Jeff Kennett's attitude towards sexism

So I glanced at the opinion page of the old, reliable Murdoch-owned Herald Sun today and there was another story where a commentator claims that Julia Gillard is unfairly accusing Tony Abbott of being sexist and 'playing the gender card.' This time it was former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett writing the article and this was EVEN WORSE than the Andrew Bolt article that I recently commented on. http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/gender-war-just-another-julia-gillard-flop/story-fni0ffsx-1226669710095
As today was also June 26th, 2013, the day that Julia was replaced by Kevin Rudd as leader of the Labor Party I was considering cancelling my plan to do this blog as this specific issue is unlikely to come up again.
I changed my mind because I decided the issue is not to do with Julia Gillard. It's to do with embarrassing old white men like Jeff Kennett who THINK they're qualified to talk about these things, when they're not, and who desperately need to STOP TALKING until they get some empathy and some logic.

Anyway, here's the Jeff Kennett article.

SOON after the death of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, I was asked by a journalist about my recollections of her period in office.
I said that while some disagreed with her policies, the reality was that everyone knew the direction she was taking her government and what she was trying to achieve. There was a degree of consistency and certainty.
Then I was asked to name other leaders I respected. I named the former prime minister of India, Indira Gandhi, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. I consider myself fortunate to have met Thatcher and Gandhi.

Jeff there are millions of bigots who do exactly what you're doing here. I'm not a bigot I have a (fill in the blank) friend/person who I admire. This proves nothing. I've heard it a zillion times before.

Ronald Reagan was a good leader with extraordinary communication skills and Bill Clinton was as intellectually capable a leader as anyone.
I was surprised later, when considering my answer, that I had nominated three women as outstanding leaders. But all had or have qualities I admire: a clear agenda, the consistency in what they believed in and the courage to withstand opposition and deliver.
But my selection was not based on gender. Merkel, Thatcher and Gandhi are, or were, talented politicians who achieved their leadership positions based on merit. None to my knowledge asked for or was given special treatment because of their gender. Which makes the current political play by our Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, so appalling.

... How is that an argument? Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi and Angela Merkel were good politicians and therefore Julia Gillard has nothing to complain about... WHAT? Thank you for that charming non-sequitor but could you kindly make some kind of coherent sense?

Public trust started to evaporate when Gillard broke her promise "that there will be no carbon tax in any government I lead". That led to a re-evaluation of the way in which she stole office from Kevin Rudd.

