Don’t you understand, John?

Apr 8, 2007 | Australian Values, Citizenship, Corruption, Democracy, Legal, OzPol Values, Terrorism, USPol, Values, War

Don’t you understand, John?

It wasn’t about David Hicks:

How Howard fucked himself whether Hicks came home or not.

 

Hicks might go away out of the political limelight but the way Howard has treated him will be the reason Howard loses the next election. If he does, Howard has shown what he is really like and how he really works. We will never trust him on any issue, not security, certainly, and not even the economy, because he has outed himself as just one more sleazy politician, which he is (and always was), although less ethical and more unscrupulous than most.

The government can’t use the fact of Hicks’s conviction for electoral advantage or to support its anti-terrorist credentials.

They can’t say he got what was coming to him. They can’t admit they had a hand in his release. They can’t say they approve or disapprove of the sentence, (which is a big blow for Billy Bunter, Minister for Fishnets, who said before the “trial”:

“   Material support for terrorism is an immensely difficu… an immensely serious charge”

– such a serious charge that Hicks was sentenced to an “immensely serious” 9 months. It would probably seem an eternity, however, if Hicks was forced to listen to 9 months of Billy Bunter prattling on and on in his nauseating way.)

The LATimes reports Hicks’s prosecution saying that

“  Today in this courtroom we are on the front line of the war on terrorism, face to face with the enemy,”

[…]

“If Hicks was such a menace to Western security, as the U.S. government has alleged since his arrest in December 2001, asked staff attorney Ben Wizner of the American Civil Liberties Union, “why was he given a sentence more appropriate for a drunk-driving offense?”

No-one really believed that Hicks was a real threat or even a real terrorist. But it was politically expedient for Howard and his echo-chamber to paint him so.

Robert Richter, QC, one of Australia’s most experienced criminal lawyers, said in a commentary for The Sunday Age that the trial was a sham that had wholly discredited the Pentagon’s war-crimes process.

“   The charade that took place at Guantánamo 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.”

All that is left is the nauseating and immoral way the Government utterly abandoned a fellow Australian, the way they “threw him overboard”, and that knowledge has sunk deep into the Australian political memory alongside the other blatantly cynical lie of “children overboard”; the way the Government railroaded him and sacrificed him to its own (hoped-for) electoral advantage and as a convenient platform for mealy-mouthed political posturing.

What Australians know is that it could have been them, or someone in their own family, that became a pawn caught in Howard’s cadaverous political claw. They know that Howard would not have helped them, either, unless he saw an electoral advantage, or until he saw electoral disadvantage in inaction.

And we have watched the apologists, the far-right echo-chamber of Ackermann, Bolt, Devine, Milne, Henderson et al characterise a process which has shredded and trashed all our concepts of decency, fairness, legality and justice, which is at best unlawful and at worst treasonous, as righteous. We have watched them spin the entire process and the outcome as proper and “justified”.

If the law and the values Australians have fought for could be so easily discarded for the sake of political gain, career advancement and a false sense of security in a world made increasingly afraid by our “saviours”, then the law and our values would be worthless. But they are not. And Australians know it.

Australians like their values and they reject the chatterers’ claims that what was done was justified.

Australians will not forget what Howard did to a fellow Australian to feed his own prideful pomposity.

Australians know that Howard is infatuated with the egregious vandalising of historical notions of justice which is the hallmark of the Bush administration and of the way in which Bush (and Rove and Cheney) have systematically politicised the American bureaucracy.

Australians have known all along that the entire Guantánamo Bay exercise was a legal stinkbomb. They now know for certain that the entire exercise was a political and not a legal process because they have seen the clear evidence that Hicks’s release was politically motivated and politically engineered – engineered to help a friend, John Howard, with his own political struggle.

Australians in their wisdom recognise the jaw-dropping cynicism of Howard and Bush in their machinations about the Hicks matter and Guantánamo. Howard supported Guantánamo, acquiesced in it and promoted it while the rest of the world, including the British, had long rejected Guantánamo as an abomination,

In September 2006, in Sydney, Britain’s last Lord Chancellor, now rebadged as its first Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, Lord Falconer, denounced Guantánamo as a “shocking affront to the principles of democracy”, accusing the United States of “deliberately seeking to put detainees beyond the rule of law…”

“   It is a part of the acceptance of the rule of law that the courts will be able to exercise jurisdiction over the executive.

“Otherwise the conduct of the executive is not defined and restrained by law.

“It is because of that principle, that the USA, deliberately seeking to put the detainees beyond the reach of the law in Guantánamo Bay, is so shocking an affront to the principles of democracy.

“Without independent judicial control, we cannot give effect to the essential values of our society.”

Appropriately enough, Lord Falconer made his comments in his Magna Carta Lecture. Magna Carta established constraints on the monarchy (or, now, the executive government). The concept of habeas corpus, a fundamental of British legal heritage, preceded even the Magna Carta. Habeas corpus enshrines the right of a person detained by the authorities to be brought before a court of law so that the legality of the detention may be examined. Habeas corpus was trashed in the US last year by Attorney General, Alberto Gonzalez, with the assistance of the Republican Party and probably under the guidance of John Yoo.

John Howard, by acquiescing in the inhuman abuse that is Guantánamo Bay, and by laws passed in Australia last year, is complicit in this fundamental assault on British-heritage legal systems.

Howard openly declared that Hicks had broken no Australian laws and therefore he was pleased to be able to have him punished by another country under their illegal system.

He was willing to, and did – as did both Ruddock and Downer – declare him guilty without his having ever been charged with any offence or any evidence tested. This is in contrast to long-standing Australian values: the right to a fair and speedy trial and the presumption of innocence.

Even Texans have tried to explain the traditional American system to other Americans:

“  In Texas, we have a fair trial and then the hanging,”

said Texas Republican, John Cornyn, ‘one of the White House’s staunchest allies on Capitol Hill’. He was defending Gonzalez’s right to be heard before being “sentenced” to political death over the US Attorneys affair.

And conservative(-ish), Andrew Sullivan, in The Atlantic Online, says

“   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.

My, what a surprise to see the ghastly hand of Dick Cheney over all of this!

Howard may wish that the argument was over and Hicks would cease being an issue. But the treatment of Hicks is already the main issue and the chain around Howard’s ankle attached to a block of concrete. It doesn’t matter if no-one ever mentions it again, because Howard has lost his credibility and his image as an Honest John, as someone dedicated to protect Australians, as someone who stands up for Australians. The Howard reputation is shot and nothing he can do now can change that.

Howard has shown himself to be a latter-day Pontius Pilate.

He washed his hands of Hicks and everyone knows it.

He did the same with Nguyen Tuong Van and left him to hang out to die in Singapore.

He showed similar compassion for Robert Jovocic.

He meekly acquiesced when AFP Commissioner, Michael Joseph Keelty, APM, delivered the Bali 9 – Australians who could have been dealt with in an Australian court – to the Indonesians on a deadly platter, potentially to face a firing squad.

On the other hand he showed actual concern and support for his “mates” in AWB through his and his Ministers’ timely amnesia.

Let’s be clear. Hicks is a dickhead. Probably. He is not a popular hero. He is no Ned Kelly.

It has never been about him. It has been about the rule of law. It has been about decency and propriety, about the treatment of him by this government and the political use of him by this Prime Minister.

John Howard can no longer pretend to be Australia’s political father figure. He’s shown himself to be just another politician who can’t be trusted.

We have seen what Howard did to one of the “sons” of his own country. We have seen, by contrast, what a real father does: he fights unconditionally for a son he loves, even when he disagrees with what he did.

When Australians compare John Howard with Terry Hicks they know whom they admire. And whom they despise. They know who is showing them how to be a real human being and a real Australian.

They now see all Howard’s fatuous gravitas for what it has always been – insincere, inauthentic, greedy, compassionless, political posturing. Howard, Australia now knows, is a small man of stunted character, an unethical man, a pretender, pretending that he is not the dork he has been all along.

Meanwhile, the ANU confers on the arrogant, racist despot of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, an honorary Doctorate so as to ingratiate itself with the Singapore government (which means Lee’s nepotistically installed son, effectively Van Nguyen’s executioner) for financial advantage (or, as they put it, “to further the university’s relationship with Singapore”). When such an award can be contemplated, much less approved, by an institution of higher learning and academic independence, Howard’s castration of Australia is almost complete.

Dear DIC

Mar 28, 2007 | Australian Values, Border Security, Citizenship, Cultural Values, Democracy, Freedom of Speech, Immigration, Legal, Media Values, OzPol Values, USPol, Values, War

Dear DIC

The Ultimate Dreamcometrue

 

I n the heat of the 2006 Spring Offensive over Australian values Values Australia was born in response to the cynical and ignorant way real Australian values were being abused by politicians and the sycophantic, right-wing media echo chamber.

It was a hard slog but slowly and surely the numbers began to rise and Values Australia was eventually recognised as a Top Five Google site.

And then…the ultimate success! The Deputy Secretary of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship — freshly cleansed of responsibility for Aborigines and migrants — complained in the most bureaucratically courteous and yet wounded tone about the Values Australia site.

The letter was variously described by others as “bizarre”, a “hoax” and (gloriously) “frog-shit”.

Values Australia had to respond to take advantage of this un-dreamt-of opportunity. (Or, as an Aussie medal-winner might say, “Issa dreamcometrue”.)

Here is an excerpt from the Department’s letter:

“I acknowledge that your website expressly states that it is a satire. However, I am very concerned that it gives the appearance of being an officially approved Australian Government website. I am concerned that some of the content may seriously damage Australia’s reputation overseas. It may also create confusion regarding the important business managed by the Department, including the processing of visa applications and the granting of Australian Citizenship. You have a right to express your views about the government but I consider that the website is potentially misleading and offensive. I request that you remove it immediately….

[…]

I would appreciate your notification within seven days of the date of receipt of this letter that you have taken that action. Otherwise the Department will consider whether to take any further action.”

The claims are addressed comprehensively in the following Values Australia response. We trust you will understand the deletion of the name and address:

Croydon NSW 2132
25 March 2007

Bob Correll
Deputy Secretary
Department of Immigration and Citizenship

Dear Mr Correll,

I have received a letter purporting to have come from your department. There are reasons for believing it may be a hoax and it is therefore attached for your information.

This letter threatens Values Australia with a number of laws and acts including Sections 53 (c) (d) and (eb) of the Trade Practices Act 1974, Section 68 of the Crimes Act 1914 and Section 39(2) of the Trade Marks Act 1995

One of the reasons it was thought this letter must be a hoax is that Section 68 of the Crimes Act 1914 was repealed in 2000 whereas the Values Australia website has only been online since September 2006. There may be other laws which are now more pertinent but it is unlikely that a competent government lawyer or the Deputy Secretary of a major government department would make such an embarrassing mistake if they were seriously trying to threaten a citizen.

However, on reflection, and taking into account the numerous far more embarrassing legal gaffes that have been made in recent history by your own department under its variety of names, and the government’s willingness in general to make threats on equally dubious legal grounds against Australian citizens, its willingness to push the legal envelope on refugees, not to mention acts which, according to everyone except government lawyers, contravene international law, and its eager acquiescence in illegal acts by other nations, it has been thought possible that this threat may in fact be genuine.

Section 39(2) of the Trade Marks Act 1995, which you mention (assuming for the moment that it was you and not a hoaxer) refers as far as we can tell to signs which so nearly resemble a sign as to be likely to be taken for it, this in particular reference to the Australian Coat of Arms].

You and your lawyers would have noted as they investigated the Values Australia website that there are a number of images to which you could be referring. There is no one image of which it might be said that “that is the one which is pretending to be the trademark”. Each of these images is merely an image. None of them is a modification in any way of the Australian Coat of Arms and each of them was generated as an original image from materials not remotely connected with the Australian Government.

