Hi there Graham...

I read your piece with some interest and probably the only comment that I'd like to make is, why is it Australia can't seem to mind our own business ? We tend to stick our collective noses into the activities of other countries without the remotest connection to the 'event' that originally brought itself to everyones attention ?

It's my understanding this particular gentleman is or was a US citizen. So why do we find it necessary to intrude, and in so doing lecture the Hanoi government, on some peceived inordinately tough punishment ?

I seem to recall we 'oh so clean' Aussie Sportspeople, pontificating to the world on illegal drugs in sport, 'waxing lyrically' on how virtuous we all are...well, that's now history.

Please Graham, I'm in no way levelling any criticism at you, you wrote the piece, and that's that ?

Hi Graham Cooke,

Thank you for the timely article, we definitely need more debate and discussion about human rights issues around the world. The moment we cease to debate civic virtue and socio-political moral dilemmas, is the moment we concede our freedoms and liberties to tyranny and oppression.

To o sung wu, you seem to have no appreciation for a collective moral duty among humanity. It is absolutely important that "Aussies" and everyone else in the world for that matter, "stick their noses" into other nations' businesses. Why? We live in a global village, and that means everyone is inter-connected. Is Australia isolated from the rest of the world? Let us for a moment ponder what it means to be a human person. It means to have ties and relations with other human beings. It means my actions AND inactions, indeed affect the lives of others.

We have two options. We can continue to be apathetic and ignorant of the woes of our fellow human beings and pretend that we live in a world that is isolated and individualistic. Or, more realistically, we can come to terms with the fact that we live in a global village, where an atrocity in Hanoi against one human person is an affront against our collective common humanity.

"The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves", says William Hazlitt. I think it's time to be honest with ourselves and realize that ignoring the plight of our fellow human comrades regardless of which hemisphere they live in is a selfish act indeed.

-Nhat Tran

Hi there NHAT TRAN...

Thank you so much for the lecture on my moral and ethical responsibilities toward other cultures and nations. I'm certain without your wise counsel and guidance I would've surely been lost to a world of turpitude and thus consigned to taking that long journey to perdition.

I unaware of either your age or background, other than you seem to have a name with an origin from Vietnam. However, before you launch yourself into engaging into something of moral imperative, you should first establish your own priorities.

Myself I'm in my seventies, and I spent a glorious twelve months in your delightful tropical nation, back in the late sixties. And based on what I saw then, and what I've heard since, my opinion is, how shall I put it, totally unchanged !

ignoring the plight of our fellow human comrades regardless of which hemisphere they live in is a selfish act indeed.
Nhat Tran,
Unfortunately that's the Democratic ideal that's been pushed so hard by academia. Now look where it got us to, even the academics are starting to complain. There might be a chance they'll wake up within a few generations.