billy blog ... some alternative economic thinking

This is where the Australian Government is allowing one of its (our) own citizens, David Hicks to be detained by a foreign government. David Hicks is like any other Australian citizen and has expectations like any other Australian citizen of being treated according to Australian and international law.

David Hicks, was captured in some dirty deal between the Americans and one of the tribal armies in Afghanistan and has been held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba since 2001 without trial. The  More ...

While the World was focused on the U.S. mid-term elections on Tuesday, another national election took place in the Americas - Nicaraguans went to the polls November 5 to elect a new President and a National Assembly. The outcomes are incomplete but the big winner is that the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional or FSLN (Sandinista National Liberation Front) leader, Daniel Ortega who fought against the right wing U.S. backed Contra insurgents in the early 1980s, will be the next President.

The political history of Nicaragua is complex but my take on it is that the FSLM overthre  More ...

Today I became aware of a case of a person in their late teens who is severely autistic, is stricken by life threatening epilepsy and has late onset Rett Syndrome. We learn that Rett syndrome "is a childhood neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by normal early development followed by loss of purposeful use of the hands, distinctive hand movements, slowed brain and head growth, gait abnormalities, seizures, and mental retardation ... gradually, mental and physical symptoms appear ... loss of muscle tone ... [loss  More ...

Just when you think it cannot get any worse, along comes Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty. We have an Australian citizen on trial awaiting sentence in Indonesia for alleged drug smuggling and the Commissioner decides to make his opinion on the case public. The ABC News reported that Keelty has indicated that the defence case of the person on trial is questionable, despite his own agency tendering evidence in an Australian court yesterday that seems to implicate airport baggage handlers in drug trafficking.

So what happened  More ...

The Treasurer has recently exhorted the benefits of working into your 70s. He has persistently indicated that he wants to keep older people in the workforce longer and encourage single parents and those on Disability Support Pension to get back into paid jobs. It is of-course clear that his own macroeconomic policies have prevented the economy from generating enough jobs to ensure these groups have the access to paid employment.

But the Treasurer has indicated in many interviews (for example, Retirement is a th  More ...

So they let Habib out from their Gulag. How many more places have they got people locked up without charge? Australia, the United States, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union have one thing in common at least. They all have abrogated the rule of law and been prepared to torture and punish without trial people who should be innocent until proven otherwise. The pretence that Australia has of freedom for its citizens is a chimera!

Total shame on all of them!