COONEY RADIO AUSTRALIA: Does this concern you and the whole process towards elections in 2014? 

GHAI ANSWERED : Well it does because another position they have removed is our examination of existing laws for possible incompatibility with the draft constitution. 

And there are hundreds of decrees past since the coup which have stripped the rights of access to courts, media is under pressure subject to heavy penalties, trade union rights have basically been removed, civil servants have no protection. 

And it seemed to us that a lot of these decrees needed to be amended and in some cases repealed. 

“Now that power has been taken away from us, and I do not see how Fiji is going to have a free and fair election unless these decrees are cleaned up. So that power has been taken away and it’s extremely worrying. 
  
“This change was brought out last week in the last month of our process, we have spent a lot of time, effort and money into examining all the decrees and the proposals for change, and at this last stage we are told that is not our responsibility.” 

LET’S FACE THE TRUTH FRANK. YOUR GOVERNMENT HAS CRIPPLED THE RIGHTS OF ORDINARY PEOPLE TO SEEK RECOURSE THROUGH THE COURTS, PARTICULARLY PENSIONERS. 

WHAT YOU AND YOUR BOY DO NOT SEEM TO UNDERSTAND IS THAT GENUINE INVESTORS NEED TO SEE A FAIR AND JUST LEGAL SYSTEM IN PLACE IN A COUNTRY BEFORE THEY WILL INVEST. 

NO DOUBT YOU WILL STILL GET THE POLITICAL ARSE KISSING CARPET BAGGER INVESTORS WITH NO MONEY WHO RELY ON THE FNPF TO FUND THEIR SCHEMES AND THEIR OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS. 

YOUR DECREES OF CONVENIENCE ARE JUST THAT, THEY ARE NOT SUSTAINABLE LAWS AND THAT IS WHY YOU AND YOUR BOY ARE AFRAID TO HAVE THEM EXAMINED AND REVIEWED.

A DECREE THAT DEPRIVES PENSIONERS OF THEIR CIVIL RIGHTS CAN NEVER BE A SUSTAINABLE LAW. 

THE Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, is more than three months overdue in declaring to Parliament gifts and hospitality amassed as spoils of the top job.

( Has anyone seen a declaration by Fiji’s top Ministers ?)

Parliament’s all-important pecuniary interests register, which requires MPs and senators to publicly report all gifts of more than $300 from private sources or more than $750 from foreign dignitaries within 28 days, reveals Ms Gillard has not updated her file since June 16.

Ms Gillard has provided only two updates to the register this year, a significant shortfall on the previous year when the Prime Minister detailed gifts presented by various dignitaries on 17 occasions.

The failure to complete paperwork on time includes Ms Gillard yet to declare tickets provided by the AFL for the grand final in September, with the hospitality confirmed by a separate register kept by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

Grilled on the matter in question time in August last year by the Liberal frontbencher Christopher Pyne, Ms Gillard said: ”Of course, there is an obligation on all members of the Parliament to abide by the rules in relation to declarations of interest.”

She added, during the height of the scandal relating to Mr Thomson’s use of credit cards when he was a Health Services Union official: ”As the member who asked the question would well know, there is more than one member in this Parliament that has declared things late. Of course, people should abide by the rules.”

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/gillard-fails-to-declare-gifts-received-since-june-20121103-28qvg.html#ixzz2BBdSorC6

David Burness and other class action pensioners in the case of Burness v the Fiji National Provident Fund , the Republic of Fiji and the Attorney General HBC 183 of 2011 whose pensions were cut by Decree in the name of FNPF’s ‘reform’ have expressed their shock at the announcement of the International Social Security Association (ISSA) that it will present two ‘certificates of merit’ to the Fiji National Provident Fund next week.

The ISSA is a not for profit (NGO) organisation based in Geneva. The ISSA’s Constitution states that its members are government departments, institutions, agencies and other entities administering social security. ISSA provides guidelines for social security coverage internationally.

Speaking for David Burness, lawyer Dr Shaista Shameem said that the ISSA gives the impression that it is part of the International Labour Organisation because its website gives its address as the ILO in Geneva. This is misleading because people think that the Association is part of the ILO.

In March this year ISSA signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the ILO to reinforce their collaboration to extend and support social security world wide and to strengthen coordination of both organisations for social protection. What FNPF did in Fiji was the opposite of this, Dr Shameem said.

She said it was ironic that ISSA was rewarding FNPF for its human rights breach of pensioners’ right to social security and to their right to life. David Burness’ application to court asked for remedies for a human rights violation in the form of FNPF pension cuts which affected his right to life. This right is one of the fundamental rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which the International Labour Organisation is bound to up-hold, and not promote its loss, Dr Shameem said.

