The only political event in the last twenty-four hours to provoke in me a smidgen of fleeting sadness, was the resignation of the two most admirable federal politicians in recent memory, Independents Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor.
While many around them succumbed (with little or no thought for the well-being of the country they were elected to serve) to bitterness, envy, misogyny,narcissistic rage and rampant idiocy, Windsor and Oakeshott stood firm, emanating decency, integrity, and, yes, that rarest of all virtues in our 21st century parliament, common sense, while all around them busied themselves with their daily obsequious capitulation to the demands of their lower, reptilian-brained selves.
On a personal level, I dislike Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard almost equally. But this should not matter. Ms Gillard undoubtedly achieved much while simultaneously behaving despicably towards asylum seekers and single parents. We have no idea what Mr Rudd might have achieved, since he was dumped without warning in his first term. We have now come full circle, a political ouroboros, its head devouring its body in obsessive self-absorption.
When Ms Gillard took over from Kevin Rudd after the coup, she drank from a poisoned chalice, as women in politics frequently do, brought in, as we are, to clear up the messes made by blokes. As well, we are a distraction from said messes, and make the party involved look progressive. Oh look! We’ll make a woman PM, for the first time evah, and that will take everyone’s mind off our chaos!
The repercussions of the coup were bound to be many, and like uranium rods, they have a lengthy half-life. How much better to install a woman to suffer the fall-out than to put a man at risk!
Now patriarchal order has been restored, the woman has gone, the blokes can get back to their business, fighting an election. Mr Rudd proved himself to be exceptionally adept in 2007, let’s hope none of his gloss has faded in the intervening and humiliating years. That he can lead the ALP to victory seems as likely as me learning how to sew, but if he can save a few seats, that will be better than nothing.
I am now returning to my blog break. I’m knitting fruit, in an attempt to dissuade the creatures that visit my kitchen every night from chewing on the real fruit in my full fruit bowl. Yes. A real woman keeps a full fruit bowl. When considering our political options, we should never forget that fact.
UPDATE ON CONVOY OF CLEAVAGE: WE ARE NOW IN THE NEW STATESMAN
No Place For Sheep 
I agree with you. What we’re seeing is a particularly clumsy three-ring circus. Back to your knitting 🙂
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I completely agree with your sentiments on the Independents, they had their constituencies at heart and did what I believe politicians are elected for! Also both are worthy members of the HOR and decent blokes with some measure of nous. It’s a shame they are leaving the Federal sphere although you cant argue with the reasons for doing so. Gillard, as I said elsewhere is a brilliant and competent Deputy, fine negotiator and deal maker, even good on the policy detail but she did all that at the cost of alienating large sections of the voting public and that is poor politics, its precisely what Kev does best and so I agree with the decision to change leaders because there is now a chance the Noalition wont get an automatic majority in both houses which would have been disastrous IMHO. The Senate may be salvagable now. On a completely unrelated note: do you have any idea how to knit or crochet a rastafarian wig? I might need one for an upcoming performance, I cant find one online anywhere!
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I really wish I could help you with the wig! But I don’t have a clue!
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I was sort of hoping the reason Rob Oakshott was resigning was so that he could run for President.
And that wool looks delicious! Perhaps I’ll sneak into your house in the middle of the night for a taste-test. Actually your observation about women and fruit bowls is amazingly prescient, and I think you may just have hit upon a gender difference that actually has some legitimacy as an intellectual touchstone!
My fruit bowl usually just contains a couple of shriveled lemons and the protective wrapping from a pawpaw.
What do other people have in their fruit bowls?
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I was actually referring to the early days of JGs leadership when some reporter went to her house and made a thing about her empty fruit bowl! Plus the kanga she’s knitting for some royal child
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Jennifer, what do you think of Abbott as our possible PM. You say that you dislike Julia and Kevin equally, where does he fit in all this.
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I think she has said that often enough, Helvi!
If Abbott actually had some policies we could discuss them. Since he has none he wants to reveal, we are left with discussing personalities, as the media has done for the last two or three years.
