En Passant

Stopping the boats (itself a lie) is built on starting the torture. Turnbull, and I should add, Shorten, feel confident in their brutal refugee policies. How do we challenge them? History shows that civil disobedience has been a key weapon in the armoury of those fighting for civil rights. Stop the cities to stop the torture. Occupy to free the refugees from the concentration camps and bring them here.

With news coming through that Nauru refused to provide visas to Amnesty International to investigate the appalling conditions in our gulag there, maybe the time has come for the ABC’s Four Corners to apply for visas to travel to the Island.

Now that the UN has declared that Australia is torturing asylum seeker children, isn’t it time the Australian Federal Police investigated which provisions of the Crimes Act Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his 2 Immigration Minister accomplices have potentially breached? Throw in the ALP leadership over the last few years and their Immigration Ministers and we have a perfectly unbiased investigation into the alleged torturers of refugee children. Jail the lot of them.

Nicole Colson in Socialist Worker US analyzes the Senate report documenting the use of torture by the CIA – and explains why none of those connected to it are likely to face justice. The Obama administration is fundamentally committed to the same project as the Bush administration – pursuing a failed “war on terror” and projecting U.S. power around the globe – so there will be no justice for those whose lives were destroyed by U.S. torturers.

It has only taken seven years, but the International Commission of Jurists has finally realised that the “US ‘war on terror’ has eroded rights worldwide.” That has been one point among many the Left has been making for a long time. But the gloss the ICJ puts on it is unacceptable. It says that the […]