Category Archives: Political

Gay History: Henry VIII’s Buggery Act of 1533

Gay Interest, History, Political, , , ,

Buggery Act 1533

Actual text:

Forasmuch as there is not yet sufficient and condign punishment appointed and limited by the due course of the Laws of this Realm for the detestable and abominable Vice of Buggery committed with mankind of beast: It may therefore please the King’s Highness with the assent of the Lords Spiritual and the Commons of this present parliament assembled, that it may be enacted by the authority of the same, that the same offence be from henceforth ajudged Felony and that such an order and form of process therein to be used against the offenders as in cases of felony at the Common law. And that the offenders being herof convict by verdict confession or outlawry shall suffer such pains of death and losses and penalties of their good chattels debts lands tenements and hereditaments as felons do according to the Common Laws of this Realme. And that no person offending in any such offence shall be admitted to his Clergy, And that Justices of the Peace shall have power and authority within the limits of their commissions and Jurisdictions to hear and determine the said offence, as they do in the cases of other felonies. This Act to endure till the last day. of the next Parliament.”
Thomas Cromwell, House of Commons

 
Note: This act was extended through Parliament three additional times. Notable convictions under the act included: Walter Hungerford, 1st Baron Hungerford or Heytesbury in 1540; Mervyn Tuchet, 2nd Earl of Castlehaven in 1631; John Atherton, Bishop of Waterford in 1640; Vere Street Coterie in 1810; and Percy Jocelyn, Bishop of Clogher in 1822.

Thomas Cromwell - God's executioner
Thomas Cromwell – God’s executioner

Political Snippet: The disquieting silence

General Interest, Opinion Piece, Political, , ,

Things have gone very quiet since Malcolm Turnbull took over as Prime Minister. I am so used to Tony Abbott’s daily fuck-ups…which always managed to make the news…that I find this lack of tact, and myriad of blunders, very unsettling! And as a friend pointed out on FB last week, without Abbott he now has no one to have a go at every day. I commented…just give it time!

They say a new broom sweeps clean, and that would appear to be the truth. A new frontbench,including 5 women – one of who is Minister for Defence! That would NEVER have gappened under Abbott’s watch! 

It appears to be a considered Cabinet, and will be interesting to watch, as will Turnbull! Despite being in a right-wing conservative government, Malcolm leans strongly to the left, and believes in social reform, and a contemporary society – the exact opposite to Abbott’s conservatism, much of which was vased on religious belief…don’t even start me on mixing religion and politics!

I think he will pander to the old government policies until the election next  year…then I wouldn’t be surprised to see some very Laborcentric polices rolled out for the election. Truth is, electing Turnbull has put the Libs in a strong position for re-election, whereby Abbott would have ensured great losses, including seats. The Labor party now have a fight on their hands, and with Bill Shorten fronting them, I don’t fancy their chances.

Watch this space!

