Pretentious. Pompous. Wanker.

I don’t like Kevin Andrews. In fact he gives me the creeps. I can just imagine him reading the lesson in church on Sunday before he drops into the office to sign a few execution warrants for undesirables.

But until we saw the way he handled the case of Dr Haneef and the Invisible Misdemeanour, I hadn’t realised what a pathetic, miserable excuse for a human being Kevin Andrews actually is.

His careless trashing of the principles of habeas corpus have been discussed in numerous other places. Likewise his laughably self-important media preening that his function as the minister was way more important than a mere magistrate’s. So also his transparent efforts to prejudice the community against Dr Haneef while pretending that his sole concern was to protect us all from being blown up in our beds.

But in the last 48 hours, we’ve seen what a petty, vindictive, small-minded little functionary he really is. He missed his true vocation: he should be employed as the building approvals clerk by a small shire council. He’d be deliriously happy telling people why their applications didn’t meet the requirements of clause 32, paragraph (iv) of the regulations.

If the man had any decency at all, he would have made a public apology to Dr Haneef yesterday, restored his visa, and implored the media to leave the man alone while he tried to pick up the pieces of his life. But no, that would have taken a man with some integrity and heart.

What did we get instead from this gutless petit-bourgeois administrator? First, a grudging concession that Dr Haneef need not be transported to the Villawood Concentration Camp. However, upon release he was to be grilled by members of Andrews’ department until almost midnight. About what, for Chrissake? Or was this a sustained exercise in impressing upon Dr Haneef that he fuckin’ well better not even think of talking to the media or saying anything mean about the government, because the government has long arms you know, they can make life very difficult for anyone who wants to travel beyond India any time in the next 50 years …

Meanwhile Andrews did his usual church warden impersonation to tell the nation that he’d asked for ‘further advice’ as to whether he should reconsider his decision to revoke Dr Haneef’s visa … just to reaffirm to even the slowest members of the community that he was acting on advice from public servants doncha know, and that in no way shape or form could he be held personally responsible for anything that he’d done.

This on the same day as the ignorant smartarse had announced that Dr Haneef was free to go back and live ‘in his Gold Coast unit’ … the unit that anyone who read the newspapers knew was no longer available to the doctor because the landlord had terminated the lease and the AFP had made it unliveable anyway. Still you can’t expect Andrews to know what 15 million ordinary Australians know can you? He’s too busy getting advice about how to cover his pale flabby arse to inquire about the living arrangements of someone whose life he’s screwed.

Now today, in the latest act of this shameful saga, Andrews announces that hey, guess what? After a mere 24 hours thinking about it the AFP have advised him that it’s OK to let the doctor go after all … jeez these guys can finish their investigations quickly when they have to, eh … and so Dr Haneef gets his passport back. But not his visa, needless to say, because … because … well because issuing a new visa would imply that Andrews had made a mistake to cancel it in the first place. And like any small-minded petty official anywhere, Andrews cannot admit that he made a mistake.

Nobody was surprised that as part of the deal to let Dr Haneef return to India, he was apparently required to agree not to speak to the media. I’m not aware of any statute that would allow Andrews to impose such a condition … it’s just another exercise of executive bullying to let ministers make whatever gross errors of judgement they want without ever being held to account.

Andrews continues to defend his actions, transparently trying to allocate blame to others by saying he’d asked for yet more advice which confirmed that “it was still open to me to come to the conclusion which I did.” Well of course it was ‘open’ to you dipshit, the Act gives you unfettered discretion to do whatever you bloody well want.

Let’s conclude with a comment from the DPP, made in explanation of why he decided to withdraw the charges against Dr Haneef:

“While there are inferences that are available from the material I have, I am of the view that they are not sufficiently strong to exclude reasonable hypotheses consistent with innocence,” he said in Canberra.

It would be hard to come up with a more revealing insight into the way these soulless bastards’ minds work.

CODA:

As Stu says in comments, Andrews is still suspicious of Haneef and his suspicions were ‘heightened’ because Haneef was so eager to leave Australia.

So just to recap:

• Dr Haneef was arrested as he was about to leave Australia to visit his wife and new baby;
• He has no home any more, thanks to the AFP;
• His possessions are apparently in plastic bags;
• He can’t set foot outside the door of his temporary accommodation without being mauled by a media pack;
• At any time some lunatic in Andrews’ office might think up a new way to get him back in detention.

