Sometimes I wish I wasn't such a news hound. That I didn't care what happened with politics in Canberra, Wellington, Ottawa, London or Washington, let alone the wars in Baghdad, Kandahar and the rest. That I felt I could just believe everything that came out of the various governments and the media, and not feel a need to question things, and to keep my own opinions, rather than accept what is said at face value.
That, for instance, I could believe that there had been a water tight case against 'Jihad Jack', who trained doing something in Afghanistan for a couple of years. That the conviction in the case was thrown out on a technicality, rather than apparently because some of the evidence was tainted by the threat of torture in Pakistan or something. That the subsequent control order was due to evidence that he is a likely threat, rather than possibly just a petty act of revenge.
And wouldn't a second trial for Mr Thomas kind of go against the long established precedent of double jeopardy? Not just a so so movie starring the fab Ashley Judd, it is the idea that if you go through a trial and get acquitted, you don't get hauled up on the same charges again. I think the idea behind it is that you wouldn't continually be pursued by a vendetta from the state or someone with lots of money to pay lawyers forever.
But New South Wales is set to fix that 'loophole' for serious cases, such as murder, gang rape and terrorism apparently. Fresh charges can be brought if substantial new evidence comes to light. The Premier down that way will be able to highlight his tough on crime credentials in the state election next year, and the Federal Justice Minister has commended NSW for getting on with double jeopardy reform. And the legislation could be retroactive, cases already thrown out could be looked at again.
What the fuck? Next there will be legislation to approve what is going on in Guantanamo and the CIA secret prisons, that confessions under torture will be admissable in court, and that people can be locked up for five years (and counting) without any charges being brought.
It is amusing, in an oh my god we are so in trouble, to hear the US President blithely admitting that yes, we did have CIA super secret prisons where we had the worst of the worst, but it is alright now, because we are transferring them to Gitmo, and if Congress puts through the correct legislation, everything will be sunshine. Just two months out from the mid term elections, where the Republicans are looking vulnerable, for the first time in five years - am so surprised with the timing of the President and the Administration bringing up all this again.
The President will be in New York on Sunday, at Shanksville and the Pentagon on Monday. After not mentioning Osama bin Laden by name for ages, he mentioned him ten times in a speech yesterday. Last week, Rumsfeld said that those who disagreed with how the war on terror was being run were like those people that appeased Hitler back in the 1930s, that the battle today was like the battles against fascism and communism in the last century.
Any recent set piece speeches on Iraq or Hurricane Katrina? I thought not.
Good Guardian comment piece on what will be the dominant theme of the weekend.
'The weekend is to be wall-to-wall 9/11. Not glorifying terrorism? You must be joking...
Terrorism is 10% bang and 90% an echo effect composed of media hysteria, political overkill and kneejerk executive action, usually retribution against some wider group treated as collectively responsible. This response has become 24-hour, seven-day-a-week amplification by the new politico-media complex, especially shrill where the dead are white people...
I would ask Bin Laden whether he had something special up his sleeve for the fifth anniversary. Why waste money, he would reply. The western media were obligingly re-enacting the destruction and the screaming, turning the base metal of violence into the gold of terror. They would replay the tapes and rerun the footage ad nauseam, and thus remind the world of his awesome power...
The gruelling re-enactment of the London bombings in July and this weekend's 9/11 horror-fest are not news. They exploit grief and horror, and in doing so give gratuitous publicity to Bin Laden and al-Qaida...'
If I thought I could get away with posting the entire thing without boring everyone senseless - anyone still awake to this point? - I would have.
Coming back to a more local angle, the Prime Minister spoke about the need for some Muslim immigrants to Australia learning English and treating women with more respect. The Senate spent an hour debating the ongoing persecution and alienation of the Muslim community in the country, and then went onto more important issues.
'John Faulkner (ALP, NSW): "... I cannot pass over him using the rights of Australian women as an excuse to attack part of our community. When Mr Howard says migrants 'must be fully prepared to embrace Australian attitudes towards women', that is the dog whistle he is blowing.
"Ask yourself, what exactly are these attitudes?
"There are workplaces, as we all know, where women have been harassed, underpaid and ignored for promotion. There are community organisations where women's participation is limited to an auxiliary role. There are religious institutions where women are relegated to subservience. Women's total wages average just 66 per cent of male total earnings. Sixty per cent of minimum wage workers in Australia are women although less than 45 per cent of the workforce are women. Women in our defence forces continue to be victimised, bullied or harassed.
"So where should we look for the cause? Should we blame the 1 per cent of the Australian population who are Muslim? Or should we look at ourselves, our workplaces, our streets, our homes? Perhaps senators might even care to look at our Parliament. It is easy to find scapegoats in members of our community who look different. It is comfortable to pretend the flaws in our society are all the fault of others: the different, the foreign, the strangely dressed.
"Australians of faith deserve better from their Prime Minister than to be demonised for their religion. And Australians who suffer discrimination deserve better from their Prime Minister than to have their real problems blamed on imaginary hobgoblins."'
Of course, as well as being boring stuff out of Canberra anyway, a story such as this got buried by all the Steve Irwin and Peter Brock memorialising. Not even going to venture a dissenting opinion on those two stories, lest I be strung up like Germaine Greer.
Like I said at the start, sometimes I wish I could give a miss on all the geopolitical stuff going on, that I could live by immersing myself into a mixture of reality TV, celebrity gossip magazines and my circle of friends and family. Sometimes I wish that - mostly I don't.
Paul
That, for instance, I could believe that there had been a water tight case against 'Jihad Jack', who trained doing something in Afghanistan for a couple of years. That the conviction in the case was thrown out on a technicality, rather than apparently because some of the evidence was tainted by the threat of torture in Pakistan or something. That the subsequent control order was due to evidence that he is a likely threat, rather than possibly just a petty act of revenge.
And wouldn't a second trial for Mr Thomas kind of go against the long established precedent of double jeopardy? Not just a so so movie starring the fab Ashley Judd, it is the idea that if you go through a trial and get acquitted, you don't get hauled up on the same charges again. I think the idea behind it is that you wouldn't continually be pursued by a vendetta from the state or someone with lots of money to pay lawyers forever.
But New South Wales is set to fix that 'loophole' for serious cases, such as murder, gang rape and terrorism apparently. Fresh charges can be brought if substantial new evidence comes to light. The Premier down that way will be able to highlight his tough on crime credentials in the state election next year, and the Federal Justice Minister has commended NSW for getting on with double jeopardy reform. And the legislation could be retroactive, cases already thrown out could be looked at again.
What the fuck? Next there will be legislation to approve what is going on in Guantanamo and the CIA secret prisons, that confessions under torture will be admissable in court, and that people can be locked up for five years (and counting) without any charges being brought.
It is amusing, in an oh my god we are so in trouble, to hear the US President blithely admitting that yes, we did have CIA super secret prisons where we had the worst of the worst, but it is alright now, because we are transferring them to Gitmo, and if Congress puts through the correct legislation, everything will be sunshine. Just two months out from the mid term elections, where the Republicans are looking vulnerable, for the first time in five years - am so surprised with the timing of the President and the Administration bringing up all this again.
The President will be in New York on Sunday, at Shanksville and the Pentagon on Monday. After not mentioning Osama bin Laden by name for ages, he mentioned him ten times in a speech yesterday. Last week, Rumsfeld said that those who disagreed with how the war on terror was being run were like those people that appeased Hitler back in the 1930s, that the battle today was like the battles against fascism and communism in the last century.
Any recent set piece speeches on Iraq or Hurricane Katrina? I thought not.
Good Guardian comment piece on what will be the dominant theme of the weekend.
'The weekend is to be wall-to-wall 9/11. Not glorifying terrorism? You must be joking...
Terrorism is 10% bang and 90% an echo effect composed of media hysteria, political overkill and kneejerk executive action, usually retribution against some wider group treated as collectively responsible. This response has become 24-hour, seven-day-a-week amplification by the new politico-media complex, especially shrill where the dead are white people...
I would ask Bin Laden whether he had something special up his sleeve for the fifth anniversary. Why waste money, he would reply. The western media were obligingly re-enacting the destruction and the screaming, turning the base metal of violence into the gold of terror. They would replay the tapes and rerun the footage ad nauseam, and thus remind the world of his awesome power...
The gruelling re-enactment of the London bombings in July and this weekend's 9/11 horror-fest are not news. They exploit grief and horror, and in doing so give gratuitous publicity to Bin Laden and al-Qaida...'
If I thought I could get away with posting the entire thing without boring everyone senseless - anyone still awake to this point? - I would have.
Coming back to a more local angle, the Prime Minister spoke about the need for some Muslim immigrants to Australia learning English and treating women with more respect. The Senate spent an hour debating the ongoing persecution and alienation of the Muslim community in the country, and then went onto more important issues.
'John Faulkner (ALP, NSW): "... I cannot pass over him using the rights of Australian women as an excuse to attack part of our community. When Mr Howard says migrants 'must be fully prepared to embrace Australian attitudes towards women', that is the dog whistle he is blowing.
"Ask yourself, what exactly are these attitudes?
"There are workplaces, as we all know, where women have been harassed, underpaid and ignored for promotion. There are community organisations where women's participation is limited to an auxiliary role. There are religious institutions where women are relegated to subservience. Women's total wages average just 66 per cent of male total earnings. Sixty per cent of minimum wage workers in Australia are women although less than 45 per cent of the workforce are women. Women in our defence forces continue to be victimised, bullied or harassed.
"So where should we look for the cause? Should we blame the 1 per cent of the Australian population who are Muslim? Or should we look at ourselves, our workplaces, our streets, our homes? Perhaps senators might even care to look at our Parliament. It is easy to find scapegoats in members of our community who look different. It is comfortable to pretend the flaws in our society are all the fault of others: the different, the foreign, the strangely dressed.
"Australians of faith deserve better from their Prime Minister than to be demonised for their religion. And Australians who suffer discrimination deserve better from their Prime Minister than to have their real problems blamed on imaginary hobgoblins."'
Of course, as well as being boring stuff out of Canberra anyway, a story such as this got buried by all the Steve Irwin and Peter Brock memorialising. Not even going to venture a dissenting opinion on those two stories, lest I be strung up like Germaine Greer.
Like I said at the start, sometimes I wish I could give a miss on all the geopolitical stuff going on, that I could live by immersing myself into a mixture of reality TV, celebrity gossip magazines and my circle of friends and family. Sometimes I wish that - mostly I don't.
Paul
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