Women at the pointy end of our spear

I’m old enough to remember when the idea of “free ” love was rather more contentious than it is these days. For the younger people today sex is often  considered little more than a recreational activity, entirely divorced form any notion of pair bonding or the creation of the next generation. Which why I have been wondering just what the fuss has been about because some recruits at the ADFA watched two of their fellows having consensual sex over a Skype connection.

Now a couple of things have struck me about this little scandal. In the first instance I have been rather annoyed that they young woman involved has been described in a way that suggest that she is a juvenile who has been preyed upon by evil grown up men, given the fact that women mature earlier than men this is not just not likely to be correct. Secondly the voyeurism via Skype is not actually the same as posting a video on You tube or some porn site. It is not “broadcasting” by any stretch  of the imagination a closer analogy would be to suggest its like someone leaving a phone connection live so that others can hear the consensual sex over a phone connection, but with pictures. Of course if you put it that way it would not sound so bad for the idiots involved (and I think all involved are idiots)  however for the likes of our defence minister Stephen Smith it has been a wonderful excuse to try to change the nature of our armed services so that he can make the ideological change that would allow women to serve in front line roles. Personally I don’t know if this is a good idea at all.

Mr Smith and the head of the defence force, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, yesterday said that as long as women met the physical and academic requirements, any job was now open to them. However, meeting the rigorous entry standards for combat formations is likely to prove challenging. The Australian Defence Association lobby group remains sceptical about the use of women in combat, as does Keith Payne, the nation’s oldest surviving holder of the Victoria Cross for gallantry.

Mr Payne said that aside from the demanding physical requirements of combat infantry, a big concern for commanders would be responding to women wounded in action or captured.

“If you’re in a tight situation and one of the ladies goes down – and one of the blokes stops to pick her up – then that is the wrong thing to do,” he said. “You’re priority is to fight your way through to the bloody objective and then you come back and look after the casualties later.”

Mr Payne, who earned his VC in 1969 for gallantry in Vietnam, said he had enormous respect for Vietnamese women combatants, who served with distinction in combat units. But he added: “I’m old Victorian era. I don’t think it’s a place for women doing frontline duty.”

Opposition defence spokesman David Johnston said the sudden announcement appeared to be a distraction to divert attention from the of inquiries announced by Mr Smith into the Skype sex scandal at the Australian Defence Force Academy. “It’s like muddying the waters. It’s an odd thing to have mentioned among all those inquiries,” he said.

In a time of war we poor blokes are generally considered to be far more disposable than the womenfolk and it is easy to see that this very long standing tradition has a very sound biological rationale but even if you go beyond that meme there has to be a number of good if more mundane reasons that women in front-line infantry roles is a bad idea. For instance what about the ever necessary need have a piss while on patrol? A bloke can just whip out the old trouser snake do the business and be back on duty in less than half  a minute, can a woman do her business as quickly?

There are times when specific gender roles just make absolute and incontrovertible sense and personally I think that restricting the most pointy end of our military spear to our more “disposable” gender just makes sense and that letting the feminist ideologues  of the Labor party (and the Left in general) change this will end up being a bad idea.

I’m more than willing to be convinced other wise but there will need to be more than just the usual “equality” arguments.

Cheers Comrades

Yet more Searing intellectual dishonesty

Wheres the intellectual honesty?

Yet again, Jeremy Sear is guilty of the accusation of intellectual dishonesty that Pure Poison allegedly tackles. On Saturday, he wrote that:

The ABC has decided to endorse – by repeating without quotes – The Australian‘s description of what it’s been doing to the Greens ever since it declared it wanted them “destroyed”. The Australian, and now the ABC, calls that concerted one-sided campaign of misinformation “scrutiny”. A special kind of “scrutiny”, where you don’t actually analyse in any detail what the object being “scrutinised” actually says and does, but instead attempt to misrepresent and belittle it via associations, smears from opponents, and outright lies.

The ‘outright lie’ Jeremy refers to is David Pemberthy’s claim that the Greens had preferenced Pauline Hanson over the major parties, which was untrue. Whether or not Pemberthy intended to tell an untruth can only be known by him, but that was a clumsy mistake. Jeremy has also been guilty of numerous clumsy blogging mistakes over the years, so perhaps Jeremy should give Pembo the benefit of the doubt.

