Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston |
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The Release Of David Hicks
How will it feel, under Adelaide's sky?
A free man again, six years have gone by
since they stole you and locked you away in a cell
Torture and questions, and a daily hell
Welcome home, David Hicks, and may you forgive
those who deprived you of the rights that we have
No fair trial for you, just political plans
Cheney has washed you from Johnny Howard's hands
Today they've released you back into the wild
in the town of your birth, where you grew as a child
Don't expect handshakes and a friendly G'day
Many will just turn their faces away
A fox before newshounds, you'll run to no avail
The eyes of the world are in cameras that tail
each move that you make for a picture to sell
If you tell them your story, you're back in a cell
It's going to be warm in Adelaide today
Not as hot as your prison in Guantanemo Bay.
or the hell we've sent our own souls to
for everything we've done to you.
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Haven't they made a record?
I guess you and Ian missed the Muslim Music Festival last September then, Jenny.
And the year before that.
Not too late to plan a trip down south in 2008?
Perhaps It Was Bragging Eliot ?
Is there proof that David Hicks actually fired a shot at a Pakistani, Indian or any other person, apart from a boastful letter? If so, it was never presented at any trial or secret army commission. I think his dad (Father Of The Year ?) Terry Hicks got this one right. David Hicks is guilty of "thought crimes ".
That's just more speculation in an historic case where it would appear-a person has been jailed for 66 months and then a criminal charge created to justify that incarceration.
It's along the lines of those ridiculous letters to the editor that pop up every few weeks that always point out the photo of Hicks with a rocket launcher as though it proves something. You should see my photo with my grandfather's .303 rifle-looking as mean as sin, but trembling in my boots and eventually too chicken to pull the trigger.
And what of the bizarre condition that Hicks must keep silent for six months ?. I hope Hicks does tell his story as it will be a world best-seller. He is now a part of Australian and US history. In a way he owes to his millions of supporters and those who are still banged up at Gitmo to tell the world this horror tale.
Hang on there a sec Richard
....or the hell we've sent our own souls to
for everything we've done to you.
Hang on there a sec Richard. I for one do not agree we did anything to David Hicks.
While I don't go along with the conditions under which or the length of time the guy was held by the US, I am not going to feel guilty about the plight the fellow got himself into. I think from the letters he wrote he knew exactly what he was doing over in Afghanistan. And his intentions there were hardly honourable.
I think he has paid the price for that and I do not think he should be vilified for the rest of his days. But I also do not think he should be hailed as some sort of martyr either. Praise should go to those who gave so much of their lives and time and money getting him out of the mess he got himself into.
So let us not say to him, what we did to you, but rather what we did for you.
Happy New Year to you anyway. Gottta get down there and sort you out a bit, I can see that.
some food for thought at this belly stuff time
Hi Jenny, just a thought.
Twenty years ago, and even Ian Mc won't argue this one, the US/UK supported and trained Mujahadeen fighters in all matters of counter insurgency to battle against the Soviets.
If this all happened in the eighties instead of now, and Mr Hicks Jr went over to support the Mujahadeen and train with them to fight the Soviets that it would be different?
Just wondering this myself.
David Hicks was sold for bounty, doing god knows what for whom. But there are many like him around the world. When nations use democracy, freedom and justice as banners for war then they are expected to show such in their treatment and behaviour. David Hicks had none of that. Some do not care that he had no humane treatment, no just trial, was detained without conviction of crime. I wonder at their principles, to so easily throw such Aussie values aside.
Others were tortured horribly. There is a lot of nastiness about to come out in the CIA tapes scandal if the CIA are pushed any further; they are playing hardball at the very top. Some very bad things have been done in our name and David Hicks is the tip of the iceberg.
And Kathy, as it was done in our name by our elected government and our allies then we too are responsible. Remember the German people were held responsible for what a vicious dictatorship despite their protest. They were told Poland attacked them too and they were threatened by terrorists (communists and socialists then).
Afghanistan, Iraq, (Somalia, Haiti ...) invasions and governments overthrown by the military of elected governments means we the people are in charge, done in our name. Perhaps we should take more interest in exactly what is being done, by whom and why and what the evidence is for such. Are we guilty of waging a war of aggression as Germany was so charged?
