"FREE David Hicks," reads the sign Pink Floyd singer Roger Waters is displaying on a giant inflatable pig at his Australian concert venues. As gestures go, this is probably as offensive as it gets; Hicks (or Mohammed Dawood, to use his preferred title) converted to Islam seven years ago and his new religion regards pigs as unclean. Hell, Dawood's religion regards even seeing-eye dogs as unclean. Islamic taxi drivers in Melbourne have refused to accept blind passengers because they were accompanied by evil labradors. Who knows what such touchy folk might make of a whole massive pig daubed with the name of their co-religionist? For shame, Roger Waters. The next round of Islamic rioting is all your fault.
Meanwhile, please spare a thought for The Sun-Herald's Alex Mitchell, whose candidate for Australian of the Year was unaccountably defeated this week. Last year Alex wrote: "For his refusal to grovel to his jailers at Guantanamo and his unbreakable spirit, Hicks should receive nominations from all over the country to become this year's Australian of the Year. Let's hope that servicemen and women and people of good will send in entries to bring him home in glory from the illegal gulag of the fanatical idiocy of the Bush Administration.''
It's curious Mitchell denounces the Bush administration's "fanatical idiocy'' but wants to reward Hicks's idiotic fanaticism with glory and honour.
Similarly, the other day John Pilger was complaining in The Guardian about Australians fighting "faraway people with whom they have no quarrel and who offer no threat of invasion''. Which is exactly what Hicks was up to, yet Pilger regards the al-Qaeda member as some type of human rights victim.