Monday, April 23, 2007

OK so tell me this...

Today, I got told I did not get a job, a job that they acknowledge I could do quite well, because I was too dynamic. Um, too dynamic? This is a customer interaction role and I am "too dynamic"? WTF?????

Seriously, if you are responding to customer enquiries, and following up on problems they have identified, how can you be "too dynamic"?

Words fail me!!!

Friday, April 13, 2007

OK J HO!!! Enough, already!!!!

This just really gets my goat!!!!

Ban HIV-positive migrants: PM

*

April 13, 2007 - 1:00PM


HIV-positive people should be denied entry to Australia as migrants or refugees, Prime Minister John Howard says.

While saying he would like "more counsel" on the issue, Mr Howard said HIV positive people should not be allowed to migrate to Australia.

"My initial reaction is no (they should not be allowed in)," he told Southern Cross Broadcasting.

"There may be some humanitarian considerations that could temper that in certain cases but prima facie - no."

Mr Howard said Australia already stopped people with tuberculosis coming in and this was why he supported stopping HIV-positive people as well.

"That's why I say prima facie, my position is no - although there can be some circumstances where there may be a humanitarian reason and under certain conditions for that to occur, but generally speaking - no."

Mr Howard was commenting in response to new Victorian health department figures showing the number of HIV-positive people moving to the state had quadrupled in the past two years.

He said he would look at changing the law to stop HIV-positive people coming to Australia.

"I think we should have the most stringent possible conditions in relation to that nationwide and I know the health minister (Tony Abbott) is concerned about that and is examining ways of tightening things up and I think people are entitled to be concerned."

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/ban-hivpositive-migrants-pm/2007/04/13/1175971314887.html

Now, to me I fail to see what the problem is. It is not like HIV positive people are about to run rampant and infect everyone....

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

And one last Hicks related post for a while....

You can tell this has really annoyed me can't you....

There is a copy of the plea bargain details "here"

With all the talk of him not revealing any details of the treatment he has already admitted he suffered, what are we to make of "this???"


I feared they'd shoot me, Hicks said before gag



Mark Coultan Herald Correspondent at Guantanamo Bay and AAP
April 3, 2007



DAVID HICKS feared he would be shot if he did not co-operate with US interrogators, the Australian prisoner says in an affidavit for an English court case.

And his Australian lawyer says he was tortured during his time at Guantanamo Bay, contradicting Hicks's plea bargain statement, in which he said he had not been mistreated by the US.

Hicks, who has spent five years in the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after he was captured in Afghanistan in late 2001, last week pleaded guilty to a charge of giving material support to terrorists.

In the plea bargain document, Hicks said: "I have never been illegally treated by any person or persons while in the custody of the United States."

But the ABC's Four Corners last night reported that Hicks had recently signed an affidavit for an English court setting out ill treatment.

"I realised that if I did not cooperate with US interrogators, I might be shot," the ABC quoted Hicks as saying.

In the affidavit Hicks also claims that he was slapped, kicked, punched and spat on in Afghanistan, the ABC reported.

He could hear other detainees screaming in pain, saw the marks of their beatings and had a shotgun trained on him during interrogation.

Hicks says in the affidavit that by early 2003, he "felt that I had to ensure that whatever I did pleased the interrogators to keep from being physically abused, placed in isolation and remaining at Guantanamo for the rest of my life", the ABC reported.

He also details twice being taken off a US warship, flown to an unknown location and physically abused by US personnel for a total of 16 hours, although two US investigations have found that claim unsubstantiated.

The allegations were made in a document which was to have been presented to an appeal in London against the British Government's refusal to grant him citizenship.

In this he says he had been repeatedly hit on the back of a head with a rifle, slapped on the head, spat on, kicked, stepped on by troops and punched in the temple. He also claims that a piece of plastic had been forced into his rectum "for no apparent reason".

Hicks's Australian lawyer, David McLeod, made the torture allegation when asked about further interrogations that Hicks has agreed to undergo before he left Guantanamo Bay.

As part of his plea bargain, Hicks signed a document saying he would co-operate "fully, completely and truthfully in post-trial briefings and interviews".

Asked on Sunday about these interviews, Mr McLeod said: "Steps were taken this morning to introduce David to the interrogators here at Guantanamo and there will be a process which will unfold before he leaves. He will be asked to co-operate in a number of issues, but we don't see any problems."

When asked if this would take the same format as his previous interrogations, Mr McLeod said: "Well, hopefully without the torture this time."

His statement was provocative, given that Hicks is still waiting to be transferred to Australia.

Mr McLeod was able to speak more freely than Hicks's American lawyers because he was not a signatory to the plea bargain. Only US lawyers are allowed to represent the detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

End quote

Sort of makes a total mockery of what he agreed to in the plea bargain doesn't it? But, do they really want to charge him with perjury, knowing what could come out? I think not!!!!!

And of course, The Shrub's Supreme Court stacking is now showing too...

Poor America... Land of the free and the home of the brave... Well, you were. Now, the guardians of your constitution, seem willing to allow it to be walked all over, in the name of the war on terror.

Time to start a War on Western Govt's that have lost their way I think...

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/guantanamo-inmates-left-in-limbo/2007/04/03/1175366190344.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

Guantanamo inmates left in limbo



April 3, 2007 - 6:12AM


The US Supreme Court has decided dozens of Guantanamo Bay prisoners have no right to challenge their detention in a US federal court, handing the Bush administration a major victory for its "war on terror" legal strategy.

