civil liberties: October 2007 Archives

The farce that is the Keystone Cops Australian Federal Police's handling of the Haneef matter just won't go away, and it gets worse every time I look at it.  AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty, who was previously vocal in defending the AFP's prosecution of Haneef, and equally vocal in attacking Haneef's lawyers for pointing out the gaping flaws in the AFP's case against him, has now said that he knew the case was weak.

Tony Morris QC has called for Keelty to be sacked, and I agree with him whole-heartedly.  From the news.com.au article:

"At the time, he was very vocal in the press, castigating Haneef's lawyers for disclosing the weaknesses in the prosecution case," Mr Morris said. "Now he admits that he was conscious of those weaknesses all along, and stood by and did nothing when an inaccurate version of the facts was inadvertently presented to the court.

"On his own admission, as the chief law enforcement officer for the commonwealth, he was willing to allow a miscarriage of justice to proceed without taking any step to interfere - and then attacked Haneef's lawyers for their efforts to prevent that miscarriage."

Keelty should have had the balls to quit when it was revealed that the prosecution had given completely false information to the court for the purpose of justifying Haneef's continued detention.  I don't know what Keelty was thinking when he made his most recent admissions -- maybe he thinks it's better to be thought to be a compliant stooge of the commonwealth's 'war against terror', than to be thought ignorant or incompetent.

The fact that Keelty hasn't been sacked over the Haneef debacle is symptomatic of the reprehensible and irresponsible government we've come to enjoy under Howard's watch.  Thankfully the smart money is on that watch ending in about a month's time.  Hopefully Rudd will give Keelty the arse, but I wouldn't put money on it.

News.com.au reports that the Commonwealth Office of Film and Literature CensorshipClassification has recently classified the computer game Soldier of Fortune: Payback as 'refused classification', with the result that the game cannot be legally sold or distributed in Australia.

(Yes, it's somewhat oxymoronic that something can be 'classified' as 'refused classificiation')

This result is courtesy of our beloved federal government's policy that if a computer game isn't suitable for a 15-year old, it must be banned.  MA15+ is the highest classification for computer games -- if it is too violent for the MA15+ category, it must be refused classification -- i.e. banned.

Earlier this year, the football game Blitz the League was also refused classification, because characters in the computer game can use steroids to get a performance boost.  Under the classification rules, drug use associated with incentives is an automatic ban.

This stupidity was brought to you by the Commonwealth Department of Condescending Paternalism.

Things have been pretty hectic here during the last week.  I've pulled out all the stops to finish a time-sensitive journal article that I hope to have published this year, and my time window to do so is closing rapidly.  Updates will be few and far between until at least the end of this week, or probably early next week.

I thought I would share the following video with you, however.  It is said to depict Miami police officers assaulting several residents of a Miami neighborhood, for no other reason than they were outside their houses while there was a protest against the Free Trade Area of the Americas being held nearby.

I'm not sure exactly where, in the Miami police book of procedures, it instructs officers to walk up to someone, and without a word of warning, spray them in the face with capsicum spray, then tell them to go home, and then strike them with batons before they have a chance to comply.



Still, it could have been worse.  A court hearing is currently underway in the UK over the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, who was summarily executed by British police in 2005 on suspicion of being a suicide bomber.  de Menezes was shot seven times in the head, by two police officers, allegedly over a period of about 30 seconds.  No police officers were charged with any offences as a result of this incident, although the police did search the house of and arrest a journalist who dared to leak results of an inquiry which contradicted the official police version of events.  Despite giving false information to the media, and obstructing an investigation of the shooting by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, police chief Sir Ian Blair escaped unscathed.

Besides de Menezes, the only real casualty of the entire affair is the metropolitan police organisation itself -- who have been charged under workplace health and safety legislation with 'failing to provide for the health, safety and welfare' of de Menezes.  I guess that mistaking him for somebody else and shooting him seven times in the head could fall into that category.