The rest of New Ltd’s coverage of the Greens however has been fair. The Australian has pointed out that Greens Senators Lee Rhainnon and Scott Ludlam also support the discriminatory boycott against Israel, and that senator Hanson-Young has addressed rallies in support of the same policy. We also know, thanks to the same publication, that Bob Brown opposed a motion condemning the Greens Marrickville Council for their Israeli-boycotting policy, even though he now claims to be against the policy. This is all information, not misinformation.

Like Jeremy himself, it seems that Bob Brown is also guilty of hypocrisy. Brown claimed that Green senators  Hanson-Young  and Ludlum should not be judged by the extreme content of the signs that appeared at rallies which they attended and spoke to:

Senator Brown on Thursday defended the actions of Greens senators Sarah Hanson-Young and Scott Ludlam for appearing at rallies in 2009 and last year, respectively, where protesters called on Australia to sever ties with Israel. “If you’re saying there that members of parliament should not take the stage or be on a rostrum or be at a rally or go on (television program) Q&A if you are going to be judged by the people you are there with, then we’re getting to a very undemocratic path, aren’t we,” Senator Brown told ABC radio.

On the other hand, different standards apply to Tony Abbott:

Mr Robb yesterday contrasted the comments with Senator Brown’s demands last month that Mr Abbott apologise for appearing alongside offensive placards at the March 23 carbon tax rally.

Mr Robb, who is in Jerusalem on a trade mission with the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce, said the Greens disliked being exposed to the same level of scrutiny as the major political parties. “We all remember Bob Brown giving sanctimonious lectures and demanding apologies from Tony Abbott just a week or so ago because he addressed a very legitimate demonstration against the carbon tax,” Mr Robb said.

So which is it, Bob? There is no intellectual consistency here, yet alone honesty.

Obviously the Greens will receive more scrutiny from media outlets opposed to their viewpoints such as The Australian than those that are more sympathetic, such as The Age and the ABC.  It’s time that Jeremy Sear realises there’s nothing wrong with scrutiny of his beloved Greens, and abandons his ludicrous narrative that the Greens are victims of a News Ltd misinformation campaign.

Intellectual honesty requires it.

(Picture size reduced in response to reader complaints of my last post)

I can't for the life of me see a cure for the NSW disease anywhere on the horizon

The first time I voted it was Gough who led the party and I was passionate about being able to give the ALP my vote. The party just seemed to have all of the correct ideas that suited my sense of fair play the idea of Medicare, ending the White Australia Policy and ending our commitment to Vietnam were things that inspired voters like myself, and I went on to be a very loyal Labor voter for many years. Then I found that I was voting for them out of a sort of despair. Despair that they were at least not the Tories and that they would do some good things for the ordinary people, But then I started to see then degenerate into an incompetent rabble. The last Labor leader that I respected was Keating and since then it has just been one disappointment after another and now, as I have completely turned my back entirely on the party I am beginning to wonder if the once great Australian Labor party is in its death throes. Which brings me to today’s little gem of an Op ed piece from the Age by Michael Pearce who also seems to think that the party if not already dead is at least gravely ill.

Many on the left have turned to the Greens for that articulation. However, the Greens sit outside the broad consensus on economic policy and, while they remain there, will struggle to win mainstream support. The dilemma for Labor is that to move outside the consensus makes it unelectable, while it denies its history and its raison d’etre by staying within it.

As a result, this once great party has become little more than a vehicle for political careerists, drawn mainly from the trade union movement. While the majority of the workforce were trade union members, as they were up to the 1970s, the link to the union movement enhanced the representative nature of the party. But today less than 20 per cent of the workforce are trade union members and the link now serves only to highlight the party’s unrepresentative nature.

The increasing professionalisation of politics has bred a cadre of party officials and MPs who have never worked on the shop floor, run a business, practised a profession (other than politics) or done anything outside of politics. Many have been parachuted into safe Labor seats or won preselection by stacking branches. Few have any real connection to the communities they notionally represent in Parliament. Indeed, many do not even live in their electorates. With caucus members no longer in the position to work out what voters think, is it any wonder the party has become reliant on focus groups to supply that information?

