Crime and Punishment

The military has charged seven Marines and a Navy corpsman with premeditated murder and other crimes in the April 26 killing of an Iraqi civilian in a village west of Baghdad, the US Marine Corps says.

All eight men face the possibility of the death penalty if convicted. They were charged with premeditated murder, larceny, conspiracy, housebreaking, making false official statements, assault, kidnapping and obstruction of justice.

Housebreaking? Larceny? So Iraqis have the right to feel secure in their homes, unless the US military decides it has reason to kick down their doors without warrants or oversight. I wonder what they stole, besides Mr Awad's life, dignity and a little piece of our humanity.

Military criminal investigators examined whether the servicemen fatally shot a 52-year-old disabled Iraqi man, Hashim Ibrahim Awad, in the face, then planted an AK-47 assault rifle and a shovel next to his body to make it appear he was an insurgent placing a roadside bomb.

This is different to blowing up an entire house, or bombing a wedding party and then claiming all the victims were insurgents about to plant a roadside bomb, somehow. I guess they must bring stuff with them to plant on anyone they happen to murder.

Joseph Casas, a defence lawyer representing Jodka, said his client was innocent and that military investigators used inappropriate methods to obtain statements from the troops in the case.

Casas said the statements were not "confessions" and that he would seek to have the statements suppressed at the trial.

"I can tell you with regard to my client, he was subjected to at least three interrogations, one of which lasted about eight hours without any food, water, restroom breaks, you name it," Casas said.

"The way that they obtained these statements is something that's going to be under our magnifying glass throughout this trial," he said.

The military held the eight suspects in "maximum" custody for three weeks, officials at the base said.

They were restrained with handcuffs attached to a leather belt and leg cuffs any time they left their mobiles.

Authorities slightly loosened the conditions last week to enable them to have no such restraints while inside jail, the base said.

Jane Siegel, another lawyer representing Jodka, said interrogators used "strong-arm" tactics and threats of life imprisonment to elicit statements from the eight men.

"The techniques that they used to acquire these statements are as close to old-fashioned psychological rubber hoses as you can get," Siegel said.

SMH

This is ironic, given that the US does in fact use actual real old fashioned rubber hoses, waterboarding and "pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death" to extract information from its other "guests" not charged with any crimes.

Glass half full, other half Aboriginal

The latest report on the nation's health shows that, with the exception of the dramatically poor health of indigenous people, Australians' life expectancy is near the top of the world.

SMH

except for the 400,000 people no one cares about anyway, things are great! See, this is that unity and inclusion thing in action! Aboriginal people have a place in our society, just not where they can mess up our health statistics.

Whoops!

Iraq's trade minister lashed out at Australia today after escorts guarding an embassy delegation that visited him at his Baghdad office shot dead one of his own guards and wounded several others.

"They are trampling on the dignity and sovereignty of Iraqis," Abdel Falah al-Sudani, a member of parliament's dominant Shi'ite bloc, said on state television.

"We demand an explanation from the Australian government for this intentional and unwarranted criminal aggression against members of our protection force. It should also compensate the family of the martyr and the wounded," Sudani said.

Heh heh, um it was an accident, let's not do anything hasty... surely a tragic accident like this won't jeopardise the relationship between our two great nations right? Right?

"Immediately, the minister called on the Iraqi government to suspend all kinds of trade relations with the Australian government until it gives an explanation and pays compensations for the families of the killed and wounded people," Mohamed Hannon said.

It is not known why the delegation was in Baghdad, but Australia has been working hard to win back one of its most important wheat markets after the AWB kickback scandal saw Iraq suspend dealings with monopoly exporter AWB Ltd in February.

SMH

Ah, crap.

Jihad of the Week

A jihad on the Inglises of the world

When I was in Tora Bora it was very dangerous. The operation was getting serious. Bush was closing in and I thought he had me for sure. In that time I realised that hide and seek is not my best game in the whole world. Instead it is Bush who is the best at it.

So I said, "George, come on, this is not fair, I have no chance, ya ya I know dead or alive blah blah but how can we have a game if you find me so easily?"

God willing Bush is my friend and he gave me an extra head start. He said to me to hide again and he will look somewhere else for a while. So he went away to look for me somewhere else and by God we have had a great game of hide and seek ever since. If he hadn't been my friend when I was in need I would not be able to have continued. Even now he pretends not to think about me but I know it is because now I am the best and he just doesn't want to admit it. Come on George, just admit it so you can go hide and I look for you.

