Hating George Bush is a luxury widely enjoyed by the Left.
Imagine, though, a world dominated instead by those who loathe him and his country most. I’m thinking, for instance, of Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president and latest poster boy of the Die-Yankee-imperialist movement:
“Yesterday, the devil came here,” Mr. Chávez said, alluding to Mr. Bush’s appearance before the General Assembly on Tuesday. “Right here. Right here. And it smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of.”
Then Mr. Chávez made the sign of the cross, brought his hands together as if in prayer and glanced toward the ceiling.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/chavez_sees_devils/
Chavez has the ability to ruin Venezuala's economy and keep millions in poverty. That good feeling you have when he speaks? It's not from god :D
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Drinking poo water, stripping farmers of their irrigation rights, paying a forture to desalinate sea water - and now this proposal:
BILLIONAIRE Richard Pratt has called for water bills to be doubled to help solve the water crisis.
Strange. We need more water, not more bills. But I guess this is one way for a billionaire to ensure that at least he won’t miss out on the rain juice.
And still no one mentions the greens’ four-letter word starting with “d”. Hint: Build one for $1 billion and you’ll double Melbourne’s water supply, no trouble.
More from Terry McCrann.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/dam_bills/
Paddy McGuinness points out some home truths to the ABC strikers, who have drawn curious inspiration from the Viet Cong, as you would. :
Well, of course, when ABC employees go on strike, the corporation saves money…
But not many people will miss these programs anyway. After all, Lateline plays the role of a radio program of an earlier era which went out at about the same time, as Humphrey McQueen described it, of providing intelligent conversation to a tiny audience by that time too drunk or too stoned to make their own.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/strikingly_silly/
First Perth, now the Gold Coast:
ONE of the Howard Government’s key indigenous advisers is leading a group of Aborigines who have lodged a native title claim over the Gold Coast and its famous beach strip.
National Indigenous Council member Wesley Aird and 1000 other descendants of the Yugambeh people have filed a claim covering 1330sqkm.
And why not? The place must really be worth something now that all those traditional humpies have gone high rise
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/even_the_traditional_owners_wear_white_shoes/
What a sad spectacle. First Iran faced sanctions if it didn’t give up its illegal nuclear program by August 31. Now that the deadline is long past, the West issues a new demand that should make Iran, well, laugh:
THE major powers had given Iran a new deadline of early October to suspend uranium enrichment and begin negotiations on a package of rewards for stepping back from a nuclear showdown, a senior European diplomat said today…
At yesterday’s meeting, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice backed away from the long-standing US position that Iran should face sanctions immediately for failing to meet an August 31 UN deadline for suspending its uranium enrichment.
The report makes it seem that this is the US backing down. Instead the US has been forced to acknowledge that Europe, China and Russia have left it virtually on its own, and thus unable to act. For now.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/from_threats_to_bribes/
Azzam Abdul Hamid liked being cruel and violent towards women. He got lots of practice. He punched, beat, slashed and battered three partners between 1996 and 2004. At various times he used a knife, a meat tenderiser, a billiard cue, a billiard ball, a stick, a broom handle, a pair of scissors, a metal vacuum cleaner tube and once poured scalding coffee over the arm of a partner. But his preferred weapon was his fist.
Hamid’s domestic violence terror finally ended in mid 2004, when he was arrested and put in jail on remand. But in May, when he went to trial, he was sentenced to a non parole period of just two years and six months - well below the maximum 14 years that he could have received - backdated to his original arrest in 2004. That meant he would have walked free in December.
Now an appeal court has increased that sentence, but has admitted that because of the original “manifestly inadequate” jail term it is restricted to keeping Hamid’s sentence to the “lower end of the available range”. And that’s despite the appeal court stressing the importance of using sentences for domestic violence offenders to show that society will not tolerate such behaviour.
Hamid’s domestic violence started with his first wife, Kristie Lee Coombs, in Wollongong in July 1996, when he grabbed her around the throat, lifted her against a wardrobe and punched her in the right eye. Subsequent assaults involved pouring scalding coffee over her arm, punching her in the mouth and breaking a tooth, beating her with a vacuum cleaner tube, breaking her nose and punching her in the stomach the day after she gave birth to their daughter.
His next victim was Rosemary Vasconcelos, who he began a relationship with in September 2000. She was slapped, had a pair of scissors thrown at her head, beaten with a pool cue and punched on numerous occasions, leaving her with black eyes. In March 2004 he held her hand down on a table and threatened to hack off a finger before cutting her. He then hit her hand with a meat tenderiser, breaking a bone.
