Prisoners in Guantanamo who originated in western countries have enjoyed some kind of support from their governments; with the outstanding exception of Australia's David Hicks. Why is Hicks so isolated and abandoned? What was David's crime? He did precisely what thousands of Americans did during the Spanish Civil War; fought in another country for what they believed to be a righteous and noble cause. A right exercised by courageous and decent people since war began. One of America's most admired writers was one of them, Ernest Hemingway. Are we now to understand he was a terrorist? Were Australian soldiers terrorists because they fought for "the Mother Country and our people in England" in two World Wars? Was it wrong to fight the Germans following their invasion of Poland? so distant from Australia. Hicks has been called a mercenary. Were our own soldiers mercenaries because they received a soldier's food and pay? This is cheap semantics; the kind we now associate with Blair and Bush. As many Australians see it, David Hicks was one of the first Australians to get up and fight against the American Global Empire. They applaud him; not condemn him. So his slant is Muslim. So what? A disproportionate number of victims of American aggression are Muslim. It's no surprise that persecution has strengthened their resistance and attracted outside support. This is a well-known phenomenon inspired by persecution; just ask any Catholic historian or any theologian. Finally, the Taliban (enemy?)had wiped out the drug industry (which the US has since restored in its entirety; it funds the CIA and bypasses Congress); and the Taliban established national sovereignty for the first time in a century or so. How could Hicks not support this. With his values, how could Hicks not support the threatened people of the Baltic who were being bombed and cleansed by NATO air strikes, justified by unproven sectarian slaughters. How could Hicks not support the people of Palestine? Come to that, how could any justice and freedom-loving and compassionate human being not support the Palestinian cause? None of Hicks' activities breached any Australian law; which is why the Australian Government has been happy for the Americans to detain him. But the world has entirely the wrong handle on this situation. It isn't the US holding Hicks in spite of the Australian Government's almost neutral approval; it is the Australian Government DEMANDING that the US military hold him outside and beyond any civil justice system which would require a crime to have been committed, and proof thereof. And why are they so desperate to keep Hicks out of Australia? Because his inevitable not guilty verdict (if ever he went to trial, which is unlikely; there being no charge) would affirm and validate the democratic right of every Australian to fight despotism and the denial of freedom and any threat to democracy itself. Few seem aware that Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, has recently signed a treaty with Javanese Indonesia which guarantees Australian Government military and economic support for Indonesian repression of these very qualities; specifically, any independence or succession movements in Kalimantan or West Papua. Hick's return to Australia would most certainly encourage an open resistance movement against John Howard's planned and rapidly unfolding dictatorship. Conversely, if Hicks is executed in the US this will affirm the legitimacy of mine and other writer's detention by the Howard/Beasley regimes "for sympathising with proven terrorists". Furthermore, our rendition to Indonesia's interrogation cells will go unremarked in the media, just as the media failed to question the Australian Police's parallel and ground-breaking Indonesian arrests of nine smugglers who were attempting to bring heroin into Australia. They should have been arrested in Australia. Given the current incapacity of Australian's to publicly criticise illicit behavior by government, it will only be comment from outside Australia which can force these issues. ~tony ryan