The Big Little Man wants us to know that he’s calling the shots in Guantanamo Bay.
Prime Minister John Howard said he was pleased the charges were to be laid before a mid-February deadline that he had set.
“I’m glad that the charges are being laid and that the deadline I set has been met,” Mr Howard told reporters today at his Sydney residence Kirribilli House.
I wonder exactly when he set that deadline? After all, “They are very serious charges and that is why they should be dealt with as soon as possible.”
Quite how Howard defines “as soon as possible” when Hicks has been interned without charges (let alone a trial) for over five years is mind boggling.
Well, it would be mind boggling if we didn’t all know that Howard’s posturing is just that – posturing. A sham. As much of a sham as the possible charges. (They’re not even real charges yet, only possible, perhaps probable, charges.) Attempted murder? Of who? I’m not a lawyer but I would have thought that the least a charge of attempted murder requires is a potential murder victim – but I gather that this charge is a kind of catch-all, nebulous accusation that David Hicks was in a war zone without being a US-designated legal killer.
Never in his wildest dreams could Kafka have come up with this.
Yeah, he’s a big man, alright, the little prick.
The case against Clevinger was open and shut. The only thing missing was something to charge him with.
And I wonder what the USA prosecution will present on the facts to do with the exact timing of David Hick’s alleged attempted murder. Did the attempt occur in normal time as we generally understand it? Or will it be in a more literary or perhaps specialist physicist sense?
It doesn’t matter who he is supposed to have attempted to murder.
Just so long as he gets the chair for it.
SteveAtThePub:
I can understand you not liking David Hicks but you ….and hundreds of others ….. have missed the most important point entirely.
This whole show has b*gger-all to do with allegations of an individual Australian attempting murder or of being a member of a gang of baddies. It has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with fighting terrorists; absolutely nothing!!!! This has everything to do with Australia’s national sovereignty, with whether we are an independent country with our own regular system of laws OR whether we are merely the private colony of a foreign potentate as was King Leopold’s Belgian Congo in the late 19th century.
We have our own troops in Afghanistan. We have experienced, highly skilled interrogators (Australian Army Intelligence Corps would NEVER put up with the cowboys, perverts, arcade-gamers, psychopaths and rank amateurs that our “gallant allies’ employ to get the answers they want to hear instead of worthwhile intelligence!). We have had centuries of experience exercising our very own consistent laws against murder, aiding the enemy and so on. We have the means here to prevent Mr D Hicks doing harm when he is returned to Australia.
There was absolutely NO EXCUSE whatsoever for the Americans to not hand Hicks and Habib over to the Australians immediately they were taken into custody. The Americans’ failure to do so is an unforgivable insult to the Australian troops who are in harm’s way and to the Australian nation. Everything done by the Bush regime since Hicks and Habib were taken into custody has been an exercise in power and dominance over the Australians …… right down to that public humiliation of the “Man Of Steel” right in his own country by his own guest.
From the Adelaide Advertiser
1. Kudos to the above-mentioned Liberal dissenters.
2. It seems that no reporter at the Kirribilli press conference challenged Howard to make a statement on the dissenters’ objections. Why not?
3. Shorter Howard: “I masterfully demanded that the US ream our national sphincter. What choice did they have?”
4. (Shorter Howard … there’s a zen concept!)
Think of it as sensible outsourcing Graham, when not to do so would have let the slippery little darling of the left off scott free at home. That’s because for all your bluster to the contrary, ever so clever we didn’t have laws in place to nail the bastard.(There was a time when we just made them up sensibly and hanged the bastards- Nuremburg, sigh!!!!)
As for mimicking the Yanks, fully expect the Ruddster to do so real soon http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,21168333-401,00.html?from=public_rss
but don’t expect a whimper of objection from LPers naturally.
More on sensible outsourcing, obby style.
One can’t help but wonder if Howard’s deadline was set after receiving word from the States about the likely date of charges being laid. Why would the Man Of Steel set a deadline without knowing for sure that it would be met?
âIâm glad that the charges are being laid and that the deadline I set has been met,â?
Classic management style. Don’t set deadlines until you’re absolutely sure they can be met.
