The Angry Exile: Australian Police - Don't Fuck With Them.

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? [...] We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Friday 5 February 2010

Australian Police - Don't Fuck With Them.

I think I've mentioned a few times that the police and judicial systems in most states here are obsessed with speeding to a degree that makes the British cops look like they just don't give a flying fuck about it. Here in Victoria it's got to the stage where the default speed limit for the whole state is 50 kph (31 mph) unless signposted otherwise, that even freeways that are five lanes across are only 100 kph - unless there are roadworks in which case it may be as low as a comical 40 kph (25 mph) - and it's not until you get well away from the towns and cities that it's finally raised to the dizzying heights of 110 kph*, which is still less than 70 mph. On top of that the fines are extortionately high and rather than the comfortable margin of 10% of the limit + 2 mph you supposedly get in the UK you get a piffling 2 kph leeway here. That's 1 ¹/₄ mph in old money or, in the Exile lexicon, fucking ridiculous. Most egregious of all the law allows - possibly even insists, I'm not sure - that at a certain point above the speed limit the cops impound your car for two days** and possibly more if you were really caning it. As far as I've been able to find out by asking Aussies this applies even when a driver gets tugged and it's not his car, which certainly seems to be the case if this is anything to go by.

To quote Vincent Vega,

What's more chickenshit than fucking with a man's automobile? I mean, don't fuck with another man's vehicle.

Especially when it's pretty bloody obvious that it wasn't even him driving it. Fuck knows what they do if it's a rental, but it's something visitors could bear in mind if the hire company piss them about. All you'd need to do is give it a good thrashing on your way to the airport at the end of your stay, and when the cops stop you and impound it get a taxi the rest of the way and send Avis a fax from the terminal telling them that their hire car is with the police. And I'm only half joking, because it's probably going to take more than one obviously wealthy car owner being fucked up by an unjust and retarded law to get something done about it. Bit of commercial pressure...

Unfortunately, far from being stopped this style of summary justice is actually spreading, and now it's computer owners who may have their property seized without so much as charges being brought. All in the name of thinking of the chiiiiiiiiildren.

Police will be able to destroy computers carrying suspected child pornography even where the material is highly encrypted and impossible to access, under a tightening of federal sex offence laws.

Now I despise kiddy fiddlers as much as anyone else but I'm really fucking concerned when the hysteria reaches Paedogeddon territory and everyone switches their fucking brains off. Do we really want to go down this road? Do we really want state sanctioned private property destroyed on a fucking suspicion?

Hey, what have you got in that safe there?

Sorry but that's nothing to do with you, officer.

No, look, I want to see what's in there because I suspect it of being [insert type of illicit item here].

Sorry but I'm not prepared to let you.

I'll get a warrant.

Oh really? Will it have the combination written on it?

No. But it'll mean you'll have to open it or the court will do you for refusing.

All because you suspect there's something in there.

Yeah, so open it.

Erm... No.

Right, we'll get the warrant.

And out of principle I'd rather do the time than open it for you.

...

Right then, in that case we'll just seize your safe, take it out into a field, get the Army to set some explosives on it and blow the cunt to tiny little bits.

And don't forget that in this country some courts have a pretty extreme idea of what constitutes child pornography. You with the cartoons, stand still and put your hands up slowly, you filthy fucking nonce.

* Ironically, being out of the towns and suburbs means that these 110 kph sections of road are generally two lanes per carriageway, or even single carriageway roads, with entrances and exits joining directly in places. Often they are highways rather than freeways (A roads rather than motorways to Brits). The high capacity sections of freeway (up to five lanes in places) with decent grade separated junctions near built up areas are invariably 100 kph.
** Longer if it's a holiday weekend, natch.

4 comments:

NickM said...: So that's the last of the V8 interceptors then?; 5 February 2010 at 06:03
JJ said...: Australian holiday out of the question then?; 5 February 2010 at 07:26
JuliaM said...: "Do we really want to go down this road? Do we really want state sanctioned private property destroyed on a fucking suspicion?"

It seems we do. Or at least, not enough of us don't to raise a fuss about it and get it halted... :(; 5 February 2010 at 16:20
Angry Exile said...: NickM, not quite. But Akubra well and truly doffed for the gratuitous movie reference. :-)

JJ, stick to the Northern Territory where it's 130 kph out of town and usually the nearest cop is miles, possibly hundreds of miles, away. The trouble is the most of the wildlife that wants to kill you so dead that you'll need to be reincarnated just so they can finish tends to live up there too.

Julia, not for the first time you've hit the nail on the head. Not enough care enough, and as a result our freedoms are eroded as much by apathy as by authoritarian bastards.; 6 February 2010 at 00:28

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