Tim Alderman (C) 2015

Australian Gay Icons: Brian Patrick McGahen

Gay Interest, History, HIV/AIDS, Political, , , , ,

McGahen, Brian Patrick (1952–1990)
by Phillip Black
This article was published in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 18, (MUP), 2012
Brian Patrick McGahen (1952-1990), city councillor, social worker, gay activist and social libertarian, was born on 3 March 1952 at Camperdown, Sydney, elder son of Patrick James McGahen (d.1963), hairdresser, and his wife Monica Marie Anderson, née Pettit, both born in New South Wales. Brian was educated at De La Salle College, Ashfield, and the University of Sydney (B.Soc.Stud., 1974). At the age of 17 he opposed the Vietnam War; he refused to register for conscription and was convicted of sedition for advocating draft resistance. He joined the Eureka Youth League of Australia, the Communist Party of Australia and the Draft Resisters’ Union.
In 1974-75 McGahen was employed as a social worker and drug counsellor in the methadone program of the Health Commission of New South Wales. When the Australian Social Welfare Union was created in 1976, he was a founding member. After travelling overseas that year, in 1977 he was an organiser for the Chile Solidarity Campaign. Over the next three years he worked on projects for the State Department of Youth and Community Services. With Social Research and Evaluation Ltd in the early 1980s, he reviewed the New South Wales Family Support Services Scheme.
Sexual politics had emerged as a social force worldwide by the mid-1970s. McGahen found like-minded activists in the Sydney Gay Liberation and subsequently in the Socialist Lesbians & Male Homosexuals. In 1978 he was part of a collective that organised the National Homosexual Conference on discrimination and employment. He was chairman (director) of the Sydney Gay Mardi Gras Association from 1981 to 1984, providing the young organisation with structure, direction and vision.
Remaining a member of the CPA until 1984, McGahen stood unsuccessfully in 1980 as its candidate in the election for the lord mayor of Sydney. In 1984, having campaigned as a leader of the gay community against the Australian Labor Party State government’s failure to repeal anti-homosexual laws, he was elected (as an Independent) to the Sydney City Council for the Flinders ward. A member of various council committees, he served from 14 April 1984 until the council was dismissed on 26 March 1987. Policies were implemented to prevent discrimination against homosexuals in council services.
McGahen became a director of a Sydney home care service in 1986, hoping to extend the service to people suffering from acquired immune deficiency syndrome. He was also concerned about immigration rights for the partners of gay men. Throughout the 1980s he was a consistent advocate for a permanent gay and lesbian community centre, preferably a registered club. In 1989 he joined the Pride steering committee, became treasurer, and soon gained support to set up such a club.
In 1987 McGahen was diagnosed positive for the human immunodeficiency virus. He decided to show that his carefully considered choice of voluntary euthanasia could be achieved in a dignified manner. Never married, he died on 3 April 1990 at his Elizabeth Bay home, accompanied by five close friends, and was cremated. He had fought with determination and enthusiasm for what he believed in, often against great opposition. In 1986 a homosexual social group, Knights of the Chameleons, had made him the Empress of Sydney, and in 1992 he was inducted into the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Association Hall of Fame.
Select Bibliography

G. Wotherspoon, City of the Plain, 1991

R. Perdon (comp), Sydney’s Aldermen, 1995

Sydney Morning Herald, 17 September 1984, p 4

Sydney Star Observer, 6 April 1990, p 17

Sydney Morning Herald, 23 June 1990, p 69

McGahen papers (State Library of New South Wales)

Citation details

Phillip Black, ‘McGahen, Brian Patrick (1952–1990)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mcgahen-brian-patrick-14206/text25218, published first in hardcopy 2012, accessed online 17 September 2015.

This article was first published in hardcopy in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 18, (MUP), 2012

  

  

Political Snippet: Yet another Prime Ministerial spill!

General Interest, Opinion Piece, Political, , , ,

The inept and much despised Tony Abbott is NO LONGER OUR PM. You can probably hear the corks popping thousands of miles away! Five Prime Ministers in something like 8 years – a record for Guinness, undoubtedly! I can hardly believe I no longer have to look at hus ugly face, listen to his inarticulate speech, put up with any mire if his policy-on-the-run, and idiotic “Captains calls” that have nade all Austealians look like idiots on the world stage!

Already celebrations are underway on social media as the excitement ramps up at this horrid mans well-deserved demise! Never in the political history of this country has a PM been hated so much, ir a government been so inept. It had gotten so bad that his own party turned against him! You can’t run a country on three word slogans, and by pushing uour own Catholic and far right-wing agendas. Nor can you expect people to support out-dated policies, and a lack of humanity, compassion and emoathy in what you espouse. People, especially voters, deserve and exoect more.

Along with getting rid if him we also dispense of the horrendous bunch of incompetent ministers called a frontbench. At least Julie Bishop had the sense to desert the sinking ship.

And Turnbull…we’ll just have to wait and see! At leadt he has a living example of what NOT to be like!