Hey it’s a helluva lot better than cooking the books when the Great Leap Forward targets are going down the s… shute.
Oh well, war is hell Gummo, but unlike the Rainbow Warrior crowd, all’s well that ends well. At least he’s alive and kicking with a story to flog eh?
Transcript, suspect D.Hicks (code name, “The Chaplain”) CIA interrogation, somewhere in Afghanistan, 2002);
thx, sweetie – but he’s already got it
Pretty obviously, both our and the US government are desperate to convict him of something – anything – so they can keep him locked up. Useful idiots like SWIO and obby no doubt will argue that’s because they actually think him guilty of something, but of course it’s really just to stop him selling his story to the papers.
I really find it puzzling how righties, when it comes to things like taxation, the welfare state or regulating markets solemnly warn us all of the iniquities of creeping state control of our lives. But come a trumped up war, or some other prospect of indulging their sadistic fantasies on someone, that scepticism disappears. Suddenly they’re all Carthago delenda est and Fürherprinzip.
From Catch 22………”The case against Clevinger was open and shut. The only thing missing was something to charge him with”
I’m afraid ‘man of polystyrene’ has started to flail again noticeably. Pencil in a small paint brush moustache and he looks a lot like a more famous little dictator. He’s rattled and Andrew Robb will be needed to calm him down.
Bet they never believed that the punters would get pissed off with ‘sentence without trial’. Now they have to deal with a true kangaroo court. With the exception of a few devout rednecks, it will not go over at all well with a public sensitive to the slightest sign of American rudeness.
Not for the first time Obby, you’ve misread the game entirely.
If you actually wandered into the smoko room now and then instead of assuming the “punters” view, you’d be only too well aware that the Hicks issue is not one of the “left” at all.
It’s been so cynically handled by Howard and his crew that it’s blossomed into an issue of “fair go”. This is going to back-fire badly on those complicit in the snafu. And it is a snafu isn’t it? How hard would it have been to do the right & dignified thing as per the Blair govt, and immediately demand return of nationals? Blair could see very early which direction the confused Americans were going with Guantanamo Bay, and wanted no part of it Also gives him the moral platform to criticise the mess, unlike our Subservient-inChief. He and Lord Downer bumble along day after day assuming it will all just fade away.
I think you’re going as well on this issue as you did on the Iraq cock-up. Nabakov keeps threatening to compile the wisdoms of Obby from recent years. It’s going to make a toe tickler when he does!
Mid February. Hmmmm. Isn’t that around the time Mr Cheney blows in to give Hevvie Kevvie a pat on the back?
Mr Cheney is visiting, is he? I wonder what cultural events Canberra have pencilled him in for. He’ll have missed the final of the one-dayers, I suppose. I do hope it’s not all work and no play for Dick.
Maybe he can go shooting with Mr Ruddock.
I’m afraid that apart from the usual 5th columnists & co, there doesn’t seem to be any support for Hicks on the Ozzi street.
When can we expect this support from salt of the earth ozzis for Hicks/Daewood to start?
SATP,
From the Australian, 30 January 2007.
This poll was taken in Jan 2007.
Is it 2007 where you are SATP?
With all of us Fifth Columnists about, SATP, you should have every reason to be afraid.
Have you stowed the ammo in your bunker?
Steve at the pub:
Steve, you’re one of those out-of-touch elites, I’m afraid: Recent polling has shown the majority of Australians want Mr Hicks returned to Australia.
Time to stop sipping those lattes and get with the mainstream, mate.
“Ozzi street” being Redneck St, Hicksville, in northern Qld. Try to get out a bit more, SATP.
Ruddock would be very safe. Cheney shoots only at cute or living things.
Steve,
Even Gerard Henderson acknowledges that Howard might have a problem with public opinion on this one:
Maybe you actually need to get out of the pub a bit and out onto the Ozzi street, as Youie said.
Katz,
If Cheney shot Ruddock, it wouldn’t make a ha’p'orth of difference. What Ruddock needs is salt poured into his mouth and then his lips sewn together, if I remember my voodoo correctly.
Yeah, and I’m not sure Ruddock’s up fer the old huntin’, rootin’ and tootin’.
