Bali was God's will: Bashir
Let us hope that the release of this hateful, venomous hypocrite who applauds killing innocents while proclaiming the virtues of a religion does not damage the fragile relations between Indonesia and Australia. It is worth repeating, given the emotions being stirred at present, that most Indonesians - and most Muslims - find the rantings of Bashir as disgusting as will the relatives of those who died in Bali.
Prime Minister Howard is applying the right kinds of pressures with respect to Bashir but sending out confusing signals with the proposal to process asylum seekers offshore.
We need to find the right balance - to recognise the difficulties President Yudhoyono faces - but to be an independent voice of reason that does not display Keatingesque subservient adulation.
Friday, June 16, 2006
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3 comments:
I think I must one of the few that disagree, but I think it isn't the right kind of pressure at all.
As far as I'm aware, the evidence against Bashir was extremely flimsy. He should therefore be let out -- in fact perhaps never jailed, unless you support the corruption of the Indonesian legal system for people that Australians don't happen to like with no real evidence. Therefore John Howard is pressuring Indonesia into corruption, which is hardly what they need.
There a nutters everywhere -- the best solution would be to ignore their ranting.
Nutters generally are not teachers who instruct their 2000 students to kill infidels. The evidence was not flimsy - this guy should have gone to jail and staid there.
Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest. But even our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing, with powers so disposed, in order to give trade a stable course, to define the rights of our merchants, and to enable the government to support them, conventional rules of intercourse, the best that present circumstances and mutual opinion will permit, but temporary, and liable to be from time to time abandoned or varied, as experience and circumstances shall dictate; constantly keeping in view, that it is folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors from another; that it must pay with a portion of its independence for whatever it may accept under that character; that, by such acceptance, it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favors, and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion, which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.
- George Washington, 17 September 1796 (emphases mine)
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