Archive for the 'US-Australia Issues' Category

For Australians thinking about visiting the US make sure you read this travel advisory before heading off or you might find yourself stuck at the airport:

TRAVELLERS who do not need visas to enter the United States will have to register online with the US Government at least three days before they visit, under a security regulation set to begin next year.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff will announce the rule today,, a US official said.

Required online registration will begin in January and will be valid for a two-year period. Australia is among 27 nations whose citizens do not need US visas. [Herald-Sun]

I would assume there is a good reason for this but the fact that Michael Chertoff came up with it gives me doubts.

I have featured gaffes that US President George Bush has made before on this site, so I think he is fair game for legitimate gaffes that he makes.  However, I just saw today on Channel 9 WIN News a deliberate attempt to manufacture a gaffe made by Bush in order to bash him with.  WIN News played a video of Bush talking to reporters and he said this before the video was cut off:

"I heard somebody say, ‘Where’s Mandela?’," he said.

"Well, Mandela’s dead"

By just watching the edited video you would think Bush is an idiot because everyone knows Mandela is alive and well.  However, if you actually watch the entire video you will see what Bush really said:

Bush was clearly referring to the fact that Iraq has no Mandela like person to unite the country under because Saddam killed all the people with Mandela qualities.  However, by watching WIN News they don’t play the whole clip and they edit it to make Bush out to look like an idiot.  Bush makes enough genuine gaffes to make fun of him over, but I find it down right disgraceful that WIN News has to stoop to such a level to manufacture something like this in order to bash Bush with.

To be fair, WIN News is not the only one playing the Bush bashing game here.  I did a little research and found that Reuters is the one that started this attempt to manufacture a controversy where none existed by publishing this same story yesterday.  I’m willing to bet WIN News read the Reuters story and then edited the video to show their viewers here in Australia in order to bash Bush with.  This is clearly just another case of BDS. 

Convicted Australian terrorist David Hicks returned to Australia this week to finish out his prison sentence given to him for his support of Al Qaida in Afghanistan.  The liberal left in Australia has treated Hicks arrival to that of rock star and some as the equivalent of Nelson Mandela:

You’d think this was the second coming of Christ, rather than the return of a man who trained for months with a terrorist group linked to the killings of more than 100 Australians, and thousands of other civilians.

Listen to Louise Adler, the far-Left head of Melbourne University Press.

She’s angry the Howard Government won’t let Hicks make money by selling (to her?) the story of his criminal career.  It’s not as if he actually killed someone, she protested this week, accepting Hicks’ word on that matter.

Besides, Hicks puts her in mind of another political prisoner with a great story to tell: "Nelson Mandela wrote his memoirs while in prison and profited by them."

Hicks, Mandela – now there’s a link? Hey, why not extend the analogy and make Hicks our first president, as Mandela was made first president of post-apartheid South Africa?

You think this is far fetched?  Just think the leader of the South Australia Democrats would not rule him out as a party candidate.  The Hicks apologists even get better, read this from the Sydney Morning Herald:

Eight years after he left his Adelaide home for the adventure of a lifetime in Pakistan, Hicks returned to Australia this morning a 31-year-old former Muslim with a bad back and receding hairline.

Yes an "adventure of a lifetime" in that adventure tourisism Mecca of Pakistan!  Watch out New Zealand you have some real competition now as the global adventure tourism capitol from the jihadis of Pakistan.  You gotta love it, only leftists would describe jihad as an "adventure of a lifetime".  In reality, which the Sydney Morning Herald is far removed from, Hicks has admitted to supporting the Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist group in Pakistan and firing at Indian soldiers in 2000.  This disclosure has caused the Indian government to want to get their hands on Hicks themselves. 

To further show how far from reality the Sydney Morning Herald is read this:

Hicks, convicted of providing material support to a terrorist organisation, has spent more than five years at Guantanamo, one of the world’s most oppressive prisons.