Farewell Abbott! No one will weep for you! Now to repair all the damage you caused! Fuck off – I never want to see or hear from you EVER again!

Tim Alderman (C) 2015

  

Daily (Or When The Mood Takes Me) Gripe: The Dumbing-Down of Humanity 

General Interest, Opinion Piece, Political, , , , ,

The following commentary is from the FB page “Veganurth”:

 “Malala Yousafzai & Kylie Jenner just turned 18 – Kylie got a brand new Ferrari and spent $10,000’s on plastic surgery and botox. Malala was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, survived a gun shot to the face by the Taliban, opened a school for Syrian refugees and is inspiring education for kids around the world. What’s upsetting is the media is only covering Kylie as “breaking news” and not mentioning a word about Malala’s powerful strength and courageous passion to change the world…. Kylie is immortalized because her parents are rich, she shops on Rodeo Drive and gets drunk at parties….. Malala is infinitely more beautiful!” 
The dumbing down of both us, and how the media treat us, has been an interesting exercise to watch over the decades. A news item during the weak was….Woolworths dropping its grocert prices! Really! News? I just laughed it was so ludicrous. Then we have Tracy Grimshaw – a journalist I USED to respect before she fell into mediocrity – and her “A Current Affair”…not! Since when are neighbourhood disputes, germs on kitchen sponges! And old people being ripped off been “current affairs”? Current affairs used to be commentary on the hews, an extension and clarification of important daily news items, but now – with the exception of non-commercial television – nothing but social drivel We see it every day now, news that is aimed at the most stupid and impressionable sector of the community. You only have to hear talk-back radio to see how it filters down to inane, racist and prejudicial argument, people babbling on about things that they know absolutely nothing about. The whole Halal issue was a very good example of social rantings from people who didn’t even know what it was! And don’t even start me on the cult of celebrity! Or our use of the word “hero”! The above is a great example of how the “news” distorts values, gives credence to the undeserving, while the people and ideals we really should value are trampled under foot, and left as footnotes! Thank heaven for unaligned, freelance journalism! These are the only ones observing our politicians, leaders, big business, and world affairs, and commentating on it in a realistic and responsible way! Commercial news services – and those owned by so-called “media magnates” who use the services to espouse their own perverted world view…Rupert Murdoch and his disgraceful Fox News is a great example – make the future of nees reportage very frightening! When truth is swallowed and exchanged for digestible drivel, those of us who think, analyse, research and voice alternative opinions to the tripe and inane diatribes that are vomited out by our daily newspapers, and television news services, truly have to be concerned.

Truth Rules! 

Tim Alderman (C) 2015

Political Snippet: Is bombing the answer?

General Interest, Opinion Piece, Political, , ,

I have to be the first to admit that my immediate gut-instinct on how to handle the whole ISOL problem is to just “bomb the bastards out of existence”! But gut-instincts rarely provide solutions! The decision by the Australian government to provide air support to the UN/US/UK air forces is a bad one. For starters, there is no end-date to the support. I have already lived through two long term wars in my lifetime, and this was exactly how they protracted out into years of warfare on a devastating  scale, hoth in terms of military and civilian – usually collateral and innocent – lives. Neither war ceased after troops were withdrawn, and I see nothing different with what is going on in Iraq. Whether this war will result in feet-on-the-ground military action remains to be seen, but we ertainly can’t get drawn once again into years of warfare that is not going yo end in a toral defeat if these obscene extremist fundamentalists. Once again, religion rears its ugly head in the world. It seems we never do really learn!

Daily (Or When The Mood Takes Me) Gripe: When a Pack of Shonks Govern A Country!

Article, General Interest, Opinion Piece, Political, , , , , ,

You have to hand it to the Abbott government – they are the regift that keeps on being gifted! If nothing else, they provide self-opinionated people like me – and the radical media – with plenty of ammunition! They are a constant living reminder of why you NEVER put conservatives in charge – I’m sure our American friends who oppose the GOP will agree with that –  and the need for us to press for a secular state. Religion and politics just DO NOT mix, nor should they be allowed to wander through our lives, hand-in-hand!

