How Harper is that?

Resigning chief scientist never briefed Gillard
By Tim Leslie
ABC Australia OnlineFeb 23, 2011


Professor Penny Sackett is resigning halfway through her five-year term due to "personal and professional reasons". (Stateline)
Related Story: Chief scientist stands down

Australia's chief scientist has told a Senate estimates hearing she has never been asked to brief Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

Professor Penny Sackett is resigning halfway through her five-year term due to a combination of "personal and professional reasons".

While refusing to comment directly on how she viewed her interactions with the Government, she told the hearing she briefed former prime minister Kevin Rudd only once during his tenure and had never briefed Ms Gillard.

"I have not met, in her role as prime minister, Prime Minister Gillard. I have met with prime minister Rudd to give a direct personal briefing once," she said.
She also confirmed she was not asked to advise Mr Rudd in the lead-up to the Copenhagen climate conference and was not invited to attend.

When quizzed about what improvements could be made to the role of chief scientist, Professor Sackett said it was the Government's responsibility to clarify what role the chief scientist should play.

"I think the responsibility rests firmly with the Government to make it, to decide how the role of chief scientist for Australia will fit into the variety of advice that it receives on matters of science," she said.

'Ignored and shunned'

Opposition science spokeswoman Sophie Mirabella says Professor Sackett is resigning because she was ignored by the Government.

"It's clear the Government has ignored and shunned her. She's supposed to be the Prime Minister's adviser, and guess what? She's never met Ms Gillard," she said.
"No wonder she resigned. She wasn't even invited to be part of Australia's huge delegation of over 100 people to Copenhagen. She wasn't involved in the process of setting targets we negotiated at Copenhagen."

Ms Mirabella says the comments show the Government is squandering the resources of the office.

"If the Prime Minister doesn't even meet with you and you're supposed to be her chief adviser on science, that shows a pretty rude disregard," she said.
"What is surprising is the Government set this office up, it employs 16 people and costs $2.3 million a year. Why wouldn't you use those resources?"

But the Government's Science, Industry and Innovation Minister, Kim Carr, told the hearing Professor Sackett's role was valued by the Government and he met the chief scientist regularly.

"She's performed a very, very important role on behalf of the Australian people, a role that this Government made full-time," he said.

"Professor Sackett has met with me on average once a month. We have regular dialogue on a range of matters, and of course formal briefings are presented."

The return of Milo Minderbinder to Libya

"Word spread that it was oil, and Chief White Halfoat was kicked off the base. Soon every man who could find a shovel was digging frenziedly for oil. Dirt flew everywhere; the scene was almost like the morning in Pianosa seven months later after the night Milo bombed the squadron with every plane he had accumulated in his M&M syndicate, and the airfield, bomb dump and repair hangars as well, and all the survivors were outside hacking cavernous shelters into the solid ground and roofing them over with sheets of armor plate stolen from the repair sheds at the field and with tattered squares of waterproof canvas stolen from the side flaps of each other’s tents."

Joseph Heller
Catch-22
Simon and Schuster, 2004, pg. 105

A guide to NATO humanitarian operations

In the best of all possible worlds, the "fighter jets" are French, the helicopters are American, the ammunition is British, and all the money is in Switzerland.

In the worst of all possible worlds, the "fighter jets" are Swiss, the helicopters are French, the ammunition is American, and all the money is in Britain.

So this is embarrassing...

Viewing cable 08TRIPOLI498, PETRO-CANADA SIGNS 30-YEAR PACT WITH LIBYA

Petro-Canada agrees to a one billion dollar "signing bonus" with Libya. You know, even Crosby can't pull that off.

The oil business is confusing. Norway is investing in Alberta Tar Sands, and Petro-Canada is investing in Libya. There must be an explanation.

Bye, bye, Miss American Pie....

18 February 2011 –The United States today vetoed a Security Council resolution condemning all Israeli settlements established in occupied Palestinian territory since 1967 as illegal, saying that while it agreed that the settlements are illegitimate the resolution harmed chances for peace talks.

The other 14 members of the Council voted for the resolution, which demanded that “Israel, as the occupying power, immediately and completely ceases all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem and that it fully respect its legal obligations in this regard.” But as one of the five permanent members, the negative US vote is the equivalent of a veto.

The resolution, co-sponsored by over 120 of the UN’s 192 Member States, also called on both parties to comply with their obligations under the Road Map plan, sponsored by the diplomatic Quartet of the United Nations, European Union, Russia and US, which seeks to establish a two-State solution of Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace and security within recognized borders.

It urged all parties to continue with their negotiations on final status issues in the Middle East peace process and called for the “intensification of international and regional diplomatic efforts to support and invigorate the peace process towards achievement of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace.”

Memo to Anonymous Operations

To: Anonymous Operations

From: Neil Kitson

Re: Access to Information Act Request A-2006-01106

Dear Anonymous,

Some insane time ago, Canadians ended up fighting in Afghanistan as part of the War on Terror. During that time, Canadian troops took prisoners. The legal basis for taking prisoners, and the legal basis for transferring them to other jurisdictions, is not clear, at least not to me. This occurred to me when I wrote a little memo on the subject to Rick Hillier, Chief of the Defence Staff.

Subsequently, I decided to ask the Department of National Defence those very questions:

The rest....followed.... This entire blog exists to document that request.

My purpose was to seek confirmation that Canadian Forces, acting in the name of all Canadian citizens, had observed their human rights obligations defined by the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949, and all subsequent international treaties signed by Canada, and confirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada as binding on Canadian citizens [2008 SCC 28]. That would include the UN Secretary General’s Bulletin of August 12, 1999 (exactly 50 years after the Geneva Conventions – not a coincidence) that the Third Geneva Convention applied to the actions of UN forces in the field, whether peacekeeping or peace-enforcing.

Over four years later, having exhausted the provisions of the Access to Information Act, I’m still waiting for information, and turning to you for help. I’m not the only one. The entire House of Commons is waiting for information from the Government of Canada on Afghan “detainees”: an opaque procedure requiring at least a year with no obvious result.

I feel that I – among many others – am being jerked around. The document I want, which I had to go to Federal Court to know even existed, is the “CAMPAIGN AGAINST TERRORISM DETAINEE TRANSFER LOG”, meticulously kept by the Department of National Defence from 2002 on, and available in redacted form on Amir Attaran’s website, and completely redacted from April 2006 onwards.

I want this fucking document, and I want it unredacted. I am entitled to it by provision of the Access to Information Act, Section 2.

"2. (1) The purpose of this Act is to extend the present laws of Canada to provide a right of access to information in records under the control of a government institution in accordance with the principles that government information should be available to the public, that necessary exceptions to the right of access should be limited and specific and that decisions on the disclosure of government information should be reviewed independently of government."

I explicitly do not want any other document, particularly any that might compromise the safety of Canadian soldiers anywhere. I do not want, for example, the address, floor plan, and phone number for the Canadian Ambassador’s Residence in Kabul. Nor do I want the arrivals and departure information for Canadian Forces flights at Kandahar Airfield, or for that matter, the opening and closing hours for Tim Horton’s at KAF.

I want one, single, unredacted document that tells the truth.

Thanks for any assistance.

The Conservative Base

Jim Gavin and Hillary Clinton

"Far more troublesome was the role of the Department of State. Knowing that the war could come to an end, sooner or later, the Department of State should have prepared a plan that had the concurrence of the War Department and the approval of the White House. By not having developed a plan, it was forced to acquiesce to the course of action proposed by the War Department. In other words, it subordinated itself to the wishes of the War Department in carrying out foreign policy.

"In subsequent years this condition has been allowed to grow in an alarming manner. Military people can always rationalize almost any problem's becoming military and thus susceptible to a military solution. They dislike interference on the part of the State Department when that Department sees serious political consequences stemming from the use of military force. I have discussed problems of this nature in the Pentagon, and with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on many occasions. I remember quite vividly a senior officer in the Pentagon referring to State Department officers who were raising questions about the political aspects of Alaskan statehood. The General referred, rather derisively I thought, to State Department people as "those field marshals in striped pants." Actually, it was the generals who were wearing the striped pants. The State Department acquiescence in the policies of the War Department was a most alarming portent of what was to come. The State Department translated this into a foreign policy described as "brinkmanship." Obviously this was not a policy. It was a slogan.

"It was not long thereafter that the State Department acquiesced in the Pentagon's desire to intervene in south-east Asia. As a general who opposed the Southeast Asian involvement from the outset, I found this deeply disturbing. Surely there must have been, among the more thoughtful people, some who saw the ultimate consequences, from a political if not military point of view of our venture. Ultimately, this proved to be one of the greatest foreign policy and military disasters in our nation's history.


"But the abandonment of foreign policy initiative to the War Department at the time of Berlin, and afterward, is profound in its implications. There have been outstanding State Department people who have opposed such policies, such as George Ball and Averell Harriman, among others. And there have been State Department junior officers who have given up their careers because they believed that they could not continue to serve with the policies of the Department. This has resulted in considerable paralysis and ineffectiveness that has troubled every President in recent years. President John F. Kennedy was very much concerned about this, and in my last conversation with him on October 21, 1963, when we were discussing a forthcoming visit of General de Gaulle, he tilted his head toward the State Department and said to me, "But first I must straighten out that State Department." Earlier, in the summer of 1961, President Kennedy is reported to have remarked to High Sidey of Time, "The State Department is a bowl of jelly." The condition of the Department, whether it began with World War II, or much earlier, as believed by many, is one that must be corrected as a matter of highest priority."

James M. Gavin
On to Berlin
"A fighting general's true story of airborne combat in World War II"
Viking Press, 1978, pg. 355-357