I ask the Leader of the Opposition: Did you agree with John Howard when he wanted Mandela hanged? Did you tell him he was wrong? Why did you not tell him he was wrong? Did you sign any ‘Release Mandela’ petititions?
Did you in your years as a journalist write favourably of him? Did you write unfavourably of him? Did you write of him at all? Did you call him, in public or private utterance, a terrorist? Did you speak out against the Apartheid regime at any point before 1989, when you were thirty-one?
Did you speak well of him after that? When did you speak well of him? What took you so long?
Name:
Abbott will lie and spin his way out of all those questions. Not going to happen Bob.
What is not going to happen? The question?
Garrett told me it was.
Aren’t you banned for life?
Hopefully I’m not banned for life! I’m on your side Bob but even more left wing!!!
When did Howard want Mandela hanged. Where is your evidence?
That he has not denied it.
And his heroine, Thatcher, did.
And he spoke up frequently for the Apartheid regime.
Why has he not denied it?
The Apartheid regime did not hang him. If anything, your third point tells against your claim that Howard wanted him hanged.
Read it again, Winston. Howard spoke up for the Verwoerd - Vorster - Botha Apartheid regime.
In line with Thatcher.
Hang Howard.
No, no. Just give him his right place in the History Wars. He did this thing to a good man, like J Edgar Hoover did to Martin Luther King.
While we are about the history wars we could dig out all the judges prosecutors and police who were involved in persecuting homosexuals.
Teach people not to enforce bad laws…It will be said that no-one can tell ahead of time which laws will be considered “bad” by the future, but “when in doubt don’t persecute people” is a good rule.
Both?
Howard should be on trial in the Hague along with Bush and Blair over the illegal war against Iraq.
What he may have wanted for Mandela then or more recently is irrelevant, except to note he got it wrong all too often as do most of the rightists.
They may try to rewrite history, they usually do. “Facts are such inconvenient things” as John Adams pointed out.