Sorry Steven, but I stopped reading when I got to the David Hicks bit.

If you cannot admire how well he has put up with such crushing injustice, then I have no respect for your opinion on anything.

John, please correct me if I'm wrong but my understanding is that Hicks was in Pakistan on 9/11, heading south, and promptly went back to Afghanistan. He's lucky he wasn't shot out of hand, so please spare us the 'crushing injustice' bit.

Joe

I would love to look after the interests of the never-to-be-sufficiently-derided white working-class Australian men, but they're such bloody whingers. I mean look at this website, pages full of the stuff.

Ok, that's the message for the left. But that begs the question: what's the message for the right? I mean, what's a young Liberal to do?
If the left is looking after the interests of the never-to-be-sufficiently-derided white working-class Australian men, where does that leave the 'right'?

Regardless of the justice or injustice of the way Hicks was treated by the USA (and or Australia) his support of the Taliban should preclude any admiration from most of those who do appear to admire him.

Whilst his knowledge of and involvement with al-Qaeda is disputed there does not seem to be room for any credible dispute regarding his active support for the Taliban.

The Taliban's record on human rights, the treatment of women especially and a variety of other excesses was easily discoverable for a long period prior to 9/11. They were an extremely ruthless and brutal government.

It should be possible to condemn the USA's choices and actions in regard to treatment of prisoners without making a hero of someone who went out of his way to side with the Taliban.

R0bert

Wonderful Article!

The thing is that the Left is interested in social justice (in theory anyway) ... for all... we even care about the rights of people we don't necessarily like or agree with - which I know is a bit confusing for some people. That's why the left is interested in fair treatment and justice - whether it's for workers, or equality for homosexuals and their families, boat people, or enemy combatants who were kept in wire cages in Guantanamo and treated in a sub-human way.

We in the West can't go preaching about our superior values (liberty, equality, freedom, democracy, rule of law etc) to the world and then scrap them when they become inconvenient, and we want to delve into the dark side for a bit ... there's a word for that ... hypocrisy - that's what sticks in people's craw. Criticism of the Taliban or Islamic militants is a no brainer - they aren't supposed to be the good guys. We are, but our "white hats" need a bit of repair work.

BJelly the point being made though is not about the rights issue. It's about the admiration being expressed for Hicks by many who on the face of it appear to be from the left.

I can happily fight for the rights of others to do things I don't personally like and for people I don't like. That's quite different to giving them a standing ovation.

R0bert

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12598#217718

john kosci, you are a perfect example of the loony left, hypocricy, the article is talking about. Meyer was not suggesting that hicks did not suffer, merely that many white men of british & eurpoean decent suffer as well & the closet communists not only do not care, but are often involved in doing it.

The PC, Thought Police cannot pretend that every australian who is not a heterosexual white man over 25 is being oppressed/abused, if they have not got an evil overlord to blame for it, namely the white men.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12598#217736

loudmouth, true, i am one of those who does feel a bit sorry for his naive stupidity, but Meyer is correct, the loony left has been demonising the proletariat instead of representing them.

that is why the polls are so low. heterosexual white men have been treated as the enemies of closet communism, is it any wonder none of us want to vote for the loony left anymore.

What is Hicks exactly?

Is he not a white working-class Australian man?

Is there no sense of irony here?

Formersnag,
It's my impression from reading Leftist writing that over the last 20 years there has been a conscious effort to turn their "struggle" from a class movement into a Racial/anti Racist/Anti fascist crusade.
In the 1980's there was a legitimate, middle class Fascist movement afoot in this country, I had friends who were ideological Neo Nazis at the time but they would happily debate with Marxists (as I was then) in a peaceful fashion over a cask of wine.
It's all changed now, the Nazis have all pretty much grown up and moved on but the Anti Fascists are still there, the anti Racism as class struggle people never did grow up and they're a big blockage in the path of younger people who want to get back to a Working Class Left movement.
I don't know if you get to many rallies but the Trotskyites and Stalinist thugs won't let anyone talk to so called "Fascists" or "Autonomous Nationalists" or debate them in public in a peaceful, adult fashion, it's always "No platform".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiMm6sjgBTM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZrwSYJyF3k

Loudmouth, RObert and Formersnag, please go away and read up the history of events as they actually happened, instead of blindly following the propganda that reads back into history lies intended to justfy crimes.

Bugsy wrote:

>>Is he [Hicks] not a white working-class Australian man?
Is there no sense of irony here?>>

No, there is no sense of irony and you are being ingenuous.

