Red Rag

I’m posting this over the wireless network I just set up at home. If you want to do the same thing, head down to Megamart in Northbridge and get an access point for $180 and a notebook card for $50.

Here we go:

The head of Sydney’s western suburbs Islamic Association, Dr Ghulam Akbar Khan, went to the High Court to have the men returned. [...]

However Justice Ian Callinan rejected the application, finding Mr Khan does not have the authority to act on their behalf.

Justice Callinan said he was not satisfied the matter requires the intervention of the court at this stage.

Is anybody surprised? This is the same Justice Ian Callinan who yesterday asked, “Why can they not be detained [indefinitely, even until death] so that they do not work and take jobs from Australian citizens?”

(He’s ignoring the fact that they often “take” the jobs that nobody else will do, and his later complaint that “[t]hey live in detention at the expense of the Australian taxpayers” is surely an argument in support of releasing them.)

This is a disappointing decision. As I’ve alluded to in the past, the Government’s excision regulations might be illegal. Callinan won’t allow a legal challenge because the men are not here to represent themselves, but that’s exactly what the legal challenge would be opposing!

Mary Crock, of Sydney University’s law school, sets out the strong arguments against the legality of the regulations in today’s AFR. It’s subscribers only online, but here’s the gist:

There are substantial holes in the formal legal justification of last week’s actions. Australia is a party to the UN refugee convention … but it seems to be picking and choosing which parts of that instrument it will honour. … For convention purposes, presence within territory is a key trigger for entitlement to full protection. However, if Australia is permitted to redefine its territory every time someone attempts to assert a right, the concept of signing on to the treaty in the first place becomes meaningless. It certainly seems to fly in the face of the general principle of international law requiring states to observe their treaty obligations in good faith. [...]

At the very least it could be argued that regulations passed retrospectively were ultra vires (ie unlawful) because they were made for an improper purpose. This is because the regulations were made to deny individuals rights they had accrued under the Migration Act (to apply for and have any rights to a visa determined).

Indeed, the incident echoes another in Dawin in the late 1970s when regulations were made declaring the whole of the Cox Peninsula to be a suburb of the territory’s capital (so as to defeat a local Aboriginal land claim). On that occasion the High Court ruled the regulations out of order on the grounds that they had been made for an improper purpose.

This is why Amanda Vanstone and Alexander Downer were so keen to deny the men had attempted to claim refugee status — the legal basis for excising Melville Island from the migration zone is quite possibly nonexistent. It was subsequently revealed that the men had not only asked for asylum, they even “brandished an English-Turkish dictionary and pointed to the word ‘refugee’.”

Callinan has ensured — at least in the short term — that the Government’s tricky attempt to ignore people’s fundamental human rights will go unchallenged.

As the academic year draws to a close, deadlines approach with increasing rapidity. Somehow Matt Keogh, usually a slow-moving sort of fellow, has finished and submitted his honours thesis a full week ahead of schedule.

Some of you might be interested in reading it. It’s called Campaign Finance Regulation in Australia: defender of democracy or protector of parties?, and it deals with a number of topical issues, including public funding for election campaigns and the use of slush funds to pursue opponents. You can download it from Matt’s site as a PDF document.

Now, I hope you’ll excuse me: I’ve got some catching up to do.

“I get sooooooo nerves when I talk to girls (I’m in highschool). I can bearly comunicate.” I believe you.

The government’s denial that the 14 Kurds sought asylum (contrary to the men’s claims) suggests that Vanstone is worried that the excision of islands to bypass treaties may be illegal

[Thanks, Slatts.]

I know, I know. This Uncle Watch business is getting a bit tedious, but he’s just so irritating. I suppose it’s a bit like Gummy Trotsky and John Ray — you know you should just ignore them, but somehow you can’t look away. They’re like the victims of a horrific car crash. So here goes.

A complex issue, and a simpleton’s response

Uncle’s commentary on the 7.30 Report interview conducted on the day of the Sydney Peace Prize ceremony is interesting. When it comes to Arab-bashing, he can set aside his usual prejudices and describe Kerry O’Brien as “almost-adequate”. But then it’s business as usual: misinterpretation and misrepresentation of the public record.
Read the rest of this entry…

Strictly speaking this is more of a “Bolt Watch”, but it was prompted by this post, in which Uncle proves that Andrew Bolt is capable of irony. He started a recent column with this gem:

It’s not that they lie. No, it’s just that even the nicest journalists are driven by our intellectual culture to peddle bizarre untruths.

I suppose his subsequent effort, picked up by Senator George Brandis and thoroughly rebutted in the blogosphere by Roop Sandhu and Gummo Trotsky, was merely an exercise in self-fulfilling prophecy.

But anyway, back to the matter at hand. The point of Bolt’s article, and the reason Uncle endorses it, is that ABC’s AM program uncritically reported claims that Aborigines from Kupa Piti (better known as Coober Pedy) were killed in the aftermath of British nuclear tests conducted in South Australia fifty years ago. He has a point — the report was one-sided and shallow. However, and as usual, Bolt overstates his case.

Here’s a few quick points that need to be raised.
Read the rest of this entry…

It would be really cool if you could all go and wish Scott good luck.

Interesting:

Prime Minister John Howard says there are others more deserving of the Sydney Peace Prize than Palestinian advocate, Dr Hanan Ashrawi.

[He said:] “I think for example Abu Mazen, the former Prime Minister of Palestine or Palestinian Council, had contributed more, if I had been asked but obviously it’s not my call.”