I think Jules Crittenden responds to this the best:

So horrible there! Though I hear China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia, a few other places have some real beauts, in strong contention for “most oppressive.”  Anyway, I’d guess being fattened up at Gitmo beats getting your head sawed off on al-Jazeera. 

So how is Hicks going to be treated in Australia since being released from "one of the world’s most oppressive prisons"?:

Remember how he was supposed to be cooped in a cell in Guantanamo so small that it was driving him mad? An alleged replica of his cage was even set up in the streets of Sydney, and Hicks sympathisers were filmed emerging from it weeping tears of pity.

How big was Hicks’ real cell? As ABC television reported from inside Guantanamo in February: "This is a cell the US says is identical to the one in which Hicks is kept. It measures four metres by two metres."

That small, huh? Damn those cruel Americans!

In fact, as Hicks’ fans cheered his return to Adelaide to serve out his last months of prison time, an AAP reporter rejoiced that after Guantanamo, Adelaide’s "Yatala jail may seem like luxury".

Or not, as it turns out from the same report: "Prison guards will constantly supervise the 31-year-old Muslim convert, who is expected to remain locked inside his two-metre by four-metre cell for 23 hours a day."

That’s right. Our cell for Hicks — and other prisoners at Yatala — is the same size as the one we plucked him from in Guantanamo. It has the same sized bed, same urinal and same concrete.

Actually, there is one difference. In Guantanamo, Hicks was let out of his cell for two hours a day — so little, complained his lawyers, that he was pale from lack of sun.

How outraged journalists were then. Even Britain’s Guardian protested: "Mr Hicks, who is allowed out of his small cell for just two hours a day, has shown signs of depression."

But as our excited AAP reporter says, at Yatala, Hicks will get the luxury

of just one hour a day,

like all maximum-security prisoners.

That, of course, makes us worse jailers than those bestial, torturing Americans.

Yes folks to be consistent I expect all the human rights groups and media to now condemn Australia for being a "gulag" and the home of "one of the world’s most oppressive prisons". 

So what is our misguided, overweight, adventure tourist plan on doing once he is released from his stay in another "world’s most oppressive prison"?:

"He accepts that he was misguided in that area. He was in his early 20s when he set out on his adventure."

McLeod said Hicks intended to study ecology and zoology when freed. He is eligible for release in 223 days, on December 29.

Ecology and zoology is anyone surprised?  Maybe he can become Australia’s Al Gore and save the nation from global warming. 

Highly recommend everyone read:
Tim Blair
Jules Crittenden
Andrew Bolt

I’m glad this issue is nearly taken care of:

Guantanamo Bay inmate David Hicks should be back home by the end of the year, whether he is acquitted or not, under a deal struck with the United States, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer says.

Mr Downer says the US has agreed to allow Hicks to serve his sentence in an Australian jail if found guilty of attempted murder and supporting terrorism.

Mr Downer would not comment on whether the government was trying to get Hicks home before this year’s election, expected to be held in October or November, to neutralise voter disquiet over his treatment.

But he said that if Hicks’ trial went ahead as US authorities had promised, the Adelaide man could be home this year.

The David Hicks issue has really been played up by the media and politicians in Australia to the people with no one really explaining what is actually going on.  Hicks’ trial would have happened a long time ago but the US courts struck down how the military trials were to be conducted.  Then the issue was bounced around the Congress as long as possible for political fodder to use against the President.  The Democrats in the Congress had to keep the Guatanamo Bay issue alive before the 2006 elections so they did what they could to ensure no trials were held before then.  Now after the election the organization of the military trials has been approved by the US courts and trials will hopefully begin soon unless someone else in our US government jumps in and delays them again. 

Hopefully Hicks will get his trial soon and be shipped back to Australia.  He will probably go to Australia continue to falsely claim how bad Gitmo is, eventually get released, and become rich from writing a best selling book.  If he gets a long jail sentence he will probably become a rallying cry for the leftists in Australia much like Tookie Williams became cause celeb for the left in America.  Either way Hicks will be Australia’s problem not ours.