Interesting to consider the why or why not.
Cheers
I'm with you Jenny!
"So let us not say to him, what we did to you, but rather what we did for you."
Precisely Jen!
Hicks HAS paid the price for his mistakes. Let the guy get on with his life I say. He is certainly no martyr. Foolish young man yes!
"Or the hell we've sent our own souls too.
for everthing we've done to you."
With all due respect, Richard, speak for yourself mate!
Along with the rest Kathy
Kathy, hi. And we might add that the majority of Australians would more than likely consider Hicks owes this country an apology. To suggest that we owe him one is ridiculous in the extreme.
While querying whether others have a conscience, Paul Walter, you might like to start a search for that of Mr Hicks, Jnr.
I suggest that if he ever does get paid for media interviews, that he repay the taxpayer of this country any money used to get him out of the hole he got himself into.
I say again, let us not make a martyr of this guy.
And Michael de Angelos, Ian got in ahead of me. But to suggest that the Taliban would ever have handed Bin Laden over is a pipe dream, so dream on. How many 9/11s would we be up to now had he been left to do business as usual from his base in Afghanistan? They might not have caught him yet, but at least he has had his wings clipped.
ridiculous?
Jenny Hume: "...to suggest we owe him one is ridiculous."
Jenny, I suggest you read prominent lawyer Robert Richter's article, New era just as disgraceful as the old in today's Age.
Perhaps we can then can amend your statement implying that Hicks, by some flight of fancy, ought "repay the taxpayer" to its proper message of compensation for Hicks, for his appalling treatment here and across the big pond.
A proud young Australian doing his bit in Pakistan
"There are certain politicians I would also like to particularly mention and thank: Senator Natasha Stott Despoja, Danna Vale, Sandra Kanck, Senator Bob Brown, Senator Kerry Nettle, Mark Parnell, Senator Linda Kirk, Nicola Roxon, Bob Debus, Rob Hull, Frances Bedford, Kris Hanna and many others who preferred to work behind the scenes."
Yep. Let's not forget them. Well, of course they'd prefer to work behind the scenes...
I bet Natasha, Danna, Bob, Kerry and the others will have wished David had kept them behind the scenes by about now.
Odd he didn't mention the people whom he shot at, especially the two Indian guys he and his mates bragged abourt murdering in one of his many letters home to Dad. They did their bit, in a way.
You remember Dad? Reckoned he didn't know what David was up to all those years. Lost contact entirely...
"I'd also like to thank my old friend Osama Bin Laden...."
Wll David be entitled to join the RSL now? Maybe join in on ANZAC Day parades?
Dancing Lessons (Masochism Tango)
If you follow the thread of that last link I left Eliot, you'll notice I've danced this tango before. For readers, I suggest a look so that you can see what the next day or so could be like, if I could be bothered putting a buck in the jukebox. I only like progressive dances as a kind of dating service. Not interested in your date.
You and Geoff are sooo predictable.
Robert McClelland : Same same.
Hicks did the right thing by walking in full view of cameras, thus devaluing the price of any "exclusive" photos by a revolting media whose very existence relies on the Hicks of the world while at the same time pandering to the blinkered views of a jaded public who have been taught over the past 11 years to think along the lines of Goebbels' style propagandist government and a media - with News Ltd being a prime example - that now feels its duty is to create and mould the "news", not simply report.
Thus we have the Herald Sun publishing such utter drivel as Nick Henderson today reminding us of the ridiculous "fact" that Hicks "belonged" to a (then a legal entity) known as Al Qaeda (and what proof does Henderson produce that Hicks was a member? - none, of course) that has killed 4 Australian soldiers.
It was reputedly while fighting the Taliban that these soldiers died. Remember them? They are actually born and bred citizens of Afghanistan, unlike our Aussie soldiers who have been sent to kill them in their homeland.
Another fact has slipped Henderson's mind: that president George Bush hosted the senior members of the Taliban government at the White House, complete with press conference, long after Hicks guarded some useless tank in Afghanistan. Bush handed over millions of dollars in aid to the Taliban at that meeting which was widely reported and featured on the White House website.
