Sunday 24th of November 2024
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the missing "bonesman" .....

Australia seems to be getting
along quite nicely without an American Ambassador. 

This month will mark the 16th
month that the position has stood vacant, with former Ambassador, John Thomas
Schieffer, having packed-up his BBQ & headed-off to Japan back in February
2005. 

After forgetting about the
position for more than a year, the Bush administration announced the
appointment of Robert McCallum as its Ambassador Extraordinary &
Plenipotentiary to Australia, back in March. 

At the time of the announcement,
I wrote a blog called the
bonesman cometh, highlighting the background of Mr McCallum, including the
fact that he was a long-time friend of “bushit” junior, with the two of them
having been Yale classmates, as well as being fellow members of the notorious
Yale sorority, “Skull & Bones”.   

I also made mention of the fact
that McCallum’s reputation was a little dubious, due to his alleged
intervention in a US government lawsuit against members of the US tobacco
industry, such that the damages being sought via that suit by the government
had been reduced from US130 billion to $10 billion.

Given the public “heat” that the
“bushit” administration felt as a result of the derailed tobacco litigation,
sending McCallum off to the antipodes probably seemed like a good idea: far
away, out of mind, a post offering little challenge or difficulty & in a
land that has always been very comfortable welcoming adventurers, carpetbaggers,
convicts & miscreants of every type, down the years.  

So where is McCallum? 

Well, shortly after he was
nominated to his 1st Ambassadorial post, things started to hot up at
home re the tobacco litigation. In fact, McCallum’s appointment has been
blocked pending the outcome of investigations into the affair. 

Yesterday, U.S. District Judge
Emmet Sullivan ruled that Associate Attorney General, one Robert D. McCallum,
must undergo questioning in a lawsuit by a non-profit group seeking records
about the Justice Department's conduct in a landmark case against the tobacco
industry Justice
Department Official To Be Questioned In Tobacco Case. 

Citizens for Responsibility and
Ethics in Washington (CREW) sued the Department of Justice last year after they
"ignored the testimony of one of its own witnesses in the tobacco trial
and reduced the amount the Bush administration is seeking from the tobacco
industry from $130 billion to $10 billion" Federal
Judge Allows CREW To Take Deposition Of Top DOJ Official. 

Sharon Eubanks, the lead attorney
in the case, quit in protest after the decision, saying the amount sought by
the US government was reduced after direct political interference: namely by
McCallum. 

Tobacco industry critics believe
McCallum was directly involved in the decision to seek lesser penalties, in a
clear case of political interference DOJ
Officials Will Testify Says Judge. McCallum was a partner at Alston &
Bird, a powerful law firm that had represented tobacco giant, RJ Reynolds. 

The ruling will allow CREW to
depose not only McCallum, but also the Director of the Office of Information
& Privacy, Daniel Metcalfe, Steve Brody, a member of the tobacco team,
along with James Kovakas, the attorney in charge of the Civil Division's FOIA
processing Federal
Judge Allows CREW To Take Deposition Of Top DOJ Official. 

Given the pending US proceedings,
it could be quite a long time before we get to see McCallum, if at all. 

But if you think that the
Australian government will voice any dissatisfaction about this situation,
notwithstanding the alleged “closeness” of our relationship with the US &
the much-vaunted personal friendship that exists between our prime rodent &
the illegal weasel in the Out House, don’t hold your breath. 

Only a few weeks ago, with little
johnnie in the US to pick-up yet another obscure award (at the taxpayers’
expense), “bushit” junior demonstrated his contempt for Australia & our
self-deluded international prime follower, by publicly humiliating the little
fella, as did the world’s most “brilliant” businessman (according to Peter
Costello at any rate), Rupert Murdoch. 

Of course, the rodent’s prime
meanstership has been marked by his government’s slavish subservience to the US
& the “bushit” administration, to the point that we are no longer capable
of formulating independent foreign policy & are content to simply “follow
orders”, as & when they are issued from Washington. Even insults dished out
by the worst President in US history don’t seem to stir even the slightest
reaction from Canberra or the lodge. 

So, as Robert McCallum prepares to
be worked over by the US "justice" system, or what's left of it, Australia just waits & waits for
an Ambassador who might never turn up: just like a loyal lapdog is trained
& expected to do. 

Indeed, given the trouble that
McCallum seems to be in, it may well be that both “bushit” & our own “great
leader” will have long retired behind their respective picket fences of
obscurity, before Australia is next graced with formal diplomatic representation
from head office.

