Thomas Paine on David Hicks

Jan 31, 2007 | Australian Values, Democracy, Freedom of Speech, OzPol Values, Terrorism, Values, War

Thomas Paine on David Hicks

Thomas Paine, Criminal Subversive

The “Nazgûl” is believed to be seeking legal opinion on whether the following statement is seditious if it can be interpreted as relating to the Government’s (lack of) handling of David Hicks’ detention on Guantánamo, and the Coalition’s subversion of the justice system and the rule of law in Australia:

“He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.”

~ Thomas Paine

If a case can be proved, the Nazgûl is preparing to posthumously imprison Paine’s bones without trial, or to request an anonymous, unquestionable, unfavourable ASIO assessment of Paine so that his bones may be indefinitely detained on Nauru without prospect of release.

Paine, the Nazgûl has learned, was a revolutionary who fought in the American War of Independence and the French Revolution and wrote several subversive books including The Age of Reason, Common Sense, and The Rights of Man.

The Nation That Hangs Together

Jan 4, 2007 | Australian Values, Capital Punishment, Cultural Values, Democracy, OzPol Values, USPol, Values, War

The Nation That Hangs Together

The Nation that Hangs Together Hangs Together

 

The glorious lynching of Saddam was not meant to be “unprofessional”, and “disgusting”.

No, no!

According to Iraq’s National Security Adviser, the noted humanitarian, Mouwaffaq al-Rubaie:

“This was supposed to be a uniting event between Shia and Sunni.”

Oops!

What a wonderful opportunity this human sacrifice would have been for fellowship and reconciliation between the warring sects! How tragic that it was missed!

Sociologists and anthropologists are at a loss as to why the intended outcome was not realised, unless it was the Shia officials who were present with their cell-phones. If only the mobile-phone-toting hangmen hadn’t shouted and argued with Saddam, and taken video of his plummeting and dangling body and shared it with the world on YouTube.

A Shia-Sunni love-in would have been inevitable, the civil war would have been over and the Americans and their allies could have gone home.

A free Iraq and the future of a fragile democracy would have been assured.

An Iraqi official assured the world that despite the debacle of the execution – carried out at an American camp in Baghdad called “Camp Justice” – the execution itself had been carried out in accordance with Islamic law.

Just so.

Meanwhile the debate over the death penalty rages around the world.

The American public, unmoved by public opinion in civilised countries – which sees them as amongst the last of the barbarians – now proudly keeps righteous company alongside the dwindling number of nations practising ‘judicial murder’ (as Prime Minister Howard calls it):

Botswana, Cameroon, Chad, Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea, Lesotho, Libya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Somaliland, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, Taiwan, India, Indonesia, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, North Korea, South Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Pakistan, Kuwait, Iran, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Syria, Yemen, Tajikistan, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Belarus, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Cuba, Dominica, Guatemala, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana.

And the United States.

And they are a proud member of the enlightened club of nations (mostly Islamic ) which approve the execution of juveniles:

Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, China, and the “Democratic” Republic of the Congo.

And the United States.

The US has staunchly refused to sign and ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which forbids capital punishment for juveniles. In this it stands proudly with Somalia as the last two nations of true principle.

The US is merciful, however, and will not execute the insane. Instead they administer antipsychotic drugs to ensure that the person is sane before administering additional, lethal drugs, which kill them.

While the United States has a proud record, executing 60 people in 2005, of which 19 were killed in Texas, and 53 people in 2006, of which 24 were killed in Texas, they have a long way to go to catch up to World Execution League Champions, China, in the number of annual executions.

In China execution is a huge and lucrative industry, providing fresh organs to western transplant patients at a bargain price. Western human rights monitors believe the Chinese kill about 15,000 a year, more than the rest of the world’s government-sponsored murders combined.

China is leading the way in efficiency, also, by equipping its courts with mobile execution vans as it shifts away from the communist system’s traditional bullet in the back of the head, towards the more “civilised” lethal injection. China expects that this will improve its international image and show it as a more modern and civilised society.

The United States could also learn a lot about commerce and cost recovery from China where families who want to reclaim the body of their dead relatives killed by a bullet to the head are charged for the bullet. It makes sense, don’t it? A triumph of “user pays”!

But let it not be said that there is no debate in the USA about the death penalty.
For example, in the measured, carefully considered words of one American citizen, chiding another who is opposed to the death penalty:

“Listen sperm breath: Take your withered prick, renew your Viagra prescription and go fuck that 6-year-old boy you’ve had the glow for. You get your facts the same place you get your man-love: from your wart-ridden syphilitic bung hole.”

Nevertheless, there seems to be growing legislative opposition in the U.S. to such opinions, despite their obvious literary qualities:

A legislative commission recommended on Tuesday that New Jersey become the first state to abolish the death penalty since states began reinstating their capital punishment laws 35 years ago. Its report found “no compelling evidence” that capital punishment serves a legitimate purpose, and increasing evidence that it “is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency.”

The report [came] amid growing unease among politicians and the public about capital punishment.

Will this be “cut and run” from the death penalty, or “a phased withdrawal”?

 

Update:

Al Jazeera has claimed that Muqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army replaced all the security officials responsible for executing Saddam. Sunni pro-Baathist website Iraqi Rabita has claimed that one of the masked men who put the noose around Saddam’s neck was in fact Muqtada al Sadr and this is why there were chants of “Muqtada! Muqtada!”

Blameshifting 101

Nov 24, 2006 | Australian Values, OzPol Values, USPol, War

Blameshifting 101

You’ve got to hand it to our Prime Monitor.

He is the absolute guru of blameshifting and that’s something to be proud of.

You know, he has a position to maintain, an aura to protect, an air of infallibility to project. We can’t have him looking weak and fallible. 

He has masterfully avoided saying “Sorry” for Australian authorities stealing generations of Aboriginal children from their families. They had only themselves to blame, for being black.

He has cleverly avoided any responsibility for the AWB Wheat for Weapons scandal and ensured that the blame falls on a few unfortunate individuals and certainly not on him or his ministers or their sirhumphreys.

He did it – it was a joy to watch – he did it by saying that in the terms of reference of the inquiry (which he set up) the Commissioner couldn’t make any findings about him, the government, or government departments.

Brilliant!

And now as the dark days in Iraq seem to slide into an apocalypse, a hell on exploding wheels – which we all thought at the time he had abetted and co-invented with George and Tony – with almost surreal prestidigitation he has ensured that he cannot be held responsible for the (no longer “impending”) disaster:

Howard ‘horrified’ by Iraq car bomb killings: Prime Minister John Howard says he is disturbed by the latest mass killings in Iraq.…

“It’s certainly going through ‘a very bad phase’, I acknowledge that,” Mr Howard said, “and nobody is other than horrified at the continued loss of life. The question arises, what to do? I do think the path ahead lies in a greater assumption of responsibility by the Iraqi military forces themselves.”

Not only is it not total carnage, a completely fucked over disaster but just a “phase” it’s going through (and as you know, phases are predictable and you always recover from them).

And there is light at the end of the tunnel. We are not being sucked into the quicksand of a civil war, stuck in a quagmire of blood, guts and a destroyed culture. No! There is a “path”! And for sure it is pretty as a picture with grass and daisies on either side, a warm sun shining, fluffy little white clouds in the sky and a cooling zephyr wafting!

My god, Howard is the wonderful Wizard of the south if ever there was!

But the Grand Masterstroke is that it’s the Iraqis who must be held responsible for the bloody chaos they are in! No blood on John’s hands! No splattered bits of human offal or brain on his starched, white, stuffed shirt.

Watch as it becomes the ungrateful, incompetent Iraqis’ fault (between now and the next Federal Election).

We are in awe. Absolutely in wide-eyed, jaw-on-the-floor awe at his brilliance.

Watch and weep. True Australian political values. Howard-style.

A Beautiful Thing

Nov 6, 2006 | Australian Values, OzPol Values, USPol, Values, War

A Beautiful Thing

US Policy Adviser redefines “Beauty”

We have noticed a report that Kenneth Adelman has claimed that what the Coalition has done in Iraq is “a beautiful thing”. And we agree whole-heartedly. It’s a pity so few people now are able to see it this way. It just takes a little readjustment of the meaning of “beauty”.

As you know, the Australian Government applauds, approves and supports all things concerned with and initiated by the US Administration. We are desperate to be part of (and it is Australian Government policy to try as hard as we can to keep up with) their Grand Scheme of Things, and although its purpose is a mystery we have faith and trust in their goodness and wisdom. And you know that George has personal audiences with the Almighty, right there in the Oval Office!. God told him that Shock and Awe was what Jesus would have done.