Yesterday, not for the first time, our government managed to make a total ass of themselves not just locally, but on the world stage. Never in the history of this country have we seen such shonky politics, economics, and misjudgement;  a prime minister (small P and small M) and a frojtbench that are so self indulgent, lacking in moral grit, and so divorced from the voices of their constituents governing us to nowhere! One can but pray that this is their death knell!

They are continuing to drag the marriage equality debate on and on, despite the majority of Australians wanting it to happen. Once again yesterday they spent hours at a party room meeting – instigated by Abbott at the last minute, naturally – arguing on whether to have a conscience vote on the issue. This has been going on not for weeks but for years now, and despite the issue not going away – as Abbott hoped it would – he continues to complicate and delay what will, in the end, be inevitable! Yesterdays tactics – which fooled no one – are again an rxample of a pm out of touch with the voters. Having had several members of his frontbench speak out against the party line policy regarding Same Sex Marriage, and with many of the backbench lending their support, he resorted to bully-boy tactics. By inviting the National Party – the most conservative of the conservatives – into the party room meeting to be included in the vote on whether there should be a conscience vote on the issue, he effectively ensured he got his way by the very blatant ploy of branch-stacking – the vote was 60-30 against. On the upside, at least 30 are not going to tow the party line! The fact that Christopher Pyne, Malcolm Turnbull and the Attorney General George Brandis stood up against him are positive moves indeed, and increasingly shows a pm out of touch with not only his own frontbench, but with his government overall! Thefeactures are getting deeper! It seems that we are now, due to all this government indecision, heading to a plebiscite (referendum) on the issue at the next election, which thankfully is not far off. The rediculous thing about this needless expense is that the outcome is inevitable…change will come! 

Not being happy with sticking their noses into the bedrooms of all Australians, they then decided to further insult our intelligence by pandering to both their anti-Labor stance, and to climate change deniers with their – excuse me while I laugh hysterically – climate change policy! Fuck me…where do thus mob get off!    Can one take a government who eliminated the portfolio of Science Minister seriously when it comes to climate change! I think not! They have always openly accused the opposition – who have a realistic approach to the SCIENCE of climate change – of having climate change policies that will increase the cost of living to the general population by an increase in electricity prices! Meanwhile, they dismantled the last governments Emissions Trading Scheme – despite the fact that it was working, and bringing money into the governments coffers – cut back funding to renewable energy resources, denigrated the benefits of wind farms, openly encouraged the opening of massive coal mines – recently stopped by the High Court after a massive public outcry – which not only threatened environmental vandalism, but endangered our Great Barrier Reef in the name of corporate greed, and at one stage just after their election threatened to decimate protected old growth forests in Tasmania! And what have they replaced this with? Well, renewable energy targets well below those proposed by other countries world-wide, carbon pricing that will be a burden to industry and the climate, and will in quick time do what they accuse the opposition of doing – increase the cost of living as businesses increase costs to cover the losses incurred by their policies. This is not policy with the environment or climate at it’s core, but policy designed to attack the opposition and hooefully gain favour with those who don’t really understand – or care – what it is all about! They have even nanaged ti take into account technologies that have not even come into being yet…if ever! If the government spent half as much time debating the issue of climate change as they did same sex marriage we may – though probably not – have seen some common sense prevail!

So, a week where we have seen our government pander to the climate change deniers, and deny their citizens the right to love whoever the like! Abbott is, beyond doubt, the worst and most destructive prime minister we have ever had in the political history of our country! His place in history will be as an example of stubborness and stupidity that is really unforgivable. His government is divided and seriously fractured by his need to impose his own morality and ideals upon those over which he governs. When his government fails, there will be no one left to blame but himself! And bring it on, I say! Bring it on!

