Obama asks Australia to take Guantanamo detainees

Reuters ^ | May 29, 2009

[Free ThinkerNY]

SYDNEY (Reuters) - The United States has made a new request for Australia to accept a group of detainees from Guantanamo Bay for resettlement, a government spokeswoman said on Saturday.

The request is the first by President Barack Obama's administration, which plans to close down the detention camp in Cuba within the next year.

Media reports have said the request involves a group of Uighurs from China's largely Muslim western province of Xinjiang. Beijing has reportedly been pressing Washington to return them to China, but U.S. officials have expressed concerns about their likely treatment there.

[bgill]

How many Gitmo detainees can fit in the Lincoln bedroom?

[Professional Engineer]

“I don’t want to deal with this, here you do it.”, says dear leader.

[eyedigress]

Why in the hell does he want to close Gitmo anyway? That seems to be an excellent place for all overseas contingent delinquents.

[RetiredArmy]

Actually, I am surprised that ACORN has not offered them top level management positions yet!!

[Califreak]

Dingoes gotta eat too!

[3catsanadog]

Would someone let the president know that the days of Australia being one big penal colony for Britain are over. They just don’t do that anymore.

[vox_freedom]

This after Australian citizens had all of their fire arms registered and confiscated.

[Rocko]

"Don't want to hurt no kangaroo."
-- Randy Newman

[naturalman1975]

It’s amazing how I’ve still got guns then.

Seriously - yes, we have universal registration in Australia. No, we have not had mass confiscations. The effect of Australia’s gun laws (stupid as some of them genuinely are) has been serious exagerated in the US. Law abiding Australians can legally own firearms.

[antisocial]

“Send them to the UN building in NYC.”

Or, invite them to bunk in the WH.

[Paladin2]

"Or, invite them to bunk in the WH."

I've previously suggested same. They could build some slave quarters on the South Lawn and Michele could use their slave labor in her garden.

[vox_freedom]

Please inform us more. You say the Aussie government didn’t confiscate firearms but I thought most weapons had to be stored in approved locations and not kept in private homes. Are all weapons able to be kept privately or were some banned?

[naturalman1975]

Firearms can be stored in your own home as long as you have an approved gun safe to keep them in. If you own more than twelve firearms, you have to have a fairly sophisticated alarm system. For this reason, quite a few people - though my guess it's still only a minority - choose to avail themselves of the storeage facilities at gun clubs and similar - especially target shooters who only intend to use their firearms at those clubs.

Very few weapons were banned, but the licencing laws were changed so you have to have specific licences for different classes of weapons and the more 'powerful' the weapon (power being measured by a bunch of regulations with only a partial connection to real firepower) the more paperwork involved in getting a licence. A basic A/B licence which allows for non semi-automatic rimfire firearms and shotguns is very easy to get. Licences for semi-automatics, handguns, or 'military style' firearms are progressively more complicated to acquire. But most lawabiding citizens can get these licences if they choose to. I'm handgun licenced and category D licenced myself, which allows me, obviously, to own handguns and 'military style' semi-automatic rifles and while there was an overly bureaucratic process to navigate to get those licences I wouldn't call it actually difficult.

There are 'bans' (the word isn't quite correct, but close enough) on some weapons. Handguns with a barrel length of less than four inches for example or greater than .38 calibre. But they still allow for a pretty wide range of choice. And machine guns and similar require a Category E licence, which though technically possible for a civilian to acquire, I've never actually heard of anyone doing it.

Yes, there's a lot of dumb laws.

But I still own one of these:

and one of these:

plus a couple of .22s. I don't feel anywhere near disarmed, I can tell you. I'd prefer most of the laws didn't exist and I worry they'll get more restrictive in the future, but I can live with them as they are.

[vox_freedom]

Thanks guy. We all know Obama would like to have those same laws on the books in the US. Stay safe, and stay armed!

[citizen]

Aussies, tell Hussein to bugger off.

[Nachum]

Thanks to Jet Jaguar for the heads up...

The list, ping