While I agree that capital punishment is barbaric and wrong, I disagree with the focus and weight that has been placed on this execution by the media and the Australian people.

The fact of the matter is, people die all the time, innocent people, and these deaths can usually be averted. Think about the amount of time and energy that people put into ranting about Nguyen and screaming hysterically for the Australian Government to lobby Singapore with trade sanctions and God-knows-what-else. If that time was put into yelling at the same Government to increase aid to famine-ravaged African countries or earthquake-ravaged Pakistan then think how many needless deaths could be averted and how many lives could be saved?

The People and The Media need to put their money where their mouths are when human rights and saving lives are concerned. You can yell about the needless death of Nguyen until the cows come home, and I won't disagree with you, but as you do... another kid in the developing world dies of something-or-other. Famine, disease, poverty, etc. Unfortuantely they are not Australian and their story is not as sensational as Nguyen's but what is the value of a human life?

Alex

It appears that as part of the Government's already highly-suspect and largely-unnecessary "anti-terrorism legislation package" they are including an update to our sedition laws. They intend to enshrine into law a clause that makes it illegal to "promote ill will and hostility between different groups". What this has to do with terrorism, i do not know, but I do know that it means that many of the things we do day-to-day will soon be, technically, illegal.

 

So no more of the following things: paying out politicians, paying out celebrities, paying out lecturers, paying out friends, paying out anyone for that matter, no more stealing mascots, swearing at people, disagreeing with people or poking people, no more saying that your LC's better, no more saying that your football team's better, you cant even say that your marks at school are better even when they clearly are. No more arguing with parents, no more of a lot of damn things...

 

That's right, there's no definition of "ill will and hostility" or "different groups" or even "promote", there's no guideline for a reasonable person to draw any inference and there's no likely outcome that they are trying to avoid. These laws appear to have nothing to do with terrorism and everything to do with turning Australia into another totalitarian police state such as Hitler Germany, Stalinist Russia or Modern Singapore (hehehe).

 

Moreover, it appears there is no logical reason for including this particular clause, not even under the false pretense of stopping terorrism (how passe, its everybody's pretense for everything these days).

 

From The Age:  "Ibrahim Abraham, from Monash University's Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, raised concerns that the sedition provisions could return Australia to an age of censorship.  Asked whether excising the sedition provisions would weaken Australia's anti-terrorism capacity, he said: "No, I don't suspect it would". Mr Abraham said if the sedition amendments were excised from the bill, "you'd still have sedition legislation as it exists right now ... which of course could be used, and could have been used any time now, to convict people and prosecute people"."

 

So brace yourself ladies & gents, free speech is over and we're all going to the gulag/dachau/auschwitz or we'll be shot outright... in fact, this blog posting is incriminating enough. Im clearly promoting ill will and hostility between groups, namely between the Federal Government and its unlucky constituency, so when the laws are in place and able to act retrospectively, I'll probably be shipped off to Siberia with the rest of the political cartoonists and radio talk-back callers... hope y'all send me chocolates!

Alex

 

 

 

 

Some quotes that appeared in the Big Issue this week:

 

A male US soldier stationed in Iraq elaborates on what the Center for Military Readiness called 'pregnancy issues' within the US military.