Tomorrow marks the 50th anniversary of the execution of Ronald Ryan. Just before 8 o’clock on the morning of February 3, 1967, Ryan declined a sedative but took a sip of whisky and walked calmly to the gallows trapdoor at Pentridge Prison.
Ryan addressed his executioner directly, “God bless you, please make it quick.”
Ryan’s supporters and opponents of the death penalty observed a three-minute silence. Protesters assembled outside Pentridge Prison in vigil.
The circumstances of his death at the hands of the state have led to great myth-making about Ryan. He has been variously painted as a bit of a larrikin, driven to crime by circumstance and little worse than a kite flyer (passer of bad cheques).
The truth is he was a career criminal and his crimes before his penultimate arrest, included what we would call today aggravated burglary and robbery in company.
His arresting officer on that occasion was Bryan Harding. I’ve known Harding for many years. He was an outstanding police officer and at various times headed up the Fraud and Homicide squads in Victoria. Harding is retired and now in his 80s; he remembers Ryan as a hardened criminal who showed little or no remorse for his crimes and gave nothing away under questioning.
Full column here.
The terror attack in Paris yesterday will almost certainly give Trump some mileage with his close America policy I’d say. …… I expect him to be saying ”I told you so” any minute
Mundine versus Green, Mr Insider, perhaps both should think about retiring imho
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HW1rv-8jFs
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer gets our PM Turnbull’s name wrong again, Mr Insider, the second time in 2 days! First it was “Trumble” then yesterday it was “Trunbull”. Good grief Sean honey get it right my man its “Turdball” oooops I am as bad as Sean!
http://tinyurl.com/guy357p
Great turnout for the ladies footy last night.
https://www.ted.com/talks/nick_hanauer_beware_fellow_plutocrats_the_pitchforks_are_coming
I think most of us will agree with his sentiments
Thanks JS, I’d never heard of Hanauer, he makes a lot of sense. As plutocrats go, he has a refreshingly un-self-serving view of his own good fortune and his role in the economy.
I think you might be a bit optimistic in your assessment of how well-received his ideas will be though. In fact, his $15/hr minimum wage proposal is regarded in US neo-liberal establishment circles as “insane”. Never mind that ours is $17.70 ($23+ for casuals) and our economy has been doing better than the US for a long time. I think you’ll also find that in general, any structural measures proven to limit inequality and link incomes to growth — such as strong collective bargaining, labour-market regulation and public infrastructure — will also continue to be fought tooth-and-nail by the same people.
In fact, it seems even the TED people refused to publish another talk by Hanauer, in which he challenged the neo-liberal myth that tax cuts for the rich create jobs, as too “partisan”.
No, unfortunately for now most of those with the power to decide — including the supposed saviour of the latest batch of “forgotten people”, Donald Trump — will continue to act in the idiotic Randian belief that all our problems will be solved if only we can make the rich rich enough.
Jean Baptiste says:
February 3, 2017 at 10:47 am
“Life is sacred or it isn’t.”
It’s a trickey one JB, because some would have us believe, and in fact have written, that nothing is sacred. And others suggest that the sanctity of human life has been talked up by humans. The super-cynics, of course, have long held the belief that – ‘if you pray to anything, you’re prey to anything’.
They all may have a point, but we should not forget that those same humans who may believe in the sanctity of human life were very active (and still are in some respects) in killing, crucifying, maiming, burning, hanging, beheading (a present popular pastime in some quarters), stoning (ditto to previous), disembowelling, raping and lots of other inventive ways in using and abusing the very same humans who are supposedly sacred.
We need some guidance JB, and as you raised the question/statement, you’re it. What say you me old mate?
PS. I know what peterkin thinks.
Geez you two are getting quite profound here.
‘if you pray to anything, you’re prey to anything’. – not bad, gets one thinking!
“the sanctity of human life has been talked up by humans”.
Exactly. If a shark or a dog or a spider or a snake bites us for food or in defence – both supremely defensible motives – we’ll dispatch it with barely a thought. But if a human inflicts the cruellest torture and death upon another human or even just snuffs them out with a single thoughtless act it is somehow beyond the pale to do likewise to ensure it never happens again?
There is nothing more sacred about human life than there is about any other.
I guess the hole in that argument, TBLS, is that humans have the intelligence to make a conscious decision not to kill as a reflex action
Surely that makes them more deserving of the ultimate punishment, not less?
Not if the punishment itself is a conscious decision to kill.
Would someone please organise a nice root for the Swantoon. Female, human, preferably.
