Untethered...with Clementine Ford
Untethered...with Clementine Ford
The Friday Five: Clementine’s rundown of the week’s news
Let’s face it, we don’t always pay attention to the news. But just in case it comes up at pub trivia or knock off drinks with our friends, we still want to know what’s going on. Clementine's Friday Five provide's a quick cheat sheet of five of the week’s biggest news items, political gaffes or pop culture tidbits so YOU can bluff your way through whatever comes up.
It's smart, irreverent, quickfire and to the point - just like that friend who everyone always says should have gone into politics, if only she didn’t hate authority figures and rules.
This week: the assassination of Yahya Sinwar, the US’ hypocrisy on arms embargoes, Albanese no longer a man of the people, some astrology news (of course!) and Liam Payne.
For the week ending October 20, 2024…this is the Friday Five.
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Free Palestine.
Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Friday Five with me, your host, clementine Ford. The Friday Five is part of my Untethered podcast channel. I drop one every Friday with the top five news stories of the week so that you can go into the weekend prepared and ready, even if you haven't really been following along. I'm recording this on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. Remember wherever you are, know whose land you're on. This week we're talking about Israel, because they continue to do things that are completely and utterly fucked. We're also talking about Kamala Harris, because she continues to do things that are completely and utterly fucked. And we're talking about our own Prime Minister, anthony Albanese, because guess what? He keeps doing things that are completely and utterly fucked. For the week ending October 20, 2024,. This is the Friday Five with Clementine Ford.
Speaker 2:To the people of Gaza, I have a simple message this war can end tomorrow. It can end if Hamas lays down its arms and returns our hostages.
Speaker 1:That was Benjamin Netanyahu, aka one of the most depraved, disgusting, evil figures in human history. Speaking about the assassination of Yahya Sinwar, I woke up to this news this morning that the IOF, the Israeli occupying forces, and their terrorist militia had killed Sinwar. But the funny thing about that because they are one of the most incompetent and violent militias in the world and yet also so cowardly is that by all reports, they didn't even know that they'd found Sinwar. They didn't even know that he was one of the people that they'd killed, one of the three supposed Hamas operatives that they'd killed. Because they're incompetent and because for the past year they've just enthusiastically been bombing and slaughtering and maiming and torturing civilians, mainly children, and I don't think that they expected to find an actual Hamas agent anywhere along this, because this long ago stopped being about stopping Hamas. I mean, even in Netanyahu's words there, this war could end tomorrow. This war could end tomorrow if Hamas just lays down its weapons and returns the hostages. Who the fuck is going to return the hostages? Netanyahu, you fucking pinhead. You've killed every single person that you could potentially negotiate a fucking release deal with. I mean, do you not get it? Sinwara was only the leader of Hamas since August, because they assassinated the previous leader of Hamas just on the eve of ceasefire negotiations and hostage negotiations.
Speaker 1:Netanyahu does not want an end to the quote unquote war in Gaza, aka Netanyahu's and the Zionists genocide in Gaza, because that's returning the hostages has never been Netanyahu's intention. Netanyahu and all of his fucking ah. There's not enough words to describe how I feel about the people in the Israeli Knesset and anyone who was cheering this fucking, just monstrous genocide on. But they don't care about the hostages. They've never cared about the hostages. I am of the view, and I think that there's enough startling evidence in support of this, that not only did they know about October 7th, but they facilitated and paved the way for it. That music festival was not meant to be in that location. They moved it, and they moved it and extended it by one day and then, as testified to by the locals on the kibbutz, on the Bjerre kibbutz, the IOF took hours to turn up. We already know as well that members of the IOF had said that they'd seen activity along the border the border, by the way, which is a fucking prison wall, which is why organizations like Hamas exist in the first place, because Israel has imprisoned Palestinians for the last 76 years. So they don't care about releasing the hostages.
Speaker 1:This is about annexing Gaza. This is about re quote unquote settling Gaza, aka stealing Gaza. We already know that they've had conference meetings with settler groups to steal that land, which is what makes it so ridiculous when people like, oh well, if he votes for Trump or if he votes for third party, then you're definitely voting for Trump. And do you know what Trump wants? To build condos there. Do you know who already wants to do that? Israel. They're going to do it, no matter what this is.
