2007-05-20
David Hicks
Australia's most famous terrorist, David Hicks, is now back in Australia. What a disaster. It shows the depravity of a large number of Australians that they actually wanted this terrorist back instead of being strung up like any other criminal in the same situation in US custody would be.
While I personally oppose the death penalty, and we can debate that, the fact is that the US HAS the death penalty, and Australians should not be seeking better treatment for Australian criminals in US custody than any other nationality. It's basically the equivalent of racism - nationalism.
And instead of Australians putting pressure on the Australian government to pressure the US government to send David Hicks back here, they should have instead been putting pressure on the Australian government to apologize profusely to the Americans that our country produced a terrorist, and explained exactly what measures we intended making to try to teach Australians the values they require to FIGHT terrorism rather than BE a terrorist. We should have been disowning this creep. And we should have gone out of our way to tell the Americans that we didn't want Australian terrorists to be treated any better than non-Australian terrorists. We aren't racist. Whatever rules you have for everyone else, make sure Australians have equal treatment. If anything, to prove we weren't racists/nationalists, we should have been telling America to make sure he had the LOWEST priority.
I can remember something similar happening in Malaysia. The Malaysians strung up a couple of Australian drug smugglers. I can remember a Malaysian spokesman saying that he received lots of letters from Australians asking them to string them up. It is things like that that make me proud to be an Australian. There are good people here who don't want criminals protected just because of their nationality or skin colour of any other reason. A criminal is a criminal, and we don't want any association with him. Every one of them is an embarassment, because it means we still haven't figured out how to stop this phenomenon. Our arsehole prime minister called the Malaysians "barbaric". I didn't hear him say the same thing when it was Malaysians being strung up. And I didn't hear him say that when America strung up Americans. It's quite disgusting. I can remember someone writing "crawl, Hawke, crawl" (around 1984) on another issue where he was pandering to America (I think he was publicly badmouthing NZ when the arsehole Kiwis were trying to ban nuclear-powered US ships in the middle of the Cold War). It's a complete embarassment. We're not America's lap dog. Chat with any Australian and you will discover we are no-one's slaves.
Howard's doing the complete opposite though, demanding preferential treatment for Australians and expecting the US to do its bidding. We saw a similar thing from Britain. Britain succeeded in getting some British criminal's charges dismissed. This shouldn't be happening. The US is a sovereign country and has its own laws and the law should be colour-blind. By demanding, and getting, preferential treatment for British/Australians, we are infringing on America's sovereignty and justice. It's unacceptable. I can remember also some Australian Aboriginal murderer escaping a death sentence based on the colour of his skin. It's outrageous. While I personally oppose the death sentence, it is the democratic will of the US people, and it should not be overridden by Australians. I've never heard of the US interfering in Australia to protect American criminals, and I'd be equally outraged if they did.
Honestly, America puts up with so much crap from the rest of the world. Just like the Filipinos. The idiots actually wrote in their consitution that foreign forces weren't allowed in the Philippines. The trouble is, they need US help against the various terrorists. So rather than changing their stupid constitution with a "what on earth were we thinking?", they expect the US to come in and only officially be "trainers", jeapordizing their own safety, above and beyond the normal risks of war! And they expect all this for free.
Honestly, if I were the US, I would just say "I've had a gutful of this nonsense" and start launching some nukes over the entire world so that people have something REAL to whinge about. Well, anyone who survives, anyway. Well, anyone who survives and still has an obnoxious attitude.
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While I personally oppose the death penalty, and we can debate that, the fact is that the US HAS the death penalty, and Australians should not be seeking better treatment for Australian criminals in US custody than any other nationality. It's basically the equivalent of racism - nationalism.
And instead of Australians putting pressure on the Australian government to pressure the US government to send David Hicks back here, they should have instead been putting pressure on the Australian government to apologize profusely to the Americans that our country produced a terrorist, and explained exactly what measures we intended making to try to teach Australians the values they require to FIGHT terrorism rather than BE a terrorist. We should have been disowning this creep. And we should have gone out of our way to tell the Americans that we didn't want Australian terrorists to be treated any better than non-Australian terrorists. We aren't racist. Whatever rules you have for everyone else, make sure Australians have equal treatment. If anything, to prove we weren't racists/nationalists, we should have been telling America to make sure he had the LOWEST priority.
I can remember something similar happening in Malaysia. The Malaysians strung up a couple of Australian drug smugglers. I can remember a Malaysian spokesman saying that he received lots of letters from Australians asking them to string them up. It is things like that that make me proud to be an Australian. There are good people here who don't want criminals protected just because of their nationality or skin colour of any other reason. A criminal is a criminal, and we don't want any association with him. Every one of them is an embarassment, because it means we still haven't figured out how to stop this phenomenon. Our arsehole prime minister called the Malaysians "barbaric". I didn't hear him say the same thing when it was Malaysians being strung up. And I didn't hear him say that when America strung up Americans. It's quite disgusting. I can remember someone writing "crawl, Hawke, crawl" (around 1984) on another issue where he was pandering to America (I think he was publicly badmouthing NZ when the arsehole Kiwis were trying to ban nuclear-powered US ships in the middle of the Cold War). It's a complete embarassment. We're not America's lap dog. Chat with any Australian and you will discover we are no-one's slaves.
Howard's doing the complete opposite though, demanding preferential treatment for Australians and expecting the US to do its bidding. We saw a similar thing from Britain. Britain succeeded in getting some British criminal's charges dismissed. This shouldn't be happening. The US is a sovereign country and has its own laws and the law should be colour-blind. By demanding, and getting, preferential treatment for British/Australians, we are infringing on America's sovereignty and justice. It's unacceptable. I can remember also some Australian Aboriginal murderer escaping a death sentence based on the colour of his skin. It's outrageous. While I personally oppose the death sentence, it is the democratic will of the US people, and it should not be overridden by Australians. I've never heard of the US interfering in Australia to protect American criminals, and I'd be equally outraged if they did.
Honestly, America puts up with so much crap from the rest of the world. Just like the Filipinos. The idiots actually wrote in their consitution that foreign forces weren't allowed in the Philippines. The trouble is, they need US help against the various terrorists. So rather than changing their stupid constitution with a "what on earth were we thinking?", they expect the US to come in and only officially be "trainers", jeapordizing their own safety, above and beyond the normal risks of war! And they expect all this for free.
Honestly, if I were the US, I would just say "I've had a gutful of this nonsense" and start launching some nukes over the entire world so that people have something REAL to whinge about. Well, anyone who survives, anyway. Well, anyone who survives and still has an obnoxious attitude.
# posted by Paul Edwards @ 12:19 
