WORST PotUS EVER!
The worst thing about the shoe-throwing incident was the timing and choice of shoe. It should have been done years ago and with a bloody great big stiletto!
Filed under: APEC, Australia, George W. Bush, Iraq, John Howard, Politics, War
Australia’s worst ever Prime Minister, the lamentable John W. Howard, must be suffering some sort of power-induced blindness as he appears to be the only leader in the West who cannot see how the war in Iraq has turned into a bloody disaster of dead and maimed civilians.
On his flying visit to Iraq, even George Bush Jnr, architect of the greatest foreign policy fuck-up since World War I, started to speculate that his government may start reducing its exposure to Iraq’s bloody civil war – the one the Americans started.
But here in Australia we see things differently, with Prime Minister Bonsaii claiming it would be ‘objectionable’ for the Australian Government to do so.
Well no. A staged withdrawal of troops in Iraq is not objectionable. What is objectionable is the ongoing slaughter of civilians, which now sees 77,000 people pushing up daisies (http://www.iraqbodycount.org/).
In the 1960’s in Australia, that poor prime ministerial swimmer Harold Hold pledged Australians were ’all the way with LBJ’. Now, nearly forty years later we find ourselves in the similar position of let’s ‘Keep the Push with Bush’.
Our leaders have blood on their hands that will stain their corrupt souls forever.
Filed under: ALP, Camp Delta, David Hicks, George W. Bush, Guantanamo Bay, John Howard, Kevin Rudd, Politics
In the show trial of the 21st century Australian terrorist supporter David Hicks has been sentenced to seven years imprisonment, with all but six years and nine months suspended. And while it is a good result for David Hicks, it is a failure of process and further proof that the fascists are alive and well and live at Kirribilli House and on Pennsylvania Avenue.
As part of his plea bargain, Hicks had to agree to drop allegations of abuse and anal probing at Guantanamo Bay and declare the Camp Delta Hilton the best five-star resort this side of Austwich. In addition, he has also been prevented from speaking to the media for a further twelve months, something quite unconstitutional in the US and so very convenient for the Australian prime manure John Howard.
These acts ensure David Hicks will be banged up when the Australian federal election is held in October, and muzzle some of the well deserved criticism about the five plus years Hicks has been held without charge. It is all very convenient and cosy and just wrong.
In Melbourne’s The Age newspaper on Sunday April 1, leading QC Robert Richter wrote a most scathing article. I have taken the liberty of re-publishing it on oneplanetmikey and it appears below.
“DAVID HICKS is coming home. At what price? Let us take stock. The charade that took place at Guantanamo Bay would have done Stalin’s show trials proud. First there was indefinite detention without charge. Then there was the torture, however the Bush lawyers, including his Attorney-General, might choose to describe it. Then there was the extorted confession of guilt.
Whatever Hicks may have done, the theatre of a voluntary plea of guilty when the choice is “rot in hell or say it’s true so you can go home” is worthy of The Grand Inquisitor. In Stalin’s as well as the German show trials of the 1930s, the essence of the display was the public confession, followed by the sentence. The Iranians and al-Qaeda still practise it, but isn’t that why we declared a War on Terror?
Then there was the silence. In the show trials, it was enforced by execution. In this instance it is enforced by threats of further punishment in both the US and Australia. The implications of the gag are staggering when added to the wholesale destruction of the rule of law.
Hundreds of years of what constituted the rule of law have been jettisoned so that Howard, Ruddock and Downer can pretend that Hicks is off their election agenda. Forget habeas corpus. Forget retrospective legislation. Forget coerced evidence and confessions. Forget commissions in which guilt has been predetermined. Forget prosecutors being judges in their own cause.
It’s OK as long as those who aided and abetted the destruction of these principles are back in office and remain unaccountable and can perpetuate the lie. If they lose office, the true story will emerge — but may no longer have impact.
The deal was simple: Go home. Shut up. If you dare to say you had no choice but to plead guilty, the US Military Commission will find you guilty of perjury and will call in a full seven-year sentence, over and above the five you’ve suffered unconvicted and uncharged. That will mean the Australian Attorney-General may not release you on licence for another seven years, or will — with the additional gags of control orders and other available means — make sure you cannot tell anyone what happened.