Hicks abandoned his family to join a terrorist organisation. He then wrote a self-serving book in which he contradicts the claims he made in his letters to his family.

I do not think most Australian White working-class men would consider this especially praiseworthy.

What I consider praiseworthy is a man who works hard to look after his family, who is there to be a father to his kids. These are precisely the qualities many on the left sneer at.

For those posters who do not understand irony, it is not I who derides working-class people. It is the grandees of the left who do that. The right merely exploits them.

White? check
Working class? check
Austrlaian? check
Man? check

I did not mention praiseworthy. I don't care about praiseworthy, I'm sure he isn't, but that doesn't change the fact that you have mentioned no less than four descriptors that the left should care about that Hicks fits perfectly.

No sense of irony indeed.
I am not being ingenuous.

Some of you fellas are such victims!

I know I don't get out much, but I do know lots of white men who are very happy with the way the left is looking after them, including my own sons.

I don't see any admiration of Hicks from 'the left' - whatever that is in your paranoid reasoning. It's more like a commitment to balance the unfair treatment with some compensation - even if one doesn't admire the stupid white man.

His need to find some excitment by 'going to war', his poor judgement and his self-serving justifications for his behaviour, are typical of poor wee white men who whinge so much about 'the left'.

I reckon that if he had not been a victim of 'the right', he would have been someone you victims of 'the left' would have admired. He would have been a typical bogan, a staunch Howard supporter, an Alan Jones fan and a climate change denier.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12598#217737

Bugsy, the message is simple really, we moderate, centrist, white, heterosexual men of british & european decent have had a gutful of both major mistakes parties. Obviously the only thing the LNP have going for them is that the closet communist, PC, Thought Police from the RED/green, getup, GAYLP/alp, Socialist Alliance are infinately worse.

i have never ever seen any men on any of these debates "whinging", only making fair, reasonable, complaints about obvious injustice from the 1984, matriarchal, communist regime, who are about to wiped off the face of the earth.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12598#217739

RObert, here, here.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12598#217744

Howler, i am stunned by your lack of verbosity, although i agree.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12598#217752

BJelly, your missing the point. the communists have been claiming for half a century that everybody who is NOT a heterosexual, white man of british & european decent has been oppressed by the EVIL white man.

i for one am tired of the continuous false allegations.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12598#217753

RObert, here, here.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12598#217758

Bugsy, the point is that hicks is the ONLY white man the communists care about, ALL other white men are the enemy to them. we get it, we understand that, that is why we will be voting for Bob Katter & preferencing the LNP ahead of communism.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12598#217759

Jay Of Melbourne, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EVGLFFuC0I i was there, the communists screamed at us for more than 3 hours with 4 megaphones. you will not see me in any of the videos though, i was wearing a t-shirt with a photo of a russian cosmonaut & the words

Closet
Communist
Corporate
Paedophiles

on it, so i guess they did not want to publicise that.

The police stood between us to keep them back, many were shaking with rage, spitting, kicking, stomping on feet. None of them got arrested.

i am pretty sure i have shared some of my favourite links with you before but just in case will list them for you.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8630135369495797236# PC in video

http://www.academia.org/the-origins-of-political-correctness/ PC in text

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JarRIC4rS1M attack christianity, replace it with the gospel according to Marcuse, Marx, Lenin & Mao.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeMZGGQ0ERk&feature=player_embedded#! ex KGB spy explains it all.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12598#217773

john kosci, you took the words right out of my mouth, all closet communists from the PC, Thought Police tell deliberate, premeditated lies 24/7/365.

"repeat the lie, until it becomes the truth" Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. where else do you think Goebels, Hitler & Juliar Dillard got the idea of Spinganda from?

Soviet era proverb, "the present we know, we are doing it, the future we know, we are building it, only the past keeps changing".

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12598#217774

stevenlmeyer, here, here.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12598#217775

Bugsy, give up, you 110% wrong, just as everybody on the left is wrong about everything, stop "moving forwards", do a u-turn, look backwards with 20/20 hindsight & maybe you will get somewhere.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12598#217778

Mollydukes, the RED/green, getup, GAYLP/alp, Socialist Alliance will soon be DE registered, grow up & get over it.

the only males who vote for the 1984, matriarchal communist regime are emasculated, metrosexual softies, devoid of testosterone & brains.

The most evil man in the land of OZ would be Doug Cameron, formerly of the metal workers union, who will be wiped out by a carbon tax, but he is still promoting it, as well as importing even more cheap labour for foriegn multinationals.

Why does he hate his own people? Why is he working so hard to impoverish them?

