To: Mike Rann, Premier of South Australia
Re: Singapore's murder of Van Nguyen
Mr Rann,
If you are correctly quoted by the ABC, you believe that "Van Nguyen is not Florence Nightingale, Van Nguyen is one of a number of people who want to peddle death to our young people and make money out of it and it doesn't come much lower than that."
Your response is sadly inadequate, and ignorant. For a start, there is the well-documented fact that Mr. Nguyen wished to save his brother from drug criminals (whom the Victorian police have managed to cast a blind eye to, in their usual, fraternal fashion). Then, we also know that Mr. Nguyen was not creating a demand, and he was not forcing anyone to take the drugs; he was abetting a trade that, however unfortunate, is a fact of life in Australia, as elsewhere, due to the constant and almost unwavering demand and appetite for illicit drugs, as for excessive indulgence in legal ones (abetted enthusiastically by legal providers).
The fact that “young people” take the drugs with sometimes dire consequences is obvious, but Mr. Nguyen clearly was not intent on harming “young people.” In the case of heroin, “anyone” is, you should note, generally a middle-class, 30-45-year-old suburbanite, with money. By saying he was willing to “peddle death to our young people,” you are melodramatizing, either through ignorance or a desire to peddle righteousness to your possible voters - and that is pretty low.
For you to say that Mr. Nguyen intended to “make money out of it” is inexcusable, because you must know what he was trying to do: not to make money for himself, but to recoup his brother’s unfortunate indebtedness. Haven’t you been reading the newspapers? This is what “extenuating circumstances” are.
Or perhaps your statement is clouded by emotionalism and spectacularism that you, as your state’s elected leader, would do well to hold better in check.
Most unfortunate is that your statement grants validity to Singapore’s intended actions. When you say: "If they aren't aware of what the laws are now then they must be living in some other planet," you allow, in effect, that Singapore’s draconian death-penalty laws have some kind of validity simply because they exist and are inflicted on Singapore’s population by the tyrants who run the place. Singapore’s governors primary concern, it is obvious, is to traumatize and terrorize its population into submission, a goal it has ably pursued for decades, to the point that most Singaporeans have become complacent and compliant about the slaughter of their own citizens by this regime.
I’d suggest that you ponder the realpolitik of Singapore before you jeopardize those judged to have breached the overpunished crimes written into the country’s grotesque criminal-justice system.
That, ideally, would kickstart you into recalling that, before you and your other peddlers of right-wing expediency rose to power, Labor was intent not on selling out to capital and to power, but on treating people humanely.
Sincerely,
Re: Singapore's murder of Van Nguyen
Mr Rann,
If you are correctly quoted by the ABC, you believe that "Van Nguyen is not Florence Nightingale, Van Nguyen is one of a number of people who want to peddle death to our young people and make money out of it and it doesn't come much lower than that."
Your response is sadly inadequate, and ignorant. For a start, there is the well-documented fact that Mr. Nguyen wished to save his brother from drug criminals (whom the Victorian police have managed to cast a blind eye to, in their usual, fraternal fashion). Then, we also know that Mr. Nguyen was not creating a demand, and he was not forcing anyone to take the drugs; he was abetting a trade that, however unfortunate, is a fact of life in Australia, as elsewhere, due to the constant and almost unwavering demand and appetite for illicit drugs, as for excessive indulgence in legal ones (abetted enthusiastically by legal providers).
The fact that “young people” take the drugs with sometimes dire consequences is obvious, but Mr. Nguyen clearly was not intent on harming “young people.” In the case of heroin, “anyone” is, you should note, generally a middle-class, 30-45-year-old suburbanite, with money. By saying he was willing to “peddle death to our young people,” you are melodramatizing, either through ignorance or a desire to peddle righteousness to your possible voters - and that is pretty low.
For you to say that Mr. Nguyen intended to “make money out of it” is inexcusable, because you must know what he was trying to do: not to make money for himself, but to recoup his brother’s unfortunate indebtedness. Haven’t you been reading the newspapers? This is what “extenuating circumstances” are.
Or perhaps your statement is clouded by emotionalism and spectacularism that you, as your state’s elected leader, would do well to hold better in check.
Most unfortunate is that your statement grants validity to Singapore’s intended actions. When you say: "If they aren't aware of what the laws are now then they must be living in some other planet," you allow, in effect, that Singapore’s draconian death-penalty laws have some kind of validity simply because they exist and are inflicted on Singapore’s population by the tyrants who run the place. Singapore’s governors primary concern, it is obvious, is to traumatize and terrorize its population into submission, a goal it has ably pursued for decades, to the point that most Singaporeans have become complacent and compliant about the slaughter of their own citizens by this regime.
I’d suggest that you ponder the realpolitik of Singapore before you jeopardize those judged to have breached the overpunished crimes written into the country’s grotesque criminal-justice system.
That, ideally, would kickstart you into recalling that, before you and your other peddlers of right-wing expediency rose to power, Labor was intent not on selling out to capital and to power, but on treating people humanely.
Sincerely,
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