Bastard of OLO?

So does the following constitute an excuse for young Australians to join IS?

"A leadership that deliberately traumatises asylum seekers from the Middle East and Asia as part of a policy of deterrence can hardly be surprised when young men, with the least stake in racist Australia, head overseas to fight for crusading Islam."

Should "Urging violence and advocating terrorism offences" ever apply to non-Muslims or journalists? https://www.ag.gov.au/NationalSecurity/Counterterrorismlaw/Pages/UrgingViolenceAndAdvocatingTerrorismOffences.aspx

Is this present article just an extension of a We Australian's are to Blame for Islamic Terrorism line? This notes December 19, 2014's "Monis and our duty of care" = Monis (the Bastard of Martin Place) was a victim of Australian society line http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=16957

Or is the author just being provocative to make an otherwise dull OLO offering interesting?

Haigh's article is nothing more than a lefty rant against everything wrong with this country without a one iota of positive suggestion how to improve things (he even bags Shorten). His conclusion is it will get worse before it gets better.

The funny thing is, his worries are mostly out of step with the general public's thinking. Only those who already believe this sort of non-productive rambling will think this article has something meaningful to offer.

You may postulate that he is out of step with the general public`s thinking but he is probably well in step with the general thinking public.
We just hope that the latter is greater than the former.

Bruce could scarecely be described accurately as "left wing" simply because he lists a number of national shortcomings.
I disagree that things will become much worse before they get better, because articles, such as Bruce's, may probably alert the thinkers among us to the problems we are facing, in time to do something abut fixing them.

We risk being swamped in orthodoxy and conformity of thought unless those with first hand experience of national administration speak out about the shortcomings which they have observed. Lest we forget!

"The decline of the lucky country"

Maybe not so much - as Donald Horne pointed out when he coined that term, it was meant as a negative.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lucky_Country

"The Lucky Country is a 1964 book by Donald Horne. The title has become a nickname for Australia and is generally used favourably, although the origin of the phrase was negative...."

Horne's intent in writing the book was to document Australia's climb to power and wealth, basing it almost entirely on luck rather than the strength of its political or economic system, which Horne believed was "second rate".

Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise.

Horne's statement was an indictment of 1960s Australia. His intent was to comment that, while other industrialized nations created wealth using "clever" means such as technology and other innovations, Australia did not. Rather, Australia's economic prosperity was largely derived from its rich natural resources. Horne observed that Australia "showed less enterprise than almost any other prosperous industrial society."

"When I invented the phrase in 1964 to describe Australia, I said: 'Australia is a lucky country run by second rate people who share its luck.' I didn't mean that it had a lot of material resources … I had in mind the idea of Australia as a [British] derived society whose prosperity in the great age of manufacturing came from the luck of its historical origins … In the lucky style we have never 'earned' our democracy. We simply went along with some British habits.

In the decades following his book's publication, Horne became critical of the "lucky country" phrase being used as a term of endearment for Australia. He commented, "I have had to sit through the most appalling rubbish as successive generations misapplied this phrase."

I wondered how long it would take before Tony Abbott was blamed for the barbaric, satanic beheadings we are seeing daily on our TV screens, in one case of a Muslim somehow rounded up who was so inspired by the fortitude of the 20 Christians beheaded with him that he apostasised and joined in their martyrdom..WITHOUT the expectation of 17(is it?) virgins awaiting him.....but this surely is record breaking time?

What a lot of nonsense...but then the freedom to publish nonsense, however boorish (a small price to pay for our Australian freedoms)is one we cherish..one Mr. Haigh would not have in countries to which even he, I wager, would not travel today (unless in an armoured vehicle?) let alone live. Countries from which people risk their lives to escape. Another situation 'down' to Tony Abbott..as are the rows of African Refugee Camps in which 1,000's sit patiently awaiting their turn to escape their grinding poverty and persecution. All Tony Abbott's fault... while we sit and pontificate...rather than search for and promote solutions...

Well now that you've finished looking in the mirror and all the personal introspection Bruce; perhaps you might care to further enlighten us WTF was that (not happy Jane) rant really all about?

And did you leave anybody out? Except perhaps, constructive criticism!?

We don't select certain countries and races for discrimination, we hate all queue jumpers equally, particularly when they can afford to pay much more than legitimate airfares to travel here and instead, come in the welcoming front door; replete with identifying documentation.

We are just not the monsters you claim we are.

Why just a few days ago a little boy who could have been deported on health issues was given a special pass, and because we are a genuinely caring people who are just fed up to the gills with people who hate us and everything we stand for, forcing themselves on us with mendacious deceit and malicious aforethought!

And then get a gun then look for a cause that allows them to vent their built up spleen in a brainwashed bloodbath of mindless murder; replete with ritual beheading, Crucifixions, being buried alive, rape, and women being sold into slavery!