And Andrews thinks it’s suspicious that the doctor is keen to get out of the place.

The man is beyond a joke and there must be a reasonable presumption that he’s seriously unbalanced.

And every day, he exercises ministerial discretion on matters affecting people’s lives.

But at least Teh Economy is going brilliantly.

The afterlife

So on ABC’s Gardening Australia tonight, there’s these people showing off their stately home … and they talk about the way friends come to visit and they are impressed with the garden … and these friends say ‘If Heaven was like this they wouldn’t mind going there’.

Wouldn’t mind going there???

Hardly a vote of confidence is it? I think Heaven’s got an image problem.

And they made such a fuss about David Hicks …

Howard’s mob spent years trying to convince us that David Hicks was an unbelievably dangerous guy, because he’d trained with al Qaeda.

Now it appears that there are 4000 people in the UK just like him, all walking the streets free as birds.

It kinda puts the terror threat in this country into perspective, and maybe explains why the British authorities don’t even want to question Dr Haneef, the poor bastard whose life has been comprehensively fucked to show paranoid Aussies how tough the guvmint is on all those imaginary Islamo-fascists just itching to come here and destroy us.

John Howard’s school days

The SMHerald’s been running random extracts from a new biography of John Howard … mainly political stuff that makes you ask again how Howard’s mob ever got to run a country for 11 years but nothing excitingly new to anyone who’s been paying attention (although Costello’s whine about never having been invited to dine tête-á-tête with John and Janette at The Lodge is a delicious item that should give Labor fun right up til the election).

There was however one bit in the weekend’s excerpts that made me think a bit. Howard’s Leaving Certificate result (the predecessor of the HSC) consisted of two As, three Bs and one F.

I thought this was noteworthy for two reasons. One is that it gives me an excuse to disclose my own results, which consisted of two first class honours and four As . The other is that Howard’s was a truly mediocre performance.

Two As, three Bs and a Fail (they were the only grades they awarded unless you did the special honours supplements – I did two … oh yeah I already said ). Not to put too fine a point on it, these were the results of a kid who wasn’t very bright. At my school kids were put into classes on the basis of their academic performance; brightest kids in the A class, dumbest in the F class. Howard would have been right at home in 5D.

The contemporary equivalent would be a UAI of, IDK, low 70s I’m guessing. Not remotely close to enough to get you into law or any of the other professional degree courses today, but in the 1950s law was run much more on the apprenticeship model with less emphasis on academic course work. Even so, it demonstrates the enormous changes that have occurred in university entrance practices over the last 50 years.

Howard’s two As were in English and Modern History. Surely it’s no coincidence that these are the two areas where he wants to tell the states how to run curriculum? As a low achiever who managed to get respectable marks in those two subjects he’s probably convinced himself that he’s well-qualified to make judgements about how they should be taught.

His failure was in Maths and he got a B in Economics. Someone who did that yet went on to become federal treasurer would have needed to do some fancy subconscious rationalisation to persuade himself that he was qualified for the position. Howard responded by adopting a condescending attitude to the whole education system and you can see that pretty clearly in Howard’s persistent campaign to de-fund public schools and transform education into just another commodity to be bought and sold in a market.

At school, Howard was what would these days be called a nerd, without any compensating flashes of genius. At sport he was a plodder who couldn’t make the top teams in either cricket or football. He was slightly deaf. It would be hard to imagine less promising prime ministerial material.

Yet he made it. God alone knows what’s been going on in his head since he finished school with a deeply ordinary Leaving Certificate. We know he has an enormous ego – that’s not a snarky comment, enormous egos are pretty much essential requirements for modern politicians – and he lacks any capacity for self-reflection (same comment). I wouldn’t be surprised if his whole life has been a journey to prove to everyone including his three older brothers that he could Amount To Something.

I just wish he’d done it in business, or public administration, or the military … anything but politics.

Crime and punishment in the USA

In 2003, a 17 year old guy in the USA had consensual sex with a 15 year old girl. Cause to tut-tut about kids these days and where-were-the-parents no doubt, in a rational society.

The young bloke, Genarlow Wilson, was convicted of aggravated child molestation in 2004 and sentenced to 10 years in gaol. Last month a judge finally ordered his release but he’s still behind bars … because the state government has appealed against the judge’s order.