Abbott looked tired and out of sorts in parliament yesterday, as it appears Labor have outmanoeuvred him yet again.
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Will she bother finishing the kangaroo? I suppose she will have plenty of time on her hands now. (sighs)
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I see… well thank goodness for that! I can once again believe in gender equality.
Oh well, perhaps if Ms Gillard is granted a full-time secretary for life as part of her superannuation, she’ll have someone to replenish the fruit bowl for her, and all will be well once again.
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I tend to think the WW knitting aspect indicated that Gillard sensed the game was up and there was truly a sting in the tail of it for cretinous MSM:
“yes, you have consigned me to the drawing room, but the political glass ceiling is shattered and others will follow”.
The one skill she lacked was the skill that Rudd excels in, involving the gift of the gab.
Three years- virtually a term PM- Australia’s first woman in the job, consolidating the opening created by her and Rudd, before being falling to the manufactured political storm created by the Murdoch/Rinehart forces and their puppet Abbott, as well as myopic pockets of an ill-informed, disaffected public prone to foot-stamping on their hobby horses like kids in a nursery, regardless of the wider good, like fringe religious .
Rudd is the last card Labor has to play and that’s for survival rather than victory. It had reached the stage where it was damned it did and damned if it didn’t.
The idiot, despicable public may cavil as hard as hard as it wants on the colour of deck chairs on the Titanic, but unless it pulls its collective head out of its arse, it is going to realise the significance of all those TV news stories it has watched about Britain, the USA, Greece, Spain and Ireland, etc for the last six years, AFTER it’s too late.
It is about damage control, to allow for a footing for a rebuild.
It is about preventing giving the right such a majority in both houses that it institutes a roll back of everything the better Labor people have done in the way of policy and legislation.
There are no guarantees that it will work; if not Gillard will be joined at the circle by an old comrade she fell out with after September, or earlier.
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We could look at Gillard’s treatment as in some ways being a positive phase in our national conversation, because the rather silly notion that having a woman in power might mean that she needed as a member of the “weaker sex” to be mollycoddled and excused has been unceremoniously rejected here. And that’s not to say she didn’t hold down a difficult job under the really trying circumstances of a minority government that would probably have sapped the energies and enthusiasm of many a weaker person including most men.
I suppose that Rudd and Abbott would naturally beg to disagree, and even if they didn’t resort to sexism in so doing they’re probably not going to attack her record now because they’ll be thinking there but for the grace of providence go I. Perish the thought, that politics is a hard job that requires intellect and stamina that women can show as well as men can!
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What Gillard faced has brought sexism and misogyny front and centre in the forum of public opinion.
As she pointed out, the way has been eased for the next woman and the one after that.
Farewell and well done Julia.
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Doug that might have stood in the 1950’s but not today when we have 3 women on the high court and many in the lesser courts, we have had a woman GG, women governors, women CEO’s (if we just want women in the jobs bring back Meredith Hellicar, hey?), a police commissioner and deputy in SA, women premiers and many women in leadership roles all over the country who don’t whinge about sexism like Gillard does.
I was granted a divorce by a woman judge way back in 1978.
If she wasn’t in the business of torturing so many women she might get away with it and if Emily’s list wasn’t sexist she might get away with it.
So many claim that we need a woman just because she is a woman but here is a list to choose from to vote for.
Bronny Bishop
Julie Bishop
Sophie Mirabella
Marine Le Pen
Sarah Palin
Pauline Hanson
Maggie Thatcher
Michelle Bachmann
But I heard something interesting on ?Dirty Laundry on ABC 2 that I have never heard of. Apparently the knitting thing came about by Helen McCabe while McCabe is being drafted to Abbott’s office.
AS I was a knitter for almost 40 years I have no problem with Gillard knitting.
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OK, Marilyn I know you hate Gillard with a fury; but can you not find any good points regarding her, now she is leaving parliament?
