The world is a pretty fucked up place for many people but here in (Western) Australia we have it really good (Maybe not so much with the floods over east at the moment). Id even suggest that we have the most luxurious lifestyles of any nation in the world, what with our booming mining economy, LCD TVs, Apple iPods, Commodore Utes etc and it really pisses me off how so many people here not only take all this for granted, but also whinge about stuff that is basically bullshit (ie most of the shit you see on A Current Affair and Today Tonight).
Refugees and Asylum Seekers come to Australia from countries where their lives and the lives of their families are under pretty much extreme threat of violence for many different reasons. Many of these people are ethnic minorities from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sri Lanka who are persecuted by their ruling governments/warlords. They arrive by the only real means they have of getting to Australia, by boat. This is not illegal as Australia has laws that protect people who arrive here on our shores if they are seeking refuge or asylum from persecution. We hear a lot of negative media coverage and political propaganda about asylum seekers and a lot of it seems to point to an extreme xenophobic fear of our country being overrun by ungrateful 'illegals' who want to steal our jobs and take advantage of our ‘generous’ welfare system. I can only feel compassion for these people, because I know that if it were me and my family in a similar situation, I would do whatever I could to get them to a safe environment. Unfortunately politicians can get a lot of political mileage from ignorants and racists by representing refugees in a negative light, which is further exasperated by the commercial media broadcasters. These are real people, just like you and me in most ways. They are generally locked up without proper legal representation and treated worse than rapists, murderers and other criminals. At the end of the day, we are all human, and we all live on this place we call earth, so why can’t we open our hands, hearts and minds?
please check out this link for a bit of a mythbuster on asylum seekers:
http://www.getup.org.au/files/campaigns/asylum_myths_factsheet.pdf
This show is a fundraiser with all proceeds going to CARAD: http://www.carad.org.au
The bands playing in no particular order:
The Hunt
SSA
The Reptilians
SUFFER
Clenched Teeth
The Craw
Warthreat
Frozen Ocean
Sat the 26th of February
at Dream studios, Leederville (cnr of Anzac and Oxford)
$10 entry from 7pm (hopefully finish by 10pm so as to not annoy the neigbours too much)
i will be photocopying a few flyers to put up around the place and i encourage the bands playing to do so as well.
I really appreciate all the bands who agreed to play this gig for free.
Hope to see some unfamiliar faces at the show.