He’s 21 now, and his life has been pretty comprehensively ruined for doing something that most red-blooded 17 year old guys would do any time they got the chance. They actually changed the law in 2006, partly to prevent such obviously unwarranted outcomes, but that hasn’t done Genarlow any good.

Meanwhile two US parents who tried to do the right thing were sentenced to 27 months’ imprisonment last month.

CHARLOTTESVILLE — Ryan Kenty, 20, and his brother Brandon, still a sophomore in high school, plan to drive their mother to jail Monday morning before heading back to her rented apartment to move the rest of her belongings into storage.

Their mom, Elisa Kelly, and her ex-husband, George Robinson, are paying the price for hosting Ryan’s 16th birthday party — more than two years in jail each. Ryan had asked his mother to buy his friends some beer and wine, as long as they all spent the night.

“No one left the party,” said Kelly, 42, who collected car keys that night almost five years ago to prevent anyone from leaving. “No one was hurt. No one drove anywhere. I really don’t think I deserve to go to jail for this long.”

I tell you what Kelly, I don’t think you deserve to go to gaol at all. If you do, so do I, and so do a lot of other respected citizens I know in Sydney, all of whom have been guilty of believing that making decisions about teenage drinking in their own homes is a matter for them and not some interfering politicians who are intent on micro-managing everyone’s lives in the name of morality and the baby Jaysus.

… parents have to realize that it is illegal for those under 21 to drink and against the law for adults to provide them with alcohol.

America … what a fucked-up country.

Soccer back to form

I’ve got nothing against soccer, but the way they carry on about it … honestly.

Australia won one (1) game at the World Cup, got knocked out in the second round, and you’d think we’d suddenly become the new Brazil. Ever since then we’ve had to endure this hubristic bullshit about being a new world power and watch out the traditional football codes cos your days are numbered and on and on.

Being admitted to the Asian zone was trumpeted as some kind of major achievement. To read some of the crap you’d think knocking over allegedly pathetic sporting minnows like Korea and China and Japan would be a piece of cake for our glorious national team on their triumphant march to global domination. Way easier than having to face Vanuatu and the Solomons and the South American country that had already been beaten by four other South American countries. Well if they say so … they’re the experts.

First step would be this Asia Cup thing, for which we were obviously unbackable favourites after almost winning the World Cup and which in a fairer world we would be awarded on the voices but we’d better humour the battling Thais and nip over to win the bloody thing I guess. And the trip of course has been pretty much one continuous disaster.

In the space of about 48 hours Australian soccer has reverted to type: rumours of internal divisions in the team, accusations that the tourists are ‘rude and arrogant’, suggestions that some of the European players would prefer to be back home with their clubs and that hardy perennial, speculation that the knives are out for the coach.

All we need now is a good ethnic brawl at a local club game next weekend and we can all heave a sigh of relief that Aussie soccer has resumed normal service.

Ah Queensland ….

As if it could happen here …

Yes as if a government in a nice free democratic country like Australia could pass laws that create absurd offences, designed to let the government stage ridiculous show trials to convince the weak-minded that we are indeed infested by terrorists of whom the Labor Party is notoriously tolerant but against whom John Howard and his ministers stand courageous and vigilant.

As if.

Do you remember all the bland assurances we were given when the government introduced round after round of new ‘anti-terrorism’ laws? Laws that gave the police powers unprecedented in Australia? Laws that created all sorts of vague new crimes? “Don’t stress out,” we were told, “If you haven’t done anything wrong you’ve got nothing to fear.”

I don’t remember The Authorities warning us not to do favours for family members lest it turn out that at some future date they are involved in a terrorist act and we are deemed to have acted ‘recklessly’, in which case we will be charged with an offence that carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in gaol. I don’t actually recall that being mentioned as doing something wrong. Yet that seems to be the fate of Dr Mahomed Haneef.

Mohamed Haneef, 27, appeared in a court Brisbane charged with providing support to a terrorist organization. A decision on possible bail was postponed until later on Saturday.

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty said the police charge cited recklessness, rather than intention.

“The allegation being that he was reckless about some of the support he provided to that group, in particular, the provision of his (mobile phone) SIM card for the use of the group.” Haneef’s lawyer Peter Russo told Australian radio that Haneef was “very upset” by news of the charges, which could lead to 15 years in prison if he is convicted.

