Hicksie... are you reading this?

If you're ever cruising near Carisbrook, do drop in.

- talk about anything -

- or nothing at all -

Either way the kettle is always on and there's always a feed.

Best wishes....

oh boo hoo .. here's a guy who stuffed up, made a mess of his life and is now not able to face up to it and it's, of course, someone else's fault.

lot's of people stuff up, many don't .. the big thing about maturity is to get on with your life and not live it trying to avoid responsibility

if you put yourself in the position that "Hicksie" has, then you take what comes ..

imagine if the yanks had not found him and some other people had who were not as well disposed to trying to find out what's what .. they would have just shot him .. no real loss, another wannabe goes down

he's not a hero as some people make out, he's just a fool who is now trying to change the way history will see him .. as a fool who couldn't cut it

jeez, captured while guarding a tank .. well done on the guarding job, the Taliban sure had his worth worked out, gave him a really important job, what a joke.

the whole celebrity thing is all based around hatred of the US and PM John Howard .. little else. For those who are shocked that torture exists in the world, grow up .. if thugs who get a gun and threaten people are let loose, then a little bit of persuasion normally works very quickly, once the gun is gone .. they tend to fold fast, I doubt very much that more than withholding a meal from these guys would crack them

Hicks was a member of the Kosovo Liberation Army and also later on AL-Qaeda. He travelled the world looking for opportunities to join mercenary forces where he could use deadly weapons against the opposing forces. He was a thrill seeking mercenary who got captured.

His stories about Guantanamo do stretch the imagination even of the most gullible conspiracy theorist. Eight to 12 yr olds in Guantanamo??

The author, who believed everything Hicks says, needs to undertake a good amount of introspection and self-analysis, a deep breath and realise that this guy is a mercenary soldier, a professional killer, not an innocent, well meaning holiday maker caught in the crossfire. He has made a complete fool of himself with his gullibility.

This story is of no interest.

Better off to watch the test pattern on TV

As I understand it, Hicks was not an innocent picked up off the streets in Morphett Vale by some CIA black op squad, but captured in Afghanistan, where he was working for al Qa'ida.

I keep expecting to read about how the Indian government has applied for his extradition on charges of firing on Indian troops while he was working for Lashkar-e-Toiba, yet another terrorist organisation.

Live in hope.

And unless I've gone senile, both of those organisations would be classified as extreme right-wing, reactionary, medievalist organisations, not left-wing in any way. So how on earth could Hicks be considered remotely progressive enough for the idiot-left to bother lifting a finger for him ?

Ah, I see: he was against the US.

US = bad, baddest in world,

US = not good,

therefore not-US = good.

Al Qaida = not-US,

therefore al Qaida = good.

L-e-T = also not-US.

Therefore L-e-T = good.

Neanderthal = not-US.

Therefore Neanderthal = good.

Uggggh Uggggh

When anybody joins any army they are committing themselves to cause suffering and death to people who have probably done nothing to them. Whether it is the Taliban or the Australian army they are making the same sort of commitment.

However, I enlisted in the US army at the age of 17 in 1943. The thought of an Axis victory frightened me more than the prospect of war. It still does.

What happened to David Hicks was horrible and shouldn't have happened. However, he put himself in the position where they could happen to him.

What a nonsensical article. We all know the Taliban manual for behaviour as a prisoner requires allegation of torture.

Hicks has followed the manual slavishly, and I would believe him about the as much as I would believe Bob Brown, another pathological liar.

When Hicks was captured he had the right to be shot on the spot, or locked up until the war was over. No doubt he convinced his captors that he had information worth obtaining, so was made a prisoner.

All the supposed rights he had are nonsense. He was released prior to the end of the war because of lying lefty pressure on the government.

I notice lately that there are allegations that he was in uniform when captured. The Taliban were not an army, and did not have a uniform. They are terrorists, and the Geneva Convention does not apply to them.

All the soft treatment given to the undeserving Hicks, has been obtained by misrepresentation and lies, which you, Jason, now wish to support.

Quite a despicable article.

What David Hicks wants most is for the Australian government "to formally recognize that the 2006 Military Commissions Act was unfair" and designed simply to obtain guilty pleas.

You did well after all with this article Jason Leopold. Thank You.

I am deeply unhappy with how Australian Authorities handle these issues. Deeply sorry for David, for the way he was treated.

I am historically aware of Americas role in world, be it the CIA, or other intellengent services. The history speaks for itself. Much of it despicable.

As David Hicks said, "it's the dreams that are the worst."

"I see myself having to begin the long process of imprisonment again accompanied with vivid feelings of hopelessness and no knowledge of the future or how long it will last,"

Where Daivid Hicks said. "The other dreams consist of gruesome medical experimentations too horrible to describe. Losing my personality, my identity, memories and self is much more frightening to me than any physical harm. It is these dreams that are the most common and terrifying."

That "torture not only permanently scars the torture victim, but it also leaves its mark on everyone who comes in contact with that person."

Like you Jason Leopold, I find it hard to write about this story, I am thankful that David is working with the land, has a partner today. As a person before and after this experience, I feel I know and understand a lot about him as a person.

I have a lot of respect for David Hicks, and his father Mr Hicks.

http://www.miacat.com/

What is torture, is it going without sleep, not getting any gravey with your chips.

Torture used to be real, like being stretched on a rack, or having your fingernails pulled out.
The modern day torture is a cop-out.

For those showing some consideration and kindness for what David Hicks has endured over time, I also thank you. A good, accurate and truthful article, Jason.

Having had involvement in the successful agitation that was the disgraceful Mamdouh Hahib case, the subject of Australia’s compliance to the evil that was US rendition has never been far from my thoughts, such matters well chronicled by decent Australians like Richard Neville and other like-minded people. Success by way of a financial compensation came to Mamdouh based on what he had seen in Egypt, which confirmed without doubt the Australian Government’s compliance to the inhumane treatment one of our citizens, Australia now able to be whistled up at the beck and call of the world’s #1 terrorist, the United States.

