Turns out the SIM card which Haneef “recklessly supplied to terrorists” (allegedly) wasn’t anywhere near either of the incidents that have landed him in so much shit. And the police knew. And they didn’t say anything about this crucial bit of evidence on which the charges against Haneef hang.

Oh. But he’s still going to be in jail, or detention, and most likely deported, and his future tainted by the fact that his visa was cancelled and his passport suspended. Chances are he’ll never visit a foreign country again, at least through legitimate channels.

Hey, Howard et al, wanna know how to make people not like you and plan acts of violence against you? Lock them up on beat-up non-existent charges. An innocent man beat down by a blatant abuse of power does make for delicious justification.

Or, hey, let’s apply the same theory to the wider public. The National Health Service first up, no doubt, should be locked up for supporting these men by allowing them to enter the country. How is that not reckless! Foreign doctors!

Hey, why just the person who gave the SIM card? Why not the whole freaking mobile company? Y’know, if only the government controlled communications it’d be a-ok, right?

These were just enablers! What about the actual ingredients of the attack? Get Jeep, and Mercedes, and the gas company, and the hardware store where they bought the gas, and the petrol pump! All these people assisted in the committing of an attempted terrorist act! And all that is neglecting to mention the critical party: the match makers. Pure evil I say.

Bloody ridiculous farce is what all of this is. Andrews should resign for his blatant abuse of power; Keelty deserves to at least face a reprimand for allowing this to go ahead, and showing his bias and political pliability (but that’s exactly why he’ll stay). Messers Howard and Ruddock themselves have some explaining to do.

Sorry to be bringing this back, but it does make me angry to see something like this occur.

You’d have to think there’s something about the Immigration portfolio which requires the minister in charge to check their conscience at the door. First we had Ruddock with the Tampa, SIEV X, the “Pacific Solution” and all that illegal immigration muck.

Then we had Vanstone and that little bit of nastiness around the lady deported to the Phillipines, not to mention Cornelia Rau, the German-born lady who forgot who she was momentarily and was locked up for it.

Now, we have Andrews and his total lack of shame at blatantly disregarding the presumption of innocence and the upholding of due process.

Am I making it a political issue? Very well, so I am. It damn well should be.

I’m going to be tagging anything I find relating to this and putting it on del.icio.us – see http://del.icio.us/karanj/haneef

It just gets better for Mohammed Haneef. He wins bail, walks out of the court… into the arms of the Immigration department. His 457 visa has been revoked and he will now be put into a detention centre for illegal immigrants. Ironically, he was trying to leave the country when he was arrested.

The reason? Section 501 of the visa. With a special proviso.

What’s that, you say? Guilty, by association, until proven Innocent, you might say:

Under section 501 of the [Migration] act, a “character test” applies to people seeking visas to enter the country.

A person fails the character test if, among other things, he or she has an association with another person or group whom the minister suspects is involved in criminal conduct.

Lemme say that again, with emphasis:

he or she has an association with another person or group whom the minister suspects is involved in criminal conduct

They were his cousins! How could he not have an association with them? Mr Andrews said he had considered information provided by the Australian Federal Police. But he doesn’t have to wait for a judgement on these people; no, no, no, as long as the minister suspects, the guy fails the test and is locked up.

What’s that? The minister is an elected official and so should be trusted? Oh, that’s alright then.

Oh but wait! You can challenge a conviction or decision, can’t you?

Haneef has two avenues of appeal … But his chances under both of those avenues are made harder because Mr Andrews has invoked a special “national interest” element of the section 501 visa cancellation process.

Ah, the Get Into Jail Free Of Conscience Clause. Cry foul my friends, because this is injustice in motion.

Ed: Senator Andrew Bartlett (Dem., QLD) gets my vote. (What? So what if I can’t vote for him?)

Ed 2: I just want to quote more – see this and this and this. And more and more. With editorials here and here. News Ltd paper The Daily Telegraph sees nothing wrong, as usual, proving themselves to be the lapdogs of the Liberals. Which is not to say Labor’s any better with their “in-principle” agreement, which disgusts me.

Dr Mohamed Haneef, the “Australian connection” in the recent terror scare in the UK, is to be charged with “recklessly supporting terrorism by supplying the SIM card to his second cousin, Sabeel Ahmed”, and therefore he had “supplied the alleged terrorists with a usable alternative identity.” He faces up to 15 years in prison for giving his mobile SIM card to his cousin.

Un-frickin-believable.

If this case had any real basis, the prosecution would have to demonstrate that he actively knew that his cousins would engage in a terrorist act, and that the SIM card could be a way for authorities to monitor and track his cousins. When clearly, they had no bloody idea that anything was going to happen, and the ‘alternative identity’ apparently provided by the SIM card had no role to play in the terrorist act.

If this man is prosecuted, I have major doubts about how serious the authorities are in pursuing real perpetrators as opposed to chasing down the easy ones to provide visible ‘victories’ against terrorism.

More opinion here and here.

