Xenophobic, racist US President Donald J Trump produces a midterm election campaign video

This is US President Donald J. Trump campaigning ahead of the American mid-term elections on 6 November 2018.

It is outrageous what the Democrats are doing to our Country. Vote Republican now! https://t.co/0pWiwCHGbh pic.twitter.com/2crea9HF7G

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2018

As with everything Donald Trump tweets - a little fact checking is in order.

Firstly, the convicted felon in this video entered the USA illegally twice. The first as a 16 year-old under a Democratic Administration in 1963 ,which later gaoled and then deported him in 1997 on drug offences. The second time he entered the USA was under a Republican Administration sometime around 2002 and he was not arrested until 2014 – after the drug-fuelled killings for which he was sentenced to death in April 2018.

Secondly, the Fox News mass scene shown is not necessarily video of recent events as Trump has a history of misrepresentation and, the current 'migrant caravans’ are nowhere near the USA-Mexico border, as the first caravan had not yet reached San Juan Guichicovi and the second was yet to enter Mexican territory on 31 October 2018. Both are quite literally thousands of kilometres south of the United States and members of these caravans are travelling on foot.

The yellow line represents the distance the first caravan was from the US border as the crow flies on 1 November 2018. The second caravan is at least 200-300 kilometres behind the first.

What Trump is also not saying in his campaign ad is that no previous migrant caravan has ever made it to the US border. The last one reportedly made it to Mexico City before petering out - at least 1,300 kilometres short of reaching the United States.

Scott Morrison just can't get his political spin to stick up here on the NSW Northern Rivers

Interim Australian Prime Minister and Liberal Member for Cook Scott Morrison just doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut.

He tweeted what looked like one of his own staff's media releases which had been taken up by the Murdoch media, only to have Byron Shire Council issue a denial of his claim that it had backed down. 

SBS News, 29 October 2018:

Byron Shire mayor Simon Richardson has dismissed the Morrison government’s claim the council has backed down from plans to change the date of its Australia Day festivities.

Immigration minister David Coleman stripped the council of its right to hold citizenship ceremonies in late September as a punishment for “politicising” the day, only to reinstate the right on Monday.

The government claimed Mr Richardson’s council had “reversed” its plan to change Australia Day ceremonies.

But the mayor said the bitter argument with the government was triggered by a “misunderstanding”. Byron Shire will proceed with its plans to move Australia Day speeches and awards to January 25, he said.

“Nothing has changed, from our perspective,” Mr Richardson told SBS News on Monday…..

The council plans to hold a citizenship ceremony in the coming weeks. The events are held semi-regularly throughout the year.

BACKGROUND

North Coast Voices, 26 September 2018:

An est. 5 per cent of the total population of the Northern Rivers are Aboriginal people principally from the Bundjalung, Yaegl, Gumbaynggirr and Githabul Nations.

They are an integral part of townships and villages spread across seven local government areas and, able to clearly demonstrate cultural connection to country, hold Native Title over land and water in parts of this region.

These families and tribal groupings contribute to the richness of community life in the Northern Rivers.

So Byron Shire Council's media release of 20 September 2018 comes as no surprise.

However, Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison's reaction and the manner in which it was delivered did surprise me. 

SBS News, 24 September 2018:

A NSW mayor says his council's decision to change the date of an Australia Day ceremony is to reflect history after Prime Minister Scott Morrison weighed in.

A NSW mayor whose council won't hold its Australia Day ceremony on January 26 has hit back at Scott Morrison after the prime minister tweeted about the issue.

Byron Shire Council will hold some council events on the national holiday but has announced its official ceremony will move to January 25.....

Tweets of the Week

I remember when Australia has a price on carbon, investment in renewable energy was booming, carbon emissions were falling & Australia was seen as a global leader in these policies

— Stephen Koukoulas (@TheKouk) October 26, 2018

If Murdoch and his sons won’t rein in its extremist propaganda, advertisers should flee Fox, and investors should flee its parent company, News Corp. Its stock should become as toxic as shares of mining companies that produce “blood diamonds.” Me: https://t.co/GVsXBolSt9

— Max Boot (@MaxBoot) October 29, 2018

Remember the date well 11/1/18. On this day in history President Donald Trump announced building massive concentration camps to house asylum seekers while giving permission for the military to fire on civilians armed with nothing more than rocks. @realDonaldTrump

— Brian J. Karem (@BrianKarem) November 1, 2018

“In an unprecedented move, the Morrison government has questioned the Federal Court's authority to commence cases that allow sick children to be brought to Australia for emergency medical care.”

The Guardian, 26 October 2018:

The Australian government is challenging the legality of the federal court hearing applications for urgent medical transfers of refugees and asylum seekers held on Nauru.

The move comes amid a rush of transfers, and appears in contrast to claims made by Australian Border Force to those detainees that the delays are due to the Nauruan government.

