STRAW MEN

Straw Man arguments in the media

A couple of straw men have sprouted of late: arguments ignoring an actual position and substituting a distorted version of that position.

McDonalds:- The fast food behemoth (and enormous real estate owner) has a series of adverts on television in which a cool young person says their friends have been claiming the meat in McDonalds is crap, and that they intend to investigate the claim for themselves. They find out that McDonald's meat is of a relatively high grade.
The meat quality is the straw man. The truism is that the criticism levelled at McDonalds, by the intended audience of the advertisements, concerns general nutrition values, salt and sugar levels and the presence of high concentrations of trans-fats, the quality of the beef is not being criticised.

AWB:- Terence Cole's inquiry into the Australian single-desk wheat trader showed "no-wrongdoings" by members of the Australian Government's Foreign Office during AWB's six-year kickbacks arrangement with Saddam Hussein in an Oil for Food deal.

Despite the fact an investigation of the Government department was not among the terms of reference of the inquiry, the commissioner heavily criticised the Government's apparently lackadaisical attitude to scrutinising the grain trader's activities in the Middle East even ignoring repeated warnings that there was someting amis.
Mr Cole made a couple of dozen recommendations to the Government which, between the lines read: 'You fellows have been up to some very dodgy stuff but we'll let it slide this time if you put these new regulations in place.
The Government takes the bit of the Cole inquiry report about "no wrongdoings", which is politico-legalese for no criminal conduct, and then starts demanding apologies for all the nasty things their critics have been saying about them.
The finding of "no wrongdoing" is being put forward to insinuate that the Government did nothing wrong.
Prime Minister John Howard said: "The Commissioner has found in the most emphatic of terms imaginable that there's not evidence of wrongdoing. We didn't have anything to hide and the Commissioner has found that there was no wrongdoing on the part of any of my ministers." - ABC News: "Government Cleared in AWB Probe"
Regardless of the fact the comissioner was not looking for wrongdoing, the statement that no criminallity was suspected among members of the Government is, in the big picture, very far from not doing anything wrong.

[Bruce's Rave and Rant]

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

Middle East facing three civil wars, Jordan's King says

Jordan's King Abdullah is warning that the Middle East could soon be engulfed in violence, saying three separate civil wars may be about to erupt in the region, including in Iraq.
King Abdullah says there could be civil wars brewing in Iraq, the Palestinian territories and Lebanon.
"The United States has now spent as long in Iraq as it spent fighting World War II," he said.
Senior Republicans are saying Mr Bush will get tough with the Iraqis at this week's summit.

[A classified US Government document obtained by the New York Times says Iraq's insurgents are now financially self-sufficient, raising more than $100 million a year from kidnap ransoms, smuggling and counterfeiting.]

SPOIL A SPACEWALK

Cosmonaut tees off into space

At the start of a six-hour spacewalk, cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin hit a golf ball into Earth's orbit from the International Space Station (ISS) to raise money for the Russian space program.
The station flight engineer made a one-armed swat with a gold plated six-iron to send the lightweight ball on a journey estimated to take it around the Earth at least 48 times before it burns up in the atmosphere.
Mr Tyurin spent 16 minutes setting up the shot off a ladder on a Russian docking module, with the help of United States astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria and under the guidance of Russian flight controllers.

"Okay, there it goes," Mr Tyurin said. "It went pretty far. It was an excellent shot. I can still see it as a little dot moving away from us."

Cosmonaut's shanked space shot gives NASA yips

It may have been a golf shot that went around the world, but he fluffed it.
As he walked in space, 350 kilometres above the Pacific, the cosmonaut whacked an 3g ball into history.
But the $US5 million stunt, sponsored by a Canadian golf equipment manufacturer, immediately went into the rough.

Instead of going in a line opposite to the flight path of the international space station, the ball swerved unexpectedly to the side. Ground controllers declared Tyurin had "shanked" the shot and that the ball had zoomed far off course.

[He had been armed with three ultra-light balls, weighing just three grams each, but he was quickly ordered to put them away and get on with his real work, fitting new equipment outside the space station.
As he packed away his club, gold-plated to reduce static electricity, mission control reported that it was still trying to calculate the ball's trajectory.]