Its really quite simple. The politics of fear trumps everything else, every time.
Those on the right of the culture wars understand this. Which is to say that any seemingly logical appeals to facts has as much chance as a snow-ball in hell.

The work of George Lakoff explains why this is so. Its all about framing the parameters of the "debate".

"i have never ever seen any men on any of these debates "whinging", only making fair, reasonable, complaints about obvious injustice from the 1984, matriarchal, communist regime, who are about to wiped off the face of the earth."

This made me LOL.

So much anger and such a sense of entitlement!

You are entitled to a free session with a psychologist, you know. Make an appointment with your doctor, explain how you see things and you'll get a referral to someone who can help get your thinking a bit more in line with reality.

That level of anger is bad for you. Lots of studies show this but I suppose medicine is also agin white men?

Formersnag,

Let's be honest - there aren't really any 'metrosexual softies', we are all randy goats - some of us are open about it, some of us try to schmooze the sheilas, but it's all just to get into their knickers.

BTT: The 'Left', although it depends what is meant by what is really an out-dated term, used to be vaguely related to the working-class, especially those necessarily white men in manufacturing and mining. Earlier, say back in Henry Lawson's day, it referred much more to rural laborers. But the world has changed somewhat since Henry Lawson's time - really it has changed fundamentally since the end of the Vietnam War, which, by the way, the great majority of the Australian working-class supported. That was their right to do so, but it is indicative of how far off-track the 'Left' was even back then.

Or maybe it was the working-class who had wandered off the track to Utopia ? Or maybe they just had more sense ? Either way, their numbers have withered away over the past forty years, while their kids took advantage of free uni education, and on to clean-hands, air-conditioned employment, protesting fiercely all the while about the evils of the world. Well, at least for a short while.

So nowadays, a vastly higher proportion of the work-force are professional people, most of whom of course have working-class origins: I wonder where they would be now if all those migrants hadn't been allowed to come to Australia to do the sh!tty jobs ?

This professional class has its own class-orientation, and purpose, and first and foremost its purpose is to maintain the systems, the welfare system, the class system and to act as the indispensable, stabilising, intermediary in the hierarchy between the labouring classes and the ruling classes, in lifelong careers. So it has little incentive to reform the system, let alone overthrow it.

So it leaves the social system alone and f@rts around with environmental issues, and these have now become 'Left'. Notions/fears of 'communism' are as antiquated as disputes over Arianism and Jensenism in Christianity.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12598#217819

Ho Hum, we moderate, centrist have no fear of communists.

Which facts? Every single word of loony left dogma is deliberate, premeditated lies.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12598#217826

Bugsy, you have the oportunity to repent now, after the next federal election, it will be too late, then you can recieve REAL christian "tough love".

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12598#217827

Mollydukes, so white men are "entitled" to nothing.

Yes you will be entitled to regular free sessions of "rehabilitation" with psychologists in between your "community work".

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12598#217834

Loudmouth joe, yes i do understand all that rationalisation of the last half century or so, but you are wrong about almost all of it.

Why do you think i use the name formersnag? i USED to talk all that PC rubbish to "get into their knickers" too.

The "left" is not an outdated term, they never went anywhere, they just keep updating their weasel words, spin, dogma, etc, etc, etc.

they never forgot about the cold war, they still are trying to destroy capitalism, as the old saying goes " you have to break some eggs to make an omlette", that is what they have been doing, if that means some children get neglected/abused, if some white men get unemployed, some poverty gets created, then for the closet communists, so be it.

the PC, Thought Police turned white men into the enemy of loony left politics for their glorious revolution, while being too stupid to see they were "divide & conquer" TOOLS of the ruling elites from both the radical, extreme, loony left & raving right, against us white men in the middle.

All left wing politics on day one was a "counter revolutionary" strategy of the pope & filthy, stinking, super rich, to foil "the enlightenment" of "protestant christianity" which was democratising the first world, several hundred years ago.

i know you wont admit it yet, joe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Weishaupt investigate some real history, instead of the spinganda they feed you.

the medical science is indisputable, no human is stupid enough to have done what the loony left have done by mistake, especially when you consider all the uni degrees.

You might be close to the mark, Formersnag: "All left wing politics on day one was a "counter revolutionary" strategy of the pope & filthy, stinking, super rich, to foil "the enlightenment" of "protestant christianity" which was democratising the first world, several hundred years ago."