Wow... I was drinking cider while blogging on my laptop and I just spat cider all over my computer screen in shock after reading that colossal pile of shit!
EVERYTHING that you just described, opposition leader Tony Abbott did exactly the same only much, much worse and got away with it and yet you use this as evidence AGAINST sexism.
The carbon tax had no significant negative impact. Unless a person makes over $150,000 per year they don't have to pay anything so the only thing that you can possibly fault about the carbon tax is the lack of consistency or flip-flopping that could be used to describe it.
But there have been MASSIVE flip-flops from Tony Abbott and there haven't been nearly the same amount of focus on that in the media.
For example here's what he said about paid maternity leave in 2002.
'Compulsory paid maternity leave. Over this government's dead body frankly. It just won't happen.'
Recently he came out with a more generous paid maternity leave plan than Labor.
Here's what he said about climate change.
“I also think that if you want to put a price on carbon, why not just do it with a simple tax? Why not ask motorists to pay more, why not ask electricity consumers to pay more and then at the end of the year you can take your invoices to the tax office and get a rebate of the carbon tax you've paid.”
Yet when Labor suggests a tax that only effects the people making more than $150,000 per year he's outraged. Meanwhile HE was going to tax Joe everyman motorists? Why does Tony Abbott hate the middle class so much that he wants to destroy them with a big new tax?
Furthermore, that's the EXACT SAME ISSUE that you're upset about Julia Gillard for and Tony Abbott also flip-flopped on it!
Abbott propensity for flip-flopping is so severe than in 2010 on the 7:30 report with Kerry O'Brien he plainly admitted that what he says when he hasn't been given a script to read off should not be taken seriously. Here's the quote...
“I know politicians are going to be judged on everything they say but sometimes, in the heat of discussion, you go a little bit further than you would if it was an absolutely calm, considered, prepared scripted remark. Which is why the statements that need to be taken absolutely as gospel truth are those carefully prepared scripted remarks.”
Yet the objective, unbiased, non-sexist reason for the media's desire to put Julia's head on pike is that SHE can't be trusted? If flip-flopping is such a big issue how come there wasn't 50 times as much suspicion of Tony Abbott's comments? And you have the nerve to say she was demanding special treatment? Fuck you Kennett, you arse-hole!
The other part of the reason you give for Julia Gillard being untrustworthy is that she 'stole office from Kevin Rudd.'
Right. Because Tony Abbott would never steal the leadership away from Malcolm Turnbull... Oh wait... YES HE DID!!! You know how many times I heard about him criticized for doing that? Once. On QandA on Monday night in 2012. You know how many times I heard people bringing Julia's character into question for removing Kevin Rudd? Constantly. Whenever I turned on the TV or the radio for about two years after it happened. I couldn't escape it even though I wasn't following Australian politics particularly closely. I couldn't believe nobody EVER pointed out that Tony Abbott had done the exact same thing within the Liberal party. I had to keep mentioning to people to make sure I wasn't cracking up. I kept asking people if it was me that was missing something. It wasn't. There was a huge, HUGE double standard.
Tony Abbott was so brazen and so confident that he'd never be called on his hypocrisy for pushing this line that Julia knifed Kevin, that he dramatically told the media on ABC24 that 'Julia Gillard and the Labor party assassinated Kevin Rudd in the dead of night.' Rather than asking 'does that mean you assassinated Malcolm Turnbull in the dead of night?', the media immediately cut away to something else, leaving that blindingly hypocritical statement unchallenged.
So THIS is supposed to prove that the media WASN'T sexist? How does it prove that? How? What the bloody hell are you talking about you stupid, biased buffoon?!

Since then, the community has been witness to a range of policy failures, political misjudgments and public brawling at ministerial level to a degree we have never witnessed before.

Policy failure and political misjudgments so severe that you're not going to mention them. And public brawling at a level never witnesses before. Politics was NEVER messy until Julia Gillard came along. Did anyone else notice that? No politician was ever mean-spirited until Julia Gillard arrived. She infected a bunch of good-natured, sweet-hearted choir boys with her evil wicked witch potions!
Just my observation, but I don't think Labor instigates most of the public brawling.

The loss of confidence in the Prime Minister and her Government has been self-inflicted. The public is not to blame, nor the media.

You assert that without evidence. I will now dismiss it.

So, in an act of desperation, the Prime Minister launched a gender attack on Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, an attack that has failed dismally, as this week's Newspoll illustrated so graphically.
When the first attack occurred in Parliament in October and Gillard accused Abbott of being a misogynist, I thought it was incorrect and grossly unfair.

Maybe you should have googled 'Tony Abbott quotes.' Here are some of what he's on record as saying on http://abbottisms.com/quote/27

“While I think men and women are equal, they are also different and I think it's inevitable and I don't think it's a bad thing at all that we always have, say, more women doing things like physiotherapy and an enormous number of women simply doing housework.” - 1979 radio interview.

“I would say to my daughters if they were to ask me this question... [their virginity] is the greatest gift that you can give someone, the ultimate gift of giving and don't give it to someone lightly, that's what I would say.” January 27, 2010. The Australian Woman's Weekly

“Why isn’t the fact that 100,000 women choose to end their pregnancies regarded as a national tragedy approaching the scale, say, of Aboriginal life expectancy being 20 years less than that of the general community?” March 17th 2004 tonyabbott.com.au

“What the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing is that if they get it done commercially it’s going to go up in price and their own power bills when they switch the iron on are going to go up.” February 8th 2010 Sydney Morning Herald

“Abortion is the easy way out. It’s hardly surprising that people should choose the most convenient exit from awkward situations.” March 17th 2004 tonyabbott.com.au

''I won't be rushing out to get my daughters vaccinated [for cervical cancer], maybe that's because I'm a cruel, callow, callous, heartless bastard but, look, I won't be.” November 9th 2006, The Australian
 
“I believe that there is a vast moral gulf which separates modern Australia from Nazi Germany. But can we be so sure that, under pressure over time, we will not slide down the same slippery slope. We only have to look at the abortion situation in this country.” October 16th 1995 Australian Parliament: Hansard

“It would be folly to expect that women would ever approach equal representation in a large number of areas simply because their aptitudes, their abilities and interests are different for physiological reasons.” - 1979 - Four Corners.

“Gillard won't lie down and die.” May 29th 2012 Herald Sun.

“Every day the Prime Minister stands in this parliament to defend this Speaker will be another day of shame for this parliament and another day of shame for a government which should have already died of shame.” October 9th 2012, Australian Parliament: Hansard.

“The problem with the Australian practice of abortion is that an objectively grave matter has been reduced to a question of the mother’s convenience.” March 17th 2004 tonyabbott.com.au

Praising his daughter's virginity and repeated condemnation of abortion . Boy, Abbott sure does love controlling women's bodies for them - but I'm sure that's for completely altruistic non-misogynistic reasons.


Ask yourself - Is this the face of a sexist man?

It was cowardly and not the act of a leader let alone a prime minister. Not something a Thatcher, Gandhi or Merkel ever resorted to.

Yeh, I got it! You're repeatedly insisting that you're not sexist. Don't protest too hard now!

But as Newspoll has shown, the community's reaction was to mark down the Prime Minister's authority even further.

Doesn't that tend to happen with political attacks generally? Political attacks bring down your opponent but they also bring you down, right?

Abbott is not only a husband of three daughters who, with his wife, Margaret, form a very normal family unit, but he has no issue working with women. Julie Bishop is his deputy leader and his chief-of-staff is Peta Credlin, a very competent political operator.

That... proves... NOTHING!... You... IMBECILE! What did you think he was going to do? Reject his wife and children for having vaginas and never speak to them again? Or stand up in the middle of parliament and demand all women in the Liberal party be immediately thrown out? You sound like someone who doesn't have the slightest, faintest, vaguest idea how prejudice works. Just because someone has a prejudice it doesn't mean that they've completely lost their senses and can't function civilly at all you fucking retard!
This is actually very telling. This is you saying that unless sexism is so extreme that the sexist just can't help spitting hatred even at the expense of wrecking their own life, then you don't see it. And you don't care.

Gillard's attack was personal and deliberate. She thought she was playing to the Australian public but, as it has turned out, she was playing to a very small group of people, most of whom were her own supporters. And she confirmed she was not a leader of substance.
Abbott deserves credit for not returning the personal attacks delivered by the Prime Minister.
Her return to this area of attack - Abbott's relationship with women and the issue of abortion - was another attempt to divide the community.

Prove it dickhead!

It was another act of personal and political desperation that has simply alienated even more Australians.
Gillard was elected to govern all Australians but instead seems intent on dividing the country she is privileged to lead.
Someone described Jill Meagher's murderer, Adrian Bayley, as a misogynist.
I agree that is a correct use of the word. But Abbott is not a misogynist, and to describe him so is a disgrace that speaks more of Gillard's insecurities and failures.

You agree that a murderer is a misogynist. Are you not merciful? Is that what Abbott would have to do before you gave a shit?

 Australians deserve a political leader they can trust, a leader who does not seek to divide the nation and who does not resort to gender attacks.
She should step down, but her replacement should not be another flawed character such as Kevin Rudd.
The public has a right and expectation to pass judgment on one of the darkest periods of political leadership this country has ever been subjected to.