None of the images is, or has ever been, intended as a trade mark, purports to be a trade mark, or has anywhere been claimed to be a trade mark.

Looking at the images it is clear to anyone remotely acquainted with the Australian Coat of Arms, and anyone who could pass any proposed Australian Citizenship Test, that none of them can be confused with it or could be “taken for it”. According to the official description of the Coat of Arms:

1) A shield is supported by a kangaroo and emu

2) A seven-pointed star sits above the shield

3) A wreath of gold and blue sits under the star

4) Golden wattle frames the shield and supporters

5) A scroll contains the word ‘Australia’.

This is not a description which fits any of the images on the Values Australia website.

a) The bird in every case is on the “wrong” side of the image and is usually a shape resembling an ostrich.

b) Where the bird, in one case only, is an emu it is looking directly at the viewer.

c) The kangaroo’s stance, when it is a stance, is different from that on the “real” Coat of Arms. The difference is variously the disposition of its arms and the direction the head is pointing.

d) In other iterations the kangaroo is reclining.

e) On most images on the site there is no kangaroo. A shape perhaps suggesting a koala is on the right hand side of the image.

f) There is no star, whether seven-pointed or not, on the values Australia image.

g) There is a representation of a crown. There is no crown anywhere on the “real” Coat of Arms.

h) On coloured images there is a rectangle below the crown which is red, blue and yellow.

i) There is no representation of wattle on any image.

j) On coloured images the foliage is clearly eucalyptus.

k) None of the images to which you may be referring have a scroll with the word “Australia”.

l) On images where there is a scroll it says either “Ministry of Mateship” or “Department of Values”.

m) Where there is a shield-shaped element discernible, it does not include any symbol of any of Australia’s six states.

n) Where a shield-shaped element can be discerned on the monotone versions there is no detail.

o) A coloured image bears a shield shape enclosing hands grasping prison bars, or perhaps the bars of a detention centre.

p) There is a distinctly non-Australian sash across the shape.

The third threat made in the letter is with Sections 53 (c) (d) and (eb) of the Trade Practices Act 1974, claiming that a case may be made of “passing off”.

In a landmark passing off case, Reckitt & Colman Ltd v Borden Inc [1990], Lord Oliver stated that a plaintiff must establish all of the following:

a goodwill or reputation attached to the goods or services…

Secondly, he must demonstrate a misrepresentation by the defendant to the public (whether intentional) leading or likely to lead the public to believe that the goods or services offered by him are goods or services of the plaintiff…

Thirdly, he must demonstrate that he suffers [loss or damage as a consequence of the erroneous belief that the goods or services of the defendant are the goods or services of the plaintiff].

a) Values Australia obviously cannot and does not offer or claim to offer the goods and services actually offered by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.

b) Not even a stupid person, let alone a “reasonable person”, could conclude that the so-called “services” offered on the Values Australia website would be confused with the real services offered by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship or that there is any intent to represent a limited range of satirical mugs, t-shirts, or “Fair Dinkum Aussie Mate ‘certificates’” – or, indeed, laughter -as being goods or services of, or sanctioned by, the Department.

c) Because the website does not offer, or pretend to offer, or represent that it offers, the actual goods and services offered by the Department, it is as impossible to demonstrate as it is silly to suggest that the Department has suffered or could suffer loss or damage of those services as a result of any confusion caused by the website. No person has ever contacted Values Australia with any question concerning citizenship or visa applications. In case anyone were to try, Values Australia has on the contrary been responsible and careful to avoid confusing really stupid people. The “Contact” page of the website has a link to the Department’s website with the words,

“If you are seeking information about real Australian visas or citizenship, we recommend you go to the official site: http://www.immi.gov.au.”

The header of the website has the statement, “Not an Australian Government site”, which links to the official DIC website.

Returning to the “forgery” threat made in the letter:

The test is intent to deceive, in the case of the repealed act, or of an intention to obtain a gain or cause a loss by inducing a public official to accept a document as genuine. I am confident that there is no public official who would accept the Values Australia website or any of its ‘materials’ as genuine, particularly to the extent of acting upon them. For example, no public official could conceivably accept the Fair Dinkum Aussie Mate Cetrificate as anything but a parody. Values Australia has not and has never had any intention to have any of its materials taken as, or presented by others as, genuine Commonwealth documents, which they quite transparently are not. To suggest otherwise is ludicrous.

The wording on the Fair Dinkum Aussie Mate Certificate includes:

I, the Minister of Fair Dinkum Aussie Values and Detention Centres hereby grant this Certificate of Fair Dinkum Aussie Mateship to the abovenamed applicant who shall be an Aussie Mate, no worries.

The parodied “Visor” stamp contains the following text:

Holder has promised not to blow anything up or molest daughters and has correctly recited “I, Lover”

True blue mate who has promised to sling me a slab

Approved for entry to pick fruit for a period of three months and must then visit Opera House

The following text appears on the home page:

Enriching Australia through the well-managed detention of innocent children

Australian values are to always give people a fair go. This ethic does not apply if your name is David Hicks.

Australia offers a wide range of lifestyle choices – both RSLs and Leagues Clubs.

In principle, we decide who comes here and how they come, but only if that is all right with Indonesia.

Australia values democracy. We love it so much we give it away, at the point of a gun if necessary. Dead Iraqis are a small price to pay for world peace.

Values Australia looks forward to hearing the Department argue that these statements could be misinterpreted or misconstrued as official, credible, or even potential Government policy, or that these statements could possibly be officially approved and that these statements would not immediately indicate to even the most unwary and unsophisticated visitor that the site was a parody, a satire and definitely not a government or government-sanctioned site.

