Home at last....sort of

Back in 2003, we knew - we, the people of Australia. We knew that the US invasion of Iraq was a giant sized mistake. We knew we did not want Australian troops there on an American joy-ride. Well, a joy-ride for the Bushies - not for the families of the American war dead with whom we mourn. And we marched and we marched and we marched to tell Howard and his henchman. But to no avail.

To-day Prime Minister Rudd announced the Australian troop withdrawal. Well, most of the troops will be withdrawn. Troops to guard the embassy will remain along with a further 800 Australian troops supporting troops in Afghanistan and providing diplomatic security.

Australians will not be satisfied until all troops are out of Iraq. But this begs the question of when the USA - which has put more emphasis on poor military decisions and strategies than constructive nation building - of when the USA will go home. After all, it seldom leaves a nation once it has arrived.

~~~

When you can do nothing else: bear witness.

Medical care for the aged = medical don't care in the USA.

Sometimes Miss Eagle thinks that if there was a referendum in Australia on whether Australia should become the 51st state of the United States of America, it would succeed. But if you are an Australian who thinks the USA would be a great place to live with freedom and justice for all, then take a read of this.

Just so there is no mistake in understanding what you are reading:

• The USA does not have universal medical insurance. Australia does.
• If you need emergency medical treatment in the USA, you will have to be covered by medical insurance or pay out of your own pocket for medical treatment.
• Many Americans are covered by medical insurance schemes run by their employers. Not all Americans work for employers who provide medical insurance. These people usually cannot afford the premiums for medical insurance and so they go without.
• The decision referred to in the link above means that employers will not have to provide coverage to people aged over 65 years of age - even if they have been paying medical insurance for years and years.
• Australia has the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS). The USA does not. Many elderly citizens try to smuggle in pharmaceuticals from Canada and other countries where they are cheaper.
• In the USA, employer run medical schemes have introduced a system where they will dictate from where the people they cover can obtain their pharmaceuticals. No walking into your local chemists or getting on friendly terms with the pharmacist and leaving your repeats there.

John Howard and his Liberal/National Coalition were never able to abolish Medicare, the universal medical insurance scheme for all Australians. John Howard did all sorts of things to all sorts and classes of people in his eleven years in government. Doctors, in the main, vote for the Liberal Party and hate Medicare. Yet Howard did not change the system. Why? Because he and his government knew that Australians support Medicare and would not tolerate its abolition.

To Miss Eagle, this means that Australians can prevent governments from going against their wishes - if they have a mind too. Howard and his Liberal doctors wouldn't and couldn't change Medicare. At least on that score, Australians held their government accountable.

May Australians recognise just what they can do and continue to hold governments of all persuasions accountable and steer clear of slavishly following the USA.

Please Note: The population of the USA is over 300 million people. The above map estimates that 16% of Americans do not have medical insurance. This means that over 48 million people in that nation have no medical insurance. Following the decision in the report linked above, that is about to grow phenomenally as millions more of elderly people are deprived of coverage.

God, creation and the placement of the Word

HT to the staff at Ekklesia for this one. God, dear Reader, seems to have difficulty getting the attention of the forty-third President of the USA. And, it is likely, that the Lord of Hosts is having difficulty getting a guernsey with the media of the said USA. All that clamouring of the religious right clogs the channels, the airwaves, and the advertising it would seem! So God booked space in The Independent across the pond in the UK. Did God use an ad agency? Saatchi & Saatchi, perhaps?

So, dear Reader, check out what God wants to say to the recalcitrant George W. Bush.

Hicks, hair, and light

An artist depicts David Hicks' appearance in the US military courtroom in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, today.Photo: AP

Published in The Age, Melbourne.

David Hicks has grown his hair to chest length in an attempt to try to avoid the never-ending light in his cell.

The charges - or lack of them - against Hicks are noteworthy:

The charge sheet does not allege Hicks fired on US troops or attacked a US target, but says he conducted surveillance on the abandoned US embassy in Kabul and met Osama bin Laden as well as accused "shoe bomber'' Richard Reid.
Previous charges of attempted murder, conspiracy and aiding the enemy have been dropped, with defence lawyers saying the move shows US authorities have a weak case.

The prosecutor in this jumped-up, stuffed-up, kangaroo court proceedings at Guantanamo Bay has used the argument that Terry Hicks told David Hicks that taking up arms was wrong.

So this is to prove the guilt of David?

In that case what are we waiting for? Let's arrest Bush, Cheney, Rumsefield, Blair, Howard & Uncle Tom Cobbley and all. After all hundreds of thousands - at least - of their citizens have told them that they are wrong in what they are doing and how they are doing it. What is the measure of their guilt? Are their circadian rhythms interrupted? Do they sleep well at night?

They have proved themselves gun-totin' cowboys with no idea of nation building. Afghanistan is still a mess. Freedom loving democracy is not a reality there. It is not a reality in Iraq.

The US cannot build a decent democracy itself. The most powerful political figure in the world does not have and cannot prove that he has the majority of support of the citizens of his nation. Because it's a good day if more than half of the US population turn out to vote. The US cannot help its own. Hurricane Katrina proved that beyond any shadow of a doubt. And in the case of New Orleans many, so many of us, believe that the US will not help its own if they are black.

Nation building? The Government of the USA should try it some time.

Debating a point that is already made