Speaker 1:What people don't seem to understand is that this is a fucking, psychotic, evil, terrorist government that has systematically, over the last 76 years, destroyed everything about this land that they claim to be indigenous to, destroyed everything good about the place in which they claim to hail from. Zionists don't care about culture. Zionists don't care about preserving ethnicity. Zionists care about land. They care about enforcing white supremacy in a region in which they are dominating, in which they can dominate and steal more and more land. So here's just some of the things that have been said since the IOF revealed that they had accidentally killed Sinwar, who, by the way, was not hiding in a tunnel was not shacked up in some fucking mansion with billions of dollars in Qatar, who was fighting to the very end for his people and who went down throwing the last weapon that he could find at the inevitability of his death. I feel like if he were white and if his story were understood by the same supporters of empire that uh, you know, cheering this on a some kind of like progress in the quote war in Gaza, he would have a fucking movie made about him.
Speaker 1:Because here's some things about Yaka Sinwar he was born in the 1960s, so he's 62 years old, so he was born in 1967 in the Kanunis refugee camp. He was born into a refugee camp, a 62-year-old man. His entire life, palestine, the land of his ancestors, has been occupied. So not only was he born into a refugee camp, because his community had already, by that stage, had their homes destroyed, stolen by Israel, by Zionists. He was born into this refugee camp and between 1989, when he was 21 years old, until 2011, 22 years later, he was in an Israeli prison, tortured for 22 years in an Israeli prison.
Speaker 1:I don't think that people understand what kind of oppression is really being enacted by Israel. I don't think that they understand. I mean when I say people, I'm talking about those who consider Israel to be the good guys and automatically the country populated by brown people to be the bad guys, because that's how Western empire works and that's how it's always indoctrinated us white people and you know the white, the whiteness of our culture. In the quote unquote West in general to turn turn a blind eye to the violence of what it means to maintain our empires. So he was tortured in a prison for 22 years and then he was released in a prisoner exchange, and that was in 2011.
Speaker 1:By that stage, israel had technically according to them, this is how they will frame it withdrawn from Gaza. We've given it back, given it back to Palestine, which is fucking bullshit. Technically speaking, israel withdrew its settlers, its settlements and its troops from Gaza, but it erected a border wall, it instituted barricades, it instituted blockades so nothing could get into Gaza or out of Gaza by land, sea or air. It destroyed the newly built Gaza airport, it bombed it and it put up a fucking border wall and it turned it into a concentration camp. And Dov Weissman, who worked in the Ariel Sharon cabinet, who was considered to be the architect this is what they're saying about Sinuata. The architect of October 7th so I'm going to use that word as well Considered to be the architect of the 2006 Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, said specifically outright that the reason that they withdrew was because they wanted to freeze any talks of a peace process. That the reason that they withdrew was because they wanted to freeze any talks of a peace process. They withdrew from Gaza. This is on record, you can look this up. They withdrew from Gaza because they wanted to freeze any peace talks, to prevent a two-state solution.
Speaker 1:This is the kind of mentality that people are defending and people are turning around and saying well, why did they hate us? How could they have done this to us? Oh my God, how could they have, how could they have orchestrated against us like this? I don't think people get what it must be like to be born into a refugee camp, to be living under apartheid, to see not just you, as Sinwater experiences, obviously for 22 years, but to see your people, your friends, your family, your loved ones beaten by Israeli police and militia, killed by them, to see your children shot by snipers, to see them maimed, to see them, to see them orphaned and then to see the complete disparity in treatment of, again, children who, just looking for something to do to protect their communities and protect their families, might throw a rock at a tank I'm not even being hyperbolic. Might throw a rock at a tank and be met with Israeli gunfire, and that be justified. Do you know? Not a single Israeli terrorist army member has ever been held accountable for the murder of a child, a Palestinian child. It's never happened. It's never happened.
Speaker 1:So you tell me if you were living in an environment in which you had no hope, you had no freedom, and in which your children and the children in your community lived in constant fear and risk of being turned into either amputees or killed outright. You tell me that you wouldn't join a resistance movement. You tell me that you wouldn't fight the hardest that you could to free and liberate your people. Because I know for a fact right now that I would, and there are things that I would probably be willing to do in order to secure that freedom that are really easy for me to judge sitting in my relatively comfortable house and not having bombs dropped on me. The hypocrisy of this is so disgusting and disgraceful. So this is what some people have said in response to this Joe Biden, the terrorist president of the United States of America, which is an empirical warlord perpetrating injustice and violence all over the world, president Joe Biden I'm quoting from Al Jazeera here.