Daily (Or When The Mood Takes Me) Gripe: Joe Hockey’s Baffled Aussies!

General Interest, Opinion Piece, Political, ,

i was going to write on this myself, but it would appear someone else has written and excellent FB post on Treasurer Joe Hockey’s vaffling comments on how to get inti the Australian housing market last week. She saved me a lot of research. 

Good on you Mel Wilson. Straight for the jugular, and armed with the stats he should have had!

Here is her FB post.

Dear Mr Hockey, Victorian mother Mel Wilson has something she would like to say to you…
Earlier this week, Joe Hockey, North Sydney MP and Treasurer of Australia said, “The starting point for a first home buyer is to get a good job that pays good money.” He added, “If housing was unaffordable in Sydney, people wouldn’t be buying.”
Mel Wilson is a 28 year old single mother from Wodonga with two children (aged two and five) and two part-time jobs in human resources. In a Facebook post that has already been shared over 24,000 times, Mel has written an open letter to Mr Hockey, articulating the thoughts of seething Aussies everywhere.
The letter is too brilliant not to share, so here it is in full:
Dear Joe,
I just wanted to touch base with you regarding your comment that young people are able to enter the property market if they just “get a good job that pays good money.”
I just wanted to ask you how one might go about this?

Are you going to be reviewing all the current Awards that are in place to ensure that most jobs pay “good money”?
Are you going to be creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs that, under your Awards, pay over $100,000 per year?
Apologies if I have missed this fantastic news, but as someone working in 2 senior HR roles, I believe I would have known about this so that I could pass the message on to some very tired, over qualified employees who currently fall under various Federal and State awards and are being paid between $18 to $25 per hour.
Are you aware of what the average Australian wage is?
Are you aware of what the average Australian mortgage in Sydney is?
Are you aware of the first-home buyer process?

Just in case these facts and figures aren’t available to you, I thought you might be interested.
The average weekly wage according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics on 1st January 2015 was $1,128.70, or $58,692.40 before tax. This means a take home amount of about $904.00 per week.
The median house price in Sydney, according to the Domain Group Housing Price Report, as of March 2015, was $914,056.
Not sure if you know how first home buying works at the moment, but you normally need a deposit of about 20%. This is to pay for the Stamp Duty (which is a State Tax you must pay every time you buy a property), and also to assist in the approval process so that you don’t need to pay Lenders Mortgage Insurance.
So in this instance, the first home buyer would need about $182,811.00 saved to purchase a house that is the average price in Sydney.
So to go out and get one of these “good jobs that pay good money” I assume these young people you speak of would need to go to university first.
On average, it takes about 3 -4 years to get a degree, so if a young person goes to University straight out of school, they can expect to finish their course and be ready for the workforce at about 21, with a HECS-HELP debt of over $20,000. To make this a bit easier for you to understand, let’s say there is a young person named Joe Junior who has done just this.
If Joe Junior is extremely lucky, and is up there with the best of the graduates from that course and that year, he will get a job straight out of University paying usually under the average wage.
However, lets just be extremely generous here and say that Joe Junior got a job and was on the national weekly take home wage of $904 per week.
Joe Junior needs to only save every single dollar worked for about 4 years to save his $182,811 deposit for their first home.
Thank you, Mr Hockey, for throwing in that $7,000 first home owner grant too – that meant Joe Junior could get into his first home 8 weeks earlier!
Just a quick side note, this example does not take into consideration the rising house prices, or Joe Junior’s HECS-HELP debt that he obtained from getting his degree to get one of your so-called “good jobs”.
Joe Junior is now 25 (not so junior anymore), has been living at home with his parents this entire time and has not been able to spend a single dollar on any bills, board or holidays or public transportation. He also can’t afford a car or petrol for a car but then again “poor people don’t drive cars”. Oh wait, Joe Junior isn’t a poor person – he has a “good job that pays good money.”
Luckily Joe Junior’s parents have been happy to drive their little Joe Junior to and from work every day and provide free housing, clothing, medical expenses and also provide the food for his breakfast, lunch and dinner each day.
So finally Joe Junior has saved his $182,811 deposit (of which only about half will go towards his mortgage due to the stamp duty cost), and can now purchase his first home, with a mortgage of about $822,650.00.
According to the Commonwealth Bank’s online mortgage estimator, the repayments for a mortgage of this amount are $1,073.00 per week over 30 years.
So hopefully Joe Junior’s average weekly wage of $904.00 has gone up enough to cover the cost of the mortgage.
Joe Junior has been applying for these “good jobs hat pay good money” that you speak of (I assume by “good money” you mean more than the average wage as you have just seen it is not even enough to cover the cost of the average house prices’ mortgage in Sydney), but hasn’t had any luck as yet. He needed to stay in the same job post university to demonstrate to the bank job stability so that he could purchase his first home. So he only has a degree, and experience in the one job, one industry, and there are just not that many jobs out there paying “good money.”
Joe Junior now also can’t wash his clothes, eat food, or get to and from work as he no longer lives with his parents, so getting one of these “good jobs” is even more difficult.
So Joe Senior, are you really aware of all the facts and figures when you says things like buying your first home is “readily affordable” to young people?
Just slightly confused as to what you were thinking when you said these words at the media conference in Sydney.
Looking forward to another one of your politically correct, direct and well thought out responses.
Regards,
Another baffled Australian
http://www.mamamia.com.au/news/a-working-mum-delivers-a-glorious-smackdown-to-joe-hockey-on-house-prices/
Tim Alderman