The claims concerning the “title of an official government agency” are the main reason it is thought this letter may be a hoax.

a) The letter was correct in stating that the Values Australia website used the phrase “Department of Citizenship” in the text of one iteration of the header image. However the full text on that image was “Department of Citizenship and Fair Dinkum Values”. The first use of this phrase on the website was on or after 22 September 2006 when your Department’s name was the “Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs”. Your Department was subsequently renamed on or about 23 January 2007 to become the “Department of Immigration and Citizenship”.

b) The letter claims that the use of the phrase “Department of Citizenship” could be misleading and deceptive, but it is clearly not. No reasonable, or even really stupid, person could possibly believe that a department called the “Department of Citizenship and Fair Dinkum Values” would exist in reality.

c) Your Department is not and never was called the “Department of Citizenship”. It is now called the “Department of Immigration and Citizenship”.

d) Astonishingly, the letter claims that the use of the phrase “Department of Citizenship”

“could be seen as a misrepresentation made in the course of trade to perspective customers, which is calculated to injure the business or goodwill of another trader and which causes actual damage, or will probably do so.”

Values Australia fails to see how the use of the phrase “Department of Citizenship and Fair Dinkum Values” three months before the Department’s change of name could be construed either as an intentional “misrepresentation”, or as “calculated to injure”. There was no Department of Citizenship in existence, or planned, which Values Australia could possibly have intended to misrepresent or to injure by using those words. The writer gives Values Australia far too much credit for political clairvoyance to suggest that it could have known three months in advance that the head of the Minister would roll and the Department’s name be changed.

If Values Australia had such predictive abilities it would be in another, far more lucrative, business.

e) On the other hand, perhaps it would not have been such a stretch to foresee that, from DIMIA to DIMA to DIC, first Aborigines and then ethnic Australians would be cleansed from your Department by the Prime Minister.

f) The letter mentions the possibility of “misrepresentation made in the course of trade to perspective customers”.

Values Australia is not clear what a “perspective” customer might be. Perhaps it is one who views the site from a safe distance.

  

 

The letter purporting to be from you effects concern that

“some of the content may seriously damage Australia’s reputation overseas.”

The Department does not need Values Australia to damage Australia’s reputation overseas. Your department, in particular, in hand with the Attorney General’s Department and the Department of Foreign Affairs have been “seriously damaging” Australia’s reputation overseas for some years.

Your department’s ministerially admitted and well-documented dysfunctional corporate culture, characterised by callous disregard for humanity, basic morality and decency (all until fairly recently basic Australian values), and the astonishing ineptitude and resultant shameless blameshifting and denial which are so regularly publicly exposed – most recently in your new Minister’s embarrassment over Nauru, IOM and the UNHCR – have resulted all by themselves in immeasurably more damage to Australia’s reputation than the Values Australia website could possibly do if it wanted to, which it most definitely does not.

Australia used to have a reputation overseas as a decent, fair and tolerant country.

Now in just the last few years we have had the Cornelia Rau affair, Vivian Solon, Robert Jovicic, the ongoing humanitarian disgrace of the detention centres and the appalling and un-Australian treatment of refugees.

Values Australia understands that Villawood detainees are released into the Australian community, after four years in detention, not knowing a word of English. Not to help these people to learn English, when there has been so much opportunity over four years, is a disgrace and to require them to enter the community without the basic tools they need in order to survive is simply abuse.

Then there is David Hicks and Guantánamo, Australia’s capitulation to Indonesia over refugees from Irian Jaya and of course AWB. Naturally, Values Australia understands that the fury at Australia expressed by the United Nations, The US Congress and Canada over the AWB Affair pales into insignificance beside the light humour attempted on the Values Australia website.

The letter you may have written says,

“You have a right to express your views about the government but I consider that the website is potentially misleading and offensive.”

Values Australia is not sure it understands. Does this mean that Australian citizens may express their views so long as they are not offensive? It does not say offensive to whom. The Department’s website asserts that Australians are free to express their opinions about any topic. That Australia does not censor the media. That a person may criticise the government without fear of arrest. Is this only as long as they are not offensive? Is it offensive by definition to criticise the government? Values Australia is not aware of which law would cover that.

Values Australia, although it makes fun of elements of Australian culture and politics, is fiercely and proudly Australian, defending the real Australian values of decency and humanity and a fair go, from the constant, corrosive attacks by cynical, self-serving politicians and bureaucrats.

Values Australia sees what it does as positively enhancing Australia’s international reputation, as it knows for a fact that it does, by demonstrating that despite our politicians and their compliant servants, most real Australians are humane; that Australians do care about people elsewhere in the world; that Australians do disagree with the callousness of this government and its servants, and that Australians do have a sense of humour.

Bob, a person reported to Values Australia a conversation with his children when they had read some pages of the Values Australia website. “Are they allowed to say that?” they asked. “Won’t they get into trouble?”

This person was furious and said so. “How dare you!” he exploded. “Don’t you understand? You have free speech in this country. You are allowed to say what you think! People fought wars and died for that freedom! How dare you assume that you don’t have freedom of speech!”

Of course their belief that they couldn’t necessarily say what they thought if it was critical of the government was natural. In their short lives they had already seen so many of the liberties, rights and freedoms that had been fought for and cherished in Australia for so long being eroded and corroded under this government, and apparently and unfortunately with the acquiescence of people like you.

So Bob (assuming you wrote the letter), what is another little freedom quietly whittled away, another voice strangled, another turn of the screw of fear on an increasingly, and synthetically, anxious population? It’s not really you, after all. It’s the job, it’s the kids’ education, it’s the career, it’s the boss, it’s the Minister, it’s the PM. It’s not you, not really. At the end of the week you can still hop in the Volvo and tootle down to the weekender at Moruya to bask in the knowledge of a week well worked. It’s just people, after all.

Values Australia will of course be assuming for the time being that the letter is real and taking legal advice on all of the points, but it declines to refrain from giving offence – if that is what is taken – for the sake merely of “not being offensive”. That would be a violation of a basic Australian value.