David Hicks may have shown some errors in judgement in his life, but he was never a terrorist. Those Australians who care to look deeper than the surface have realised that in the days of Mamdouh Habib and David Hicks, the US was paying serious dollars for anyone that was scooped up from the streets of Afghanistan, the more the merrier. They had a target. These millions, paid to the tribal chiefs of the Northern Alliance, have now been channelled and invested in expanding what is now the largest drug industry in the world, 93% of world production at the latest count, all supported by the US military. A fact!

So, in this environment, our Australian soldiers walk the Afghanistan roads and sometimes die, doing the bidding of the servile Australian government as they curry favour with the US, yet again.

John Howard should go to his grave for allowing this to happen to Mamdouh Habib and David Hicks, his gullible connivance against the interests of Australians with the dishonoured Machiavellian, Cheney. A policy that Howard promoted, is now carried on by the feckless Prime Minister, Gillard, who surrenders to anything that will further her tenuous hold on power in this country.
She has even turned her military funeral attendances into a media event.

David Hicks deserves Australia’s sympathy and best wishes, always.

I must admit that I am stunned by some of these comments and the absence of compassion and humanity. I realize this was a lengthy story. But I'd like to know if anyone took the time to read what the Guantanamo guards Albert Melise and Brandon Neely had to say about Guantanamo and how the treatment of David Hicks and other detainees affected them for so many years? What say you about that?

I've spent a decade covering the Bush administration's torture and rendition program and during that time I have debunked many of the major claims that government has made about the threat posed by detainees imprisoned at Guantanamo as well as their intelligence value. It's shocking to me to see people here lap up government propaganda about the "war on terror" and continue to peddle and disseminate lies that have long been debunked.

For a primer, I would encourage everyone to read this before opining about what they think they know: http://www.truth-out.org/wilkerson-cheney-bush-aware-guantamamo-detainees-were-innocent58446

Whatever your feeling is about David Hicks there is absolutely nothing that can justify the torture of another human being. That some here feel there is justification is a sad commentary about how low we have sunk as a society.

Dear Jason Leopold,

There is nothing that can justify torturing another human being or any sensate creature. There is also nothing that can justify being in an army and trying to kill other humans who you personally have nothing against.

David Hicks tried to join the Australian army. Turned down he joined another army. He wanted to participate in war of some kind.

I see no justification for what happened to him. I feel great sympathy for him. He has suffered. He has or had the Anzac spirit. He just applied it outside of the Anzac framework.

Jason,

Don't be stunned by the comments. you did something that needed to be done, telling the real facts.
This reaction was to be expected when you view in detail the media coverage promoted by Howard and his Attorney-General, with a point to make as they grovelled day and night to the US asking them to make a case against David Hicks for their political ends.

The 'man of steel' was certainly found wanting in his own electorate and by the country.

David is safe and one hopes that time will allow his treatment to be forgotten and that he moves on to a better life surrounded by friends.

What others say is not important.

When you realise that 911 was lie and Muslims had nothing to do with it,a lot more compassion will be shown towards David Hicks. http://www.ae911truth.org/ http://patriotsquestion911.com/

All that is needed for evil to prevail,is a few good men/women to do nothing.

I formed my opinion of Jason’s complete lack of veracity simply by reading this disgraceful article.

Apparently there are others who have formed a similar view of this serial plagiarist, fabricator, fake document producer and general culprit.

“We wonder if the folks over at Truthout.org are rethinking their affiliation with reporter and serial fabulist Jason Leopold. Leopold, you may recall, is the freelance reporter who was caught making stuff up in a 2002 Salon.com article, self-admittedly “getting it completely wrong” in pieces for Dow Jones, and had his own memoir cancelled because of concerns over the accuracy of quotations.”

http://www.cjr.org/politics/jason_leopold_caught_sourceles.php

Jason uses a euphemism for outright lying in his words “getting it completely wrong”.

“If there is one common theme that emerges from all of Leopold’s journalistic snafus, it’s that none of it seems to be his fault.”, that is according to Leopold. Objective observers take a different view.

Let us hope it all grinds him to a halt sooner rather than later, and he stops producing more odious trash like this article.

Leo, thank you for turning ME into the story by citing a five year old report. You remind me of Karl Rove, George Bush's former political adviser. Well done, Leo. You are a great human being. Also, congratulations on learning how to use Google.

Perhaps some reading comprehension for you is in order, Leo. You seemed to have missed this from the article you cite in hopes of discrediting me:

"Editor’s Note: Initially this post mistakenly attributed certain statements made by Mark Ash, Jason Leopold’s editor, to Leopold himself. The attribution has since been corrected."

Those misstatements led to a defamation and libel lawsuit against the magazine, details of which are posted in the comments section of said article.

But aside from your attempt to change the conversation, Leo, what exactly does this have to do with torture?

Oh Gawd, another "progressive" left wing journo crying over a person who's own father called him a " terrorist" and who many Australians consider a traitor.

I don't know if then Yanks tortured Hicks but I sure hope they did.

It reminds me of that old Aussie poem.....

I always thought "how bloody strange, to have an attitude,
of awe for those who would knock you dowm, then look for gratitude."

Dear Lego,

I think it is wrong to torture anyone even terrorists and traitors. It is also illegal under US law. I was a soldier in the US army. We took an oath to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States. Officials including presidents take a similar oath.

Amendment VIII of the US Constitution:

"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."

Those public officials who authorised torture violated their oath of office and should be removed from office along with receiving suitable punishment for such violations.

David Hicks was neither a traitor nor a terrorist. He owed no loyalty to the US so could not be a traitor. There is no evidence to show that he was a terrorist.

