Today’s Sunday Mail in Queensland publishes federal voting intention figures from the Galaxy poll that produced the state results you can read about in the post immediately below this one. The federal results are broadly similar to the state ones, and likewise in alignment with the current Queensland reading of BludgerTrack, in crediting Labor with a two-party lead of 51-49, which represents an 8% swing compared with the 2013 election result. The primary votes are 41% for the Coalition (compared with 45.7% in 2013), 37% for Labor (29.8%), 10% for the Greens (6.2%) and 3% for Palmer United (11.0%). The poll also provides a second encouraging personal result for Bill Shorten following his improved rating in last weekend’s Ipsos poll, with 40% rating him the federal leader with the “best plan for Queensland” compared with 34% for Tony Abbott – a question that produced a 42-40 split in favour of Abbott when last posed in the wake of the budget in May. The poll had a sample of 800 respondents, and was presumably conducted late in the week.
[As the NBN rolls out at glacial speed it will get more prominence over the next twelve months as people with full fibre connections lord it over their friends and family still coping with increasingly inadequate copper line based ADSL (or worse).]
As a lucky soon to be recipient of fibre to the premises I sure as shit will be to any illiberal voting acquaintances.
[ Boerwar
Posted Sunday, August 23, 2015 at 1:37 pm | Permalink
War brutalizes.
Simple as that.
If you have already eviscerated someone or blown off their heads with gunfire the next step of cutting off hands for ID is a very small step.
]
Defiling a corpse is also treated as a ‘war crime’
Geneva Convention IV
Article 16, second paragraph, of the 1949 Geneva Convention IV provides: “As far as military considerations allow, each Party to the conflict shall facilitate the steps taken … to protect [the killed] against … ill-treatment.”
https://www.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v2_rul_rule113
Boerwar at 195
It does seem unusual that this angle of the story (removing the hands of dead Taliban allegedly for identification purposes) has not received more publicity, particularly given that it might (worst case) even constitute a war crime.
Perhaps the msm has decided that to investigate the incident would be considered unpatriotic.
Charlie Edwards@171
I have had similar thoughts.
Are we to believe the Afghan Govt or the Army has finger print files covering the entire Taliban membership?
If they don’t, I fail to see how the hands could aid in identification and your suggestion of photographs seems to have much more merit.
So then what is the real reason for the hand chopping?
The story seems to be that there was only one soldier who took off hands and he is under investigation.
Hang on, tell me if I have got this right.
The Liberal Party nominates a candidate who is not even entitled to vote in the electorate, is still subject to an official investigation which has yet to resolve if he is involved in what is frankly a barbaric act.
This candidate then makes a series of self praising statements that push FIGJAM to its limits and also makes a transparently false statement about a former prime minister.
And then the Liberal Party supporters have the utter cheek to complain when any of the above is criticised?
Wow, that is hubris at its most blatant.
[Perhaps the msm has decided that to investigate the incident would be considered unpatriotic.]
Which makes it more strange that it should surface within a few days of Mr Hastie making his appearance in public life.
Who would have known he was the commander in question? Well, the Defence department and his own unit. Would a deep throat there have immediately recognised the connection and hit the blower to their favourite pet journalist? Possible…
On the other hand, there is one person we are certain knew about it. And that was Andrew Hastie. Strange the issue should hit the press within a couple of days of his appearance. Strange that he was eminently well prepared to deal with the issue.
So it was leaked to Fairfax because if the information was leaked to a News Corpse outlet we all would have thought “Liberal Party black Ops”.
From the moment I first saw it I took off my political tragic PB hat and put on my average voter hat. And all I saw was upside for Abbott and the candidate.
And as it turns out. Not only does the action appear defensible, should anyone even care what we do to the evil Taliban that launches suicide bombs and cuts off people’s heads, but Mr Star SAS was not actually involved, and did absolutely the right thing by referring it up the line. And it gives him the opportunity to show care for his men by complaining that it is still ongoing.
The last one is a beauty. Why is nobody asking why Mr Hastie has so much standing in the Liberal Party that he cannot even get them to give a kick along to the investigation, which they have been in charge of for almost the entire time?
