Update: Ken Parish has kindly pointed out that I was wrong about the US Supreme Court ruling in 1944. It appears there were two rulings in December about the detainment of citizens of Japanese ancestry.

Korematsu v. United States. In this case it was decided 6-3 that the exclusion of Japanese Americans from the west coast was constitutional.

Ex Parte Endo. In this case, the Supreme Court decided unanimously that Mitsuye Endo should be released from custody, as her loyalty was clearly apparent.

After this ruling major Pratt, commander of Military Area 1 suspended the exclusion order and Japanese Americans were able to return to home.

–End Update–

Every blogger should know by now that Mamdouh Habib has been released from prison in Guantanamo Bay and returned to Australia via charted jet. This has caused howls of indignation from the right and applause from the left.

There has been a particularly nasty post on AWH by blogger Paul Bickford. It wasn’t this post that got me angry, but what I read in the comments.

“I suspect given what we know about him and his associations, that he was very likely guilty of just about everything the yanks were holding him for. – James Ozark”

This prompted a response by blogger Liam Hogan.

“I don’t know about you lot but I don’t look forward to the day when Australian citizens can be sent to prison for ‘associations’. – Liam Hogan”

I know this is getting pretty boring but its about to get funny.

“Don’t look forward to the day? Better hit those good old history books, then, buddy. During WWII, people were imprisoned for *exactly* that. It’s called war. – James Ozark”

This got me quite angry not only were people imprisoned for no reason other than their country of origin, but there are some people who think that this policy was the right thing to do.

I’m not alone in thinking this was wrong, I did a little research and what do you know in 1944 the US Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the detainment of Japanese Americans during WW2 was unconstitutional.

James obviously doesn’t know anything about history (or Google or Wikipedia) because you should read what he wrote next.

“Oh yeah, and horror of horrors, democracy and elections were suspended for the duration of the war, too, as they were in every Western democracy. – James Ozark”

In every Western democracy? What alternate reality are you living in James. Because in this reality, the US didn’t suspend their elections, and they?re a western democracy aren’t they. There were democracies, such as the UK, that did suspend their elections, but remember he said every western democracy.

James when you make such bold statements about history you better make sure they are correct (I was going to write “right” but I think that’s the cause of his problem).

Well it?s the end of a terrible week. Everybody?s had it in for me; my brother has been a real shithead. He wont stop calling me by that stupid nickname that I will not mention. The only person that laughs at every single one of my jokes is sick and I haven?t seen her all week. The World of Warcraft server went down last night, so I couldn?t satisfy my addiction.

The number 1 worst thing happened yesterday. I was typing a post for my blog and I got distracted I started doing something else and then I clicked close on the browser that was running MT. My unsaved post irretrievably destroyed.

All my posts now will be written in Microshaft Word. But this means that I have to put up with this little fucker.

I have tried to get rid of this fucking little paper clip bastard multiple times.

Well anyway, here?s a cute picture of my dog Emma.

This morning I swear I saw a red gold fish in our pond, but no it turned out it was just a lily pad. My brother and I were out by the pond mourning the loss of our fish. Then about five minutes after this we heard a plop, then some bubbles and a lily pad moved. My brother said, “There is definitely something alive down there!” Yesterday he told me he saw tiny fish swimming around in the pond. Could these be baby gold fish? Yes of course, my fish managed to fulfil their destiny before they were eaten.

All this adds to the hope that our fish will survive. In a world where horrible things happen, small things like this really make life worth living. They give us hope that some day things will be better.

In a few days my cousin will be going to high school. Now we all know that the first day of high school can be a harrowing experience, one that will affect the rest of your life.

We hear stories of the poor kids such as John Marsden and my step Dad who were forced to go to high school wearing short pants. Both of these people were deeply scared; in John’s case he actually became an author (It is a well known fact that all authors have terrible childhoods).

I was lucky enough to come through my first day unscathed. Although it was still terrifying as everyone I knew told me I would get my head flushed down the toilet in a bizarre initiation ritual. I was just thinking, has anyone ever actually had their head flushed down the toilet or is it just a myth?

If you are brave enough to relive this horrible time in your life please help me answer this question in the comments.

At the end of a long hard day I like to relax beside my fishpond.

