Thursday, September 01, 2016

In which the pond intolerantly refuses to tolerate the intolerant pretending to be tolerant...



There's something beguiling about Mexican cartoonist Paco Calderón Cartones' cartoon - it reminded the pond of that very nice koan (and more koans here):


Those precious moments, that little surge of sweetness, is why the pond visits the pages of the reptiles each day ... and sure enough ...


Now this sort of modest splash probably doesn't build up things with sufficient style, so here we go, trumpets and drum roll please maestro ...


By golly, that's solid stuff,  and it helps explain why others read the reptile Oz too ...

And so to the main course, Carr certified, a recommendation guaranteed to ensure the pond's deepest enthusiasm, much like the public transport initiatives and infrastructure projects conducted during Carr's reign to leave NSW a richer and more efficient state (what's that you say, the Olympic stadium doesn't drop you at work each day? Well, that's why they invented the 50km walk) ...


Now Maher Mughrabi can look after himself, as can leftists, but really, that's such a stupid opener that the pond thoroughly enjoyed it.

Of course religion isn't a race and theoretically it should have nothing to do with race or ethnicity or nationality.

Somebody forgot to tell the protestants of Tamworth when they abused the pond for being an Irish retard Catholic dog perhaps aligned with frogs ...or the pond's Greek friend for being a wog ...

Another scribbler - the pond can't imagine who - wrote this, and more here:

Hey presto! Without a coherent object, racism is eliminated as a phenomenon!! Let joy be unconfined!

You can't be racist against Italians, because Italians aren't a race, they are a nationality. (This should have been on posters here in the 1950s.) You can't be racist against Jews, for the same reason that you can't be racist against Muslims.

If only it were simply a matter of race as something that does or doesn't exist. But it isn't. Racism is about how we think of ourselves – and others.

Indeed, indeed, and while the pond has no time for Daesh, Saudi Arabia - that thing about women not driving really snarks the pond - and rampant Wahhabism, why is it always that scribblers like Monk routinely quote the likes of Daniel Pipes and ignore the crusaders that have been in their midst for yonks?




Even that fellow Iraq war lover Christopher Hitchens found Pipes a bit rich, suggesting he confused scholarship with propaganda and pursued petty vendettas with scant regard for objectivity, but that didn't stop the sword wielder and Saudi Arabia lover wanting to appoint him to the board of the United States Institute of Peace (Peace is their profession) (wiki here).

It really irritates the pond the way that the crusaders are suddenly on a crusade about Saudi Arabia, as if it wasn't there to be discovered long ago ...

Never mind, on we go with astute, Carr-certified analysis ...


Actually the crux of the matter is that any militant religion poses a direct and deliberate threat to any secular liberal constitution. We must organise our defences and push back on a coherent and principled basis.

Which doesn't lend itself to a kind of confused pick and stick Alan Jones sort of assessment, whereby a pasty Hastie creationist fundamentalist is somehow different to other forms of fundamentalism ... this is after all, a man who gets to vote on gay marriage, school chaplains and funding of fundamentalist religious schools wanting to teach creationism as a different scientific theory ...

However the pond's campaign is unlikely to find much meaningful help from a scribbler who blathers on about regressive leftists, and who fails to mention the other crusaders who were in our midst ... what exactly did Dr Monks do during the war daddy?




Let's hear it from Doug Wead, an Assembly of God evangelist ...


Yes, he's one of them and they knew it, and the two Christian crusaders went off to war and left us with a fine old mess... and now we're only supposed to fear Islamic fundamentalists?

Here's the thing.

You can't send Islamics to the sin bin, and provide an exemption for other religious fundamentalists ...

Nor should you propose that if people don't like your offer of benign tolerance that they should then be smoted and smited with your raging intolerance ...

How is it that they who must bow to your generous and benign tolerance, or be excluded from the benefits of toleration? And what exactly are those benefits, if the main one seems to be to suffer under the yoke of your benign discrimination, abuse and intolerance for refusing the offer of tolerance?

Well the pond is intolerant of all religions on an equal opportunity basis, but it's also intolerant of those who preach intolerance dressed up as if it's some kind of tolerance ...

By golly, that's how confused that Monk has made the pond, but while we're at it, can we also be intolerant of all the religions who intolerantly refuse to allow same sex marriage? Not just the Islamics and Daesh, though they're reprehensible enough, but also the ones that do it with a benign smirk and a cucumber and cheese sandwich, before consigning gays to eternal hellfire ...

And now speaking of peace and harmony throughout the land, surely this will become a cult hit of the first water ... in this version you get to see it twice!!