This is the modern Labor Party: a hollowed-out institution lacking any coherent and relevant ideology, propped up by the increasingly marginalised trade union movement with a dwindling active membership. Can anything be salvaged from it, or is it time to say the party is over? This is the real, existential question that the ALP and its members need to ask.

Michael Pearce is a Melbourne lawyer and has been a member of the Labor Party since 1976.

We need to have a viable dichotomy to keep an incumbent government focused and hard working but Labor seems to be so incompetent in power and that has more than anything undermined any of its good social ideas and it is the reason that it has seriously declined in its standing with the public. I can’t for the life of me see a cure for the NSW disease anywhere on the horizon but there is one thing that I do know ant that is if they don’t find a cure soon the party will continue to wither and die . The Greens like to think that they will raise to fill the political space thus created but I think that this is wishful thinking because they have peaked and now that they have enough prominence to warrant closer scrutiny they have been found very deficient in that most important currency of political capital, moral consistency.

Hard times ahead for the left, even those of the moderate centre Left like the ALP.

Cheers Comrades

Saturday trifecta

Cheers Comrades

Becoming a Rockstar Fan

Its no secret that I have  taken an interest in console gaming since “Santa” delivered a PS3 to Chez Hall last Christmas. But I have been struck by just how disappointing some  of the actual games on offer are, ah well that just means that when I find a good one, it is just so much better by comparison. For instance I think that I mentioned that I had bought Mafia II and to be honest I did enjoy the good aspects of that game, the cars and the period music were great but it was far to mission only , you had to do the missions to drive the narrative forward and while you could take little detours to do some free play that was largely pointless because there was nothing to do and to top that off the world was not realised as   a true sand box which would allow you to really explore and immerse yourself in it. The Music in that game was excellent with tracks that I recognised but there was only three stations and  a play-list that was just not extensive enough to give you enough variety. Anyway when I had played it through I felt very little desire to replay it so I traded it in for “Red Dead Redemption, Undead Nightmare” which I have been playing while I await the arrival of “Red Dead Redemption” proper which I know will get here today from the UK. Now despite the things that I have written about the campaign for a R 18 classification for games I have done precisely what any grown up can do if they really want an adult game and that is to buy it on-line. Back to “Red Dead Redemption, Undead Nightmare” the game was originally a derivative of RDR and I got it not for the zombie killing (which is strangely satisfying BTW) but to become more familiar with the game world and the control layout that it shares with RDR  I just love the graphics and the way that the world has been so beautifully rendered so this makes it the third tick of approval that I am willing to give Rockstar games. The first was for Grand Theft Auto IV, the second was for “Liberty City Stories”  and I am more than happy to give “Red Dead Redemption, Undead Nightmare” a pretty big tick as well even though the narrative is rather limited and just a little silly. As for “Red Dead Redemption” proper I’ll let you know how it goes but I can’t help thinking that one of the friends of this blog who is fond of Clint Eastwood westerns  would love this game.

While we one on the subject of good gaming can I suggest that the upcoming game, also from Rockstar, might just be the future for “grown up” gaming ?

By Grown up I don’t just mean games with more realistic depiction of sex or  death and destruction,  but gaming that stimulates  the intellect and allows you to enter into the narrative in a truly engaging way. I previously wrote about Heavy Rain which was a more adult game but did not quite make it for a number of reasons. L A Noire on the other hand may just be, dare I say it , a game changer .

Cheers Comrades

Three New Navy Ships Of Interest

This was set to me by a loyal reader because he found it funny, well I do as well so I post it here, don’t have an attribution so sorry in advance it that deficiency upsets anyone.

1) USS  REAGAN (US  NAVY)

Seeing her next to the Arizona Memorial  really puts her size into perspective….. ENORMOUS!

When the Bridge pipes ‘ Man the Rail’ there  is a lot of rail to man on this monster: shoulder to shoulder, around 4..5  acres.
Her displacement is about 100,000 tons with  full complement.

