mikkey

Interesting how much you know about the case. Seems you have all the facts. I do not know the exact nature of her injuries. I have seen her give a TV interview within 48 hours of the shooting and she had some facial injuries but did however not "look" like it was as bad as you describe. If she had a fractured skull she probably would be in hospital. I leave it to the proper authorities to establish the facts. If she walked up and shot the guys head off after the fact, then there is no choice then to charge her with murder. If she is convicted depends on what the investigation shows. The interesting side of the story is when does self-defence end and revenge killing start. Seems you need to take a cold shower instead making comments about my "attitude". --------------------------------------------------------- When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray.

Do you think maybe she might have legitimately believed he was still a threat because she was in shock and had brain damage as a direct result of his actions? If he actually was attempting to flee, it's not good that she shot him. But was she capable of making that determination or did she think she was still fighting for her life? How can you honestly say that you think she deserves to be charged with murder? I saw some of her TV interview and she did not look that badly injured. The brain damage thing could be spin from her defence. There is footage from the crime scene (TV news crew so probably an hour after the event) where she is walking calmly around the crime scene with a towl wrapped around the head. So don't know how serious her injuries really are. This is what the justice system is here for. Investigate, determine the facts and then get it judged by the justice system. The facts will then be clear. Don't jump to conclusions based on media reports. However, based on the initial "facts" the police has no choice then to charge her with murder in our legal system. If she a) gets convicted and b) which penalty - that will depend on a number of things. --------------------------------------------------------- When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray.

Update: She has been charged now, has now met police and been interviewed. Is free and scheduled to appear for initial hearing in court in about a month time. --------------------------------------------------------- When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray.

As you described it seems. Witnesses (according to the press - so we will have to wait for the evidence in court) say he took the money and went to the car. She got up followed him and shot him at close range in the head through the side window while he was starting the car. --------------------------------------------------------- When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray.

Geeez, don't let the facts get in the way. The robber had the money and was in the process of leaving, i.e. had stopped the attack on her. The women walked up to the car he was in the process of starting in order to drive away and shot his head off from close distance. The guys should go to jail, but should he be "executed" for his crime? Is it ok to shoot somebody after they have stopped attacking you and clearly are no longer threatening your live? --------------------------------------------------------- When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray.

Well, you need to take into account that: a) the Robber did not carry a gun or knife - but knuckle duster b) The guard shot him after the incident while he was in his getaway car trying to start it. She walke up to the side window and shot him from a short distance through the window into his head. I do not think society can tolerate that guards (or police) just kill a robber who does not have a deadly weapon and who does not threaten live. Would be like imposing death penalty on robbery. What is next? Chopping poeple hands off for stealing? --------------------------------------------------------- When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray.

Gambling has been legalised gradually in Australia and there are now Casino’s in every larger Metropolitan area and Slot Machines in Bars and Clubs everywhere. I read something that the amount of slot machines per capita is the greatest worldwide. The major problem down here is the machines – not so much the Casinos. They are available nearly everywhere in Hotels, Clubs, Bar virtually at every corner. This has lead to a major increase in problem gambling with many shattered lives. My sister in law worked during studies in one of those clubs and had to regularly call social workers in when pensioners broke down in tears after gambling their pension away. It is quite tragic actually. The Casinos have some issue with money laundering, but the system is being tightened at the moment. I personally prefer “centralised” gambling in Casinos as it seems to induce more of a “budget” approach (like when you go to Vegas) and you have to make an effort to get there. A gambling ”club” around the corner is far more tempting for weak addicts and we should do away with it, but unfortunately the industry produces so much tax for State governments that there is no chance…. --------------------------------------------------------- When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray.

The case is not clear-cut and the media is playing far to great a role in it. 1) Firstly she is actually not charged yet. Problem is that she is hiding from police and has not even given a statement yet – but appears on a current affair show (for money) and talks about it. The police wants to force her to cooperate and might have to charge her in order to be able to do so. 2) The robbers family is appearing on a rival networks current affair show (also for money) and is painting him as an innocent victim. So these 2 networks are directly interfering in the case taking sides and distorting the investigation and making it difficult to have a fair trial if the security guard is put in trial. Typical media…. 3) The reason she might be charged with murder is that some witnesses stated that she got up after being bashed and walked up to the robbers car and shot him in the head through the window from close range. I think if that is the case she would be in trouble in most countries. You are not allowed to “execute” robbers… 4) Even if charged and convicted she might get away with a very lenient sentence. She was bleeding and badly “smashed”. In Australia it is possible to get convicted for murder and get a very lenient sentence if there are a lot of mitigating circumstances. We had cases where women killed their abusive and violent husbands and got away with a suspended sentence. --------------------------------------------------------- When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray.

This forum has deteriorated to a "hate fest" for right wingers. In all discussions they dominate by posting in numbers and "shouting" down any attempt of an intelligent discussion. I find it interesting to discuss with people with different views. But lately it is far too aggressive and due to the "numbers" of posts from the right wing club it is really not as interesting as I hoped it would be. --------------------------------------------------------- When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray.

If you read kelpdiver you might see that the situation might have been slightly different to what I first understood. In any case - for a very long time there was (and partly still is) a nasty anti-French campaign in the right wing media and I can also refer to a lot of crap on this board. It goes from half-racist vilifying jokes about French people to boycott of their products. And yes the (conservative side of) US media started it when the French did not "play ball" in regard to Iraq pre war. What you see now is a reaction to this. The "you are either with us or against us" BS from GWB has turned a lot of people in allied countries against the US - not just in France. Just reading this forum I see a lot of "fuck them" when talking about foreign critics of the current policies. So don't be surprised that they have turned around and tell the Americans (in the words of your VP) "to go and fuck yourself". --------------------------------------------------------- When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray.

Is the money spend in this war counted in the GDP (I would assume so?) - that would explain why the US GDP growth has been strong the last year. --------------------------------------------------------- When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray.

No, but it has moved from a certain anit-american sentiment to "hate". Lance Armstrong was spat on in the time trail. That would never have happened a few years ago! One of the points critics of GWB ar making is that the US is loosing support amongst their allies. I live in Australia which has been one of Americas strongest allies for generations. The anti-American sentiment is currently the strongests since the Vientnam war thanks to GWB's foreign policies. The current government might loose the upcoming election to the left partly due to its support of GWB's policies. Would never have happened a few years ago... --------------------------------------------------------- When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray.

I have not followed this a lot, but I think this is more anti-American then it is anti-Lance. Ever thought about why the French currently "hate" Americans? Mind going back 18 months and check what was said about the French (and still is being said) and the vilification of France in the US including boycotts and stupid freedom fries? You reap what you sow. --------------------------------------------------------- When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray.

Question: Does military spending and aid contracts count in these GDP numbers? If so, the increased military spending due to Iraq and the rebuilding contracts to US firms would probably count for a lot of the increase - i.e. the growth is driven by government spending? Another Question re. the economic record. How do the last 4 years compare to 1993 - 2000 in regard to GDP growth, unemployment, and budget deficit? I have not seen any comparison - would be interesting. --------------------------------------------------------- When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray.

Here is his explanation: http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/07/20/berger.probe/index.html --------------------------------------------------------- When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray.

Lately I am really getting worried about the polarization in the US in a political sense, and when I read this forum it seems to be a valid feeling. The political debate seems to be driven by people manipulating facts to their liking and at the same type demonising the opposition. In one corner you have Michael Moore who uses the same tricks in Film to manipulate as the Nazis did and in the other corner you have the right wing propaganda machine of Fox News using similar misinformation techniques. So people watching Moore get manipulated to think GWB was bought by the Saudi’s to wage war against Iraq and in bed with OBL. Fox News viewers get manipulated into thinking that Iraq was connected to 9/11 and that WMD’s actually existed in Iraq when the war began. At the same time I see the right-wingers here use a tone that is extremely aggressive and label people who do not agree with them as “enemies” (anti-American). The MM camp on the other hand is flogging conspiracy theories. I am personally a big critic of GWB’s foreign policy and the way the whole Iraq thing was handled pre and post war. However, the way MM tries to manipulate people and handles “facts” is no iota better then the crap, right wing media like Fox News is spouting. Things a rarely black or white, but from afar it looks like the “uniter” seems to really have polarized the American people. The Linda Ronstadt incident tells me that the political climate in the US has deteriorated to a level I only remember from the late Nixon era. --------------------------------------------------------- When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray.

Damn right! And it includes criticism. No contradition in that. But this goes beyond criticism. --------------------------------------------------------- When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray.

I normally do not disagree with Bill but technically this was different. He actually broke the cease fire conditions. So technically it was more serious. However, this does not change the fact that this war was based on BS and badly executed... --------------------------------------------------------- When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray.

The above is the reaction I would have expected from Americans. But the reaction was hysterical. I thought you guys are so proud of free speech? I wonder if anybody would have been kicked out of a venue for praising GWB. It is also interesting that people tore down posters etc. Seems like people who have leftist views in America now are being persecuted by the corporate sector (thinking of Dixie Chicks, Goldberg etc.). Never heard this happen to conservatives. Seems like the attitude from the right is getting more and more aggressive. I just need to read this forum. A little like the 50's revisited. --------------------------------------------------------- When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray.

From afar I never understood why she is so famous in the US. Love to see a new reality show with Martha decorating the prison... --------------------------------------------------------- When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray.

The interesting point is that they were not convicted, just detained... The story gets huge coverage down under. The journalist making the claim is quite respected. But who knows. It is easily possible that the journo was conned by e.g. the Iranian secret service. Here is hoping that the story is false. Interesting that UK and US media seem not to have picked up on it. --------------------------------------------------------- When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray.

This is something an Australian Journalist has dug up. I have not seen it outside OZ media, but if this is true it will be quite a problem (can't really have PM's running around killing people in a new democracy..) Iraqi PM executed six prisoners: witnesses By Paul McGeough Baghdad July 17, 2004 Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad major crimes unit just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim Government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the executions. They say the prisoners - handcuffed and blindfolded - were lined up against a wall in a courtyard next to the maximum-security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amriyah security centre, in the city's north-western suburbs. They say Dr Allawi told onlookers that the victims had each killed as many as 50 Iraqis and they "deserved worse than death". The Prime Minister's office has denied the entirety of the witness accounts in a written statement to The Age, saying Dr Allawi had never visited the centre and he did not carry a gun. But the informants told The Age that Dr Allawi shot each young man in the head as about a dozen Iraqi policemen and four Americans from the Prime Minister's personal security team watched in stunned silence. Iraq's Interior Minister, Falah al-Naqib, is said to have looked on and congratulated him when the job was done. The Interior Minister's office has issued a denial. Rumours have been circulating in Iraq for some time about Dr Allawi, including about this particular incident. But The Age has been first to find people who say they witnessed executions by Dr Allawi. One of the witnesses claimed that before killing the prisoners - and they name three of the people alleged to have been executed - Dr Allawi had told them he wanted to send a clear message to the police on how to deal with insurgents. "The prisoners were against the wall and we were standing in the courtyard when the Interior Minister said that he would like to kill them all on the spot. Allawi said that they deserved worse than death - but then he pulled the pistol from his belt and started shooting them," one of the witnesses said. He is a doctor and I know him. He was my neighbour in London. He just doesn't have it in him. - Sabah Khadum, Interior MinistryRe-enacting the killings, one witness stood three to four metres in front of a wall and swung his outstretched arm in an even arc, left to right, jerking his wrist to mimic the recoil as each bullet was fired. Then he raised a hand to his brow, saying: "He was very close. Each was shot in the head." The witnesses said that seven prisoners had been brought out to the courtyard, but the last man in the line was only wounded - in the neck, said one witness; in the chest, said the other. Given Dr Allawi's role as the leader of the US experiment in planting a model democracy in the Middle East, allegations of a return to the cold-blooded tactics of his predecessor are likely to bring to the boil a debate on how well Washington knows its man in Baghdad, and precisely what he envisages for the new Iraq. The witnesses did not perceive themselves as whistle-blowers. In interviews with The Age they enthusiastically supported Dr Allawi for the killings. One justified the alleged killings and said: "These criminals were terrorists. They are the ones who plant the bombs. Allawi said they deserved worse than death; that they didn't need to be sent to court." The two witnesses were independently and separately found by The Age; neither approached the newspaper. Nor were they put forward by, or through, others. They were interviewed on different days in a private home in Baghdad, without being told that the other had spoken. A condition of the co-operation of each man was that no personal information would be published, but others known to The Age have vouched for their credibility. Both interviews lasted more than 90 minutes and were conducted through an interpreter - with another journalist in the room for one of the meetings. The witnesses were not paid for the interviews. Before the shootings, the 58-year-old Prime Minister is said to have told the policemen that they must have courage in their work and that he would shield them from any repercussion if they killed insurgents in the course of their duty. The witnesses said that the Iraqi police observers were "shocked and surprised". But asked what message they might take from the act, one said: "Any terrorists in Iraq should have the same destiny. This is the new Iraq. "Allawi wanted to send a message to his policemen and soldiers not to be scared if they kill anyone - especially, they are not to worry about tribal revenge. He said there would be an order from him and the Interior Ministry that all would be fully protected. "He told them: 'We must destroy anyone who wants to destroy Iraq and kill our people'. At first they were surprised. I was scared - but now the police seem to be very happy about this. There was no anger at all, because so many policemen have been killed by these criminals." Dr Allawi had made a surprise visit to the complex, the witnesses said. In Baghdad, accounts of the shootings are interpreted by observers as useful to a little-known returned exile of 33 years who needs to prove his leadership credentials as a "strongman" in a war-ravaged country that has no experience of democracy. Neither witness could give a specific date for the killings. But the number of days that each said had lapsed since the shootings narrowed the time frame to on or around the third weekend in June - about a week before the rushed handover of power in Iraq and more than three weeks after Dr Allawi was named interim Prime Minister. They said that as many as five of the dead were Iraqis, two of whom came from Samarra, a volatile town