She said it was particularly hypocritical for ISSA to hand out this award to the FNPF when ISSA itself had insisted in the 1970s that FNPF change from a ‘savings’ to a pension’ scheme. This fact was in the documents before the court in the Burness case. The effect of this change on the FNPF was to be addressed in the court case but the FNPF pensioners were prevented by Decree from having their day in court.

Dr Shameem said that ISSA’s MOU with ILO commits the two organisations to closer programmatic and strategic cooperation. The ILO team were recently unceremoniously removed from Fiji by the Government. The ILO has also frequently objected to Fiji’s anti-labour rights record.

Mr Burness and other pensioners will be requesting the ILO to immediately take this matter up with its partner the ISSA, as a complaint.

Dr Shameem said that the pensioners felt that such undeserved awards given to the FNPF, which had acted unlawfully in breaching pensions contracts, puts the ILO on the spot. Even more so when an executive FNPF Decree went on to interfere with pensioners’ access to the courts. The right to justice is another international human rights principle of the International Labour Organisation, she said.

The Australian Government find another way to confiscate seniors pensions savings

The Australian budget will receive a boost of almost $900 million under a plan to transfer millions in unclaimed money to the taxman and the corporate regulator.

In a measure announced today, the government will collect an extra $675 million by lowering the threshold at which inactive superannuation accounts are automatically moved to the Australian Tax Office.

At present, super accounts of people who cannot be contacted are transferred to the tax office if they hold less than $200 and there have been no contributions for five years.

But from January, super accounts will be transferred to the ATO if the account’s owner can’t be contacted, there is less than $2000 in the fund, and there have been no contributions for one year or more.

With the nation’s lost super accounts holding about $17 billion, the change will deliver to the budget $675 million in savings over the next four years.

The unclaimed money will be held in trust by the government, but members can reclaim their lost funds from the tax office.

“These reforms will benefit individuals with small lost accounts by preventing these accounts from being eroded by fees and charges and protecting the real value of these balances,” the government’s Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook said.

Similar treatment will be applied to unclaimed bank deposits and life insurance policies, giving the government an extra $92.3 million over the next four years.

Under current rules, bank deposits can only be transferred to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission if they are inactive for seven years, but this will be cut to three years from January.

Unclaimed company money will also be automatically transferred to ASIC, delivering $118.5 million in savings over four years.

While the government expects to receive a boost from the changes, Superannuation Minister Bill Shorten said raising the threshold for unclaimed superannuation would help unite members with their retirement savings.

“The ATO will use its data matching resources to match these lost accounts with members and assist those members to be reunited with their lost superannuation,” Mr Shorten’s office said in a statement.

Under the changes, the ATO will also pay members an interest equivalent to inflation on their unclaimed super. At present, no interest is paid.

The government said the reforms would help lower the amount of unclaimed super because it would encourage super funds to collect more information about their members while the accounts were active.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/unclaimed-cash-to-boost-budget-by-900m-20121022-280vy.html#ixzz2A0GXroyl

Corruption, lack of freedom and dictators’ atrocities bring more misery than full-scale wars

I was recently struck by some photos and reports I saw on the al-Arabiya network, the most respected news outlet in the Middle East. There was a starving child in Yemen, a burnt-out ancient souk in Aleppo, Syria, car bombs in Iraq and destroyed buildings in Libya.

What links all these images is that the destruction and the atrocities were not perpetrated by an outside enemy. The starvation, the killings and the destruction in these Arab countries were carried out by the same hands that are supposed to protect and build the unity of these countries and safeguard their people. Who, therefore, is the real enemy of the Arab world?

Many Arabs would say it is Israel — their sworn enemy, an enemy whose existence they have never recognised. From 1948 to today there have been three full-scale wars and many confrontations. But what was the real cost of these wars to the Arab world and its people? The harder question that no Arab wants to ask is: what was the real cost of not recognising Israel in 1948 and why didn’t the Arab states spend their assets on education, healthcare and infrastructure instead of wars? But the very hardest question of all is whether Israel is the real enemy of the Arab world and the Arab people.

Hundreds of billions of dollars were wasted and tens of thousands of innocent lives lost fighting Israel. The Arab world, though, has many enemies and Israel should have been at the bottom of the list. The real enemies of the Arab world are corruption, lack of good education, lack of good healthcare, lack of freedom, lack of respect for human lives and, finally, the many dictators who used the Arab-Israeli conflict to suppress their own people. These dictators’ atrocities against their own citizens are far worse than all the full-scale Arab-Israeli wars.

In the past, we have talked about Israeli soldiers attacking and mistreating Palestinians. We have seen Israeli planes and tanks attack Arab countries. But these attacks in no way match the current atrocities being committed by some Arab states against their own people.

In Syria, the atrocities are beyond imagination. Aren’t the Iraqis the ones who are destroying their own country? Why would Iraqi brains leave Iraq in a country that makes $110 billion from oil exports? Wasn’t it Tunisia’s dictator who was able to steal $13 billion from the poor of his country? How can children starve in Yemen if their land is the most fertile in the world? Why have the Lebanese failed to govern one of the tiniest countries on the planet?