Speaker 1:President Joe Biden said Sinwater's death marks a moment of relief for Israelis, while providing the opportunity for a day after in Gaza without the group in power. Sorry, excuse me, what the fuck? It provides a moment of relief for Israelis. Israelis who are not having bombs dropped on them day in and day out. Israelis who have not had to bury countless tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of their children, who are not currently buried under rubble. It provides a moment of relief for Israelis the dehumanizing that is still going on, beyond even what they want to think about, you know, securing the death of Sinwar, the dehumanization of Palestinians whose deaths don't seem to matter, whose deaths don't seem to create any kind of sense of even tension in Western leaders. For them to sit there and say it marks a moment of relief for Israelis for them. For them to sit there and say it marks a moment of relief for israelis, fucking, oh. I hope you never experience a moment of peace in the approximate handful of years that you have left to walk around like a decrepit old corpse on this earth. Joe biden, you, monstrous ghoul, you, monstrous ghoul, you, monstrous ghoul. He went on to say I will be speaking soon with Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders to congratulate them, to discuss the pathway for bringing the hostages home to their families and for ending this war once and for all, which has caused so much devastation to innocent people. Again, the hostages aren't coming home because Bideniden and netanyahu don't care about them. Um, they've killed everyone who could be in a position to even say where they are. Uh, so can the fucking bullshit.
Speaker 1:And then vice president kamala harris hailed sinwa's death and said it is a chance, to quote finally end the war in g. Justice has been served, she told reporters. Justice has been served. Has it? Has it, because where is the justice for hundreds of thousands of dead Palestinians? Where is the justice for the babies who have been shot in the head with a single shot by snipers, which we know is happening? Just last week, the New York Times released a report with 65 quoted medics saying that they had seen babies and children present at the hospitals they were working at, with single gunshot wounds to the head.
Speaker 1:Where is the justice for the woman who we all saw months and months and months ago, bereft, completely destroyed by grief, because the child that it had taken her hundreds of injections to be able to conceive via IVF had been killed by an Israeli bomb. Where is the justice for the journalists who've been murdered, for the families of the journalists who've been targeted specifically and killed? Where is the justice for Shaban Al-Dalul, who was burned alive in a makeshift hospital tent just at the start of this week? We saw his burning body still attached to the ivy. Where's the justice for him? And where is the justice for his mother, who burned alongside him? For these actually evil people to stand there and say justice has been served? Oh and look, all it took was the complete eradication of our human souls. All it took was the complete annihilation further of an already besieged and oppressed people. Justice has been served. I hope that every single one of them I don't believe in hell, but I hope that every single one of them burns in it because they don't belong anywhere else but in their own fucking complicity for the rest of eternity. So that's that story.
Speaker 1:Israel accidentally finally killed Yahya Sinwar, who fought to the end and who will and this is the reality in his death will create an endless number of new Sinwars. What do they think this last year will have done to the children who still remain alive? What do they think it will have done in terms of inspiring more and more determined resistance? They may have killed Sinwar, but they haven't killed the resistance movement. They've only made it stronger. And they know that, because it's not really about getting individuals, is it? It's about crushing them entirely and stealing the land. So they won't stop until every single last one of those Palestinians in Gaza is dead and every single Palestinian in the West Bank and everyone in Lebanon that they want to steal the land from to Israel, and every single government complicit with Israel, will not stop. This is all performance and pantomime and it's fucking bullshit. Don't buy it. And speaking of not buying things, that takes me to the second of this week's Friday Five.
Speaker 1:Earlier this week, the United States government revealed that if Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel continued to block humanitarian aid into North Gaza, then they would institute an arms embargo. It's amazing, right Incredible, to think that they could have done that this whole time. Oh wait, they didn't mean it. They meant in 30 days. In 30 days, if you haven't allowed more aid to enter North Gaza and notice that they didn't say if you haven't stopped bombing the fuck out of Gaza, if you haven't ended your tyrannical, maniacal intention to annex Gaza and to slaughter these entire people, to ethnically cleanse the land, if you haven't continued to commit war crimes with impunity and no intervention at all from anyone who claims to be about upholding international law, no, no, no, that stuff's all fine. Keep doing that. We love that. We love that for you.
