Careful, watch it! Here is another one. A controversial piece, whose words could easily cause dangerous empathy, or for some, irritating disdain or dismissal, no one is obliged to read any further.
The ABC 4 corners have come up with 2 sessions that I found to be somewhat related. A few months ago there was this exposure of the mistreatment of cattle. It resulted in a nation-wide outrage. Who can forget footage of the poor cows being beaten, their sad pleading eyes as they went into their final death throes. Of course, this was all done in a naughty overseas country. Our condemnation went instantly into automatic or overdrive. Within days the export of cattle was halted and reassuring footage was shown of thousands of cattle being put back into holding yards and given rich grains pouring from laden bins. Thousands flocked to the NT and even Queensland and stroked cows. Thank goodness for our humane treatment of all thing living. Tearstained faces on the telly and many cancelled their holidays to Bali or Java. How barbaric. At some stage old footage of sheep being loaded alive in boots of cars by white frocked men, again in an evil overseas country, was again dug up and dusted off, just in case we had forgotten. We all felt a warm glow of empathy. We were not like that. We are caring and full of humanness. We felt good about ourselves.
Now, I find all this love and sweetness for animals somewhat at odds with what we saw last night on the 4 Corner programme on boat-people. There were sad and pleading eyes as well. There were people being beaten, shot at. Some were driven into suicide. There were lip sewing, knife or razor cuts, self-harm percentages, children in jail without parents. Opioids medicated people suffering the torment of indefinite detention without having committed a crime. Those ghastly scenes of boat people running around the dark with tracer bullets lighting up the sky, something reminiscent of a Kristalnacht.
This has been going on for years now. How odd, that we seem to accept that. Where is our indignation and love of humanity? I suspect that much of this lack of empathy can be squarely laid at the feet of the commercial TV and Radio world. Last night on the ABC’s media watch, Jonathan Holmes pointed out about the way the commercial TV and Radio manipulate and hijack our national conscience and managed to change an entire nation into a kind Joseph Goebbels mentality. (Goebbels was Reich-minister of Propaganda for Hitler) There is a sizable portion of the Australian population who genuinely believe that boatpeople are being treated like royals. They are given red carpet treatment, palatial housing and benefits that other can only dream about. No matter how they are presented with facts or how often the UNHCR or Amnesty International points the finger at Australia, many persist in believing the gospel of Commercial Media.
I don’t know what the answer is. I haven’t got it. I am surprised that the Commercial media is so popular. I would not even know where our channel 9 or 7, 10 are. We haven’t watched those ever. The ads are too distracting. Perhaps, the freedom to corrupt and enslave us into Goebbels is not freedom at all. Should a Government be far stricter on the likes of Bolts, Ackermans, and Jones’ of this world?
Pingback: Love those Cows, (but not so much Boat People) « Oosterman Treats Blog
Gordon O'Donnell said:
Jesus, what a semi – illiterate bunch of homosexual sympathisers
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Vectis Lad said:
O’Donnel, I was quoting atomou: “the age” thing.
If’n you posteth twixt the posts, one can’t reply in sequence!!
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gerard oosterman said:
Let’s be very wary of tourists as well. They are all potential terrorists, hellbent on taking our lovely life-style away, steal our Harvey Norman furniture, rip out our petunias and demolish all colour-bond fencing.
Be especially wary of loitering people wearing sunglasses around Bondi Beach carrying Le Monde or Figaro mags. talking in a foreign tongue, smelling of garlic/eau de cologne.
There is one sitting on a bench in the park here at Bowral, he’s reading a book for God’s sake. I’ll phone 000.
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Big M said:
Took me eye orff the PA for a day and, what happens, Gerard sticks a cat amongst a bunch of pigeons.
Good on you!
I’m orff to work, again!!!
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Warrigal said:
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.
It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
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atomou said:
Who could ever forget that scene, ey, Waz?
Who could ever forget those words, those sentiments? That mental state?
