A few days ago I thought of tweeting: “Today on ANZAC Day we celebrate the turning back of boats from people trying to enter a country illegally”, but then I thought of Yassmin, and I decided that it might trigger a meltdown from all those who accuse left-wingers of being snowflakes every time they object to something someone says… Like Yassmin, my point was not about disrespecting the ANZACs who apparently went over to Turkey to defend our way of life and ensure freedom of speech, so that people are free to say whatever’s on their mind unless it’s the sort of thing that would offend John Howard, in which case they need to leave the country.
After the reaction to Victoria’s Deputy Health Officer’s tweet about Captain Cook, it seems that I was right to keep the tweet to myself. Apparently, it’s not all right to suggest that the arrival of white people had a similar effect as the introduction of COVID-19 because, well, it’s just… um, political? And as a public servant, you’re not allowed be political, even in your private time. According to Tim Smith, the Victorian Opposition MP whose role is to make his colleagues look relatively intelligent, this tweet was the “biggest issue of the day”. Mm, I would have thought that something else might have actually been more significant for most people, but hey, I’m not across what makes something an issue apart from the fact that people like him insist that it’s a much bigger issue than, for example, people getting off a cruise ship and spreading disease this century.
Which makes me wonder what’s happening with the religious freedom bill. Will it be all right for public servants to tweet their religious views? And when do religious views become political views? Would it have been all right for the DHO to have said that Jimmy Cook was burning in Hell because of his attempts to observe the transit of Venus?
Whatever, it does seem strange that the free speech brigade are some of the first to demand the punishment of those who say something that offends them. Of course the calls for the head of the naughty person who’s said something that’s offensive only has the effect of spreading the reach of the comment. This applies whether the said person is left-wing, right-wing or just too stupid to understand that what they’re saying is not defensible by anyone. If Uncle Fred makes a fool of himself at Christmas lunch, Alan Jones doesn’t demand that he be banned from all future festivities and nobody outside the family ever has to get annoyed with Uncle Fred’s lack of empathy, education and understanding.
Who’d have heard of Annaliese van Diemen if it weren’t for the outrage?
Well, obviously a few people because she does have a fairly important job at the moment… Which sort of makes me wonder why you’d be distracting her by calling for her resignation unless you thought that she was doing something that put the health of people at risk.
sigh<
In other breaking news, I understand that it’s been discovered that Eden-Monaro has a severe shortage of female change rooms and that Bridget McKenzie will be given the sort of special envoy status that enabled Barnaby to write such a detailed report on the drought. Apparently, Barnaby sent Morrison several texts which alerted the PM to the fact that the drought was worst in the areas that had the least rain, but that the drought wasn’t severe enough for there to be an actual pub with no beer.
Senator Jim Molan is thinking of standing as a candidate. A lot of people are asking why he’d resign from the Senate to risk an unlikely electoral victory, but he thinks that he should be able to win because Labor are likely to endorse a woman. In fact, that’s one of the reasons that Molan wants to join the House of Representatives. He has his eyes set on the Prime Minister’s job, because it’s well-known that all you need to become leader of the Liberals is a ruthlessness and a totally unrealistic opinion of your own abilities which Molan has in spades.
Finally, I’d like to thank all those in the media who work so tirelessly rewriting the federal government’s press releases as news stories because without them, we’d never know what the government wants us to think.
Cheers. It’s Friday.
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Who is Tim Smith? Is he a loudmouthed, unintelligent conservative clod with guts from being backed by shitskull yankee maggoty Murdoch? Can these team playing long lists of liars, frauds, thieves, misfits and backward boys not see the clear truth? Theft and murder were British Imperial policy, between the lines, and Lt. Cook, who did his duty, opened up this nation’s door to intruders who have despoiled it. The poor betrayed, deluded, keen, loyal bastards who went to war for Britain after 1914, Aussie diggers among them, were told lies and betrayed. They never were to fight for honest freedom, oh no. The Rhodes and Milner types, unspeakable turds, made sure of that. Look at a map of 1919, after the British and French gutzed at the corpse of former ememies’ territories and see the complete lack of freedom, for places like Kenya, Egypt, The Palestinian mandate, India, Singapore, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Algeria and plenty, even hordes more, were freshly and newly enslaved by extorting and enslaving masters, the British and French. Freedom for capitalist conquering crapheads to thieve, murder, enforce, embarrass, overlord, humiliate and snobbishly despise. Conservative c—s. The brainless, gutless, heartless, uncivilised shitskulls in Australian conservative ranks still are as dull as the insides of a dead dog’s bowels, and more fragrant.