Speaker 1:What you need to do, though, is make us look a little bit less complicit in that, because we need you to just let some food and band-aids in, because we in the U? S need to be able to say that, in addition to sending you two thousand pound bombs and specific weaponry that shreds babies bodies from the inside out, that we're also sending them some food, that we're also making sure that you know they've got something to eat while they wait for you to kill them. You're making us us look bad, benji. That is literally it. They were like if you don't stop blocking the paltry amount of food and aid that we performatively send to Gaza, then we might have to take the bombs away. In a month, after the election, we might have to take the bombs away in a month after the election, like that is crazy. I mean anyone who falls for that. You need to go back to brain school because you didn't do very well the first time around.
Speaker 1:Honestly, to sit there and say, firstly, the admission that in 30 days' time they could do it if you don't let a bit of aid in now, means that they could have done it all along. Means they could do it right now means that at any point in this absolutely disgusting, monstrous, inhumane parade of genocide that we've witnessed for the last year, at any point the United States, which is the biggest supplier of weapons to Israel, but also all of the other governments around the world that are now beginning. Actually, weirdly, israel's far right government has instituted an arms embargo to Israel. That's how bad things are that fascists in Italy are like you're too fascist for us. So at any point, the United States could have actually decided that they were going to stop sending the 2000 pound bombs to Israel that are being used to burn children's bodies from the inside out. They could have done that and they haven't. They haven't, and that is the Democrat administration view.
Speaker 1:Now, I've already said repeatedly I do not want Trump to win. I think Trump is dangerous and crazy, and the people around him are even more dangerous and even crazier, but I'm not going to sit here and participate in the charade that says that somehow the most important thing that America and Americans need to do right now is to stave off a presidency under Trump, and that the best way they can do that is to vote for Kamala Harris and the Democrats, because the Democrats have facilitated a genocide for an entire year. We have witnessed them do it, and now, at the 11th hour, they're like oops, we might be losing a few too many votes to those conscience voters, so we've got to just just dangle some kind of like pathetic little withered carrot in front of them, because we can't outright take the bombs away from Israel, because we're just not going to do that, so we'll just pretend that we're going to maybe threaten them a little bit harder than we have been. They could have done it at any point. At any point, they could have stopped this simply by stopping the flow of weapons, and the fact that they haven't means they won't. They never will. So this pathetic little bribe is an insult. Do you think that the people in Gaza are sitting there and thinking, oh gosh, thank God, thank God, thank God, the providers of our destruction have finally seen that we need some food and they're waggling their finger at the man who's killing us and they're saying, please could you just give them a little bit more food so that they're not hungry while you kill them. Like this is crazy People who say, well, we've got to vote for Harris because she's the best bet that we have for ending the genocide.
Speaker 1:Do you know who hasn't said anything about this 30 day deal? Kamala Harris. Do you know why she hasn't said anything about it? Because she doesn't intend to honor it. It's a pathetic deal anyway, but she doesn't intend to honor the threat anyway, but she doesn't intend to honor the threat.
Speaker 1:It is notable that this 30 day period ends after Biden's presidency. He will not be president after November 6th. I mean, technically speaking, he'll still be the president until January, but Kamala Harris will be the incumbent and she hasn't said anything about honoring this. So what do they think people are expected to believe about this? This is an obscenity. It's an obscenity.
Speaker 1:And when you have Kamala Harris sitting there today and saying justice has been served and not committing to any kind of arms embargo to Israel. She is telling you exactly who she is and how she plans to govern and rule. This woman has spent more time courting the endorsements of Republicans than she has even acknowledging third party voters, and still her most enthusiastic cheerleaders sit there and chastise anyone who refuses to buckle on genocide as being somehow a Trump supporter, as being somehow unable to see the bigger picture, as being somehow unwilling to accept the potential, even because it's just imaginary at this point, the possibility, according to them, that we just have to hope that kamala harris, once she's elected, that she might do something like. That is not a fucking government. That is not a government. That is a circus sideshow. And everyone who is pretending that this is still okay, everyone who is pretending that this is a way to democracy and freedom you are seriously embarrassing.
Speaker 2:When I contacted the PM to let him know that we had the details, Anthony Albanese told me, and I quote I'm about to get married to Jodie and start a new chapter of our lives. Jodie's a coastie, and spending time with her up there is awesome. It will be nice to be closer to her parents and her family one day. So there you go. The kid who grew up in council housing and has lived in Marrickville for most of his life is headed for the clifftops of Copacabana.