Graham (family name withheld)

for Values Australia

 

 

Values Australia is not a lawyer and would be grateful for any serious pro bono advice on the matter.

 

 

Some Responses to “Dear ‘DIC’ ”

 
Club Troppo » Missing Link:
29 March, 2007 at 7:19 am

[…] The usual superbly diverse collection of blogospherical delights are summarised below under the usual headings. But I thought I would highlight here in the intro a post which is my early favourite for Blog Post of the Year 2007. It’s quite possibly the best piece of passionate, angry polemic I’ve ever read, certainly on a blog. “Roger Migently” is roused to extraordinary heights of eloquence by the bastardry of the recently renamed federal Department of Immigration and Citizenship (”DIC”) and produces a devastating response to a threatening letter from the Department’s lawyers. Do yourself a favour and read it in full. For what it’s worth, my briefly considered generalist lawyer’s evaluation of the threats is that they have no legal substance whatever. This appalling example of government bullying and attempted suppression of political free speech should by rights become a significant story in the mainstream media if the Department continues pursuing “Roger”. […]

Barista » Blog Archive »:
30 March, 2007 at 7:46 am

[…] The site has a wonderful time taking the piss out of this letter, demonstrating just how ludicrous the claim is. I just wanted to compare the coats of arms which the Department considers to be so similar: […]

Lang Mack:
30 March, 2007 at 8:06 am

Thank you so much for the effort you put in,I have been dealing with these “people” on behalf of another four five years and have had to play it straight to get a result, that made me so happy, I wish you well.. Thanks again..

al loomis:

31 March, 2007 at 11:38 pm

was it really ‘dic’? are they that stupid? your fortune is made! unless it’s a scam in which case the the scammers get the coup feather, and you are caught taking yourself so very seriously. amusing, whichever.

 
roger migently:
1 April, 2007 at 12:22 am

Please say more about how to make one’s fortune out of this!!

 

Kieran:
7 April, 2007 at 11:09 am

Awesome. Absolutely awesome.

Guantánamo Career Suicide

Feb 24, 2007 | Democracy, Freedom of Speech, Legal, OzPol Values, Terrorism, USPol, Values, War

Guantánamo Career Suicide

 Guantánamo Policy Chief Pulls Plug on Career:
Spills Government Beans in Radio Interview

 

 

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Guantánamo Policy, Charles “Cully” Stimson, resigned following uproar over a 12 January interview on Federal Newsradio, a propaganda front for the Bush administration. In the interview Stimson stated,

“I think the news story that you’re really going to start seeing in the next couple of weeks is this: As a result of a FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] request through a major news organization, somebody asked, ‘Who are the lawyers around this country representing detainees down there? And you know what, it’s shocking.”

When the interviewer asked who was paying for the legal representation, Stimson replied,

“It’s not clear, is it? Some will maintain that they are doing it out of the goodness of their heart, that they’re doing it pro bono, and I suspect they are; others are receiving moneys from who knows where, and I’d be curious to have them explain that.”

And then:

“I think, quite honestly, when corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms, and I think that is going to have major play in the next few weeks. And we want to watch that play out.”

This was enough not only to offend everyone who believes in and supports western democratic values, justice and the rule of law but also to incense large numbers of professional legal practitioners across the USA.

However, it’s not the first time US military officials have criticized Guantánamo defense lawyers.

In March of last year, Col. Moe Davis, chief prosecutor for the Guantánamo tribunals, told journalists that several major law firms that have defense contractors as paying clients are providing pro bono lawyers to defend Guantánamo detainees in habeas petitions.

“It’s somewhat ironic that the weaponry that we use in the war on terrorism is helping fund the defense of the alleged terrorists,” Davis said at the time.

This is the same Col. Moe Davis who is the Prosecutor in David Hicks’s case, who has lately been in the news in Australia, insisting that Hicks is the world’s blackest murderer since Hitler, and on Insight1 with Jenny Brockie on SBS2.

The Administration and the Pentagon effected to be embarrassed by Stimson’s loyal fervour.

A Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Brian Maka, said Stimson was not speaking for the Bush administration.

Stimson’s comments “do not represent the views of the Department of Defense or the thinking of its leadership,” Maka said.

Stimson apologised within days claiming that

“those comments do not reflect my core beliefs”

Of course what he said does clearly express his core beliefs.

He was comfortable, relaxed and confident in the radical right wing atmosphere of the radio station with its right wing propagandist presenters. He was comfortable, relaxed and confident that he was expressing administration policy, thinking and attitudes.

It was no slip of the tongue, no moment of passion, no mad aberration. He was under no duress, and was very definitely not being flustered by tough questioning. He offered the information quite unprompted. He arrived at the interview intending to say what he said. He came prepared with a list of at least 12 of the 14 the law firms who had been disclosed as representing Guantánamo inmates.

There can be no doubt that he planned to say what he said and that what he said expressed his core beliefs. He is a practised, experienced propagandist who was repeating the company message which he had delivered almost word for word elsewhere and more than once:

GENE ROBINSON, Washington Post columnist (from audiotape): “…calls into question, really, the United States’ commitment to the values and ideals that we said we want to spread throughout the world, such as due process and rule of law. And Guantánamo seems to mock those values.”

 

KUR: How do you answer that?

 

MR. STIMSON: He’s wrong. That doesn’t mock those values at all. Indeed, we’re giving more rights to these terrorists than our own soldiers got during any conflict when they were detained or the Nazis got when they were detained during World War II. During war, you’re not entitled to a trial. You’re not entitled to criminal charges.

Stimson has consistently over time reinforced his message about the treatment of prisoners in Guantánamo:

  • It is transparent and humane
  • Prisoners are not entitled to a trial
  • They get more than they deserve or have a right to
  • There is minimal opposition to the holding of these prisoners
  • They release a lot of people
  • The media are irresponsible in their reporting
  • The inmates are unquestionably guilty

In fact…

  • These are “the very terrorists” who are personally responsible for the financial losses incurred by American companies after 9/11.

Stimson claims that over 2000 journalists, 500 media outlets have been there to see what goes on to the point that Guantánamo is

“probably the most transparent and open location in the world”.

However, the Washington Post has reported that

“Journalists could not talk to detainees, they had to be accompanied by a military escort and their photos were censored. Now, the Pentagon has shut down access entirely _ at least temporarily.”

Stimson claimed that media organisations are “irresponsible” for not showing the new prison at Guantánamo but continue to show Camp X-ray footage. After all, they have access to “B-roll” footage of the new facility but they don’t show it. “Ask yourself why?” he said, “Are they fair and balanced, or do they have an agenda?”

It is a reasonably safe bet that news organisations are not permitted to originate their own footage and that what Stimson describes as the “B-roll footage” is shot by the Defense Department and is entirely sanitised, showing only what Defense wants outsiders to see and nothing that they would not want outsiders to see.

Meanwhile, FBI agents have documented more than two dozen incidents of possible mistreatment at Guantánamo. In one, a detainee’s head was wrapped in duct tape because he chanted the Quran; in a second, a detainee pulled out his hair after hours in a sweltering room.

In a December 2006 court ruling, a federal judge in Washington decried the plight of “some of the unfortunate petitioners who have been detained for many years in the terrible conditions at Guantánamo Bay.”

Stimson characterises local and international public opposition to the Guantánamo detentions as

“…small little protests around the world – really quite minor – drummed up by Amnesty International trying to get their loyal, ardent followers to show up – these are a couple dozen here, a couple dozen folks there…”

Can detainees be released without trial?

CAUSEY: You have about 395 detainees there and I believe something like 340 others have previously been released to their home countries.?

 

STIMSON: 377 detainees, Mike, have been transferred or released from Guantánamo. Just in 2006 alone we transferred 114. We’re on track to transfer or release, you know, 70, 80, 90, 100 in the coming year. Now those numbers are hard to guess because of the diplomatic negotiations. What’s important to know is that those 395 that are there on the island now, roughly 70 to 80 have already been approved for transfer or release. So we’re just waiting for those countries to step up and accept responsibility and mitigate the threat that these guys pose.

Obviously detainees can be, and are, released without trial. It’s just a matter of “diplomacy”. As far as the American Administration is concerned they, but particularly those concerned with Guantánamo, are constrained by no laws. They can hold or release inmates on a whim. Even the politically careful Australian Prime Minister John Howard has said as much, insisting that if David Hicks is not brought to trial before the end of the year he will have him repatriated. He will not ask. He will require.

(This is directly contrary to Mr Cheney’s claims in Sydney (24 February) that “he cannot speed up the process”. One of them is a liar or both of them are liars. Place your vote here.)

And here is what has become of the presumption of innocence in the American justice system as expressed by Cuddly Stimson:

NORRIS: Is there a possibility that there are some folks on Guantánamo that don’t belong there?
STIMSON: Not now.

Referring to Stimson’s lame apology before his ultimate (forced) resignation, the Ethics Scoreboard says:

Stimson’s apology is a lie, and obviously so. What he calls his “core beliefs” are nothing of the kind. They are his official beliefs, the principles that he is required to support officially (that is, give lip service to) as a member of the bar and a high-ranking official in a democracy. True core beliefs are what you reveal when your guard is down, not what you contradict.

The reaction to Stimson’s vilification of Guantánamo defenders was swift and strident. Just a few of these will give the flavour.

The National Lawyers Guild

The undersigned organizations call for the censure of Mr. Charles “Cully” Stimson, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, for statements attacking the lawyers who are defending the Guantánamo detainees. Mr. Stimson’s remarks are aimed at chilling the willingness of lawyers to represent those persons imprisoned at Guantánamo, and are contrary to bedrock principles of the right to counsel and the presumption of innocence.

The threats by Mr. Stimson are not subtle. They imply these pro bono lawyers are terrorists. They exhort corporations to pull business from the firms where these lawyers are employed. These remarks are slanderous, and violate the free association rights of these lawyers and their firms.

The Society of American Law Teachers (representing over 800 members at 165 law schools):

Mr. Stimson – who, as a lawyer, should know better – has violated the highest standards of our profession by challenging the lawyers engaged in pro bono representation of Guantánamo detainees and calling on the clients of their law firms to withhold their business from those firms. Lawyers are essential to upholding the rule of law in our country, and the rule of law is precisely what the President claims the United States is defending in the “war on terror.”

And from the American Bar Association:

Lawyers represent people in criminal cases to fulfill a core American value: the treatment of all people equally before the law. To impugn those who are doing this critical work — and doing it on a volunteer basis — is deeply offensive to members of the legal profession, and we hope to all Americans.” She is right. Stimson should be immediately fired for what he said last week and, furthermore, he should be investigated for breaching the code of professional ethics. Not only were the remarks nasty, they were politically and diplomatically unwise.

 

What Stimson said, and why, and how, constitutes conduct unbecoming a member of government and a member of the bar. One hand may be acting aggressively, if not mercifully and justly, toward prosecuting suspected terrorists. But the other hand, Stimson’s hand, is undercutting the very principles we fight for. This is how our government waged the legal war on terror in our name last week.

 

As Thomas Paine wrote of the United States years ago, “This is a government of laws, and not men” – the unchecked power of even the President is not part of democracy or our system of justice.

Shortly after his apology, which was not accepted by any but the most hardline in the Bush Administration, Stimson resigned.

Some see the direct hand of John Yoo in the authorship of the letter of “apology”.
John Yoo’s position can be described as “justice in the service of politics”, rather than what we would normally expect, “politics in the service of justice”.
John Yoo’s judicial politics can be traced to Dick Cheney.

Salon reported an interview with Yoo regarding torture. The interviewer asked:

“If the president deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?”

 

“No treaty,” replied John Yoo, the former Justice Department official who wrote the crucial memos justifying President Bush’s policies on torture, “war on terror” detainees and domestic surveillance without warrants. Yoo made these assertions at a public debate in December [2005] in Chicago, where he also espoused the radical notion of the “unitary executive” — the idea that the president as commander in chief is the sole judge of the law, unbound by hindrances such as the Geneva Conventions, and possesses inherent authority to subordinate independent government agencies to his fiat. This concept is the cornerstone of the Bush legal doctrine.

Salon also says

Yoo, who left the Justice Department two years ago and is now a law professor at Boalt Hall at the University of California at Berkeley, was the prolific writer. But he was not the author of the process…Then, as now, the driving force was Vice President Cheney.
Cheney’s idea of the head of state invested with absolute power is a venerable one. Bush’s presidency is the latest experiment to achieve it…

 

The original commentary on it appeared in a pamphlet published in 1776, “Common Sense,” written by Tom Paine:

 

“But where say some is the King of America? I’ll tell you Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve as monarchy, that in America THE LAW IS KING. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other. But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be demolished, and scattered among the people whose right it is.”

So what does Stimson believe to be “Truth, Justice and the American way”?

“DoD official says some Guantánamo detainees may be imprisoned for life”. More than 300 prisoners now held by the US at Guantanamo Bay could remain there under US military detention for the rest of their lives, DoD Deputy Assistant Secretary for Detainee Affairs Charles “Cully” Stimson told Reuters during a routine visit to the base last week.

Ethics Scoreboard has named Charles “Cully” Stimson Liar of the Month for January 2007

 

1 The Insight webpage has a poll which asks “Should David Hicks be brought home?”
Voting is 93% in favour of Hicks’s immediate return.

 

John Howard: Strong or Weak?

Feb 9, 2007 | Australian Values, Corruption, Democracy, Legal, OzPol Values, Terrorism, USPol, Values, War

John Howard: Strong or Weak?

Choose Your Favourite War Criminal

 

What extraordinary influence our Groveller General enjoys with US President Bush. 
Mr Howard said he will raise the Hicks issue when he meets the US President George W Bush on Tuesday…Mr Howard says he will urge the US Government to hear the case as soon as possible.

That was as recently as 2005 – 16 July – only a year and a half ago!

Mr Howard has been “relaxed and comfortable” that the Military Commissions process is appropriate, legal and being handled justly and sensitively. Because the Americans have assured him so.

“George, I am concerned.”
“Wha, don’t be concerned, little buddy.”
“George, do you torture people?”
“John, Ah am shocked! How could you aks such a thang?”
“Do you?”
“Little Johnnie buddy, I assure you we do not.”
“Then George, (mmm, I like it there, yes just there…) you will have a perfectly acceptable explanation for these photographs taken at Abu Ghraib?”
“John (would you mind just reaching around there for a moment? Aaaah! That is goood!) These were bad apples who should never have obeyed ma orders or revealed our secret and systematic interrogation techniques which we do not and never have used or sent people to secret prisons in Syria, Pakistan, Egypt and Poland and such, to render them speechful.”
“Really?”
“I promise! Would I tell a lie? Oh! Oh! Oh my God!”
“Oh! Oh! Oh George! Oh! I love you George!”
“Have you got a cigarette, darling?”

Guantánamo chief, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, has told the ABC’s PM program that Hicks poses a real security threat and there are no innocent detainees.

Greens leader Bob Brown says he is “outraged” that the head of the Guantánamo Bay detention centre has described David Hicks as a dangerous terrorist, prejudging him guilty without any legal process and

“the rights of Hicks have been removed, he’s had no legal rights – he’s been judged guilty by Admiral Harris himself.”

He should not be outraged. This is old news. Brown is so behind the times.

Said Hicks’s lawyer, David McLeod,

“This suggestion, that because detainees are there, that that is in itself evidence of terrorism, or their being a terrorist, simply puts the lie to any attempt to deal with them in a fair and open manner.

“To suggest that a prisoner in the Australian criminal courts is guilty would in itself amount to a mistrial or an inability to proceed appropriately and fairly before a court.”

They should not be outraged. It has all been said before. Charles Stimson, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence in charge of detainee policy at Guantánamo Bay said as much in an interview in January:

Jane Norris: Is there a possibility that there are some folks on Guantanamo that don’t belong there?
Stimson: Not now.

He claimed in the interview that the roughly 400 prisoners in Guantánamo Bay are

“the very terrorists who hit [American corporations’] bottom line back in 2001”.

This came as quite shock. The Australian Government had not realised that there were an additional 400 evil dudes plotting 9/11 and that the US had rounded up every last one of them and these ones are the very ones who slammed the planes into the buildings. But they said nothing at the time. Americans are so modest!

(Stimson says in this interview that

“something like 340 others have previously been released to their home countries”.

Countries like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Britain. But John Howard has stood strong and insisted that a citizen of his own country should be made an example of to the recalcitrant …um…Saudis and Pakistanis…?)

In a previous interview, June 2006, Stimson said Guantánamo prisoners are

“not entitled to anything more than determining whether they’re enemy combatants or not, which we’ve done”.

See, what Brown doesn’t seem to get is that guilt or innocence has already been determined. There was no need for a trial. Hicks is guilty and that’s that. And we’ve known it for years. We decided it years ago. Even John Howard has been saying so for years.

Oddly enough, elsewhere the US is reported to be having trouble releasing detainees because of “the refusal of other nations to accept Guantanamo prisoners“. Strange that John could claim to be finding it so hard to have Hicks return home to Australia to be dealt with.

You Are a Threat to US Security

Feb 3, 2007 | Corruption, Democracy, Legal, Terrorism, USPol, Values, War

You Are a Threat to US Security

Boulleda Hadj

If you can use a computer,
you are a threat to the United States

 

 

Melissa Hoffer is one of those lawyers intentionally slandered in January by Charles Stimson, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, the subject of our next post. Hoffer, a Boston lawyer, represents six Guantanamo detainees. Read their story. Read her story.

This is a little known piece, at least to us. Just read it. It is chilling.

Read Hoffer’s description of how our “big friend”,  John Howard’s masturbation mate, really goes about “doing its business”. See how the US really considers the rest of the world, including us. Understand the difference between this Administration’s values, in practice, and the values it claims it wants to export to the Middle East, like the rule of law, like liberty, like human rights, like human decency, like human dignity. Compare the claims of the US Defense Department and the Bush Administration (with the collusion of the Howard Government) about the treatment of prisoners, with the reality of what they do.

The U.S. position is that it may seize anyone, anywhere, at any time, if there is reason to believe that person is an “enemy combatant” someone who is part of or “supporting” (even unwittingly) Al Qaeda, the Taliban, or forces “associated” with these groups.

The global dragnet cast by this definition is so broad that an attorney for the U.S., arguing before Judge Green in December 2004, admitted it would include a little old lady from Switzerland who gave money to an Afghan charity organization that – unbeknownst to her – funneled the contribution to Al Qaeda.

And equally, it should be said, you and I could suffer the same fate.

Hoffer’s closing words in an (unavailable) speech:

“If we extinguish that humanity with lawlessness and cruelty, we extinguish hope for the future of humankind. For when we degrade others, we degrade ourselves, and when we take away a another person’s freedom without just cause, we erode our own freedom. But as we join with others around the world, working, fighting, unjust imprisonment and torture, we honor and preserve our humanity. This is the lesson of Guantanamo.”

According to Wikipedia:

“The six men were formally arrested by Bosnian authorities, tried before the Bosnian Supreme Court, and acquitted of all charges. Even so, upon their release from legitimate Bosnian incarceration, following their acquittal, they were captured by American security officials who transported them to detention and interrogation in the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The conduct of the Bosnian authorities was formally condemned as illegal by the Human Rights Chamber of Bosnia Herzegovina, the relevant Bosnian court at the time.

The Associated Press has made the Combatant Status Review Tribunals of four of the six men available for download. Transcripts within these documents record the Bosnians reporting to their tribunal officers that interrogators did not believe that there had ever been any substance to the US allegations that they had planned to bomb the US embassy.

And according to the Washington Post:

Since then, the military has conducted annual reviews of the six men’s status.

Each time, court officers have upheld the original decision.

Records from tribunal sessions in December 2005 show the U.S. military is no longer accusing the Algerians of conspiring to attack the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo. No explanation for the change is given.

The military has listed other factors in its decision to label the men a security threat.

One detainee was judged a threat in part because he was a karate expert and had taught martial arts to Bosnian orphans, tribunal records show. He was also classified as potentially dangerous because he was familiar with computers.

Another detainee was flagged because he had performed mandatory service in the Algerian army more than a decade ago, as a cook.

Boudella was accused by the U.S. military of joining bin Laden and Taliban fighters at Tora Bora, Afghanistan, the mountain hideout where the al-Qaeda leadership escaped from U.S. forces in December 2001. In fact, at the time, Boudella was locked up thousands of miles away in Sarajevo, after his arrest in the later-discredited embassy plot.

One fresh allegation filed against Boudella last year was that he wore a ring “similar to those that identified the Red Rose Group members of Hamas,” the radical Palestinian movement, according to tribunal records.

Boudella’s wife, Nadja Dizdarevic, responded in an interview that the ring is a common anniversary band worn by thousands of Bosnian Muslims. She said she obtained an affidavit from the jeweler in Sarajevo where he bought the ring and submitted it to the U.S. military in hopes that they will drop the charge at his next hearing.

If it is a mark of belonging to Hamas, then 98 percent of the Bosnian Muslims belong to Hamas,” she said. “For every claim they make against him, I have proof to show them they are wrong, so they have to invent something new.”

The Defense Department declined to answer specific questions about the case, saying that some evidence against the men remains classified.

But a Pentagon spokesman defended the decision to apprehend the six Algerians.

“There was no mistake in originally detaining these individuals as enemy combatants,” said Navy Lt. Cmdr. J.D. Gordon. “Their detention was directly related to their combat activities as determined by an appropriate Defense Department official before they were ever transferred to Guantanamo.”

So be careful. You Are a Threat to US Security

The decision will not be made by a court of law, it will be made by “an appropriate Defense Department official” whatever that might be – you’ll never know or ever be able to find out – on the basis of unquestionable, unreviewable, “classified” information, which you will never be allowed to see. In fact, it is so secret that they can do what they like with no information whatever – because its existence cannot be tested – especially if to reverse a decision would be an embarrassment. There is no accountability whatever and that leads to the brazen corruption we see today at all levels of the Bush Administration.

This is American justice and American law at work under this illegitimate neo-con junta which is so beloved by John Howard and his toadying supporters in the coalition.  

 

Who are the true cowards?

The cowards are not those who “do not have the stomach for the war” (as Cheney puts it when blaming the American people for his own failure); not those who publicly oppose, or privately work against, an illegal, unjust, unsupportable, unethical adventure predicated on deliberate lies by an unutterably stupid President and his unbelievably cruel, greedy and dishonest Vice-President.

The real cowards are those in the administration, the bureaucracy and the military who are too afraid to stand up against obvious, monstrous injustice; who would willingly sacrifice other people’s lives in order to protect themselves from embarrassment; who would sacrifice everything that is, or has been, good and great about their country for the sake of their own careers.

The real cowards are those ordinary people who, although they oppose the war and the excesses of the American, Australian and British governments, do not speak up; who say, “she’ll be right”.

The real cowards include those leaders of nations, like John Howard and Tony Blair, who go along with a madman for the sake of the hope of a little better trade deal, and so are complicit in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people and the destruction of the lives of millions more; who have participated in and even applauded the ruination of an entire country, the creation of a more dangerous world, a surge in terrorism and the destabilisation of the entire Middle East.

These are the real cowards. These are the real “evil-doers”.