And those of his lady: Out, damn’d spot! out, I say!—One; two: why, then
’tis time to do’t.—Hell is murky.—Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier, and
afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our
pow’r to accompt?—Yet who would have thought the old man to
have had so much blood in him?
OR: Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe topful
Of direst cruelty!
Fucking, “unsex me!”
How powerful a prayer is that?
Oh, for more Shakespeares!
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gerard oosterman said:
Let me at King Duncan.
When udders are a bursting
the gate to meadow continues rusting
and tumeric colour my cloth still
when dust is all that silence will
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astyages said:
One of my favorite Shakespearian speeches Warrigal… Sums it all up very nicely I thought…
🙂
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Emmjay said:
Gez, this probably won’t get up at the Drum, so….
Armin di Nihill.
Gez, many thanks for this piece again. And for the Pig’s plug.
How brave are you to flush out most of the Boltian lunatics and racists.
And expose them for the dumb-arse miserable bastards that they are.
Onya, mate.
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gerard oosterman said:
Armin,
You are too kind, but the plug to the Pig’s wasn’t my doing. The ABC did it on their own bat. They did edit some bits out, including the the reference to KristalNacht.. The ABC must have noticed I had put the piece up at the Pig’s first.!
Anyway, it went alright but am surprised at the vehemence against the boat people.
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gerard oosterman said:
Armin,
You are on the soap box! Standing ovation SVP. clap,clap.
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Gordon O'Donnell said:
Gerard, I have tried to post a comment on you Drum article but to no avail, well done
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algernon said:
I got a couple up and noticed that Armin gave Dingo and some other dope called Rohan a shit sandwich in reply to one of them, I suspect Rohan, is Indian looking the language used but I could be wrong and I’m not suggesting anything there, though I suspect that Rohans comments are fantasy.
Unfortunately i have limted time nowadays to get beyond the odd comment. I’ve employed boat people through companies I’ve worked for and the organisation has been richer for it. One an unaccompanied minor who was Vietnamese. Parents thought he’d have a better life and was bought up by a sister who wasn’t much older. He returned to meet them as an adult. This triggered depressive episodes for him and eventually he moved on.
I agreed totally with Armins reply.
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gerard oosterman said:
You all gave good stick, muchas Gracias. Happy birthday Algy. Here is you cake _*-*_*- with candles.
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vivienne said:
VL is just being irritating as usual. He only watches pay TV as it has lots of interesting stuff. Well, it is obviously lacking in a lot of interesting stuff, like news, current affairs i.e. what is happening in the country.
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gerard oosterman said:
Here is another ‘shyster’ another ‘bogus’ refugee ‘rorting’ our lovely hospitality, our kindness and compassion..
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-26/sri-lankan-man-dies-in-villawood/3600684
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Vee-ell said:
Of course the eternal elephant-in-the-room, in your themed anthology, is deterrent.
You have consistently sidestepped this issue, gerard. And I don’t blame you. I think you came close to saying, something like, It’s not an issue.
However, for the rest of the world it is. That’s why you cannot just land in a boat, on an English, French or Indian shore. If you land without papers; you’re locked up.
Now, recognising your angst and sensitivity, about the treatment of the detainees, I must admit to being naive. I didn’t know that they were badly treated. I asked you about this once before. I can’t remember whether you replied or not.
What do we actually do to mistreat them?
You’re entitled to think that I am feigning ignorance. However you would be wrong. I am honestly not sure what we do. Aren’t there laws in this country about beating and starving prisoners?
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Gordon O'Donnell said:
Gee Julian you don’t take in much. Typical Aussie
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Gordon O'Donnell said:
Oh yes. We should beat and starve prisoners before executing them. Think of the savings. 🙂
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gerard oosterman said:
Vee-ell.
Where is Warrigal just when you need him?
When you go to your computer next time, just get on the ABC TV and look at last night’s 4 Corners. They tell it so much better and, above all, have the facts.
The boatpeople is not an issue because of the low numbers compared with the over 40 000 of visa overstayers.
