GUANTANAMO BAY DAVID HICKS vs Melbourne Cup Mayhem, the Sun-sets on Sunrise before 7 am today !

The "Melbourne Cup" is Australia's biggest annual horserace, running
continuously for over 100 years

It's called "The race that stops the Nation" but coming from NZ let me
assure you it is actually "The Race that stops TWO Nations" as NZ stops for
it too.

Ch 7 Network have the broadcast rights this year, so obviously they're gonna
make the most of it, the have obviously paid licence fees of some kind etc.
Ch 9 Network therefore only have un-official coverage rights.

Since having WIN country channel available recently, in the mornings at
breakfast time I surf between the Ch 7 Network's SUNRISE show as broadcast locally
by GWN and the Ch 9 "Today" show on WIN.

This morning I awoke to the sound of rain on the roof (here was me thinking
it'd be a dry day, because that's what the forecast was for) and turned on
the telly about 6.59 am to find the Ch 7 Sunrise show getting the wind-up, 2
hours earlier than normal.

Yep, its been pulled off air early today to allow for the Melbourne Cup
coverage. Golly how much of a "lead-in" do they need for a track report etc
before the big race. Yeah they have a fashion parade and some other items
too, but come on, in Eastern States time, that means that the morning
"Sunrise" show as pulled off-air a full 7 hours (closer to 8 ?) before the
actual horse-race. Come on get real, 7 hours !

Even here in WA where we are 3 hours behind the Eastern States timezone, the
normal finish time of the Sunrise show would still have been some 2 hours
(nearly 3 ?) before the start of the race. (Normally WA tv programs are
broadcast on a delay behind E.S. but for major sporting events such as this
horserace, we get live coverage.

Now neither the Ch 7 "Sunrise" show nor the Ch 9 "Today" show are anything
special to write home about, but they're a good enough watch over breakfast
and do sometimes feature interesting items and interviews relating to Ch 7
or Ch 9 tv shows respectively.

So at breakfast today I saw no "Sunrise", and with the rain about, no
'sunrise' either. I *had* to watch the Ch 9 "Today" show throughout. Still
it has some "un-official" races to keep folks in the Melbourne Cup mood.
The Ferret Race has already been held but I think that the Shetland Pony
race is yet to run. Note added later, the outright favourite "Makybe Diva" made history by winning, for her, her third Melb Cup win. The results and end secs were played during the 12 noon news on telly.

I'll *try* NOT to see the race when it runs (sometime around 12.00 pm WA time I
think) .......it'll certainly be repeated all throughout all the news
bulletins tonight, and comment about who wins and who doesn't, will probably
displace any real news, like about the Vietnames-born Australian citizen on
Death-Row in a Singapore Jail and poor Aussie DAVID HICKS, held in
Guantanamo Bay concentration camp for the last 4 years, because he was
caught in Afghanistan with a bag of dirty laundry. (NO gun, NO bomb, just a
backpack of dirty clothes ! )

Last night's highly respected 4 CORNERS current affairs program covered
the case of this Australian citizen, who's been soundly shat on by our Prime
Minister. (For those who don't know, "4 Corners" was the program who's
expose' brought down a corrupt and downright evil Queensland state
government some years back) David's father related what he'd been told by
his son, when he was allowed a short visit with him awhile back. It was
detailed on the docu last night that David was sexually abused by the US
military after he was turned over to them (by other Afghani Muslims, in
return for a US $ 1,000 reward.) David's due to go before a specially
convened US Military Commission on November 18. Without even the rights of
a "normal" court martial. There's a famous case, fully documented, (sorry
the name escapes me, but it's been made into movies and books) from the Boer
War days in South Africa (late 1800's ?) where an Aussie soldier was "fitted
up" and used as a patsy, then carted off and executed. Later the truth came
out, but of course by then he was dead, eh. ( ADDED LATER BREAKER MORANT URL LINK ) Legal experts use his case as a
prime example of how the normal court-martial process can be corrupted to
give a pre-determined outcome, no matter what the actual evidence.
......and poor David Hicks will be getting an even lower standard of
"procedure" than that. (I won't call it "justice" or "due legal process"
because, independant legal experts, assure us that it will be neither.) 4
Corners last night said he was the first Guantanomo inmate to be tried, as
he was being used as "the token white male". He's a white-European race
Westerner ( a recent convert to Islam, although he can only understand
Arabic language at a very basic level), and the US Military wanted to show
the world it "was being fair" by NOT targetting non-Westerners. Note David
Hicks is one of the very few (perhaps the ONLY) white-European still being
held at Guantanomo. Note that last night's program also gave some details
on the only other Australian being held there (he was finally released
without charge earlier this year and returned home to freedom in Australia.
Mumdoo Habib (sp?) was a father of young children, arrested in Pakistan
(nowhere near any fighting) where he was checking out Islamic schools for
his Melbourne-born kids future. Once back in Australia he detailed how the
US Military how "rendered" him, that is, transferred him temporarily to
Egypt, so that he could be tortured with electric shocks and water
immersion, (but with American "plausable deniability"). This link should go directly to the full text transcript TRANSCRIPT

cheers






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Patsy..... "So, is killing *Not* wrong anymore ?"
Trudy..... "We don't have to worry about Right and Wrong anymore, ZOOT
decides for us"
.....THE TRIBE ep 2:49