Is there manna? Is there heaven? Is there a constructive parliament?




While watching, a YouTube ad came up warning of the four stages to a heart attack ... the pond thinks the video got it to the second or third stage ...is Abbott the most shameless politician in living memory or what?


7 comments:

  1. Denotation and connotation, DP. Let me illustrate:

    "Connotation represents the various social overtones, cultural implications, or emotional meanings associated with a word or sign. Denotation represents the explicit or referential meaning of a word or sign - it refers to the literal meaning of a word, the 'dictionary definition.'"

    So there we have it. Paul Monk is lecturing us about formal denotation, Maher Mughrabi is explaining his version of connotation. But it sure makes it a problem to talk about "racism". Maybe we should just talk about "mood affiliation" and let it go at that.

    A pity about Monk though - when logical formalism is what's needed he can be very good indeed. Especially with regard to the methods and supporting software of the van Gelder and Monk team.

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  2. Something about that video reminds me of Little Red Riding Hood.

    Abbott looks very wolffish. The eyes are positively a-gleam as they fix on the naive red-head.

    Miss pp

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    1. She's just Little Red Riding Head to Tones' Grandmotherly Wolf, ya reckon.

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    2. I reckon GB.
      Oh grandma! What big teeth you have!
      He is ready to pounce.
      On us all.
      Miss pp

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  3. First of all I really like your site. I log into it first thing every day for my daily chuckle re the rantings of the right-wing loons.

    That having been said Paul Monk is one of the very few writers featured in both the Lizard "news"-paper, and Quadrant too, who has something intelligent to say. He also is a featured writer for the Australian Rationalist Magazine. He is by the way an atheist too.

    So I found the general argument of this essay to be spot on re the very real threat of militant islam. The second last paragraph sums up the situation in succinct terms.

    I disagree with his phrase the "regressive left". To me the real regressives infest the right side of the culture wars divide. Much/most/all of right-wing politics, culture and religion being a form of individual and collective psychosis.

    And perhaps the situation is much worse than what Paul Monk tells us in his essay. Such is the very disturbing thesis of this essay which describes the murderously reasonable intentions of the radical jihadists
    www.themonthly.com.au.issue/2016/june/1464703200/robert-manne/mind-islamic-state

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    1. In part I can agree with you, Anony; as I say above, when strict formal logic is required, Monk is usually very good. But then, even the Bolter (and The Devine, Rita Panahi, and the whole panoply of reptiles) get some things right now and then.

      But really, to contribute some perspective on Monk's second last paragraph, here's what Robert Manne says in his The Monthly essay you linked to:

      "...I have believed that there is nothing more dangerous in human affairs than beliefs capable of convincing their followers of the nobility of mass murder and other savage acts."

      Now I really don't have to say that those abstract things "beliefs" can't actually do anything, do I ? If any sense is to be made of Manne's essay, that has to be translated into something like this: "there is nothing more dangerous in human affairs than people who adopt beliefs that allow them to pretend that their acts of mass murder and savagery are noble."

      Otherwise, what could be said about another organisation that operates in America: the Ku Klux Klan. Surely if there's a problem with Islamic "beliefs" and their magical ability to turn ordinary folks into savages and murderers, what can be said about the "beliefs" that empower the KKK ? And why isn't it being said, loud and clear, day in and day out, whilst so ever there's anybody who claims to be a KKK'er ?

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    2. Frankly Anon, being an atheist has got three fifths of stuff all to do with analysis, and what is the point of the analysis? Well the pond refuses to get hysterical if it's to whip up and lather up much excitement and fear about the impending threat to, and downfall of civilisation. There wasn't so much of that when everybody was hunkering down with Saudia Arabia and bunging on a war with unintended consequences.

      The pond is immediately suspicious of people - whether it be intelligence agencies, police forces, or computer security experts - talking up threats in a way that even Daesh couldn't imagine or manage. At the moment they're a rabble. So what are we facing?

      The number of foreign Islamic State fighters has halved in just one year, according to a classified White House intelligence report seen by NBC News. The data, however, says these fighters are now carrying out attacks across the world.
      The number has dropped to just 12,000 fighters, which is about half what it was in early 2015, according to the intelligence report recently sent to the White House. NBC published its findings on Wednesday. (14th July 2016).

      Current population of the world? 7.4 billion.

      Now the pond would be exceptionally pleased not to be culled by one of the crazed ratbags roaming the world under the Daesh banner because they copped a good licking and the Caliphate turned out to be a pathetic dream, but we need to get a dream grip here... between Daesh bringing down the world and the financial systems, please allow the pond to bet on the financial systems and greed ...

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