Thursday, 1 January 2009
Wednesday, 31 December 2008
Twittering Gaza in December 2008
#Israel allows some 100 lorries of humanitarian supplies to cross into #Gaza in coordination with Palestinian Authority
at http://twitter.com/ajgaza
If Rumsfeld and Ashcroft go before the courts, can Bush, Blair and Howard be far behind?
Some of the best news to come out of 2008 turned up in News Week earlier this month.
The United States, like many countries, has a bad habit of committing wartime excesses and an even worse record of accounting for them afterward. But a remarkable string of recent events suggests that may finally be changing—and that top Bush administration officials could soon face legal jeopardy for prisoner abuse committed under their watch in the war on terror.
In early December, in a highly unusual move, a federal court in New York agreed to rehear a lawsuit against former Attorney General John Ashcroft brought by a Canadian citizen, Maher Arar. (Arar was a victim of the administration's extraordinary rendition program: he was seized by U.S. officials in 2002 while in transit through Kennedy Airport and deported to Syria, where he was tortured.) Then, on Dec. 15, the Supreme Court revived a lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld by four Guantánamo detainees alleging abuse there—a reminder that the court, unlike the White House, will extend Constitutional protections to foreigners at Gitmo. Finally, in the same week the Senate Armed Service Committee, led by Carl Levin and John McCain, released a blistering report specifically blaming key administration figures for prisoner mistreatment and interrogation techniques that broke the law. The bipartisan report reads like a brief for the prosecution—calling, for example, Rumsfeld's behavior a "direct cause" of abuse. Analysts say it gives a green light to prosecutors, and supplies them with political cover and factual ammunition. Administration officials, with a few exceptions, deny wrongdoing. Vice President Dick Cheney says there was nothing improper with U.S. interrogation techniques—"we don't do torture," he repeated in an ABC interview on Dec. 15. The government blamed the worst abuses, such as those at Abu Ghraib, on a few bad apples.
High-level charges, if they come, would be a first in U.S. history. "Traditionally we've caught some poor bastard down low and not gone up the chain," says Burt Neuborne, a constitutional expert and Supreme Court lawyer at NYU. Prosecutions may well be forestalled if Bush issues a blanket pardon in his final days, as Neuborne and many other experts now expect. (Some see Cheney's recent defiant-sounding admission of his own role in approving waterboarding as an attempt to force Bush's hand.)
Now the Bush Administration may still be able to sidestep American laws, but one has to wonder if the day is drawing nearer when the Iraqi Government will have the courage to take the United States, Britain and Australia before The Hague on the basis of breaches of international law and war crimes.
Saffin ends the year as she began it - with good news for the NSW North Coast
Photograph showing Federal Member for Page, Janelle Saffin, with Big Scrub Landcare Group chairman, Dr Tony Parkes, in regenerated lowland subtropical rainforest at Binna Burra.The Northern Star reported last Monday:
THE TREES towering over Dr Tony Parkes are only 16 years old, yet they show what is possible when the Big Scrub Landcare Group decides to regenerate a forest.
Now it has bigger, more ambitious plans.
The environmental group, whose myriad partners include Rous Water and every local council from the Clarence to the Tweed, has just won a $369,000 Federal Government grant to rehabilitate some of the most significant lowland rainforest remnants in the country.
“Some of the vegetation around here is 20-odd million years old, and can trace its genesis back to 100 million years ago,” Dr Parkes said. “We are dealing with a very ancient rainforest that has evolved over time.”
The Member for Page has had a charmed year in the local media and is held in high esteem by many in local communities and groups which have benefited this year from Federal Labor funding.