Finance Minister Nick Minchin says "there remains an ongoing debate about the extent of climate change" and the extent of human activity's role in global warming.

This statement brings wry amusement to Miss Eagle's visage. Miss Eagle notes that King Canute debated similarly with a flatterer when making his own point about turning back the tide. Difference is that King Canute was not on the side of political flattery. He DID know which way was up!

In fact, Miss E is certain there is a debate going on. Nick seems to be debating the point. She is not certain just who or how many outside India, China and the US of A happen to be in Nick's debating club.

Does Bush know what he's talking about....

Ignorance is bliss?

....because Miss Eagle sure doesn't.

Miss Eagle doesn't talk about Bush much. Why bother? Coming home from work to-day I heard a sound clip from a White House press conference. The gist of the thing was about weapons in Iraq. Miss Eagle picked up that much. And Dubya was talking about IUDs. That's cute, Miss E thought to herself. Intra-Uterine Devices as weapons of mass destruction in Iraq! Ooo-wah!

In case no one has guessed yet, Miss Eagle is curious. She is the original curiosity killed the cat but information brought it back girl. So home to the 'puter to check it out. So she went to the White House site and came up with the press conference. Now Miss E's hearing might not have been too good but then Miss E doesn't think too much of Dubya's diction - considering he is a graduate of an Ivy League university. Turns out that Dubya was talking about IEDs.

Now Miss Eagle is not an expert on armaments and - she is a committed peace lover - has no ambition to become one. Therefore she hadn't a clue about IEDs. So she did what any good blogger does, she Googled it: with this result. So good so far or so far so good.

She then decided to explore the other conundrum from the Press Conference. What on earth is a Qud. This was a bit trickier. Google Quds and you will see what Miss E means. However, she thinks this might be the critter. Anyway, she thinks it has a lot to do with this lot.

Miss Eagle has now come to the conclusion that there are two types of armaments. There are peaceful, democratic armaments (like the ones that the USA and the coalitions forces employ) and there are destructive armaments (like the ones that Iran is alleged to have deployed). Mmmmmm......Miss Eagle thinks.

Now perhaps Miss Eagle could be convinced that Dubya knows what he is talking about if........

• She didn't remember all that guff about peace, democracy, and regime change while watching a handful of men (definitely no women) being a choreographed support group for the pulling down of a Saddam Hussein statue.


• She didn't remember the looting of hospitals in Baghdad without let or hindrance from the United States armed forces.


• She didn't remember the looting of the artifacts and antiquities of the earliest years of human civilisation without intervention by the United States armed forces.


• She didn't remember how US corruption, bumbling, self-interest, and military and political self-congratulation have set up post-Saddam Iraq to fail.

Nah! Dubya hasn't a clue about that of which he speaks.

Matchwinner Rudd and the smell of roosting chickens

Here are the words of Kevin Rudd used in yesterday's parliamentary debate:

KEVIN RUDD: To accuse the party of Truman, to accuse the party of Kennedy and Johnson as being the terrorist party of choice - I cannot understand how any responsible leader of this country can say to the nation that it is his serious view that the Democratic Party of the United States is the terrorist party of choice, but these are your words Prime Minister.

You not only met your match yesterday, Prime Minister.

You met more than your match.

Chicks and chutzpah

Well, it was taking the long way, but the sisterhood came out on the other side: every chick has her day.

Yeah, things are looking up for the Dixie Chicks: a great night at the Grammys and United States public opinion on the Iraq War is catching up to them.

Don't ya just love natural justice:

Though the mills of God grind slowly,
Yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience he stands waiting,
With exactness grinds he all.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Keep it up Kevvie: keep the 'counting coming

Well, hasn't to-night's news been interesting! Those with a sense of social democratic history will want a copy of Kevvie's speech - with all its references to US Democrat Presidents. Miss Eagle was particularly taken with the commentary on the 7pm ABC Television News in Melbourne that said Howard was "called to account". Haven't found a direct reference to link to for this comment - but Miss Eagle asserts the accuracy of her hearing in this matter.

Readers of this blog will know how interested Miss Eagle is in the calling to account of John Howard: or, as she cares to put the situation, having "the chickens come home to roost". There is a strong odour of roosting chickens in the air. Keep it up Kevvie. Way to go.

Will David Hicks ever come home?

John Quiggen raises the question that even if David Hicks is tried and found to be not guilty that he would not necessarily be released from Guantanamo Bay. Quiggen quotes documents here, here, and here.

The United States of America throws justice out the window and expects the world to take it seriously as an exponent of democracy and freedom. They are not even up to caped crusader standard.

Bring David Home - 3

Last night, Miss Eagle joined more than 300 other Melburnians at a Civil Rights Defence dinner at the Coburg City Hall.

Terry Hicks, father of David Hicks, was the guest of honour and guest speaker.

As can be seen below, Terry was honoured.

Terry has won the admiration of many Australians for his tenacity and courage in battling for his son against not only the powerful USA but his own government. He has done this with modesty and integrity.

You make parents proud, Terry!

Join the campaign to bring David Home by emailing bringdavidhome@theage.com.au

From memory, there were three standing ovations for Terry including one before he spoke!

The crowd honours Terry with a standing ovation.

Three speakers: well known civil libertarian Brian Walters SC

Les Thomas, brother of Jack Thomas

Omar Merhi, brother of Abdulla Merhi, one of the Barwon 13

As Miss Eagle listened to the speakers, she could not help but think - as a mother of sons - there but for the grace of God go many of us.

