Singapore's courts … are stacked with political cronies and kept under tight executive rein. They are compromised by the Government's habitual use of defamation laws to bankrupt and silence emerging opposition leaders in a what remains a rigid one-party state. - Mark Baker, The Death of Reason

Forty-seven per cent of Australians supported the hanging of Van Nguyen. No surprise there. They've been supporting John Howard and his inexorable drive to make Australia over in Singapore's image for ten years.

Like Singapore, we are already a state run by and for the exclusive interests of business. Ex-Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett, the man who kick-started the Australia we are now sinking in, was fond of saying that the only noble goal in life was to start a small business.

Our universities are being turned into two-tiered nursery schools for masters and servants. The masters will learn how to run businesses and the servants will learn how to work for them. The mind, with its diversity so frightening to conservatives, will be harnessed to the time clock. Flatland at last.

Health will sooner or later be affordable only to the masters. The rest of us, expendable ciphers, will be left to chat (or vomit blood) in third world hospital corridors or on waiting lists where our names will still be years away when we die considerably younger than the old age we had anticipated.

And the anti-dissent pro-terror bill will insure that no one talks back.

The Baker quote above touches on some of the current and future similarities in Australia. Our High Court is slowly but surely being "stacked with political cronies," while Ruddock's anti-dissent pro-terror bill will turn us into obedient Singaporeans, heads bent to the state-supporting tasks allotted us. The Labor opposition is already null and void "in what remains a rigid one-party state" whose members squeak in the name of democracy but cannot summon the courage to cross the floor. Fear of Bill Heffernan's award-winning impersonation of Liberty Valance has turned Barnaby Joyce into a clean cut version of Marshall Link Appleyard; every one of his constituent concerns have been met by Liberty Bill's standover threats, causing poor Barnaby Link to roll over and over to show everyone his soft, pink belly.

The Workplace Deregulation of Australian Society will become law and disorder early next year. Ray Manley's letter to The Age gives a pretty astute summation of what may or may not be in store for us, depending on whether we have the courage to fight back:

The Federal Government's IR legislation will not only raise poverty levels in Australia to American levels, it will also dramatically increase robbery, theft, vandalism and even organised crime. The Government may save money in its welfare reforms, but state governments will need to increase police numbers while businesses and households will have to deal with damages caused by breaking and entering. The combined effects of these pieces of legislation will endanger public safety. Increased levels of poverty may even increase the likelihood of home-grown terrorism. If this Government were serious about crime, it would also be serious about treating Australians like human beings.

The key to John Howard's deforms, as noted in Manley's letter, is his traitorous reduction of Australia's high standard of living to "American levels." Anyone who has lived and worked in America, and above all, has observed the working and living conditions of millions of its underclass, must be shocked and horrified at Howard's determination to duplicate that underclass here.

His base urge to make miserable the lives of his own countrymen places him high on the historical list of national traitors. Even so, I would not wish him to share the fate of Van Nguyen, whose punishment in no way fitted his crime. John Howard's crimes are infinitely worse than his, but our side of the human race does not kill. Howard's punishment awaits the return of justice to Australia. It will be severe, but it will also be humane.