Hamid’s final victim was Rachael Hanna Meades, who was punched around the head, dragged by the hair across the floor through broken glass, beaten unconscious with a stick and hit around the head with a billiard ball.
When Hamid finally fronted court he faced nine charges ranging from assault to malicious wounding and causing actual bodily harm. He pleaded guilty to all charges. It was also revealed he had a string of previous convictions for assault dating back to 1991 and a history of drug abuse involving cannabis and amphetamines.
The original judge at his NSW District Court trial, Colin Charteris said: “The Courts and the community deplore the use of physical force against other citizens and, I think, particularly involving young women vulnerable in a relationship. His offences involve considerable cruelty and in my view cowardice.” But the judge then discounted the sentence after accepting evidence Hamid had been suffering from a mental illness, possibly caused by his drug use.
The NSW Appeal Court, however, found in its judgment handed down on Wednesday that despite any drug-induced psychosis, there was no evidence that Hamid “acted without knowledge of what he was doing or the gravity of his actions” when assaulting his partners.
But the appeal court judges said they were restrained by having to impose a sentence that would “generally be towards the lower end of the available range” as a result of an appeal by the Crown.
So although the original judge got it wrong, there was no way to give Hamid the type of sentence he originally deserved.
Hamid’s non-parole period was extended by 21 months. He’ll be up for release in September 2008.
http://blogs.news.com.au/news/crime/index.php/news/comments/court_fails_domestic_violence_victims/
Such people as Hamid may be useful to the community. His corneas might give sight to those who’ve lost it ..
I’d understood from some expert druggies that amphetamines and Cannabis didn’t actually have an effect on mental illness .. did I miss something? Clearly the judge felt it an aggravatintg factor. Hasn’t anyone told those poor women that it wasn’t the drugs?
There is no need to focus on 14 years as a sentence maximum. He could serve 24 years and still find women who will accept such treatment so that he could be with them. I feel very sorry for any child of his .. truly a life sentence.
The bitter confrontation between Victoria’s powerful police union and the state’s fledgling anti-corruption watchdog is escalating, with rank and file officers taking to the streets of Melbourne in a mass protest rally. The stakes are high and, with a Victorian state election little more than two months away, getting higher. For those who haven’t been following the dispute, here’s what it’s all about:
The Office of Police Integrity, established by the Bracks Government almost two years ago as a compromise solution the growing clamour for a Royal Commission into police corruption, has been under criticism for a lack of action. The Bracks Labor Government has been determinedly defending it since its creation in the face of calls for it to be abolished by the 10,000 strong Victorian Police Association and the Liberal state Opposition, which claims its poor track record shows its been ineffective.
It was in this context that in July the OPI raided the offices of the Armed Offenders Squad at the Victoria Police crime department complex in St Kilda Rd. The raid, in which files and other documents including police diaries were seized, followed complaints from suspects that they had been assaulted by squad members while being questioned. The police union claimed the OPI was conducting a “trial by media” after photographs of the raid appeared on the front page of the top-selling Herald Sun and the watchdog’s deputy director told the ABC the squad could be disbanded.
At the time, however, Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon defended the squad members, saying no decision would be made about scrapping it until the investigation was complete and all the facts known.
What no-one knew at the time was that the OPI had installed a spy camera in the Armed Offenders Squad’s interview room in May and already had dramatic footage of actual assaults.
A number of secret hearings were held by the OPI, in which squad members were compelled to give evidence. The OPI then decided to hold public hearings into the allegations – only the second time it has used these powers. Questions have been raised about the decision to opt for public hearings, when closed hearings had already been conducted. On Friday September 8, the day before the plans for those hearings were to be made public in the media, Nixon and her Deputy Commissioner for Crime Simon Overland mounted a pre-emptive strike on the squad. They disbanded it, claiming at the time it was part of a crime department restructure. But there is little doubt they knew of the existence of the video tapes showing the assaults and the damaging publicity that would follow when they were made public.
When the OPI hearing started on Monday, there was what the Police Association has described as an “ambush”. A detective was first put under oath and swore there had been no assaults. The tape of him allegedly assaulting a suspect was then aired for all to see. The impact was dramatic. The detective collapsed in the witness box. Other detectives followed I the witness box, each being shown the tape and asked whether they were the ones pictured doing the bashing.