Well definitely not a redback spider. They murder after a root.
Hmmn? Emergency nurse to Swantoon. “Um, how exactly……”
Swantoon “Don’t ask!”
I think its the Black Widow spider Yvonne (hence the name), not the redback. They just wipe themselves off and go and sit under the dunny seat.
Close rellies Carl. Same behaviour ……… maybe they are intelligent after all? 🙂
I suppose it saves them having a cigarette. That tobacco will kill ya!
Well the male will be wishing he had had a smoke beforehand – because he’ll have been despatched to spider heaven after doing his thing
We need to teach what a profound thing it is is to be a sentient being.
Contemplate that.
The profundity of sentience has been talked up by sentient beings. Have we bothered to ask anyone else? Is there any evidence that life is better served by sentience or intelligence than by the lack of it? Does it even matter?
Truth be told, if it was a choice I’d rather hang out with lyrebirds, gum-trees and my dogs any day of the week over other human beings. Matter of fact, most of the time I do.
Any evidence? Sounds like you’re going to find out. Can you speak Lyrebird or gumtree?
If it was a choice, I would too TBLS.
Just because humans have defined ‘sentience’ doesn’t mean we are the only sentient beings on this earth.
http://www.livescience.com/39481-time-to-declare-animal-sentience.html
Regards, Bella
Jean Baptiste (10.59 am)
Deep JB, deeper than the deepest ocean.
Do the think the wheels may have fallen off when those two otherwise innocent miscreants took a chomp out of the apple?
It seems to have been all down hill since then me old mate.
Gosh Carl. Another creationist. Put it there mate. Deep question Carl but I don’t think there were wheels to fall off in the early days of human history.
But, it’s clearly all the fault of women and I believe many of Trumps voters were influenced even if unconsciously by that salutary warning contained in the story.
Lets face it, God made man first, so He sure as hell doesn’t want a woman for POTUS.
God bless you. And God Bless Australia.
All the fault of women. JB?
Nah mate. Don’t get me started on my opinion of the male thought process. i .e. the detour a thought has to take before it hits the male brain.
Now that is the cause of our downfall.
Yvonne! I doubt there was a more credible representative of God on Earth than St Paul.
I quote.
“I do not permit a woman to assume authority over a man, she must be quiet.”
Letter to Timothy.
You might reflect on the forbearance and leeway with which I and other pious men have extended to you here. God is a man, he is not a woman. It is a he, not a she that created the universe. If God was a she I doubt she would have created much more than a knitted tea cosy and none of us would exist.
Contemplate that.
God does move in mysterious ways. If indeed men’s thought processes are as you say then God must have created men that way for a good reason, and I am thankful for that.
JB. You pious? You lying?
Love youse all. Love makes the world go around. Couldn’t live withoutcha.
But women are the stronger sex 🙂 sorry bout that.
What an idiot Christopher Pyne is, Mr Insider. He goes on the ABC 7.30 program tonight with the astute Stan Grant interviewing him where he initially claimed to know what was said in the now infamous Turnbull/Trump phone call, then when pushed by Grant he back peddled and said he knew nothing more than what had been reported! Again pushed by Grant he back peddled on what he had previously said about the possibility of Trump becoming POTUS, he had then claimed the election of Hillary Clinton was the best outcome. Pyne is a complete idiot and fits in well with the do nothing hopeless dysfunctional Turnbull government.
Well I thought he did quite well under the circumstances, HB. This whole business is such a confused mess that nobody is sure what the heck to say at any one time. (As I write this Trump seems to love us again with sweet little tweets) Pyne probably knows exactly how the conversation went – but why on earth would he tell us? But Stan kept trying to tie him up in knots. The media need to chill There’s enough crap flying around – and everyone needs to get used to Trump’s tactics. They will given time – hopefully.
“….. everyone needs to get used to Trump’s tactics. ”
No they don’t. I could get used to an axe in the side of my head too if it didn’t kill me. But do I want to?
mr blowfly. His tenure as village idiot cost Australia 50 billion dollars
Cool your boots, Henry. Them’s fighting words! C Pyne has PM material written large all over him. I’m not joking. Bundled up in one erudite package he has the goods to be our PM, President and Queen. Despite the costumes consider the savings?! Except for a couple of cricketers and Don Dunstan the Pyne is the best thing to emanate from SA. I pine for Pyne.
ot I did manage to find a venue for that piss weak fight. I was going for Green simply because the man Mundine does himself no favours, imho. Regardless, In my amateur view I cannot see how Green won that fight on points. btw I happened to be in close proximity with one of our more useful pugilists. Smaller even than I, but all muscle. and I shook the champs hand and wished him the best. old Milton can’t have enough punchy types in his corner! especially with those punchy leftard, lgbgti’vegotagalinkalamazoo types getting about….
