I shouldn't mock other people's pain. Unless they're stupid.

[changeling]

AHAHAHA. Schapelle Corby, Australia's favourite drug smuggler (who is set to irrevocably damage relations between us and the Indonesians), was named after the Chappell brothers - big heroes in the cricket world.

Portly Ros [Schapelle's mum] and the beer-gutted Mike [her da] have long been estranged but they've briefly got back together for the sake of their daughter. Mike, who has cancer and a magnificent salt-and-pepper beard, has taken to visiting his daughter in prison in the Ocker-Abroad uniform of shorts, singlet and flip-flops. When someone suggested to him that he might wish to smarten up a bit out of respect for the local culture, he showed up at the jail the next day in a singlet bearing the logo of Indonesia's national beer brand, Bintang. Mike likes to shriek 'Schapelle's cummin' home, she's cummin' home,' thrusting a triumphant fist in the air as the hacks scribble away. 'How's that gunna happen, mate?' the hackpack inquire. 'In a plane, mate, in a plane,' yells back Corby, before he's whisked off. Now the hacks are perplexed. 'Was he takin' the piss?' they ask themselves.

There are no words for my extreme amusement.


(This is the part that's not funny:

Myriad petitions have been raised in Australia and a thousand 'Free Schapelle' websites created. Worse, from Canberra's point of view, there have been calls to boycott Bali and Indonesia, to withdraw aid, and to stop trade. Australia was the world's most generous donor to the tsunami relief in Aceh, but now outraged Australians are reneging on their commitment, wanting their donations back. The Salvation Army was forced to put out a statement that a recent drive for funds was for needy Australians and not Indonesia-bound.

[...]

The [Australian] reaction [to the Corby case] is deeply unhinged, and baffling to an Asia that has come to see Australia as a no-nonsense, logical country, one trying to shake off the remains of its 'White Australia' policy and engage with their region on its own terms. But that's not how it is.

)

All quotes from here.

Comments

[wittgensteinian.livejournal.com]

The whole family really is awful. Australia's up in arms over some girl who overplucks her eyebrows - please.

Maybe what David Hicks needs to do is enrol in a Camp X-Ray beauty school, and then the government would do something for him.

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

Yeah - whatsisname on JJJ's current affairs show did an article on the fact that every time he did something on Schapelle Corby, he got lots of emails, but when he did an article about someone whose plight I've forgotten, but who was clearly innocent, he got no emails at all.

I hate that everyone is obsessing over Schapelle, but no-one cares about Hicks at all.

[nys.livejournal.com]

Life for Schapelle!

She's so dodgy, i'm sure she's guilty.

[mawaridi.livejournal.com]

Australia was the world's most generous donor to the tsunami relief in Aceh, but now outraged Australians are reneging on their commitment, wanting their donations back.

...

That is just sickening. Whether she is guilty or not guilty, that is fucking sickening.

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

I know.

I remember hearing an Indonesian saying words to the effect of, "We get criticised when we don't follow through on our laws, and we get criticised when we do."

[aphephobia.livejournal.com]

Tell me about it. The parenting community I frequently complain about is up in arms over this.

Personally I'm all for not going to Bali because if she IS innocent... what's to say the same thing couldn't happen to me? That said, though, people are acting like this is something new. I wouldn't go to Jamaica because hate crimes against gay people are all right over there. I wouldn't go to Nigeria because the government is fine with killing activists who don't like Shell. I wouldn't go to Spain because of what it's acceptable to do to animals over there.

But denying the poor people who live there- who probably don't know who Schapelle Corby IS- aid for something which was of mammoth proportions and which no one had any control over...? I'm sickened. I knew the outpouring of donations was weird. This really makes us look like shitheads. It's fucking embarrassing... I'm not a fan of Indonesia after, well, East Timor- but fark. It wasn't just Indonesia that was hit by the tsunami, was it? And again- it wasn't the civillians' fault that happened, either. (I wonder if there's a travel warning in Indonesia about Australia- "These fucks were all over Pauline Hanson a few years ago, and they're now wanting back aid money..." I feel sorry for them... *sighs*)


Something about the start of the article made me uneasy... I dunno. Schapelle's parents might come off looking like stereotypical Aussie yobbos, but I think it's fair enough for them to be hurt and pissed off- the evidence WASN'T supremely convincing on this... I dunno. I think the media has cottoned onto the "entertainment factor" of her story and the typical classist bullshit is now coming in. We have Schapelle (TM) for the intellectual crowd to make snide remarks about, and we have SchapelleLite for the lowest common denominator folk. I'm sure if she was thinner, we'd have a "Save Schapelle because she's hot" campaign from the "men's" magazines, too... I find the whole thing really gross, to be honest.

[jolly-oddness.livejournal.com]

And we're supposed to be a no-nonsense logical country? Well, I thought so too...

(Oh, well).

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

My whole country is acting like a kindergarten class. No, wait. No kindergarten child would act like this. My whole country is acting like a spoilt brat.

[jolly-oddness.livejournal.com]

I went to a friend's house, and they had a woman's day magazine. One of the er...headlines, I guess you could call it, for a feature story was 'shoot me and save schapelle' or something similar.

Er....

Hm.

[pink-spiral.livejournal.com]

I can't believe how much our government and the people of Australia are screwing up the reputation and status that pro-federation campaigners could only have dreamed about. After all, wasn't that one of the reason we became a nation? To have some sort of world status? To be taken seriously and not just thought of as some colony?
Well we may not have the issue of being mistaken for Britan's colony but we may as well be America's. Being being taken seriously? Not friggen likely the way we're currently handling foreign affairs.

I'm sick of all of the stupid people in this country. I'm sick of people thinking they can "save schapelle" or "make a differnce" by withdrawing donations from an aid effort that may as well be for another country it's so distant for the Schapelle case. I'm disgusted about people wanting their donations back. For the first time in my life, I'm disgusted to be an Australian.

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

I agree.

[wittgensteinian.livejournal.com]

There is a rather more cynical interpretation of Federation, and that was simply sheer practicality. Commonwealth gets the stuff like coining money and looking after lighthouses, states get the rest (the important things). Section fifty-one isn't exactly all about ensuring Australia's status as a sovereign country. And Australia was pretty slack about severing ties with the Mother Country.

The convention debates of the 1890s make it abundantly clear that it was a pragmatic step. A few renegades wanted - gasp - some express freedoms and rights, but were told to shut up because that wasn't what Federating was about. They just wanted tariff-free trade between the states. Bugger everything else.

The Constitution is the triumph of compromise over what actually would've been nice.