Our Prime Minister is not a "Sheila" and not a "Ranga"

Our new Prime Minister is a person, and a female person - to boot.

She ought not be characterised as a "sheila" and not as a "ranga".

I will leave my original post there (below), so you can see how easily the average Aussie bloke can slip into silly errors.
It was not meant to be offensive, and I apologise that it was.

When are the attacks on Indians going to be called for what they are?

The Victorian Police object to being called "racists".
I simply ask, when are they going to start acknowledging that attacks on Indians in Melbourne are something other than "random acts of violence"?
That commentary was sparked after the killing of an Indian worker living in Melbourne. He was not robbed - just stabbed.

The cartoon appeared in the 5 January
edition of Delhi's "Mail Today".

The diplomatic spin has become a whirlwind.

• "Acting Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said that Mail Today’s cartoon and its Ku Klux Klan reference are unacceptable and “deeply offensive.”
• "Bharat Bhushan, editor of the Mail Today newspaper, stood up for the cartoon, saying ”We perceive the Melbourne police to be a racist organization simply because it seems it is not acting fast enough, or seriously enough, on the attacks on Indian students.”
• "Mr Bhushan also argued that Indians were overrepresented in crime statistics – with Indian students making up only 1 out of a 1000 living in Melbourne but accounting for 1 in every 20 attacks."
• Source: Des Pardes 8 January 2010
  

Read this article in "The Age" by Sam Varghese, a subeditor with "The Age online". He knows of what he speaks - he is an Indian.

And today the ABC news reports that yet again another attack on an Indian has been deemed a "non-racial attack". Are the Victorian Police living in dreamland?

This represents a trend in policing to "politicise" the reporting of crime - by attempting to "de-politicise it". In other words, the statements by the Police have become "spin", lies, and twisted truths. Who are they protecting, by twisting the truth? Themselves, or the Victorian Government?

Whoever they are trying to protect, they are not protecting the Indian residents of Melbourne - at least not adequately.

Death Penalty "debate" is a disgrace.

The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.

It violates the right to life.

************

The media is whipping up a feeding frenzy over Kevin Rudd supposedly "rebuking" the ALP's Foreign Affairs Spokesman, Robert McClelland for a statement he made yesterday about the Death Penalty.

The really disgusting thing is the way in which Alexander Downer has been whipping this issue up.I vividly remember Alexander Downer welcoming the announcement of the imposition of the Death Penalty on the Bali Bombers. I was appalled at the time, by Downer's statement, for it is in direct contradiction of Australia's bi-partisan stance in opposition to the Death Penalty - whether in Australia, or overseas. It is also in contradiction of Australia's ratification of the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. So much for Australia's Foreign minister representing this Government's official policy on international law. It is another example of the Government of Shame, in operation.

And Downer made feeble efforts to have the death penalty waived on an Australian citizen in Singapore (on the grounds of Australia's "high moral principle") - but let us not forget that the person concerned there was an Australian of Vietnamese origin. I would not dream of suggesting Downer is a racist bastard - you can make up your own mind on that. Hypocrite? Certainly!

As the Indonesian Lawyer Wirawan Adnan, who is defending at least one of the Australians convicted of drug charges in Indonesia (the so-called Bali 9) has said - this debate weakens Australia's arguments against executions of our citizens (abroad).

• We perceive this as a little bit inconsistent with the death penalty and makes it difficult for the Bali nine to go for a lesser sentence than death," Wirawan Adnan said.

  Another lawyer for the Bali bombers, Achmad Michdan, called Australia's position hypocritical.

*************

Here is a draft letter to Alexander Downer from a website about the Death penalty.

• [insert date]
• The Hon Alexander Downer MP

Minister for Foreign Affairs
Parliament House
PO Box 6022
Canberra ACT 2600
Australia

• Dear Minister
• The worldwide trend towards the abolition of capital punishment is undeniable and Australia must establish itself as a clear opponent, unafraid to express its views.
• We failed in our pleas for clemency for Van Nguyen hung in Singapore in Dec 05 by campaigning too little too late, our apparent double-standards and inconsistent stance was widely noted at this time and surely had some bearing on the outcome. Now six more young Australian citizens, three of whom were teenagers when incarcerated, face the firing squad in Indonesia for being drug mules. Australia cannot be content with the death penalty, even when courts have discretion in imposing it. We must press for better protections of human rights, and awareness throughout the world that there cannot be a justice that kills.
• We acknowledge the need to address serious crimes, but there is no convincing evidence that the death penalty deters crime more effectively than other punishments. Surely one of the principles of sentencing is rehabilitation; the death penalty renders this impossible with no opportunity to make better choices or the chance to return to society with a positive contribution, a second chance. The death sentence represents the ultimate failure of justice.
• Officially Australia has a long-standing principled opposition to capital punishment. In 1990 Australia signed the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which commits signatory nations not only to abolish the death penalty, but to undertake "an international commitment to abolish the death penalty". Australia's traditionally strong position on the death penalty has been undermined in recent years by what appears to be double standards. If we are to restore credibility when arguing for our own citizens to be spared, Australia must maintain a clear and principled stance against capital punishment in all circumstances.
• Yours sincerely
• [Insert Name and Address]

Bob Collins's passing - and the politics of hatred.