This afternoon, much to my despair, it was discovered that there are no longer any fish. Who was responsible for this despicable crime? I will tell you who, its those evil kookaburras.

This is my beautiful fishpond before the terrible act of cowardice.

This is a kookaburra otherwise known as Flying Death.

My mother, who unfortunately knows little about the fragile ecological balance of our backyard, has been feeding these nasty kookaburras. Little did she realise as soon as her back was turned they were having another feast this time on our beloved pets.

In my despair I don’t know who to turn to. I can’t turn to my step Dad as he was responsible for another fish holocaust. This was about five years ago. The fish pond had a rather high ph level and my step dad tipped a bit of hydrochloric acid in it to restore the balance. About ten minutes later most of the fish were belly up.

I can’t turn to my brother because he is to blame for the koi carp fiasco of a couple of months ago.

I’m sure a lot of people who read this will find it amusing. If you are one of those people who can laugh at other peoples despair, you can go and sleep with the fishes, Sob!

Yes I am still alive and this Blog is still active.
I went away for a week and forgot to take my blog with me, lol.

Sadly Grogblogging didn’t live up to its potential for me.

Unfortunately the venue was too dark making it impossible to read nametags. Either it was to loud for my voice to punch through to peoples ears or they didn’t want to hear what I had to say. They had a raised dance floor and my brother ran straight into it. Lucky for Nick it wasn’t a sunken dance floor or it could have been tragically funny.

However, it was good to meet some bloggers face to face. I had a good discussion about health care with Joel Parsons from the bench. Joel is a righty by nature although his reasons for being on the right were quite complex. I am going to have to have an email conversation with him to find out more about interesting beliefs.

It was also interesting to talk to pragmatic lefty (way way left) blogger Tillops. I couldn’t quite hear what he had to say, something about the internal politics of the labour party, but what I did hear was very interesting.

Maybe Grogblogging can be held in a Lygon st cafe next time. An environment such as this would be far more conductive to interesting conversation. (Being out doors will allow the cigarette smoke to clear as well. Cough! Cough!)

I apologise for the whingey tone of this post.

Sorry, I gave the wrong time, it is now next Friday the 14th of January.

I was going by this old flyer that has a different time, address and day on it.

This is the correct one.

Be sure to RSVP as well. Just go to Hecho En Mexico.
Sorry folks, well, I’m going out anyway. See ya.

Groggblogging is on this Friday, January 7. [Update: It starts at 7pm.] Be there or quit blogging. Here’s a map, just in case you’ve forgotten where it is.

This post isn’t just about grogblogging. I’ve just discovered my Google page rank has hit 5. This means that heaps of people have linked to me and I probably haven’t linked back. If anyone finds a site with a link to mine tell me and I’ll link back. I’m going to have to open a bottle of champagne this evening to celebrate. I really hate champagne, but what the hell it gets you drunk.

I have also noticed that my website does some really weird stuff when viewed with Firefox. If you click and drag to the right on one of my posts you’ll see what I mean. The Christopia poll on the right hand side also doesn’t seem to display correctly. I’ll see what I can do to fix it.

I don’t use Firefox myself, this site is designed to use Microshaft Internet Explorer (IE). Due to the popularity of Firefox I’m going to have to subtly redesign my site to work correctly with it. Meanwhile, IE isn’t really all that bad. If you’ve got a broadband internet connection you can run Windows Update, this will fill 95% of the holes in IE (deja-vu of Half-Life 2).

Meanwhile a good friend of mine has a sister who has a friend who has a sister who blogs. It’s a fine site but she’s kinda scary because she’s a blonde, right-wing gun freak, who is in the US military, but check the site out anyway. Finally a right-wing death beast who actually is willing to put their money where their mouth is. If you want to kill terrorists, actually go and kill them. The author of this site Risawn has recently become famous for this picture.

It had the guys at Silent Running so excited that they have made her the official goddess of their site. The world of right-wing death beasts is an extremely strange place for lefties like me.

Update: Firefox doesn’t go weird on my site all the time, it’s a stranger problem than I first thought. The right click and drag thing only works for certain posts, such as this one. I think it’s posts that have pictures in them that are too wide.