Hicks pleads guilty — and another matter

The Daily Telegraph here in Sydney has no doubts as you will see on the right and in its editorial today:

IMMEDIATELY after the news broke yesterday that Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks had pleaded guilty to the charge of providing material support to terrorism, his deluded supporters sprang into action.

Just because Hicks had pleaded guilty did not mean he was guilty – far from it.

He’d pleaded to the charge, they insisted, because he’d been forced to do so by his captors.

After five years in captivity, the Hicks cheer squad insisted, he would have been prepared to plead guilty to anything, just to be free of the endless torment to which he has been subjected.

All that time in close confinement could do strange things to a man.

And no less an authority than Hicks’ Camp X-Ray buddy Mamdouh Habib was called on to give corroborative verity to that version of events. And Habib, of course, was not loathe to assist. Hicks would have been forced to plead guilty, Habib insisted, to be allowed access to legal counsel. He – Habib – knew how the system worked. Hicks would have had no choice…

Many will share the views expressed there, or those views will become their views…

The Hicks affair

In keeping with my determination not to keep on posting the same thing over and over, I refer you to what I have already said on this blog and on on my Blogspot blog. But the five year imprisonment without trial of Australian citizen David Hicks by the US government has been in the news again here in Australia, first because former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser has condemned it as a total failure of rule of law not only in the USA but also here (and keep in mind current PM John Howard was Fraser’s Treasurer), and now because the “director of military prosecutions to the new Australian Military Court has described the treatment of David Hicks as abominable.” See Top brass breaks ranks on Hicks for both.

Asked about the treatment of Mr Hicks, who has been held at Guantanamo Bay for more than five years and is not currently charged with any offences, she did not hesitate. “Abominable,” she said. “Quite frankly, I think it’s wrong. I don’t care what he’s done or alleged to have done. I think he’s entitled to a trial and a fair one and he is entitled to be charged and dealt with as quickly as is possible. As is anybody.”

As for the military tribunals the Americans have set up to deal with Mr Hicks, the Brigadier said: “Maybe they should have a good look at us.”

Her comments follow remarks by the former prime minister Malcolm Fraser yesterday that the Australian Government had “totally deserted” Mr Hicks.

Truly, we and the USA have behaved like banana republics in this case.

Baghdad Burning has a new post on the execution of Saddam Hussein. “Death and destruction everywhere. I’m so tired of all of this…” John Baker scores 10/10 for subtlety.

I for one cannot understand the current craze for Saddam snuff movies. It is sick, in my opinion. All we need to know is that he is dead.

Welcome to our nightmare

 Orpheus Lost by Janette Turner Hospital (Australia May 2007; USA Canada October 2007):  

I’ve always been intensely interested in examining ordinary human beings, people without political agendas, who are suddenly caught up in the fist of history and crisis. If someone happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, what happens to their lives from that point onwards? How do they negotiate life, history, politics thereafter?

I suppose I can trace the birth of this intense interest to something that happened to me when we were living in a village in South India in 1977. I was with my two young children in an exceedingly ramshackle taxi heading from the village to the city market in Trivandrum. It was a time of political upheaval in India. Riots broke out, and suddenly our taxi was surrounded by a mob waving the banners of the Communist Party of South India. The taxi could not move forward. Our taxi driver was very frightened and was trembling violently. The rioters were drumming on the taxi roof and windows. The children and I were in the back seat and I felt that weird and absolute calm which is actually shock. I had an arm around each child and can still vividly remember the two dominant thoughts in my head: 1) I must make the children feel safe with me and 2) No one will ever know what happened to us. In fact, the tense situation only lasted a few minutes and then the crowd let the taxi move slowly forward. Since then, I’ve been aware of how suddenly and how randomly political events of which one is only dimly aware can disrupt a life.

This has to be in my top three best reads of 2007!

Burke’s web hits business as cunning PM pulls the wings off St Kevin

I will cross-post this here and on Journalspace today. The headline combines a story from The Australian with one from the Sydney Morning Herald.

I am not at all surprised by the first story, as unfortunately Burke and his style and methods have characterised Australian politics for years. If this whole saga sickens people on that culture of mateship and power it will have done some good, but it is no use the Howard side of politics pretending their people have never been part of it.

SENIOR business figures, including close supporters of John Howard, have been dragged into the Brian Burke scandal after Health Minister Tony Abbott questioned the ethics of hiring the disgraced lobbyist.

…Mr Abbott yesterday scolded corporate Australia for helping rehabilitate the disgraced former premier. Mr Burke’s corporate clients have included Macquarie Bank and Fortescue Metals whose chief executive, Andrew Forrest, is a close friend of Mr Howard and who attended the 2005 dinner with Mr Rudd that has embroiled the Opposition Leader in the biggest furore of his leadership.

Asked on the Ten Network whether business had been morally compromised by employing Mr Burke, Mr Abbott replied: “I think that certainly they have questions to answer because of the modus operandi that this gentleman has consistently been using.”

Nice quote found…

I was just browsing what various bloggers have been saying about the implications of the Chinese stock crash/correction, a matter I don’t profess to understand. While reading Simply Left Behind (the non-rapturist’s guide to the galaxy) I spotted this under his masthead:

“Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things…every one! So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, ‘Liberal,’ as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won’t work, Senator, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor.” — Matt Santos, “The West Wing”

Meanwhile, the ?Liberal? Party here in Australia is cracking down on dissent in its own ranks: PM berates Liberal critics.

Remembering Little Pattie

I was a sober and very Christian student taking a year out working for an insurance company when Little Pattie’s ‘He’s My Blonde Headed Stompie Wompie Real Gone Surfer Boy’ rose to No 2 on the hit parades. Later I seem to remember a school dance in my first teaching job at Cronulla High where my unique version of stomping turned a few heads; invention rather than skill distinguished my performance. It was one of the first signs of my departure from Calvinism.

Funnily enough I was talking about Little Pattie a week ago when I dropped into the SBHS Swimming Carnival. My colleague Steve S is a friend of hers and a great admirer, and a trades union comrade. So I was interested to see her tonight on Talking Heads. You can’t get much more Australian than Little Pattie. I was struck by two things: 1) it is possible to appreciate our military and those who were part of the fight in Vietnam and are in Iraq without approving of either war; 2) it is possible to see clearly where we are going wrong in this country without resorting to cliched left-wing positions.

For example: