scott parkin

what is our country coming to? I guess we always knew it would happen, but really…this is incredibly depressing.

the short story is that scott parkin, a non-violent peace activist, has been detained and is awaiting deportation due to what the government has called an ‘adverse security assessment’. they refuse to give any more detail than that. scott was here to travel and while here linked up with greenpeace and then was asked to help out with some non-violent activist training with Pt’chang. now I’m not going to enter into any conspiracy theories about scott’s enemies at halliburton putting political pressure on the australian government, but the injustice of his detention alone is apalling. Iain Murray, the guy who had him out here and who was with him when he was arrested is one of the facilitators of Pt’chang, the group I did the non-violent activist training with a few months back. He led the training day, and he’s the one who’s been interviewed in all the papers. I have no doubt that they are 110% committed to non-violence, and Scott therefore poses no threat to Australia at all. It’s just staggering that this can even be allowed to happen.

any sort of resistance to this government is crushed with brutal and increasingly fearless impunity, and no-one seems to be willing or able to hold the government to account for it. we are becoming a dictatorship and the majority don’t notice, or don’t care. is this what we are coming to?