This article is not about torture, it is about lying. It is about Jason and his little terrorist mate Hicks, lying about torture.

Extracts from the Al Quaeda training manual:

“At the beginning of the trial, once more the brothers must insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them by State Security [investigators] before the judge.

Complain [to the court] of mistreatment while in prison.

Make arrangements for the brother's defense with the attorney, whether he was retained by the brother 's family or court-appointed.

The brother has to do his best to know the names of the state security officers, who participated in his torture and mention their names to the judge. [These names may be obtained from brothers who had to deal with those officers in previous cases.] “

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/network/alqaeda/manual.html

The terrorists know that they cannot win, but use the decency and laws of the community which is the target of their hate filled crazed attacks to attempt to damage the community.

Jason, you do not just lie about torture, you lie about everything, so your assertions mean nothing.

The technique of using laws aimed at fairness to frustrate the justice process was seen in Australia, when the Islamic rapists used delay after delay to break the nerves of the young girls they had raped, and who were faced with the ordeal of giving evidence. If you want to talk about torture, that might be classified as torture of the girls.

Dear Jason, I look forward to your interviews with the victims and families of the Bali bombings.

That you have an agenda is clear and that agenda has robbed you of real compassion. Selective compassion has no value other than to support your agenda.

Not a very balanced article.

Davidf,

When you write,

"David Hicks was neither a traitor nor a terrorist. He owed no loyalty to the US so could not be a traitor. There is no evidence to show that he was a terrorist...."

your second sentence is correct - after all, Hicks was not a US citizen. Whether he was a traitor to Australia, is a different matter. And surely, if he worked for al Qaida AND fought for the L-e-T against India, terrorist organisations, then he was clearly a terrorist,

* i.e., working with terrorist organisations (did he or didn't he ?),

* i.e., organisations which commit terrorist acts (have they or haven't they ?),

* i.e., acts which kill innocent people indiscriminately and are designed to strike terror into our hearts and weaken our support for governments (is this or isn't this the point of terrorist acts ?).

He got copped, did some of his time for his links to al Qaida, and was out in barely six or seven years. He got off lightly. Move on.

Joe

While all you lots are quibbling about how 'compassionate' we should or should not be over a former fundamentalist wahabist militant KLA/LeT member getting caught by a country that commits human rights abuses, and 911 conspiracies:

*I* will be saving my attention to Julian Assange- an Australian citizen who has not only been abandoned by our government in the face of dubious charges of his own, but unlike Hicks- is no remote potential security threat, and has actually been trying to do US a great service, as opposed to the types of people David was trying to help.

- and let's not forget Bradley Manning, who is now being subjected to what Hicks has been:

HIS accused crime?
Upholding the First Amendment.

But no- lets not distract ourselves from shedding a tear for David.

There is little doubt that Hicks is a nong but it is more important that our justice system does not also act as a nong.

The Hicks story is not just about Hicks the man but about the travesty of an unjust judicial process that could equally be open to abuse and tyranny for any other person accused of a crime.

Hi Pelican,

You didn't finish your last sentence:

"The Hicks story is .... about the travesty of an unjust judicial process that could equally be open to abuse and tyranny for any other person accused of a crime ...."

you could have added:

".... such as armed attacks on the armed forces of a friendly country [India] or working for known terrorist organisations such as al Qaida and Lashkar-e-Taiba."

Just trying to be helpful :)

Joe

Amnesty International has stated that the military commissions established under the Act to try David Hicks (and others) did not meet international standards for fair trials. Therefore the charges would be irrelevant if the trials did not meet international standards.

The Red Cross received a full report as to the way David Hicks was treated. He had no contact with his lawyers for almost two years after he arrived in Guantanamo Bay. For 5 years he was detained where the lights never go off and windows never open. He was repeatedly beaten, once over 8 hours, including while restrained and blind-folded.
He was forced to take unknown medication. He was subjected to sleep deprivation "as a matter of policy." He wasn't allowed to leave his cell or exercise in sunlight, and the list goes on.

I was always under the impression that the US Bill of Rights stood in protection of the individual against the capriciousness and overwhelming power of the state. That the US Constitution guaranteed the individual certain fundamental rights and protections. That US laws were based on the principle that the law serves the individual, not the state, and that state political interests cannot outweigh the interests of the individual, who must stand in law as a free man.

Apparently, this is not the case, certainly it wasn't - in the case of David Hicks - whose government also let him down. He did not receive a fair trial - that is obvious - and he should have as an Australian citizen - regardless of the charges against him.

Lexi,

You're right, Hicks should not have been mistreated - he should have been given prompt access to a lawyer of his choice and a fair trial, and then perhaps not shot, but given 25 years, released in, say 2030. Then the Indians can deal with him.

Joe

Just to follow Chris Shaw's post, if ever you are around here David, do drop in, I have left a few rat traps set for you to find.

Hasbeen:

I don't know of anyone who would actually want to visit a rat-infested home especially not someone like David Hicks.
Having been kept a prisoner in Guantanamo for five years would have been enough of an "experience" putting up with vermin.

It seems that some here hate the US so much, they are willing to overlook and understate the fact that Mr Hicks was a mercenary who liked shooting large calibre weapons at his fellow human beings for fun.

He was picked up by the Northern Alliance NOT the US Army. It is clear he is a thrill seeking violent individual who has had his wings clipped by being put in Guantanamo Bay for a while.

It is worth reading the words of his fellow Al'Qaida trainee Feroz Abbasi who claimed Hicks had said he'd said he "wanted to rob and kill Jews back in Australia and crash an airplane into a building"

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1592997,00.html

Dear Atman,

Objecting to torture of anybody for any reason has nothing to do with hating the United States. Torture is simply wrong regardless of who is tortured. It is a violation of US law.

I am a US citizen & think the US is a great country. I think Hicks is a dirty dog. I also think it was wrong to torture him, and I think he was tortured.