Repost.

Political Commentary: The Politics of Execution

General Interest, Opinion Piece, Political, , ,
execution
ˌɛksɪˈkjuːʃ(ə)n/
noun
  1. 1. 
    the carrying out of a plan, order, or course of action.
    “he was fascinated by the entire operation and its execution”
    synonyms: implementation, carrying out, accomplishment, performance, effecting, bringing off, bringing about, achievement, carrying off, carrying through, completion, enactment, enforcement, discharge, prosecution, engineering, attainment, realization, fulfilment; 

    perpetration
    “the execution of the plan”




  2. 2. 
    the carrying out of a sentence of death on a condemned person.
    “the execution of juveniles is prohibited by international law”
    synonyms: capital punishment, the death penalty, being put to death, killing; 

    the gibbet, the gallows, the noose, the rope, the scaffold, the guillotine, the firing squad; 
    the (electric) chair; 
    informalthe drop; 
    informalnecktie party; 
    historicalnoyade


It is a word that disgusts me. In fact, capital punishment of any description disgusts me.

Our two Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were transferred from Kerobokan prison to Nusakambangan island, in a wave of world punlicity yesterday morning,  where they are to be executed by firing squad. There is a huge amount of controversy surrounding these two men, so I will add my two dents worth. But my personal feelings can ge summed ip in a very simple statement – executing people achieves absolutely nothing! (http://www.eaplstudent.com/publications/controversies/does-the-death-penalty-reduce-crime).
And so now, just to prove how absolutely sadistic they are, the conjrctured carrying out of this execution this coming weekend, has been changed yet again with the statement from President Joko Widodo this morning that they might be waiting there on “Execution Island” for yet another week or more! Now try telling me that these two unfortunate men are not being used as a political football! Seems the Indonesian government and “judiciary” want to see just how much begging we will do! 

By no stretch of the imagination can it be ssid thst these two men have had a fair go through the Indonesian judicial system. There was a feeling right from the word go,10 years ago, that evetything involving their trial and sentencing was already preordained. The whole appeal process – if it can be called that – is no better. It would appear that the law is filtered to suit the occasion. They never really stood a chance in the face of stubborn, retaliatory sadism.