She hardly said a word about sexism up until Abbott started spruiking about Slipper’s emails being sexist. That was the last straw, and kindled her excellent speech.
As for your list of women, I doubt either of us would want to piss on them if they were on fire! Thatcher is dead by the way; if you want to include dead ‘uns the list could be lengthened.
As for the knitting, what was she thinking? My mother was a fine knitter too, but I don’t think it was a good look for a Prime Minister; just one last political misjudgement from a woman who seemed to make political misjudgements at regular intervals.
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Gillard was great at getting negotiations and deals done and dusted and will still appear better at it than Rudd – who face it has a well deserved reputation for being a cautious ditherer – she was poor at the politics though, alienating large sections of traditional Labor voters to appease her ideological peers. Despite the worthiness of some of the reforms her manner and behavior was never prime ministerial – and she lost me for good when those bodies of the drowned Sri Lankans were left. She should have at a minimum ordered a 48 hour search or similar despite its likely futility. Anything less appears nasty, cruel, disrespectful and (cough) is in fact in breach of international maritime law. Still given how she got the leadership in the first place I guess it was hopelessly optimistic of me to expect anything better from her. She was supposed to be a Prime Minister! What was that crap? Gillard may also be exposed in coming days to investigation for matters buried in the past, I hope for her sake she has clean hands -: the ramifications for political criminal behavior can be dire….time will tell once she loses Parliamentary protection. As for her recent performances – Blue ties rants etc just put me to sleep, that kind of whining bored me in the 70’s and bores me today and usually makes me suspect hidden incompetence as does any other false assignment of blame for your own performance – has she ever heard of personal responsibility? Anyway she’s gone now, thanks Julia for your contribution, enjoy your knitting. More interesting to me is the parade of entitled prima donna’s now abandoning the party, this is a wonderful opportunity for Labor to recruit fresh faces and new energy. Their experience will be missed but there cronyism wont be. I’m not sure if Rudd can save Labor, if he can sticky tape enough seats (particularly in the Senate) back on for Labor that alone is a worthwhile reason for him regaining the job, it is never good for any Western democracy to have a sweeping annihilation of a major political group unless the opposition who becomes Government demonstrates extreme competence and reassures the electorate that things are being run well and everything is under control. I don’t see the LNP as having this level of expertise so if anything this coming election is for me a temporary re-alignment of the control of the ship. Probably Labors next best chance is in 6 years (2 terms) although Rudd may surprise and deprive Abbott of electoral oxygen well before then – interesting times. I wonder if Nova Peris is having second thoughts now though?
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Whoever you are, nonnymouse, that was an astute post.
DQ, Marilyn is not entirely off the mark- the prospects of a rout that was going destroy everything done over six years by both of them, made Julia Gillard’s position untenable.
I stoushed with people on the challenge day, lay down with a headache and woke up to find the challenge on.
I figured it would succeed, dirty politics or not (both sides) and had an insight that the situation was untenable and this had to be.
She could have walked on water and they would have
crucified her.
Worst of all she made serious political mistake that anonymous rightly suggests alienated too much of the grassroots vote, she was too captive to the loathed right
faction and too uncritical of the US, although I agree much of the mess on many issues was created also by the conservative press and Abbott’s openly redneck, race-baiting, sexist approach wedging Labor on these.
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Gillard made her final political mistakes the last day : one in calling on the vote and another in trying to be rid of Rudd by saying the loser should leave parliament. Naturally, she thought it would be Rudd, at least up until Shorten reached his agonising decision, and Wong did as well. Unlucky? Perhaps, but unlucky too often starts to add up to misjudgement, in my view.
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I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if she’d had enough and was prepared in a way to call time on the whole thing!
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I wonder about Nova too? Poor woman was held up as a token ventriloquist’s dummy and it was insulting to a woman who is a hero to most Australian’s through her brilliant sporting career. To dump a well respected senator for no reason and still not bother to consult with the labor membership in the NT was the sort of stuff of dictators.
