The constant gardener.

Editor's note: I guess this post is kinda late seeing as it's already past the 2nd of December, but no harm posting it anyhow. Personally, I'm glad it's over and done with. I'll give it, oh, another month or so for it to settle down and be forgotten, before another bleeding heart case dominates the news.

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The whole hooha over the Nguyen trafficking case is nuts. There is absolutely no evidence to prove that he isn't guilty, and all that Australia is riding on in their clemency appeal is their repeated mantra that "execution by hanging is repugnant". So they'd cease to create a ruckus if he were executed in any other way? If Nguyen were somehow indeed spared, do they expect him to be shipped back home so he can be hailed a hero for1. not only being the first person in history ever to evade the death penalty in Singapore, but also 2. his valiant attempts to pay off his twin's debts?

Singapore should be listening to Australia's pleas because the countries were good friends, Mr Beazley said.

"There has been a sort of disjunction between the seriousness with which this is regarded here and the seriousness with which it's regarded in Singapore," he said.

"I am surprised by the insistence of Singapore in this regard. This is a chink in their armour, it's a strange behaviour and basically there needs to be recognition, which we have go to help them with, that this is cruel and unusual punishment for the offence that's been committed." Mr Lasry, who heads Nguyen's Melbourne legal team, revealed that he recently told Singapore's high commissioner in Canberra that the "regime" of the mandatory death penalty would have to change.

"They simply can't keep doing this to people," he said.

My only response to this is... Why the hell not? Australia's pleas for clemency on the grounds of basic human rights abuse and Nguyen’s "first time offence", while entirely rational in the contexts of conventionally ‘Western’ values, cannot be expected to apply to Singapore. The fundamental disparity between the two sets of Western-Asian values actively precludes that, and honestly, if you don't want to be subjected to such laws, don't bloody well be a drug mule.

Australia needs to 1. Make up its mind re: capital punishment (not too long back that the country celebrated over Bali bomber Amrozi's death penalty); 2. Separate fact from frenzy: The man is not a saint; and 3. Learn not to stick it's nose into the governing of other countries when it can't even properly handle its own.

Yeah, I'm pro-capital punishment. Surprise, surprise. Read the full articles here and here.

Oh, and how good is The Constant Gardener?!!

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You're gonna hate me when I tell you everything
You're gonna question whether you really know me at all
You will revisit every smile, and where it fit into the day
I know this is how it will play
And I try, oh I try to think of all the things
That I could do
To let you know that I love you

"Even So" - Rachael Yamagata