Nor did Henderson mention that Australia as a nation has assisted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Afghans (now conveniently branded "Taliban" and Iraqi innocents (likewise, "insurgents"). That's all of us - including Henderson who continually voted for a government they believed would keep the economy flowing even while it participated in lies that led to a war.
David Hicks has become the poster boy for everyone who simply cannot face the fact that Australia has participated in the murder of countless thousands of innocents.
The same happened in Germany during the rise of the Nazis although the German people were unfairly blamed for their atrocities. Hitler never received mass support despite those crazy engineered films of Leni Riefenstahl.
Hitler was never supported by the majority of high ranking army officers who constantly plotted to assassinate him but struggled with old fashioned honour, treason and duty to the Fatherland .
Unfortunately, the fact they couldn't get near the despot to bump him off was the only reason the fanatical madman lasted so long. But the Nazis by then controlled the media - we have a media that mostly does the same propaganda job for profit.
As Nikita Krushev famously said on a visit to the USA in the 1960's: "How do you control your journalists so easily? We have to threaten ours with jail" ( or words to that effect).
Now the new Labor AG Robert McClelland has acquiesced to the demands of the Australian secret police, the AFP, on these ludicrous "control orders". Is McClelland hoping for change slowly or is he simply pandering to an uncontrollable AFP? Likewise, Mike Rann has jumped upon the bandwagon.
Never have we seen so many gutless politicians pandering to a ridiculous Keystone Kops organisation which has already demonstrated with Dr Haneef that they are 1 nasty, 2 incompetent, 3 prepared to break the law and lie.
Yet the majority of AFP officers would be hard-working and honest folk with our best interests in mind. But then so were those who worked for the Stasi, so were those who worked for the KGB. Honest people doing a job.
Was it Huey Long who said: "If fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag, waving the cross, and preaching free markets" decades before it's begun to happen ?. And where the US goes, we follow shortly after.
Hicks' Full Statement
From Limited News:
There, that ought to soften Geoff's heart...
Michael, when Hicks goes down in history as the only convict of this sorry mess, and the odds are good that he will, I wonder what other desperation tactics other than the deployment of Kalid Sheik Mahommed (KSM) will be revealed as attempted influences of the outcome by the Bush/Howard administration? Unless you think that KSM's transportation to Gitmo just before Hicks's "trial" was a complete coincidence?
Flash: Hicks Nightmare Begins!
Have you apologised yet, under Adelaide's sky?
For those you would maim and that filthy big lie?
For the day you were caught after taking up the gun
To fight with bin Laden and the Taliban?
Tell me David Hicks, will you ever forgive
those who deprived you of that girl with big tits?
Those who stomped on your carefully laid plans
To stop skinning 'roos and start shooting Hindus and Jooos?
Today they've released you back into the wild
in the town where you deserted a woman with child,
Don't expect handshakes and a friendly G'day
too many remember your cowardly way.
And if that not enough you should remember this is true
There will be plenty of people keeping an eye on you
each move that you make the Feds will be there right on time
And don't even think about profiting from your crime.
It's going to be warm in Adelaide today
Noticed the restaurants have got better since you've been away.?
But you needn't worry about getting so fat yet again
because for the first time in memory you will have to pay your own way.
Free?
A fool, a braggart, a patsy. But ‘free?’ Never.
A suicide or a drunken wreck? Very probable.
Saturday morining at Yatala
At the moment there are TV vans running around Adelaide's northern suburbs following Hicks' little motorcade, and no doubt the helicopters will give directions if they lose the trail.
It was a very quiet affair. The twenty or so Hicks supporters were kept back from the gate by police. A few cars came out of the gate at around a quarter past eight. Somebody in the back of one of the cars waved (could've been anybody) and we all clapped. Then the chase began.
Hick's lawyer read a statement to the press to the effect that David wanted to thank the Australian public for brining him home, and that he didn't want to say anything more for fear of being sent back to Guantanemo. I've always wondered how that one would be enforced, but it's not something you'd want to test. Anyway, the statement was far from the apology for his sins that the Murdoch press has been suggesting he would make. That one was just more villification.
I wonder what the bonus for the first exclusive photo will be worth? It would, after all, sell a lot of laptops and hardware in the Sundays.