Hicks is Filth. Although Bill does get a bit carried away he has a valid point when saying a self confessed terrorist like Hicks is going to make a bucket load of cash from his attempts to turn the West into an Afghan like state in which barbarism is a celebrated part of everyday life.

Go back to Afghanistan and die Hicks nobody wants you hear you are an embarrassment to Australia.

I wish RightThinkers would do some actual research, you know beyond reading Ministers press releases and rehearsing to Alan Jones. Very few think Hicks himself is anything special, how would anyone know when he has been buried in a box for five years? (of course Bill Muehlenberg doesn't support any of his claims with evidence - how very modern of him).

What this gay-whale-loving-red-under-the-bed is concerned about is not Hicks The TShirt but the rule of law. That the Howard government has no problem with a citizen being sold by drug traffickers (the Northern Alliance), flown off for torture (Egypt?), and then kept drugged in a gulag (as Amnesty International described Guantanamo Bay) for over five years is despicable, and no amount of 'WooOOO BE AFRAID!!' will change that.

Scare mongering on a threat that has killed less people than falls in baths will win him many friends in the arms/death industry, but doesn't it give comfort to the enemy? Not if the Rule of Law is RightThinks real enemy.

If Hicks is Abu Muslim al-Austraili or Muhammed Dawood, he would be more interested in blowing things up rather than making money through relating his experience as a terrorist. But if he is David Hicks again, welcome home. He was, after all, mislead by the teachings of Islam.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/hicks-no-longer-a-muslim-exdetainee/2006/06/23/1150845378125.html

Bill

Congratulations you have exceeded all expectations. The obvious blatant errors in your article can only make me feel you are auditioning for the Chaser's War On Everything.

Good luck in your Doctoral Thesis, you're going to need it.

From what we have noticed about Hicks over the last five or so years, could say he seems to have been like an over-adventurous nut-case like the ones joining the French Foreign Legion in older days.

Our Eighth Divvy Aussies fought against them in Syria during WW2, just odds and sods similar to Hicks apparently desperate to escape, having been knocked back even by the local easy-touch Sheila or such like.

By using country boy, Hicks, Bush, Howard and Blair were evidently out to prove something symbolic as justification for the war they have been consistently losing, despite George Dubya having the most powerful military establishment ever - on call.

But pity they did not pick a better subject than a silly someone like Hicks, especially for our ultra-right wingers, who with their rotten rhetoric are far more damaging for peace in our world than any a Hicks would ever be.

Spot on Bushbred.
.

Bill, David Hicks signed a gag order for twelve months media silence. He also signed away any rights to profit from his story.

You’ve overlooked these points entirely!

These were ‘requirements’ by the military commission in order for him to be released or to get the small additional sentence that he has received. They should not have been part of the commission’s role. But now that they are secured in writing, they will be ‘honoured’ by the Australian government and legal system.

Some basic principles:

Once he’s done his time, the slate should be clear.

He should have full freedom of speech.

He should be able to profit from this saga, once the slate is cleared. His profits would be in line with the level of community interest, in just the same way the Beaconsfield miners profited. Todd Russell and Brant Webb didn’t do anything good for the community or anything smart in a business sense in order to secure those profits, they won them purely via extraordinary circumstances. The same should apply for Hicks.

The proceeds of crime argument should not prevail, as he had no intent to profit from what he did in Afghanistan, and he would not be winning those profits by committing a crime or an extension of wrongs committed, but rather by addressing the enormous public interest in the case.

The level of interest has been generated predominantly by the appallingly antidemocratic treatment he received in Guantanamo. There is a far graver level of wrongdoing here than Hicks exercised. If he had been tried and convicted or released early on, interest in his story and profits gained it would been far less.

I would argue that he should be paid for interviews, book and movie rights and anything else that is in the public interest. (But I do think that payments for this sort of thing, including to the Beaconsfield miners, are too exorbitant).

Bill I don’t think your article sits at all well with your position as a lecturer in ethics!