the 300

giving your cousin a pre-paid SIM card that still had some credit 12 months ago, before leaving the UK- cost: getting arrested for terrorism

Giving $600,000 to a registered charity - cost: getting arrested for terrorism

Giving $300 million plus in bribes to a corrupt dictator, whom you claim to be a key al queda supporter, to buy weapons to attack your own troops - cost: get away scott free with over a million dollars in bonus's for the good work that you are doing.

priceless.

There's nothing rotten in the state of Denmark, its all fine and dandy, but there is something wrong with the state of Australian justice. Like so much of the Howard Governments recent attempts at governing, it all smacks of political expediency, cheap, nasty populism and absolute flailing incompetence.

In the Haneef case, the minister for immigration declares that no matter what the outcome of the courts, innocent or guilty, he will expell Haneef from the country on the basis of evidence which he cannot reveal on the grounds of national security, which Haneef cannot see, on the grounds of national security and which obviously can only be leaked to certain favourable media organisations, on the grounds of national security. He then goes on to explain something about the right of the charged to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Phil Ruddock, AG, doesn't wish to intrude, he just wants the court to address the charges, which according to Kevin have been rendered null and void in terms of his decisions.

Defending any charges of "terrorism" in this day and age is a bitch, public opinion is firmly against you from the start, you are guilty in the eyes of the populace just for being charged (see herald/sun polls for a good overview of stupidity in action). Most people will ignore the fact that a magistrate has seen all the "evidence" presented and made the decision to grant Haneef bail, setting it at a very low, for "terrorism", of $10,000, a good indicator of both the strength of the AFP case and lowly nature of the charge.

Lateline Tony Jones, asking some good questions to the rambling, very tired shell of incompetence, AG Phil Ruddock:

Boiled down, this is about a SIM card he gave to his cousin Sabeel Ahmed. The problem is that the British police have not charged Sabeel Ahmed with being part of a terrorist organisation. So how do the Australian police make a connection to a terrorist organisation when the British police do not?

Very briefly, how can you be charged with providing anything to a terrorist organisation when what you're being charged with is giving a SIM card to someone who in another country is not being charged with being part of a terrorist organisation?

Let me ask you this - what effect does that protected information, the secret information, have in law - because Dr Haneef and his lawyers are not entitled to see it and therefore it's very hard to defend yourself against it?

In this instance this information has been used, it appears, to take away a man's liberty, and yet here's the strangest thing of all. On page nine of this document assessing Dr Haneef's character, it says "if Dr Haneef continued to reside in Australia, he may make a positive contribution to the Australian community". How do you explain that statement?

None of these questions were answered in any way, shape or form of substance, Weary Phil, he of the monotone, quasi-legalese speak, merely wanted to point out that, in bringing terrorism cases to a magistrate, the judiciary was severely amiss in weighing up the evidence for what it was and granting bail.

"I will just say again that one of the matters we will be looking at is the question of the presumption against bail in terrorism matters."

So we have the immigration minister declaring that whatever a court decides, is completely irrelevant, and Australia's chief legal officer, stating that courts can't decide upon what they see and hear, they can only act in one manner, whatever the circumstances. Forget even the illusion of the presumption of innocence, we now have the one allegation and your out rule. Regardless of the strained quality of the hearsay, the paucity of evidence, the poverty of the charge, irrespective of the fact that the defendant may not, as a matter of national security, even see the case against him or her, you are guilty. Now Haneef, a man charged with the most piddling of unintentional terrorism offences, the sort of offence that I would characterise as charging a waiter with aiding a terrorist for bringing him a glass of water at a restaurant, will face several years in a detention centre awaiting a trial, which regardless of the outcome, he will be punished for, even if found completely innocent. To add to his misery, he will be charged by the day for the privilege of his own detention, something that he would not face if he were left languishing in jail.

Its not popular, but for shame.

Ruddocks last two departments, Immigration and Indigenous Affairs, have all ended with the minister taking over from him blaming him for the disastrous state of affairs within their portfolios, with numerous of the governments own reports using such glowing praise as "disastrous","dysfunctional", "a culture of incompetence" and so on and so forth, where ever the fool lays his hands. Both Tampa and the Children Overboard were Phils work, as were many of the 257 plus Australians locked up/detained for up to 6 years by the immigration department, so god knows what state the Australian legal system will be in when he is overwhelmed by his own bland spin of ineptitude and his successor pins all the departments overwhelming failures on his shoulders.

The Whitewash Papers (Cole Inquiry) handed down its findings in November of 2006, end result, not one single charge laid, not one. While Trevor Flugge, Andrew Lindberg and the lilly white boys and girls of AWB sadly get away with nothing more than their million dollar bonus's for funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to the man our PM describes as "worse than Hitler", we should ponder the nature of justice, in Howard's Australia, she is not only blind, but clearly venally stupid, as well as a politically motivated whore.

Meanwhile an Indian doctor pays us for each day he sits on Christmas Island....

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http://soundportraits.org/on-air/feature_documentaries/

yes, sound can be interesting and informative. Check out the section on executions, quite breathtaking.

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Blatant Hypocrisy of the day:

GW Bush

"We are showing the Palestinian people that a commitment to the peace leads to the generous support of the United States. These (Fatah Palestinian) leaders are striving to build the institutions of a modern democracy," said President Bush. "By following this path, Palestinians can reclaim their dignity and their future and establish a state of their own."