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MELBOURNE’S 10 terrorism suspects are spending Christmas in solitary confinement, dressed in “Guantanamo Bay orange” and banned from touching their loved ones.
With about 23,000 prisoners in gaol over Christmas, some of whom are incarcerated for victimless crimes, I am less than sympathetic about a brace of potential mass murderers being deprived of liberty in a society where they were planning to deprive people of their lives.
I just wonder why the Age feels a need to take on the roll as witness for the defence.
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Ignorance is bliss…. Like you I hate it when I’m told the truth which I did not want to hear…. At least Bush is now listening to some truth with respect to Iraq !
Democracy will come to Iraq. What are you going to say then? Will Bush still be wrong?
Did it come to Vietnam Kev…. was the war there justified ?
Yes. Trying to stop the communists invading a country where they invariably murder their new and unwilling citizens, subject them to a lifetime of abject poverty, reducation/death camps and then put them in ‘lockdown’ for decades so they can’t even see or hear of freedoms is always justified.
Did democracy get there? No. But LBJ’s reluctance to actually fight the war in fear of USSR and China entering and starting a third World War coupled with the media’s support of the anti-war movement and the communists generally precluded a reaonable outcome.
However, there is hope. Last Dec when I was there, signs of Vietnam coming out of lockdown were everywhere.
Gee wiz…. I guess those nasty Vietnamese weren’t all bad. They stopped Pol Pot didn’t they. I dont recall the US helping the poor Cambodians….
“Invariably Murder ????”…. I suspect thats a generalisation again Kev, though people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones…. by the way, you looked at my lawyer response ???
No, it’s not a generalization. Read some more on Stalin, Mao Tse Dung, Castro, Kim Jong II et all. Vietnam is no different. Of course I only know that from having visited and talked to the people and observed what was going on – twice. In the absence of a liberal arts degree I can only use my life-experences to form opinions.
And now Vietnam is a Tiger economy…. did it all alone without US help. Amazing, dont you think. Imagine if Ho Chi Min had ruled from the start. The new Singapore I’d imagine
What’s amazing is you believe it.
From the mouths and writings of US/Aust and local entrepeneurs during my 2005 visit to Vietnam.
Post invasion…murder teachers, army officers, public servants…send the troops, bar girls and lesser people to re-education camps…more murder but not total.
Welcome USSR officialy. They’ve been there for years but it had to be a peasant against the mighty US giant type of victory so mums the word on modern Chicom and USSR weaponry. USSR of course, were only interested in a warm water port and in selling Vietnam shoddy factories. They disassemble these in the USSR somewhere and re-erected them in Vietnam. There is such a monolith, and now, a memorial to communist stupidity, at Vung Tau. Fenced in to keep out prying eyes it is a huge factory sold for some 200 million dollars and sits there rusting quietly. It never produced a single washer.
Move into 20 years of lockdown but forced to admit failure after peope dying of starvation and economy laughable. Accept some foreign capital investment but always after bribes and stupifying typical communist bureacracy…projects fail. Accept some foreign investment and foreign management but always with bribery, stupifying bureacracy and a Commisar in charge…projects fail. Early 2000’s recognize, (not publically of course), that capitalism actually works and reach agreement with foreign, (read US, Aust,and European investors), that they themselves are not up to managing anything and at long last welcome foreign investment managed by foreigners and Viola…things start working.
So yep, I guess you are sort of right. It wasn’t the US that brought them out of their vacuum, it was capitalism.
Tiger economy…definitely not yet but things do look better.
If Ho Chi Minh had ruled from the start the lockdown and subsequent poverty and total absence of any rights or freedoms whatsoever would have dated from the fifties and simply would have lasted longer.
I understand that when Ho Chi Minh went to the US asking for help to be rid of the French, he was sent away with nothing…. and then he became a commie… true ??
Though your right. Capitalism has bought Vietnam a future. Just a shame the US chose not to help the country for so many years. Bitterness…???? Who knows…
Kev – What was your assesment of the South Vietnamese Government. Were they corrupt ? Did they play a role in the descruction of their country ?
I admit my knowledge on Vietnam is lacking. Kev is far more in tune with the country. Sure I’ve been there, but never shot at the locals as Kev did (or I presume Kev did). I do wonder though, if the US had not invaded, and bombed and killed and Napalmed, how would the country be today. Do you ever wonder Kev ?
No. Ho was a founding member of the French Communist Party in 1920. He did get help from the US to fight the Japs but didn’t look for it to fight France. By then he was a part of the communist problem.
Ah, the old Sth Vietnam is corrupt and therefore shoudn’t be supported routine. Yes, they were corrupt and this would’ve contributed to their downfall. But, there are degrees of corruption…there are no degrees of communism.
No. I never wonder. I move on but the US didn’t invade and they targeted communist troops when they bombed and napalmed. And before you claim they also bombed civilians fly a sortie through a war zone with 60’s technology before you blame the pilot for errors.
If we had never gone there the country wouldv’e been communist from the early 60s and although there seems to be a huge gap in peoples knowledge of just how bad the communists were, I can assure you the country would be worse off now. If communism had prevailed in the 15 years from say, 1960 through to 1975 when the USSR was at it’s peak of paranoia then I wouldn’t give a non-communist national a snowballs chance in hell of surviving.