It’s reasonable to ask now that Sarah Ferguson be arrested for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. She confronted a suspect the police had been ‘monitoring’, accused him, upbraided him, harassed and pursued him, and gave him time to make arrangements to flee the country and vanish overseas. She should be put in gaol for this, and our laws adjusted to prevent this hectic hyperbolic vigilantist prurience recurring ever again on our shores.
That being said, some words might also be said in praise of Captain Emad. Though motivated by base gain, he saves lives, and children’s souls, from tyranny. None of the Australian citizens he got here on dodgy boats think ill of him. He is their saviour. Children who might have been criminalised or used as whores in ‘detention facilities’, ill-educated, maddened and soiled of soul or dead by now of disease or drugs, are going to good schools in Australia, planning useful careers and fruitful marriages, and Captain Emad and his sinister unseen cronies are to be thanked for that. We may think of these smuggled children as Emad’s Victims, but they do not.
Sometimes human happiness needs a swindler or two to bring it about. Oskar Schindler, who harassed and seduced his female Jewish slaves, or some of them, and made millions out of a subject people’s forced labour, is nonetheless a hero too. Unless we accept that complexity we have no moral sense; or else, like Scott Morrison, no philosophical intelligence.
Discuss.
Name:
“To represent these smugglers as heroes or modern-day Oskar Schindlers is misplaced and naive,” Sarah Ferguson told The Daily Telegraph.
“Sarah Ferguson told radio 2GB: “Smugglers who come here (learn fast) how do you bludge best, how do you get everything you can get out of the Australian system.”
I guess collecting shopping trolleys is not as lucrative a business as people smuggling. I’m sure we’ll hear more from resourceful Capt’n Emad when he flies back into the country.
Neither is teaching disabled children, or night nursing.
Your point being?
The much demonised Abdul Kadem did no more than translate for other refugees in Indonesia after being robbed and needing passage for himself and his kids.
When Ferguson found him in 2010 he had a very good personal reason for being in Indonesia and it had nothing to do with any criminal behaviour.
This man was brutalised and tortured by Australia and is a victim.
The AFP on the other hand allowed 108 refugees to drown so they didn’t expose their spy and the AFP had a spy working with Abu Quessay to kill 353 people.
Out of all those people we demonised as smugglers they saved 11,000 men, women and kids and none drowned until we set up Howard’s vicious blockade.
The man in this story arrived as a refugee and left as an Australian resident terrorised by a dingbat journalist.
The bitch never said a word to poor Abdul Kadem and when I chided Matt Brown about his stupidity his only question was how much profit does he think should be made, as if anyone gives a damn.
I assume that you object to protesters referring to Julia Gillard as a bitch. Am I wrong? If not, why do you refer to Ferguson as a bitch?
What about the destruction that occurs along the way Bob? Those who die on the boats, those who lose lives in the criminal struggle to run the people smuggling business? Those who are sold into prostitution and/or bonded labour?
Should we glorify Emad for perpetuating this?
Are you saying that freedom should have a price? Emad’s smuggling business is a user pays system where freedom goes to the highest bidder. Emad is the ultimate capitalist, praying on the desperate and needy.
Is what you are really saying that you support capitalism and that the end justifies the means?
Correct me if I am wrong Bob, but this seems to be at odds with other things you have said to me.
Please confirm or deny whether you are a closet capitalist? Have you been employed by the economic rationalists to take down the Left from the inside?
Is your capitalist stipend/retainer how you afford Palm Beach?
In our ‘struggle for freedom’ in Iraq two million people died including a million children.
Do you think this struggle was worth it, or not?
The Arafura Drowned are under a thousand, the saved above thirty thousand.
How does that compare with Iraq?
I really, really don’t like you.
Stay out of my way.
Bob we are on the same side of the fence, you just cant see it.
I am here to keep you honest. What you don’t like about me is that I am in fact doing that.
I dont think I raised Iraq anywhere on this website so I dont see why I am being put to test on it. In any event, its not a war that I support. [Nb: Unlike yourself I am not an ideologue wedded to the policies of my particular side of politics and do engage each issue with rational thought]
On your comments on the drowned. Can I take it that you dont regard those thousand lives as important?
Once again, you are suggesting that the end justifies the means. Are you in fact part of the Jesuit Illuminati?
First you call for Sarah Ferguson to be arrested for breaking the law, then you call for the laws to be changed.
Which is it Bob? Did she break the law, or just the law you wish existed? Make up your mind.
I wanted more laws for her to break and go to gaol for. To go to gaol for a longer time.
Sarah Ferguson. Gaol. A longer time.
All clear now?
Not really.
‘She should be put in gaol for this, and our laws adjusted to prevent…recurring ever again…’ etc.