“God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did.”   [New York Times, 24/9/2006]

Iraq; Kyoto; gay marriage; support for hypocritical closet homosexuals; inappropriately blurring the distinction between Church and State; scaremongering about terrorism; rewriting indigenous history, and now capital punishment — we’re with them.

Step for step. Lock step. Every step of the way.

We in the Howard Australian Government are pathetically grateful for any attention that the US may give us from time to time. For example, recently George W. Bush looked down at us and said, “You still here? I’d forgotten all about you! Look, we’re having a picnic. Why don’t you come along? In fact, you have to come along. It’s just over there in Iraq. Don’t forget to bring your sandshoes.” And then he patted us on the head and you should have seen our little governmental tail wagging!

Anyway, although we have faith and belief and trust, we are now confused.

When George asked us on the picnic, two of his top advisors were Richard Perle and Kenneth Adelman. They told us George was right. We believed them utterly because George told us to. And they said the nicest things about George and his Grand Scheme of Things.

When George told us that Donald Rumsfeld was the greatest military strategist who ever lived, of course we believed him. And no serving General ever disagreed. Until now.

It’s just that we’re a little confused about how the current situation in Iraq, which the US Military says is sliding swiftly towards chaos, fits into Rummy’s strategy. But then, he’s Rummy and George insists he’s still the greatest. What would little old us know? Probably chaos is part of Rummy’s strategy to confuse the enemy (that is, the Democrats).

But now the Military Times has an editorial calling for him to go. Vanity Fair has quotes from Richard Perle and from Kenneth Adelman saying that the Admninistration is “dysfunctional”. and these are people whose word we have accepted without question until now.

The editorial, “Time for Rumsfeld to Go”, says:

Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with Congress and with the public. His strategy has failed, and his ability to lead is compromised.
…
The time has come, Mr President, to face the hard bruising truth; Donald Rumsfeld must go.

Richard Perle is a former Assistant Secretary of Defense, and an advisor to Mr Bush on the Defense Policy Board, a member of the American Enterprise Institute, the Project for the New American Century and the Hudson Institute. I mean, if you can’t trust these people, who can you trust?

And yet he told Vanity Fair magazine that incompetence in the Administration had turned Iraq policy into a “disaster”. A disaster!

Kenneth Adelman is a member of the Project for the New American Century, Assistant to the Secretary of Defense, 1976-1977, member of the Committee on the Present Danger, the RAND Corporation and the Institute for Contemporary Studies.

I mean. that’s high-powered right-wing cred, okay? And he says he is “crushed” by the performance of Rumsfeld and the Administration.

“They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the postwar era,” he said. “Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional.”

So you can understand why we’re a little confused. We bet on these guys and now they’re saying “don’t put your money on Bush”.

Well, We still don’t know. If you don’t remember, Adelman is the guy who said,

“I believe demolishing Hussein’s military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk,” 

and

“Measured by any cost-benefit analysis, such an operation would constitute the greatest victory in America’s war on terrorism].

And you know that glorious victory will come, we’re certain of it. Well, we hope desperately for it. It won’t heppen overnight, it may not even heppen this century, but it will heppen.

Kenneth Adelman, who looks like a kindly family doctor, is also the man who said about the war in Iraq:

“It bothers me that people in Britain don’t see it as people in America see it. We did a beautiful thing.”

And you know, we don’t think people are as aware as they should be of just how beautiful the thing we have done in Iraq is.

Should we agree with the US Military, Perle, Adelman, now or stand by George? Is George a dead duck like they say? If we stick with him like a mate, could we get burnt and look as stupid as him?

And then there’s the question of war crimes. People are starting to talk about them. Those civilian casualties are starting to bank up a bit, you now. They’re starting to look a bit untidy.

In 1946 the judges at Nuremberg who tried the Nazi leaders for war crimes left no doubt about what they regarded as the gravest crimes against humanity.

The most serious was unprovoked invasion of a sovereign state that offered no threat to one’s homeland. Then there was the murder of civilians, for which responsibility rested with the “highest authority”. [Pilger]

Now we would like to agree with Laura Rediehs:

“So, although both sides in this Great Cosmic Battle employ similar techniques – violence that includes the killing of innocent civilians – our doing this is justified because we are good; their doing it is unjustified because they are evil.”

… although we think she might have been being ironic. But she’s right. George talks to Jesus. The enemy only think they do.