All Lives Matter But Not Equally…

Image from sbs.com.au

If you cast your mind back to the Black Lives Matter protests and remember the response from some was: “All lives matter!” and the argy-bargy about how could such a simple statement be racist.

Of course, sometimes it’s not what’s said but the context in which you say it. For example, if a work colleague tells you that they’ve just lost their grandmother, it’s not fine to say: “Yes, it’s been a terrible day all round. The left lane was blocked by road works and it took me an extra twenty minutes to get to work today.”

While what Usman Khawaja wrote on his shoes may seem innocuous enough, it’s the context that matters. I mean, it’s hard to argue that “All lives are equal” and “Freedom is a human right” are controversial statements, the fact that it’s happening at a time when the idea of a ceasefire in Gaza is being debated makes it a political statement and some people get terribly upset when sportspeople make political statements… unless, of course, they’ve just been offered a pre-selection for the party that the person who’d normally object to sportspeople doing anything more than running, jumping and catching balls votes for.

I even saw a couple of comments on social media hoping that Khawaji got a duck in both innings and I have to say that comments like that are so un-Australian that I feel that whoever made them should be deported…

Whatever it’s clear that the writing on the shoes was meant to convey support for the Palestinian people. Clearly by suggesting that all lives were equal, he’s suggesting that somehow Israel’s response to the October 7th atrocities was also an anathema and that killing people is never justified when we all know that the best way to bring peace is to kill a lot of people who’ve done something bad and – unlike you – when you kill people on their side, they are more inclined to just forget the whole thing rather than fight back.

Ignoring the whole Gaza situation for a moment, I’d have to say that I’m finding the Opposition’s recent tactics rather interesting. It seems that focus groups have told them that Albanese is perceived as “weak” by some, and so they’ve decided to hit this button as often as possible.

It may be an effective tactic.

However, there is a big problem with just constantly hitting the same button for two reasons:

  1. The first is that it’s pretty easy to anticipate the tactics and have a counter strategy. If a tennis player has a weak backhand and you always attack to their backhand, then they’ll soon either work to improve it or simply run around onto their forward because they know where the ball is going. If a football or basketball team always pass it to the same player to score, then it’s easier to cut it off. If you keep saying that a politician is heartless, it’s easy to get a puff piece of how they always visit their mother on Mothers’ Day. And if a politician is weak, he simply needs to find some way to demonstrate strength… like doing something heartless which The Greens will attack.
  2. The second is that it ends up lacking nuance and eventually you end up attacking something which most people support or where what you’re attacking just sounds ridiculous. You can suggest that people should do more to help themselves and that you believe in personal responsibility but when you try to suggest that someone who’s lost their leg should learn to stand on their own two feet you demonstrate the same careful thinking that made Tony Abbott an ex-PM…

All of which brings me back to Australia’s vote at the United Nations. To suggest that voting against the USA and Israel and supporting the ceasefire is weak lacks all traction when your friends in the media and you attack it. Added to that the fact that most Australians are tending towards support for a ceasefire, even if they were appalled by the attacks by Hamas.

Don’t get me wrong. Australia’s foreign policy is only partly what we decide and partly what’s decided for us. In the case of the UN vote, it may well be that we abstained a few weeks ago for fear of upsetting certain allies (such as the US), but we were quietly told that it wouldn’t be altogether wrong if we were to come to our own decision and to put pressure on Israel because the US doesn’t want to do that… at least, not publicly.

And so, the Coalition will be attacking Albanese as weak at every opportunity which gives him the great opportunity to say that he doesn’t care what they say because he’s tough enough to ignore what they say and to get on wth the job just like we’ve done at the recent COP meeting where we stood up to the fossil fuel lobby and pushed for renewables. (Ok, the reality of what we’re actually doing may not match the rhetoric but it won’t be Peter Dutton and fiends calling him out on that!!) To suggest that Albo meekly followed the rest of the world in doing something about climate change when our party is suggesting tripling nuclear energy in Australia – which means precisely nothing because three times zero is still zero – is not the winner you think it is.

As I said before, it’s all about context. You may get some traction with some people who care more about sport than politics when you say the two shouldn’t mix. And they may agree that they hope that Usman Khawaja goes out cheaply. But you might find that they don’t appreciate you cheering if he goes out in the fourth innings when Australia was nine wickets down, needing just two runs to win!

Sometimes people may get the impression that Dutton and his band of smiling assassins enjoy it too much when things go wrong.