Thanks for your interest, you’ll get there eventually.
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Vee-ell said:
And the mistreatment? The beatings ect.
I have never seen 4 corners, however their must be a list of mistreatments.
The 40,000 over stayers are not a problem, surely? They have identification. meaning that one can save months on the processing.
And of course, would have had to obtain a visa. No foreigner can travel to Australia, without a visa.. Here’s a link http://www.immi.gov.au/e_visa/
When one is granted a visa there are requirements to be fulfilled. Or, didn’t you know that?
In fact one can’t get on the aeroplane without it.
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Gordon O'Donnell said:
Julian,
You need to connect with the locals man
Peace
Hung the Hippie
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Vee-ell said:
You mean like Paul’s….”Love of the Common People”?
I’m off line now BTW.
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Gordon O'Donnell said:
Julian,
Don’t run away
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Voice said:
We have similar problems here that immigrant detention centres have all over the world, Julian. Suicides, riots, fires, lack of facilities, in some cases neglect of medical needs, particularly mental, .. One would assume that here, as elsewhere, not all the security personnel are up to scratch. Occasionally, as elsewhere, there are bad incidents. Here, as elsewhere, we go through phases when we improve things, and phases when they worsen.
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Gordon O'Donnell said:
Τις Παρασκευές μου αρέσει να έχω spanakopitas και τα τσιπ
On Fridays I like to have spanakopitas and chips
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Voice said:
Gordy, I’m all for the occasional Pommie bashing on a lazy Sunday afternoon … well, maybe not. Don’t put yourself down, mate. That’s my job… well, maybe not. Seriously though, please don’t put yourself down so much.
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atomou said:
Laddie asked, “You mean like Paul?”
If I may intersmack, “No, I mean like Luke. Luke 10:25-37, in fact. The parable of the Good Samaritan.”
Now, I’m going totally against the currents of my morality river here, by sending you to the Bible, of all things but I can’t think of any other bit in literature that might cause you to put the right associations on the refugee issue.
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Vee-ell said:
To be honest atomou, I haven’t a clue what your point of view is.
Your comments are (always) interlaced with convoluted hyperbole and bucket loads of personal insults: Certainly the very antitheses, of problem solving.
However, perhaps you would care to expound on ‘your’ perspective, of how we deal with boats, laden with strangers coming to our shores, Bearing in mind the principle that ALL governments hold dear: deterrent.
Now’s your chance. You’ve earn’t it…Go for it.
OK! A big fanfare: I give you…Atomou’s remedy.
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Vee-ell said:
PS. The Paul reference was just a retort to Hung, re connecting.
It was probably something that only Hung & Warragal, would have picked up on, after I had posted Paul Young’s song. Which in turn was a reference to “My Home”.
Back to the garden for moi. The Stump Grinder has arrived and the roofer is here. Their logic is more succinct than 3/4 of these comments.
@ Viv, I am very aware of the universal refugee problem and particularly Australia’s unique circumstance.
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Gordon O'Donnell said:
“What do we actually do to mistreat them?” We greet them with Serco employees. These people are lowly paid and poorly trained. They are pushed to the edge to make a profit. The only difference between them and the refugees is clothing.
The problem you have with England, France etc., is there are many other ways of getting into the country other than boat. One of the best ways to get to Australia is by plane then by boat. To get to England or France you simply hitch a ride on a lorry.
Julian. I don’t know how long you have been here but your ignorance of Australia and what is happening around you is astounding. Either look around or go home.
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Vee-ell said:
I am home.
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Vee-ell said:
http://www.immi.gov.au/e_visa/
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Vee-ell said:
Paul Young – Where Ever I Lay My Hay that’s My Home
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Vee-ell said:
You can’t get into England in a lorry. Where did you get that idea?
Not unlessen youse have some sandwiches, beer and a map.
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Vee-ell said:
So…we greet them with Serco employees?
Who do you expect, The Fucking Queen?
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algernon said:
Gordon, is the Queen a wombat?