Dear Loudmouth
Thank you for your assistance. What would I do without you? :)

As I said Hicks is a nong but there is always the tenet "innocent until proved guilty". I have a suspicion there is a lot more to the Hicks case in terms of his personal health and wellbeing as far as vulnerability to 'grooming'.

However it is just a hypothesis and is no way an excuse for consorting with terrorists.

Dear davidf.

You may think it is wrong to torture terrorists to gain vital information to foil airplane, bus and train bombings, but I do not. Terrorizing terrorists seems like a great idea to me. The USA and Prussia were the first countries in the world to sign an agreement recognizing that uniformed soldiers were not criminals. Times have now changed again, and you had better start figuring out that suicide bomber terrorists are not criminals, and they are not soldiers either.

Your US Constitution needs a bit of work to recognize this. If the men who created the US Constitution’s Right to Bear Arms had ever seen an Armalite rifle and what it could do in seconds to a McDonalds restaurant full of mums, dads and kids, they may have had second thoughts about enacting the First Amendment. And if the founding fathers of the US Constitution had ever known what an atomic bomb was, and ever realized that a terrorist state like Iran was trying to get one so that it could give it to fellow terrorists to detonate in a western country, they may not have been so self righteous about torture either.

Australia was the first country in the world to offer military assistance to the USA after the 9/11 bombings. Those bombings, in which 6 Australians were victims, were conducted by Al Qaida. David Hicks was fighting for Al Qaida at the time of the attack and that sure looks like treason to me.

The only miscarriage of justices is that he got off so lightly.

But unfortunately in Australia, we have this crowd of US hating social regressive who appear think that they are morally and intellectually superior to everybody else, and they seem to have a compulsive need to get puritanical and self righteous over everything. They can be relied upon to daub the slogans and man the barricades for every anti US and anti Australian cause imaginable.

Their agenda can be put like this. Minorities are always right. White Australians and white Americans are always wrong.

Lexi, you may be ignorant, but you are good at making up unsubstantiated garbage.

If you persevere you might become a disreputable journalist like Jason.

On the other hand, you might consider adverting to facts, and see Hicks for the lying, pathetic would be terrorist that he is.

Gitmo was the best accomodation and highest class company that he had experienced for quite a while, but gratitude cannot be expected from someone of his moral turpitude.

He sticks to the code of the al Quaeda vermin, and makes false accusations of torture and mistreatment.

He looked in good condition on the occasion his premature release, quite the opposite to the harrowing description of him in the subversive left wing press, immediately before his release.

Leo Lane:

You accuse me of making up "unsubstantiated garbage." On what do you base your hypothesis? My sources were Amnesty International and The Red Cross - if you were to google David Hicks and those organisations you would find the same information that I did. As for my being a journalist - I already have a profession - but Thank You for the compliment of comparing me to the author of this article. What are your qualifications? You don't appear to have evolved very far.

LEGO,

You may have a point. But what is overlooked in Hicks' case is that the organisations that he was prepared to go overseas and fight for are extreme Right-wing organisations - extreme and Right-wing insofar as they oppose modern democracy, equal rights and indeed the entire Enlightenment project, and use all manner of means to destroy it. Isn't that so ?

Yes, they make use of the latest technology but put it at the service of ideologies which would plunge the parts of the world that they can conquer back into the middle ages, back to what Europe had to go through five and eight hundred years ago, a thousand years ago.

What I don't understand is how and why groups and individuals who think of themselves as Left, brainlessly support and excuse these ideologies:

"Al Qa'ida is a CIA construct, it doesn't even exist, and anyway it's not so bad, it doesn't commit terrorist acts, and anyway when it does, it's the Americans' fault, they've brought it all on themselves,"

many on the Left (or who think they are on the Left) might say. Do they somehow think that it's the 'turn' of fundamentalist Islam to have a go at medieval ?

Well, it's been there, and done that, at various times from 630 or so until 2011, in many parts of the Muslim world (hopefully, what is happening now in the Arab/Muslim world is a sharp turn away from Islamism towards democracy, effectively towards the democratic and progressive Left).

Sure, Muslim architecture of the Middle Ages was beautiful and ingenious, but what about social development at the time, the slow groping towards human rights and political activity that characterised European history for a thousand years but which has been absent from the Muslim world until very recently ?

Hicks was copped working for the enemy, he did some time and he's out. He was one of the lucky ones. Let's move on.

Joe

cont'd ...

Leo Lane:

The following website may clarify a few things for you and others:

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2011/international/david-hicks-first-interview-details-us-torture-allegations/

David f and Pelican
What you say is quite solid.
Though it raises further questions:

The question for the Australian government would be many layers:

1- Does the Australian government have a responsibility to intervene on behalf of its citizens and refuse to allow another country to subject them to treatment that is illegal or unconstitutional to that country?

Which, generally, should have an obvious "YES" answer.

The complication arises when:
2- Does the country maintain this obligation of intervention on behalf of this individual, when this individual poses a threat to the physical well-being and safety to Australians at home?

And of course, how should this be judged?
1- explicit breaking of laws (according to systems abroad or what Australia regards as an explicit crime committed outside Australian soil).
2- Correspondence to militant groups deemed a threat, but not specifically one that orchestrated a specific terrorist act.
3- Psychological state (eg groomed advocate of anti-western mindsets and policy)

AND the onus on how much these must be substantiated or proven, or merely suspected to a certain degree, to warrant.

This is not meant to be a rhetorical question, it is very much a dilemma on how much we balance security against standing up for the liberty of those suffering under other authorities abroad.