And that is the only reason these monsters are heading offshore to take part in mass murder, and as such are no better than the Nazis!

Its not a crusade but rather yet another Holocaust, with Christians, Jews and other Muslims in the cross-hairs!

And you stand there with a straight face and try to excuse or justify it!

If you hate us and all we have become Bruce?
Why not pizzorf, and find somewhere you actually like!?

Perhaps in Ecuador keeping the traitor Assange company.

And wouldn't that be a sight?

I mean which one of you would excel in the universal condemnation of the disciplines of democracy and everything Australian.

Perhaps you could kick start that particular conversation with a little flag burning ritual!? Cause that's what this looks like mate!
Rhrosty.

Truth stings a bit for some it seems.

I've heard and read lots of silly reasons for these terrorist and this is a great example.

IS is fighting against other Muslims, how you can stretch our border protection policies into motivation for this activities is beyond me.

The reality is what motivates these people will be all sorts of things, most importantly will be how they were raised. This is something the parents of these people should have a long hard look at themselves about and stop blaming us evil white guys for.

Muslims everywhere have to deal with their sectarian ways.

"A leadership that DELIBERATELY traumatises asylum seekers from the Middle East and Asia ...."

And you call other people immature, Bruce?

Some of what you continue on with about Australia's problems is true; but using the dowright lie in your third sentence as an excuse for lunatics kids from Australia joining ISIS is outrageous and moronic. Most of the head cases were born in Australia. Your ravings are the sort that undoudtedly ring bells with ASIO and the AFP.

And, if real hater like you can resist the call of ISIS, so can the ratbags you apologise for.

Going back to your concerns about the general state of the country - concerns you never mentioned when your socialist mates were acutally creating the state we are in now - people like you and the socialist millionaire Turnbull are not the answer. Bad though Abbott is (and he is downright useless) there is not a single politician in Australia at the present time who would be any better.

The entire political system is moribund. Bruce Haigh is the same. Until ordinary voters demand better, by refusing to vote, or casting informal votes with 'none of these self-serving incompetents, thankyou' written on the ballot papers, we will be stuck with the idiots we have now.

Swapping one lot of boof-heads for another no longer works.

But Julie Bishop is a good polly, shapely and quite fetching in a hajib! I'd vote for her.

http://firstplacetoday.com/short-quick-guide-hijab/

Have to chuckle when people talk about the "thinking" public as if they actually know what the public is thinking. Of course the rest of us are expected to guess that they are also thinkers and, if we disagree with them, we are not thinkers. Sad really.

It is rather worrying that clowns like this bloke can actually get into our diplomatic service, & worse, be our representative anywhere, let alone Muslim countries, where his sympathise obviously lie.

I find it galling that this far from patriotic clown is drawing a comfortable pension from the taxpayers he so obviously hates.

He really does qualify as a fully hide bound idiot in recommending a continuation, or even escalation of the crazy Rudd/Gillard policies that got us into this mess. Follow his ideas & we will be leaving Greece far behind in the bankruptcy stakes.

Yes we are in trouble, but we don't need this dill to tell us. All thinking Ozzies knew we were in trouble the day Rudd was elected.

The loss of our golden egg laying goose in our mining boom will require a huge reduction in wasteful spending, which should start with a huge reduction of the excessively generous benefits paid to retired bureaucrats.

THe boats can't be stopped. Oh thats right Bruce you now have egg all over your face. Instead of facing the fact you and your mates were wrong, your hatred of Abbott oozes at a greater rate. I suggest its not Abbott who is morally bankrupt. The decline of the 'lucky 'country more or less started with the increasing influence of lefties like yourself dominating the public broadcasters and brainwashing the kids.

This was never the lucky country. The financial elites have always owned and controlled us. The difference being currently is that China and Russia are no longer slaves of our Western Imperial banking system. This is why Aust and Britain want to join the AIIB or Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank initiated by China. Many countries are deserting the Rothschild banking cartel and looking to China as an escape from total melt down.

World GDP = $70 trillion. World debt= $200 trillion. World derivative gambling market = $1000 trillion they admit to. This coming collapse will make the Great Depression seem like a walk in the park.

Hi Arjay,

China has maybe five to ten years before its demography and no-interest loan policies catch up with it.

Ateday, the thinker,

Don't get too far up yourself. Ah, thinkers, the precious few who really know, not like the rest of us hoi-polloi.

A refugee queue ? Of course there is. Out of forty five million refugees - genuine refugees - world-wide, how many do you reckon have gone through all the right steps and filled out the application forms, and then waited ? How many refugees in that camp in northern Kenya with 300,000 people could afford to get on a boat ? Or could afford a pot to ..... ?

I wonder how Abbott can be blamed for the Nepal disaster ........ Never mind, some 'thinker' will find a way.

Joe