 

[textblock style=”7″]

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

[/textblock]

About Rossleigh 1447 Articles
Rossleigh is a writer, director and teacher. As a writer, his plays include “The Charles Manson Variety Hour”, “Pastiche”, “Snap!”, “That’s Me In The Distance”, “48 Hours (without Eddie Murphy)”, and “A King of Infinite Space”. His acting credits include “Pinor Noir Noir” for “Short and Sweet” and carrying the coffin in “The Slap”. His ten minutes play, “Y” won the 2013 Crash Test Drama Final.

8 Comments

  1. If only some of the mainstream media, other than Laura Tingle on 7.30 would start to concentrate on Spud’s inconsistencies with a bit more venom we might not be seeing the glee that Albanese’s falling support is provoking.
    That being said, I read of some polling which actually shows how contemptuous of him the majority are so that would seem to indicate either his relentless negativity, or his inconsistency or perhaps both are starting to gain traction.

    In the meantime we could all help by not buying Murdoch papers. If your local happens to be one you will probably be getting minimal real local news, apart from murders, road deaths, youth crime and how bad Labor is and a mass of syndicated clickbait about mega wealthy singers, how climate change isn’t real and how you can continue to eat in these parlous times.

    Another perceptive and colourful offering, Rossleigh. I particularly liked the one-legged person reference having a one-legged friend who is trying to do just that.

  2. I have come to the conclusion Dutton is the weak one as not once not even once have I seen him being questioned by a journalist after one of his press releases. He is getting a free ride but wait until the next election comes around and he will have to square off with Albo at a national debate.

  3. Thank goodness that Albanese finally grew some testicles and discovered his spine by standing up to his masters of war.

    However, I refuse to ”Ignoring the whole Gaza situation for a moment”.

    The GAZA SITUATION IS GENOCIDE by the ZION@ZIS inflicting THE NETANYAHU NAKBA on Indigenous Palestinians is the real objective, that the USA (United States of Apartheid) is using to roll over war materiels stock as part of the ”normal” procurement process for enormous profit of the American NE military industrial complex shareholders.

    The ZION@ZIS are following the same playbook from the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943 with the only change being the jackboot in on the ZION@ZIS FOOT. The goal has been announced as ‘to drive ALL Palestinians into the sea”. This will allow fresh ZIONA@ZI colonial settlers to fill the reconstructed premises built on the lands of the dispossessed and displaced Indigenous Palestinians with European foreign aid and both European & American bank ”investment”..

  4. Peter Dungpile is as weak as diluted water, a vacuum of a man concealed inside a black hole, itself the core of nothing at all. Brainless, gutless, heartless, arid of soul, intellect, awareness and decency, the Plodding Plop needs to be removed from public life. Trouble is, a devious scrotumheaded old political pervert and media maggot from afar in the putrid USA is a keen fan of all things soiled and saleable, using reeking turds like A Bolt to spread the manure of foul messaging out. Propaganda corrupts, absolutely.

  5. Phil, Speaking of Avile Blight…I mean Avicious Bastard…no, no Adisgusting…that’s it…Andrew Bolt. He’s throwing a bit of a vituperative hissy fit and childish tantrum about comments Chris Bowen made about him.

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/dec/14/andrew-bolt-herald-sun-newspaper-newscorp-column-chris-bowen-sacking-calls-ntwnfb

    Now there is no way that Rupert/Lachlan will get rid of him, he’s just the right sort of right wing rabid scumbag that help keeps the money rolling in and satisfies the bogan rednecks that thrive on the Faec…Fox…nah, Faeces Network.

  6. The standard milieu for journalists, including those of post Kerry ABC, has been:
    Labor
    An agressively negative, when did you stop drinking?
    Liberal
    Would you like me to nod whilst you speak?
    That will not change until albo’s labor get the guts to present the media with controversy about the lnp, the loonies and the dutton.

  7. GL & PP apropos your reference to Andrew Bolt I have for the first time read one of his articles. Probably will never happen again. However on reading it I have come to the conclusion that the stories of the Dreamtime and how they apply to conservation and the natural world make far more sense than the myths of a man who turned water into wine, thus allowing educated clergy to claim they can turn wine into blood, which achieves s.f.a in saving the planet. Who’s the primitive?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*


The maximum upload file size: 2 MB. You can upload: image, audio, video, document, spreadsheet, interactive, text, archive, code, other. Links to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other services inserted in the comment text will be automatically embedded. Drop file here