LEGO:

Generally the two rationales for torture are:

1. These are terrible people so whatever we do to them is justified.

2. Torture is an effective means of getting vital information.

Neither is true. When we employ torture we become terrible people since we justify atrocity the way others do. Torture is only one way & not the best way of getting info. People under torture can tell the torturer what the torturer wants to hear. It may not be the truth. People under torture may finger enemies and so subject innocent people to torture. The Indonesians have in the past used torture. Recently they have changed their interrogation methods. The interrogator builds up a relation with the subject treating them decently while subjecting them to much questioning in a friendly manner. They are having more success with locating and catching terrorists than with previous methods.

In our system guilt is individual. Being a member of an organisation does not make one guilty for everything the organisation does. I was in the US army during WW2. We had trials of Nazis after the war. They were convicted if they were found guilty of war crimes. Being a Nazi did not make a person guilty of a war crime. The same thing goes for any connection with Al Qaeda.

I wish you were familiar with the US Constitution. The first Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Nothing in there about bearing arms.

The second Amendment:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

The right to bear arms is not unconditional and can be limited to those members of a well regulated militia.

I don’t believe the first two amendments should be changed. I am a white American who loves his country.

Thanks, Lexi, a reference to Amnesty International, who base their garbage on the very author who has inflicted his trash on us here.

Next you will refer us to the mendacious, anti Western Civilization organisation, the United Nations.

Do you have any reference which is not so obviously polluted and untrustworthy?

Do you just believe anything, without submitting it to analysis, and considering its source?

Davidf,

Yes, you're right, torture is immoral and unnecessary. But to expand on your statement that ".... being a Nazi did not make a person guilty of a war crime. The same thing goes for any connection with Al Qaeda.... ", it really should read:

"Being a Nazi did not [necessarily] make a person guilty of a war crime. The same thing goes for any connection with Al Qaeda."

And, being a Nazi, a person could still commit a war crime: after all, ghastly crimes were committed, and in that part of the world, at that time, by Nazis.

Similarly, a person who goes overseas and seeks out al Qaida and Lashkar-e-Taiba, and is involved in terrorist activities, may well have committed war crimes.

Neither the Nazis nor al Qaida (whose philosophies are not all that different) were/are Boy Scout movements. They were/are in the killing business. They commit/committed vile crimes. No, not every messenger boy and cleaner was guilty of heinous crimes, but some supporters and members certainly were, knowingly and willingly.

Did Hicks ? Did he intend to commit terrorist acts ? Would he have been prepared to ? If not, why did he go there ?

No torture for anybody, certainly, but when someone DOES commit treasonable and terrorist crime, then they do the time.

Joe

Furthermore, being a Nazi implied virtually anyone who was German and willing to serve under their (Axis) nations' armed forces in order to fight for their countries. It otherwise cannot make any claim to the motives of the person who served as part of the Wehrmacht.

Serving under an unofficial Islamist militant force, let alone three separate ones, narrows the lists of motives as to why that person would be there.

And it still avoids the question as to whether the government should intervene to protect and recollect such an individual from another government, at the potential expense of security to the rest of the population?

Dear Loudmouth,

I agree. Those who have committed crimes even if they think they are justified in doing so should pay for it.

Davidf,

If every criminal who didn't think he was doing anything particularly wrong, or thought that for some reason he HAD to do what he did, didn't have to do any time, then the jails would be pretty empty.

The question is: did he intentionally break any laws, did he intend to commit, and then committed, acts which would be regarded as crimes ? Yes/no. End of story

Pelican wrote:

"There is little doubt that Hicks is a nong but it is more important that our justice system does not also act as a nong."

Agreed.

The trouble with this piece is that Jason Leopold tries to turn Hicks into some kind of hero or martyr. He isn't. He took up arms in support of a vicious ideology. It's an ideology that would abolish freedom of expression and kill journalists like Jason Leopold.

But all that notwithstanding, you are right. Our justice system should not "act as a nong."

Leo Lane:

What evidence do you have to present? It's all very well to spout off against various institutions and organisations but where is your evidence to contradict Amnesty International, The Red Cross, The American Military Lawyer who represented Hicks, various Guantanamo Guards who witnessed the torture of Hicks, British prisoners who were in Guantanamo with Hicks and gave their accounts to British newspapers on being released, and so on? As I told you in my previous post - all you have to do is a bit of research - google - the subject and who knows you may actually learn something - instead of simply saying what people who aren't thinking are thinking.

Lexi, you are the one making the ridiculous assertions, not me. The onus is on you. I am simply refuting nonsense.

Do not resort to the schoolchild retort of "prove it".

I said in my post that Amnesty discredit themselves by using the ridiculous article of Leopold as part of their assertions.

We know you can read, so give a proper answer, or give it up.

The very basis upon which Hicks was charged and convicted was all based on a lie.We all know the invasion of Iraq was based on a lie.There were no weapons of mass destruction.

The Taliban had stopped the production of heroine prior 911 and now US troops patrol it's production? Are they trying to tell us that the most powerful military machine on the planet cannot destroy a few poppy plants?Afghanistan now produces 90% of the world's heroine valued at $92 billion pa.

We now learn that Afghanistan has $ trillions in lithium needed for the battery industry.Currently they are building a pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to make it economically viable.Now Iran is being demonised for it's oil.

911 was a total lie.Thousands of professionals in the West are now saying so.http://ae911truth.org/ http://patriotsquestion911.com/
The forensic,scientific,irrefutable evidence is there.This is not like climate science.It is either right or wrong.

Fascism is afoot and we'd better wake up before it is too late!

Dear Loudmoth.

Left wing people call any organization or movement that is nationalistic and patriotic “Right wing”, as if being nationalist and patriotic is somehow evil. I consider that groups opposed to democracy, and to be enamoured of the elitist view that the people are too dumb to be allowed to rule themselves, to be Left wing. I consider that Hitler was a Communist, who had a few schisms with the Kremlin over doctrine. Hitler made plenty of speeches where he said he was a Socialist, and his own party’s name was the National Socialist German Workers Party, which sure sounds Socialist to me.

