The Social Justice Network has warned for long time of expected wide spread riots in detention centres if the current Labor-Greens coalition government continues with its regressive politics. The coalition government was sending conflicting signals in different directions. The Labor was selling itself as tough government on boat arrivals to stop “people smuggling activities”. While the smaller partner, the Greens, was selling empty rhetoric about the need for more humane approach. The Greens did not give one principled vision on how to deal with this highly humanitarian issue.
At last night’s ABC Lateline, the Greens joined both the Labor and the Liberals to condemn and blame the detainees for their “violent” actions that will “cost tax-payers a lot of money”. The Greens also retreated from their election promises to work on totally abolishing of the mandatory detention system to replace it with demands to cosmetically make the system looks like prettier and less inhumane.
“The Greens senator and spokesperson on the issue rightly pointed to the fact that the continued detention of thousands of asylum seekers for indefinite periods and the vague process of the rejected applications had caused desperate asylum seekers to riot inside detention centers” said Jamal Daoud, spokesperson for the SJN. “But she did not give any practical steps taken by her Greens party to enforce the Labor to change these inhumane practices that causes huge losses of tax-payers money”
“Ms Hanson - Young failed to answer question about her party’s practical commitment to honour its policy on working towards abolishing mandatory detention system. From Ms Hanson - Young indications, we understood that the Greens supports convicting desperate asylum seekers for their desperate actions”
“We understand that abolishing mandatory detention system should include dismantling detention centres, including Villawood detention centre”
“It is alarming that the former Liberal PM, Malcolm Fraser, supports dismantling the “hell-holes”, when the Labor-Greens coalition government is moving to prosecute the people who work to dismantle them”.
“The citizens who voted to the Greens in the last elections on perception that they will work to dismantle this inhumane system need some explanations form the Greens officials. These voters need to hear from the Greens why they were very effective to enforce Labor to change its position on many important issues, like introducing Carbon Tax and considering changing the constitution on marriage definition to introduce same-sex marriage, but they are unable to change Labor’s position on mandatory detention issues”
“We deeply believe that the Greens is enjoying the crisis in detention system. Such crisis that depletes the Labor from progressive votes for the Greens benefits”.
The Social Justice Network supports any attempts to dismantle the mandatory detention system. This includes supporting any attempts to dismantle any of the “hell-holes”, including Viallwood DC. If the Labor-Greens coalition has deep concerns about tax-payers money, they should work quickly to dismantle this system that causes waste of millions of dollars every year.
For media contact, Jamal Daoud can be contacted on 0404 447 272
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
The Greens backdown on boycotting Israel: another Greens political whoring!
Marrickville council has decided last night to overturn its original decision to endorse campaign to boycott Israeli products, known internationally as BDS campaign. The motion was introduced to the council last December by Greens councilors. The decision to overturn the original one was not possible without the support of the introducing party, the Greens.
The Social Justice Network (SJN) condemns in the strongest words the Greens political whoring attitude tonight.
“The Greens had done it again. In the last few months, the Greens has sent too many conflicting messages in too many directions that the message was lost at the end” said Jamal Daoud, the spokesperson of SJN. “Three Greens councilors opposed withdrawing the original motion. While two have supported the withdrawal. The Greens deliberately misled the Australians by splitting the vote on the motion last night”
“From the first day, we knew and we expressed our pessimism of the real agenda behind the original motion. We have questioned many aspects of the motion, including its timing just few months before the NSW election”
“The draft of the motion was clear that it was designed for electoral use. The Greens had big hope to snatch Marrickville seat from Labor. They wanted to do so on a sea of Palestinian bloods”.
“The Greens political whoring has great negative impact. It divided the community, divided the movement for Palestine Freedom and demoralised the activists and community members”
“We have warned from day one of the original motion that the Greens enthusiasm for this campaign will be evaporated once the election dust settles. This is what exactly happened last night”.
“The Greens is not new for such political whoring attitude. The Greens party has backflipped on many issues in the last decade to the point that no politician or analysts know where they are really standing on issues”.
“The Greens has vowed to abolish private health rebate. This is the party’s official policy. But in fact, the Greens has voted against partially abolishing the rebate when it was introduced by Kevin Rudd’s government”.
“It also backflipped on political donations, refugees rights, selling public assets, Afghanistan war, Multiculturalism and issue of Israeli occupation of Palestine”.
The Greens mouthpiece on Palestine – Israel issue, the Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine (CJPP) should come up with convincing argument if they want to keep fooling Australians on the Greens progressiveness on this issue. The CJPP should issue media release explaining what we can expect from them and their party.
We will continue exposing this highly opportunistic party on all levels. We are very concerned that continued Greens chameleonic attitude of constantly changing skin colours, will affect the communities’ faith in the political system. We have witnessed in the last decade growing decrease of marginalised communities participation in the political process. The total lack of any alternative party on issues important for large section of community will deepen this feeling of hopelessness among growing numbers of Australians.
For media contact, Jamal Daoud can be contacted on 0404 447 272
The Social Justice Network (SJN) condemns in the strongest words the Greens political whoring attitude tonight.
