from Alan Ramsey …..

‘We let David Hicks rot for almost five years, without trial, in an American military hellhole in Cuba, and the Howard Government does nothing. A Melbourne court sees videos of an elite Victorian police unit obviously bashing confessions from suspects, yet all the police do is cry foul at their public "humiliation". Now a 90-plus-kilogram policeman in a remote Aboriginal community behaves so brutishly his victim's liver is torn in half and four ribs are broken after a "fall" as he is being taken from the paddy wagon and dragged, on his back, by the arms to a cell.

In March last year, just after the inquest began its hearings, a Palm Island spokesman for Mulrunji's family, Brad Foster, told The Australian newspaper's Tony Koch: "I ask a simple question. Just consider if a policeman and an Aborigine - or your son or father, for that matter - were involved in a scuffle at the entrance to the watch-house and they fell to the ground, and the Aboriginal man got up and walked away, leaving the policeman dead.

"How long do you think it would be before that Aboriginal man was charged? Do you believe he would have been immediately spirited away and protected from the media, given counselling and a safe house on the mainland, and then transferred to a pleasant job on the Gold Coast, constantly comforted by media statements by the Police Minister and the Police Commissioner? Of course not."

No politician has tried answering the question in the 18 months since.

Nor have Queensland police.

John Howard's Australia.

Peter Beattie's, too.’

Political Inaction Endorses Brute Force

and, from Mike Carlton …..

‘One of the secrets of John Howard's success is his peerless ability to proclaim, whenever it suits him and with utter conviction, that black is white.

It's a treat to watch, like the arrival of the scheming pantomime villain. The prime ministerial eyebrows knit in earnest sincerity above the prime ministerial spectacles. The wrinkles on the prime ministerial forehead arrange themselves to indicate that great truths are to be revealed, and the prime ministerial voice drops an octave to convey a portentous prime ministerial gravitas.

Thus, with Orwellian ease, he can weave any two polar opposite propositions into a seamless policy whole. The war in Iraq has made us safer. Scrapping employment benefits is good for workers. Handing more of the media to Packer and Murdoch guarantees diversity of opinion. Jailing terrorist suspects indefinitely without trial preserves our freedoms. David Hicks was aiding the enemy, while AWB was merely doing its best, in difficult times, to sell wheat to Saddam Hussein. Muslims must integrate with the Aussie way of life but it's OK for those far-right religious cranks the Exclusive Brethren not to vote in elections. The list goes on.’

Opposites Attractive In The Howard Lexicon