Should the federal court action be successful it has the potential to void some previous orders, forcing those cases to refile in the high court.

The rate of medical transfer orders has ratcheted up as the health crisis worsens, criticism of the policy strengthens, and the Nauruans appear to have stopped attempting to block departures.

The home affairs department raised the jurisdictional challenge in a case involving a child detainee, her mother and two siblings, Fairfax Media reported.

The family have already been transferred to Australia. But lawyers for Peter Dutton’s department have continued to argue that under section 494AB of the Migration Act, the federal court cannot hear legal proceedings against the commonwealth relating to a “transitory person”. It is believed to be the first time the government has made this argument in about 50 cases relating to the transfer of people from Nauru.

On Thursday two federal court judges ordered both parties to submit their arguments in coming days for a yet-to-be scheduled expedited hearing, expected next week. The child, an 11-year-old Iranian girl, is being represented by the law firm Robinson Gill and the Human Rights Law Centre.

“This has come out of the blue, and there’s a risk it could make it much harder for desperately unwell children to get the urgent, lifesaving medical care they need,” said Daniel Webb, director of legal advocacy at the HRLC.

The challenge appears at odds with the government’s messages to detainees laying the blame for transfer delays with Nauruan authorities. Guardian Australia is aware of ABF writing or verbally suggesting to people or their lawyers that the department had approved their medical transfer but Nauru was holding up cases.

The Sydney MorningHerald, 24 October 2018:

The legal point was raised last week in the case of an 11-year-old Iranian girl held on Nauru who had not eaten in more than two weeks.

Medical experts gave evidence she was facing “imminent death” if she was not treated by paediatrics experts in an Australian intensive care ward.

However, lawyers acting for the Home Affairs Department argued that under section 494 AB of the Migration Act the court could not hear the case as it did not have jurisdiction because she was a “transitory person.”

Tony Abbott looks further afield for conservative politicians to destroy

Having had a hand in destroying or diminishing the careers of so many conservative politicians in Australia, sacked former prime minister and current Liberal MP for Warringah, Tony Abbott, has been forced to turn his gaze overseas......

The Sydney Morning Herald, 28 October 2018:

London: Tony Abbott secretly met with Boris Johnson two weeks before writing an incendiary article savaging Theresa May's beleaguered Brexit plan, it can be revealed.

The British Prime Minister faces daily leadership speculation and a growing rebellion by Brexiteer MPs and the party's grassroots who fear she will not make a clean enough break from Brussels.

In his piece for The Spectator magazine this week, Mr Abbott accused Mrs May of toying with "surrender" unless she is prepared to go through with crashing Britain out of the European Union with no deal, a scenario remainers believe would have catastrophic consequences and even strident leavers concede could cause the ports to "seize up." Mr Johnson, the former British foreign secretary who is widely considered to be planning a tilt for Mrs May's job, has used the same word to describe her approach to Brexit.

Mr Abbott's meeting with Mr Johnson, kept secret by both parties until now, has been exposed by a Labour MP whom Tony Abbott confided in, not realising he was a Labour and not a Tory MP.

Stephen Doughty told The Sun-Herald he was in Oxford on October 4 when he bumped into Mr Abbott in the street. The former prime minister told him he had just had some "good meetings" with "your man Boris", not realising Mr Doughty is a strong remainer and campaigning for a second referendum…..

“Boris Johnson meets Tony Abbott who two weeks later writes a piece urging Britain to pursue a catastrophic No Deal? As they’d say in Porpoise Spit - ‘What a coincidence!’” Mr Doughty said, referring to the cult film Muriel’s Wedding.

Mr Doughty said he was surprised that both Mr Johnson and Mr Abbott would keep their meeting secret and questioned what the pair discussed “not least given the ongoing attempts by Boris to oust Theresa May and take over as PM and the Brexit negotiations himself.”

"Perhaps he was also giving him some tips on how to oust a prime minister?"

“It seems to me that there are some very strange linkages between Tony Abbott and Boris Johnson and others pursuing a hard Brexit agenda," he said.

Australian Politics 2018: This Federal Government Can’t Do Anything Right

Reared with a sense of righteous self-importance, fed on a diet of IPA ideology with a side dish of entitlement, brought to Canberra by the Old Boy’s Network, then fattened into self-complacency by the political perks of office, this particular Coalition Government (which took the reins of government in 2013 and kept them in 2016) was always a puny failure.

Faced on a daily basis with its own failings this clueless federal government scrabbled about for years before turning bitter, vindictive and intent on destruction.

Here is yet another example of the Morrison Government’s inability to do more than spin its wheels…..

Financial Review, 26 October 2018:

Federal energy minister Angus Taylor's roundtable aimed at forcing big energy companies to lower their standing offers for retail power by January 1 is under a cloud because of real fears this could amount to an illegal cartel.

Energy industry sources say the legal risks of breaching cartel laws - jail terms and massive fines for individual executives - are too great for them to risk at a roundtable at which issues of pricing will be hanging in the air even if not explicitly discussed.

Mr Taylor dismissed suggestions that the round table could breach competition laws.

"Of course we're not going to breach the Australian laws; we don't do that," he told reporters after the COAG Energy Council meeting in Sydney.

But he signalled that all the invited retailers may not attend the round table, at which the government would outline its policies and expectations that the sector will deliver price cuts for consumers.

"We're looking forward to as many electricity providers coming to the round table as want to come along," Mr Taylor said.

The energy companies' fears of breaching the cartel laws are heightened because they have been under permanent surveillance on pricing by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for the last 18 months and the government recently extended that monitoring until 2025.

As well, cartel laws have been widened to include so called "signalling" and other forms of tacit agreement falling short of explicit price fixing agreements during the last decade because offences were too difficult to prove in court under the previous, much stricter definition.

Mr Taylor wrote to energy companies on Tuesday inviting them to a "roundtable" to discuss the reductions in their standing offers they will be required to make for January 1, 2019 - before the July 1 scrapping of standing offers which are to be replaced by the "default" tariff to be set by the Australian Energy Regulator by April 30.

 Read the full article here.

The Morrison Government is puckering its lips to blow on a dog whistle or two?

Ever since Scott Morrison - as then Australian Minister for Immigration and Border Protection - imposed a complete media blackout on asylum seekers arriving by sea, voters have never been quite sure how to take the Liberal-Nationals boast that they had “stopped the boats".

Every so often an inconvenient highly visible landing on our shores revealed that the boats had never stopped coming.

Now faced with increasing pressure to close Manus and Nauru as offshore detention sites, Prime Minister Morrison and his political cronies have to once again hype up the threat of ravening hoardes of undocumented immigrants by drawing out attention back to those boats.

The Australian, 24 October 2018, p.6:

....Operation Sovereign Borders has prevented more than 3300 asylum-seekers coming to Australia by turning back 33 boats and successfully disrupting ­nearly 80 people-smuggling ventures in the past five years.

The Australian can reveal that since September 2013, at least 2525 people have been stopped from boarding boats to Australia because of co-operation with neighbouring countries which has led to the disruption of 78 people-smuggling operations.

In addition, 33 boats trying to ferry just over 800 asylum-­seekers to Australia were stopped on the high seas or turned back.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton yesterday told parliament that advice from the Operation Sovereign Borders agency heads was that the “threat of people-smuggling has certainly not gone away”....

According to the Refugee Council of Australia on 3 August 2018 there were:

3,127 people have been sent to Nauru or PNG as part of offshore processing arrangements

An estimated 1,534 people are still on Nauru or PNG as of 29 July 2018, and as of 30 June 2018 219 are still in Nauru Regional Processing Centre

947 people have left ‘voluntarily’, including through resettlement, as of 29 July 2018, and since September 2012 to May 2018  646 people have left Manus and 165 from Nauru ‘voluntarily’ to their country of origin, and 20 people were forcibly removed from Manus

494 people have been transferred to Australia for medical treatment, and 460 of them were still in Australia as of 21 May 2018 (based on official information that 294 people had left for the US as of 30 April 2018 and reports of another 121 people resettling in the US since then)

7 people had left for Cambodia, as of 30 April 2018

372 people have been accepted by the US (including those who have left), and 121 have been refused by the US, as of 21 May 2018

By far the largest number of those refused are from Iran (70), although 15 Iranians have been accepted

There are 170 families on Nauru, including 99 families which have 158 minors, as of 26 February 2018

There are at least 100 children who have been born to people subject to offshore processing, as of 23 October 2017

There are nine nuclear family units split between Australia and offshore processing, as of 23 October 2017

There are 583 recognised refugees left in PNG, and 821 recognised refugees on Nauru, as of 21 May 2018.

Australia also holds people in onshore immigration detention and as of 31 July 2018:

Numbers of people in held detention: 1,345 with key sites being Villawood (502), Christmas Island (173), and Yongah Hill (262) 

Average length of detention: 446 days, with 267 people having spent more than 730 days in detention

Numbers of people held in detention because they came seeking asylum by boat: 315

Number of children: in detention facilities including ‘Alternative Places of Detention’: 5, in Nauru Regional Processing Centre: 12, in community detention: 176, and in the community on a bridging visa E: 2,835

Number of people in community detention: 386, from Iran (221), stateless (46) or from Sri Lanka (36), with 245 people having spent more than 730 days in community detention

Key nationalities of people in detention: New Zealand (174), Vietnam (104), Sri Lanka (89), and Iran (103).

To date there are reportedly 200 asylum seeker children and their parents in legal limbo in Australia with no clear path to either Australian citizenship or the full protection under international law, because although government sources are allegedly saying to the media that these children will never be returned to Manus or Nauru there are no guarantees in place.

As of 29 October 2018 50 children remain on Nauru.