CLOAK AND DAGGER

Alexander Litvinenko, before and after poisoning.

Moscow to blame for poisoning, KGB director says

Former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, who had been fighting for his life in recent days after an apparent poisoning, has died.
In an interview just hours before he slipped into unconsciousness, Mr Litvinenko whispered: "The bastards got me, but they won't get everybody".
The Kremlin said on Friday the ex-spy's death was a "tragedy" but was now a matter for British police to investigate.
Litvinenko, a fierce critic of Putin, first began to feel ill on November 1, after having tea with two Russians at a central London hotel, followed by lunch at a London sushi bar with an Italian academic.

The former Russian spy London, has been a very public thorn in the side of Russian President Vladimir Putin, blaming the President for ramping up the violence in Chechnya and ordering the assassination of his opponents.
Now a KGB defector has told AM he has no doubt that Moscow ordered Mr Litvinenko's poisoning, which could set the scene for Britain's biggest ever clash with President Putin's Russia.
Some reports have it Mr Litvinenko was investigating the recent shooting of Russian Journalist Anna Politkovskaya

Alexander Litvinenko's vocal and constant derision of President Putin immediately had his friends claiming he was poisoned by the FSB (former KGB) or some other intelligence agency in Moscow.

GREEN URANIUM

Ranger uranium mine in Kakadu National Park in Australia's Northern Territory.

Uranium mine blamed for high Aboriginal cancer rate

CANCER cases among Aboriginal people living near Australia's biggest uranium mine appear to be almost double the expected rate, a study by the Federal Government's leading indigenous research body shows.
The study also found there had been no monitoring in the past 20 years on the Ranger mine's impact on local indigenous health. Yet since 1981, there have been more than 120 spillages and leaks of contaminated water at the mine, located in the world heritage-listed Kakadu National Park.

Switkowski task force to get Indigenous cancer report, co-author says
PM challenged on nuclear power ban

CRIMINAL MINDS

Islamist cops nab 22 in raid on Somali smokers

Islamic religious police on Tuesday arrested 22 people for smoking in the Somali port of Kismayo, where they will be flogged if found guilty of violating a new tobacco ban, officials said.
Those detained were nabbed just days after local Islamist officials announced a total ban on the use of tobacco in the key southern port, in a new sign of their increasingly strict application of Sharia law.
"We started raids against tobacco users and we have arrested 22 people so far," Kismayo police deputy chief Mohmaed Abdulkadir Jibril told reporters here, about 500km south of the capital Mogadishu. "Some of them were smoking cigarettes while others were using tobacco leaves when they were caught," he said.

[The anti-smoking raids are the latest indication that Somalia's powerful Islamist movement, which is now girding for war with the weak government, is intent on imposing a fundamentalist version of Koranic law in its territory.]

JUSTICE V DAVID HICKS

Justice at Guantanamo? The Paradox of David Hicks

Of the 500 detainees still imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Hicks is one of only four detainees formally charged with offences. The remaining detainees, many preparing to enter their fifth year of detention, have not yet been charged. In this sense, Hicks can be seen to be one of the ‘lucky’ ones, released from the limbo of detention in the absence of charge, trial or conviction. The paradox is that the treatment of David Hicks to date has transformed him from an alleged perpetrator of war crimes into a possible victim of one. This stems from his likely status as a prisoner of war.

CRIKEY!I do not know whether David Hicks is guilty or innocent of charges related to terrorism. It is, however, damaging to Australia's reputation that an Australian citizen has been rotting in Guantanamo Bay for nearly five years without trial. It has taken his American Army lawyer, Major Mori, to argue that he cannot receive a fair trial before an American military commission and a British judge to state that the long detention and proposed trial of Hicks is contrary to the rule of law.

