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January 11th, 2022 
Awake Goy 
After granting World Number 1 men’s tennis player Novak Djokovic a visa, the corrupt, racist and mendacious Australian Coalition Government waited until he had flown all the way to remote Australia before abruptly cancelling his visa and imprisoning the Serbian champion in an immigration detention centre used to indefinitely and highly abusively incarcerate men, women and children refugees without charge or trial. If they can do it to Novak Djokovic they can and will do it to anyone.
Djokovic has successfully appealed the decision in the Federal Court but the Australian Government threatens to overturn the Federal Court’s decision by exercise of “Ministerial discretion”. This outrageous affair stinks of political opportunism by an increasingly unpopular Morrison Coalition Government that faces elections in 2022 [1]. It has also shone light on the desperate plight of Djokovic’s fellow prisoners in Melbourne, the refugees imprisoned without charge or trial by grossly human rights-violating Australian Governments for as long as 9 years. There are many aspects of this case that deserve intense and unremitting global scrutiny, ranging from the glaringly unfair and dishonest treatment of Novak Djokovic to the appalling corruption, mendacity and racism of the Australian Coalition Government as illuminated by this disgraceful affair and as set out succinctly below.
(1). The core issue – Djokovic was initially granted an entry visa by the Federal Government, flew to Australia but was immediately imprisoned on arrival because of cancellation of the visa.
The inescapable, shocking, core reality is that the Australian Coalition Federal Government granted Novak Djokovic an entry visa under the present highly restrictive but clearly necessary “rules” dictated by the Covid Pandemic, but then waited until Djokovic and his extensive entourage had flown all the way to remote Australia at great expense before cancelling the visa for undisclosed reasons.
Djokovic’s eagerness to come to Melbourne, Australia, to defend his Australian Open tennis title was extremely understandable since he had already won the prestigious title 9 times. Indeed if Djokovic had been allowed in and had won the Australian Open title for the 10th time he would have become the world leader for winning men’s Grand Slam tennis events.
In order to get an entry visa, non-vaccinated Djokovic needed to gain an exemption from the requirement to be double vaccinated against COVID-19, and indeed this exemption was recommended for Djokovic by 2 Australian medical panels which, acting for Tennis Australia and the Victorian state government, respectively, had independently assessed and approved Djokovic and other applicants (all applicants being anonymous to the panels). Djokovic and several other tennis-related applicants were approved and granted visas to enter Australia. However while Djokovic was prevented from entering Australia by cancellation of his visa in transit (he was imprisoned on arrival), a Czech Republic tennis player , Renata Voráčová, was allowed to participate in a pre-Open tournament before having her visa cancelled.
(2). The mendacious Australia Federal Coalition Government falsely obfuscates the core issue by falsely claiming that Djokovic had violated “the rules”.
The Australian Federal Government has the authority to decline and revoke entry visas in the name of “public health”, “national security” or other specified or indeed unspecified reasons. However the Australian PM Scott “Scomo” Morrison (aka Scum-o, Scam-o, Skim-o, Scheme-o and Smirk-o ) has falsely implied that Djokovic had broken the rules: “Rules are rules, especially when it comes to our borders. No one is above these rules. Our strong border policies have been critical to Australia having one of the lowest death rates in the world from COVID, we are continuing to be vigilant” [2].
Minister for Home Affairs Karen Andrews disingenuously elaborated this further: “While the Victorian government and Tennis Australia may permit a non-vaccinated player to compete in the Australian Open, it is the Commonwealth government that will enforce our requirements at the Australian border. If an arriving individual is not vaccinated, they must provide acceptable proof that they cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons to be able to access the same travel arrangement as fully vaccinated travellers” [2].
However it is clear that Novak Djokovic had followed “the rules”, satisfied the exemption criteria of 2 independent medical panels, and was consequently granted an entry visa by the Australian Federal Government only to have it revoked after an arduous flight to remote Melbourne. Djokovic took legal action in the Federal Court, and Paul McNamee (a famed Australian tennis player and a former Australian Open tournament director) stated that Djokovic had followed the rules, cleverly declaring: “So he deserves his day on court, not in court, in my opinion” [2]. Indeed the Federal Court judge who upheld Djokovic’s appeal stated that Djokovic had properly followed all the rules: “The point I’m somewhat agitated about is, what more could this man have done?” [3]. Nevertheless because of the power of “Ministerial discretion” it is possible that Alex Hawke, Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs, will effectively overrule the Federal Court’s decision by simply re-arresting and deporting Djokovic.
John Menadue (Secretary Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs 1980-83, and editor of the progressive and expert Pearls & Irritations web magazine) has expertly commented: “The Department of Home Affairs issued a visa for Novak Djokovic to come to Australia. But apparently the Department did not understand or know that Djokovic had a long standing and widely known opposition to vaccination for Covid… A visa is usually a reliable sign that the applicant can enter Australia. That is not necessarily so. Visas can be cancelled on arrival in Australia. So when it came to the crunch in Melbourne Djokovic was refused entry by Border Force presumably for failing to abide by our public health requirements. What a shambles with the Department of Home Affairs and Border Force not talking to each other” [4].
Abul Rizvi (a former deputy secretary of the department of immigration): “Health Minister Greg Hunt has confirmed tennis star Novak Djokovic’s visa has been cancelled, and the player is being held in immigration detention while he challenges the cancellation decision in the courts. It should never have come to this farcical situation. What has transpired is unfair to Australians who got vaccinated and to Djokovic, who could argue he did everything required of him by Australian authorities yet finds himself in detention. While Tennis Australia and the Victorian government gave Djokovic an exemption to play at the Australian Open, apparently on the basis of a decision by two independent panels of medical experts who applied the exemption rules developed by the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation, that does not determine the right to enter Australia. That power rests solely with the Department of Home Affairs and [the enforcing] Australian Border Force. Given the high-profile nature of the case, it is surprising these two bodies did not act earlier… the Department of Home Affairs granted Djokovic a visa” [5].
(3). Australia has compounded its offence by cancelling the visas of 2 other tournament-related people after their arrival in Australia.
Two other people connected with the Australian Open have had their visas cancelled after travelling all the way to Australia. on Federal Government-granted visas. Renata Voráčová from the Czech Republic (ranked 81 in the world) has had her visa cancelled after arrival in December 2021 and playing in a pre-Australia Open warm-up tournament. i.e. unlike Djokovic she was initially permitted entry before her visa was cancelled and she was imprisoned in the same immigration detention centre as Novak Djokovic before being deported. The Czech Republic Government has protested to the Australian Government. A European tennis official was treated likewise and was deported [6, 7].
(4). Caveat emptor – the Djokovic affair is another instance of a duplicitous Australia reneging on agreements and business deals.
We are familiar with the term “caveat emptor” meaning “let the buyer beware”. Australia granted Djokovic an entry visa but after he had suffered the arduous and expensive trip to Australia to engage in a hugely significant sporting event they reneged on the deal and cancelled the visa. The corrupt and mendacious Australian Coalition Government has an extraordinarily duplicitous record over commercially-related deals of which some further examples are outlined below:
(a). The French submarines scandal. US-beholden Australia recently entered into 2 anti-China military security-related partnerships, namely AUKUS (Australia, UK and the US) and the Quad (Australia, the US, India and Japan). To please the Americans, US lackey Australia cancelled an already in process A$90 billion deal for French submarines, and instead indicated future agreement to get UK- and US-designed nuclear-powered submarines sometime in the next 2 decades. French President Emmanuel Macron described Australia as “duplicitous” and when asked whether he thought PM Morrison was a liar he famously replied “I don’t think. I know” [8, 9]. The Australian Government then compounded its duplicity by releasing secret diplomatic exchanges between France and Australia.
(b). The Job Keeper scandal. During the Covid Pandemic the Australian Government instituted a complex scheme whereby it would hugely subsidize employee salaries in companies expecting huge declines in profit. In the event this offensively discriminatory scheme ended up giving about A$5 billion to companies that had not actually suffered major loss and which were not obliged to pay the money back. Conversely, 11,000 individual recipients of Covid-related benefits who had received more than their entitlements have been sent notices of demand, and are obliged to pay the money back [10].
(c). The Robodebt scandal. The Robodebt scheme was an unlawful method of automated debt assessment and recovery employed by the Australian Government. Rather than determining the actual debt of an individual taxpayer the Robodebt scheme issued debt notices to 470,000 welfare recipients with an automated data-matching system that compared Centrelink (welfare) records with averaged income data from the Australian Taxation Office. This illegal system caused massive financial and mental stress to hundreds of thousands of poor people. Faced with protests, in May 2020, the Morrison Government announced that it would scrap the debt recovery scheme, with 470,000 wrongly-issued debts to be repaid in full. In June 2021 the Federal Court ruled against the Government and approved a A$1.8 billion settlement including repayments of debts paid, wiping of outstanding debts, and legal costs [11].