Yeh it's right up there with the stolen generation and the White Australia Policy! How dare she actually call him what he is! I can't believe she would call him a hateful fuck! He's just acting like a hateful fuck! Why can't he act like a hateful fuck without being called a hateful fuck? It's sooooo unfair! Waaaah!

Australia's next prime minister should be selected by the public, not the factions of the ALP.
I admire the standards set by Thatcher, Gandhi and Merkel.

Really? You admire Thatcher, Gandhi and Merkel? You should have said something because I had nooooooooooo idea. In fact I was about to conclude that you ARE a sexist based on the sickeningly biased substance of this article you just wrote, but now I know that there are three females that you like I'm all turned around on that assumption. Boy, what a dolt I was for EVER suspecting you! Uh-Duh! Herp! Derp! Derp!

May such standards soon return to Australian politics.
Have a good day.

Okay, thanks for your ignorant tripe, fuckhead!

Andrew Bolt is a hypocritical sexist idiot.

When I read stories written by Andrew Bolt I generally have two different types of reactions. Either I suspect that he's lying or wrong OR I know that he's lying or wrong. Sometimes he's not even making sense and very, very rarely do I think that he's actually right.
The story he had out yesterday was called 'Prime Minister Julia Gillard can't hide behind a skirt'.http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/prime-minister-julia-gillard-cant-hide-behind-a-skirt/story-fni0ffxg-1226666505054 It was about how he thinks that Julia Gillard is putting off male voters by unfairly accusing men of sexism. I'm not going to address everything here, just the blatant nonsense. Here it is...

Even this week, Gillard ally Nicola Roxon still hadn't learned that lesson. First the sanctimonious former attorney-general complained: "(Gillard) has been subjected to some of the most crass, silly, petty, sexist and just plain rude behaviour for years."
But in that same speech she boasted of her own sexist baiting of Opposition Leader Tony Abbott - how she'd accused him in Parliament of being weak, before holding up golf balls and leering: "I am prepared to offer him some balls."
Do Gillard's team know how such stuff grates on men? Do they realise many men would privately think, "But if I did that to a woman, my God ... "

HOW is that sexist against MEN? It sounds like she's implying that anyone who doesn't have balls also doesn't have courage. That includes all women, not men, so if anything that comment is sexist against women. The comment also implies that all men except Tony Abbott having balls is a fantastic thing. The comment was pro-balls, therefore pro men! And you're still whining about sexism against men?
As for the last paragraph where you say men are thinking 'if I did that to a woman, my god...' I don't even know what you're talking about. If I did WHAT to a woman? There's no area of the female anatomy symbolizing courage, and if there were, it would mean something different in this sociological context to accuse a woman of lacking courage than to accuse a man. There's no equivalency here.
Perhaps Bolt was saying that if a man insulted a woman and brought her body parts into it, it would be considered worse. But this ignores the fact that this 'sexist' attack only brings Tony Abbott down onto equal footing with women. Poor Tony. He was feeling so superior to women until Nicola Roxon said that. What'll he do about his dignity now?
The irony is that this article was supposed to be about Gillard and her supporters unfairly calling people sexist, and you make THIS ridiculous argument where you take a comment sexist against women and try to argue it's sexist against men, like a brazen hypocrite. The fact that you missed that concept seems to imply that don't care about sexism against woman and only care about sexism against men. That makes you a sexist.
As you are a sexist, I feel I can now comfortably ignore the rest of your stupid article as a sexist is  not qualified to comment on sexism.

Andrew Bolt thinks the Greens are pro-Hamas Nazis lusting for Jewish blood!

Andrew Bolt wrote an article on November 22, 2012 called 'Giving Greens a rocket' http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/C851 about the Israel - Palestine conflict and the views of senators Lee Rhiannon and Christine Milne in relation to the conflict. In his usual classy fashion, he insinuates both that the Greens are pro-Hamas and that they're Nazis who want Jews to die all the while calling every gratuitously oppressive action of Israel 'self-defense.'
I've taken it upon myself to correct this bull-crap.

Could Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon and the rest of her insanely anti-Israel party explain those hundreds of rockets being fired at Israel from Gaza?