Capability
Top speed exceeds 30  knots, powered by two nuclear  reactors that can operate for more than 20 years without refuelling
1. Expected to operate in the fleet for about  50 years
2. Carries over 80 combat  aircraft
3. Three arresting cables can stop a 28-ton  aircraft going 150 miles per hour in less than 400 feet
Size
1. Towers 20 stories above the waterline
2. 1092 feet long; nearly as long as the Empire  State Building is tall
3. Flight deck covers 4..5 acres
4. 4 bronze propellers, each 21 feet across,  weighing 66,200  pounds
5. 2 rudders, each 29 by 22 feet and weighing  50 tons
6. 4 high speed aircraft elevators, each over  4,000 square feet
Capacity
1. Home to about 6,000 Navy  personnel
2. Carries enough food and supplies to operate  for 90 days
3. 18,150 meals served daily
4. Distillation plants provide 400,000 gallons  of fresh water from sea water daily, enough for 2,000 homes
5. Nearly 30,000 light fixtures and 1,325 miles  of cable and wiring 1,400 telephones
6. 14,000 pillowcases and 28,000 sheets are  carried

2) HMAS KEVIN RUDD (AUSTRALIAN NAVY)

HMAS KEVIN RUDD sets sail today from her home port of   Brisbane

This ship is the first of her kind in the  Navy and is a standing legacy to Ex PM Kevin Rudd ‘for his  foresight in military budget cuts’ and his conduct while holding the  (formerly dignified) office of Prime  Minister.

The ship is constructed   entirely from recycled  aluminium cans collected by The Greens and is completely solar  powered with a top speed  of 5 knots. She boasts an arsenal comprising of one  (unarmed)  F18 Hornet aircraft which, although it cannot  be launched on the 100 foot flight deck, forms a very  menacing deterrent to recreational fishermen on Moreton  Bay.

As a standing order there are no firearms  allowed on board.

This crew, like the crew aboard HMAS  JULIA GILLARD, is specially trained to avoid conflict and to appease  illegal immigrants and  enemies of  Australia  at all costs.

An on-board  Type One  Universal Interpreter can send out messages of apology in any language  to anyone who may find  Australia offensive. The number of apologies are limitless and,  though some may seem  hollow and disingenuous, the Navy advises all apologies will sound  very sincere.

In times of conflict HMAS KEVIN RUDD has orders to seek  refuge at Christmas Island..

3)HMAS JULIA  GILLARD (AUSTRALIAN NAVY )

This ship will be used to ferry illegal  immigrants across the Arafura Sea from Indonesia  to Australia  in time to  pick up their welfare checks from the Labor Government each Month as advance payment for their democratic vote once they become  Australian  citizens.

Details of the specifications of HMAS  Julia Gillard are  in line with her namesake’s economic policies, very rusty, full of holes and a total  mystery.
But don’t worry…Admiral Swan is formulating yet another  plan!

Cheers Comrades

Unsafe hands in the senate

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young addresses a Friends of Palestine rally in Adelaide, in January 2009. Source: Supplied

You just have to love the way that the Greens are now being revealed for the Hard Left ideologues that their public image as a basically environmental party tended to conceal. Further its good to see that as this party has be come more prominent there has been a well deserved increase in critical scrutiny of their policies and personalities.

In my previous post about Lee Rhiannon I was so bold as to suggest that her support of sanctions against Israel was evidence of anti-Semitism because I tend to think that most of the Lefties who claim to be “anti-Zionist” are in fact just old fashioned anti-Semites wearing a minimal  layer of distinction so they can deny that they actually hate or despise the Jews in a more general manner. I think that this is an entirely reasonable lens with which to consider any Greens who decide to side with the Palestinians at rallies here Like the Greens senator in the picture above.

TWO Greens senators have publicly supported calls for Australian sanctions against Israel over the Middle East conflict, putting them at odds with party policy and their leader Bob Brown.

West Australian senator Scott Ludlam last year demanded an arms embargo on Israel, which he described as “a rogue state”, while South Australian colleague Sarah Hanson-Young addressed a rally where protesters called on Australia to sever ties with the Jewish state.