Only three of the nine judges on the court said they would be prepared to examine the case, one short of the number required for it to be taken up by justices under their rules of procedure.

The petition was filed on behalf of inmates of the Guantanamo camp in Cuba, who have little prospect of facing formal charges, a tribunal or a return to their home countries.

The Supreme Court's decision not to hear the case left intact a ruling by the Federal Appeals Court for the Washington DC Circuit in February that the inmates had no constitutional right to challenge their detention before federal courts because they were not US citizens or on US soil.

That ruling upheld a law passed last year barring designated "enemy combatants" from challenging their detention in the US court system.

Justices John Paul Stevens and Anthony Kennedy wrote in a statement that the court should not hear the appeal because other legal options for the detainees had not been exhausted.

In a dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer disagreed.

"I believe these questions deserve this court's immediate attention," he wrote.

"If petitioners are right about the law, immediate review may avoid an additional year or more of imprisonment. If they are wrong, our review is nevertheless appropriate to help establish constitutional boundaries."

The decision was greeted with regret by lawyers for inmates at Guantanamo Bay.

"It's tremendously disappointing," said David Cynamon, who represents Kuwaiti detainees.

"It would be my hope that Congress would now recognise that the ball is back in their court to give the detainees some basic rule of law here."

Vincent Warren, executive director of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, which represents other detainees, said Bush administration policies on the issue were a "sham".

"The Supreme Court has once more delayed the resolution of the fate of these detainees - three quarters of whom the military admits it will never charge - who have languished without any meaningful way to challenge their detention for more than five years."

The decision was the latest dramatic legal chapter in a fiery debate over the treatment of Guantanamo inmates that brought the "war on terror" into conflict with civil liberties provisions of the US constitution.

Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd, who is pushing new legislation that would restore basic rights to detainees, said the Supreme Court decision to decline the appeals was "extremely regrettable".

"It would have helped restore America's international credibility with respect to adherence to the rule of law," he said in a statement.

President George W. Bush has designated hundreds of suspected terrorists as "enemy combatants" and the United States has held them in Guantanamo for years without charge, pending appearances before military tribunals.

The Supreme Court ruled in June 2006 that the tribunals were illegal because they were not authorised by Congress - an omission the then Republican-controlled legislature remedied with legislation passed four months later.

The US government has said it plans to charge around 60 to 80 of those remaining at the camp, including the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks in 2001, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

It has said it plans to send a further 80 back home, leaving more than 200 inmates in legal limbo.

But the remaining detainees held at the US naval base in Guantanamo, which currently has around 385 inmates, argue they were not covered by provisions of the Military Commission Act that barred all suspects from challenging their detention in civilian courts.

The appeals court ruling rebuffed as "nonsense" the detainees' contention that the law had a loophole that allowed them to file so-called habeas corpus petitions that contest detention without formal charges or proof.

The appeals court also rejected the detainees' right to claim that the act violated the US constitution that said habeas corpus could be suspended only in times of rebellion or other extraordinary circumstances.

Does anyone else think the David Hicks deal stinks?

Well, yes, quite a few it seems....

I have been watching this unfold with something like open jawed disbelief. Fortunately I am not alone. Even conservative commentators in America are getting concerned...

Here is what Andrew Sullivan had to say....

"Hicks, Cheney, Howard"

01 Apr 2007 03:41 pm

So Cheney goes to Australia and meets with John Howard who tells him that the Hicks case is killing him in Australia, and he may lose the next election because of it. Hicks's case is then railroaded to the front of the Gitmo kangaro court line, and put through a "legal" process almost ludicrously inept, with two of Hicks' three lawyers thrown out on one day, then an abrupt plea-bargain, with a transparently insincere confession. Hicks is then given a mere nine months in jail in Australia, before being set free. Who negotiated the plea-bargain? Hicks' lawyer. Who did he negotiate with? Not the prosecutors, as would be normal, but Susan J. Crawford, the top military commission official. Who is Susan J. Crawford? She served as Dick Cheney's Inspector General while he was Defense Secretary. Money quote:

As the deal developed in recent weeks, Air Force Col. Morris Davis, the lead prosecutor for military commissions, and his team on the Hicks case were not in the loop. Davis said he learned about the plea agreement Monday morning when the plea papers were presented to him, and he said the prosecution team was unaware that discussions had been taking place.

"We got it before lunchtime, before the first session," Davis said at a news conference Friday night. In an interview later, he said the approved sentence of nine months shocked him. "I wasn't considering anything that didn't have two digits," he said, referring to a sentence of at least 10 years.

If you think this was in any way a legitimate court process, you're smoking something even George Michael would pay a lot of money for. It was a political deal, revealing the circus that the alleged Gitmo court system really is. For good measure, Hicks has a gag-order imposed so that he will not be able to speak of his alleged torture and abuse until after Howard faces re-election. Yes, we live in a banana republic. It certainly isn't a country ruled by law. It is ruled by one man and his accomplice.

End quote

Now, Andrew may not be the most conservative commentator around, he is moving to the left on a regular basis now it seems. But, he still writes in some right wing publications, and is very well connected in the Republican Party. He was at the love fest where Ann Coulter did that really bad Edwards is a faggot joke that got her in trouble. When he writes what he wrote above, you know it is true, and more importantly, something stinks to high heaven in the land of Gitmo....

Having said that, I love his last paragraph!!!! "If you think this was in any way a legitimate court process, you're smoking something even George Michael would pay a lot of money for." Indeed. Makes you wonder about J Ho and Downer and friends really, doesn't it???