These families are ordinary working families. The are not wealthy nor do they dwell in the halls of power and influence. They have been caught up in the defence of their children and siblings and their love and determination is something to behold.

The representatives of the Hicks, Thomas and Merhi families were saw speaking last night are fine examples not only of values Australians hold dear but of the greater family of humanity.

MAY JUSTICE REIGN

AND

MAY THESE SONS BE RESTORED TO THEIR FAMILIES

Jack Thomas with baby son Gabriel conversing with Terry Hicks.

Jack and Terry were very gracious allowing a photograph for The Eagle's Nest

An intransigent Australian Government continues to fail to lobby for the release of David Hicks who is continually subject to harsh, inhumane and unjust treatment by the government of the United States of America at Guantanamo Bay.

This shirt says it all!

How long is a piece of string?

Anglican Archbishop of Sydney Peter Jensen, David Hicks, & Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell

How long is a piece of string? How long is imprisonment in Guantanamo Bay? How long until David Hicks is tried before a just and fair tribunal? How long until David Hicks comes home to Australia?

Whatever David Hicks has or has not done, the Australian community is tired of the attitude of the US and Australian governments on this matter.

The latest people to speak out on the matter are the Anglican and Catholic archbishops of Sydney - arguably Australia's most senior churchmen. Miss Eagle agrees with Nicola Roxon of the ALP and Bob Brown of the Greens:

Opposition shadow attorney-general Nicola Roxon and Greens leader Bob Brown said the Government's handling of Hicks amounted to the complete abandonment of an Australian citizen.

Converging towards Peace

Pine Gap has been an emblem of Australia's involvement in the United States geo-military network since 9 December 1966 when the Australian and US governments signed the Pine Gap treaty. Pine Gap is a CIA-run facility as the ground control and processing station for geosynchronous satellites engaged in signals intelligence collection.

There are four categories of signals collected:

• telemetry from advanced weaponos developmebnt, such as ballistic missiles, used for arms control verification;
• signals from anti-missile and anti-aircraft radars;
• transmissions intended for communicatins satellites; and
• microwave emissions, such as long distance telephone calls.

It is widely beleaved that this facility and facilities like it around the world also benefit the commercial interests of the US government and US corporations, commonly referred to as US Inc. In short, industrial and commercial espionage is part of its brief. Bear this in mind when considering the Australia-US Fair Trade Agreement.

Pine Gap has been the focus, across the years, of numerous demonstrations. In December last year, a group of poeple known as Christians Against ALL Terrorism actually penetrated the Pine Gap perimeter by peaceful means and face trial on October 3, 2006 in Alice Springs in Australia's Northern Territory. Read an account of their experience here.This trial is of particular legal interest because Australia's Attorney-General, that ghost like person Phillip Ruddock, has charged these four people under a never before used Commonowealth law. Please go to the website where you can leave donations and look at other ways in which you might be able to support the Pine Gap 4, Jim Dowling, Adele Goldie, Bryan Law and Donna Mulhearn.

Geneva 1 - Bush 0 in the latest ball game

Justice and plain old fashioned common sense is alive and well in The Supreme Court of the United States of America. Read the decision in Hamdan v Rumsfeld here. But justice and plain old fashioned common sense is frequently conspicuous by its absence in the Bush Administration. That's inhabited by the nutters who thought up the term "illegal enemy combatant", decided to abrogate the Geneva Conventions in relation to the treatment of prisoners of war, and didn't stop to think of the Christian tradition of The Golden Rule and that the GCs cut both ways - you do this to others and someone else will do it to your own.

What's Miss Eagle rabbiting on about?

The fact that the US Supreme Court has ruled

the military commissions illegal

and that the Geneva Conventions have to prevail.

Australians have been guilty of a sin of omission. We have never forced the Australian Government to discuss its attitude to the Geneva Conventions. The Howard Government has stood shoulder to shoulder with the US on the military commissions. Where have we forced either John Howard or the ghostly Phillip Ruddock to defend the Geneva Conventions? Where has the RSL been in defending the Geneva Conventions? Where has the Australian community or the RSL or the defence community demanded that the Australian Government declare and debate its hand on the Geneva Conventions and the fiction of illegal enemy combatants? Why is the Australian Government alone in the Western world in its support of the now illegal military commissions? For clarification of the issues, go here.

Have we shut up because:

1. The US is the most powerful military power in the world
2. The US pulls Australian strings
3. This has occurred when we are fighting people whom we see as "The Other"
4. This has occurred because the context of the abrogration of the Geneva Conventions and the institution of the fiction of "illegal enemy combatants" touches the racism inherent in Australian society

Australians need to reflect that before the League of Nations, before the United Nations, there were the Geneva Conventions.

Australians need to recall what happened in World War II in regard to those nations who were not signatories to the Geneva Conventions. Japan was not a signatory and imprisoned Allied Forces - among them significant numbers of Australians. Look at how Australians were treated by someone who cocked a snoot at the Geneva Conventions.

Germany was a signatory to the Geneva Conventions as were the Allied Forces. German prisoner of war camps were not highly desirable places but a modicum of humanity prevailed. Russia, though, was an example of a non-signatory whose forces were treated abysmally by the Germans because there was no accountability under the Conventions.

This "do unto others" at the basis of the Geneva Conventions has been raised in Senate committee hearings in the US.

It is time for Australians - the RSL, the defence community, the broad community - to demand from their government solid backing for the Geneva Conventions and its application and hem Howard and his cohorts in until they confess that the term "illegal enemy alien" is a fabricated fiction.