Wrong. YOU are insanely PRO-Israel. Which is why the Greens LOOK insanely anti - Israel to you.

You see, Rhiannon even this week was still claiming Gaza was ``the world’s biggest outdoor prison and . . . has been under blockade for quite some time’’.
Blockaded by Israel, that is, which Rhiannon wants to boycott ``as a way to promoting Palestinian human rights’’.
And it’s blockaded so wickedly that Greens leader Christine Milne on Tuesday tabled a motion in the Senate demanding the government get ``Israel to lift the blockade of Gaza’’.

Blockaded sooooooooooooo wickedly! Ooh I'm crying about the blockade that crippled the Palestinian economy and left them short of food and medicine! Wah! Wah!
Fuck you Bolt!

(Has Hamas, the Islamist terrorist group which seized power in Gaza five years ago, learned the lesson from this? That the quickest way to get the Greens to spruik your cause is to shoot lots of rockets at Jews?)

??????? I don't even know what to say to that. That's just stupid.
Hamas also 'seized power' by being democratically voted in by the way.

But, about that blockade, Senators. From where came the nearly 2000 rockets fired from Gaza into Israel since January, including some powerful enough to hit Jerusalem and Tel Aviv?
The answer? Many from Iran.

2,000 rockets which only killed a small handful of people. Iron Dome, Israel's air defense system, explodes a lot of the rockets in mid air. It's not like every rocket attack was the equivalent of 9/11 and Israel is just a big burning pile of dead bodies by now.
Whenever I hear someone talking about the number of rockets fired with no mention of the number of people killed I know it's to hype up Hamas' actions. Not that Hamas' terrorism isn't terrible (as is Israel's), but this is scaremongering.

Some blockade, which lets such weaponry get smuggled in. Perhaps that blockade isn’t as strict as Rhiannon claims—certainly not along Gaza’s border with Egypt, now controlled by the Hamas-friendly Muslim Brotherhood.

Perhaps the blockade isn't as strict as Rhiannon claims? PERHAPS you should find the answer to that query instead of treating that query as if it were an answer! Firstly, the Muslim Brotherhood are very new. The Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak was friendly with Israel and supportive of the blockade just a couple of years ago.
Israel has not just used the blockade to defend itself. The Wikileaks cables revealed that in 2008 Israel was using the blockade to keep Gaza on the brink of economic collapse and deliberately letting in just enough supplies as to keep the Palestinian people just above the level of humanitarian crisis. This caused 60% of the babies in Palestine to have anemia, 65% of the population to be food insecure and crushed the Palestinian economy, keeping them all prisoners. In 2012 (according to Wikipedia's sources) Israeli courts forced Israel's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) to release a document which detailed the exact number of calories Israel would allow into Gaza to avoid humanitarian crisis. This was then converted into daily truckloads.  Israel didn't even stick to that number and let through LESS than was detailed.
Lee Rhiannon's speech which you claim to be responding to details many appalling effects of both the blockade and the occupation. 80 per cent of the population is dependent on international assistance. Over 1.5 million people live in Gaza and almost 1.2 million are refugees—Palestinians who have the legal right to return to their country of origin. At least two-thirds of Gazan households lack secure access to food. People are forced to make unacceptable trade offs, often having to choose between food or medicine or water for their families and 85 per cent of Gaza's fishing waters are totally or partially inaccessible due to Israeli military measures.http://lee-rhiannon.greensmps.org.au/content/video/speech-gaza-blockade-and-israel-palestine-conflict
Despite this, Israel continues to severely hamper recovery and reconstruction with restrictions on imports and exports. So I'd say you COULD describe the blockade as 'strict.'



Next question: If Gaza is the ``world’s biggest outdoor prison’’, strangled by a blockade so severe that Palestinians are left, as activists such as Professor Juan Cole like to claim, desperately short of food and medicine, why would Hamas be smuggling in rockets instead?