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Gordon O'Donnell said:
Not our dear Lizzie old boy
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atomou said:
Our queen eats, roots and leaves!
Hang on, let me re punctuate this.
Our queen eats roots and leaves, so she’s a wombat.
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Gordon O'Donnell said:
Egg zacily Sire
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atomou said:
Laddie!
No one would ever suggest that you are “feigning” ignorance. Your love for ignorance and for displaying it in all its pathological detail is glaringly obvious.
No, no feigning it, lad!
And, as I said on an earlier cavil, you begin, not with an admission to ignorance but with an assertion and then, when that assertion is proven to be wrong, you retreat to your beloved fortress, a fortress beloved by all troglodytes, Fortress Ignorance.
Too glib, lad and too silly. Self demeaning.
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astyages said:
As an ex-troglodyte I must protest, ato… in any case, some people were born ignorant, some achieve ignorance and some have ignorance thrust upon them!
😉
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atomou said:
You were a cave-dweller, asty?
Doubt it, old Philoktetes, deeply doubt it.
I’m trying very hard to work out the sort of ignorance that burdens our lad but, alas, ah cannae ken! Ever!
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Vectis Lad said:
I’m trying hard to accept your personal (generalised) abuse all the time.
If you have a specific example–air it.
You wrote that I made an assertion that was then proven incorrect. A mystifying assertion in its own.
I don’t claim to be an arbiter of all things–and of course my political views are the opposite of yours. Not that I really know what they (yours)are.
They appear to be, give everybody everything (in general terms).
But if you want to keep going with it…fine. Learn to cop, return of serve: and to accept that, just maybe, yes maybe, you ‘are’ actually wrong sometimes.
Kepp up the bantering and I will keep pointing out how different (some) Australians are from general world thought, behaviour, speech, codes, attitudes, manners, grace and idioms.
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Vectis Lad said:
PS. I accept those differences, however you, apparently don’t.
You have a perception that you are right all of the time!
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atomou said:
I wouldn’t be asserting anything if I wasn’t sure I was right, lad.
I do some reading -lots of it; you do some tit-perving -lots of it. You make either direct assertions or assertions implied by questions or sarcasm (So…we greet them with Serco employees? Who do you expect, The Fucking Queen?)
And then, when someone points out the fact that you should have studied the matter a little BEFORE you made those assertions, you protest you knew nothing about the core of the issue… “I don’t know who Bolt is!”
I don’t care what your political views are. Couldn’t give a dried dog poo about them but I do expect people who make assertions to have developed them not by watching lots of tits but by studying those issues as thoroughly as they can.
At my age, I don’t tolerate what I don’t have to. I don’t need to agree with everyone -or anyone, for that matter, on everything -or anything for that matter. I work at my assertions before I make them. Good ‘nough for me.
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Vectis Lad said:
“At my age, I don’t tolerate what I don’t have to. I don’t need to agree with everyone -or anyone, for that matter, on everything -or anything for that matter. I work at my assertions before I make them. Good ‘nough for me.”
QED. Obdurate, bigoted froth; unworthy of a reply.
.
.””So…we greet them with Serco employees?
Who do you expect, The Fucking Queen?”””…is not an ‘assertion’. It was a sarcastic question…You left school too early.
“you do some tit-perving -lots of it.” …About Lily, the mathematician presumably ? My comments are not for eaves-droppers, but for Voice & Viv.
All in all, a pretty dismal display of…well, just rubbish, really.
Better luck next time. Use your dictionary. Or better still read this:
Click to access goodmanners.pdf
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Gordon O'Donnell said:
Well said Lord Ffunston. Personally I’m glad to stick with us lefties. It gives a good balance. We all get hot under the collar at times, me in particular. I think it’s great that we just don’t agree to the one mantra. Keep it up old boy oh and what’s this at my age bullshit?
Your plastic pal who’s fun to be with (thanks to Douglas Adams)
Hung
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atomou said:
I just hate good manners, particularly when they’re used to hide bad logic.
Have you gone to school at all? And I don’t mean the school of etiquette!
Assertion by question, by sarcasm, by direct exhortation is all the same. Either you know what you’re saying or you know stuff all and if you know stuff all, then cop the crap that goes with it.
No such thing as eavesdropping on a public forum.
Laddie, old son, I shall henceforth let your bullshit flow! No further comment from me!
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Warrigal said:
Perhaps, given the power and reach of the media these days, we should introduce a course in “Media Studies” at primary school level. We teach our kids to read and write, we teach them basic numbers and number theory, simple geometry, all because we know that a grounding in these things is essential to progress in modern society. Perhaps an ability to parse the national discourse, engage in the national debate is just as important if not more important.
But we all saw the hue and cry over the seemingly benign issue of introducing an ethics stream. That so upset the clergy, mistakenly believing that this was exclusively their turf, that the idea just sputtered out. Try getting a course up that would give kids, and therefore adults in time, the ability to see through the lies of politicians and “the market”. That’s really striking at the power base of the power elite. Can you imagine Big Ears trying to peddle the trash he currently is to an enlightened electorate?
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atomou said:
But you’ve answered your own “perhaps,” Waz.
We can teach the poor blighters whatever we -the moral minority- anything we want but they will still have to deal with the unbearable noise of crap thundered down from big brother. And it will be worse for them because, like Cassandra, they will know the truth and, for a while, utter it, but they’ll never be heard nor heeded!
Best leave them dumb and uncouth. Makes for a more acceptable slave yard, waz.
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Gordon O'Donnell said:
Then we teach them cricket Warrigal old boy. The willow and leather is the universal game. Father O’Way proved that for me. Move on from the Enlightened Electorate. No such thing exists except the next Test Match against the Old Dart. Believe in me and I will believe in you, plus I’ll give you a better write up in the next Universal Cosmopolitan. 🙂
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vivienne said:
Gerard – it is there now along with more from others.
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gerard oosterman said:
Yes, Vivienne. Thanks for that. It’s going to be a nice evening. Hope yours will be too.
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Gordon O'Donnell said:
Yes Gerard. As you live near the Bradman Oval, this summer I want you and Helvi down there rooting for the local team. God bless Bowral.
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gerard oosterman said:
We rooot for cricket every day, walk around the oval. Did you know that the season has started already here? I saw a man swinging a bat yesterday in the middle of the oval too. Someday we should meet-up and we’ll take you around the oval, have a coffee and you can explain what a ‘ out for a duck’ is.
I feel somewhat despondent too about my lack of cricket knowledge. I left it too late now.
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Gordon O'Donnell said:
Out for a duck means you didn’t score. I am glad that you root for cricket every day. Rooting is important. It is a part of society that is surely lacking. Only the other day I said that the Minister for the Environment should be sacked as he was compared to a storm, uprooting trees all night. Think about it.
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gerard oosterman said:
I thought that ‘out for a duck’ had something obscene like rooting and that somehow it would involve a duck. Not so silly, because cricket is very much an English thing and they often go for ducks when shooting out in the open air. Very often an Englishman would say to his wife,’ I say Gladys,” I am going out for duck”
Did you know that English and soap get often confused?
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vivienne said:
Gerard, I commented on your article on Unleashed and it is still not there. Hours ago. Good on you.
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Warrigal said:
Free speech isn’t free. The cost is calculated in the frustration and animus we we find rising up in us when the likes of Bolt Akkerman Jones et al freely speak their minds. Keep in mind they feel a similar frustration and animus to those who don’t share their views.
That their speech is often filled with hatred and a dark loathing of “the Other”, possibly inciting listeners to similarly hateful opinions and occasionally hateful acts, seems to sit badly with those able to express opinions with a little more empathy and compassion.
But does their hatefulness require statutory control; and if it does, what shape would that control take?
You see, it will in time cut both ways. What might be grist for the mill today, may in the next election cycle be seen as nothing more than a contaminant, corrupting the pure flour of our nationhood.
The Americans tried it. They called it The Patriot Act because they wanted to convey, duplicitously of course, that only non patriots would complain about the act’s intrusion into their much vaunted freedoms. It was Bush’s end play around the Bill of Rights, essentially designed to get around troublesome rights like “habeus corpus”, free assembly and speech etc.
Do we really want to go down that road? I don’t.
Sadly free speech has to be free for everybody, even when that speech includes the hateful nonsense spewed like bile, like a poisonous, noxious vitriol from the quivering, spittle flinging lips of atrocious, sub human, krypto-fascists like those previously mentioned.
See there was a little example of hateful free speech, right there.
Whoops, he brown shirts are knocking my door down.
The boat people? That’s just politics played hard ball old school and stupid. The fact remains most of these people are eventually settled here and contribute to Australian society just as the Poms and the Irish, Greeks, Italians and Balts, Chinese, Vitetnamese, some 150 different nationalities, did before them. That Gillard and Abbott cannot find common ground is nothing new, and you’re absolutely right G, we should all be screaming blue murder over it. But we don’t, maybe because the majority of Australians have the government they want, and they so justly deserve. Dull, short sighted, mendacious, self serving and duplicitous, just like Bolt Akkerman Jones et al. They are the voices of this disjunctive time, reflective of our national mood. Not necessarily your mood or mine, but the national mood, as moderated and mediated by Murdoch and his ilk, just the same. Perhaps we are at this time a hateful stupid little people with not much more on our minds than our own well being. I don’t like the thought but there you are.)
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billie said:
Warrigal, your last para is spot on!
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Warrigal said:
While the Billie boils, eh?
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atomou said:
I agree about free speech, Waz. If it’s going to be free for one then it ought to be free for all and in all its shortcomings, because, as you’ve pointed out, the moment we give politicians the right to circumscribe the idea of “fee speech” we give them a horrendous rod to beat us with.
What needs to pointed out though is that let all speech be made on equally amplified megaphones because it’s the megaphone that makes the difference. Its reach, its volume, its longevity. Either enable all speech to be made on megaphones and pulpits and lecture theatres and school rooms and TVs and radio stations and newspapers with equal ease or don’t let the same politicians bullshit us about how we have democracy and freedom to speak.
Why did the “Occupiers” get kicked up the bum and why do we keep hearing that they didn’t have any “goals”, that they were inarticulate rabble? Why have we not heard from any of the more articulate protesters? May I suggest that the megaphone did not get to them? That they were banned from approaching the megaphone -much like the ABC Dumb bum does?
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atomou said:
One more little ranty thought:
Free speech in this country is like the “free market.” Freely available to some, totally inaccessible to others.
We should be shouting from the roof tops: “Free speech for all!”
Much like Aristophanes’ women shouted in the opening of his Lysistrata: (Replace the word “Adonis” with “free speech”)
Chorus of Women:
Cry, all you mothers! Cry for your Adonis! Cry!
Cry! Adonis! Lament the death of Adonis! Cry,
cry mothers! Your Adonis is gone! Adonis is gone for ever! Beautiful to all eyes, Adonis is gone!
Lament his death, mothers of sons!
🙂
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gerard oosterman said:
Ato:
Free speech for all but I think that it should be a little less free for the Bolts, Ackermans and Jones’ of this world. How did they get there in the firts place? Who listens to them and why? Could there be education at primary school level to teach the kids to be more critical, to weigh up the difference between the false and the real prophets?
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gerard oosterman said:
Thanks for your ,as always, enlightened reply,. Someone replied that he hadn’t noticed any guards beating boat-people to death. He seems to live in hope.
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Warrigal said:
We don’t have to beat them. A couple of months in detention and they’ll be self harming, going mad, and we won’t have to lift a finger, or pay a cent to watch them do it.
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Gordon O'Donnell said:
Geez Warrigal, 453 words to say what? Zipping isn’t in the cup this year? FFS.
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