Abu Bakar Bashir is the
jailed spiritual leader of the south-east Asian terror network responsible for
the Bali bombings that killed 88 Australians. He is currently serving a jail
term on unrelated terror matters and is expected to be released in the near future
to continue his wicked work.
He recently gave his
support to the ISIS in front of members of the terrorist group, Jama’ah
Anshorut Tauhid (JAT) who came to visit him and they quickly spread his
hallowed word to Indonesian extremist groups via social media.
Yet two stupid
Australians are due to face the firing squad over drug offences.
I guess I have a foot in both Left and Right camps because I find State
sanctioned murder as equally abhorrent as abortion. Capital punishment is so
final, so irretrievable, it assumes an infallible justice system when US
executions have too often been proved, using DNA evidence, to have been carried
out on innocents. Yet there are no pangs of guilt.
When Victorian Premier Henry Bolte joyously pulled the lever that sent
Ronald Ryan to his death, to Sir Henry’s dismay the practice of capital
punishment in Australia died with him.
I recall at the time the Press was angrily against Bolte. “The
Age”, “The Herald” and “The Sun” all ran campaigns against
executing Ryan. Bolte had privately pressured “The Age” to soften its
editorials but those were the days when “The Age” was a vibrant, responsible
journal with influence and managing director Ranald McDonald and editor Graham
Perkin steadfastly resisted the pressure.
But Sir Frank Packer folded and he pulped an entire issue of the
Bulletin because of an anti-hanging cartoon by the brilliant Les Tanner.
Capital punishment is rooted in religion and belongs with stone-age
Islamic Shariah Law and Biblical Mosaic Law which specifies 36 various
“offences” that carry the death penalty with provisions for execution by
stoning, burning, decapitation and strangulation.
The hangman is masked, one member of every firing squad shoots a blank,
lethal injections are automated, levers, time clocks and switches disguise
human involvement... and yet we are not ashamed? Like hell we are not!
Pope John Paul II before his death approved changes to the Catholic
Catechism in 1997 stating that: “Assuming that the guilty party's identity and
responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the
Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only
possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust
aggressor.”
As Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott said, “It is not our place to
intervene publicly when the Indonesians or even when the Americans decide to
execute their own.” Whether it’s “their own” or “ours”, it’s philosophically
either right or wrong and Abbott betrays any conviction he might have had with two
bob each way.
Of thousands we have executed just how many were innocent we will never
know and how many dismembered embryos in bloody buckets were future astronauts,
artists, inventors or heart surgeons we will also never know.
Surely we have evolved past the death penalty and the macabre edicts of
both Moses and Mohammed?
Pickering Post
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