I propose instead that we send Dick Cheney up to spend a very long weekend with Steve at the Pub. He’s quite handy with a firearm – or so he reckons.
Polls also showed Joh Bjelke-Petersen being resoundingly voted out at every election. Each time the opposite happened. I haven’t taken any notice of a poll since.
That goes for you too Gummo Trotsky. Disingenuous to pretend that posting of yours shows support FOR Hicks. Read the poll question again. Being not in favour of the way the federal government has handled the Hicks incarcertaion, which is not the same as wanting him free.
Perhaps a poll question along the lines of: “Do you think David Hicks has got what he deserved?” would reveal some interesting answers.
Sure have got the ammo in Katz. It is piled up & sorted by calibre. You want that I should put your name on one? Or don’t you consider Hicks worth that much? He is after all, a responsibility dodging little bigoted hatemonger, who sided with the enemy. He should have been shot out of hand.
What have you done Katz, to support the families of troops who have been killed on service overseas in the middle east & afghanistan? Do you consider those people to be worth more or less than Hicks?
Perhaps there will be sudden mass public support for a turncoat bin laden sympathiser, child support evader and racist bigot. Perhaps people will change their vote because of just such a little turd/national disgrace. It just ain’t happening yet in significant numbers. For some reason self-interest (mortgage, job, health care) are still the principal election issues for most people.
Bigotry is never dead on this site while you are alive eh Youie? You have something against North Queenslanders? Consider them not all that bright perhaps? 2nd class citizens perhaps?
Indeed Steve is right for he grasps the essential sumulacra of Hick’s situationary contingency without making the Volarian errors attributable to heitus-induced post-Beckettian non-clarities.
Yes, but Joh didn’t need an actual majority of the votes to keep winning elections because of the Gerrymander. Just sayin…
The Hicks issue probably isn’t a vote changer by itself, but it doesn’t really matter who Hicks is. The issues are to do with justice and fair process. If Iraq does start to become a vote changer (and I don’t think it is yet, but it might be getting there), then the Hicks narrative just reinforces the servility of Howard towards a disastrous foreign and military policy from our “great mate”.
What are we defending from this enemy again? Oh .. hmmm .. just a minute .. the right to a fair trail and not be arbitrarily detained and not “shot out of hand” perhaps?
But don’t let me get in the way of your little fascist regime there Steve;
Listen here you little spiv. I used to be of those fucking troops. You don’t speak for me! I’d say having an opinion that doesn’t bow down to death threats issuing from the likes of you is enough “to support the families of troops”.
Y’know, I generally reckon that people have a right to make fools of themselves, and anyway it’s in everyone’s interests to let people like satp show us just how ugly, ignorant and cowardly they are. But death threats, implicit or explicit, are beyond the pale.
I’m for permanently banning the deadshit.
Well, for one thing, I’ve campaigned against the government cover-up in the case of the death of Jake Kovco.
Not content to send Kovco to Iraq on the basis of a lie, the Howard government has also conspired in telling lies about Kovco’s death and manner of leaving Iraq.
In other words, Australian troops have been sent on worse than a fool’s errand. They’ve been sent under false pretenses.
Is this how you want the troops and their families treated?
Glad to read of your ammo situation. Put my name on a big bullet.
No more of such rhetoric, please, steve.
SpivAtThePub; Also, would those families also be expecting the sort of “support” that Sgt Andrew Russell’s widow, Kylie Russell, was treated to by the callous little twerp that sent him into harm’s way?
Steve at the Pubs account of the meaning of that opinion poll on David Hicks runs into a little bit of a problem. If the poll really was worthless, why did John Howard sudenly set his mid-February deadline? Did he simply have a change of heart after five years?
Notice the Big Ocker’s slip into US gangster argot. Has watched far too many bad DVDs, this boy.
The Editor: One can’t help but wonder if Howard’s deadline was set after receiving word from the States about the likely date of charges being laid. Why would the Man Of Steel set a deadline without knowing for sure that it would be met?
He wouldn’t have. Either they received word first and then ‘set the deadline’ to make themselves look good. Or they said to the States, “Guys, we’re in a spot of bother, can you please please please say you’re going to lay charges soon?” and the States said back, “If we try really hard we might come up with something by mid-Feb” and so Howard said, “Fine, thanks so much” and the next day, “I’ve demanded that he be charged by the middle of February”.
