For goodness sake! Andrew Bolt is a journalist and a very one eyed right wing person, if he cannot stand being verbally attacked by a person,whether that person is right or wrong, then get out of the business of journalism, there
seems to be too much of this I am offended by what people say and will go to the courts for compensation, Chris Kenny is no better, Julia Gillard had to put up with much worse tha Bolt or Kenny, especially with the blow up doll small video joke which circulated while she was Prime Minister, get a life and take the good with the bad.

Dilan
I disagree with you. I would not however advocate laws or restraints on you just because I disagree with you. Yet you here advocate just that, force to be used against those who disagree with you.

Nelson Mandela was persecuted for his speech, the civils right movement in the US had to overcome restrictions to speech, in Australia edie Mabo had to fight for his right to speak, suffragettes had to fight for their speech, gays, the oppressed everywhere have but one solace, one weapon - free speech.

And you with your shortsighted view of history would take that away because you believe you know what ethics are right for eternity, when every generation has erred.

When today we conduct illegal wars against phantom enemies, advocate torture, displacement t of millions, when a global media provide us daily with the most shallow uncritical corporate narrative you wish to strike at the one defence we have. In a world riddled with mendacity to cover an ever increasing violation of individuals rights you wish to remove our last remaining grip on sanity, our ability to express our angst.

What purpose do you serve but to enslave. You elevate some random racial incident in a park to a first order magnitude but ignore the widespread racial foreign policy of this country, its racist policy towards refugees.

Your intention of course is good, but in hitler and Stalin's mind their intention too was good. The advocate of the stolen generation also had good intentions.

In all these cases throughout our history it was legal force in NAZI germany, legal force in Stalin's Russia, legal force in Australia which enabled egregious crimes. It is. The most superficial reading of history to think that speech without legal force could have enabled these crimes.

There is no need for you to look for the enemy, for the enemy is you

So yes, I will deny the holocaust just as you deny Hiroshima, Dresden. I will deny the significance of a racial incident on a bus, as you deny the million murdered in our illegal invasion of Iraq, our torture of prisoners of war, our indefinite imprisonment of refugees.

I object to any restriction on any speech, whilst not a single australian politician is capable of criticising Israeli treatment of Palestinians. . I reserve the right to say the most vile and hateful language while my government continues to act in the most vile and hateful way.

For to restrict my language is an attack on my thought and in truth is the worst of all possible crimes. How you have become the unwitting agent of oppression is the real question you really need to address.

Your problem Dilan is that you have a half arsed view of things. Those two women in Queensland were drunk, stupid and violent. Race had nothing to do with it. The poor old bloke obviously fought back after a disgusting display and thank goodness another man stepped in. Race did not come into it so your whole piece is just a total waste of all our times.
Stop looking for fights all the time. Get on with your fellow Australians with courtesy, plain speaking and a smile.

What is racist hate speech? In this argument it seems that there are many terms used that are not well defined and it creates a lot of confusion and talking at cross purposes. There is racism, racist speech, racist abuse, discrimination, vilification and they all get mixed up together even in the Federal legislation.

The example of the girls on the Queensland bus talks of racial abuse, racial attack and violence as if they were all one and the same thing. There are laws which deal with violence toward anyone and these girls should feel the full force of those laws. Violence is violence but is it any worse when an indigenous person is involved? If you stab someone does it hurt anymore depending on your skin colour?

Objectively it is an act of violence and should be dealt with accordingly but there was something else going on in this incident. There was racial abuse and this is why it made the headlines. There are people who get attacked violently and abused because of their weight or because they are old or slow or stupid or are tall or dress differently. There are thousands of types of abuse – should they all be legislated for? Why is racial abuse any more painful than being abused for being old or fat?

Attackers abuse because they want to hurt. They use violence which should never be condoned and they use words. They use words because they know that they are effective. A fat person is more than likely already feeling lots of pain because they are not happy being fat – no one is. Drawing attention to their size especially where there is an audience is an act of aggression. The attacker is not saying anything objective about being fat but they do know that in all probability the fat person will be hurt and that is their only aim. The same with old people – few feel good about being old and it is more than likely you will cause pain by ridiculing someone for being old.

Continued ...

Yebiga, correct, great to have someone writing the truth. We are becoming tired of the same old untruths that Governments want us to believe.
Andrew Bolt wants to become a man, not a wimp, he is ready to shed tears because someone called him a racist, get over it Andrew, it is your job to be criticised by others, most of your articles leave you open to critiicism anyway.