But you don't have to attribute such puppeteering skills to the pope - against the fuzzy, incomplete and imperfect principles of the Enlightenment, there were many, many retreats, and I am coming to think that Marx's Communism was one of them - an attempt to organise a Utopia on earth, to re-integrate state and a secular form of total belief, along with the (he hoped, but it didn't really matter) willing submergence of the individual once more in the collective. In other words, a pre-Enlightenment, or anti-Enlightenment, total system, where ideology competed with and replaced religion, which in turn directed the state, obliterating the boundaries between the two, and as a necessary prerequisite, obliterated individuality as well.

So Marxism was perhaps a retreat from the separation of state from religion (secularism), and religion from the individual (i.e. conscience, consciousness), and the boundaries on the rights of the state to intrude in the lives of individuals (i.e. private life, and civil society). In application, Marxism, Bolshevism, Sovietism, and the 'Chinese Way' attempted to impose a nominally secular totalising system, one more pervasive than any Pope or Tsar ever attained.

In this sense - and this is a great surprise to me too - communism may have been a reactionary system, by no means a revolutionary one: what its adherents sought wasn't a great step forward, but really a mighty step backwards, to the certainties and control of absolutist systems: Papist theocracy without popes, absolutism without kings or emperors, a system in which the 'Pope' and the 'Caesar' were one, the Party, i.e. the 'Leader'.

[TBC]

[contd]

The world is inevitably imperfect, unfinished, uncertain, but full of surprises and unexpected innovations. Reactionaries of all colours find all of this to be anathema, and always have.

Hence, this grotesque informal alliance, or at least apologetics, between 'Leftists' like Chomsky, Chavez and the Castros, and Gaddafi, Mugabe, al Qaida and assorted thugs. Not just because these thugs pose as anti-Americans, which suckers the Western 'Left', but because they all fear an Enlightened world.

Joe

You make me laugh Formersnag.

You're like a rocket missing a stabiliser fin.

Formersnag what happened to you? As your paranoia of "reds under the bed" and sexist comments has developed over the past few years.
You live in a capitalist society, your country is governed by two rightwing political parties, so whats your problem mate! Your safe!!

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12598#217850

Loudmouth, i knew would get there one day joe.

if you have biological parents married for life, or the nuclear family, which is also part of a happy, healthy, functional, extended family living together in the same large home or block of units, working together in the same family owned small business/farm & involved in the local "protestant" church congregation, along with all the other families in the local area/village? Does this not sound like a "cohesive, social unit" or commune to you?

Yet the loony left has worked assiduously to destroy this.

Socialism = ANTIsocialism

Communism = ANTIcommunity

With true Austrian economics, social policy is first & foremost.

You have a tax/welfare mix, family laws that encourage successful marriages/families because this provides the foundation stones for family owned small & medium sized businesses.

You end up with an economy similar to what we had between 1945 & 1965, the closest any nation has ever come to being a classless society. We had the highest living standards of any nation on earth. The smallest gap between rich & poor.

BTW, the "chinese way" is now identical to 1930's Nazi Germany with a communism sticker on it instead of fascism, only with more corruption. To all intents & purposes it is a totalitarian system with a mixture of command economy, co-operating with certain "capitalists" often using "capital" borrowed from "the state" & "growing" out of poverty towards world domination with similar speed & style.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12598#217855
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12598#217865

Bugsy & Kipp, i will explain in plain simple english AGAIN.

Globalised, free trade, foriegn owned multi national, capitalism = Coca Cola Communism, a tiny handful of ruling elites on the boards of these few cartels own/control almost everything that is worth owning/controlling.

Our country is governed by 2 left wing parties, the liberal party is almost as Fabian Socialist as the RED/green/labour party.

Both want to import more cheap labour for foreign owned multinationals, while both aboriginal & white Aussies stay under employed.

Both are promoting principles & policies aimed at killing all industries other than quarrying & tourism.

WHHOOOOOOSSSHH fsfsfsfsfsfsfsfsfsfsfsfsfs sputter sputter *POP*

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12598#217941

Bugsy, Wow, what clever sarcasm? which UNI gave you your masters in smart arse?

What will be your clever come back when the polls have Bob Katter's Australian party ahead of the GAYLP? When you are in front of a senate committee on UN australian activitees?

Kipp, i have never made any sexist comments ever, only feMANazis, fauxMANistas & closet communists do that. And there never were any reds under beds, they were Australian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot 's IN their own BEDS.

Bovine
Excrement
Distribution
Services

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RDMXe_BY9Y&feature=player_embedded enjoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi3erdgVVTw you want more

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=HFzhHeatRA0 still not laughing at yourself?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=nKBnN8i-tfk surely loony lefties will enjoy this one?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8_YL3q1--U&feature=related laugh at yourself.