Okay Milton, so you “pine for Pyne” as you say.
Whatever floats your boat in private however the majority of Aussies think he’s the Hyacinth Bucket of politics with that effete voice of a patronising brat.
No-one takes him seriously mate, the guy is a tool.
And a misogynist. From memory he kept a photograph of Julia Gillard displayed in his office with Flying Start written on it with the first letters of both words crossed out.
Nice work by a flaming handbag-carrying git hey Milt?
IMO there’s still no better commentary on capital punishment than Albert Camus’ 1957 essay “Reflections on the Guillotine”. Premeditated state murder is the worst kind of all, the most extreme hypocrisy imaginable, a so-called deterrent done in guilty secrecy, and utterly ineffective.
Why did the socialists then use capital punishment as a policy enforcement tool.
Which socialists? The Swedes? The Danish? If you are referring to historical totalitarian regimes, then yes, they did, socialist and otherwise, and that was bad. Your point?
But to bring the discussion back to the present, use of capital punishment is probably a good measure of totalitarianism. Look at the top five: China (by a long shot), Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and the US. North Korea is probably in there but no-one knows numbers. In that list we have one-party state capitalism, a couple of theocracies, and whatever TF North Korea is.
The US’s presence on that list is more of a puzzle. It is the last first-world country to still do it. For the record, I don’t believe the US is totalitarian, but it does have theocratic, plutocratic, and lately kakocratic tendencies. I’m not sure if that’s enough to explain it. Maybe it’s just some cultural resistance to change. After all, they still use furlongs and hogsheads.
The Soviet Socialist republics for one
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_state
And the list goes on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_socialist_states
These so called worker parties killed more people than all the wars of the 20th century put together
All in the name of socialism
Its friday. What crazy shit will Trump pull tonight?
Gracious tweet to Malcolm. He loves him again! This is crazy stuff alright
his botoxed dick
yucky! but I love your economy with words. thanks smoke.
Beat me to it. I was going to say his pencil dick.
Well, I enjoyed the alt-fact “Bowling Green massacre” invented by Kellyanne Conway, the mummy* who talks for Trump when his TV shows are on:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/02/03/kellyanne-conway-cites-bowling-green-massacre-that-never-happened-to-defend-travel-ban/?utm_term=.f70eef31e3d9
* I refer not to her parental status, more in the Egyptian sense.
In normal times that Bowling Green massacre thing would be considered bizarre. It would probably warrant a resignation or sacking too. Just shows how far we’ve come from sanity.
Well, well, well – even Plibersek is saying nice things about our PM!
I thought good old Christopher Pyne was quite good on the 7 30 Report this evening too despite the efforts to trap him up.
Maybe this will pan out well for Turnbull. If it were put to a global vote it probably go with Australia – because most don’t know what to make of Trump at all
Further clips show Trump being all conciliatory once again. As I have said before here – that seems to be his style. Agression, and then back right off. Rather typical of a bully really.
Didn’t see 7.30 report, but differing opinions prevail about Christopher Pyne. Personally I’m looking forward to seeing Stan Grant in action, he is a man I have always admired……
Everyone is treading gingerly – with good reason. I thought Pyne did well. It seems that Turnbull may come out of this smelling of roses – if the furore from the right-wingers over on the dark side this morning is anything to go by! Another good article from Paul Kelly.
Penny see if you can get a link to his National Press club address when he spoke about his aboriginality. It was brilliant!
Just out today but I will hunt around for it tonight.
Thanks The Guv’nor, if you can get the link that will be good, although I’m often denied access because “it is not allowed in your country”. Lots of stuff doesn’t make it to Malaysia, but I had no problem in other countries. If not I’ll save it until Inget back to OZ. I bought his book last week online. As I say I’ve admired him for ages, thought he was fantastic when he was on CNN in Hong Kong .
You need a VPN into Aus Penny
Pyne sadly a man who never admits he was wrong and no matter what he’s asked Yvonne he just opens his mouth and lets fly all sorts of dribble as he did last night with Stan Grant and Grant became frustrated with him for the very reason I gave above.. He is, imho, not a role model for a politician.
Don’t they all do that HB?