Refuse Guantanamo Bay inmates

Malcolm Turnbull

Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull has called on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to immediately reverse his decision to accept Guantanamo Bay inmates for resettlement in Australia.

“It would be difficult to imagine the circumstances in which any claims on humanitarian grounds should take priority over the many applicants for humanitarian entry currently awaiting approval,” Mr Turnbull said.

“It is understood that there are around 250 inmates currently detained in the military prison, with 60 considered by the United States authorities suitable for release. More

Rudd could secretly resettle Guantanamo inmates

TERROR suspects held at Guantanamo Bay could be secretly resettled in Australia within the year as the Rudd Government joins the British in moving to help Barack Obama shut down the notorious military prison. The Australian

Crush Hamas and brave the backlash

Missing from CNN International’s coverage of the weekend’s fighting in Gaza was even a fleeting glimpse of the tens of thousands of Israelis who spent last night and much of last week in bomb shelters; of the house in Netivot, where a man was killed by a Grad missile; or indeed any of the hundreds of rockets, mortar shells, and other projectiles fired by Hamas since the breakdown of the so-called ceasefire. Michael B. Oren

Rudd open to taking former Guantanamo inmates

KEVIN Rudd has left open the possibility of Australia taking former inmates from the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, but warned that any US request for an inmate to come would be subject to legal criteria and assessed on a case-by-case basis. The Weekend Australian

ABC editorialises on anti-terror laws

From ABC1 7.30 Report

The ABC’s 7.30 Report, like much of the media, has been all over the Clarke inquiry into the so-called Haneef affair.

According to reporter Matt Peacock last night, Haneef’s arrest was “the first application of the Howard Government’s draconian new anti-terrorism laws.”

Now, the 7.30 Report has form when it comes to editorialising about the Howard Government’s counter-terrorism laws. More

Hand-wringing on “terror” labelling

TWO weeks ago, Clark Hoyt, public editor of the New York Times, ran what Boycott the New York Times’ Don Feder described as “a nauseating example of of the paper’s moral relativism” on how the newspaper decides when and when not to use the “terror” label.

Hoyt said the newspapers editors and reporters have been wrestsling with questions like: “Why those responsible for the 9/11 attacks are called terrorists but the murderers of a little girl in her bed in a Jewish settlement are not. And whether, if the use of the word terrorist can be interpreted as a political act, not using it is one too.” More

Teach the children - Sheik’s vile lesson of hate

A GROUP founded by a Muslim extremist who encourages children to kill themselves for Allah plans to build a huge complex in Sydney to teach young people Islam. Daily Telegraph

The illusion of independent terrorists

WHEN US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in India this week, the assumption was that the Pakistan-based terrorists responsible for the murders of about 175 people in Mumbai, and the injuries to hundreds more, were non-state actors. Yet it may be that the world has misconceived the age of terror. Greg Sheridan

The Howard Government has been replaced by one with an instinctive support for the Palestinian cause

John Howard was, of course, right back in February, when he said that Al Qaeda would be praying for an Obama victory in the US presidential elections last month. He would have been even more right had he said that Al Qaeda was also likely to be praying for a Rudd victory in the Australian elections. David Barnett

Asia’s Islamism engine

FOLLOWING the terror massacres in Mumbai, Pakistan may now be the single biggest state sponsor of terrorism, beyond even Iran. Yet it has never been listed by the US State Department as a state sponsor ofterrorism. Greg Sheridan

Nothing tangible in national security statement

Shadow Minister for Defence

Kevin Rudd’s first year in office has been characterised by his ability to look extremely busy with summits, overseas trips and token policies such as Grocery Watch….without actually achieving anything or making the tough decisions. More

Let’s get militant about weasel words

One of the most disappointing aspects of media coverage of the Mumbai terrorist attacks - as with earlier attacks - has been the use of the word “militant” to describe the terrorists.

People who torture and murder innocent civilians, including women and More

Religious head incited killers

THE al-Qa’ida-linked Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorists suspected over the Mumbai massacre were trained in Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, and were incited by speeches from their leader in Lahore. Bruce Loudon

Terror changes course, with the same deadly results

THE terrorist attacks in Mumbai occurred just two months after the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad was devastated by a huge truck bomb, and trials of terrorists in Britain and Australia revealed plans for atrocities in those countries. Mervyn Bendle

A relative view of the Indian terror toll

In 2005, a conference in Adelaide was advised to treat the road toll as seriously as the threat of terrorism. On ABC radio on Friday, Sally Warhaft, editor of the Monthly magazine, seemed to treat terrorism like the road toll. Proving again that everything is relative to the postmodern mind.

That Warhaft should refer to a terrorist attack in India as unexpected was … unexpected. As the US Dept of State reported earlier this year:

“India continued to rank among the world’s most terror-afflicted countries. The conflict in Jammu and Kashmir, attacks by extreme leftist Naxalites and Maoists in eastern and central India, assaults by ethno-linguistic nationalists in the northeastern More