And waiting 46 hours before even bothering to mount a rescue and then leaving the dead in the sea was just beyond horrendous.
Now I wouldn’t vote for the ALP if my life depended on it and haven’t since Hawke sold us to Murdoch in 1987.
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http://www.independentaustralia.net/?s=marilyn+shepherd&x=0&y=0
Perhaps Doug you might like to read some of my actually researched articles, most of which I got so many readers I was actually paid for them.
I have never had a lick of respect for Gillard and her self-immolation was pure hubris based on arrogance and self pity.
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Three emails were sexist and had nothing to do with anything at all, so what?
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You MUST be kidding us with that list, they’re all good reasons to vote for men instead!
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She might be just stirring the pot I think
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She has a long and illustrious career behind her on these things..
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It may be an imposter : not one “fucking moron” or “fucking deranged monster”; not even a “dingbat” or a “dumb as a frigging post”.
Can’t be Marilyn. Maybe her Nurse took over her keyboard? 🙂
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Gremlins!
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Precisely my point, so many women think we must vote for women because they are women. It that was true would they vote for these appalling creatures?
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You say “if that was true….”, I realise that the “if” part is meant to be about why some women vote for female politicians, but I reckon that the part in doubt is that “so many women” actually think so.
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Read your articles? I’d rather re-read Battlelines or Mein Kampf.
I know exactly what they contain; some of it I agree with, a lot I do not, as you well know.
We’ll agree to differ.
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So you are too dumb to read my opinion of the BER then?
Doug how can you fucking disagree if you don’t know what I wrote?
Shows what a pathetic dingbat you are and why I call you a dingbat.
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What do I disagree with? Tell me! You seem to know what my views are on every subject. (sarcasm drips across the blog)
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You are the one who said you won’t read what I said so you disagree with me.
Read the article on BER and tell me why you didn’t want to read it.
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Why should I? Give me one good reason!
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Because I ,make good arguments and research what I write rather well.
The BER article in particular you will like, it is a shot across the bow at the dimwitted Pyne.
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Modest, aren’t you?
I don’t think it is too difficult to write to expose the propaganda of the likes of Pyne; the difficulty is getting people not politically inclined to pay attention to the arguments.
You really don’t need to preach to the converted, ie me.
(BTW, I’ve been stirring you; I read your articles before the first comment above. And your articles are more readable than Battlelines and Mein Kampf. 🙂
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Jesus, I would hope so. Haven’t read Battlelines simply because there is not one word of Abbott’s I have any time for.
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Thanks for interrupting your leave, to pen another piece. Strong women will return to lead. Gillard was set upon by Rudd mainly, and he supplied much ammunition to the Coalition, who naturally used it in a political offense.
Rudd is barking mad imo, and whether the ALP win or lose, their first act as a caucus should be to drive a stake in to his godbothering, vacillating, narcissistic, and according to his own party psychopathic heart.
For such a bleeding heart Christian Cretin, Sunday Service Attending Fraud, his about turn on issues central to his “faith”, guaranteeing him a percent here and there, is nauseating.
I note the barely concealed contempt on the brave women’s faces left on his frontbench during the final hours of Parliament.
I would not even call him misogynist, as he is an everyogynist, as James Joyce would say.
A dark night will descend on all, if this Moonie wins the election, and women and the ALP will eventually suffer.
And he may very well win.
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It was not Rudd doing it, it might have been some who supported him but why would you believe the propaganda of the MSM while decrying the MSM.
Have you forgotten the dreadful way Rudd was treated by the same media.
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Divide and conquer. The real nigger in the woodpile ( yes, that’s right..nigger in the woodpile!!), apart from Rinehart, Abbott and Murdoch and the reactionary msm, has been the intellectual desert and ethical wasteland that is the soc-con. ALP right
They are destroying the ALP in preference to it being a Labor party. They are far closer to Abbott for a soul mate than the likes of Wong and co.
They are “gone” themselves and a measure of their character and outlook is that they drag Labor and the people of Australia down with them, rather than yield an inch on decency and reality.
