Friday 9 December, 2005

Blogworld 3

There was intense discussion this week of the wider political and ethical consequences if Nguyen Tuong Van hangs at Singapore's Changi prison next Friday. Andrew Bartlett wrote a comprehensive blog linking readers to others writers on the subject and hoped,'the outrage remains and spills over into stronger ongoing activity against the death penalty being carried out against anyone, not just Australians.' The Herald-Sun's Andrew Bolt put the case against lobbying for mercy by stating that it's Australians who are behaving like 'barbarians', not Singapore. 'What the citizens of Singapore must think of us, if they heard our raucous squealing, I blush to imagine. . . They could hardly think us civilised for sending out so many young traffickers -- and then oinking in outrage when our neighbours catch and punish them.'Bolt Watch a blog set up a year ago so that, 'Andrew Bolt's deranged polemic gets what’s coming to it' retaliated that `in Bolt's attack on MPs who have tried to obtain clemency for Nguyen, he blatantly, obviously, unmissably concentrates his attack on the ALP.' It took Darlene Sees Stars to bring us back to the human dimensions of this unfolding tragedy, 'The young drug trafficker condemned to death by hanging will not be able to hug his distraught mum and twin brother when they visit him today. . . While his crime was considerable and thus worthy of punishment, he and his family are surely entitled to one last embrace.'

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