Because they want to free themselves from the prison by killing the prison guards. DUH! Idiot, you just described a scenario which gives them great incentives to smuggle in rockets. I think if I were in prison, a rocket that could help me blow the walls open and escape would be more useful than an extra sandwich!

Strange priorities, especially when rockets are not weapons of self-defence but of offence. Of terror. Which, of course, is the stock in trade of Hamas, pledged to Israel’s destruction.

Hamas pledge is stupid but it's not STRANGE to want to free yourself from prison as opposed to only making your prison conditions more bearable with more food. You have no empathy. You don't get their issue AT ALL. Allow me to sum it up for you- HAMAS DOESN'T LIKE BEING TOLD WHAT TO DO YOU NITWIT!
Good to see you say rockets are weapons of terror. I'm sure you won't say the exact opposite within this same article when Israel uses rockets.

Next question about that blockade you oppose, Senators Rhiannon and Milne: Can you now understand why Israel, while allowing in food, medicine and other goods, does try to stop imports to Gaza of weapons and material to build them? Why it’s so suspicious of what Hamas would do if left free to bring in whatever it wants?

TECHNICALLY they're letting in food and medicine if they allow in one breadcrumb and one aspirin. How MUCH food and medicine do they allow in? Not all of it. They've already turned Palestine into a shithole and they're still blocking useful resources.
The other part of your stupidity is, you actually think the Greens just want to leave Hamas to do whatever it wants? Right. You actually believe that the Greens position is that Hamas should blow up anything it wants? Well, that's a completely fair, objective framing of this issue...NOT!
'Uh- Duh! Hamas won't stop bombing for some unknown reason and I say Israel has a right to defend itself but Lee Rhiannon doesn't think so! Herp-a-derp! Derp! Derp!'
But the annoying thing is people make this argument all the time. It's not just Bolt! 'Israel has a right to defend itself.' Oh! Do they really? I was too stupid to realize that. Thank you for pointing it out. I didn't find your pointing out of the bleeding obvious patronizing at all!
I'm pretty sure that the Greens want Israel to negotiate peace THEN lift the blockade. Israel has the power to do that by giving back some of the land. That's the crux of the issue. Palestinians want their land back and Israel won't give it back.
I don't think Rhiannon wasn't saying that Israel should just get rid of the blockade in the middle of a war so Israel can be bombed. Although, if they did that they'd still have Iron Dome and the ability to bomb Hamas back a thousand times worse than Hamas can bomb them. This is due to the fact that they've got billions of dollars in military backing from the United States. That also seems like a pretty good deterrent.
It is not 'insanely anti-Israel' to say that Israel remove the blockade given that they have so much to deter Hamas already, and such massive potential to abuse their power with the blockade as well as the ability to (somewhat) placate Hamas by giving back the land (and returning to the 1967 borders.)
Don't act like Israel would be completely helpless without the blockade you disingenuous twat!

If Israel did not restrict dangerous imports to Gaza, would there now be more rockets or fewer? More dying or less?
Senators, doesn’t seeing Hamas fire off so many rockets make you at least consider how much mayhem would be unleashed if you really did manage to lift what blockade there still is?

YOU... ARE... A... FUCKING... RETARD!!!!

Last question: If Hamas put as much effort into developing Gaza as it does into smuggling rockets, wouldn’t its people be safer, richer and more trusted by its neighbours?
Would a Hamas that created jobs rather than rockets be more likely to persuade Israel it wanted peace, and not Israel’s destruction?

You shouldn't say 'last question', then immediately asked another question.
Also, this framing of Israel as the one wanting peace is off the mark. Israel and Hamas had a cease - fire in June 2008 and until Israel broke the cease-fire agreement by invading Gaza and killing half a dozen Hamas activists, Hamas didn't fire a single rocket.
You probably wish that Benjamin Netanyahu (the Israeli Prime Minister) was on stamps. That way you would have the honor of licking his backside!

 

Look at those rockets, Senators, and ask yourselves how smart it was to only now demand peace—only now that Israel has finally responded to many months of rockets fired at its civilians.
Ask yourselves if you’ve become a dupe of terrorists rather than a voice for ``human rights’’.
 
 Hang on, how did they demand peace? They bombed several Hamas targets and then mocked them about it on twitter. They weren't demanding peace they were shining Hamas on you lying cockroach!
And you're upset that it happened ONLY NOW? Gotcha. Israel should have bombed Palestine and egged them on with abuse sooner.

And if anyone thinks I’m being too hard on these allegedly well-meaning women, consider this morally bankrupt line from Milne’s Senate motion, the Greens’ final shame: The Greens have asked ``that the Senate note the disproportionate Israeli response in Gaza and that the parties to the conflict are not equivalent as Israel is the world’s fifth largest military power and Palestine has a weakened and constricted economy and is subject to restrictions on freedom of movement and goods in breach of international law’’.
What is grotesque about that paragraph is not what perhaps seems most obvious—that the Greens characterise this month’s fighting as between the ``military power’’ Israel and defenceless ``Palestine’’—when in fact Israel is finally defending itself after months of rocket attacks from Hamas terrorists.

Firstly, Israel is 'defending itself' in OCCUPIED areas. They've thrown people off their land and built on it threatening death if they're stopped, and when they get attacked for doing that they're JUST DEFENDING THEMSELVES! Isn't that fucking convenient! What a neat system you've got set up there!
Secondly, this particular action of 'defending itself' that you refer to involved Israel assassinating Hamas' military chief Ahmed al-Jabari with a rocket as well as a series of bombings that reportedly killed ten people including an 11-month-old baby and two girls under five years old, then mocking Hamas about the bombings on twitter. By the time the Greens made their speech over 100 Palestinians and three Israelis had died in the fighting that resulted from that incident. The two sides still hate each other and are still kill each other with nothing solved.
Now it's strange because you said in no uncertain terms earlier in this very article that 'rockets are not weapons of self-defense but of offence. Of terror.' Then a couple of paragraphs down you point to a political assassination with a rocket and say 'Israeli is finally defending itself.' Your inability to see your double standard is EPIC! It's pathological. You've got mental problems.
You should really ask yourself if you've become a DUPE OF THE TERRORISTS?! You should also ask yourself whether you've become a knuckle-dragging, chest-pounding, tribalistic, macho arse-clown!



No, most repulsive is that the Greens believe Israel’s self-defence is ``disproportionate’’—as in not enough Jews have died for Israel to now drop so many bombs on Hamas targets.
So excuse me if I ask Rhiannon and Milne one more question, after all: How many Jews must die before you let them defend themselves?
Some—including many in Hamas—think even six million wasn’t enough.
What’s your figure, ladies?

Whoa! Just when I think you can't get dumber you put an extra twist of idiocy on it! First you say that rockets are weapons of terror. Then you say that anyone against Israel using rockets on Palestine is a Hamas-supporting Nazi who wants Jews to die! It's obvious that Milne meant that too many Palestinians died rather than not enough Jews died, you insane, burbling, pathological, narrow-minded, Reich-wing, conservatard, Zionist shill, thundering, category-five moron whose ability to put words in people's mouths is second only to his ability to put bullshit in his reader's heads!

Angry Hatemongering Alan Howe Article

On May 13 this year I was reading the Herald Sun opinion column and Alan Howe had written a response to some comments of someone who he describes as 'Monash University lecturer and media commentator Waleed Aly, among Australia's best-educated and best-known Muslims'. The article was called 'Irritating? Most of us would call it murderous. Here is a link to the article. http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/irritating-most-of-us-would-call-it-murderous/story-e6frfhqf-1226640607985

I don't know Alan Howe very well. I don't read the paper much but I think this article paints a clear picture of who Howe is - an idiot. It got under my skin so much that I've decided to vent my frustration here. Here are the parts of the article that pissed me off the most...

'"Let's clear something up," he began. "Our responses to terrorism are not about the loss of innocent life . . . it's never really about the victims. It's about us."
He added that he believes we see ourselves as interchangeable with the killed and injured.
Really? I don't. I've never met Waleed Aly, so I can safely say that neither does anyone I know feel other than for the victims of Islamic terror when they blow up innocents, bring down buildings, or blade away at the necks of Westerners to provide content for the gloating audiences of Al-Jazeera.'

Why don't you just say what you mean? 'ALL MUSLIMS ARE BARBARIC, BEARDED, LIMB CHOPPING, WIFE-BEATING FUCKTARD TERRORISTS!'. Actually there are plenty of types of terrorism that don't involve Muslims so I'm bit put off that the article repeatedly embellishes Islamic terrorism and doesn't even bother to mention that other types exist. Off the top of my head the IRA, the Tamil Tigers, abortion clinic bombers, eco terrorists, repeated mass shootings in the USA, the invasion of Afghanistan and Israeli war crimes against Palestinians.
Also, you say that you don't react to victims because you identify with them and then immediately say that you feel bad for all the 'westerners' who got their heads cut off by Islamic radicals. Not all the people. All the westerners. But there's no chance Aly has a point about you reacting because you identify with the victims?

'Aly then comes to an absurd conclusion: The "sober" coverage of the Boston killings means we (for that read "the West") are "maturing" in the way we handle terrorism. There is a "pragmatic recognition that terrorism is a perpetual irritant".
Self-loathing Muslim extremists trying to kill innocents in large numbers might be a common occurrence, but like our endless road toll it still makes news.
Try telling the families of the 3000 men and women vapourised at the Twin Towers that terrorism is an irritant. Or that the 202 people, including 88 Australians, killed in Bali were executed by irritants.'

Groan. Groan. Groan. Alan, you're surely not REALLY still furious about 9/11 are you? That was people you don't know, in a country that isn't yours 12 years ago. If you're still angry about that then you need a therapist. Waleed Aly never said that if your family is killed or you are killed that terrorism is supposed to be an irritant to THEM. If your family dies then OF COURSE it's more than an irritant. It's supposed to be an irritant to people who are not personally connected to it like you, who has no personal connection to the tragedy and therefore no reason to be angry. The fact that you are angry shows you either have mental problems or you just like needlessly stirring up hate.
If you are furious about this, then you should be just as furious about every tragedy. 9/11 and the Bali bombing were awful but they weren't the worst catastrophe ever to have happened. Incidents that kill people like that road toll you mentioned happen all the time.
I agree with Aly. What do you expect would happen if I DID tell a 9/11 family member that the attack was merely irritating to me? Apparently in your mind they'd be pissed off that I don't stay up late at night fuming about an incident 12 years ago that had nothing to do with me.
Then there's the irony that Aly says the west is maturing in reaction to terrorism and you respond by immediately putting words in his mouth that make him look like a callous lunatic. Well... Our maturity apparently doesn't extend everywhere.

'Terrorists, according to Aly, kill "relatively few people".
So do redback spiders, but I spray every one I see.'

Oh my god! Not only are you putting words in his mouth but you're being painfully transparent about it. Aly clearly was not trying to suggest that we shouldn't bother doing anything about terrorism yet your response implies that he did. Do I need to say more?
Don't think I don't know what you're trying to imply here. You're thinking 'Of COURSE Waleed Aly LOVES terrorism. Just listen to the sound of his weird, foreign, terrorist-sounding, different-sounding name. He wants to blow up and chop up WESTERNERS like ME! Fucking 9/11! THE HATRED DRIVES ME DAY AND NIGHT! IT'S WHAT MAKES MY LIFE WORTH LIVING!'

'I'D prefer it that Waleed Aly took a more sensible and constructive approach. You know, acted positively.'

Fuck you, you condescending, hypocritical, bigoted wank-tard!
In fairness however, it does end with promoting the idea that charities and community involvement are a good way to help victims of terrorism. Howe says that he started that in relation to a Muslim terrorist attack in Beslan, Russia. A redeeming quality to an article which is otherwise pushing a lot of hate and fear.