As far as we have been told, the so-called ‘terrorist organisation’ consisted of a handful of loonies who in the end didn’t manage to hurt anyone but themselves, and even then Keelty confirms that there is no suggestion Haneef knew what they intended to do. He just gave his cousin his SIM card when he left England - and apparently that is now a very serious offence in Australia.

But don’t fret folks, the laws won’t affect you if you haven’t done anything wrong … unless of course your arrest can be exploited for political advantage, in which case it won’t matter a damn whether you’ve done anything wrong or not.

More at Surfdom.

MySpace is no fun no more

So now the grown-ups want to muscle in on MySpace.

MySpace has over 3.6 million Australian users, which Horne said would be called on to answer political opinion polls.

It’s like how all the adults take over playing with the new PlayStation on Christmas Day .

Oh well kids … time to look for another site to play in.

Deconstructing al Qaeda

One day, if it’s not too much trouble and they can find the time, I wonder if someone from the Bush Administration can explain to us just how al Qaeda operates. I mean I have a lay knowledge of history and I teach organisational behaviour yet I really, really have trouble comprehending what this al Qaeda thing is of which we read so often.

Take this story from Reuters as an example. It repeats the well-worn line about al Qaeda wanting civil war in Iraq:

U.S. officials blame al Qaeda for most of the major car bombings in Iraq, saying the group is trying to spark all-out civil war between majority Shi’tes and minority Sunni Arabs.

We’ve been reading stuff like that for at least 18 months so you’d reckon al Qaeda might have turned to another strategy by now, if that is really their objective. But it’s a good line so it just keeps being trotted out.

Then we have the attempts to simultaneously inflate and downplay the role and effectiveness of al Qaeda. On the one hand:

Brigadier-General Kevin Bergner said 26 leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq had been killed or captured in operations in May and June across the country.

Well that seems pretty worrying – especially when they presumably let all the ‘followers’ escape when they got the leaders. The brigadier didn’t suggest that this had delivered a body blow to al Qaeda – on the contrary, he ‘expects al Qaeda in Iraq to strike back with “spectacular attacks” after major U.S.-led offensives that have disrupted its activities’ – so the 26 leaders seem to be the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

But then again:

“Their numbers are relatively small (in Iraq), but their effect is very, very devastating to the Iraqi people because they are employed frequently as these suicide bombers.”

So they can strike spectacularly even after losing 26 leaders but then again they’re relatively small. Maybe the confusion arises from the use of expressions like ‘relatively’ … relative to what? The 300,000 plus US troops and contractors in the country? How about providing some actual numbers? Unless the truth is that they have no idea … meaning that if they ‘win’ in Iraq it will be in spite of the absence of good intelligence and not because of it.

What kind of organisation is al Qaeda anyway? Does it use the cell system perfected by the commie spy networks? Is it a bureaucracy where everything has to be submitted to Osama for approval? Is there a quasi-military command structure or have they mastered modern technology to become a virtual organisation of autonomous teams?

Bergner was pressed to explain the link between al Qaeda in Iraq and the global network led by Osama bin Laden, given the U.S. military’s increasing focus on al Qaeda in Iraq as the biggest threat to the country.

“Al Qaeda senior leadership does provide direction to al Qaeda in Iraq,” Bergner said.

I seeeee … they ‘provide direction’ eh? That covers a multitude of possibilities … everything from sending “Keep fighting the infidel!!” emails to providing detailed daily operational orders. But if the intrepid reporters ‘pressed’ the brigadier to be more forthcoming they didn’t tell us the outcome.

In any event, under the strictly America-centric perspective of Iraq that dominates the English language media, al Qaeda is little more than a PR firm that uses rougher tactics than most. Because as always, events in the Middle East can only be understood as attempts to send messages across the sea:

Some U.S. military officials have said they expect militants to strike hard in the next two months before a much-anticipated report on Iraq goes to the U.S. Congress in mid-September.

Yep, the violence in Iraq would have been over years ago if it wasn’t for the need to keep influencing opinion in the USA.

Fortunately it will all be over soon. Senator Joe Lieberman, having assured us at regular intervals since 2003 that things are looking up, has finally changed his tune. Now, things aren’t just looking up but the USA is winning. Better than winning:

The enemy is on the run in Iraq.

That explains the two million plus refugees … they’re al Qaeda followers retreating from Baghdad, totally demoralised by the continuing loss of their leaders and their failure to start a civil war.