Speaker 1:If you're in Australia, you might be aware that we are currently experiencing a housing crisis. People around the world are experiencing similar. If you're in Australia, you might be aware that we are currently experiencing a housing crisis. People around the world are experiencing similar, but in Australia, rental prices are astronomically expensive. We have thousands of people who are unable to get secure housing. It's impossible to buy a house here. Rental prices, as I said, are astronomically expensive and so, of course, our Prime Minister, who is the head of the so-called Workers' Party, the Labor Party, decided that now would be a brilliant time to buy a $4.3 million house on a clifftop.
Speaker 1:That audio at the start was Ben Fordham, who is a twat, by the way. I'm certainly not sharing his audio or anything from his show as endorsement. He is a presenter on 2GB and, in my opinion, they are all toads over there. But Ben Fordham who considers himself a journalist, I suppose, but laughably I don't Ben Fordham found out about Anthony Albanese's $4.3 million purchase and contacted him, and that was a statement that he was reading out. Jodie is Anthony Albanese's fiancée. She's a coastie, apparently, and it'll just be really nice to live in this monstrosity of a mansion on top of a clifftop near to Jodie's parents $4.3 million, while some people are living in their cars. Now listen, I'm not saying that the prime minister of Australia isn't allowed to live in a nice house. I'm actually not saying that anyone isn't allowed to live in a nice house. But there's a difference between a nice house and a fucking mansion on a clifftop. And when you're the leader of the so-called workers party, it's a very bad look to buy a house that is almost $5 million in price and to be doing so when your government is tiptoeing around abolishing negative gearing.
Speaker 1:Now, for anyone who doesn't really understand what negative gearing is, I'm going to try and distill it into the most easily like accessible lay people's terms, because it took me a while to understand it as well.
Speaker 1:Basically, if you buy a property in Australia and you buy and you rent it out, so whether or not it's your only property that you own, you own and you're renting somewhere else yourself, or it's an investment property.
Speaker 1:Either way, if you're renting it out and you're technically considered to have created an opportunity for a renter to live somewhere, lessening the impact of housing on the government, then you're entitled to negatively gear that property, which means that if you make a loss financially on it, you can in perpetuity which means forever claim that loss on tax. So you can negatively gear properties to basically make money. So that's how we've got investment property owners with portfolios of you know maybe a handful of houses, and sometimes dozens of houses, who are literally high stakes, white collar gambling and making money through negative gearing by becoming like landlord moguls. And the problem with negative gearing is that it should have been abolished a long time ago because the system that it sprang up in no longer exists. But any time the government or any party even broaches the idea of abolishing negative gearing, it's met with resistance and manipulation by you guessed it the landlords. And where do we find in Australia an over-representation of landlords and investment property owners?
Speaker 1:Let me think, oh, that's right In the federal government benefit not only from their taxpayer salaries, but also from the taxes that they wrought through negative gearing. And so when it comes to abolishing negative gearing, of course they're not going to vote to do that, because then they'll lose money. And what makes this particularly galling? For Anthony Albanese to do this when he's been just come through a few months of just crucifying the greens because they won't vote for his really pathetic poultry housing legislation, which you know. They're claiming that they're building housing so that more australians can have a house. This is going to benefit like 0.2 percent of the population, but it will be something that they can then put on placards and posters and skydive out at the election and say, look, we saved housing. Like. It's just so unbelievable to me how bad labor is Labor is handling its own PR at the moment. Not only have they facilitated and supported and been complicit in a genocide for the past year, but they're also turning their backs on the same working people they claim to represent. Anthony Albanese isn't just buying a $4.3 million house. He's also in the process of selling a house that he purchased 10 years ago for $1.17 million still very expensive, I mean, but that's the average price of a house in Australia these days. It seems he now has it on the market for $1.85 million and the reason I know this is because I saw a story on realestatecom the other day which is, I assume, where the $4.3 million house news was leaked as well. But he's trying to sell it and his own estate agent. Now this would have all been approved by Albo. You don't say anything about the Albo, about Albo's personal business, unless you've run it past him. I'm assuming either that or his real estate agent has just been very unceremoniously fired. But he said we had one buyer come through it but they were being a bit cute about the price so we withdrew it from the auction and we know it's worth the money. So he's trying to get $1.9 million basically for this house to make a profit of $700,000 in 10 years. So 10 year profit and the audacity of saying the buyer was being a bit cute with the price Sorry, is this the leader of the Workers' Party or what?
Speaker 1:This is a man who grew up in public housing. His mother spent her entire life in public housing and actually the key thing there is that isn't that amazing, because you would never be able to do that. Now there is no one who could say that they've spent their entire life in public housing, because the housing system has been completely destroyed and degraded and there is no security for anyone living in Australia anymore, unless they have the money and the intergenerational wealth to buy into this astronomically expensive fucking pyramid scheme. And we're supposed to be in support of the fact that he's bought a house now for $4.3 million. And, of course, every labor rusted on hack is saying oh well, peter Dutton's millionaire.
Speaker 1:Peter Dutton, he's the opposition leader, peter Dutton, why don't you do his house? It's like I don't give a fuck where Peter Dutton lives. Peter Dutton could live in hell and I'd be happy Peter Dutton could live in a fucking toilet on a farm and it would be too good for him. The fact that he lives in a mansion is not surprising to me, because the system that we live in rewards fucking cunts like him. But I'm never going to vote for Peter Dutton and I'm never going to vote for Labor again either. But Peter Dutton doesn't pretend to be anything other than he is, which is a representative of the fucking big L liberal Republican party here, the Tories. They don't pretend to be different. The Labor Party does pretend to be different. Anthony Albanese certainly used to be different, used to be extremely vocal on Palestine, used to actually be what we'd say in Australia was a good cunt, and now he's a fucking bad guy. He is one of the worst examples of hypocrisy in politics and of self-interest, and of what happens when someone who once upon a time had morals gets just a little bit of taste of power. Fucking shame on you, alba. You should be disgusted with yourself.
Speaker 1:In lighter news, it's a full moon week. There's a big full moon in aries on thursday night, and it's one of release and rejuvenation. It was a fiery one. Aries is, of course, the warrior. The planet of aries is mars. It's all about big, loud movements. Uh, did some big loud movements myself today when I went on a rant on instagram, and I guess I've been doing some ranting tonight too, but it's a cleansing moon. Even if you don't believe in this stuff. Can I just recommend that you go and stand outside under the moonlight and just write a list. Just write a list of things that you would like to not do anymore, things that you've outgrown, people you've outgrown, ideas that you've outgrown. Just write that list down and just go and, in a safe container, just burn it or bury it, tear it up, flush it down the toilet, whatever. Just unshackle yourself, untether yourself, if you will, from all of those things and those ideas and those people who are holding you back.
Speaker 1:The last piece of news for this week's Friday Five is that, very sadly, liam Payne, the 31-year-old former singer of One Direction, died this week. You've probably heard this. It seems from all reports that he fell from a balcony while staying at a hotel and leaves behind a little baby. It's all very sad and it's. It's a sort of a confronting kind of reminder that fame and privilege I mean look privilege and money those things open a lot of doors. I'm not going to waste my time feeling too sorry for rich people, but it's a reminder that those things are not actually the pathway to happiness.
Speaker 1:Now there are some really troubling aspects of this story as well. I don't know a lot about the former singers of One Direction, but I do know that Liam had recently been named as having allegedly stalked his ex, persistently harassed her, and now, of course, because we live in a world where people turned on Amber Heard and celebrated an abuser like john depp, I'm not suggesting that he and liam pain were the same at all, and I still think that it was sad that he fell to his death, obviously. But people, fans, deranged stalkers, are coming for this poor woman as if somehow it was her fault. Now can we just put out a very big, strong, stern reminder that women are not responsible for men's behaviour. Women are not obliged to stay in relationships with men when they're not happy. They're certainly not obliged to care for men through men's emotional needs and through men's refusal to change behavior that they find scary or threatening. I'm speaking broadly now. There is no world in which we should be supporting the harassment of a woman who has allegedly already experienced so much and was simply trying to create safety for herself, and she shouldn't be dealing with this right now. It's a tragic situation, yes, but don't make it worse by pointing the finger at someone who endured things people can never know the true details of. I mean, let's believe women when they talk about the experiences of their relationships. I'm very sad for Liam Payne and his family. I'm sad for the child who now won't have a father growing up, but I don't support in any way any kind of behaviour that holds women accountable for the actions of men. We are not men's emotional fucking trampolines that they can jump up and down on so that they can achieve ever more heights, and we are certainly not their emotional fucking safety nets that they can fall into over and over and over again at the expense of ourselves. Do not harass women who have already done the hard work of leaving a relationship simply because you, in some bizarre parasitic form of fandom, believe that it's your responsibility to avenge someone who you did not know, who you were not friends with and who you probably had never met in your entire life. Just leave women be. And that brings us to the end of this week's Friday Five for the week ending October 20th. It has been a big one, it's been explosive, it's been fiery. I half blame that on the Aries full moon.
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