This seems bizarre. The arguments raised against Ashrawi pale into insignificance when compared with Abu Mazen’s Holocaust denial:

In 1983, he wrote The Other Side: The Secret Relationship between Nazism and the Zionist Movement, wherein he suggested that the figure of six million Jews murdered by the Nazis was a false one, “peddled” by the Jews. To bolster that thesis, he quotes known Holocaust revisionists as authoritative sources. Seeking conspiracy theories that would serve Arab interests, Abu Mazen also wrote that the Zionist movement “led a broad campaign of incitement against the Jews living under Nazi rule… to expand the mass extermination.” Zionists, he contends, collaborated with the Nazis to murder Jews, in order to gain sympathy for the creation of the State of Israel.

He recently responded to the allegation, claiming that he had been misinterpreted and did not disbelieve the commonly accepted figure. These excerpts suggest otherwise, though, and he did not back away from his thesis, that the Zionists conspired with Nazis to exterminate Jews. His recent decision not to visit a Holocaust museum doesn’t lend him credibility, either.

Perhaps John Howard can explain why he supports a Holocaust-denier over a widely respected peace activist?

Exhibit A:

Stencil art is emerging as a more edgy form of street art – but one that is also more aesthetically appealing.

Exhibit B:

“Jews are the new Nazis” reads the perfectly stencilled graffiti appearing on walls across Sydney in recent months.

I don’t care whether it’s a tag, a stencil, a painting or a sculpture, “Jews are the new Nazis” is not aesthetically appealing.

Ah, Hanan Ashrawi. It is not surprising that Uncle would turn his attention to the peace prize recipient, and it’s even less surprising that his arguments would be totally unhinged. The very basis of his post is flawed:

These are specific challenges, and can be given specific responses. Instead the Chair of the Peace Prize committee, Stuart Rees responds to the criticisms by … ignoring three of them [etc.]

Good point. Well, it would be, if Rees was in fact responding to Peter Wertheim. If Uncle had read to the end of the articles, he would have discovered that Rees’ piece was first published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 22 October. He could hardly have been expected to respond to points that had not yet been raised by Wertheim, whose piece was published on 23 October — a day later.

Uncle also dismisses a quotation attributed to Ashrawi as being MIFTAH’s position, not hers. However the same article is available elsewhere and “Hanan Ashrawi” graces the by-line. Even LGF’s feral inhabitants knew it was hers.

Uncle recently claimed he was hungover. I suspect he hasn’t stopped drinking.

[Note: I'm not going to buy into the debate about whether Hanan Ashrawi is a suitable recipient for the Sydney Peace Prize, as I don't know enough about her to form a legitimate opinion. I'm a bit wary, though, of picking anybody from Israel/Palestine at the present juncture. ]

Reformed troll, Norman Hanscombe, has joined the ranks of fully-fledged bloggers. I look forward to visiting Cassandra’s Cave on a regular basis. Now, if only Chris Sheil would resurface…

This really is too easy:

[Friends of the ABC] seems to be having trouble… Their last press release is dated July 2002.

Perhaps FABC could tell us what his policy is on “seriously biassed” news reporting.

You’d know, Uncle, if you went to the right website. Here’s their response to the ridiculous “bias” inquiry. It really wasn’t difficult to track down. Uncle knows the FABC’s email addresses include the domain friendsoftheabc.org, but inductive logic appears to be beyond him. There’s always Google, I suppose. It’s quite easy to master, but it comes with help for simpletons like Uncle.

Ok, one last quick one. On 13 October, Uncle complained about ABC’s TV news because it reported that attacks against US forces in Iraq were increasing. He thinks they’re wrong, because on 6 October, military officials said the number of attacks was not increasing. Whether the scale of the attacks was increasing, as the resistance began to use bombs rather than light arms, was not addressed. In any case, a week’s a long time in Iraq, though, and another ABC report claims that on 14 October the Coalition Provisional Authority’s own security briefings indicated “that attacks on US soldiers ‘continue to increase’.” If it’s good enough for the US military, surely it’s good enough for our Uncle?

I’m going to have to stop doing this, or I’ll be here for ever. Uncle calls for fairness and accuracy, but doesn’t appear to know what those things are. He criticises Maxine McKew for her characterisation of US Lieutenant-General William Boykin. She said:

… this is something I saw on the front page of the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’.

Why wouldn’t Muslims perhaps think in the way Dr Mahathir does when they see that a that a senior Pentagon general, US General William Boykin, says he believes he’s on a mission from God, as he says against radical Islamists because he wants to protect America’s Judeo-Christian tradition.

If this is not anything but a crude recall of the crusades, I don’t know what it is.

Uncle tells us:

This is what Boykin said:

Speaking in uniform before a Christian group in June, Boykin claimed “radical Islamists” hate America “because we’re a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian…and the enemy is a guy named Satan.”

Well, yes and no. If Uncle had followed McKew’s reference and looked up the relevant article in the Sydney Morning Herald, he would know that Boykin has regularly said a lot more:

In June, General Boykin told a religious group in Oregon that radical Islamists hated the US “because we’re a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian . . . and the enemy is a guy named Satan”.

Of his role in the battle against a Muslim warlord in Somalia, he told another audience: “I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.”

Last year, he said: “We in the army of God, in the house of God, kingdom of God, have been raised for such a time as this.” He has also said of President George Bush: “He’s in the White House because God put him there.”

Claiming to be “in the army of God” when fighting a Muslim enemy is definitely “a crude recall of the crusades”.

But even if you accept Uncle’s apologia for Boykin, his indictment of Kevin Rudd is hardly fair. When Rudd said, “General Boykin should be sent on gardening leave,” Uncle claims he caved in to McKew and isn’t up to his job. But when the Liberal Member for Flinders, Greg Hunt, says “I think the General Boykin’s comments are just as silly and repugnant as those made by Dr Mahathir,” Uncle is mute.

All we’re asking for is even-handed coverage. Right, Uncle?