(d). Hidden Carbon Debt scandal: massive dumping of Australian goods on China. China is Australia’s biggest trading partner but the Sinophobic and US lackey Australian Coalition Government has been wilfully sabotaging this crucial relationship. As a fervently loyal US lackey, Australia (population 26 million) has been actively, aggressively, publicly and absurdly attacking China (population 1,439 million) on behalf of anti-China America (population 334 million). Historically China has an exceptional record of not invading other countries – in addition to recent border wars with India and Vietnam, it conquered Tibet in the 13th century (when England was conquering Celtic Britain) and conquered Xinjiang in the 18th century (when England was invading most of the world) but would like “respect” from its neighbours and indeed the World [12, 13]. Clearly China can and must be criticized for the one party state, urban air pollution, the surveillance state, censorship and harsh treatment of Uyghurs, pro-democracy Hong Kong activists and dissidents. Such government-to-government criticism is usefully made diplomatically but the Australian Coalition Government has consistently resorted to relentless public singling out of China for crude public abuse, including threats of war that amount to dangerous lunacy. Indeed the Chinese Embassy in Canberra produced a list of 14 areas of Chinese grievances about Australia’s hostile conduct [14]. China has also responded with trade sanctions and accusations of “dumping” that Australia regards as “payback” and “bullying”. The trade cost to Australia is presently about $20 billion annually [15] but permanent post-Covid Pandemic loss of Chinese overseas students may cost a further $20 billion per year. However Australia is among world leaders in 16 areas of climate criminality, totally rejects a price on carbon pollution, and consequently has a huge annual Carbon Debt. Australia’s annual GDP of $1,393 billion should be inflated to $1,393 billion + $686 billion Carbon Debt = $ 2,079 billion. The ratio of Carbon Debt/GDP = $686 billion/ $1,393 billion = 0.49 i.e. for every $1.0 billion of goods and services generated by Australia each year (or exported to China each year), there is a deliberately hidden but inescapable subsidy of about $0.5 billion to be paid by future generations. This immense intergenerational theft via unpaid Carbon Debt is totally ignored in corrupt, mendacious and “look-the-other-way Australia [16, 17].
(e). Australia dishonestly and resolutely ignores horrendous and genocidal Australian war crimes. Thus variously as UK or US lackeys Australians have invaded 85 countries, as compared to the British 193, France 82, the US 70 (50 after WW2), Germany 39, Japan 30, Russia 25, Canada 25, Apartheid Israel 12 and China 2, with 30 of these Australian invasions being genocidal [8, 9. 12, 13, 17, 18]. Some of the worst atrocities in which Australia has been involved are as follows (dates and deaths from violence and imposed deprivation in brackets): Australian Aboriginal Genocide (1788 onwards, 2 million), Palestinian Genocide ( WW1 onwards, 2 million), Bengali Holocaust (1942-1945, 6-7 million; Australia was complicit by withholding wheat from its huge wartime wheat stores from its starving ally India), post-1950 US Asian Wars (1950 onwards; 40 million), Iraqi Holocaust (1990-2011, 5 million), Afghan Holocaust (2001 onwards, 7 million), Muslim Holocaust (2001 onwards; 32 million), and the Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust (1,500 million avoidable deaths from deprivation since 1950). As a leading climate criminal country Australia is deeply complicit on a worsening Climate Genocide that presently kills 1 million people annually (9 million die annually from air pollution, 75,000 from burning Australia’s world-leading coal exports) but which, in the absence of requisite action, will kill 10 billion people this century en route to a sustainable human population by 2100 of only 1 billion [17].
(f). Australia resolutely ignores minimal cost on-line and “reading only” university education and massively rips off local and overseas students. All good students and scholars learn from scholarly books and journals. As an informed and altruistic scholar and academic for decades I have argued for the powerful and empowering option of vanishingly minimal cost on-line and “reading only” university education i.e. essentially free and open to all Accredited Remote Learning (ARL) [19-21], Reading Only Tertiary Education (ROTE) [ 22, 23], and examination-accredited Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) [24]. My first university, the University of Tasmania, is now adopting on-line teaching and learning but will presumably continue to charge huge fees. In short, every nation needs a complement of top scientists and scholars for a variety of economic, health, cultural, risk avoidance and prestige reasons but why should impoverished youth have to pay for it? The COVID-19 Pandemic meant general adoption of on-line teaching and learning but with retention of huge fees. Before the COVID Pandemic Australia earned $40 billion annually from “education exports” but post-COVID-19 overseas students and their governments might well consider the huge and unconscionable rip-off involved.