Added to that, his very good relations with his fellow Socialist Stalin, who not only allowed Germany to get around League of Nations resolutions by allowing Germany to train its Luftwaffe on Soviet soil prior to WW2, Stalin even provided vital war material to Germany in the form of Rubber, Tungsten and Oil while it was fighting Britain and France.

As to why left wingers can never be patriotic, is because the leaders of this philosophy have utterly convinced themselves that patriotism and nationalism is racist, and is therefore utterly evil.

For the rank and file, most of them are young, educated idealistic people who have a compulsive need to display to the common herd that they are something special. The leaders of the left wing philosophy promote their wacky ideology to this vulnerable demographic group by promoting the idea that “smart, intelligent” people reject nationalism and adopt an Internationalist viewpoint. The young, educated people then seize upon this ideology as a way to display social superiority, in the same way that an adolescent seizes upon a packet of cigarettes to display that they are adults.

But most of them start to get smarter as they get older, and they grow out of it. Socialism depends upon youth, naivety and self esteem. However, some groups such as ABC journos and people living in the cloistered world of academia, live in a world where their sentiments become inbred, and they can never grow up.

Dear Davidf

I disagree that torture is ineffective; it has been around for a long time because it works quite well. And I think that torturing torturers who wish to mass murder innocent westerners, because the lifestyle of Western people offends their non existent God, is justified.

How a nation chooses to fight its enemies has to be related to circumstance. We in the West do not generally think it appropriate to kill helpless, wounded enemy soldiers. But during WW2, it was quite routine for allied soldiers to kill every wounded and helpless Japanese soldier they could. They did it because the Japanese soldiers exhibited sadistic brutality upon any male or female captive, because wounded Japanese were well known for killing medics who were attempting to aid them, and the Japs rarely took prisoners themselves anyway. In such a circumstance, the Geneva Convention was hardly appropriate.

It is reasonable for you to think that western people should slaughter their enemies in a civilized way, and most of the time our boys are happy to do that. But, like the Japanese Army before them, today’s terrorists have no intention of moderating their behaviour with any sort of civilized rules. If they want to fight dirty, then we should accommodate them.

The principle that you mentioned, that all members of an organization are not equally guilty of a crime, is not a hard and fast rule. Both your own legal system, and my own Australian legal system, recognizes the principle of “common purpose”, where individuals can be charged with murder if they are part of an armed robbery gang which stages an armed robbery where a victim is killed.

Exempting individuals who are part of mass murdering terrorist organizations from “common purpose” is just plain silly.

LEGO,

The Left is an extremely broad church, and I still think of myself as being part of it, in a schism or faction of one (of a sort of democratic socialist left). But rather than characterise Hitler and fascists as Communist, I prefer to think of many communist parties as oriented, or at least fairly indulgent, towards fascism, certainly towards fascist methods, if not towards their goals.

For example, I've been tortured with the notion that without Lenin's 'Red Terror' and his policies against former Tsarist territories, policies enthusiastically promoted by Stalin in his ethnic cleansing programs - would there have been as much rationale for Mussolin's Terror against the Left and against the people in Italy's colonies, between 1922 and 1945 ? Or, of course, the Nazi Terror ?

Or, come to think of it, Pol Pot's New Red Terror and, it has to be admitted, the Vietnamese use of starvation in its 're-education' centres, in the seventies ? When will the Left ever learn ?

How different is the Marxist notion of a Utopia without certain classes, and the Nazi notion of a pure Aryan world without certain racial groups ? Especially when the methods for extermination are not all that different - after all, what were the gulags for but for the eventual extermination of entire groups ? And how different is Baba Ya (where the Nazis shot a hundred thousand Jews) from Katyn (where the MVD/KGB shot forty thousand Polish officers) ?

And one other common feature of fascist and communist regimes (and Islamist as well, which may explain why sections of the Left are well up the @rses of Islamist groups) is their policy of 'one person, one vote, one time', and the Left's indulgence towards very long-term regimes like Ghaddafi's, the Castros, Mugabe ......

So it's no fun trying to stay Left, while there have been such appalling crimes committed in its name.

Yeah, I'm thinking of calling my faction, the Stephen Bradbury faction. I hope he doesn't mind :)

Joe

Dear Loudmouth,

I am reading "Fascism" by Roger Eatwell. It is a history of the fascist movements in Germany, Italy, France and England. It speculates why fascism came to power in Germany & Italy but not in France and England.

In the index under Fascism (ideology) there is a subentry 'similarities to communism' which contains 9 references.

The followers of Hegel split into left Hegelians led by Karl Marx and right Hegelians who were primarily German nationalists. Some of the heirs of the right Hegelians became Nazis so both groups share an antecedent.

You might enjoy Eatwell's book.

Thanks, David, it could be very timely :)

I wish the Left would read books like that, if only not to go down the same dreary paths, and not to suck up to 'friends' for so-called strategic purposes, 'taking the long view', and other fascist apologetics.

And in regards to Hicks' journey as a tortured terrorist, I agree that torture is impermissible, even if it gets results, which I can't imagine it does. Not even fascists deserve to be tortured. Shot maybe, but not unnecessarily made to suffer.

Regards,

Joe

Leo Lane:

Now you're simply stirring. You were the one who asked for "proof," I provided you with the information as you requested.
However, my links were not "trustworthy," according to you so I asked you to provide ones that were - and still you tell me the onus is on me. Why? Put your money where your mouth is and do some research. I'm not going to do the research for you - the answers are there on the web all you have to do is look. However, I can see that further discussion with you is futile and nothing constructive is going to be achieved. You're entitled to your opinion, as I am to mine. The truth of the matter is that if the world consisted simply of some self-evident reality that everyone perceived in exactly the same way, there might be no disagreement among observers. However what we see in the world is not determined by what exists "out there." It's shaped by what our past experience has prepared us to see and by what we consciously or unconsciously want to see. Knowledge and belief about the world do not exist in a vacuum, they are social products whose content depends on the context in which they are produced. Inevitably we're all guilty of some measure of bias - the tendency to interpret facts according to one's own values. This becomes particularly acute in subject matters that involve issues of deep human and moral concerns - like the David Hicks case.