Now to me, this clearly implies that the law as it currently stands is not enough to actually convict her of anything, that you need it to be changed in order for such a thing to happen at all (regardless of the length of time).
Another question, if I may: You’re square in the ‘Craig Thomson is innocent’ camp. You and others among his defenders cite the fact that he has not been charged, presumption of innocence, etc etc etc.
Why do these concepts not apply to Sarah Ferguson? Why are you so quick to condemn her and insist she should be jailed?
Especially when there is no indication that the police are even thinking about laying the charges you are calling for?
Well put. You echo my thoughts.
I think this is called the double standards of the Left. To be fair, the ideologues of the Right have a similar lack of consistency.
Because what she did is up on film, and it constitutes harassment, entrapment, blackmail and scandalous libel.
There is no film of Craig doing anything.
Next question?
Wow. Do you have any idea what blackmail, entrapment and libel actually are Bob?
Lets see.
Explain how she blackmailed this man. Explain how she entrapped him. Explain how she libeled him.
Specifics.
Even your accusation of harrasment requires far more serious actions than this to be a crime.
And there’s evidence for the Thomson case as well, even if you choose to believe it’s all been faked. It doesn’t have to be on tape to be believeable.
You are a very unpleasant fellow and you will be banned soon, not for your politics but for the lies, the deliberate, malicious, barefaced lies you repeat and invent.
As to Sarah Ferguson:
Let us imagine you are in a shopping mall in Malaysia. And you look up, and you see a Malaysian woman coming at you with two television cameras. Let us imagine that, speaking in crisp Malaysian, she accuses you of running a drug ring, whose penalty in that country is to be hanged by the neck until you are dead. Let us imagine you tell her that you do not want to talk to her, and she comes after you, offering not to broadcast what she is filming if you tell her the names of your associates. Let us imagine she does not say, ‘You have the right to remain silent’, nor advise you to call a lawyer. She just comes after you, threatening your life, your family, your future.
What does that all add up to? Well, it’s harassment. It’s entrapment. It’s blackmail. It’s defamation. It’s libel. And it’s what Sarah Ferguson did to Captain Emad.
You have called me dishonest. You have called me, knowing the variety of my beliefs (monarchist, anti-Zionist, Katterite, conservationist, humanist, atheist, social democrat, Assangist, pro-life, anti-hanging, anti-divorce, pro-Brown, pro-Howes, pro-Carr) an unyielding ideologue. You have called me a capitalist, preying on the desperate and the needy though I have written a book called The Capitalism Delusion and given money and shelter to boat people. Those are lies, and you know them to be lies, and yet you tell them, and you tell them here.
I will allow you a week to reply to this, and then ban you for life.
Argument is fine. Dissenting, heretical, obscene opinion is fine.
Lies I will not print.
Bob, the number of replies to this thread is such that the space to write in is now very narrow.
I will post my response at the bottom of the page.
I want Sarah Ferguson to go to jail for demonising an inncent man, a man who came here merely as a refugee and was forced to flee from her mania.
How was he a refugee Mailyn? He was living comfortably in Kuala Lumpur before. So what hardship was he fleeing? Why did he need to seek asylum?
There are thousands of geniune refugees in camps all around the word waiting for a chance to come here. Explain how this man is more deserving than any of those people.
You cannot argue with this person, Shadow. It is not worth the effort.
Perhaps, but I do so enjoy exposing her lies and hypocricy.
Slow down Shadow. He doesn’t need to be more deserving, just needs to meet the criteria for refugee status. Please don’t turn potentially interesting discussions into an emotive ‘Won’t somebody think of the children’ style rant.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/haneef-lessons-must-be-heeded-20120608-20137.html
Well who said he was living comfortably in Kuala Lumpur? Sarah bloody Ferguson? Did she see him in KL, did she interview him,talk to him?
If he was comfortable in KL how could he also be working in Indonesia.
He is not a smuggler for the simple frigging reason that refugees do not have to be smuggled to Äustralia because they come to get protection and that is legal.
Perhaps Ämanda Vanstone might convince you oiks.
Thursday, 10 February 2000 SENATE—Legislation L&C 205
Senator McKIERNAN—I am talking particularly about the boat people. They are the
people who arrive on our shores – mainly on Ashmore Islands – and who put their hands up
and say, ‘Find me, find me!Take me in.’ They do not use these exact words, but they want to
be found. These are not people who are escaping the scrutiny of our Coast Watch people.
Senator Vanstone—Senator, I cannot resist!Perhaps you could tell Mr Beazley that so he
does not keep raving on about this silly idea that we need a Coast Guard to locate the people.
You at least realise that they want to be found; it would be helpful if your party realised that
as well.”
Or how about the judges in this country since 2000?
TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS
AT DARWIN ON WEDNESDAY 14 MARCH 2001 AT 12.30 PM
Continued from 12/3/2001
As has been observed in relation to other cases of this kind, the prisoners were not involved in a ‘people-smuggling’ exercise. There was nothing covert about either operation. They were transporting the non-citizens to Australia for presentation to Australian authorities. There was no attempt to hide from the authorities or to disguise what they had done.
Thanks for that Marilyn. Sometimes your good posts are lost in the invective; this one is excellent.
On another note has anyone noted that Kathy Jackson melted down in court today sacking all her lawyers, telling the judge to sack himself and claiming the administrator was an
ALP stooge – as distinct one supposed from all the liberal party stooges she has been relying on.
I wonder if she likes the heat in the kitchen that she has created.
Why am I not surprised?!?
Good one Marilyn.
What says quality journalism better than ACA style car park confrontations and though door crack interviews with unwitting relatives?
I spose’ it won’t be long till the said journalist is chasing down shonky fridge repairmen and the like.
Exactly William.
Allow me to repeat something I said more cryptically yesterday in another thread. Could the blundering reporter have exposed an informer, rendering him useless to the AFP. That would account for his being allowed to leave the country.
Calm down Bob. You’ll burst a vein.
First things first.
“You have called me a capitalist, preying on the desperate and the needy”
I have done no such thing. I defy you to prove where I have. Either you’re imagining things or you’re confusing me with someone else. I expect a full apology.
Now back to my point.
Entrapment is the act of deliberately encouraging someone to commit a crime so you can then punish them. More specifically it is conduct that can *only* be engaged in by a law enforcement official capable of arranging such punishment. Sarah Ferguson qualifies on neither front. So that’s Entrapment off the list.
Libel is spreading lies designed to destroy a mans reputation. In your opening post you freely admit that this man did indeed do the things he’s accused of (namely arrange passage for numerous refugees to Australia). You then say he is considered a hero for this. So in your view, where are the lies and the loss of attenndant reputation? Goodbye Libel.
Blackmail. Her behaviour is no more blackmail than when a criminal is granted lighter punishment for providing further information on other more important criminals. Scratch blackmail.
Finally harrassment. This requires a constant pattern of unwanted attention which eventually falls under our stalking laws. If chasing someone for an interview consituted criminal harassment, half of our media would be locked up right now. So we can dismiss that too.
Bob, I sincerely believe that your own views regarding the subject matter of the interview are colouring your judgement. Your desire to see Ferguson punished for daring to put the interview to air, has you imagining all the various ways you think she should be guilty. But none of the laws you cite work the way you think they do. This will be borne out when no charges are laid.
Now I Iike to use my posts to simply point out these sorts of errors to you. Otherwise we would simply have yourself and people like Marilyn constantly reinforcing each others view of the world.
If you truly feel threatened by a differing perspective, go ahead and ban me by all means. No skin off my nose, I’ve got places to go that offer far more robust discussion.
It’s up to you Bob. Is this blog a place only for those who agree with you or not?
So a private investigator cannot entrap anyone? This is a lie. A single incident of harassment, as in sexual harassment, is not harassment? This will come as news to Christy Fraser-Kirk. And Ferguson, in calling a criminal deserving of twenty three years in gaol a man whom the authorities let leave the country and won’t ask to return has not libelled him? These are lies. These are amazing lies.
It now turns out that the man who shopped Emad is notoriously unreliable. And you find no fault in Ferguson for confronting him with these untruths and driving him out of the country? Wow.
By reading carefully you will find I have erased no word of yours yet. So saying I print only those who agree with me is a lie as well.
What a liar you are. What a liar.
Sixty-four million years.
Dont think so. You’re falling apart Bob
Philosophical Intelligence :
An interesting concept, Bob. A senior ex-politician friend of mine thinks that Morrison is a better man than appears to be the case, since he is a protege of Bruce Baird.
I have had several “discussions” with him about Morrison’s deficiencies. His view is that Abbott has sold him a hospital pass, to derail a potential rival for leadership. That is a tried and true strategy in the Liberal Party, from Menzies sabotage of Hasluck, Spender and Barwick on to more recent times, with the left-leaning ministers under Howard given difficult portfolios.
Morrison seems to me to be willing to spout all sorts of nonsense playing to the redneck constituency. Theoretically, he may show his true colours once ensconced as the Minister for Immigration (perish the thought).
I’d rather not take any of the Opposition front bench on trust, certainly not when it seems to me that man for man and woman for woman that Labor’s ministry is far superior to the alternatives.
No Morrison is a redneck taking his advice from Philip Ruddock.
Perhaps he needs to be reminded that Ruddock authorised the payment of $250,000 to an Iraqi who worked with Äbu Quessay and the AFP when 353 people drowned.
Now it’s time to watch MABO.
What an amazing film MABO was, crying my eyes out.