And PBers here are happily falling into the same trap by making judgements about what happened (what might have happened?) on almost zero actual information. keeping the issue kicking along to the joy of the Liberals, who will parlay every comment into a show of disrespect for our incredibly brave SAS who have put their lives on the line to protect us from the crazed towel heads who would murder us in our beds, given half the chance.
If they don’t, I fail to see how the hands could aid in identification and your suggestion of photographs seems to have much more merit.
Never heard an explanation on why you can’t take finger/ palm prints off a corpse, police / forensics seem to have no trouble doing it.
It’s ritual mutilation pure & simple
“Are we to believe the Afghan Govt or the Army has finger print files covering the entire Taliban membership?
If they don’t, I fail to see how the hands could aid in identification and your suggestion of photographs seems to have much more merit.” (Bemused)
Just speculating here, but perhaps they had taken fingerprints off bits of IEDs or from inside a known Talib meeting-place and just wanted to find out whether they’d caught the people behind some particular recent atrocity, names being irrelevant. Leaning towards the charitable I know, but vaguely possible.
shea mcduff
That is Tony for you!
Spoiled rotten and only male child says it all.
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
The UK Military Manual (1958) states: “The dead must be protected against … maltreatment.”
The UK LOAC Pamphlet (1981) states: “The dead must not be … mutilated.”
The UK LOAC Manual (2004) provides that the dead must be protected against maltreatment and that the mutilation of dead bodies is a war crime. The manual refers to this as a “well-established rule of customary international law”.
United States of America
The US Field Manual (1956) provides that “maltreatment of dead bodies” is a war crime.
The US Instructor’s Guide (1985) states: “In addition to the grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, the following acts are further examples of war crimes: … mutilating or mistreating dead bodies”.
The US Naval Handbook (1995) provides that “mutilation and other mistreatment of the dead” are representative war crimes.
The US Naval Handbook (2007) states that “[m]utilation or other mistreatment of the dead” is an example of acts that could be considered war crimes.
Quote from Haste in the OZ… USING the Canning by-election as an opportunity to kick the prime minister is “disgraceful”, says Liberal candidate Andrew Hastie.
Looks like he did come down in the last shower after all.
shea @ 206
As per my comment at 207, it is a sneaky political black ops, not hubris. Like most of the Liberal actions on so-called national security issues it is intended to provoke negative responses from their opponents which can then be parlayed into a Labor does not respect our military position.
Some of you will no doubt remember Abbott’s ‘shit happens’ comment actually resulted from a briefing in Afghanistan following attacks he made on Labor for not protecting our troops overseas sufficiently. That comment in turn came from a bitterly angry and emotional email/facebook (or the like comment) from a soldier who had seen colleagues killed on the battlefield.
Abbott has been dying to paint Labor into a party that disrespects our troops fighting on the front line for us and Hastie is part of that push.
On the point of nominating a candidate who is not entitled to vote in the electorate, my understanding is that the Labor candidate does not live in the electorate, although he grew up there and his family still lives there. As there is a rigid residence requirement for electoral enrolment, neither may well be enrolled in the electorate. So no big deal. But it does give Hastie the opportunity to remind voters of another downside of being in military service – the near impossibility, especially when young, to live in the same place for more than 3 years.
What is the largest swing against a sitting government in a by-election?
TPOF at 207
I’m not sure that folk are making judgements, certainly I framed my concerns in terms of genuine questions because as an ex Army Officer with operational service in the ME I am trying to put myself into the position of this officer & am asking myself the basic who, what where, how & why questions that I think journalists should be asking.
There may be entirely reasonable answers in which case I’d hope that Defence or the government might be able to advise us & the intent isn’t actually to cast aspersions.
As an ex commander, I’m asking who ordered him & why & also did he consider questioning those orders. It would be nice to know the context so as to be able to clear up the issue entirely otherwise the SAS as a whole risks being stained by this incident which is unfair. The issue here I think is transparency & the killing of a few Taliban is unlikely to be ‘top secret’.
I have no time for Hastie, and this “war hero” crapola and Abbott’s vampirism of same is really getting on my nerves, but let’s not get carried away by the hand cutting thing.
As far as stuff that happens in wartime this is small bikkies. Sure, “our boys” should be better behaved, and whoever is responsible should be disciplined and probably discharged (and in a timely manner), but frankly I’m much more concerned by what is happening to the living in the ME, not the dead.
