effect of the tax cuts when considering the size of the next wage decision.

How grossly unfair that a person struggling to pay rent and buy essentials should not only pay less tax, but should the fair work commission deem that because of the impact on inflation, they should also get a pay increase. HOLY MOLEY!

At the same time those earning around $190,000 per year are still going to pay less tax and get the CPI increases or whatever protection they enjoy in their employment contract, and we are told by the National’s leader, David Littleproud that the tax cuts are nothing less than class warfare.

Try telling someone struggling on the minimum wage that an income of $190.000 a year is not a lot. The minimum wage is $23.23 per hour, $882.80 per week, $45,905.60 a year, less than a quarter of $190,000. According to Mr Littleproud his constituents earning around $180,000 to $190,000 are doing it tough and should get the tax cuts under the original stage 3 legislation. He does fail to point out that they will be getting a slightly reduced tax cut, about four time in dollar terms that of a person on the minimum wage. besides, the lower income earners got tax cuts under stages 1 and 2 of the tax system and should be happy and stop bleating about the rent increases, mortgage increases, price of groceries and the cost of a beer.

Class warfare!

That’s what it is! Nothing but class warfare!

Again we see that politics is being played with empty rhetoric, slogans that imply something good is really something bad.

Q: What is more threatening to a democracy than a fascist?

A: A stupid one.

The Republicans have them in abundance.

My piece of a couple of weeks ago; One step away from total fascism singled out a few of them. I did not expect that in the short number of days since then that they would reach an even higher level of fascism and/or stupidity.

But here we are.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

1 What every good fascist needs is a little bit of Hitler in their daily lives.

“Neo-Nazi Homeschoolers Could Be Paid $22,000 to Teach Their Kids About Hitler.

Ohio’s “Backpack Bill” would funnel over a billion dollars of taxpayer money into homeschooling and private schools, including the neo-Nazi “Dissident Homeschool Network.”

The neo-Nazi homeschooling couple [Katja Lawrence] was unmasked earlier this week along with her husband Logan Lawrence from Upper Sandusky, Ohio could receive a huge taxpayer-funded windfall of up to $22,000 per year if Republican-backed legislation known as the “Backpack Bill” is passed by state lawmakers.”

2 They are obsessed with drag queens. Keep them away from hotels or they could become the pubs with no beer.

“DeSantis Admin Seeks to Revoke Miami Hotel’s Liquor License Over ‘Drag Queen Christmas’

Officials from the administration of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis want to revoke the alcohol license for the Hyatt Regency Miami after one of its facilities hosted a Christmas-themed drag show opponents called a “sexually explicit performance marketed to children.”

Ron DeSantis certainly ticks all the boxes for being a dangerous fascist.

MUST WATCH! This video explains why DeSantis and the Maga GOP is even more dangerous than Trump, They are actually doing things! pic.twitter.com/3nb6u6ya1q

— PoliticsVerse 🇺🇸 (@PoliticsVerse_) March 15, 2023

As a follow up to Clara’s video that I posted a moment ago. This is her follow up.

I for one will be listening to what she has to say.#DemsAct #DemVoice1 #wtpBLUE #ONEV1 #FAM46 pic.twitter.com/Xh6tkzXwnd

— 𝔗𝔯𝔲𝔱𝔥 𝔐𝔞𝔱𝔱𝔢𝔯𝔰 (@politicsusa46) March 17, 2023

Ron DeSantis is Trump 2.0 and is a threat to our freedoms. Whether it’s banning books, Don’t say gay, Don’t say black or FL is where woke goes to die, this guy can never be allowed near the Whitehouse. He is a threat to the Constitution and Democracy. #wtpBlue #DemVoice1 #Fresh pic.twitter.com/MDpt6zBcaj

— Brian Cardone 🏴‍☠️🇺🇦 (@cardon_brian) March 16, 2023

From the article: