Archive for the ‘Terrorism’ Category
Saturday, December 27th, 2008
27/12/08
George Brandis and Philip Ruddock have said that Mohamed Haneef does not deserve an apology, and Mr Brandis even said the Government should apologise to Kevin Andrews for trashing his reputation (”I don’t hold grudges”, December 23). Kevin Andrews said the Australian people expected him to act and that he had the courage to do so. This opinion can now be weighed against details of the bungled investigation and ASIO’s advice that Dr Haneef was innocent. The failure to balance the requirements of justice against public security smacks of Dick Cheney’s belief that the US President’s executive authority could be expanded at will to cover the treatment of suspected terrorists and the domestic wire-tapping program. The Haneef case will at least result in a fresh look at the legislation under which the injustice occurred. James Moore Kingsgrove
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Tags: Australia, Haneef, Terrorism
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Friday, December 26th, 2008
26/12/08
The Howard government made an art form of creating plausible deniability by using ministerial advisers as the primary conduits of information between ministers, their departments and other agencies. Information—oral and/or written—reached the adviser and from there knowledge about its path to the minister or elsewhere fell into a black hole. The Clarke report into the Haneef affair found no evidence of conspiracy and no evidence of politicial motivation in the actions of Philip Ruddock and Kevin Andrews. Yet the report cannot explain the motivation behind Andrews’s mystifying decision to cancel Mohamed Haneef’s visa, nor for Ruddock’s troubling failure to scrutinise and reconcile conflicting evidence from two agencies under his ministerial control, and the inquiry sheds no light at all on the role of the ultimate political tactician, John Howard.
But two individuals who could have shed light on these matters — Andrews’s chief-of-staff, Michael Toby, and Howard’s senior adviser, Jamie Fox — either refused to give evidence or were denied permission to do so by the former government. In this case, no evidence is not evidence of innocence. The inquiry’s inability to penetrate the protective shield provided by Howard government advisers is evidence that it never had the investigative authority to reveal if and how our political practitioners interfered with the administration of justice. Greg Poropat; New Farm, Qld
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Tags: Australia, Haneef, Human Rights, Terrorism
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Friday, December 26th, 2008
Geoff Elliott; 26/12/08
Australia has been asked to accept detainees released from Guantanamo Bay when it is shut, plans for which are already under way. The US State Department confirmed that, over the past 12 months, it had cabled more than 100 countries seeking help to clear out Guantanamo Bay. The incoming administration of Barack Obama is expecting help with resettling more than 250 detainees still at Guantanamo Bay, some still considered dangerous but many regarded as not being a threat. Labor has been critical of Guantanamo Bay, saying the post-9/11 detainee camp was “an affront to natural justice and the rule of law”. The Rudd Government itself, however, has not pushed the issue too hard since taking office, unlike some of its European counterparts.
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Tags: Human Rights, Terrorism, USA
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Friday, December 26th, 2008
Michelle Grattan; 26/12/08
It might sound odd to say so, but this week’s report on the Haneef affair is reassuring as well as alarming. It would have been far worse if former judge John Clarke had found that then immigration minister Kevin Andrews had cancelled Indian doctor Mohamed Haneef’s visa for cynical political reasons, under pressure from John Howard. The 2007 election was looming; the government was in trouble, and that’s what many people thought happened. In his exhaustive review, Clarke concluded otherwise, saying Andrews’ mistakes came not from political calculation or pressure but from incompetence — failure to get to the bottom of things. (He did add the tantalising word “mystifying” in relation to the timing of the visa’s cancellation.) Of course, this is of no comfort to Haneef, who has suffered permanent scars that cannot be entirely removed even by a report that finds everybody else rather than him at fault. But it is a small positive ray for our political system. Overwhelmingly, however, people will concentrate on the indictments in this report — and rightly.
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Tags: Australia, Haneef, Terrorism
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Friday, December 26th, 2008
26/10/08; (2 Items)
The Catholic leader in the Holy Land has made an impassioned plea for peace from the traditional birthplace of Jesus. “On this night, the silence of the grotto (where Jesus was born) will be even louder than the voice of the cannons and submachine-guns,” Latin Patriarch Fuad Twal told a midnight Mass of pilgrims who gathered from around the world. To get to the church, many had to drive through a gap in the eight-metre-high concrete wall that separates Bethlehem from Jerusalem and forms part of the projected 700-kilometre West Bank separation barrier Israel says is needed for its security. “It was heartbreaking to see that wall, it’s a blot on Israel,” said Jessica Kelly, a 22-year-old student from Sydney. In Rome, Pope Benedict urged an end to “hatred and violence” in the Middle East during his midnight Mass at the Vatican.
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Tags: Christianity, Israel, Terrorism, USA
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Friday, December 26th, 2008
Jonathan Freedland; 26/12/08
The first, defining phase of the conflict that began on 9/11 — the war of Bush, Tony Blair and Osama bin Laden — is about to slip from the present to the past tense. Bush and Blair will be gone, with only Bin Laden still in post. The urge to move on is palpable. You can sense it in the valedictory interviews Bush and Dick Cheney are conducting on their way out. They’re looking to the verdict of history now, Cheney telling the Washington Times last week: “I myself am personally persuaded that this president and this administration will look very good 20 or 30 years down the road.” The once raging arguments of the current era are about to fade, the lead US protagonists heading off to their respective ranches in the west, the rights and wrongs of their decisions in office to be weighed not in the hot arena of politics, but in the cool seminar rooms of the academy. Not so fast.
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Tags: Terrorism, USA
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Thursday, December 25th, 2008
Michael Jansen; 25/12/08; (2 Items)
It is bitterly ironic that Western Christians celebrate today the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem more than 2,000 years ago while the inhabitants of this West Bank town and their compatriots continue to suffer a crushing Israeli occupation supported by Western governments. Bethlehem, at the time of the nativity, was also ground down by occupation. Roman occupation. But there is a distinct difference between the two occupations. Israelis went to Palestine with the intention of colonising the land and expelling the indigenous people; the Romans to rule a strategic land bridge between North Africa and Europe. Eventually, the Romans expelled the Jews from Palestine because they attempted to revolt against the empire. But Israel cannot follow the Roman example by mounting mass ethnic cleansing operations against Palestinians, even though these try to resist the occupation.
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Tags: Christianity, Global, Israel, Terrorism
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Thursday, December 25th, 2008
25/12/08
Gunmen broke into the house of a women’s rights activist in the volatile northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Thursday and beheaded her, police said. The victim was identified as Nahla Hussain, the leader of the women’s league of the Kurdish Communist Party. She was alone in the house at the time of her death. It is not known what the circumstances were that led to the attack. Violence against women has been an ongoing problem in Iraq. The killing comes ahead of next month’s provincial elections, a post-Saddam era watershed event that’s generating an uptick in civil unrest and political infighting. Twenty-four officers from the interior and defense ministries were arrested this week accused of facilitating the activities of former Baathist regime members, the Iraqi prime minister’s media spokesman said Thursday.
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Tags: Human Rights, Iraq, USA, Womens Rights
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Wednesday, December 24th, 2008
Robert Gee; 24/12/08 (5 Items)
With each tolling bell, Maryam Aranky traced a cross over her chest with her index finger. Another resident of Taybeh had died, and the villagers were walking toward the Greek Orthodox church for the funeral. Ms Aranky, 69, who lives alone, said she would not celebrate Christmas this year. She is still mourning the recent loss of three relatives, including her brother — “the one who took care of me”. “We are dying,” said Nabil Massis, who is 50 but appears older, adding he has been out of work for years. “The one who gets an opportunity to leave for a job will leave.” In the past two months, there have been “nine or 10″ deaths and just four births, according to Mayor David Khoury.
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Tags: Christianity, Human Rights, Israel, USA
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Wednesday, December 24th, 2008
Paul Maley; 24/12/08; (5 Items)
The Australian Federal Police’s counter-terrorism chief “lost objectivity” when assessing the case against Mohamed Haneef, ignoring or cynically interpreting evidence that strongly pointed to the former terror suspect’s innocence. The long-awaited report into the Haneef affair by retired NSW Supreme Court judge John Clarke QC criticises the AFP’s lead investigator, the then national manager for counter-terrorism, Ramzi Jabbour, as “unable to see that the evidence he regarded as highly incriminating in fact amounted to very little”. Mr Clarke accuses Mr Jabbour, who was sent to Queensland from Canberra to take carriage of the 700-person investigation, of selectively, even cynically, interpreting the evidence against Dr Haneef. He is found to have downplayed facts that may have weakened the case against the Indian doctor - such as Dr Haneef’s attempts to contact a police officer in England after failed terror attacks in London and Glasgow in June last year.
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Tags: Australia, Haneeef, Terrorism
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