The stance by the two senators conflicts with Senator Brown’s assurance last week that his federal party was not anti-Israel and did not support the NSW branch of the party advocating sanctions against Israel.

The Coalition last night labelled the Greens “reds”, while the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council called on Senator Hanson-Young to visit Israel before jumping to conclusions.

Senator Brown yesterday refused to comment on the activities of his senators and directed The Australian to his party’s policy on Israel, which clearly advocated a peaceful two-state solution.

Now by my count that makes three of the Greens senators who will be suspect when it comes to their attitude to  the Jews. While it may be easy to assume that as someone with a communist heritage like  Lee Rhiannon probably has a deeper commitment to her “anti-Zionism” than either senator Scott Ludlam or Senator Sarah Hanson-Young  and it may just be naivety that has seen both of them front pro-Palestinian rallies. However I am not so sure that such generosity is justified.

We are a country where the people inevitably  desire  “a safe pair of hands ” to hold the reins of government and it has to be a worry that the likes of these three  watermelons have any thing even close to real political power or influence so we can only hope that airing the dirty laundry of the Greens will to some extent keep them in check, after all most mould only manages to thrive when it is kept out of the light of day.

Cheers Comrades

Andy on Ten?

Click for source

I have only vaguely been following the coniptions that some lefties have been having over the possibility that Andrew Bolt may get his own TV show, frankly I think that such a show would be a great commercial success, The right thinking public will enjoy Andrew telling it like it is and Lefty fan boys like our learned friend will enjoy watching it because they want to show the world their own righteous indignation at the opinions of Andrew Bolt and to bemoan the fact that what he says so obviously resonates with the public. It has to be a commercial winner for network  Ten.

Update

Ten has confirmed it will launch a new Sunday morning program, The Bolt Report, hosted by Herald Sun journalist Andrew Bolt on 8 May.

The Bolt Report will air at 10am, before Meet the Press, Ten’s existing political program which will move to 10.30am.

source

Cheers Comrades

Another island detention centre created under Labor

click for source

Isn’t amazing just how out of control the Asylum seeker issue has got under the Labor Governments of Rudd and Gillard?  Now they have decided that they have to warehouse claimants in Tasmania.

I’ve said it before but what is needed is the prompt repatriation of failed claimants and the removal of the  possibility that those who “prove” their claim can get permanent residency.The polling in the screen-shot above should be a message to any lefty who thinks that the public are buying the victim hood claims from a group of people who are predominately seeking an immigration outcome rather than fleeing for their lives.

Anyway I’ll leave you to ponder this while I spend the day helping out with a school excursion to visit the GOMA * which should be fun .

Cheers Comrades

*The Queensland Gallery of Modern Art

Enjoying the Polls

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott was pushing the pedals for charity yesterday in a bicycle ride between Grafton and Coffs Harbour. Picture: Frank Redward Source: The Australian

When the last polls came out showing an improvement for Labor  lefties  were delighted , not because they think Gillard is wonderful but because they felt that this meant that there was just a slim hope that Tony Abbott may not ever  make it to the lodge after all. Their mood will not however be so buoyed by the latest Newspoll which shows that the bounce experienced by Gillard last time has not been sustained:

click for source

Politics is all about trying to reconcile conflicting imperatives and while Tony Abbott is out and about on his Polly Peddle ride for charity our not so beloved PM is trying to find a way out of her  comfy accommodations between that rock and its unyielding location.  Which at the very least provides those of us who are addicted to politics with some amusement as she does the two step between loving the Greens/independents who keep her in the Lodge and trying so hard to demonstrate that Brand Labor is not being tainted by the process.

Amusing Times Comrades

Nanny state minding the minders

Yet another recent example of the creeping expansion of the nanny state:

CHILDCARE workers who send tantrum-throwing toddlers to “time out” risk hefty fines under national childcare laws to come into force next year.

New regulations will expose childcare centres to penalties if children are required to take part in religious or cultural activities, such as Christmas tree decoration or Easter egg hunts. And family daycare providers will have to carry out criminal checks on neighbours, friends or relatives who visit their homes more than seven times a year while children are present.

Childcare supervisors risk personal fines for the first time, under the national legislation being adopted by state and territory governments.

Centres could be fined as much as $50,000, and supervisors $10,000, for failing to ensure children are adequately supervised, or for using “inappropriate discipline” to keep order.

 

Pity the childcare workers, who now cannot even use “time out” in order to make temperamental toddlers calm down, when such a method is used in homes right around Australia.

Gambling that the truth can be concealed or not all claims for asylum are genuine

There are some people out there who tend to think that what happens on the internet is entirely discreet from the real world and there are even some of them out there who get terribly upset when their own efforts pull the rope on their petard. One such is an unnamed “asylum seeker” described in today’s Oz:

But his story unravelled when the tribunal began quizzing him about his Facebook profile, on which he admitted attending a school in the Indian state of West Bengal, not Nepal.

On another social media site, hi5, the asylum-seeker had uploaded photographs of himself wearing the Indian school’s uniform and posing with classmates.

When confronted with the images, the man explained he attended a school with an identical name and uniform in Nepal. The tribunal found no evidence such a school existed.

Another photograph showed the man and his sister posing in their school uniforms at a park in West Bengal, with an Indian landmark clearly visible in the background.

“When it was put to him that the (park) captured in the photograph is in (India), he insisted that there is a (park of the same name) in Nepal,” the tribunal said in its decision on March 8.

In rejecting the man’s asylum bid, the tribunal labelled his implausible explanations “far-fetched and patently deceitful”.

“On the basis of the information posted by the applicant on various social networking sites, the tribunal finds that, contrary to his assertions throughout the process, the applicant has resided and completed his secondary schooling in . . . West Bengal,” it said. “The tribunal finds that the applicant is Indian born, he is an Indian national and holds a valid Indian passport. . . He is not a refugee.”

Its a comforting thought that some people are either so stupid or so arrogant that they manage to undermine their own attempts to defraud the Australian people by making false claims about a “need for asylum”. This of course begs the question about just how many others making similar claims for asylum are just a little less stupid and just a little more convincing in their lies?
We believe in giving people a “Fair Go” here in Oz but being taken advantage of by those who are trying to get in by way of deception like our face-book user cited above. What bemuses me is that for the likes of the open borders left people like this chap don’t exist. Now if they really cared about the genuinely persecuted then they should be even more upset about the scamers and fraudsters getting through the essential vetting process, but then they would actually have to admit that not all claims for asylum are genuine…

Compassionately Comrades

Losing faith in Multiculturalism

A brilliant piece by Greg Sheridan in the weekend Oz about why he now thinks that multiculturalism is a total failure:

I was shocked to discover the growth of jihadi culture in Lakemba. We used to go to its main street for shopping and for food.

One day, waiting for a pizza order, I wandered into the Muslim bookshop. I was astounded to see titles such as The International Jew or The Truth about the Pope, amid a welter of anti-Semitic, anti-Christian and pro-extremist literature.

The revenge attacks on white Australians after the Cronulla riots originated out of Punchbowl. A number of media crews were attacked when they went to local mosques. A large number of those charged with terrorism offences in Australia stayed in or had associations with the area.

Due to the brilliant and fearless reporting of this paper’s Richard Kerbaj, who spoke perfect Arabic, we found that at a number of the mosques in the area outright hatred was being preached: anti-Semitic, misogynist, conspiratorial. Most of the time, these sermons didn’t advocate violence. The speakers were what Britain’s David Cameron has called “non-violent extremists”.

The advent of satellite television made it easier for these folks to live a life apart. Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV station was available on satellite packages. Most Arab homes you went into had Arabic TV playing in the background.

Check it out Comrades

Sear defends "anti-Zionist" Greens policy

Jeremy Sear is vague about where he stands on the NSW Green's policy of boycotting Israel

This morning, Jeremy Sear seems to be defending the NSW Green’s policy of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against the nation state of Israel.

Sear rejects descriptions of the BDS policy as “bigoted”, “racist” and “extreme”, claims that there are actually reasons and arguments behind the policy, and also asserts that the policy is not “madness”.