There is no denying their crimes. And the societal requirement to punish is justified. They have been in prison in Indonesia for 10 yesrs now, and in any  country where prison terms are the sentence of the court, they would probably be due for release,mor at least paroled. The true grist of this story is not about sentencing but the imposition of a sentence that in any civilised country – disregarding some backward stares in America – is unacceptable.

If the true conclusion of imprisonment is reform and rehabilitation, then the sentence imposed by the Indonesian court has achieved that aim. It could be said – though there is no way we are going to find out – that upon release these rwo men could toddle off to totally accepted and fulfilled lives as beneficial members of society! This being the outcome of their sentence, the question has to be asked – why are they being executed! It is supposedly to set an example – now on the world stage – of what happens when you break the law on this tiny group of islands caloed Indonesia. We tiny islands with big boot! Well, it doesn’t work that way! 

Amnesty International state that there are 5 reasons for abolishing the death penalty:

1. You can’t take it back

The death penalty is irreversible. Absolute judgments may lead to people paying for crimes they did not commit. Texas man Cameron Todd Willingham, for example, was found innocent after his 2004 execution.

2. It doesn’t deter criminals

In fact, evidence startlingly reveals the opposite! Twenty seven years after abolishing the death penalty, Canada saw a 44 per cent drop in murders across the country. And it wasn’t alone.

3. There’s no ‘humane’ way to kill

The 2006 execution of Angel Nieves Diaz, by a so-called ‘humane’ lethal injection, took 34 minutes and required two doses. Other methods of execution used around the world include hanging, shooting and beheading. The nature of these deaths only continues to perpetuate the cycle of violence and does not alleviate the pain already suffered by the victims’ family.

4. It makes a public spectacle of an individual’s death

Executions are often undertaken in an extremely public manner, with public hangings in Iran or live broadcasts of lethal injections in the US.

5. The death penalty is disappearing

Out of 198 countries around the world only 21 continue to use capital punishment. And while countries that carried out executions in 2011 did so at an alarming rate, those employing capital punishment have decreased by more than a third in the last decade. With this clear downward trend, public pressure may help persuade the world’s biggest executors China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the USA to stop.

There are countless arguments for and against the death penalty. In an imperfect world where we can never be sure we have ever got the “worst of the worst” is it ever justified to take a life?

And the answer to that question is……no!

I was watching one of many series I watch on Foxtel, called “The Killing”, which ended by someone – not totally proven guilty – being execured by hanging. Despite knowing it is acted, the whole process was very realistically acted, and quite heart-rending. There are actually people there to witness it happening, and one would think that after withessing such a horrific and barbaric act, one would become a strong advocate against the death penalty. 

If Indonesia think they are big-noting themselves on the world stage, well they are…but not in the right way. They could have exonerated these rwo men, saved their parents and loved ones a world of grief. Indonesia could join the civilised world and eliminate this dreadful punishment all togethet! There is more admiration for humanitarianism than barbarism! After 10 years of imprisonment, there would be a lot less controversy by paroling and releasing them, then alliwing them voluntary access to the prison to continue the rehabilitation programs that they themselves have set in place. Not only would this be seen as just and humane, it would be of continuing benefit to other prisoners.

Much has been said about how they are drug traffickers, and deserve this penalty as it will save lives. What a load of bullshit that is. These two deaths, along with a string of others caught for the same crime in IIndonesia, is not going to save one single, solitary life! A drug addict is a drug addict, and what they can’t get from one person they will get from another! End of story! Perhaps Indonesia needs to look in its own backyard first!

The world is holding its greath, and this is just what Indonesia wants! The end of this story is, I think, inevitable. I would love to be proven wrong!

Tim Alderman

(C) 2015

PS for anyone interested to read a history of capital punushment (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/execution/readings/history.html), and a further interesting article on why the death oenalty is slowly dying in America after a botched lethal injection (http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/execution-of-clayton-lockett-and-the-flaws-of-lethal-injection-a-992359.html).

  1.