The death of former NT Senator Bob Collins has unleashed the "Politics of Hatred".

The News.com.au webshite - the "Newspulse", the email "flier" they send out - has a foul headline "Bob Collins killed himself- Report". The article to which it links is slightly more considered - but the NEWS LIMITED website editor had no such qualms - he states Collins's death as suicide, as fact. That is outrageous.

*****

News.com.au states:

"FORMER Northern Territory Senator Bob Collins may have committed suicide, according to a report to be published today. The report, by Darwin-based writer Paul Toohey in The Bulletin, says the Northern Territory coroner is to investigate whether the Labor icon took a drug overdose three days before his trial for child sex offences.
The article also says Mr Collins:

• TRIED to kill himself by driving his Toyota LandCruiser into a tree at high speed in Kakadu after the child abuse charges were first laid in 2004; and also
• TOOK an overdose of pills in hospital in Adelaide while recovering from bowel cancer.

Toohey told the Northern Territory News last night: "Collins didn't die of cancer - I know that for a fact."

*****

The Howard Government might now be thinking that they ought allow Parliament to return for another session, which would allow the Howard "Government of Shame" team of headkickers, and haters free reign vent their collective spleen in the safety of "Coward's Castle" under Parliamentary Privilege.

A proposed State Funeral offered to Bob Collins's family is likely to be withdrawn, or rather the family is being asked to reconsider their acceptance of a Government offer (in accordance with the Protocol Office standing rules). How gutless is that little dodge - putting pressure on the family, rather than the Government actually making a decision of its own.

So a major Politician, a former leader of the Opposition in the NT, and a former Senator for the NT, is to be buried under a slur of sexual abuse, which can never be tested in the courts.

Let me just say that from people who know some of the characters involved in this story, there are two sides to this whole business.

Let us not pretend that the Politics of the NT is above the Politic of Hatred. It is not. Lots of "respected people" in the NT resent the good things which Bob Collins did for the people of the Northern Territory. Those same people are prepared to listen to "tittle-tattle" from individuals with whom these "respected people" would not normally share the same room.

But if there is some "scuttlebutt" to be aired about Bob Collins, anything and everything is suddenly credible enough to be printed.

This is the Politics of Hatred - nothing more. It reveals the depths to which politicians and journalists will stoop.

Dr Haneef - Guilty - of being an Indian

Oh Please! Kevin Andrews, wake up. You are the problem here.

First we lock up "an Indian National", working in Australia on a "457" work visa. Then, despite the provisions of the anti-terrorism legislation which Phillip Ruddock dreamt up, which was supposedly designed to be ultra-secret, the "authorities" leak his name and photograph, and accuse him of being a cousin of a "Terrorist". Then we leak the story that he "recklessly gave material aid to Terrorists".

How many people do you know who have swapped mobile phones? Or sold them on cheaply to mates, because there was another model they liked more? Mobile Phones are not like "real property" - they are lost, stolen, passed on by younger people. It is only old boring people like me who tend to keep their "mobiles" for long times.

Then, despite the supposed water tight provisions of Ruddock's legislation, the Magistrate is about to release Dr Haneef, because clearly she is not convinced that he poses any threat to man, woman or child in Australia.

Then Kevin Andrews gets a call from the head of the Commonwealth Police, to warn him what is going down, so they decide that the Minister can use his powers (under Section 501 of the Migration Act) to deem Dr Haneef to be a person of "bad character".

He does not have to be proven to be of bad character. It is the Minister's judgement (only) which is the "test" - without any evidence being required, or any court of law to sit in judgement.

Kangaroo Court? No. No court required! Just Kevin Andrews.

Racist Humbug? Or just plain Howard Government political Humbuggery? You decide!

If you think I am going over the top, you should see what they are saying, over at crikey.com.au
Crikey!

PERSONAL DECLARATION OF INTEREST.
I was treated (successfully) in hospital, in Canberra, in 2005 and 2006, by a succession of young, intelligent, well trained foreign doctors. The majority of them were of Indian origin. I was deeply grateful to them, as individuals, and frequently expressed my personal appreciation for the work they did for me. Does that make me guilty of providing emotional support to Terrorists? Or, by being sufficiently sick that my illness created employment for them, perhaps even guilty of indirectly providing material support for Terrorists?

Oh, please, Ministers Ruddock and Andrews - get a life. It's preferable to destroying one.

A CHALLENGE TO HEALTH MINISTER - TONY ABBOTT.
How will you staff the hospitals of Australia if your jack-booted colleagues go around scaring away the same young, intelligent and well-trained foreign doctors?

Have you even thought of that?