The Police Association has attacked the OPI’s tactics, which undoubtedly gained it the type of publicity it needed to show it was doing its job, describing it as a “Spanish Inquisition” that denied those involved natural justice. As association secretary Paul Mullett pointed out, a criminal suspect would not have to go on trial without being already told of the evidence against them.
But the OPI’s activities have raised broader issues.
First is the debate over whether detectives dealing with hardened criminals need to occasionally use rough tactics to get the job done. It’s the “means justifies the end” argument and it has hit a chord with the Victorian public. A radio poll found 80 per cent of respondents were not worried if armed robbery suspects were bashed by police.
The second issue is the growing rift between Victoria Police command and the force’s rank and file. Christine Nixon and Simon Overland are both outsiders – Nixon recruited from the NSW Police and Overland from the Australian Federal Police. After the disbanding of the Armed Offenders Squad the police union turned on Nixon and Overland, accusing them of failing to stand by their officers. And the attack has become personal, with the Police Association beginning to highlight both Nixon’ and Overland’s lack of hands-on crime investigation experience.
Caught between the police union and the OPI is the Bracks Government, staring down the throat of a state election in which police misconduct and what to do about it is suddenly a hot issue.
Premier Steve Bracks took a political gamble by rejecting calls for a royal commission or a truly independent anti-corruption commission at the height of Melbourne’s gangland wars and opting to expand the existing Ombudsman’s role into the Office of Police Integrity. He appointed as the OPI’s head George Brouwer, a career bureaucrat with close links to Labor. So Bracks now has to defend his creation, while trying not to antagonise the Police Association, which in the past has shown it can turned law and order into a damaging weapon during elections.
http://blogs.news.com.au/news/crime/index.php/news/comments/stakes_high_in_police_row/
Forgive me for laughing. The ALP has a problem of its own making in appointing a mate to solve a problem .. and then appearing to be too close to something it don’t want to be. Ms Nixon has a problem stemming from the ALP bringing her to Victoria to do a job, and not supporting her. The police union has a problem in that they have to defend people engaged in a discredited practise. Police that weren’t involved are impuned, and police that were involved in what is realistically, a minor but significant crime are being staked in public.
The OPI have not got pictures of cops on the take, but cops beating up ‘suspects.’
I detailed, in a previous post my discovery of ‘noble cause’ police work. I think these police, if these beatings are only what they are involved in, need to be dealt with in administrative terms .. removed from such investigative work. However, the inability of the police union to adequately represent the needs of these officers (or others) will result in these officers being dismissed and disgraced. The good news is that the police union can blame Nixon, and the population can point in many directions .. but not the disgraceful ham fisted ALP
Canada is suddenly looming large as an unlikely source for illicit drugs coming into Australia. Yesterday’s $100 million-plus haul of cocaine and 120,000 ecstasy tablets is only the latest sizeable shipment to come in from Canada. In June 1.2 million ecstasy tablets were found in a shipping container of plastic jars of ink that arrived in Melbourne from Canada.
And there is evidence that international Vietnamese drug rings are actively involved in the Canadian connection.
In November last year two Canadian nationals of Vietnamese origin were stopped at Melbourne airport carrying ecstasy tablets in containers of capsules marked as fish oil. And that followed a courier of Vietnamese-Canadian origin being caught bringing in 11 kilograms of amphetamine tablets.
The Australian Crime Commission has already established links between Australian-Vietnamese marijuana rings and their Canadian counterparts. The ACC revealed in its latest Illicit Drug Data Report that some Australian-Vietnamese had traveled to Canada to learn better cultivation techniques from Canadian-Vietnamese, who dominate the marijuana trade in that country.
According to Royal Canadian Mounted Police, ecstasy started to be produced on a large scale there from 2004 onwards. Asian organised crime gangs are heavily involved in Canadian ecstasy trade, with raw chemicals being illegally imported from China.
Cocaine, on the other hand, is transited through Canada from Columbia, normally being shipped via the Caribbean.
http://blogs.news.com.au/news/crime/index.php/news/comments/the_canadian_connection/
Opportunism among dealers. It is good to catch couriers, but not enough.
I know it isn’t always popular to say so, but it is the ‘small time user’ that allows the big time distributor to exist. The market doesn’t have to exist. Laws regarding prevention of use are not supposed to be a challenge.
Spin doctors will portray this as a success or an indication of failure. In fact, it is a success, but will only ever be a failure in terms of the fact that the market won’t miss it.
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