But anyway, helping people is what decent people do. They don't leave each other on a mountain to die because they have to reach the top. Who needs to climb mountains anyway? Like singing and flying kites and educating women, these are not serious things. Mark Inglis is haram, believers should not associate with him, or expect him to urinate on you if you were on fire and he was on his way home after drinking a whole skin of fermented mare's milk. God is great.

Drivers make fine whine

Coronation Drive, City of Brisbane

I found a mail petition today, it was from the local Labor party MP some plonker by the name of Ronan Lee. Was it about IR laws, or Stopping the mayor, Campbell Newman, from tossing $2.5 billion in tax money into 5 white elephant road tunnels? No. It's about a fucking toll bridge.

After years of whining about not being able to zip down Coronation drive at a steady 100km/h with no stops and no jams from home to work the City of Brisbane finally does something, they're building another bridge accross the Brisbane river, only they want people who actually use the bridge to pay for it. Waaaah cry motorists, make people who don't even drive (me) pay for my bridge. Fuck that.

I'm writing that punk a letter asking him to explain who should pay for the bridge if not the people who use it. Driving isn't a right and I shouldn't have to subsidise making someone else's lifestyle choices more convenient. Fucking carpool for all I care. From the number of people I see jammed on that road one to a car I reckon a toll for single occupant drivers would do more to ease congestion than any number of bridges.

Defeat into Victory

I've been meaning to point this out for ages so I might as well while I have a moment. Remember the 'Zarqawi Blooper Tape'? How could you not. It purported to show a master terrorist who couldn't shoot a machine gun, or rather a squad automatic weapon (SAW). Of course the declaration of the footage being a propaganda coup for the occupation meant the loss of some of the tape's context.

First of all have a look at the picture again. The weapon 'Zarqawi' is holding is a M249 SAW. The insurgency counterpart to this weapon is the RPK. The fact that Zarqawi is holding an American soldier's weapon means someone Zarqawi knows killed the soldier it used to belong to and then had enough control of the area immediately after killing him to take his weapon.










The M249

Next they were able to casually drive several vehicles out to someplace in Iraq, park them, shoot off some rounds, shoot some video and then get back into their cars and drive home. All this in a country supposed controlled by the world's greatest military.

Jihad of the Week

A Jihad on Bono

"For pretending that giving him and his corporate masters more money is the only way to help others. For trying to sell a yuppie circle-jerk as changing the world and for making sucky music, except for the Joshua Tree. In this fatwa I declare Bono to be haram. A jihad against this running dog, lapdog lackey of capitalist yankee pigdogs. Believers should not own his music or have dealings with anyone who does, except for the Joshua Tree. Also his friend, the wrinkly, less famous one, Geldof, he is haram also. Anyone who buys this "Red" should be stoned, slowly, over several days, with small pebbles. God is great!"

New Democracy!

Now with 80% less democracy for that great fresh taste.

THE normalisation of US-Libya relations is a natural marriage of a US administration desperate for friends and oil in the Middle East and a government that needs to open its economy to the outside world, observers say.

The Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, announced on Monday that the US was restoring full diplomatic relations with Libya and removing it from the list of countries designated as state sponsors of terrorism.

Dr Rice called the moves "tangible results that flow from the historic decisions taken by Libya's leadership in 2003 to renounce terrorism and to abandon its weapons of mass destruction programs".

Observers called the announcement proof that promotion of democracy is no longer a top priority of the Bush Administration, which is grappling to hold Iraq together and has turned its attention towards building alliances against a hostile Iran.

"The timing can be explained by a need for the United States to have a positive breakthrough in the Middle East," said Mohamed Sayed Said, a political analyst at the Egyptian government-run al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies. "With Libya, Washington gets a regime that has converted itself from radicalism to accommodation." It was self-evident that there was a retreat from democracy and that the US was aligning itself with undemocratic regimes, he said.

Libya has been ruled by Muammar Gaddafi since he seized power in 1969. Analysts expressed no surprise about the rapprochement, saying it was inevitable since Colonel Gaddafi gave up Libya's nuclear weapons program three years ago.

The US lifted its economic embargo against Libya in 2004, and since then, at least six US oil companies have resumed drilling and exploration that had been suspended in 1986. Libya possesses the world's eighth-largest oil reserves, but the US embargo had driven down production by keeping new equipment and technology out of the country.

Libya is still regularly listed by human rights groups as having one of the world's most repressive governments. A survey by Freedom House, a US-based organisation that promotes democracy worldwide, placed Libya in the bottom five countries in terms of the free flow of information.

SMH

These would be the WMD he got from Pakistan, America's latest major non Nato ally. So for rolling over and letting Uncle Sam scratch his belly Gaddafi joins Islam "the boiler" Karimov as a dictator the US just can't do without in its war on tyranny. Eastasia? Eastasia has always been our ally...

Do it for Jesus!

Honorable Member Dana Vale

I too share your concern about Christian Australians aborting their way to an Islamic Republic of Australia. We have 50 years in which to act and act we must if we are to avoid tabbouleh becoming our national dish. I propose that your party use its majority to pass legislation declaring every Christian uterus a strategic area, vital to the nation's interests. In so doing the government will be able to classify abortion as the destruction of state property, which would quickly put a stop to that.

Of course it shall be the duty of every man to attempt to undo the demographic damage caused by decades of unpatriotic abortions. They shall need help, not all ladies have the good fortune to be as comely as yourself, honorable member. Women should be compelled to spend at least 3 hours a day in the gym, an hour beautifying themselves and at least 8 hours performing Kegel excersises while reading the Kama Sutra, which I'm told does wonders for reproductive ability. It is not necessary for women to be aroused for conception to occur so such requirements are redundant for men who shall have to perform the selfless task of impregnation. Of course our need to maintain our demographic advantage of the Crescent peril will require us to put aside quaint notions of monogamy as we know it. Each man may be forced by circumstance to impregnate several women, being Christian men they shall take no joy in it, solemnly discharging their office as guardians of a Christian tomorrow.

We must let nothing stand in the way of reproduction for the motherland. As you are no doubt aware our health minister, Tony Abbott, has failed to take this crisis seriously, even to the point of restricting the number of IVF attempts a woman can make. While this might be a sound strategy for Catholics who get knocked up at 16 as soon as look at you, more refined Christians shouldn't be prevented from taking part in the defence of the character of our nation. Besides, if we don't take action now, in 50 years we could be living in a Papist state.

Close your eyes and think of Australia!

To think I used it rhetorically...

Lyenko Urbancic, Nazi, Liberal Party member.

An avid anti-Communist who was outed in the 1970s as a former Nazi propagandist, Urbancic died yesterday in Sydney. He was still a member of the party and attended a State Council meeting last year.

The party never succeeded in expelling the Yugoslav-born, right-wing, Slovenian nationalist. Nor did it end the influence of his faction, "the Uglies", which he helped create in the 1970s to restore backbone to the party.

Urbancic's rapid rise in the party ended in 1979, when he was exposed in a radio program as a former Nazi propagandist in Yugoslavia. He was briefly suspended from the party while investigations were conducted, but denied the claims and narrowly avoided expulsion.

In 1986, he told a Sydney newspaper: "I never said 'Heil Hitler', I never put a Nazi uniform on, I never greeted in the Nazi way."

But Urbancic never disguised his efforts to lead a right-wing faction to attack the party's small-l liberal members and influence its policies on drugs, homosexuals and law and order.

SMH

Seriously, you couldn't make this shit up.

Last week

I went here










We stayed here





Across the road from us...






Then we went here





And here




And we saw stuff like this

Mushrooming

Given the ease with which one can deflate the ludicrous notion that a nuclear Iran would constitute "the largest threat" facing the world, it is a cause for great concern that this view has so completely taken over rational debate on the subject. It is of even greater concern when we remember that we are only discussing a potential. But note how a central part of the propaganda campaign works: several months ago, the usual estimate for the time Iran would need to develop nuclear weapons was about ten years. Then it got reduced to five years. Now, people speak as if Iran will have nuclear weapons in the next few months. The unavoidable implication of this tactic is the obvious one, the one that Bush used so disastrously with Iraq: we need to act now. We have to do something now. There is only one word to describe this approach: it is not reasoned discourse -- it is hysteria, pure and simple.

Arthur Silber

Selling us down the river

Crooks




By Michael Gawenda, Herald Correspondent in Washington and Marian Wilkinson
February 1, 2006

THE Australian ambassador to the United States lobbied Congress to drop an investigation into allegations that Australia's wheat exporter paid kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime.

The Federal Government confirmed last night that the then ambassador, Michael Thawley, met the chairman of a US Senate investigations committee in late 2004 to head off the planned inquiry.

The AWB investigation was ultimately dropped, despite the US Government having information that an AWB wheat contract might have been inflated to cover kickbacks to Iraq. This information included a report, seen by the Herald, from the US Defence Contract Audit Agency.

It is understood a Senate sub-committee did not pursue the AWB investigation in the face of the fierce resistance of AWB.

Mr Thawley met Norm Coleman, chairman of the Senate permanent sub-committee on investigations, in the weeks before the Australian general election on October 9, 2004.

A statement to the Herald last night from the office of the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, confirmed Mr Thawley "argued strongly" to Senator Coleman for AWB's case, which was to block a US Senate inquiry.

"The Government was very concerned that because of the strong campaign by American wheat interests, the Senate committee would be used by those interests to damage Australia's wheat interests with Iraq," the statement said.

Mr Thawley had "expressed surprise" to Senator Coleman that his committee was focusing on AWB. The statement said the Government was "very concerned at the time that AWB Ltd would be unfairly treated". It added: "The Government had no reason to believe other than that the AWB Ltd was behaving properly."

Around the time of Mr Thawley's meeting it is understood there was also a meeting involving Australian government officials and the Senate committee staffers during which the US-Australia alliance and Australia's role in the "coalition of the willing" was raised.

The Government knew the AWB was paying bribes to Saddam and reacted by using its influence, haha, to try and make it go away. Incidentally our "role in the 'coalition of the willing' was raised." Not only is the government in this grubby scandal up to its eyeballs, but our foreign policy was used as a bargaining chip to get a crooked company and a crooked government off the hook. How many Australian soldiers did it cost to make all this go away? What else did they promise? This has the makings of a government destroying scandal if the stupid boob in charge of the opposition would get his act together.

When Democracy (TM) goes bad

Hamas members celebrate their landslide victory over the Fateh party in Palestine, Ariel Sharon begins to rotate in his bed.

As it is, if the U.S. had sat down and tried to formulate a deliberate policy to undermine the credibility of any Palestinian party that promotes a negotiated end to the conflict with Israel – and this means essentially Fatah - it couldn’t have come up with anything more effective than the crooked mediation and the blind eye to Israeli expansionism that Republican and Democratic administrations alike have practised since the Madrid Conference.

Lawrence of Cyberia

What's good for the goose

"Senior members of the Arabic community need to really have a close look at themselves

















and start … identifying these people. The only people that know these people out there are members of the Middle Eastern community …
















They need to stand up and …













be held accountable for the actions of people in the community."

SMH

If only

Wheat exporter AWB knew it was providing hundreds of millions of dollars in kickbacks and deceived the UN about the payments that helped prop up Saddam Hussein's murderous Iraqi regime, an inquiry has heard.

In a damning opening statement, the Commission of Inquiry into the monopoly wheat marketer's deals under the corruption-ridden United Nations oil-for-food program has questioned whether AWB told the truth in claiming it was duped by an elaborate scheme of kickbacks set up by the despot.

Counsel assisting the inquiry, John Agius, SC, said evidence would show that AWB's most senior executives knew they had paid close to $300 million for non-existent trucking services that were funnelled directly to Saddam's government.

Evidence would also be presented that AWB "was prepared to deceive the UN as to the true nature of its contractual arrangement with the IGB [Iraq Grain Board]", Mr Agius said.

AWB, the former Australian Wheat Board which is now a listed company, has consistently denied that it knew the hefty trucking fees paid to a Jordanian company, Alia, were ending up in the dictator's pocket.

Mr Agius rejected AWB's position.

"Evidence will be called to the effect that AWB always knew that Alia was a conduit for the payment of money to Iraq," he told the inquiry.

"These matters were always known to AWB to be in breach of the UN sanctions [imposed on Iraq].

"These matters were known at high levels within AWB."

SMH

Not that you kids care but what irony. A market monopoly aided and abetted by a government clamiming a commitment to free markets in the sigle biggest act of bribery to prop up a regime the same government claimed to oppose. Of course John Howard knew nothing, nothing definately much less than his somnambulist foreign minister or the suddenly and perhaps precipitously departed defence minister. Something tells me that Lord Downer of Baghdad and Mark "Uncle Sam sold me some magic beans" Vaile will definately be 'shuffled' by our Saddam loving PM. I hope in vain but oh to see the Liberal party hoist by its own petard, collapse in scandal brought on by their own hubris. Of course Kim Beazley is nowhere to be found. The man couldn't win an arse kicking contest against a one legged man. And... hey, get off my lawn!

Respecting the Flag

Race riot flag burner jailed

From: AAP

By Sonya Neufeld

January 12, 2006

A MAN has been jailed for three months for burning the Australian flag, despite apologising to the court for his actions during Sydney's recent spate of racial unrest.

Hadi Khawaja, 24, who has been an Australian citizen since 1986, pleaded guilty to participating in the damaging of an Australian flag at the Brighton-le-Sands RSL, in Sydney's south, on the evening of December 11.

Earlier that day, more than 5000 people had been involved in a race riot at the southern Sydney beach of North Cronulla, during which people of Middle Eastern appearance were chased and attacked.

Khawaja and a 17-year-old boy were alleged to have burnt the flag during the retaliatory violence that spread to other Sydney beaches and suburbs and eventually led to the introduction of anti-riot laws at an emergency sitting of the NSW Parliament.

The teenager, who cannot be named, is alleged to have climbed the flagpole and thrown the flag down to Khawaja, who set it alight amid a crowd of about 150 people.

Khawaja, of Peakhurst, appeared in Sutherland Local Court today on charges of malicious damage and entering enclosed lands with intent to commit an indictable offence during public unrest.

news.com.au

Maybe you think burning our flag is a terrible thing, maybe you think he deserves his sentence and more, just one thing though. If he gets a three month sentence for burning a flag what do we do to people who do this while wearing it?

The more things change

Then

In the 1920s Britain bombed Kurds and Arabs in Iraq when they rebelled against Britain's attempts to control them. By October 1922 the RAF had principal responsibility for the war, with British ground forces being reduced. In a single aerial sortie, in mid-May 1922, Suleymaniya was bombarded, causing the town's 7,000 residents to evacuate the town for the rest of the conflict. In fact, armed confrontations between Kurdish and Arab nationalists and British imperialism continued until the early 1930s.

Winston Churchill, the colonial secretary at the time, believed that gas could be used effectively against the Kurds and Iraqis (as well as against other peoples in the Empire): 'I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes.' Some shared Churchill's enthusiasm for gas as an instrument of colonial control but the British cabinet was reluctant to allow the use of a weapon that had caused such misery and revulsion in the First World War. In the event, gas was used against the Iraqi rebels though gas shells were not dropped from aircraft because of practical difficulties.

Wing-Commander Sir Arthur Harris, later Bomber Harris, head of wartime Bomber Command, was happy to emphasise that 'The Arab and Kurd now know what real bombing means in casualties and damage. Within forty-five minutes a full-size village can be practically wiped out and a third of its inhabitants killed or injured.' It was an easy matter to bomb and machine-gun the tribespeople, because they had no means of defence or retaliation. Iraq and Kurdistan were also used as testing grounds for new weapons; devices specifically developed by the Air Ministry for use against tribal villages.

Now

BAGHDAD, Jan. 3 -- U.S. pilots targeting a house where they believed insurgents had taken shelter killed a family of 12, Iraqi officials said Tuesday. The dead included women and children whose bodies were recovered in the nightclothes and blankets in which they had apparently been sleeping.

A Washington Post special correspondent watched as the corpses of three women and three boys who appeared to be younger than 10 were removed Tuesday from the house outside the town of Baiji, 150 miles north of Baghdad.

A U.S. military spokesman said that American forces take every precaution to prevent civilian casualties and that they were working with Iraqi authorities to determine what happened at the farmhouse in Baiji. "We continue to see terrorists and insurgents using civilians in an attempt to shield themselves," Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a military spokesman, said in an e-mail.

The Associated Press Television News showed footage of men carrying several bodies wrapped in carpets from the wreckage of the house. The men chanted ritual prayers: "There is no god but God."

The United States has steadily intensified its use of airstrikes against insurgents in Iraq in the past year, increasing the number of attacks from 25 in January 2005 to 120 in November.

Washington Post

Where the hell is my bike!?

Was supposed to get my new baby on the 3rd, the courier company's drivers didn't show up for work, which was nice of them, on the 4th they said it's on the way, be there by the end of the day, yeah right. They need to ship it from motherfucking EAGLE FARM to ST LUCIA. It's TWO goddamn days late. I could have taken a cab there and ridden the fucker home. First Express "Distribution with a difference" yeah, unlike other companies we just don't deliver your shit, see? That's the difference. If I don't get my bike today unpleasantness will follow.

BANZAIIII!!!

"Osama? That Pussy won't even get his hands dirty, I'm the real deal."

Remember back in the 70s when one of the most ruthless, most feared terrorist groups was from... Japan? No? Well get a load of the Japanese Red Army, hijackings, mass slaughter of civillians, contract killers, you name it. Funny how no one ever saw the need to tar every Japanese person as a potential terrorist though.