On May 14, 1948, the state of Israel was declared. On May 15, the Arabs declared war on Israel to win back Palestine. The war lasted for nearly ten months. The Arabs lost and now call it Nakbah(catastrophic war). The Arabs gained nothing and thousands of Palestinians became refugees.

In 1967 the Arabs went to war with Israel again and lost more Palestinian land, creating more refugees who now live at the mercy of the countries that host them. The Arabs called this war Naksah(setback).

The Arabs have never admitted defeat in either war. And now, with the Arab Spring, the Arab world has no time for the Palestinian refugees or the Palestinian cause because many Arabs have become refugees themselves and are under constant attacks from their own forces. Syrians are leaving their own country not because of Israeli planes dropping bombs on them but the Syrian Air Force doing so.

If many of the Arab states are in such disarray, we should contrast them with Israel. It now has the most advanced research facilities, top universities and infrastructure. Many Arabs don’t know that the life expectancy of Palestinians living in Israel is far greater than in many Arab states and they enjoy far greater political and social freedom than many of their Arab brothers. Even the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip enjoy more political and social rights than in some parts of the Arab world.

The Arab Spring showed the world that the Palestinians are happier and living better than their Arab brothers who fought to liberate them from the Israelis. It is time to stop the hatred and wars and create better living conditions for future Arab generations.

Abdulateef al-Mulhim is a former commodore of the Saudi Navy. This is an edited version of an article that first appeared in Arab News

WHEN YOU HEARD (YES SIR CAPTIAN) from Dispatch, Flight Service, Gound Service, Maintance, your copilot did not carry NASA get out of jail forms, and 

CHIEF PILOTS HAD BALLS.

In the age of the 707

Those were the good ole days.  Pilots back then were men that didn’t want to be women or girlymen.  Pilots all knew who Jimmy Doolittle was.  Pilots drank coffee, whiskey, smoked cigars and didn’t wear digital watches.

They carried their own suitcases and brain bags like the real men that they were. Pilots didn’t bend over into the crash position multiple times each day in front of the passengers at security so that some Gov’t agent could probe for tweezers or fingernail clippers or too much toothpaste.

Pilots did not go through the terminal impersonating a caddy pulling a bunch of golf clubs, computers, guitars, and feed bags full of tofu and granola on a sissy-trailer with no hat and granny glasses hanging on a pink string around their pencil neck while talking to their personal trainer on the cell phone!!!

Being an Airline Captain was as good as being the King in a Mel Brooks movie. All the Stewardesses (aka. Flight Attendants) were young, attractive, single women that were proud to be combatants in the sexual revolution. They didn’t have to turn sideways, grease up and suck it in to get through the cockpit door.  They would blush and say thank you when told that they looked good, instead of filing a sexual harassment claim. Junior Stewardesses shared a room and talked about men, with no thoughts of substitution.

Passengers wore nice clothes and were polite, they could speak AND understand English.  They didn’t speak gibberish or listen to loud gangsta rap on their IPods.  They bathed and didn’t smell like a rotting pile of garbage in a jogging suit and flip-flops. Children didn’t travel alone, commuting between trailer parks. There were no mongolhordes asking for a “mu-fuggin” seatbelt extension or a Scotch and grapefruit juice cocktail with a twist.

If the Captain wanted to throw some offensive, ranting jerk off the airplane, it was done without any worries of a lawsuit or getting fired.

Axial flow engines crackled with the sound of freedom and left an impressive black smoke trail like a locomotive burning soft coal. Jet fuel was cheap and once the throttles were pushed up they were left there, after all it was the jet age and the idea was to go fast (run like a lizard on a hardwood floor). Economy cruise was something in the performance book, but no one knew why or where it was. When the clacker went off no one got all tight and scared because Boeing built it out of iron, nothing was going to fall off and that sound had the same effect on real pilots then as Viagra does now for those new age guys.

There was very little plastic and no composites on the airplanes or the Stewardesses’ pectoral regions. Airplanes and women had eye pleasing symmetrical curves, not a bunch of ugly vortex generators, ventral fins, winglets, flow diverters, tattoos, rings in their nose, tongues and eyebrows.

Airlines were run by men like Howard Hughes and Juan Trippe who had built their companies virtually from scratch, knew many of their employees by name and were lifetime airline employees themselves…not pseudo financiers and bean counters who flit from one occupation to another for a few bucks, a better parachute or a fancier title while fervently believing that they are a class of beings unto themselves.

And so it was back then….and never will be again.

The Petition of William Roberts Marshall QC, SC Resident Justice of Appeal Fiji since 16th July 2010 
1. This petition is addressed to the Prime Minister, Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama and to the Military Council.