07/07/07 was a cute date to pick to release a list of the “New 7 Wonders”, to update the list from the wonders of the Ancient (Greecian) World, as voted by an internet poll (can you say “donkey vote”?). The List is:

• Great Wall of China
• Taj Mahal
• The ruins of Petra in Jordan
• The Colosseum in Rome
• The statue of Christ overlooking Rio de Janeiro
• The Incan ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru
• The ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza in Mexico

Point the first: The “ancient” Mayan city? Should that not disqualify it immediately?!

Point the second: The “ruins” of Petra and Machu Picchu?! Oh, I’m suuuuuuuure they’re all well and good, pretty places that were once-upon-a-time wonders, but that doesn’t exactly qualify as a “wonder” now. Oh look, here is where they sacrificed virgins to their gods. Just imagine it, don’t mind the fact that it’s a pile of rubble now.

For what it’s worth, here’s the list I always grew up thinking was the list of wonders around now:

• Eiffel Tower (late 19th century)
• Statue of Liberty (mid 19th century)
• Leaning Tower of Pisa (middle ages)
• Taj Mahal (middle ages)
• The Pyramids & the Sphinx (yes ok ancient)
• Great Wall of China (early-middle ages)
• …

Err… I’ll be honest. I couldn’t ever name the last one in the list, so my 7 were always incomplete – I always thought it was just out of the corner of my eye, metaphorically speaking, and that the 8th should/would be the Sydney Opera House (even on a world scale, it is gorgeous like you wouldn’t believe). So, what’s the 7th shortlist? I thought…

• The Colosseum (yes ok ancient)
• Stonehenge (yes ok ancient, very)
• Big Ben? (19th century?)
• Golden Gate Bridge? (20th century?)
• Hoover Dam? (20th century)

Your suggestions?

Pearls before Breakfast, the article I was talking about yesterday, got me thinking about the why and how. I’m convinced it’s bad experimental design (let alone any considerations about the playing style), and to have taken the single instance (a.k.a. “stunt”) as the representative result is a clear example of confirmation bias: they went in with a hypothesis, and in single stroke of brilliance, proved it! (asking the symphony orchestra director was merely a play to setting up the fall, I say – the article starts cynical and stays that way).

There’s two main flaws:

• He’s standing outside the station exit and inside the doors; it’s a commute area, not one which a group can easily gather
• It’s morning and turning up late at work is rarely an option

A more representative experiment would have included:

• Playing in the evening rush home (less time pressure)
• Playing at lunchtime (open wallets)
• Playing somewhere other than at the station (location influence neutered)
• Playing at a different station (comparative sample)
• Playing on the platform (captive audience of those waiting)
• A female expert playing (different to “standard” by visual)

There’s a hundred other variables to the experiment, naturally, but these are some obvious ones that wouldn’t be difficult or time consuming to test; they’re things which any ordinary busker would also need to take into account. Finally, the comparison needs to be done: if an “ordinary” violin player had been at the same spot at the same time of day, would the result have been the same, or less? or even more, as people appreciated the attempt? One factor to consider is that if the performance is exceptional, it may blend, in a curious way, with something the people have already heard before.

If you’ll indulge, what if the skill meant that people filed it away, unconsciously identifying it as pre-recorded and ignoring it much as they would a stereo system? :)

We had a “grads” Christmas party last week, and we’d invited along the summer interns mostly to make up the numbers. As soon as we settled in to start the night, a group pulled out cigarettes. And they kept going through the night. Now, I’d seen it often enough in Europe, and given the reputation of the continent, I could accept it. But my impression of Australia, and Australian ‘youth’, was that smoking was on the way out, a rarity at best.

I’m no innocent; smoking is prevalent enough in clubs that I know how much it happens. But the constant, almost chain smoking style of cigarette consumption was more than a little off putting. As a principled stance, I walked away as soon as it wasn’t blatantly rude – everyone’s free to choose, I say, even if I don’t like it – and stayed away for most of the night.

It puzzles me; these are intelligent people, and most of them are around my age (I’m still the youngest :D). We’ve had the education, the advertising, all the information we could ever need, and yet, these people still persist in doing so. The women were more into it than the guys – it seemed if anything to be an image thing.

I don’t know; I’m not entirely sure what my point is. Basically I was disappointed that people are still smoking by choice.

The last week of the year for the parliament was an action-packed one to say the least – the like that goes “one week’s a long time in politics” was shown to be quite true.

Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard replaced Beazley at the top of the Labor party, something which I would consider just about the smartest move made by the Labor party over the least 5 years. Beazley had lost it somewhere in his mumbles, and someone who’s lost that many times just within his own party was never going to be a serious contender against the master of Australian politics that is John Howard. Rudd started the week with a couple of strong lines against Howard, willing and able to drudge up the 22% interest rates from when Howard was Treasurer.

The electorate in general is adopting a wait-and-see approach so far. Rudd doesn’t have the down-to-earth populist appeal that Latham originally had, but he’s got savvy and, more importantly, he knows the areas in which he can pitch battles. To put it briefly, he’s about 10 times more likely than Beazley to have an impact. In a world where China is steadily growing in influence, Rudd’s ability to speak Mandarin (fluently, apparently) should hold him well in the future, should he get past Howard.
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