“The Greens had done it again. In the last few months, the Greens has sent too many conflicting messages in too many directions that the message was lost at the end” said Jamal Daoud, the spokesperson of SJN. “Three Greens councilors opposed withdrawing the original motion. While two have supported the withdrawal. The Greens deliberately misled the Australians by splitting the vote on the motion last night”
“From the first day, we knew and we expressed our pessimism of the real agenda behind the original motion. We have questioned many aspects of the motion, including its timing just few months before the NSW election”
“The draft of the motion was clear that it was designed for electoral use. The Greens had big hope to snatch Marrickville seat from Labor. They wanted to do so on a sea of Palestinian bloods”.
“The Greens political whoring has great negative impact. It divided the community, divided the movement for Palestine Freedom and demoralised the activists and community members”
“We have warned from day one of the original motion that the Greens enthusiasm for this campaign will be evaporated once the election dust settles. This is what exactly happened last night”.
“The Greens is not new for such political whoring attitude. The Greens party has backflipped on many issues in the last decade to the point that no politician or analysts know where they are really standing on issues”.
“The Greens has vowed to abolish private health rebate. This is the party’s official policy. But in fact, the Greens has voted against partially abolishing the rebate when it was introduced by Kevin Rudd’s government”.
“It also backflipped on political donations, refugees rights, selling public assets, Afghanistan war, Multiculturalism and issue of Israeli occupation of Palestine”.
The Greens mouthpiece on Palestine – Israel issue, the Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine (CJPP) should come up with convincing argument if they want to keep fooling Australians on the Greens progressiveness on this issue. The CJPP should issue media release explaining what we can expect from them and their party.
We will continue exposing this highly opportunistic party on all levels. We are very concerned that continued Greens chameleonic attitude of constantly changing skin colours, will affect the communities’ faith in the political system. We have witnessed in the last decade growing decrease of marginalised communities participation in the political process. The total lack of any alternative party on issues important for large section of community will deepen this feeling of hopelessness among growing numbers of Australians.
For media contact, Jamal Daoud can be contacted on 0404 447 272
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Brief analysis of NSW Election results: SJN proud of its campaign and achievements
The Social Justice Network ran 3 candidates for the NSW state election, 2011. The candidates scored the average of 2.2 across the seats of Auburn, Lakemba and Fairfield. Despite all circumstances (which we will mention later in the release), we could score this result in the first state campaign we ever participated in.
Recently, we have been receiving phone calls from people known to us and others not known to us. The tone of the callers has a mixture of joy and gloating. What is deeply depressing for us is that these callers were having Lebanese accent, and we are sure that they are Muslims.
In the election where the Liberal party started its campaign with vicious attack on Multiculturalism and Muslim community, where we saw many Liberal shadow ministers launched Islamophobic comments, to the point of demanding ban of Muslim migration for initial period of 10 years. We were deeply shocked and depressed when we saw that many “Muslim” organizations urged Muslim NSW residents to reward the Liberal party for its Islamophobic campaigns by urging them to vote for this extreme party.
In the aftermath of this campaign we should stress that we are proud of our achievements. We also very proud that we participated in aborting the agenda of some opportunistic Muslim “leaders” to get Liberals elected in the highly multicultural seats with high Muslim presence. We also very proud that we did not compromise our principles for any reason or in return for any deal.
Maybe we did not get a lot of votes. But we got our message through in this election in the targeted areas. Not only this. We left our fingerprints on this election, especially in high multicultural seats with high Muslim presence.
Despite the following facts, we did succeed in sending strong message about the lack of real multiculturalism in Australian politics:
1- Our campaign had no budget and we operated with self-funds..
2- Our campaign was subjected to vicious dirty tricks from many rival candidates, many of them has big budget to spread lies, deception and roumers about our campaigns and our candidates. We are well aware about the house-to-house and shop-to-shop campaign to spread lies about our campaign and candidates.
3- Our campaign challenged high-profile religious and community “leaders” who sold the interests and rights of their communities for individual benefits.
Maybe we did not get many votes, but we can claim comfortably and safely the highest moral ground among rival candidates and political opponents. During the many “Meet the candidate” forums and meetings, we demonstrated that we have both real commitments to social justice, and we have clear vision how to address the injustices in the society.
In this campaign we could accumulate more knowledge about how to conduct future campaigns in more efficient way. We should stress again that this was the first time we ran candidates for state parliament. And we have learnt a lot. And we have better exposure and better networks now. We should mention here that our candidates got more votes than political forces which were established long before our group and ran tens of candidates before.
When we decided to run candidates, our aim was not to win seats. We knew very well that we will not win any seat. We wanted to send a message to different sides. We wanted to send message to mainstream political groups that it is highly unacceptable to keep ignoring the lack of multiculturalism and the lack of equal representation of new migrants in decision making bodies. We also wanted to send a message of hope to marginalised groups and give them some hints about alternative way to deal with complacency of mainstream parties in racism and Islamopbohia.
With very limited financial resources, we have achieved a lot. We did not get a lot of votes. But we affected the way voters voted in this election. We are proud that we participated in:
1- Minimizing the swing to Liberals in high multicultural seats, especially with high Muslim presence.