to the north of the capital, where an insurgency attack on the home of the Interior Minister had killed four of Mr Naqib's bodyguards on June 19. The Age has established the names of three of the prisoners alleged to have been killed. Two names connote ties to Syrian-based Arab tribes, suggesting they were foreign fighters: Ahmed Abdulah Ahsamey and Amer Lutfi Mohammed Ahmed al-Kutsia. The third was Walid Mehdi Ahmed al-Samarrai. The last word of his name indicates that he was one of the two said to come from Samarra, which is in the Sunni Triangle. The three names were provided to the Interior Ministry, where senior adviser Sabah Khadum undertook to provide a status report on each for The Age. He was asked if were they prisoners, were they alive or had they died in custody? But he later cut short an interview by hanging up the phone, saying only: "I have no information - I don't want to comment on that specific matter." All seven were described as young men. One of the witnesses spoke of the distinctive appearance of four as "Wahabbi", the colloquial Iraqi term for the foreign fundamentalist insurgency fighters and their Iraqi followers. He said: "The Wahabbis had long beards, very short hair and they were wearing dishdashas (the kaftan-like garment worn by Iraqi men)." Raising the hem of his own dishdasha to reveal the cotton pantaloons usually worn beneath it, he said: "The other three were just wearing these - they looked normal." One witness justified the shootings as an unintended act of mercy: "They were happy to die because they had already been beaten by the police for two to eight hours a day to make them talk." After the removal of the bodies, the officer in charge of the complex, General Raad Abdullah, is said to have called a meeting of the policemen and told them not to talk outside the station about what had happened. "He said it was a security issue," a witness said. The witnesses say that as many as 30 people, including the victims, may have been in the courtyard. One of the witnesses said there were five or six civilian-dressed American security men in each of a convoy of five or six late-model four-wheel-drive vehicles shepherding Dr Allawi's entourage on the day. Like the US military, Dr Allawi's office refused to respond to questions about the composition of his security team. It is understood that the core of his protection unit is drawn from the US Special Forces units. The security establishment where the killings are said to have happened is on open ground on the border of the Al-Amriyah and Al-Kudra neighbourhoods. About 90 policemen are stationed at the complex, which processes insurgents and more hardened offenders. One of the Al-Amriyah witnesses said he watched as Iraqis among the Prime Minister's bodyguards piled the prisoners' bodies into the back of a Nissan utility and drove off. He did not know what became of them. But the other witness said that the bodies were buried west of Baghdad, in open desert country near Abu Ghraib. Dr Allawi's office has dismissed the allegations as rumours instigated by enemies of his interim government. A statement in the name of spokesman Taha Hussein read: "We face these sorts of allegations on a regular basis. Numerous groups are attempting to hinder what the interim Iraqi Government is on the verge of achieving, and occasionally they spread outrageous accusations hoping they will be believed and thus harm the honourable reputation of those who sacrifice so much to protect this glorious country and its now free and respectable people. "Dr Allawi is turning this country into a free and democratic nation run by the rule of law; so if your sources are as credible as they say they are, then they are more than welcome to file a complaint in a court of law against the Prime Minister." In response to a question asking if Dr Allawi carried a gun, the statement said: "(He) does not carry a pistol. He is the Prime Minister of Iraq, not a combatant in need of any weaponry." Sabah Khadum, the senior adviser to Interior Minister Naqib, whose portfolio covers police matters, also dismissed the accounts. Rejecting them as "ludicrous", Mr Khadum said of Dr Allawi: "He is a doctor and I know him. He was my neighbour in London. He just doesn't have it in him. Baghdad is a city of rumours. This is not worth discussing." US officials in Iraq have not made an outright denial of the allegations. An emailed response to questions from The Age to US ambassador John Negroponte said: "If we attempted to refute each (rumour), we would have no time for other business. As far as this embassy's press office is concerned, this case is closed." --------------------------------------------------------- When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray.

1) The British inquiry states "British intelligence on the claim that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger was "credible". There was not conclusive evidence Iraq actually purchased the material, nor did the government make that claim". So they had information that Iraq MAY have attempted to buy Uranium from Niger but certainly NO information that they actually did. 2) The CIA did not agree with the assessment 3) The main conclusion of the British inquiry is that while no attempt to deceive was made, the quality of the intelligence was very poor. 3) The "Kay task force", which has searched Iraq for 18 month now, has not found any active nuclear weapons program nor material for nuclear weapons. So in other words, after all the WMD claims have been discredited (and even Blair agreed yesterday in Parliament) - you are basing the "we went to war for WMD's" case on a probable attempt to buy Uranium from Niger. An attempt which – if it happened – was not successful. --------------------------------------------------------- When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray.

You are really clinging to straws: --------------------------------------------------------- When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray.

yup. My Dad was a senior journalist for more then 30 years. I grew up amongst media people and I can tell you - never trust anything you see in the media... --------------------------------------------------------- When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray.