D is for

DAVID Hicks who like the previous entry has also passed into seeming oblivion. And is probably quite glad of it.

Apology is as apology does

Two interesting questions about apologies hover around us. One is the apparently bizarres suggestion that David Hicks, having now served his sentence, should apologise for what he has done.
This might be nice, but it is hardly a legal requisite. Given the fact that there are also big questions about the nature of his internment any way, and no apology forthcoming from either American or Australian governments to him, then perhaps it should all be left well alone.
We also wonder about if and when the Rudd government will apologise to the stolen generations. I guess they will, and I suppose they will also pick their time.
Australia Day would seem opportune. We shall have to wait and see!

Not Wholly Innocent

It's not entirely possible to believe that David Hicks is in any way innocent of those crimes for which he has been imprisoned for the last six years. What it is also not possible to believe is that he is other than a foolish young man who got caught up in fanciful romp, which had quite serious consequences.
The young often do that. The idealising of Osama Bin Laden, which he was obviously given to who to him was 'lovely', was obvously misguided. Though I for one acknowledge that I know nothing about bin Laden other than what the press, intent on demonising him to the nth degree, have told me.
Hicks looks to me like many foolish young men I have known. Jaded by the world which (in his eyes) has betrayed the hopes of his childhood; he set off to throw in his lot with something that looked way out, that outlandishness being sufficient attraction to give his life some sense of purpose. Then he found that he was running with the big boys where perhaps he was ill-equipped to go, but being young and a man he no doubt had difficulty admitting any sense of poor judgement!!
And so, the whole sorry saga. It is difficult to believe that he is other than just a foolish man.
He has been the pawn of political players who have cared little for his welfare, and much for the political advantage that could be got out of him.

So when he is released from gaol tomorrow, there will be fluttering and posturing. He will, one hopes, sink into anonymity and get on with trying to be a bit more sensible. All of us who have been foolish young men, must recognise that we are not wholly innocent (pun of the day) either. Nor must we be naive about Hicks, but strewth (as we say in Oz) let's forget about him now!

What we pay you for?

I suppose politicians have a tricky and responsible job. Which is why we pay them a lot of money. So I am always a little disappointed when they fail to deliver. There is, sadly, not much to pick between both sides. Maybe that is because in the search for truth, justice and....well let's not get carried away....but maybe there are only a few limited answers.
We could at least expect that opposing parties might actually offer us some choice of policy, but they don't seem to.
So I am disappointed when:

• Both sides seem to be remarkably silent about the injustices in Immigration law
• Both sides capitulate to logging interests because there are critical votes at stake
• Neither side seems concerned about the obvious injustices done to Mohammad Haniff as they were about David Hicks
  
• Both sides accept the heresy of the 'free market' which dictates everything about economy

When will one side or other actually offer something that looks not just like pragmatism, but like hope and vision. If we can't have vision couldn't we have a little imagination instead of this wretched cynicism that you seem inten to dish up.
Isn't THAT what we actually are paying you for?

Terror nullius

No this is not about Mr Hicks (well not completely) it is as usual about the mountain of stuff that always seesm to o'erwhelm me close to big festivals.
Any way set my mind to thinking about this recurring terror. Yes, that is sometimes what it feels like. I remember one Holy Saturday afternoon where I just felt that it was not going to be possible to get everything ready to begin the Easter Celebration that evening, and indeed I felt in a state of collapse.
Since then I have realised that such terror is largely imaginary, and there is now a sense of when you get to sitting in the darkness on Maundy Thursday evening that it's all down hill from here.
That is one way of dealing with terror...and also realising that what we often name as "terror" is nothing of the sort. Panic, maybe. Faithlessness, perhaps. But mainly one just needs to get a life!
Did set me thinking about terror though.
There is the terror of people driving. I will have to drive the road there and back four times if I want to spend time with my family as well as be a priest. Others will be doing the same thing.
On that stretech there are black and red markers. Too many. Blacks mark the fatalities, and reds the injuries. They increase from month to month. One fear I have is that in a decade or so there will be no stretch of that oft-travelled rad where you cannot see one of these reminders.
Terror, too, because of the fragility of children. One girl a couple of years older than my youngest murdered in the last months, two kids the same age victims of men driving up and trying to grab them. What a terror this must be for them, and for their families.
The terror too of the wretched Tsunami. We don't suffer here, (even though we imagine we might...I live 300 metres above sea level) but the most delicate economies, like the Solomons have no fall back position.
Amidst all this, there is always (for me) a real terror about Good Friday. I often listen to Liszt's Stabat Mater and Passion Meditations. The music is terrifying...you can hear the nails.
For some elsewhere that terror is still a reality.

And there is a real sense of dawn on Easter Day when the terror of death broken open is a reality.This is I think a real terror, but a positive one. It scares us to death to think that things might not be as we think they are.

Twas ever so

In the way of these things, as Holy Week goes on for a priest almost everything seems to get subsumed by the events that the week relates to.
After 50+ years,I know this feeling well, and it is good to not fight it, indeed I rather enjoy giving in to the flow.
Events that are happening about us in this world begin to echo the events that took place in the life of Jesus. This is hardly surprising since the story has about it that sort of universal quality that is called "archetypal". That is it sets out and refers to eternal truths. We are quite familiar with this . And the Christian stories are not the only "archetypal" stories. They occur as legends and myths, and as the heroic stories of society. So we hear echoes, not just of religious stories but of universal truths.

So I am struck by the theme of 'injustice', and how powerful political leaders are often not free to do the right thing. Though Pilate was nobody's bunny, and was in almost every sense a total despot. We read how he listened to the charges about Jesus and simply said....these charges are trumped up :

Then the assembly rose as a body and brought Jesus before Pilate. They began to accuse him, saying, ‘We found this man perverting our nation, forbidding us to pay taxes to the emperor, and saying that he himself is the Messiah, a king.’ Then Pilate asked him, ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ He answered, ‘You say so.’ Then Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds, ‘I find no basis for an accusation against this man.’

This is how Luke's Gospel reads, and (as is so typical) he sends Jesus off to someone else, so that he won't be seen to do the wrong thing. But he is not allowed to do this.
This attitude looks very like the buck-passing that we have seen with Hicks. Nothing much to do with facts, a lot to do with pressure and political expediency.
Which is why we then read in the story:

‘Why, what evil has he done? I have found in him no ground for the sentence of death; I will therefore have him flogged and then release him.’ But they kept urgently demanding with loud shouts that he should be crucified; and their voices prevailed. So Pilate gave his verdict that their demand should be granted. He released the man they asked for, the one who had been put in prison for insurrection and murder, and he handed Jesus over as they wished.

That is, Pilate just gives up and does what he believes is popular even though he has clearly stated that it is wrong.

There is, as is said elsewhere "nothing new under the sun"

In your face or in your eye

Sin and David Hicks!
If we need any more proof that the Hicks business is essentially about promoting a political agenda then the next phase in the process should convince us. Having pleaded guilty he is now required to state exactly what he is pleading guilty to!!!
Now doesn't that seem cart before the horse-ish. Surely if he was charged and invited to make a plea then the prosecutors should have at least felt that they there were clear what they were charging him with. Why then does the subject of the charge have to tell them what he did in detail?
It would seem that the answer to that must be that Hicks is the victim of a kite-flying exercise (which he was never going to win) and having once admitted that the kite does indeed fly, has to now tell the powers-that-be just why that might be so.
For what it's worth, I (and I suspect most other people) think that Hicks is indeed guilty of something relatively minor. It is easy to demonise him and paint him as second-only to Osama Bin Laden himself, but he is clearly not that.
He is not guilty so much of being 'idealistic', as being a fool who got caught up in some Boy's Own Adventure which turned out to be a whole lot more serious than he realised. By then it was too late.
He has become the pawn of powerful men's ambitions. The shallowness of these ambitions is exposed day by day. Oh dear dear!
But human beings are flawed....(here come a segue..."A what?" I hear you ask, seehere) Yesterday I had quite a strange conversation with one of my good lay people. She was complaining about Easter last year.
Apparently she took exception to the fact that it "was too much about sin". Now my radar always explodes in these sort of circumstances...usually a person thinking something is "too much about sin" is experiencing a conviction of the Holy Spirit about something in their own life. Maybe I rely too much on my own experience.
I could not believe that our lovely Easter service with an opportunity to recommit oneself to the Christian way, and the declaration of God's forgiveness accompanied with the splashing of water....maybe I love splashing water too much....was actually perceived as something negative.
This parishioner seemed to be inviting me to strip the Easter period of its "negative overtones". A man was crucified for heavensakes!!!


I know on one level what she was saying, but do we become so wishy washy that we don't want to explore anything of depth any more.
Segue 2...one two three....I don't want to suggest Hicks is an angel...I do want him to deal with his law-breaking, but he is being made a scapegoat for much more than that.
I do not want to suggest that he is Christ like. But the Crucified Man was a scapegoat too.
There will be sin this Easter. It will be forgiven. As it is every year, every day, every time we come ... we need to be a bit more robust, honest and open.

Hicks Hiccup

All of us are no doubt glad to see that the Hicks' debacle moved yesterday and that Hicks, in pleading guilty, has allowed some resolution of his personal hell...or at least some step towards that resolution.
Hicks has pleaded guilty, and no one imagines that that clarifies very much at all. It does allow him to be called the "convicted terrorist" or "the admitted felon"....but no one imagine that it actually reveals the extent of his involvement with Al Qaeda, whether he was a foot soldier or a military commander, whether he is being smart or just plain stupid
That it will bring him back to Adelaide seems almost certain, and that must be a relief for his family.
What it will not do is reveal to you and me the extent of his actual involvement
I continue to be incensed by Howard, Downer and Ruddock who say things like..."We are very angry that this has taken so long...we have always been disturbed about how long this has taken."
That is just not true! It is self-serving politico-spik. They were remarkably unconcerned about David Hicks until his prolonged detention in ther Guiantanamo limbo became an electoral liability.
I hope that we, the electors, remember this self-serving stuff...it is not the only example of change of heart (global warming another!) which should be criticised for being too little too late.

Hick Cup

As keen as we all are for the David Hicks trial to be over and done with, and to be done well, I have a certain unease about how much of this is being staged in the public arena. With senior prosecution saying at a new conference yesterday to aseembled journalists "You will see on TV in the coming days what Hicks was involved in, and then you can make up your own mind"
No "Allegedly involved in", no prejudicing the fair trial. No refusal to comment while the matter is sub judice.
And then already, for what ever reason, part of Hicks's team have already been removed because they are ineligible to stand before a military commission.
No this doesn't sound terribly impartial to me. Expeditious maybe, but not impartial

Petulant

It would be petulant to question why the air crash in Yogoyakarta yesterday has dominated the airwaves.
While it is serious, it is also a modest disaster in the scheme of things.
It gets excessive media attention because there were Australians on board, but mainly because there was video of the awful events.
Not so events with recent around the world...34 killed in a train crash in Harare, 8 killed in a helicopter crash in Austria.
I was also personbally bowled over by the PM's obvious intention to act with great haste to "bring them home". Not so others who don't take his fancy like David Hicks, who has become his politcial football

The Hicks' Riddle

The continuing saga of Australian prisoner David Hicks grows more convoluted from day to day (here).

But for the life of me I find it difficult to fathom. That it is allowed to go on and on seems amazing and should be brough to some resolution one way or the other

There would seem to be only a limited number of possibilities about what is happening here.

1. Hicks could be guiltier than most people seem to suggest, and this is known to American and Australian authorities who are therefore reluctant to do anything to see him released. This seems unlikely since throughout the whole debate he has only ever been touted as an insignificant player deluded by a warped sense of purpose which few of us can share.
   
2. Despite the fact that we are touted in the coterie of America's closest allies we actually have no influence at all with regard to the way Australian public opinion is respected by the Bush regime. We have not been able to do, for example, what the British and other "allies" have done, and that is have their citizens repatriated to be dealt with at home. This does not really surprise us. We are a very small country, and although Bush has been happy to trumpet John Howard as an ally; and Howard has been happy to receive that accolade we seem remarkably powerless when it comes to bringing that influence to bear where it really matters. Our farmers, for example would testify to the fact that marketrs are closed and unfair barriers remain in place which prevent any sense of level-playing-field. This Hicks' case is just another example of that impotence.
   
3. The Australian government doesn't have the slightest interest in the welfare of David Hicks and just keeps hoping it will all go away.This certainly seems to be the net effect of what is happening even if it is not the deliberate policy. It nevertheless says to me that we are not a country where justice for all is prized, and where due process is regarded as being a key principle in the exercise of democratic freedoms. There seems indeed one law for some and another law for others.....
   

That this goes on and on seems a source of great sadness.