I noticed JulieB responded with two exaggerations to defend Hastie when talking to Cassidy. The first was ‘that was years ago’ in a dismissive tone, implying many years. Turns out to be only two. Then ‘he wasn’t there’, when Hastie himself said he was up in a helicopter overlooking his men.
When cornered, it seems Miss Julie lies easily.
[ lizzie
Posted Sunday, August 23, 2015 at 2:22 pm | Permalink
I noticed JulieB responded with two exaggerations to defend Hastie when talking to Cassidy. The first was ‘that was years ago’ in a dismissive tone, implying many years.
When cornered, it seems Miss Julie lies easily.
]
*Years Ago* – did not stop them pursuing a much younger lawyer, JG, to the bitter end of her career …..
Hmmm. Planet Janet and Brendan O’Neill talking about the failure of feminism? If you’ve got nothing better to do tomorrow night in Sydney, why not go along?
[Why “Grievance Feminism” is a Threat to Serious Feminist & Humanitarian Issues
Janet Albrechtsen I Columnist, The Australian
Dr Andrea den Boer | Senior Lecturer, International Relations, University of Kent | Author of Bare Branches: the Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population, UK
Christina Hoff Sommers | Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute | Author of Who Stole Feminism? | USA
Brendan O’Neill | Editor, spiked UK
Over the past century the feminist movement has achieved remarkable advances in securing equal rights for women in the West, but in other regions around the world women are still treated as second class citizens – or even goods and chattels. Millions of women in developing countries live with subjugation, domestic servitude, rape, violence, honour killings, harassment, genital mutilation and restricted education as societal norms. They do not have the rights to their own bodies, their own opinions, their own lives, and often are denied rights to property as well. They are denied basic freedoms that are accorded to men in those same countries without question.
This session will explore why these issues are not a battle for women’s rights but a battle for human rights, in the truest sense of the term, and why “grievance feminism” trivialises and sidelines the real issues of fundamental gender illiberalism.]
http://www.cis.org.au/events/upcoming/event/208
I heard Hastie say he’s been fighting for democracy. Conned or deluded is the question.
From Abbott in defence of Hastie..
“I’m confident that it’s not someone’s past that matters; it’s their future that matters.”
Looks like he’s done before he’s started.
“Human organizations are flawed because humans are flawed,” TIME International editor Jim Frederick wrote in Black Hearts, his gut-wrenching book about 1st Battalion’s tour in the Triangle of Death. “Even with the best intentions, men make errors in judgment and initiate courses of action that are counterproductive to their self-interest or the completion of their mission.” When asked to do something as brutally inhumane as killing someone, some soldiers will inevitably suffer lapses in their humanity.
That’s why leadership is crucial to prevent atrocities of all kinds before they occur
TPOF
Interesting perspective.
I’ll only comment on one aspect.
[But it does give Hastie the opportunity to remind voters of another downside of being in military service – the near impossibility, especially when young, to live in the same place for more than 3 years.]
The military are not the only occupation that have that as a problem.
In the first 10 years of my teaching career I lived in 5 different state electorates and 3 different federal electorates, had no opportunity to buy a home and received no subsidy for having to transfer 4 times.
The second transfer was interesting.
I shifted from a city electorate to a country electorate and the value of my vote nearly tripled.
Then back to the city where my vote decreased in value, then back out to the country where it more than doubled.
[ psyclaw
Posted Sunday, August 23, 2015 at 2:27 pm | Permalink
I heard Hastie say he’s been fighting for democracy. Conned or deluded is the question.
]
THIS reminds me of the Buffy St Marie /Donovan classic – Universal Soldier – excuse my indulgence
“Universal Soldier”
He’s five foot-two, and he’s six feet-four,
He fights with missiles and with spears.
He’s all of thirty-one, and he’s only seventeen,
Been a soldier for a thousand years.
He’a a Catholic, a Hindu, an Atheist, a Jain,
A Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew.
And he knows he shouldn’t kill,
And he knows he always will,
Kill you for me my friend and me for you.
And he’s fighting for Canada,
He’s fighting for France,
He’s fighting for the USA,
And he’s fighting for the Russians,
And he’s fighting for Japan,
And he thinks we’ll put an end to war this way.
And he’s fighting for Democracy,
He’s fighting for the Reds,
He says it’s for the peace of all.