[Former Chief Justice, Sir Gerard Brennan, has said that the Australian Government's supine acceptance of the situation "shows we are morally impoverished", adding that an "Australian citizen's right to justice should never be a mere trading item in international relations"]

BLACK-BOX VOTING

E-voting glitches plague US midterm elections

Technical glitches and usability flaws caused problems with many electronic voting systems in Tuesday's midterm elections. Experts say the systems, particularly those that let users cast their vote through touch-sensitive screens, must be tested more thoroughly in future to prevent such problems happening again.
More than 20,000 complaints were logged by the Election Protection Coalition, many involving e-voting systems. Close races in Virginia and Montana also threw the spotlight on the security and auditing of results.
Some voters complained that voting machines simply did not work, and those at polling places in Denver crashed repeatedly, according to reports. Polling staff across the country were also unfamiliar with the equipment, and some polling places were forced to stay open later than planned.

[The most disconcerting issue concerned touch-screen machines allegedly "flipping" votes cast for one candidate to another. Some voters were unable to correct on-screen mistakes, while others may not have spotted them.]

SUFFER THE CHILDREN

Sanaa Athamna lies dead with the bodies of her relatives Maysa and Maram. Eighteen members of the same family died in an Israeli artillery attack. Photograph: Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images.

'I cannot see a day when we live in peace with them'

Sanaa Athamna lay as if she slept, dead on a steel tray in the morgue of Beit Hanoun hospital. Across her forehead was a single, hairline fracture and beneath her eye a smudge of blood, the only visible marks of the destruction brought by the wave of Israeli artillery shells that struck her street in Beit Hanoun before dawn yesterday.

In her arms, hospital staff laid the bodies of her relatives: two sisters, Maysa, one, and Maram, three. Their mother Manal was also killed in yesterday's attack, but lay in a morgue at another hospital awaiting burial.

In all, 18 members of the extended Athamna family died when Israeli artillery struck their houses on Hamad Street. At least 14 of the dead were women and children. It was the biggest single Israeli strike in the Palestinian territories for four years and came only a day after the military had ended a six-day incursion in Beit Hanoun, a heavy battle which claimed more than 50 lives.

A profound pessimism has taken hold of Israel
Grief turns to rage as Beit Hanoun buries its dead

THE 'MODERATE'

Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani: "Death to gays and anyone else with a Sunni disposition".

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani says, "Kill a Gay for Allah"

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani of Iraq has issued a death fatwa against lesbian and gay people. On his website, he calls for the killing of homosexuals in the "worst, most severe way" (see his text below).
“Sistani's murderous homophobic incitement has given a green light to Shia Muslims to hunt and kill lesbians and gay men,” says exiled gay Iraqi, Ali Hili, of the London-based gay human rights group OutRage.

Arabic link to Ayatollah's website
Go to the Sistani website [www.sistani.org]. Under the section Istiftaaat, go to letter L in Arabic, look up to Lewat which means (sodomy). See question 5.
Q5: What is the judgment for sodomy and lesbianism?
A5: Forbidden. Punished, in fact, killed. The people involved should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing.

Death squad kills Iraqi boy for having sex with men

Baghdad, Iraq: A 14-year-old boy was murdered by an apparent police death squad because he had sex with men. Ahmed Khalil was shot repeatedly in front of his home in a poor section of the capital by men wearing police uniforms

Gay beaten and burned to death


Haydar Faiek, aged 40, a transsexual Iraqi, was allegedly beaten and burned to death.


Mahmoud Asgari (16) and Ayaz Marhoni (18) were tortured and then hanged in Iran for being gay July 19, 2005.

ON THIS MONTH

Reasons for war

In November 1990, a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl testified before the US Congress that she had seen Iraqi soldiers tossing premature babies onto the floor of a Kuwaiti hospital so their incubators could be sent back to Iraq. Her testimony was cited by Senators as a crucial factor in their decision to go to war with Iraq. It later turned out that the girl, who had been brought forward by a US public relations company hired by Kuwait, was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S.


["The streets of our country are in turmoil. The universities are filled with students rebelling and rioting. Communists are seeking to destroy our country. Russia is threatening us with her might, and the Republic is in danger. Yes - danger from within and without. We need law and order! Without it our nation cannot survive." - Adolf Hitler, 1932]