There are three possible reasons why Sear does not outline his exact position on the Israel boybott policy:

     1) He agrees with the policy, but dosen’t want to be attacked for doing so

     2) He doesn’t agree with the policy, but is not publicly condemning it out of loyalty to the Greens party, of which he is a member

     3) He is ambivalent about the policy, believeing that it is at least somewhat justifiable, but also has reservations about it.

Jeremy also attacks News Ltd for not outlining any justifications for the controversial anti-Israel policy, with the result that “readers are trained to just assume that there is no explanation or rationale”. But two of the most notable pro-BDS articles recently published also fail to outline a single justification for the policy. Indeed, one of those articles showed a total lack of irony and self-awareness when it contained this little howler:

The argument that any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic is ridiculous but it is routinely used by supporters of Israel to try and silence its critics. The accusation that critics of Israel’s policy towards Palestinians ignore other human rights abuses around the world and just pick on Israel is also wrong. Anti-racists are just as outspoken about Western justifications for imperial wars, the treatment of refugees, and the treatment of Indigenous people in this country.

The idea that the anti-Israel BDS policy could possibly be motivated by the treatment by Israel of the Palestinians is laughable, when there are dictatorships all around the world, particularly in the Middle East, that brutally oppress their people and persecute minorities. Any alleged mistreatment at the hands of Israel must pale into insignificance compared to the undisputed and grave abuses of human rights that occur all around the world. Why doesn’t the hard left have more sympathy for the people of Zimbabwe, or the people of Burma, for instance?

Those who support the BDS policy must therefore have another motive, which is why accusations of anti-Semitism and racism are certainly justifiable, particularly when one notes that many of the “anti-Zionists” question Israel’s right to exist and would if they could allow extremists like Hamas to have their way with the Israeli people. Contrary to Sear’s assertions, there are no justifications for imposing sanctions and boycotts on the Middle East’s only democracy.

Jeremy Sear should therefore show a rare amount of courage and sensibleness by openly comdemning the NSW Green’s anti-Jewish policy.

UPDATE: In an update to the same post, Jeremy defends the anti-Israel boycott policy against charges of anti-Semitism:

The other thing to note is how they turn a proposed boycott of Israel into “anti-Semitism”. That doesn’t make any sense unless you claim – dishonestly – that the Greens don’t care about other human rights abusers, and that they’re only picking on Israel because it’s full of JEWS and they must therefore HATE JEWS.

 

Well Jeremy, do the Greens have a specific policy in favour of boycotts and sanctions against China, Burma, or Iran? No, they don’t. So why on earth is Israel singled out for special treatment, when there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza or the West Bank?

Jeremy Sear has just highlighted the problem with the argument that the Greens do not discriminate against Israel. The facts show that they clearly do.

A Commo in the ranks makes the Greens a real worry for Australia

Greens senator-elect Lee Rhiannon outside the NSW Greens office in inner-west Sydney yesterday. Picture: Jeremy Piper Source: The Australian (click for link to story)

If you want  a good example of just how bad the Greens are for this country you need look no further than the senator elect in the picture above, an Anti-Semite◊  ex-communist* supporter of terrorism# who wants this country to boycott the only real democracy in the middle east, Yep, those Greens are a just  barrel of laughs and a wonderful example of moderation and good sense^ .

The thing about endorsing the participation of women in politics is that they are just like men in one important aspect and that is a certain proportion of them are going to be nut jobs, ratbags  or idiots at each end of the political spectrum, Lee Rhiannon is in many ways just like that other woman seeking a seat in an upper house and to be frank neither should be allowed near control of a dog, lest that poor  dog be subject to uncontrolled wagging by an ideologically driven tail.

Cheers Comrades

◊Oh I know that she will insist that she is an “anti Zionist” but we all know that is just code for hating the Jews

*Are they ever free of the pernicious influence of Karl Marx?

#To endorse the Palestinian cause is to endorse the methods they have used in their fight with Israel and that has far too often been the bomb and the missile aimed at civilians

^Sarcasm: no one believes that the Greens are either moderate or possessed of any good sense