Dear Loudmouth.

What made be begin to think objectively about Hitler’s political orientation, was a book by a German/French (Sudetenland) soldier who fought in Russia in the Wehrmacht. The book was “The Forgotten Soldier” by Guy Sajer, and in it he said that he could not understand why he was fighting to destroy a political system that was practically identical to Germany’s.

I began to realise that the differences between Fascism and Communism were almost non existent. The Soviets were certainly less racist than the Germans, but then they possessed an Empire which included dozens of different ethnic groups, so they had to be. And the Soviet method of dealing with ethnic minority nationalism by forced deportations, was more humane than the German method of simply mass murdering anybody they considered an untermenschen.

On the political level, the only minor difference between Fascism and Communism is that Soviet Socialism was supposedly Internationalist, while German Socialism was intensely nationalistic towards Germany. But the Soviet Union could also be intensely nationalistic about the “motherland.” While on the economic level, the Soviets demanded total control over the means of production, while the German Nationalist Socialists considered that private ownership of factories and farms was more efficient. With the entire Socialist world now embracing this private ownership of the means of production, the question begs, could a country like China , which is racist, intensely nationalistic, and has now accepted that private ownership of the means of production is more efficient than State control, be considered a Fascist state?

Anyhoo, I have lived through a time when educated, and supposedly intelligent young people advocated a system of government which is a screaming nightmare out of 1984. When it finally collapsed, one would have thought that they would finally grow a brain. But here they are today, still thinking it is “smart” to go into bat for Islamofascists David Hicks.

LEGO,

Interesting that you should note what Sajer said - I'm reading Vassili Grossman's 'Life and Fate' and he makes very much the same point. And in his short stories, published as 'The Road', he very artfully starts out in what you think is a description of an aspect of one system, only to discover that he is writing about that aspect of the other. Scary !

So your question:

"With the entire Socialist world now embracing this private ownership of the means of production, the question begs, could a country like China , which is racist, intensely nationalistic, and has now accepted that private ownership of the means of production is more efficient than State control, be considered a Fascist state?"

I fear to answer. I wouldn't say that China is a fascist state yet, but it's on the road to it. Since we learnt in our youth that 'fascism means war', China may be still a few steps away from fascism. A few short steps.

Yes, that baffles me, that Islamism embodies such an obviously extreme right-wing philosophy, yet some on the Left seem to support it uncritically. Perhaps some on the extreme Right do too, I don't know. Perhaps many on the Left haven't understood the essentially forward-looking philosophies engendered by the Enlightenment, engendered painfully over centuries, and write off anything developed in any Western country as something to be opposed, because it may have given rise to, or accompanied, capitalism, the develoment of democracy, equality, market systems or internationalism/globalism.

But yes, having known adherents to many Left branches of the various schisms, I have come to the conclusion belatedly that many latch onto Marxism or Leftism or whatever very much as a religion: never to be questioned, timeless, having all the answers and - most crucially - giving them licence to do anything in its name, very much the pure and Utopian end justifying the most devious and brutal means. That religious attitude even seems to involve an abdication of notions of right and wrong, of good and evil, of kindness and cruelty.

[TBC]

Sorry folks, that reference to Vassili Grossman (1905-1964): he was the Soviet Union's chief war correspondent, historian, novelist and short story writer. He covered the Battle of Stalingrad from the inside, and was amongst the first to write about the Nazi extermination camps. Hounded by the Soviets after the War, his master-work 'Life and Fate' (1961) has never been published in Russia.

[Cont.]

So perhaps the identity that some on the Left feel with Islamism is not so incomprehensible: different goals, same means, same devaluing of 'Western' morals. An infantile disorder perhaps, something older heads may not be fundamentally able to understand, but there you go, we have to put up with it.

Hence the support of some on the Left for terrorist trash like Hicks.

To summarise:

* torture is immoral and illegal;

* if one voluntarily goes overseas to work with terrorist groups and takes up arms in their cause, then one is a terrorist;

* everybody deserves the full justice of legal defence and a prompt and fair trial;

* if one is found guilty of offences, then one does the time.

Meanwhile, in Libya, people actually are fighting for justice and democratic rights ......


Joe

So Arjay, would this equation hold true that:
If 911 = fake inside operation,
then fundamentalist wahabi militant = good and safe for exposure of Western public and thus our obligation to rescue?

This is the broad picture that nobody seems to be getting.

My take on the Hicks case is that it is actually irrelevant whether he is a good person or a bad person or whatever - the real issue is that he was tortured illegally, was abused and denied legal rights. Those in the Australian government that just refused to recognize the injustices commited against Hicks and who actually sought to promote their own agendas on the back of this are the same people we entrust to uphold our laws and our democracy. This is a disgrace. As far as I am concerned my rights are indistiguishable from Hick's or anybody else's, and so it is actually the rights of all of us which were abused in Guantanamo, not just David's.

Dear Loudmouth

It appears to be the accepted wisdom that Nazism is “right wing”, but I disagree. The differences that supposedly make Fascism and Communism different appear to be minor, subject to circumstance, and to have disappeared entirely with the present “Socialist” governments now infesting the Earth. Like “Fascist” Germany, China is racist, (tick), anti democratic (tick), authoritarian (tick), and allows private ownership of the means of production (tick). The idea that “Fascism means war” is simply an empty slogan, and the people of Tibet might disagree that China is not warlike and expansionist.

