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Bali 9 and the machinations of cheque book weilding 9 journosHi everyone, thank God for the Media Watch program on the ABC for revealing what has been going on with regards to the Bali 9. It would appear that for the sake of ratings and the ability to get a bit of oneupmanship on the board, Channel 9 journalists have just about condemned the Bali 9 to death by exploiting the financial circumstances and desparation of their families. According to what I have seen on Media Watch Channel 9 have locked the families of some of the accused into exclusive deals in exchange for airfares and "modest accomodation". In doing this they wired up one family and primed them with questions presumably written by Mike Munro and sent them in to question their son. They even have gone to the length of posing as family members to get interviews. Some of the accused have even co-operated with this and in one case turned a visit to a dentist into a chance for a media interview. From what has been observed this has probably provided the prosecution with even more evidence and motivation to push for the death penalty.
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No need to go to the dentist before
Doctors See Way to Cut Suffering in Executions
From the NYT
By DENISE GRADY
Published: June 23, 2006
A flood of lawsuits challenging lethal injection as cruel and unusual has stalled executions in some states and may prompt others to abandon them. And a Supreme Court ruling last week made it easier for death-row prisoners to file such suits.
But medical experts say the current method of lethal injection could easily be changed to make suffering less likely. Even the doctor who devised the technique 30 years ago says that if he had it to do over again, he would recommend a different method.
Switching to an injection method with less potential to cause pain could undercut many of the lawsuits. But so far, in this chapter of the nation's long and tangled history with the death penalty, no state has moved to alter its lethal injection protocol.
read more at the New York Tmes
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Gus is appalled that the US is still a barbaric country in which the death penalty applies... There is one way to stop the "pain" etc... Eliminate the death penalty... Simple. No state or jurisdiction should have the power to legally kill people no matter their crimes. End of story...
Bali Nine
For those of us who know (some of) the Indonesian laws in detail, our worst fears have come to be realised: four more Bali nine sent to death by firing squad... For the grocer of Kiribilli to expressed surprise at the way the verdicts have been handled by saying:"I have to say that the breakdown inside Indonesia in relation to this is very strange," is totally disingenuous or stupid. My bet is that he is lying once more. Nothing would surprise me...
The Australian Federal Police officers had to know they were sending these kids to the gallows and possibly the death penalty when they gave the information on the Bali nine to the Indonesian authorities. The kids — I know some of them are adults, but at nineteen one can be so stupid... Note to some rabid shock jocks of the media: please stop being "pleased" at the new sentences... you once did stupid things and luckily were not caught — could have been caught red-handed on their arrival in Australia. A harsh sentence could have been applied, but not life imprisonment nor death by firing squad...
And what I suspect is our Kirribilli apologist for the death-penalty-unfortunately-not-yet-introduced-in-Australia, our amazing candid Johnnee, a lawyer's bootstraps who lets an Australian citizen rot in the hell of Guano Bay to please his buddy George the minus when the supreme court of the US points out to the unlawful tribunal machination off the US administration, can only come up with false surprise and some "good" advice....
Quoting our weasel on the perils of drug trafficking:
"If any good is to come out of this terrible business, it might serve as yet another warning to others who are tempted by money or other situations to have anything to do with drugs because for 40 or 50 years it has been apparent that to deal with drugs in Asia is to risk your life," Johnnee said.
Yes Mr H, but when the Australian Federal Police is squirting on our citizen overseas, especially when they are about to board a plane back home, the AFP is actually breaching Australian laws that clearly state NO Australians (institution or individuals) shall put Australian lives at the risk of DEATH, no matter what or crime.
One can imagine — when the US administration demonises "appeasement" as dealing like Chamberlain dealing with Hitler — our Johnnee has been treading these appeasing flat waters for yonks, appeasing the US and Indonesia by giving them what they want, including the scalp of some stupid young men...
The death penalty is abhorrent and is not fit the archaic laws they are written in. If the Australian Police did not know what the result of their ratting would be, then it should go and play marbles in primary school... And did the AFP arrest any Mr Big out of all this?
Zilch, Nada, Nothing, Zero, Zip... Just a few mules in waiting...
For many of us, our secret worst fears have been realised. Let's hope things can be reversed...
Death penalty is still abhorrent
From our 50 years old ABC/TV and our very ancient ABC radio
Howard hails Saddam sentence
Prime Minister John Howard says Saddam Hussein's trial and verdict are a triumph for the Iraqi people.
Saddam has been sentenced to death for crimes against humanity.
Mr Howard says he does not believe Australian troops in Iraq will come under increased threat as a result of the verdict.
He has told Channel Nine it is a sign of hope for the future of Iraq.
"For a nation to have persevered with a transparent fair trial with a man like this, through all the difficulties in his passing, that to me is a nation that wants to embrace democracy and isn't that something that is worth supporting," he said.
The president of Australia's Iraqi Migrants Council, Kassim Abood, says the community is overjoyed at the death sentence.
Hundreds of Iraqi Australians celebrated on the streets in Sydney's west last night when news of the sentence was first released.
Mr Abood says it is an important milestone for the fledgling nation.
"It's a great day for the Iraqi people, for all these victims' families, the Kurds, the Arabs and the neighbours of Iraq that finally the day has come when Iraqi people put their judgement to the world," he said.
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For the leader of a country where the death penalty is not a legal option, Johnnee's "hailing" of the sentence passed on Saddam is quite disgusting... And to say the trial was transparent is a joke of justice understanding. Saddam lawyers were killed, the prosecution was supervised by the US to make sure the result was assured, etc... Oh please do not believe that I support Saddam in any way but the crimes committed by Bush, Blair and Howard in their pursuit of Saddam are akin to the NSW police killing about 350 innocent people in a stupid deadly car case to catch a petty thief, and getting away with it by claiming they had no other way of catching him... Sorry folks, we do not live our lives in a Bruce Willis movie, you know...
Er... unfortunately, we live in the age of the brilliant porkie, and of a US president who as a governor of Texas signed more death warrants than anybody else in the US. His going to church will never wash the blood of his grubby hands, even if he believes firmly in his own worth — and I hope you and I did not get splattered with it as he and his piddley mates butchered their way through Iraq. Yes Saddam had to go eventually, but war WAS avoidable... other peacefully firm processes could and would have achieve a lot more, a whole lot more, than the mess that Iraq is today while allowing us to retain our "moral" values away from duplicity and porkies about WMDs and a battery of fake reasons for war. Our ethics have vanished in smoke in the process. Shame on us for allowing that to happen.
Yes, these three morons are behaving as if the death of Saddam would wash their bloody hands and prove them right. I hope it does for the Iraqi people's sake, but I know it won't... because not all Iraqi people will approve and...
Even small ones
From Al Jazeera...
George Bush, the US president: "Saddam Hussein's trial is a milestone in the Iraqi people's effort to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law."
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Gus:Bravo Mr Bush... excellent. Replacing a tyrant with the rule of Law... You can smile, wryly. You are replacing the proper rule of Law with our own desires by creating new improper laws, Mr president... Yes, that's the privilege of tyrants, even small ones. Your lack of ethics and lack of respect for your own US constitution smack of doublespeak. Carry on as you wish but do not take the world with you...
Hang the hangman as well or no one
Europe calls for death penalty to be commuted
By Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor
Published: 06 November 2006
[http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1959073.ece|European governments] and human rights organisations reacted with deep unease to the death penalty handed down to Saddam Hussein yesterday, amid doubts about the fairness of the trial and fears that the sentence could trigger further sectarian bloodshed in Iraq.
Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern said that Ireland and its EU partners had made clear their opposition to the death sentence being invoked by Iraqi tribunals, as the governments of France, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands confirmed the European view. "I must say that this is very far from our ethics and the political tradition of this country, no matter how cruel the crime is," said Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi. The European Union has abandoned the death penalty, which became a controversial issue when the tribunal to judge Saddam was set up.
Robert Fisk: This was a [http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1959051.ece|guilty verdict on America] as well
Published: 06 November 2006
So America's one-time ally has been sentenced to death for war crimes he committed when he was Washington's best friend in the Arab world. America knew all about his atrocities and even supplied the gas - along with the British, of course - yet there we were yesterday declaring it to be, in the White House's words, another "great day for Iraq". That's what Tony Blair announced when Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti was pulled from his hole in the ground on 13 December 2003. And now we're going to string him up, and it's another great day.
Of course, it couldn't happen to a better man. Nor a worse. It couldn't be a more just verdict - nor a more hypocritical one. It's difficult to think of a more suitable monster for the gallows, preferably dispatched by his executioner, the equally monstrous hangman of Abu Ghraib prison, Abu Widad, who would strike his victims on the head with an axe if they dared to condemn the leader of the Iraqi Socialist Baath Party before he hanged them. But Abu Widad was himself hanged at Abu Ghraib in 1985 after accepting a bribe to put a reprieved prisoner to death instead of the condemned man. But we can't mention Abu Ghraib these days because we have followed Saddam's trail of shame into the very same institution. And so by hanging this awful man, we hope - don't we? - to look better than him, to remind Iraqis that life is better now than it was under Saddam.
Only so ghastly is the hell-disaster that we have inflicted upon Iraq that we cannot even say that.
unequal justice .....
The Editor,
Sydney Morning Herald. November 6, 2006.
If Saddam Hussein deserves the death penalty for the execution of 148 Iraqi citizens in 1982 (‘Saddam verdict a milestone’, Herald, November 6), what would be an appropriate sentence for George Bush, Tony Blair & John Howard for having waged an illegal war of aggression against Iraq, that has so far given rise to the deaths of more than 650,000 innocent Iraqis?