Howard rallies the faithful once again

This is possibly the most blatantly repugnant thing that John Howard,  still Prime Minister of Australia,  has ever been quoted as saying.  And that is saying a hell of a lot.

The Labor party spokesman for foreign affairs recently sparked a furore when he dared to suggest that if elected his party would campaign against the death penalty in all cases,  even for the Indonesians convicted of the terrorist attack which killed Australians in Bali in 2002.  Some of the victims' relatives were enraged,  baying for the blood of the perpetrators and more or less also for the blood of the Labor spokesman for foreign affairs.  Howard immediately seized the reins of the bandwagon:

The idea that we would plead for the deferral of executions of people who murdered 88 Australians is distasteful to the entire community ... I find it impossible myself,  as an Australian,  as Prime Minister,  as an individual,  to argue that those executions should not take place when they have murdered my fellow countrymen and women.

The man has an undeniable talent for identifying the worst traits of the Australian people,  and then fuelling and exploiting those traits for political gain.  Is there any other politician in the world today who can do this with such aplomb?  Mugabe has nothing on this guy.  Karl Rove would be taking notes.

Labor leader Kevin Rudd,  probably the next Prime Minister of Australia, was quick to slap down his foreign affairs spokesman and declare that he would only campaign against the death penalty if it was being imposed on Australians,  and certainly not when imposed on the killers of Australians.  I'm sure that will go down just marvellously in the international community.  However, even despite his pathetic pragmatism,  he did not go so far as to utter anything as shameful,  as reprehensible,  as sickening,  as Howard's righteous indigation above.