Payola smokorola

From the ABeeCee (still free of commercial advertising, please do not turn around)

US ambassador 'looking forward' to Aust post
The man nominated to be the next US ambassador to Australia says he is aware of the problems caused by the absence of an ambassador for the past 18 months.

Robert McCallum has appeared before a Senate confirmation hearing in Washington.

In his first public comments since being nominated by President George W Bush, Mr McCallum - a senior US Justice Department official - spoke of the significant economic and strategic partnership between America and Australia.

"The US-Australian alliance is a true partnership for facing evolving threats in the modern world," he said.

Mr McCallum's nomination as ambassador had been held-up by claims he interfered in a damages claim against big tobacco companies.

He has now been cleared of any unethical conduct.

Mr McCallum told the Senate's foreign relations committee he is looking forward to getting to Australia, conceding staff at the US embassy in Canberra have been hampered by the absence of an ambassador for 18 months...

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Gus:
beaudifool... It's all done with cigarette smoke... Anyway what problems we had of not having an ambassador? Did we miss not having an official head of US spies in Australia? The US becoming unable to control little Johnnee? Hey the guy's a hundred per cent behind Bonsai's butt... can't do better than that...

Ah I see, missed on a few square dances and a few official piss ups, in the honour of lung cancer...

playmates .....

Yes Gus, there's no doubt about the efficiency of the US justice system ....  it was less than 3 weeks ago that a US court cleared the way for the "smoking bonesman" to be questioned / investigated in respect of the US tobacco lawsuit (see my blog at the top).

Certainly makes Cole / AWB look slow by comparison & it begs a whole lot of questions re David Hicks spending more than 4 years at Guantanamo Bay.

But then, given bushit's form, maybe McCallum has just decided to declare himself "innocent", without worrying about the formalities?

One thing's certain, there'd be a lot of people in Washington who'd rather he was here than there.

At least the rodent will have some suitable company to play with.

fire proofing Cigs Inc


From the Washngton Post

Big Tobacco Lied to Public, Judge Says
Industry Avoids Huge Penalties but Is Ordered to Correct False Advertising
By Henri E. Cauvin and Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, August 18, 2006; Page A01

A federal judge ruled yesterday that tobacco companies have [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/17/AR2006081700791.html|violated civil racketeering laws], concluding that cigarette makers conspired for decades to deceive the public about the dangers of their product and ordering the companies to make landmark changes in the way cigarettes are marketed.
But U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler said that under a 2005 appellate court ruling, she could not impose billions of dollars in penalties that had been sought by the Justice Department in its civil racketeering suit against the eight defendant tobacco companies.
All she could do, she said, was try to deter future illegal acts by the companies, and to that end, she ordered them to stop using terms such as "low tar," "light" and "mild" and to undertake a massive media campaign in an effort to correct years of misrepresentations.

From the Sydney Morning Herald

A whiff of tobacco about Bush's new man
Richard Ackland
August 18, 2006
IT HAS been 19 months since we've had an American ambassador in Canberra, yet despite this hiatus the relationship between the two countries is as chummy as ever.

[http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/a-whiff-of-tobacco-about-bushs-new-man/2006/08/17/1155407952564.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1|Today Robert McCallum arrives as the representative of the most unconvincing US president] in living memory. His old Yale pal George Bush inveigled him out of the Atlanta law firm Alston & Bird and invited him to take a political position at the Department of Justice in Washington, where eventually he became third-most senior officer. Now it's Canberra.
In his wake in Washington there is a small lake of unresolved litigation that has its source in the lengthy and expensive case that the Department of Justice started (in Bill Clinton's era) against the big cigarette manufacturers - USA v Philip Morris et al.
This was a huge action, in which the government alleged that the tobacco companies knew of the lethal consequences of their trade and yet not only sought to cover that up but to fraudulently entice young people into the habit. Originally the department sought a penalty of $US130 billion payable at $US5.2 billion a year over 24 years. The idea was that this would fund a nationwide "quit smoking" program. At the eleventh hour, the Justice Department lawyers were instructed to ask the court for a penalty of $US10 billion at a rate of $US2 billion a year for five years.
The person who gave that instruction is America's new boy in Canberra, Robert McCallum. He has argued ever since that his intervention was not political and that his relationship with the White House and the fact that his old law firm acted for tobacco interests had nothing to do with it. The reason he sought this reduction was to make the penalty "forward looking, focused on future frauds by the defendants" and therefore appeal proof.
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Gus: Great fire proofer of conspiracies...?