However, when push comes to shove in 2009 and informed policy accompanied by firm action is urgently required on climate change, water security, the environment and human rights; Ms. Saffin may have to work harder to retain that political honeymoon mood within an electorate which cannot be brought.A personal and poltically incorrect list of the leading Aussie idiots and semi-idiots of 2008
For their active support of climate change denialism in the face of evidence that anthromorphic global warming is occurring:
- Dr John Nicol
- David Archibald
- Professor Bob Carter
- Professor Lance Endersbee
- Dr David Evans
- Viv Forbes
- William Kininmonth
- John McLean
- Professor Cliff Ollier
- Professor Ian Plimer
- Dr Walter Starck
- Dr Tom Quirk
- Tim Blair
- Andrew Bolt
- Jennifer Marohasy
For their sheer political ineptitude in Federal Opposition:
- Malcolm Turnbull
- Brendan Nelson
- Julie Bishop
- Warren Truss
- Tony Abbott
- Joe Hockey
- Wilson Tuckey
- Alby Shultz
My personal favourites were the collective dummy spit after losing government which saw the Coalition Opposition force both the Speaker and Acting-Speaker to suspend the House of Reps and the Tuckey-Shultz boycott of the historic Apology to the Stolen Generation.
Sheer political ineptitude as an individual state MP:
- Steve Cansdell (Nationals MP for Clarence) - constantly bleating to the media but never actually getting anything done in Macquarie Street.
- Luke Hartsuyker (Nationals MP for Cowper) - the best instances of his performance can be found here and here.
- The Labor Iemma & Rees governments in New South Wales - enough said!
- Kevin Rudd - failing to actually create policy which will keep his election promises on water security, climate change etc.,
- Peter Garrett - failing to protect the environment across Australia when large commercial interests are involved and abandoning the whales in Antarctica
- Stephen Conroy - for being his politically dishonest and prissy self
- Jenny Macklin - ensuring the former Howard Government's racist policy towards indigenous remote communities continues
- Julia Gillard - failing to eradicate some of the most contentious elements of the former Howard Government's WorkChoices legislation
- The Young Liberals - trying to recreate McCarthyism in 2008. A free belly laugh at their expense can be found here.
Most inane blog:
- Australian Women Online - just read that blog's opinion on Internet filtering and debate here and here.
Most opinionated private citizen:
- Gerry Harvey - a very wealthy business man who obviously declared himself an expert on both 'no-hoper' welfare recipients, Centrelink payments and charitable donations.
Tuesday, 30 December 2008
As December draws to a close, a short list of quotes
Some rapes can be of minor effect on the victim.
Queensland Attorney-General Kerry Shine loses his gloss in a radio interview he now supposedly regrets.
I was shocked to read this article and find that none of the quotations bear any resemblance to what I sent in writing to the reporter. I have asked the news agency to remove the article from its website because it grossly misrepresents my written responses to the reporter as shown below.
Nihad Awad who optimistically expected better after doing an interview with Trend News Agency on modern Islam.
Judas betrayed his friend, Benedict Arnold his country, and now a brightly lit billboard on I-91 in Springfield accuses State Representative Angelo Puppolo of betraying the sanctity of marriage.
Lisa Tanner, CBS3 Springfield, with an unfortunate turn of phrase concerning the U.S. senator who came out in support of gay marriage.
NCV is in my opinion a slimy piece of dirty gutter risk taking "journalism at its worst".
A not so anonymous reader from Sydney.
If you think anyone is seriously going to consider setting up shop here with a mandatory internet filter and 12Mbit/s residential connections, you need to get out more. I've had friends leave Australia and take their business with them because our speeds are too slow to be remotely competitive. The mere fact that the filter is even on your agenda is spooking the people who aren't rolling on the floor laughing.
Posted by Alex12 on a Rudd Government consultation blog.
"In my view, the magistrate was correct in determining that, in respect of both the commonwealth and the NSW offences, the word 'person' included fictional or imaginary characters ...," the judge said.
And I suspect the Judge might have just inadvertantly granted human rights to cartoon characters.
Neil in Neil Gaiman's Journal on Monday 8 December 2008 on hearing that an Australian court dived fully-robed into a bowl of Fruit Loops.
Stephen Conroy appears to be completely immune to reality - the worse the situation gets, the rosier the picture he paints. Tomorrow he's probably going to come out with a statement that the filter will be powered by unicorns and reduce greenhouse gasses.
Stuart Anderson commenting via No Internet Censorship for Australia website on the Rudd Government plan to censor the Internet.
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