~~~

It is not known what the implications are for David Hicks and Miss Eagle waits - but is not hopeful - for Australian and British Governments to provide a response in his matter based on the US Supreme Court decision.

The horror against humanity that is Guantanamo Bay is unaffected by this decision.

An historic letter?

Davo over at Wombat's Waffles has published THE letter from Iran. You can read it there or here. Now there can be all sorts of views on the letter. Who are the Iranians to tell others what to do? Do the Iranians understand how the Americans think? Are the Iranians being sincere but naive?

Now turn that around, shall we? Who are the Americans to tell others what to do? Do the Americans understand how the Iranians think? Are the Americans being sincere but naive?

Now for the answers:

• Both Iran and the U.S. indulge in state-sponsored violence and incursions on the sovereignty of other nations.
• Both Iran and the U.S. need to have a greater objectivity about their history and their place in the world and among the nations. As Robert Burns said: O would some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us.
• Americans have some self-seeking and self-agrrandizing national myths which do not serve them well internationally. Perhaps, Iran does too. National myths without the objectivity of broad and deep knowledge can not only breed naivete when placed in a wider context but, without such objectivity, other dangers come: ignorance, bigotry, national superiority, notions about racial, ethnic, typological superiority.

George W. Bush professes Christ. Significant sectors of the American polity do too. It therefore behoves the President and all Americans to have a look at the theology of The Letter from Iran. There is much to think about. Equally, the Iranian President will need to be held to his spiritual ideals expressed in The Letter.

The Abrahamic religions do have common ground. The Abrahamaic heritage of the One God. A sense of justice. A sense of compassion. A demand for an ethical life. The facts are that so often governments operating within this heritage do not live out the ideals and demands of the heritage. We are not ignorant. Yet we build faultlines of bigotry, racism, and prejudice out of a common heritage. And then we complain when, into our self-built difficulties, comes another with a capacity to build the ultimate weapon of the current technology.

The Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has outlined the basis for a closer relationship and for a common understanding. Whether the U.S. likes it or not and whether the Iranian President is genuine or using empty grandstanding rhetoric, the path has been shown which could lead to a bridge. Miss Eagle is reminded of what Maya Angelou once said that God sends pebbles into our lives. If we ignore them, he then sends a rock.

Incorrect labelling? Not a Product of Australia?

You remember, dear Reader, that American citizen, Rupert Murdoch,

and you recall that he owns The Australian. Well, this cartoon is from to-day's Australian.

Iraq - Bring the troops home

Bring Australian troops home now

Australians have been consistent in their opposition to the invasion of Iraq. Hundreds of thousands marched in the streets across Australia to express their opposition. Polls showed that Australians would only consider armed intervention in Iraq under UN supervision. When Australia eventually became part of the "Coalition of the Willing" and went to Iraq anyway, opposition in the polls diminished. This was more an admission of a fait accompli than wholehearted support of Australia's participation in the American hegemony and the Iraq War. Increasingly, Australians are expressing their opposition to the Iraq War in opinion polls and saying that they want Australian troops brought home.

There are times when the people have a mortgage on wisdom, not their government. Australians proved this in the matter of East Timor when, over 25 years in the face of Labor and Liberal Governments' support of the Indonesian takeover of East Timor, they expressed opposition to the Indonesian takeover of Timor Leste and provided decisive support, finally, for the Australian Government to take armed police/military action to halt the bloodshed caused by the Indonesian military and their bloodthirsty Timorese allies. Australians live in a democracy. Miss Eagle does not believe that Australians are prepared to sacrifice everything to the US-Australian relationship. Perhaps the opinion polls should be including questions based on that proposition.

Valuing our birthright

Peter Costello is to-day sounding off about Australian values and citizenship. There is much in what he says - but it has a singular point of reference: those who do not accept the secular rule of law in a pluralist democratic society. Costello says, amongst other things:

No one is going to respect a citizenship that is so undemanding that it
asks nothing. In fact our citizenship is quite a demanding obligation.

I think this is the heart of the matter: that by and large there has been little or no respect in Australia for citizenship - and I am not singling out terrorists or any ethnic group. I just do not believe we truly value what we hold. Look at the track record: the number of people who live here as permanent residents, who could take out Australian citizenship, who reap the benefits of living here and expect to cherry-pick what they want from our society - but they don't take out citizenship. How many British and New Zealand citizens are in this group? Look too at the teaching of civics in our schools. Look at the erosion of so many things that we have taken for granted:

1. The attempts by the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Nick Minchin, to take away compulsory voting. Does he really want Australia to be like the USA where the President almost never receives the votes of the majority of Americans?
2. Attempts - and in some areas of the law this has already occurred - to do away with trial by a jury of twelve with unanimous verdicts to supplant it with hearings by a judge or a jury of fewer people or majority verdicts.
3. The rights of all citizens to access the law - when access to the law has become more a right of the rich.
4. The right to have government assistance when abroad. Things may have improved in this regard but it is still a hit and miss afair and if you fall foul of the politics of the Australian government as David Hicks has done, forget it. Blair and the Brits can extricate their citizens from the madness of Guantanamo Bay, the US takes umbrage if any of their citizens are threatened, and yet we leave a young citizen to rot with none of the legal rights that Australians take for granted - and certainly no access to rights under the Geneva Convention.

We Australians also need to recognise our historic exclusion of people - Aborigines from civil rights until 1967, selectivity in immigration under the White Australia Policy, and continuing selectivity by herding some immigrants into concentration camps known as immigration detention centres. We are happy to control and/or manipulate access of some to Australian law.

Our right to free speech and the democratic hallmark of transparent governemnt is limited when major social organisations in Australia are forced, if they want to receive any government funding, into silence as a condition of funding and when governments can indulge themselves in secret dealings of dubious nature and claim commercial-in-confidence dealings.

Lastly, we won't look to closely at flawed business and educational immigration programs where we have been only to happy to sell our birthright for a mess of pottage allowing criminal elements to infiltrate and unqualified people to conjure up Mickey Mouse courses while our own students are increasingly priced and placed out of university places.

Citizenship. I'm in favour of it. I am a sixth, possibly seventh, generation Australian. I am proud of the place. I just wish I saw governments, both state and federal, value it as much as I do.