Good, Bad,Ugly

The public hysteria surrounding the imprisonment of Schapelle Corby is based as much on racial stereotypes as justice. By any conventional Western standards, 27-year-old Corby is physically attractive. She has a trim figure, a classic Anglo-Saxon face, a flashing smile and haunting eyes.She plays perfectly the role of the innocent victim singled out by a corrupt and unscrupulous Asian legal system. The Indonesian judges and the prosecutor have become, in the view of the scandalised Australian public, the evil perpetrators. It's the sort of characterisation used in early James Bond movies – the handsome and statuesque good guys battling the evil Asian bad guys.
If Corby was a 27-year-old Australian man of Asian appearance, perhaps with swarthy skin and the hint of a moustache, would there be the same clamour for Western justice? I doubt it. He would look like the standard Asian drug smuggler provided by central casting.
Corby looks innocent. We want her to be innocent. We want her to be the ill-treated victim of ruthless Asian courts which are determined to hold up a beautiful Australian girl as a public sacrifice to underline Indonesia's hard-line policy against drug smugglers.
Those who demonstrated in the streets yesterday demanding the release of Corby did so with all the honourable intentions. They believe Corby is innocent. Those who telephone talk-back radio stations or register their anger in media straw polls are driven by the motives of apparent injustice and Corby's innocence.
That is their right. I don't believe they are correct, infact i personally think they are fanatics. By Western standards Corby did not appear to receive a fair trial. She had to battle the barrier of a language and cultural divide to make her voice heard. She sat before a senior judge who boasted that he had convicted 500 consecutive drug offenders.
But Corby's offence – and under law it is a proven offence – was committed in Indonesia, not Australia. She does not have the privilege of Western justice. In football terms this is an away game. Visitors always get the change rooms with the cold showers.
As unpalatable as it might be, Corby was found with 4.1kg of marijuana in her luggage. That is beyond dispute. The task of her legal team was to prove that she did not put it there, that she knew nothing about it. They failed.
Whether they would have failed in an Australian court is as hypothetical as it is irrelevant. Corby's tearful plea for mercy was heart-wrenching and moving. Only a dead person would not have felt compassion for her and her family.
But quite rightly the judges were not influenced by her tears. Nor should they have been. As in Western courts, they can only make their assessment based on the evidence and the laws of the land – their land. Not personal pain and remorse.
As we watched this nightmare unravel across newspaper front pages and on national television, it was easy to feel sorrow for Corby and contempt for the Indonesian justice system. There but for the grace of God ...
But that sorrow and anger has its foundation on the shifting sand of emotion, not the granite of logic. Emotion based as much on deep-seated, almost subconscious racial beliefs, as on the facts of the case.
A beautiful Australian girl crushed by the heartless mechanics of shoddy Indonesian justice. I ask again, if it had been a swarthy man of Asian appearance, or an ugly overweight chick would we, as a nation, feel the same way, even if he was a dinky-di, third-generation Australian?
The answer, sadly, is no. That is the real shame of the Schapelle Corby case.

Ok i think i have given enough exposure on this, tomorrow, something different :)