2.  One object of this petition is to explain, with evidence supported by documents, that since 9th  April 2009 there have been progressive inroads into the independence of the judiciary which process has culminated since mid-April 2012 in a judiciary which at all levels now does what it perceives is required of it by the Executive.  At all levels, judges having heard the evidence, having researched and found the applicable law, and having listened to the submissions of the parties now ask themselves,” Now what would the Attorney General like my decision and judgment in this case to be?” and make their judgment and orders in line with their answer.

3. A second object of this Petition is to persuade you that you should change this Executive policy forthwith.  The commendable objective central to your dismissal of the Qarase government in late 2006 was to have a nation where everyone regardless of race are Fijian citizens; where government is inclusive rather than them extractive, multi-racial rather than racist, and honest rather than corrupt.  Such a government is transparent in its actions so that its citizens can appreciate its problems and performance.  If there is nothing to hide then transparency will be appreciated by informed opinion and that good opinion will trickle down to the grass roots.

4. A transparent non-corrupt inclusive government which values and abides by the rule of law has a chance of being elected whenever, inevitably, some kind of electoral process is put into action and Fijians must vote.  You have said you will win in 2014 against Qarase and the SDA.  But you will not if the perception of voters is that your government has undermined the rule of law to the detriment of innocent individual citizens of Fiji who have become victims of miscarriage of justice.  Another matter is that citizens of Fiji do not want a government which if they have a civil or criminal case before the courts, will ensure a result in favour of the Executive.  They see confidence in the independence and impartiality of the courts as essential.

In the 143 page petition, Marshall says Khaiyum deliberately instigated a campaign to destroy the rule of law in Fiji and tells Bainimarama he must dismiss him or pass the reins on to someone in the ‘Military Council who will.’

Marshall recommends Khaiyum be exiled to Rotuma like Apolosi Nawai and be given no access to the Internet. He also suggests:

a) the Chief Registrar (Justice Arachchi, whose contract was terminated last week) be dismissed
b) Chief Justice Anthony Gates be retired
c) Nazhat Shameem be appointed Chief Justice
d) If she doesn’t accept, it should go to Justice Salesi Temo
d) Shaista Shameem be appointed to the office of Attorney General
e) And William Calachini made Independent Legal Services Commissioner
f) And judges from Sri Lanka serving in the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court be dismissed

In the following excerpts from petition, Marshall details the Machiavellian actions of Khaiyum:

To read the full transcript
Click on this link ~ Final Petition of William R Marshall_rvse

LONG before the GPS was invented, bees learnt how to navigate the shortest possible route when they buzz from flower to flower.

British researchers have attached tracking devices to the backs of bumblebees – which live for about a month – and found that they use trial and error to determine the ideal flight path from one food source to another.

Developing an efficient route between scattered feeding sites – to save both time and energy – is the goal of many species including ants, bats and hummingbirds.

But scientists have struggled to understand how animals achieve this feat in the wild.

“[It’s] analogous to the well-known travelling salesman problem – finding the shortest route to visit a set of locations once and return to the origin,” the study leader, Lars Chittka, said.

The London psychologist from Queen Mary University and his team arranged five artificial flowers, each filled with a few drops of sugar and fitted with motion-sensor cameras, 50 metres apart on an open field to prevent the insects navigating the shortest distance by sight.

They also attached tiny transponders on the backs of five bees to track them as they foraged for food.

When released from their hive, all bees found the closest flower first. After several foraging trips they found the other sites.

Between their first and last attempts, the bees reduced their travel distance about 80 per cent, from 1953 metres to 458 metres, in one day. Measured by a computer, the shortest path was 314 metres.

Of the 120 possible routes between the five flowers and the nest, the bees tried only 20, on average, before finding the shortest.

Because it takes too much time for the bees to explore all the possible routes between food sources, the team suggests that the insects learn the best flight path through experience, abandoning a previous route if they happened upon a new, shorter path. On average, it took the bees 26 trips to figure out the ideal journey.

While the researchers were surprised how quickly the bees could find the best route, given the number of possible solutions, their technique was “simple and elegant”.

“It sounds simple to keep exploring even when you’ve found what looks like a good solution and, if you do find a new route, compare it with your previous one and then stick with the better of the two – but it’s robust and it works for an animal with a brain the size of a pinhead,” said Professor Chittka, whose findings were published in the journal PloS Biology.

When the researchers moved one flower to another location the bees’ distance increased before they incorporated the new location into their ideal circuit.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/animals/from-a-to-bee-first-a-stumble-then-its-a-direct-flight-to-nectar-20120920-269q7.html#ixzz28N0d3FTA

Go to this site to nominate someone you know ~ http://7billionactions.org/60over60

Go to this URL to read the full report ~ http://unfpa.org/ageingreport/