The anger is controlled. The righteous anger of a decent person. Thank you.
The now defunct anarchist shop in Sydney used to sell t shirts displaying a sailing ship with rigging and sails, beneath, the two words: ‘boat people’. The first settlers brought smallpox, an epidemic that in 1789 wiped out thousands who had no immunity and had had no vaccinations, the first peoples; discussed with dignity by the panel on the latest Big Ideas Radio program, ‘Cook, Man or Myth’, presented by John Maynard.
Cook was not part of the First Fleet. Do school kids still learn that he was? Thoughts too of the patriots in their swags deposited by the tour company on the wrong Galipoli beach every Anzac day, and not being told so. In homage to yet another lot of boat people invading someone else’s land. A circus forgotten this year…
This Van Diemen v Cook thing is a family squabble which includes Abel Tasman and the right to the claim of who ‘discovered’ Australia.
The Cook family have retaliated and pointed to their family home, Cook’s Cottage being located in Fitzroy Gardens, Melbourne as being proof that they were here first.
Back to you Van Diemen !
These RWNJs forget (actually don’t know) that 250,000+ Aborigines died of introduced diseases or were murdered.
(I can’t provide a link to that claim. It was the figure given to us at uni when doing my honour’s degree in Aboriginal studies.)
@Rossleigh: At the risk of offending the “Hate the ABC Brigade” I would like to put in a good word for Dr Norman Swan the physician and journalist on ABC RN who among other achievements, has been the only reliable source of evidence based scientific information about the COVID-19 pandemic since it first became a news reality. The MSM has been busy ensuring that they publish every bit of false news, presidential misinformation, unChristian dreams and just fake news made up to fill a dead spot in programming. Meanwhile Swan has been producing a daily Covidcast podcast heard on ABC RN every morning by grateful regional listeners unused to the belle of political barnstorming by the supine Nat4 you have when you want nothing done.
@MT: Check out any of Henry Reynolds excellent tomes.
@TM You are joking, aren’t you….. then perhaps not. People will believe anything. Maybe that is your point.
Tim Smith has probably never met an Aboriginal. You can only learn so much about Aboriginal culture from books, the rest is from being up close to them. Any whites under the age of fifty, only know about Aboriginals from talk back radio and racists like Andrew Bolt etc. I don’t have any tertiary qualifications to speak on Aboriginals or their culture but, I have camped up with them and yes been pissed up with them. Back in the sixties they were classified as Flora and Fauna. In the north of South Australia, I will never forget the Aboriginal children, their eyes bleeding with the pus of conjunctivitis and the adults slowly going insane from alcohol abuse. The women near on being each other to death, squabbling over food and booze.
But the most shameful experience was watching so called civilized white men, the miners and yes accuse me of being racist, it was mostly Greeks and Turkish men doing it, plying the young Aboriginal girls with booze for sexual favours. It disgusted me back then, it still disgusts me to this day thinking about it.
When I think back about Adelaide in 1965, Aboriginal’s were rounded up like so much cattle because, they were not allowed in the city limits. Thrown into paddy wagons and driven out to the main north road to Pt Augusta. Their shoes the police made them remove, thrown out another five kilometers from where they discharged their human cargo. I will never forget the anti Apartheid demonstrations, who knew it was going on in our own back yard. They all did but, turned their shameful eyes away from it all.
My wife and I visited some of those places about ten years ago, I went to see some of the Aboriginals I knew all those years ago, all of them I didn’t know, had passed on. As soon as I mentioned the name of one of them, they looked at me with astonishment. Those Aboriginals were a third my age but knew who I was talking about. I was privileged to be taken to the grave of one of them. That these people talk to whites at all is something I will ponder until they deep six me. Tim Smith wouldn’t have an effing clue.
DrakeN..
I know it’s so working class but, I would like to give this man some working class love. I’d like to kiss him on the nose with my forehead. Spread the love around I say. Tories can never get enough loving.