He’s the one who must decide,
Who’s to live and who’s to die,
And he never sees the writing on the wall.
But without him,
How would Hitler have condemned them at Dachau?
Without him Caesar would have stood alone,
He’s the one who gives his body
As a weapon of the war,
And without him all this killing can’t go on.
He’s the Universal Soldier and he really is to blame,
His orders come from far away no more,
They come from here and there and you and me,
And brothers can’t you see,
This is not the way we put the end to war.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-29/charges-considered-after-taliban-fighters-hands-cut-off/5849090 ………
They were on the hunt for one of the Australian force’s priority targets, an insurgent known as Rapier, a specialist in the construction of improvised explosive devices believed to have been responsible for the deaths of a number of Australian soldiers.
Australian troops are required to collect fingerprints and eye scans of every Taliban fighter who is killed.
Days after it has been proved they are wrong, and the correction published, the Coal Cabinet are still mouthing 10,000 jobs from Adani. When it comes to fabricating figures, the Coalition have no shame.
Hastie & the Libs must have missed this.. 30-8-2013 on reports of the mutilation..
Rudd has ‘full confidence’ in ADF
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has also commented on the investigation, saying he has “full confidence in the Australian Defence Force”.
“I have full confidence in our men and women in uniform in Afghanistan. I have full confidence in their professionalism,” he said.
CE @ 215
The simple fact is that we know very little about what happened in the incident. The question we should all be asking is the only legitimate point that Hastie raised in his speech – the failure of Defence to finalise its investigation, so we actually have some information and not speculation to work from.
The next question is so obvious, but I have not seen one journalist ask it: Why has this Liberal Government – the Government that does have the backs of serving men and women according to Hastie – not done anything to finalise the investigation, despite being in power for 2 years?
To me, the politics are very clear. The Liberals want to make this a khaki by-election and everything is being done to make it so, even a huge range of dishonest hyperbolic outrage hoping to provoke a reaction from Labor. Labor wants this to be a local by-election on local issues that are a microcosm of State and national concerns.
To the extent that we are all distracted by the ‘hand-off’ controversy, we are helping to make this a khaki and not an Australian by-election.
psyclaw
[
I heard Hastie say he’s been fighting for democracy.]
He picked a suboptimal new commanding officer for himself then.
sceptic@225
Thanks for that, it makes a little more sense now.
But if there was a requirement to collect fingerprints and eye scans then I would expect them to have appropriate equipment to do it in the field.
bemused at 230
Agreed
Shea @ 223
[The military are not the only occupation that have that as a problem.]
Certainly not. But despite the critical importance of teachers and other civil workers who are constantly being transplanted, it is only the military who can be portrayed by a PM wrapped in Australian flags as doing it in selfless service for the country.
It goes to the ‘local’ issue. Keogh will, I’m sure, not play up Hastie’s lack of connection to the electorate. He will not comment or even say that he understands Hastie’s situation. But then he will bring any discussion back to his own suitability to service the interests of the voters of Canning. Anyone else working for Labor will do the same. This will probably be the cleanest election Labor will ever run.
I didn’t realise they were ALL going. Haven’t seen it anywhere.
[@iDGiam
Is anyone else wondering why Abbott is taking the front bench with him on his “staying in an aboriginal community” BS spin trip?]
Hey Liberal party. Abbott is such a great campaigner he is off on his indigenous trip during a crucial leadership campaign period.
Such confidence you guys have in his campaigning abilities. More keep Abbott out of people’s faces as the less seen the better during a campaign.
From the ABC
[Australian troops are required to collect fingerprints and eye scans of every Taliban fighter who is killed.
It can be a difficult process as they are often operating under intense time pressure and in dusty, hot and sweaty conditions.
The ABC understands that during the operation on April 28, four insurgents were killed and that the right hands of three of them were removed by an SAS corporal.
Rapier was not one of them.
The corporal was acting on advice given by an officer from the Australian Defence Force Investigative Service (ADFIS), who lectured a group of SAS soldiers on April 19 during a training session at the Australian base at Tarin Kowt.
The ADFIS officer told them it did not matter how the fingerprints were taken and that it would be acceptable to chop off the hands of the dead and bring them back to base for identification purposes.
The ABC understands it took three days for the senior command at Tarin Kowt to realise what had happened, but as soon as it was known an operation pause was put in place.