But getting back to Hicks. It has been accepted that for a couple of hundred years that the police look after internal criminals, while the army deals with foreign enemies. However, we are now living in a new age where the enemies of our people now live among us (courtesy of multiculturalism) while their leaders live in anarchic overseas failed states. And these terrorist leaders possess their own private armies with anti aircraft guns and anti tank mines. Combating such enemies within the state using a legal system set up to deal with common criminals instead of suicide bombers, is entirely inappropriate.

Externally, the nature of war has changed yet again. Terrorists are not soldiers and they are not criminals. Extending to terrorists the same legal rights we would bestow upon common criminals, or even POW’s, is as inappropriate as using cavalry against machine guns. When dealing with implacable and sadistic enemies like the Japanese army in WW2, who recognised no civilised rules of war at all, allied armies had no compunction in resorting to methods that people living peaceful lives of leisure would today consider to be war crimes.

It is time to take the gloves off again.

The essence of the thing we refer to as Nazism did not evaporate at the conclusion of WWII. It merely changed venues.

Out with the old and in with the new:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=95d_1206462963

(note the passing of Julius Streicher - he was the Murdoch of his day)

It is a part of all of us. To enliven it, all that is required is to flatter an immature human desire to feel superior to "the other". The more helpless the untermenschen the better. Any contrary evidence is bayed down by the pack.

.... that old essence? This thread fairly reeks of it .....

The following link may be of interest:

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/chapters/pushing_the_envelope_on_presi/...

It's taken from "The Washington Post." Written by Barton Gellman and Jo Becker (staff writers) entitled, "Pushing the envelope on Presidential Power/Cheney." It's a long article, and David Hicks is covered towards the end of it. It makes for interesting reading, in my opinion.

Dear Lexi,

That was an interesting article. Bush and Cheney were criminals according to the standards of President Theodore Roosevelt. He said:

No man is above the law and no man is below it: nor do we ask any man's permission when we ask him to obey it.

That applies to the president and vice president. Clinton was impeached for lying about a sexual indiscretion. The far more serious acts of Bush and Cheney should have seen them tossed out of office and put in prison.

I don't accept your characterisation of multiculturalism, LEGO, but that's for another time :)

This article by Umberto Eco on what he calls 'Ur-Fascism', the prerequisites for a fascist ideology, should be required reading:

http//:www.themodernworld.com/eco/eco_blackshirt.html

He highlights the role of traditionalism and conformity, and of an aggrieved seige mentality, the over-development of a sense of 'us' and 'them' - all of which are used to demonise 'them' and sanctify whatever methods that might work for 'us'.

Yes, I agree that the terms Left and Right are becoming less meaningful. Perhaps we live in times when consistent ideologies are not fully fleshed out, on both the 'Left' and the 'Right', but when labels - 'neo-liberal', 'Socialist'/'Communist', 'Hansonite', 'Blairite', even over-use of the terms 'racist', etc. are thrown at people with whom we disagree. They avoid a great deal of necessary thought about the deeper meanings of issues and stances. I've done it myself, I'm sure.

So, for a host of reasons, critical analysis, a tolerance for others' opinions and for diversity, and a positive attitude to the 'other' and to new ideas, are vital components for vibrant civil societies everywhere. They may prove to be the greatest enemies of current fascist ideologies such as al Qa'ida's Islamism.

And they may be - painfully - one of the outcomes of the current people's movements in the Middle East and Africa. They may teach us all a thing or two.

Joe

Dear David,

Thank You for taking the time to read the link on Cheney. I find that the more I research the more depressing it gets. I guess the old adage, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely," proves to be true in some cases.

If Hicks was treated badly by his captors (and that is purely his story) that does not change the fact that he was a mercenary who loved shooting destructive weapons at other human beings.

Interuptus said: "My take on the Hicks case is that it is actually irrelevant whether he is a good person or a bad person or whatever - the real issue is that he was tortured illegally, was abused and denied legal rights."

And that is the crux of the problem. For some people the 'real issue' is not that Hicks was a thrill seeker who loved shooting large weapons at other human beings and has admitted as much. Nor is it about him wanting go out in an adrenaline rush while killing large numbers of people, its all about stories of his treatment by the US.

Because of the dominance of irrational anti-western sentiment in the minds of some, we now have a very dangerous person living amongst us again. Hicks will not be quiet forever.

Oops, got that URL of Umberto Eco's description of Ur-Fascism wrong, should have been:

http://www.themodernworld.com/eco/eco_blackshirt.html

That's it ! Brilliant !

Joe

I found Jason's story harrowing, and share his disgust at the way Hicks was treated. Hicks was a mercenary, so what? Australians have joined the French Foreign Legion, a corps which for several years fought the Allies in the Middle East and North Africa. There were Britons in the FFL at the outbreak of WWII- were they pilloried in this fashion (I believe the FFL released tham, and they never fought against the British). Hicks may have been a silly, feckless amateur, but nothing he did warranted the horrific treatment he received at the hands of a nation which should be upholding international law (but departs from the script when it sees fit). The lack of support for Hicks from the Australian government also shames all Australians. I'm glad to see that he is now living a fairly normal life and has worked out the illogic of Islam. Lest I'm accused of being a "bleeding heart lefty" I might add that in most respects I'm quite conservative- certainly not a Green or even Labor voter.

Viking13

So you can excuse someone who kills for money, but you have no time for flawed legal systems?.

Wonderful logic.

"So you can excuse someone who kills for money, but you have no time for flawed legal systems?".

Que? I didn't excuse any mercenary- I merely noted that there is nothing new about men from one nation fighting for another. In this case Hicks "fought" for a movement noted for its barbarity, and lack of recognition around the world (although it was the de facto government of Afghanistan via conquest- not a lot different to other movements thoughout history). Flawed legal systems? Whose? Australia's, USA's or Afghanistan's? The system at Guantanamo was severely flawed, in large part because it operated outside any legal framework, including the that of America!