The Bali drug-smuggling sagas Interview: Mick Keelty
Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Questions hang over AFP role
What was the game plan of the politicised AFP with respect to the events surrounding the arrest of the nine young Australian heroin traffickers in Bali?
The track record of the AFP in dealing with their Indonesian counterparts has not been good. The Indonesian police, and military, are corrupt. The AFP has not gone down the path of investigating links between Jemaah Islamiah, the police and the military...
It is common knowledge the Indonesian police and army are involved in corrupt activities including extortion rackets, illegal timber felling, drugs, prostitution, employment and people smuggling. Was money fed into the Indonesian network to stop people smuggling? Most recently the problem became an issue over the delivery of foreign aid in Aceh.
Bruce Haigh is a former diplomat who ran the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's Indonesian desk from 1984-86. He now grows grapes and olives at his farm in Mudgee, while writing his book about Australia's troops in France and Belgium in World War I.
• Bruce Haigh outlined his views is a letter to The Australian , which published on 26 April 2005 [Ross Fitzgerald: Out of respect for the recently departed, we may forgive some of Joh Bjelke-Petersen's excesses, but it behoves us not to forget what he did in his 19 years, three months and 23 days as Queensland premier before he was forced to quit on December 1, 1987. The truth is that Bjelke-Petersen presided over a corrupt and vicious regime that blighted the lives of tens of thousands of people A corrupt and vicious regime; The man who sold Queensland ; Supporters of the reign of Joh Bjelke-Petersen argue he was wonderful for Queensland because he abolished death duties, oversaw the development of extractive industries, trampled on the unions and built dams and powerhouses. Such superficial analysis ignores the suffering he caused, the prostitution of electoral laws, the criminal abuse of the parliament and, most shamefully, his disgraceful treatment of the rights of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders Counting the cost of a mean-spirited opportunist ]
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• · · · · · Wonderful Jana Wendt Pope Benedict XVI ; Politics requires scapegoats, whether they bear guilt or not. And the media seem less interested in discovering who is responsible than in providing a megaphone for the accusations. But the questions need to be asked. We cannot begin to fix the policymaking process until we see who broke it--and even then, the damage may be beyond repair. In Defense of Striped Pants