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Friday, November 21, 2003
NO MORE THAN 5000 fighting the Yankee oppressors? I heard that General Abi Zaid estimates that no more than five thousands individuals oppose the coalision in Iraq. I agree with this estimate. The active elements can be no more than that. How would he know. He just lives there. Wednesday, November 19, 2003
PICK THE DIFFERENCE between a left-wing public broadcaster and a left-wing academic. When the academic fabricates 'news' to support the jihad he also fabricates the evidence, as the Bunyip points out. When the broadcaster does it, they just make it up. Like AM and the '500 Palestinian children' killed by the Israelis in the latest intifada, arrived at by taking the Palestinian's figure and multiplying by 350%. THE RED CROSS can visit the helpful residents of Guantanamo Bay at any time of their choosing, they can speak to any detainee in private, and they are a conduit for written "red cross messages" for them. They then get open access to the commanders to communicate their observations. This is the message from the International Red Cross when our Gastropod lines up the rights crowd to groan about the US hanging on to these happy campers from the Taleban, al Quaida, and so on. The Red Cross can't talk about POW camps, but they can leak. So far they've leaked nothing more than the unhappiness of the detainees. That doesn't make me too unhappy. They don't know how many "children" are held there, partly because they can't define them. Human Rights Watch condemns the holding of "children" too, but they can't visit, so they know less than the Red Cross. But they have no doubt that it's a rights issue, pure and simple. They used to be worried about the makeshift character of the camp, says Wendy Patten. But they don't want it to last either. Richard Bourke of the Louisiana Crisis Assistance Centre - if you can work out what he's doing here - thinks it outrageous that some of the Guantanamo denizens might be there for ever. His Center is supposed to be a not-for-profit legal services organization founded in September 1993 to address the crisis in capital defense representation in the South, with an emphasis on the State of Louisiana. That is, it's against capital punishment. Why is its opinion on Guantanamo worth the pulpit of our national pubic broadcaster? What Richard doesn't tell us is this: how much risk is he prepared to take in letting the hard-core jihadis among these people out for another slash at us? Are they citizens with a right to full legal process, or combatants to be held for the duration? It's no issue for these people. It is for the rest of us. Wouldn't it be good to have a balanced discussion of these things. Never on Late Night Live, or anywhere else on our ABC. Monday, November 17, 2003
NO SURRENDEROOS, these bounders. About 50 kangaroos who escaped from a French animal park 30 years ago are happily living wild in a forest west of Paris. One expert said the kangaroos survive on buds and leaves, and reproduce in the month of August. A real kangaroo expert would know it's "buds, leaves, and roots". YOU NEED VIDEO TO WORK OUT RADIO NATIONAL these days. Have they got their fingers crossed? Has Biffer Balding put a gun to their head? This week the pre-schoolers at Background Briefing are running Michael Ignatieff, who thinks: "If you want to be good, you've got to be powerful, and you've got to be with the Americans.. If you do that you take a ride with a Tiger, you may end up inside." The maven of the pre-school, Kirsten Garrett, 'produces' this one, so perhaps the littlies couldn't be exposed to it. You can run the audio, or listen tomorrow night at 7.05. And then they have Owen Harries doing the Duckmanton Lectures. I mean the Boyers. This is just not right. I mean not left enough. BEING ON THE LEFT these days means never having to say "freedom of speech". the EOC [Victorian Equal Opportunity Commission] in the 12 months to June last year logged just five complaints of religious vilification in the entire state, covering all faiths and none. This wasn't good enough. And so Sisely [the Commissioner], who said the low figures proved people were too scared to complain, took action. Over the next year, her staff taught nearly 10,000 Victorians, particularly Muslims and Arabs, about our discrimination and vilification laws – and how to complain to her office. And, early last year, Sisely hired May Helou [who] was the head of the Islamic Council of Victoria's support groups for women and for Muslim converts, and now sits on its executive. And what do you think Ms Helou did? Of course, she made damn sure the quota of complaints of vilification was boosted. She arranged for some recent converts to Islam to attend a Pentecostal Christian lecture on the Koranic basis of Jihad. Were the self-invited Muslims offended? You bet they were. When [Pastor] Scot finished, one of the converts, Thomas, stood and asked: how should Christians respond? "Pray," Scot replied. Muslims "should be loved". Helou, Sisely and EOC had a better idea, the big stick. So far the Pentecostalists defence of their freedom to discuss Islam has cost the Pastors $100 000. Andrew Bolt could be making it all up, I suppose. Read the whole dreadful story here. I just know Bolt is making this one up: Witch Olivia Watts is just the latest zealot to use the Government's new racial and religious vilification laws to shut up someone whose opinions she dislikes And why is HREOC allowing itself to fall behind in the suppression of free speech? |