(5). The Australian Coalition Government and Australia are profoundly corrupt. The Australian Coalition Government has an appalling record of corruption involving deceit, blatant pork barrelling and flagrant avoidance of mandatory reporting to paying 10 times more than the market value of a piece of land and other massive dodgy expenditures. This Coalition corruption is underscored by its refusal to allow a strong federal anti-corruption watchdog like the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) of New South Wales (NSW) and similar anti-corruption bodies in other states. In addition Australia in general is profoundly corrupt with a governance system that effectively ignores massive malfeasance from entrenched tax evasion and totally ignores gross violation of international law including the Fourth Geneva Convention. Australia is an ostensible democracy, has the rule of law, boasts a supposedly egalitarian population, and is a great place to live. Corruption is covert abuse of authority for private gain, and is most glaringly obvious in countries ruled by greedy dictators. However money is power and Australia is profoundly corrupt in that every election is a carefully calibrated auction to ensure return of a government that protects the financial interest of the well-off half of the country ranging from ordinary tax-paying workers with a stake in their own home to billionaires inexorably enriching themselves through asset appreciation and “democratically installed” tax minimization options. Thus the combined wealth of Australian billionaires increased by more than 50% over the Covid Pandemic year of 2020 [25]. The conservative Coalition that presently and indeed usually rules Australia, has the relatively easy job of gaining support among the the well-off half of the population (democratic corruption) and fooling many poor people through the power of oligopoly right-wing media, notably the mendacious Murdoch media. While the Australian Labor Party (mostly and presently in opposition) has an ideal of helping the poor and disadvantaged, it is hog-tied by the greed of the millionaire average Australians and the anti-democratic power of Big Money. The decent Greens have presently 10% electoral support and demand transparency and economic and electoral fairness. Democracy in Australia has transmuted to kleptocracy, plutocracy, Murdochracy, lobbyocracy, corporatocracy and dollarocracy in which Big Money purchases people, politicians and parties, votes and hence more power and more private profit.
(6). The bullying Australian Coalition Government cynically exploited non-vaccinated Djokovic for political reasons to hide Covid Pandemic failures and garner votes in the forthcoming Federal election. The Australian Coalition is mendacious, dishonest, corrupt, anti-science, climate criminal, speciescidal, ecocidal, terracidal. pro-war, war criminal, blindly pro-US, fervently pro-Apartheid Israel, pro-apartheid, pro-nuclear terrorism, anti-child, anti-women, anti-LGBTQI+ , anti-Indigenous, anti-intergenerational justice and pro-intellectual child abuse. Former Australian Human Rights Commissioner, Professor Gillian Triggs, opined that the Coalition was “ideologically opposed to human rights”. And, as if that were not enough, the Coalition is extraordinarily incompetent – the economy is run as a blindly ecocidal Ponzi scheme based on high immigration, the gross national debt is heading towards A$1 trillion, and with a Carbon Price of $0 per tonne CO2-equivalent the Carbon Debt is $5 trillion, increasing at $0.6 trillion annually and at $50,000 per capita each year for under-30 year old Australians. In addition the Coalition Government has repeatedly failed in its COVID-19 response through allowing the coronavirus into Australia, deadly negligence over a COVID-19-infected passenger ship, much more deadly negligence over private Aged Care homes, tardy acquisition of vaccines and Rapid Antigen Tests (RATs), and a presently disastrously premature “let it rip” strategy that sees Australia now suffering as many daily new infection cases on a per capita basis as the US. However the Coalition is very good at winning votes through nationalism, imposed ignorance, jingoism, war, racism, nationalism, xenophobia (anti-Arab anti-Semitism and Sinophobia), and confected indignation. In the Djokovic Affair the Coalition quickly recognized the electoral pull of widespread indignation in 92% fully vaccinated Australia (that has suffered repeated tough Lockdowns) over a non-vaccinated tennis player – and indeed the world’s number 1 – being given special dispensation to enter Australia, and especially so because he is the world’s number 1 (evidence of the “democratic” Australian “tall poppy syndrome” or hatred of non-sporting excellence and expertise ) [1]. Thus Jenny Hocking (emeritus professor at Monash University, Distinguished Whitlam Fellow at the Whitlam Institute at Western Sydney University, award-winning biographer of Gough Whitlam and author of “The Palace Letters: The Queen, the governor-general, and the plot to dismiss Gough Whitlam”): “This clumsy attempt to shift the political focus, even if only momentarily, away from the government’s mounting Covid management and testing failures, was already unravelling. The inconvenient fact of Djokovic’s existing visa only reinforced Morrison’s habitual carelessness with the truth and highlighted the brazen political opportunism at its core” [1].