2- Minimizing the Greens votes, including aborting the Greens dream of wining high multicultural seat of Marrickville and minimizing the increase of Greens votes in the Legislative Council.
3- Making the low representation of Non-English speaking people in parliament an election matter.
4- We were the only political group that campaigned on true progressive platform, where progressiveness meant siding with marginalized in their fight for equality. Unlike other “progressive” groups who were preaching progressiveness but practicing regressive ideas of excluding marginalized and promote Anti-family and Anti-moral values. Such campaigns that would result in deepening marginalization by increasing socio-economic problems as a result of deteriorating social bond of families and communities, increase individualism and increase depending on substances.
Our high moral ground includes our refusal to participate in Islamophobic campaigns through high restraint in dealing with sheikh Fayez fiasco. We were more restraint in dealing with this issue (despite the fact that we do not agree with any comment or teaching Mr Fayez launched or preached) than many Muslim religious figures and Muslim radio stations, who participated in fueling these campaigns by vending fiery comments.
In the next few weeks we will take further steps to capitalize on the already achieved goals and achievements. We will announce about them in due time.
Jamal Daoud
Spokesperson, Social Justice Network
Recently, we have been receiving phone calls from people known to us and others not known to us. The tone of the callers has a mixture of joy and gloating. What is deeply depressing for us is that these callers were having Lebanese accent, and we are sure that they are Muslims.
In the election where the Liberal party started its campaign with vicious attack on Multiculturalism and Muslim community, where we saw many Liberal shadow ministers launched Islamophobic comments, to the point of demanding ban of Muslim migration for initial period of 10 years. We were deeply shocked and depressed when we saw that many “Muslim” organizations urged Muslim NSW residents to reward the Liberal party for its Islamophobic campaigns by urging them to vote for this extreme party.
In the aftermath of this campaign we should stress that we are proud of our achievements. We also very proud that we participated in aborting the agenda of some opportunistic Muslim “leaders” to get Liberals elected in the highly multicultural seats with high Muslim presence. We also very proud that we did not compromise our principles for any reason or in return for any deal.
Maybe we did not get a lot of votes. But we got our message through in this election in the targeted areas. Not only this. We left our fingerprints on this election, especially in high multicultural seats with high Muslim presence.
Despite the following facts, we did succeed in sending strong message about the lack of real multiculturalism in Australian politics:
1- Our campaign had no budget and we operated with self-funds..
2- Our campaign was subjected to vicious dirty tricks from many rival candidates, many of them has big budget to spread lies, deception and roumers about our campaigns and our candidates. We are well aware about the house-to-house and shop-to-shop campaign to spread lies about our campaign and candidates.
3- Our campaign challenged high-profile religious and community “leaders” who sold the interests and rights of their communities for individual benefits.
Maybe we did not get many votes, but we can claim comfortably and safely the highest moral ground among rival candidates and political opponents. During the many “Meet the candidate” forums and meetings, we demonstrated that we have both real commitments to social justice, and we have clear vision how to address the injustices in the society.
In this campaign we could accumulate more knowledge about how to conduct future campaigns in more efficient way. We should stress again that this was the first time we ran candidates for state parliament. And we have learnt a lot. And we have better exposure and better networks now. We should mention here that our candidates got more votes than political forces which were established long before our group and ran tens of candidates before.
When we decided to run candidates, our aim was not to win seats. We knew very well that we will not win any seat. We wanted to send a message to different sides. We wanted to send message to mainstream political groups that it is highly unacceptable to keep ignoring the lack of multiculturalism and the lack of equal representation of new migrants in decision making bodies. We also wanted to send a message of hope to marginalised groups and give them some hints about alternative way to deal with complacency of mainstream parties in racism and Islamopbohia.
With very limited financial resources, we have achieved a lot. We did not get a lot of votes. But we affected the way voters voted in this election. We are proud that we participated in:
1- Minimizing the swing to Liberals in high multicultural seats, especially with high Muslim presence.
2- Minimizing the Greens votes, including aborting the Greens dream of wining high multicultural seat of Marrickville and minimizing the increase of Greens votes in the Legislative Council.
3- Making the low representation of Non-English speaking people in parliament an election matter.
4- We were the only political group that campaigned on true progressive platform, where progressiveness meant siding with marginalized in their fight for equality. Unlike other “progressive” groups who were preaching progressiveness but practicing regressive ideas of excluding marginalized and promote Anti-family and Anti-moral values. Such campaigns that would result in deepening marginalization by increasing socio-economic problems as a result of deteriorating social bond of families and communities, increase individualism and increase depending on substances.
Our high moral ground includes our refusal to participate in Islamophobic campaigns through high restraint in dealing with sheikh Fayez fiasco. We were more restraint in dealing with this issue (despite the fact that we do not agree with any comment or teaching Mr Fayez launched or preached) than many Muslim religious figures and Muslim radio stations, who participated in fueling these campaigns by vending fiery comments.
In the next few weeks we will take further steps to capitalize on the already achieved goals and achievements. We will announce about them in due time.
Jamal Daoud
Spokesperson, Social Justice Network
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
