Apparently there was a legally sanctioned execution of Australian drug dealers in Indonesia. Tarquin O’flaherty and Quentin Cockburn wised to add their thoughts.
Tarquin O’Flaherty:
It is today, the 28th of April and I’ve just watched the ABC news. Dominating every thing else was the fact that those swiney ole Indonesians are, despite our pleas, despite our best diplomatic efforts, determined on executing our two boys.
Despite all this, our love, our fears our desperate tears, implacable, uncaring, determined to see this thing to the death, the wholly insensitive Indonesian authorities will execute these two men very soon now.
Watching the ABC news, not one journalist interviewed a dead child’s parent. At no stage did we see a mother, helpless with grief, incoherently try to understand why the child she had nurtured had been found dead in an alley with a needle in her arm. Or, why some kid in a nightclub toilet had overdosed and died of a massive heart attack. Somewhere else, a kid high on ice, wanders out into the road and is promptly reduced to pulp by the passing traffic.None of this seemed to matter to the ABC news.
All of this leaves me incoherent with rage. What the hell is going on? What has happened to us? These two Australian boys are not, (despite bleeding heart attempts to say otherwise), innocent. They are lousy, stinking, get-rich-quick drug dealers who were caught trying to smuggle murderous drugs out of Indonesia and into Australia. These drugs, one way or another, will kill our children.
This pair of drug dealers were absolutely aware of the consequences of their actions. They knew if they were caught, they would face the firing squad.
Much as I sympathize with the view that the death penalty is unacceptable, to behave towards these men as if some terrible injustice is being forced upon them, as if they were somehow innocent of the charges brought against them by the Indonesian authorities, is to fly in the face, not just of the facts, but in that of reality itself. They were caught with the drugs strapped to their bodies. Because of this they have been found guilty of a crime which carries the death penalty.
The pair are, whichever way you swing it, cheap, murderous thugs who would have sold their bounty to the highest bidder had they got away with it.
It is my view that the ABC has utterly failed in its responsibility, throughout this affair, to behave in an impartial, even-handed manner. It has chosen instead, and inexplicably, to pander to the the lowest common denominator, to support a cretinous, sentimentalized , wholly emotional view which absolutely fails to reflect the facts of this case.
This is, amongst those at the ABC whom we deem to be worthwhile, a shameful display of intellectual failure. Those who have, in the past, contributed to the good reputation of the ABC, must be hanging their heads in shame..
Quentin Cockburn, a poem, ‘Promotion‘
‘Chan and Sukumaran, their final hours’, (Herald Sun April 29)
‘Political fallout will run deep’, (The Age)
‘It cannot be business as usual’, (Herald Sun)
‘Senseless’, (ABC NEWS)
‘Ambulances containing eight coffins left Nuakambangan’, (Herald Sun)
‘The family said, they asked for mercy but there was none’, (The Age)
‘Amazing Grace in face of death’, (Herald Sun)
‘No one was answering the phones at the Indonesian Embassy in Canberra this morning’, (The Age)
‘As I said before Gallipoli was a splendid failure but the Western Front was a terrible victory, and we should remember out victories as well as we remember our defeats’, (P.M. Tony Abbott. Villiers Brettoneux dedication. ABC News)
Promotion well earnt for those who serve the AFP
Lest we forget