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btw, great stoush, Marilyn and Doug!!
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Yeah, but he read the stuff didn’t he?
And today Rob Oakeshott pointred out finally that we don’t have any borders. Who would have thought.
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I almost commented, but thought better of it.
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I doubt that Oakeshott is an authority on international law.
We certainly do have borders; you don’t need a fence and a checkpoint manned by armed guards to have borders. You don’t have to believe me; ask some of your favourite refugee advocate lawyers whether or not we have borders. 🙂
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We do not have any fucking borders, we have a coastline and the ocean is not ours so where is the border you nincompoop.
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Where we say it is and international law agrees, you stupid fucking fool.
I’ve had it to here with your fucking insults. Expect trouble if you persist.
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WE have no fucking borders, and only minimal control over who is in the 12 nm contiguous zone from the coasts.
All borders are simply lines on the ground invented by people who want to grab a bit more ground, how then do you think we can grab a bit more sea? Jesus wept, I don’t know how you can be so frigging dumb.
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The statement that you don’t believe in borders does not consist of a legal reality. I want a humanitarian program too, but we won’t get one by acting completely unreasonably when challenged.
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What are you going on about Marilyn? Borders are lines on the map, seldom lines on the ground. What is your point?
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This has been explained for you at length in the past, so I don’t think the claim you’re making is appropriate and you should know why.
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It never ceases to amaze me how female and male “feminists” lock themselves in to misogynist theory such as Marx, Freud and Nietzsche. Edmund Burke described times such as ours, when Penny Wong could garrot a feminist PM and people of value flee to their pensions. If you don’t vote LNP at the next election you are not only a mug, but ignorant of liberal theory and history.
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Maybe some, even a lot of people may agree with you, but I want few few select policy outcomes that I don’t think Abbott’s liable to provide for this country.
I’m pro employment and anti austerity for a start. Pro action on climate change and very much in favour of leading the technological race to make that happen.
I’m in favour of a humanitarian approach to asylum seekers that neither major part knows the meaning of. And I’m for same sex marriage.
I’m for fairer distribution of wealth and more accountable authority and less middle class welfare.
So do any of these seem like the sort of things Abbott can deliver?
I don’t think so!!
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Seconded.
Leave the nineteenth century back in the nineteenth century.
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Have you noticed that no women resigned from the cabinet, so much for solidarity.
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Maybe all the males leaving got Emily’s list excited?
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Feminists? What feminists? I don’t know any.
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http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/rudd-toughens-boat-stand-20130701-2p7mh.html
Hating as I do to have said we need to be careful what we’d wished for, this does not look encouraging!
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See how it pans out, remember when several Sri Lankan middle class arrived they voluntarily elected to return to Sri Lanka once they saw the detention process. To me that frees up spaces for genuine refugees. It is just niave to think that all are arrive are genuine refugees and we do have a Visa/Immigration process that serves perfectly well for those wanting to arrive as new migrants.
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I see it as a dangerous step though.
Once you start using the language of economic migration in conjunction with our humanitarian programs the criteria are ever so slightly changed in a way that is open to abuse by racists.
I could sugar coat that by putting it a bit more subtly I suppose but I really don’t see the need because everyone knows that the volume of subtext around this issue far outweighs anything actually said on the matter!
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What do you think is a genuine refugee and why are not they not genuine human beings if we say they are not genuine refugees?
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I’ll out the question back to you, how do you personally distinguish between someone wanting to migrate,and someone who is wanting refuge? To me the difference is clear…but a lot of people seem to co-mingle the two…I’d be interested in your answer on what criteria you use….then apply it to some of those that have left voluntarily without pressure and see which category you would put them in.
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We’ll all be genuine refugees if Abbott gets in. Do you think Denmark could accommodate another 10 million Aussies??
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It took princess what’s-her face- we’d be lay-down miseres.
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It’s very clear, migrants move from one safe country to another and can go home anytime they want to.
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