Apart from the loss of fundamental guarantees of freedom, another freedom — speech — is garrotted.
The best thing one can say about the process is that one day there may be a reckoning for this despicable episode, in which Australian ministers, all the way down from the Prime Minister, have been party to the commission of grave crimes under the Australian Criminal Code 1995, divisions 104 (Harming Australians Overseas) and 268D (denying a fair trial), because they have been criminally complicit under section 11.2.
By the time the US Supreme Court strikes down the whole festering sore in a couple of years — which most constitutional lawyers believe it will — we can only hope there will be another attorney-general in Australia who will have the guts to authorise proceedings against those who “aided, abetted, counselled or procured” the commission of the crimes to which I have referred. Let us not forget the war crimes trials after World War II, in which the German Nazi judges who prostituted their duty in the service of the political ideology that put them there were put on trial for what they did.
It may only be then that the full horror of what we allowed to happen to the rule of law in the name of political expediency will be revealed.”
With that so eloquently expressed, it will be people like Robert Richter who will uncover the truth. Unfortunately this ain’t going to happen until there is a change of government in Australia, and then only if Kevin Rudd and the ALP have the guts to convene a Royal Commission into what David Hicks did, what happened to him after he was sold by the Northern Alliance to the US, and what role the Australian Governmet had in supporting both the military commission and Hicks’ egregious and criminal detention without trial. There will be a day of reckoning, but I fear it will only occur after little Johnny Howard and his coconut-headed cohorts have shuffled off this mortal coil and spend eternity knee deep in burning dog shit. Let’s hope.
It is hardly surprising David Hicks has pleaded guilty to “material support of terrorism.” If it had been me and I had to endure his conditions, I would have also confessed to having had lunch with Brian Burke. Hick’s plea does not equal a confession as he has been held under duress, simply by being banged up like a dog for more than five years. His confession is suspect and therefore most unreliable. In the US, the Centre for Constitutional Rights issued this statement about the plea and process. “Hick’s guilty plea should not be seen as legitimising in any way an utterly illegal system of off-shore penal colonies, abuse, and trials that violate fundamental due process rights.” By all appearances he put his hand up in guilt to escape the pain, suffering and humiliation brought bt the Americans and their 21st centurary concentration camp.
If there is a war criminal in this revolting spectacle it is he who I loathe, John Winston Howard, the prime minature of Australia. In the UK, Tony Blair refused to let his citizens appear before the military commission, due to concerns with the process and legitimacy of the commission. But no, not here. Our little Johnny Numbnut and his attorney general, cuddly Phil approved and supported this process, claiming it was needed to bring Hicks to justice. In doing so, they jumped into bed with the devil and sold an Australian for the grace and favour of George W.. It may have been expedient for the bastards to do so, but to jump into bed with the 43rd shows what little men they are.
So today David Hicks has been dished up a justice that should have been thrown out due to its vile taste.
Someone needs to hang, and it ain’t David Hicks.
It has been four long years folks but the war is going swimmingly and see no reason for it to end. I’m not sure who is winning, but remember folks War is Peace and the economy is booming so it ain’t half bad. The British Medical Journal The Lancet reports that 100, 000 have shuffled off this mortal coil, while 3,228 US soldiers are pushing up the daisies.
Four years ago, I walked the length of Swanston Street here in Melbourne. I was not alone, as there were about 200, 000 other folk with me. There were men in suits, pensioners with walkers, young people, old people, the shirtlifters and the shirtlifted. We were a unified force. The march was supposed to e from the State Library to Federation Square, a distance of about 2km. But the march was less of a march, because the crowd that turned up stretched from the State Library to Federation Square.But it didn’t matter. We went to war and people died. We the people were ignored. The war went on and more people died. And the war will continue to go on and people will continue to die because we the people are ignored.
So Happy Birthday to the War and good luck to everyone else, because we are going to need it. Bush, Blair and Howard have sold us short. History will sell them even shorter.