(7). Australian Immigration and Border Force have an appalling record of merciless racism, injustice and human rights abuse under “the rule of law”. Racist White Australia excluded non-Europeans from Australia for three quarters of a century by the 1901-1973 so-called White Australia Policy. However for years Australia has had emplaced a “New White Australia Policy” that has a rapid-access Sub-class 601 Electronic Travel Authority visa that can only be accessed by “Whites” (citizens of Canada, the US, New Zealand, and Western Europe) and certain “Honorary Whites” (citizens of Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan) – the rest, the variously ”Non-White” and “Honorary Non-White” citizens of Eastern Europe (including Serbia), South America, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific are excluded [26]. For over 2 decades Australia has been abusing refugees fleeing persecution in contravention of the Refugee Convention. and since 2013 Australia has been highly-abusively and indefinitely imprisoning thousands of boat-borne refugees (men, women and children) without charge or trial in off-shore concentration camps. My own multicultural family can tell all kinds of stories about Australian Immigration. Thus my father, a Jewish refugee from Nazism, luckily found safe haven in Australia in 1939 but because of his war-time technical work for the war effort was not incarcerated in a camp with Jewish and non-Jewish “enemy aliens”. In 1966 (7 years before the end of the White Australia Policy) I needed Immigration approval of the entry of my non-European fiancée but the officer behind the desk asked “Is your fiancée a prostitute?” to which I held my anger in check and simply stated “No sir” – he stamped the document, we married that year and were married for 52 years before her death. A gifted overseas relative sought entry and our last resort was to politicians – while a Labor premier and friend of her father felt unable to intervene, a Federal Liberal MP who had drunk whiskey and played poker with her father promptly secured the visa. Another relative about to board a plane to Australia realized that he lacked a visa – however representations via his office to a connection in the Australian Embassy immediately secured the requested visa. Novak Djokovic was imprisoned for several days in a prison also holding refugees who had been highly abusively imprisoned without charge or trial for as many as 9 years by the human rights-violating Australian Coalition Government. The Djokovic Affair is a blot on Australia but has at least shone an international light on the appalling plight of these sorely abused refugees.
(8). Novak Djokovic is imprisoned together with highly abusively incarcerated long-term refugee prisoners. Novak Djokovic is imprisoned at the Park Royal Hotel, Melbourne, that is used to highly abusively imprison refugees Indeed a refugee fellow inmate of Novak Djokovic’s Melbourne prison, Mehdi Ali, has been illegally imprisoned from childhood onwards by the utterly despicable and child-abusing Australian Coalition Government for 9 years without charge or trial. Mehdi Ali: “It’s so sad that so many journalists contacted me yesterday to ask me about Djokovic. I’ve been in a cage for 9 years, I turn 24 today, and all you want to talk to me about is that … pretending to care by asking me how I am and then straight away asking questions about Djokovic” [27]. Decent Australians supporting the human rights of refugees have joined Australians protesting the incarceration of Novak Djokovic outside the prison.
(9). Horrendous Australian, Australian Immigration and Border Force abuses. Ordinary Aussies will fervently assert that they are not racist and actually believe it. There has been effective bipartisan agreement between Labor and the Coalition over highly abusive and indefinite detention of boat-borne refugees in concentration camps. Cowardly and unprincipled Labor has recently tried to “soften” its refugee policy to differentiate itself from the morally degenerate and child-abusing Coalition. However Labor is still resolute that boat-borne refugees will never be allowed to set foot in Australia except in cases of medical emergency. The one thing that politicians are good at is understanding the mind set of the voters and most Australians support the common child-abusing and anti-refugee policies of the Coalition and the present Labor opposition. Australians evidently retain an entrenched and longstanding fear of populous Asia that continues to be expressed in horrendous abuse of refugees and blind support for the nuclear terrorist, serial war criminal and genocidal policies of the US (Australia supported all post-1950 US Asian wars, atrocities associated with 40 million Asian deaths from violence and war-imposed deprivation). Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and Australian Immigration and Border Force are no exceptions to this. Thus Australian Immigration continues to highly abusively maltreat refugees in violation of international law, and Australia has legislated to imprison doctors, nurses and teachers exposing abuses in Australia’s off-shore refugee concentration camps,. Border Force has been involved in illegally forcing refugee boats back to Indonesia and forcing Tamils fleeing the Tamil Genocide back to Sri Lanka. Australia is among world leaders in 16 areas of climate criminality. US lackey, serial war criminal, egregiously climate criminal and Sinophobic Australia has formed the anti-China AUKUS (Australia, UK and US) and Quad (Australia, India, US and Japan) Alliances to contain a supposedly aggressive China. However in reality a mendacious, US lackey, nuclear terrorist, climate criminal, serial invader and subversive Australia has variously covertly or overtly violated all 81 Indo-Pacific countries from WW2 onwards [8, 9].
(10). US lackey Australia backs the US-imposed “rules based order” and US hostility to Serbia. Since the Japanese Pearl Harbor attack (December 1941) and the subsequent fall of Singapore to the Japanese (February 1942) White Australia with its pathological fear of Asia became totally committed to alliance with the US. Australia was involved in all post-1950 US Asian wars, atrocities associated with 40 million Asian deaths from violence and war-imposed deprivation. The particularly racist Coalition supported all these wars whereas its Labor opponents supported all but the Vietnam War and the Iraq War. Australia’s hostility to Serbia was intimately connected with slavish support of US policy as outlined below:
(a). With the help of intelligence agencies Australia, the US and various Latin American countries were havens for Nazi war criminals including Croatian Ustase war criminals after WW2 [28]. Australian Intelligence and the Australian army were party to helping Ustase terrorists in Australia, this prompting the raid on the Melbourne HQ of the Australian Security and Intelligence Organization (ASIO) by the Whitlam Labor Government Attorney General, Lionel Murphy, before the UK- and US-complicit removal of the Whitlam Government on 11 November1975. The Ustase were evidently involved in terrorist bombings of Yugoslav consulates in Melbourne and Sydney.
(b). The US had a long-standing hostility to Serbia because in WW2 the Serbian partisans under Tito who heroically fought the German, Italian and Croatian fascists were communists as was the post-WW2 Federal Republic of Yugoslavia under Tito. During the Balkans War the US bombed Serbia.
(c). Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT}: “Australia was one of the first countries to recognise Kosovo’s statehood in 2008… Australia recognised Kosovo on 19 February 2008 and established diplomatic relations on 21 May 2008… Kosovo declared independence from Serbia on 17 February 2008, although this declaration has not been universally accepted. Kosovo claims it is currently recognized by 114 countries” [29].
(d). The US rejects the authority of the International Criminal Court (ICC) but nevertheless has played a dominant role in the so-called “rules based order” including the prosecution of war criminals. However the US-biased ICC in practice has adopted a definition of “war criminal” that is only concerned with non-European countries that the US doesn’t like plus Serbs (for an analysis of accounts of this bias see “The Politics of Genocide” by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson [30] and my review of this key book [31]). Thus various leaders of Serbian regular and irregular forces in the 1990s Balkans War (200,000 killed) were properly arraigned before the ICC and rightly convicted of war crimes. Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic was rejected by the Serbian people in 2000 and sent to The Hague for trial before the ICC [32], but George W. Bush, Tony Blair, their associates and a succession of Australian leaders from US “asset” Bob Hawke onwards have not been arraigned for horrendous war crimes in Iraq and/or Afghanistan. Thus deaths from violence and war-imposed deprivation (half of them children) total 5 million (Iraq, 1990-2011) and 7 million (Afghanistan, 2001 onwards) [18].
(e). The Australian Government applies limited sanctions against the Former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia) [33].
(11). Before the Federal Court supported Dokovic’s appeal, the Australian Government indicated its preparedness to re-arrest, criminalize and deport Djokovic even if the Federal Court supported him. The instinctively evil and rotten Australian Coalition Government unsuccessfully sought to delay the Federal Court hearing of Novak Djokovic’s appeal over his detention and exclusion from the Australian Open. However the Australian Coalition Government has made it clear that even though the Federal Court has found in favour of Novak Djokovic, the Immigration Minister has the power of “Ministerial discretion” to over-ride the decision, re-arrest him and deport him – this would mean that Djokovic would be excluded from Australia and from contesting the Australian Open for 3 years.
(12). Djokovic’s unwise, dangerous and self-admittedly ignorant opposition to vaccination does not excuse his vile treatment at the hands of the duplicitous Australian Government. Novak Djokovic is opposed to mandatory vaccination and indeed the Australian medical Association (AMA) has stated the very same policy position: “In general, vaccines should only be given to individuals with appropriate consent” [34]. However while the AMA, and scientists, health bodies and health workers around the world overwhelmingly support COVID-19 vaccination, Djokovic (for all that he admits lack of expertise in the matter), opposes vaccination for himself and by implication for others [35]. His eminence as one of the world’s greatest sporting heroes and his opposition to vaccination have no doubt contributed to only 47% of Serbs being vaccinated against COVID-19 as compared to 78% of Australians and 76% of New Zealanders [36]. Novak Djokovic and Serbs should consider the following latest COVID-19 statistics: For Serbia total deaths 12,912, population 8.7 million, deaths per million of population 1,487; for Australia 2,387 deaths, population 25.9 million, deaths per million of population 92; for New Zealand 51 deaths, population 5.0 million, deaths per million of population 10 [37]. Assuming the New Zealand Covid Pandemic result is as good as it gets for a European country, bad personal, societal and government COVID-19 policy in Serbia has killed 1,477 per million x 8.7 million = 12,850 Serbs so far in the 2 years of the COVID-19 Pandemic. In the same period under the incompetent and fervently neoliberal Australian Coalition Government its bad decisions have killed 82 per million x 25.9 million = 2,124 Australians. However this deadly harvest does not excuse Australia’s vile and dishonest treatment of Novak Djokovic.
Final comments and conclusions.
The fundamental issue in the Djokovic Affair is that Novak Djokovic went through all the required procedures, satisfied 2 expert medical panels, and was issued with a valid visa by Australian Immigration. He travelled to distant Australia with his support staff but on arrival was arrested, imprisoned and bullied by Australian Border Force, his visa having been cancelled. A Czech player and a tennis official were deceived and imprisoned in the same way. The immediate consequence for Australia will be that trust will be damaged in any prospective deals with Australia, the Coalition and with the Australian Government. As a decent Australian any trust I had in the Coalition totally evaporated 60 years ago with its support for the genocidal Vietnam War, and my response has been endlessly confirmed by vile Coalition actions ever since.
The US lackey Australian Coalition Government has severely damaged its relations and trade with tis biggest trading partner China by endlessly provocative and undiplomatic attacks. The deliberate strategy behind this crazy behaviour is that Australia fears and hates Asia, and for 70 years has had a core policy of trying to maximize US military presence in Asia. However the economic cost to Australia is escalating, with the present loss of perhaps as much as $40 billion of annual trade with China. The need for Australia to diversify its trade to Europe will be hampered by its betrayal of France through cancelling the already operating A$90 billion French submarine deal. Australia has deeply offended the Czech republic, an EU member, by deceiving and then deporting a Czech tennis player. And now Australia has likewise deeply offended Serbia that hopes to become an EU member. Duplicitous Australia faces indignant opposition when it attempts to get a favourable trade deals with the EU.
The endlessly mendacious Australian Coalition Government continues to lie, deceive, rob, bully and bluster at the expense of Humanity. The maltreatment of world number 1 tennis player Novak Djokovic is merely another example of Coalition malfeasance, and coincidentally has brought to the world’s attention to the desperate plight of the refugees highly abusively and indefinitely imprisoned without charge or trial in the same place in Melbourne. The Australian Government had good reasons to reject Djokovic’s application in the first place but chose to go down a duplicitous, mendacious and bullying route to win votes in the forthcoming Federal election. Australia and the World are waiting to see if the Australian Government will over-ride the decision of the Federal Court and exercise ”Ministerial discretion” to re-imprison and deport Novak Djokovic.
At the high end of the scale of Australian criminality is its deep complicit in nuclear terrorism and climate criminality that are the 2 key existential threats to Humanity and the Biosphere. Australia is variously a leading supporter of US, UK, French and Apartheid Israeli nuclear terrorism, and is among world leaders in 16 areas of climate criminality. Australia has a compulsory and preferential voting system, and decent Australians will utterly reject the Coalition, vote I Green and put the Coalition last.
References.
[1]. Jenny Hocking, ”Scott Morrison, Novak Djokovic and the dark arts of political manipulation”, Pearls & Irritations, 11 January 2022: https://johnmenadue.com/scott-morrison-and-the-dark-arts-of-political-manipulation/ .
[2]. ““Rules are rules”: Australia denies entry to Novak Djokovic”, Al Jazeera, 5 January 2022: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/5/australia-cancels-novak-djokovic-visa .
[3]. Josie Taylor, Joseph Dunstan and Dana Morse, “Novak Djokovic wins court battle, free to play in Australian Open”, ABC News, 10 January 2022: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-10/novak-djokovic-australian-deportation-court-hearing-melbourne/100747256 .
[4]. John Menadue, “What a shambles: a tangled net for Scott Morrison and Novak Djokovic”, Pearls & Irritations, 8 January 2022: https://johnmenadue.com/what-a-shambles-a-tangled-net-for-scott-morrison-and-novak-djokovic/
[5]. Abul Rizvi, “Djokovic farce borne of multiple failures”, Sydney Morning Herald, 7 January 2020: https://todayspaper.smedia.com.au/smh/shared/ShowArticle.aspx?doc=SMH%2F2022%2F01%2F07&entity=Ar02303&sk=306AFBA1&mode=text .
[6]. Andrew Greene, “Australian Border Force cancels tennis player Renata Voráčová’s visa ahead of Australian Open” , ABC News, 8 January 2022: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-07/australian-open-renata-vorackova-visa-border-force/100745226 .
[7]. Andrew Greene, “Czech tennis player Renata Voráčová deported from Australia after visa cancellation”, ABC News, 8 January 2020: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-08/czech-tennis-player-renata-vor%C3%A1%C4%8Dov%C3%A1-deported-from-australia/100746080 .
[8]. Gideon Polya, “AUKUS & Quad In Context: Australia Violates All Indo-Pacific countries”, Countercurrents, 10 December 2021: https://countercurrents.org/2021/12/aukus-quad-in-context-australia-violates-all-indo-pacific-countries/ .
[9]. Gideon Polya, “Australia violates all Indo-Pacific countries”, Stop state terrorism, 9 December 2021: https://sites.google.com/site/stopstateterrorism/2021-12-09-australia-violates-all-indo-pacific-countries .
[10]. Nassim Khadem and Gareth Hutchens, “Senate demand for JobKeeper data escalates to threat of fines or jail for ATO boss”, ABC News, 3 September 2021: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-03/ato-boss-threatened-jail-if-doesnt-release-jobkeeper-data/100428868 .
[11]. “Robodebt scheme”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robodebt_scheme .
[12]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, G.M. Polya, 2007 (containing an avoidable mortality-related history of every country and now available for free perusal here: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); an extensively revised and updated 2021 version is being prepared for publication.
[13]. “Stop state terrorism”: https://sites.google.com/site/stopstateterrorism/ .
[14]. Jonathan Kearsley, Eryk Bagshaw and Anthony Galloway, ‘If you make China the enemy, China will be the enemy’: Beijing’s fresh threat to Australia”, Sydney Morning Herald, 18 November 2020: https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/if-you-make-china-the-enemy-china-will-be-the-enemy-beijing-s-fresh-threat-to-australia-20201118-p56fqs.html .
[15]. Elizabeth Knight, “Australia’s diplomatic divorce with China is getting more expensive”, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 January 2021: https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/australia-s-diplomatic-divorce-with-china-is-getting-more-expensive-20210114-p56u5n.html .
[16]. Gideon Polya, “Carbon Debt & Dumping – Climate Criminal Australia Hugely Subsidizes Meat, Grain & Wine Exports To China”, Countercurrents, 31 August 2020: https://countercurrents.org/2020/08/carbon-debt-dumping-climate-criminal-australia-hugely-subsidizes-meat-grain-wine-exports-to-china/ .
[17]. Gideon Polya, “Climate Crisis, Climate Genocide & Solutions”, Korsgaard Publishing, Germany 2021.
[18]. Gideon Polya, “US-imposed,, Post-9/11 Muslim Holocasut & Muslim Genocide”, Korsgaard Publishing, Germany 2020.
[19]. Gideon Polya, “Accredited Remote Learning (ARL) (Distance Learning, DL) to maximize Deep Learning”, Free University Education: https://sites.google.com/site/freeuniversityeducation/accredited-remote-learning .
[20]. Gideon Polya, “Review of Global Distance Learning (DL) systems”, Free University Education: https://sites.google.com/site/freeuniversityeducation/distance-learning .
[21]. Free University Education: https://sites.google.com/site/freeuniversityeducation/home .
[22]. Gideon Polya, “50 Reasons For Free University Education As We Bequeath The Young A Dying Planet“, Countercurrents, 19 March 2017: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/03/19/50-reasons-for-free-university-education-as-we-bequeath-the-young-a-dying-planet/ .
[23]. Gideon Polya, “Crisis in our universities”, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Radio National, Ockham’s Razor, 19 August 2001: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/crisis-in-our-universities/3490214#transcript .
[24]. MOOCs: https://www.mooc.org/ .
[25]. Daniel Hurst, “Australia’s billionaires became 50% richer during pandemic”, The Guardian, 29 December 2020: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/dec/29/australias-billionaires-became-50-richer-during-pandemic .
[26]. Sub-class 601 Electronic Travel Authority : https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/getting-a-visa/visa-listing/electronic-travel-authority-601#Eligibility .
[27]. Ellie Mitchell and Evan Young “Novak Djokovic’s visa debacle throws spotlight on plight of detained asylum seekers”, SBS News, 6 January 2022: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/novak-djokovic-s-visa-debacle-throws-spotlight-on-plight-of-detained-asylum-seekers/dcd835e1-5bae-4d40-bc8b-8a7e0050d467 .
[28] .John Loftus and Mark Aarons, “The Secret War Against the Jews”, St. Martins Press, 2000.
[29]. DFAT, “Kosovo country brief”: https://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/kosovo/kosovo-country-brief .
[30]. Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, “The Politics of Genocide” , Monthly Review Press, 2010.
[31]. Gideon Polya, “Book Review: “The Politics Of Genocide” By Edward Herman And David Peterson”, Countercurrents, 5 December, 2011: https://countercurrents.org/polya051211.htm .
[32]. “Serbia in the Yugoslav wars”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbia_in_the_Yugoslav_Wars .
[33]. Australian Government, DFAT, “Former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Sanctions regimes: https://www.dfat.gov.au/international-relations/security/sanctions/sanctions-regimes/Pages/former-federal-republic-yugoslavia-sanctions-regime .
[34]. “AMA statement on vaccination for COVID-19”: https://www.ama.com.au/sites/default/files/2020-11/AMA%20COVID%2019-VACCINE%20POLICY%20NOVEMBER%202020.pdf .
[35]. “What has Novak Djokovic actually said about vaccines?”, BBC News, 7 January 2022: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-59897918 .
[36]. Google: “World in data, COVID-19 vaccine”.
[37]. Worldometer, “COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic”: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ .
Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia over 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, notably a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds”. He has also published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” and “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History”. He has recently published “US-imposed Post-9-11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide” (2020), and “Climate Crisis, Climate Genocide & Solutions” (2021). For images of Gideon Polya’s huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ .
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