The pause, which lasted a week, upset the US command as it had a direct impact on a broader ISAF operation that included US forces.]
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-29/charges-considered-after-taliban-fighters-hands-cut-off/5849090
Andrew Elder makes an excellent point, he mentioned two high profile WA women, Diane Smith-Gander and Deirdre Willmott
Looking at both their linkedin profiles, they are both on paper at least far more impressive than Hastie having held a number of roles in both the public and private sector.
Looks like another botched decision by Tone
mexicanbeemer@236
The decision was made by a Lib pre-selection committee in media reports I read.
Bemused
Yes but if Tone was leading his political party with an eye to improving its performance then he should have pushed for a candidate that had certain expertise, this candidate (Hastie) appears to be a mini Tony type.
Lets see if Tony can beat Rudd in by-election swing against 1st term government ..
2008 Gippsland Rudd -8.1%
& Hawke 3rd term government
1988 Port Adelaide Hawke -14.2%
http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2015/07/background-on-swings-at-federal-by-elections.html
[ lizzie
Posted Sunday, August 23, 2015 at 2:57 pm | Permalink
From the ABC
Australian troops are required to collect fingerprints and eye scans of every Taliban fighter who is killed.
It can be a difficult process as they are often operating under intense time pressure and in dusty, hot and sweaty conditions.
The ABC understands that during the operation on April 28, four insurgents were killed and that the right hands of three of them were removed by an SAS corporal.
Rapier was not one of them.
The corporal was acting on advice given by an officer from the Australian Defence Force Investigative Service (ADFIS), who lectured a group of SAS soldiers on April 19 during a training session at the Australian base at Tarin Kowt.
The ADFIS officer told them it did not matter how the fingerprints were taken and that it would be acceptable to chop off the hands of the dead and bring them back to base for identification purposes.
]
Its the Medina/Calley/My Lai shuffle again but on a MUCH smaller scale – The Nuremburg defence – Orders are Orders
Didn’t deny taking part
Calley didn’t deny taking part in the slayings on March 16, 1968, but insisted he was following orders from his superior, Capt. Ernest Medina — a notion Eckhardt, the former prosecutor, rejects.
Medina also was tried by a court-martial in 1971; he was acquitted of all charges.
When asked if he broke the law by obeying an unlawful order, the newspaper reported, Calley replied: “I believe that is true.”
“If you are asking why I did not stand up to them when I was given the orders, I will have to say that I was a second lieutenant getting orders from my commander and I followed them — foolishly, I guess,” Calley said.
@iDGiam
Is anyone else wondering why Abbott is taking the front bench with him on his “staying in an aboriginal community” BS spin trip?
Maybe he just wants them all close by where he can keep an eye on them.
I always knew Tone wanted to take senior departmental heads with him on these trips but I don’t recall him ever saying that he would take the ministers.
Wonder if they went by helicopter
Calley was always a scapegoat. Is the Medina investigation still short of a scapegoat?
[ Steve777
Posted Sunday, August 23, 2015 at 3:24 pm | Permalink
@iDGiam
Is anyone else wondering why Abbott is taking the front bench with him on his “staying in an aboriginal community” BS spin trip?
Maybe he just wants them all close by where he can keep an eye on them.
]
….just wants to make sure the quisling in the group gets his mighty significant useful “talking points ” out to us as usual …..
lizzie @ 233
It’s not as if the cabinet’s doing anything. So them going off to the donga with Tony won’t matter. Cost a fortune of course, but so what?
mexicanbeemer@238
So you are advocating he should have made a ‘Captains Pick’ after implying he already had.
Lizzie at 235
“From the ABC
Australian troops are required to collect fingerprints and eye scans of every Taliban fighter who is killed.”
Unusual, I wonder when it became policy to identify every enemy killed in war.
phoenix
The scum behind (ahem) Operation Phoenix are another bunch of war crims from the Vietnam era..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program
Labor’s had eminent soldiers as MPs and candidates – Mike Kelly in Eden-Monaro, the current candidate for Brisbane, one in WA and another in Victoria in 2007.
In SA, Capt Bill Denny MC and Eric Shepherd MM were Labor MPs after World War I.
Charlie Edwards
I wonder how many civilians became “Taliban” after they were mistakenly killed or ‘collaterally damaged’ ?