Tag: Reports

Informed Comment

The Prime Minister for Announcements and Photographs – » The Australian Independent Media Network

PUT THE  LNP & MORRISON PROXIES LAST ABOVE AND BELOW THE LINE

If you are sick of the disappointment and white noise of a presidential style campaign where two rather ordinary men vie to be the chosen one, pre-poll voting starts May 9. It gets to the stage where there is nothing left to say. I wrote this two years ago. It’s kind of tragic that, despite…

When you employ the gas industry to suggest a road map for the future, you aren’t trying to solve a “known problem” – you are looking for affirmation of the irresponsible abrogation of our responsibility to tackle global heating.

When the pandemic hit, we listened to the medical experts and took action. Sure, they have formed countless committees, but they didn’t push decisions down the road six months until the committee published their findings.

We have thousands of reviews and reports and recommendations. We know what the problems are and how to go about fixing them. And it certainly is not by creating more committees to produce more reports telling you what you want to hear and coming up with more slogans to announce.

The greatest “known problem” in this country is that we are run by ScottyFromMarketing and his inept band of backup vocals.

Source: The Prime Minister for Announcements and Photographs – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Indigenous Affairs, Indigenous Australians, Indigenous Issues

Indigenous deaths in custody: inquests can be sites of justice or administrative violence

Source: Indigenous deaths in custody: inquests can be sites of justice or administrative violence

Peter Dutton, Uncategorized

Dutton misleads on his role in protecting public health

In terms of public health, the primary focus is on ensuring visa applicants and arrivals are free of tuberculosis. But the Auditor-General’s report of 2007 states visa applicants and holders must also be

‘…free from a disease or condition that would result in a threat to public health or a danger to the Australian community.’

via Dutton misleads on his role in protecting public health

Uncategorized, white house

‘Insidious’: Emails Show Trump White House Lied About US Poverty Levels to Discredit Critical UN Report

With its attempt to falsify statistics and whitewash uncomfortable facts about poverty in America, the White House once again demonstrated its “contempt” for the poor, one critic argued

‘Insidious’: Emails Show Trump White House Lied About US Poverty Levels to Discredit Critical UN Report

crime, Security, USA

Iraq war logs: secret files show how US ignored torture
• Massive leak reveals serial detainee abuse
• 15,000 unknown civilian deaths in war

Iraq, Rawa. Operation Steel CurtainInsurgent suspects are led away by US forces. Some of those held in Iraqi custody suffered appalling abuse, the war logs reveal. Photograph: Sean Smith for the Guardian

A grim picture of the US and Britain’s legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.

Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the Guardian and a number of other international media organisations via the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

The electronic archive is believed to emanate from the same dissident US army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have leaked a smaller tranche of 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters and civilian killings in the Afghan war.

The new logs detail how:

• US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.

• A US helicopter gunship involved in a notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after they tried to surrender.

• More than 15,000 civilians died in previously unknown incidents. US and UK officials have insisted that no official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081 non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.

The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks. Six reports end with a detainee’s apparent death.

As recently as December the Americans were passed a video apparently showing Iraqi army officers executing a prisoner in Tal Afar, northern Iraq. The log states: “The footage shows approximately 12 Iraqi army soldiers. Ten IA soldiers were talking to one another while two soldiers held the detainee. The detainee had his hands bound … The footage shows the IA soldiers moving the detainee into the street, pushing him to the ground, punching him and shooting him.”

The report named at least one perpetrator and was passed to coalition forces. But the logs reveal that the coalition has a formal policy of ignoring such allegations. They record “no investigation is necessary” and simply pass reports to the same Iraqi units implicated in the violence. By contrast all allegations involving coalition forces are subject to formal inquiries. Some cases of alleged abuse by UK and US troops are also detailed in the logs.

WikiLeaks says it is posting online the entire set of 400,000 Iraq field reports – in defiance of the Pentagon.The whistleblowing activists say they have deleted all names from the documents that might result in reprisals. They were accused by the US military of possibly having “blood on their hands” over the previous Afghan release by redacting too few names. But the military recently conceded that no harm had been identified.

Condemning this fresh leak, however, the Pentagon said: “This security breach could very well get our troops and those they are fighting with killed. Our enemies will mine this information looking for insights into how we operate, cultivate sources and react in combat situations, even the capability of our equipment.”