Of course, as has been pointed out in some media but wasn’t dwelt upon in the Australia media, he at no time said what he’d do if they didn’t meet his so-called deadline. That’s because he wouldn’t know what to do. And because it wasn’t a deadline.
Sorry to chime in so late here, but observa:
Neither did the US. Why do you think they’ve had him banged up in Guantanamo Bay for five years? It’s taken them that long to concoct a judicial framework in which they can “legally” prosecute him.
SteveAtThePub:
That might have been true a couple of years back ….. but in February 2007, thanks to the political incompetence of Howard, Ruddock and the rest of that mob, David Hicks has been turned into a combination of Ned Kelly, Les Darcy, Phar Lap, Mother Theresa, Lindy Chamberlain and Bazza McKenzie in the eyes of so many ordinary Australians. Even if a truckload of rock-solid, verifiable evidence against Hicks was brought forth, who would believe it now?
ViaCollins’ post at 12:05pm was right on the money; public attitudes have changed markedly. Blair was cunning enough and tough enough to avoid being caught out by this change ….. not so Howard.
You also said
Errrr. Enthusiasm is fine …. but that wasn’t quite as prudent a statement as might be supposed ….. you see, there are quite a few of Australians who have friends or relatives in the ADF …. and their own feelings might not necessarily coincide exactly with the official Party line.
Actually I’m starting to warm to Davey Hicks. He seems a cool kinda guy. Loves guns. When his woman turns from a hot root into the mum of kids, he ditches the bitch. If the floozie didn’t want to be saddled with sprogs she shoulda took some precautions, rite?
A rugged individualist kinda guy, he heads overseas to fight for a cause he believes in. The sort of thing real men do. No office pansy jobs for our Dave the idealistic. His vocation is using military weapons and killing people. Macho stuff. Sure beats sticking around & helping to change nappies.
Quite romantic actually, going overseas to fight for an ideal, a cause one believes deeply in. Few men have the balls for this.
Not like the Australian Army. They go overseas for & kill thousands of Iraqi women & children in return for pay. Mercenaries or hired killers? I can’t decide. None of them had the balls (unlike Dave) to refuse to be the political tool of the bush regieme. None of them lay down their guns or bolted for sanctuary in a safe country. They chose to proceed with prosecuting howard’s illegal war.
Then Davey’s killing & fun is interrupted by some backward tribesmen kidnapping him & ransoming him to the mercenary & imperialistic US forces. He gets thrown in the calaboose.
Three squares a day & he doesn’t have to worry about child support tracking him down & garnishing his wages! Doesn’t get any better than this you may think? Hah! THIS is where his adventure turns into real heroic stuff.
Dave is tortued, sadistically. For years he is kept in conditions fit for a battery farm chook, and subject to treatment we shudder to think of.
However I have confidence in Dave, despite what the world’s worst fascist regieme has done to him, his attitude on women & jews won’t have been changed.
Yep, I reckon you have got a bit in common, too. If only the coin had flipped the other way- you might have been best of mates.
Observa, I have seen the light, now my mission is to save your soul also.
No point folornly gloating over how in the good old days Dave would have been declared a traitor, put on his hoss, had a noose slung from the nearest tree branch and over his neck, whle the citizenry scrambled to be the one to slap his cayuse accross the rump.
Wbb has a valid point in the post immediately above. Better to recognise his positives. For example, faced with a choice of entertainment for the evening, do you think he would have headed to the drag strip & mingled with a “sociopathic fringe group” or gone to sip sauvignon blanc at a book discussion group and got right into the relative merits of the writing style of a few obscure froggy insomnia curing philosphy authors?
Would he accompany a mate for a night of gay/jew bashing? Or dress up in peacock feathers & skimpy leather to take his place on a float at the gay & lesbian mardi gras?
Just stunned I am.
Went to bed thinking Far North Pumpkin had a contract out on Hicksie.
Only to wake up finding them holding hands and comparing calibres.
Jes’ and it was really love all along.
Islamist fanatics = gun-hugging redneck hicks = sociopathic fringe group
It works for me.
And I see that SATP is embracing the idea with almost unseemly fervour.
Little wonder Ratty was so keen to pry the guns from their trembling hands.
Best thing he ever did.
Howard shrugs off questions on the issue of retrospective laws.
Read the fine print for confirmation that the charges are not even close to being laid yet. The deadline was artificial, a tool for spin.
One has to wonder whether any of those people who are saying loudly and publicly that David Hicks is getting what he deserves, and that the proceedings he is being subjected to to entirely proper and appropriate – Gerard Henderson, Miranda Devine, Janet Albrechtson, Philip Ruddock, John Howard, Steve at the Pub to name but a few – would be happy for themselves or a loved one of theirs to be subject to identical treatment. I rather suspect not.
Cheers…
..”…for themselves or a loved one of theirs to be subject to identical treatment….”
You are projecting your standards onto me Mick.
None of my family are the type to run out on our family/kids. If anyone did they would have to hope that the law caught up with them before their relatives did.
As for joining radical terrorist militias overseas, well let’s just say that none of us are misguided enough to disgrace the name so resoundingly. However, if one of us did, the task of regaining the family honour would fall to the male relative most capable of ..er.. clearing the family’s name.
You stick to the ethics of your family, & I’ll stick to mine.
Mary Maxwell has a conspiracy theory -
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/5199
Is this so far-fetched? Many other Muslims have been kidnapped in Europe and rendered to countries where there were tortured, including Guantanamo Bay where Hicks is held.
She also has another conspiracy theory about Major Michael Mori -
Mary Maxwell has also called into question Hicks’ ability to speak or write Arabic.
It makes you think…
Or not.
I’m perfectly happy to accept that it’s a combination of mendacity and incompetence. If there are so many conspiracies about by all powerful evildoers, you wonder why the reality is so messy.
I think the essential point Mary Maxwell makes, that ‘habeus corpus’ is being trashed and the public softened up to accept it, is a good one.
But hey, me believe in conspiracy theories?, no way. Next you will be telling me that John Howard some how rigged an election by telling people lies about the intentions of refugees to throw kids overboard.
If you are perfectly happy not to think, then I am perfectly happy to do your thinking for you.
Yet more similarities b/w our token FNQ Real Bloke and the tribal semites he claims to hate.
And that Maxwell theory is crazy. When you have psychopaths like Moe Davis, religious visionaries like George Bush and utter bastards like Dick Cheney running things, conspiracy theories are redundant.
Things are as bad as they seem. And that’s bad enough.
I think the Maxwell theory is silly too.
I’ve read that there are big divisions within the US military and especially within its legal arms about the new military commissions. Mori is not an isolated individual.
Wbb, you will withdraw the remark which states that I have ever claimed to hate a tribe of semites.
So what is a truer description of your feelings, Stevie? For example when you say:
Was this an expression of admiration for those semites subject of that statement?
Actually, now I see I probably do owe you an apol. Your proclivities for threatening people with guns etc – probably leads you to see the above perception (slanderously inaccurate as it is) as a ve.
silkworm: “If you are perfectly happy not to think, then I am perfectly happy to do your thinking for you.”
Well, fine, just so long as no thinking gets done, which would be the net effect.
[Sorry, s-worm, it was just too easy and I couldn't help myself...]
“Nuremburg, sigh!!!!”
Another luxury we can’t afford, it seems.
SteveAtThePub [at 12:49am]:
Sounds like a storyboard for a wow of a Hollywood blockbuster …..
Meanwhile, back in the three-dimensional real world …..
David Hicks does not sound like a very nice person at all. However, whether he is thoroughly nice or an utter mongrel is completely irrelevant. One could be rather unkind and say that David Hicks is irrelevant to the wider and far more serious issues that have been brought to the surface by the Howard government’s blundering; blundering which brought about this scandal.
Now, why not have a very hard, very quiet think about why some families of ADF members might be concerned about how Hicks has been treated and why someone with the professional background of Australian Defence Association director, Neil James, wants Hicks brought back to Australia and put under a Control Order so that he “cannot rejoin the war” (remember, that’s the actual reason for him being in custody).
“Justice” is indeed an expensive commodity LoneNut.
“Afforded”, as dubbya’s daddy would always say, “by just us”.
SteveAtThePub ….. and Observa too:
You seem to follow the quaint 20th Century tradition of dividing the world into Left and Right. I myself prefer dividing people into the Blues and the Greens – as in the supporters of chariot-races in ancient Byzantium; it’s more fun ….. “Nike! Nike!”.
What puzzles me is that the Right does not support David Hicks. His is a natural cause for the Right to support with all their accustomed zeal. A young man going forth into the world to exercise his free will and so forth ….. falsely imprisoned and tortured by a neo-Stalinist regime which had wiped its boots on Constitution of a freeedom-loving people; which said “Nyet!” to the whole world’s protests about manifest breaches of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Convention and every other civililized international agreement; which relies on the collaboration of a satellite regime to keep this Australian subjected to cruel-and-unusual punishments; which is getting ready to subject him to a Communist-style Show Trial. …….
The Right has abandoned all the running on this to the Lefties. How strange. The Right, by its timidity and confusion, keeps on kicking home goals for the Left. That’s really peculiar. Capt. John Birch and Mr B. A. Santamaria must be turning in their graves ……
Shurely shome mishtake? John Bellinger, the legal adviser to the US Secretary of State, according to today’s SMH, defended Hicks’s trial process as fair and denied Hicks was being charged under a retrospective law. But then he is also quoted saying – in mitigation of US action re Hicks – that there were tribunals using offences that were “obviously put down on paper much later than the conduct actually that was in question”. Is this man a habitual drunk? Or is it just a shortcoming in processing a logical train of thought? This is a legal adviser to the US Secretary of State?! Perhaps I am missing a legal subtlety here. I invite the legal geniuses at Catallaxy to please explain this one.
Sir Henry, turn it up. A man can be an habitual drunk without being involved in the process of the law—and being a lawyer, as far as I’m concerned, is a far worse blight on someone’s character than just being permanently potted. Consider the folklore of folk law: the phrase “sober as a judge” is a backhanded compliment to judges just as much as it is a description of the sozzled non-lawyer in question.
A few of the comments on this thread, by the way, show the telltale signs of nights-on-the-keyboard-tiles, tap tap tap tap slouch ramble hyperbole tap tap tap. Bravo chaps and chappettes! Keep up the good absence of work.
You’re right DevilDrink. Must be just a cretin then. Any actual ideas on-topic about the legal conundrum faced by us all-night time-wasting tappers?
What, are you tripping?
It was probably from the mouth of his nana or his mother..
but I am so stealing Graham’s phrase about “..now,have a very hard,very quiet think”.
I’m not only stealing it, I’ll be using it.
SteveAtThePub and Observa:
Last night, when I criticized the Right for not supporting David Hicks because his case would have been a natural one for the Right to support, I honestly did not know that a Family First Party politician was in the United States lobbying Congressman there to have David Hicks returned to Australia. Fair dinkum, I did not know.
Say what you like about the Family First Party: earthly agents of the Anti-Christ; bible-banging b*stards; clever and dangerous harbingers of a Theocratic Australia; etc., etc., ….. they are always several jumps ahead of the other parties on the Right.
TheDevilDrink and SirHenryCasingbroke:
That ‘legal advisor” you fellows mentioned sounds like a right royal example of the evils of self-abuse.
Gentlemen, gentlemen! The correct expression – after saying or attempting to say “British Constitution” and “Sixty-six West Register Street” – is …..”As Jober As A Sudge”.
AnotherKim:
G’day. Please be my guest …….
Graham Bell: Please copy & paste where I have EVER divided the world into “left” or “right”.
Go Senator Fielding. Smart move that. Actually going to Washington. Speaking to actual politicians. You wonder what the ALP are up to sometimes.
“You wonder what the ALP are up to sometimes.”
Indeed, wbb. They only jumped on the Hicks bandwagon after getting a feel from the polls that there is a vote in it. In fact they have shown very little interest in the individuals right to a speedy trial or release, locally. Preferring to go along with Howards fear mongering War on Terror.
But I guess you knew that anyway.