Paul Sheehan, the Nazis, the human rights industry, and did we mention the Nazis?

(Above: who'd have thought this site would have the legitimate chance of putting up a wretched lol cat meme and a spelling Nazi joke, but thanks be unto Paul Sheehan. As Kerry Packer once observed, you only get one Paul Sheehan in a lifetime).

Back from Newcastle just in time to see Senators Robert McClelland and Stephen Conroy tag teaming and power wrestling to demonise Google and the dangerous dangers lurking in the full to overflowing intertubes.

Robert McClelland refers Google's snooping to federal police is this morning's follow up header, in a paper always happy to join in Google bashing in what is now known as the Murdoch wars, and incidentally proving Chairman Rudd's minions have learned well from the Chinese government.

Thank the lord the Labor party is doing so well in the polls! And doing their level best to keep the geek community on side so they don't stray to the Greens.

It's a bit like the forlorn hand crafted sign on a closed and shuttered shop front saying "Welcome to Newcastle". Well if you visit the CBD of Newcastle on the dead of a Saturday night, you'll suddenly know what it's like to be an urban Robinson Crusoe.

But back to the commentariat - they never stop, like a ceaseless wave of wordsmiths pounding on Stockton beach - and of course Monday is Paul Sheehan day, and he doesn't disappoint with Beware the words of a wolf dressed in sheikh's clothing. Yep, the sand was out on Stockton beach, in much the same way as the sand of meaning is adrift in Sheehan.

Every so often, we like to draw attention to Godwin's Law, which states that as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches.

We have adapted this law to commentariat commentators with invariable success and irrefutable proof.

Naturally Sheehan doesn't disappoint, as he lathers his way through a speech by Sheikh Taj el-Din al Hilaly, and arrives at a moment in a speech by Paul McAleer:

He chose his words carefully: ''This flotilla [confronting Israel's military blockade of Gaza] was hijacked by state-sanctioned murderers, who carry out their orders with deadly precision.''

State-sanctioned murderers who act with deadly precision. Sounds like Nazis.

It could have sounded like North Koreans blowing up a boat, or Chinese soldiers during the Korean war, or American soldiers gunning down civilians in the streets of Iraq, or Australian soldiers getting a little wild and woolly in Afghanistan, but of course it has to sound like Nazis.

One of the finest corollaries to Godwin's Law is that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress.

Never mind, Sheehan isn't interested in debating the point, the effect, the politics, the efficiency or the wisdom of Israel's most recent actions. He's much more interested in payback, and golly does the payback have a long and bearded memory. You see McAleer is a functionary in the Maritime Union of Australia:

The irony in McAleer's comments was elements of the union now known as the MUA functioned for decades as a criminal organisation, practising system-wide blackmail, extortion, intimidation, pilfering and featherbedding on the wharves. During World War II, the wharfies' union, controlled by the communists, undermined Australia's war effort. After the war, when dock operators began to introduce mechanisation on the wharves, union leaders pushed forklift trucks into the harbour.

Yes indeed we're back in the days of World War 11, when the Nazis were rampant, and Bob Menzies earned his nickname "Pig Iron Bob" by shipping iron ore to Japan, which was not yet at war with Britain and unions refused to ship the iron ore, saying that it would come back as bombs to Australia ...

The point being?

Well I guess if Sheehan is going to indulge in simple minded, one sided memories of history, it behooves everybody else to play the same silly game. The point of course is to generate much heat, and no light, and thereby help preserve NSW's parlous electricity supply.

Meanwhile Sheehan keeps on skipping around, determined to avoid any actual consideration of Israel's actions. After all, once you've lead with a joker like Hilaly from the bottom of the pack, the debate is closed. Hilaly bad, therefore Israel good, therefore QED.

Who else ya got?

Time to trot out Greens MP Lee Rhiannon, and then to shed a crocodile tear about the alliance between the hard left and the hard right of Islamic militancy:

It is an interesting alliance. After the first modern Islamic revolution, in Iran, the new regime wiped out the communists, whose activists on university campuses had helped bring down the shah. Within its first two years, the Islamic regime had executed thousands of communists, student leaders and feminists.

Sounds like Nazis.

I keed, I keed, we all know that the removal of communists, student leaders and feminists can only enhance the stability of the world. The alliance between the hard right and the hard right of Christian militancy tells us so. Or so Glenn Beck says.

Oops, there I go, getting agitated about a religious war. Where's the government and government quango mangoes when you need them, even if we know any commentariat columnist worth their salt will vigorously disapprove of any government action in relation to curtailment of freedom of speech:

Where does the Australian Human Rights Commission stand on matters such as calls to religious war made in Australia? It has nothing to say. It prefers softer targets.

Yes indeed and where does the Australian Human Rights Commission stand on the matter of a religious state like Israel? Why do they refuse to take a stand on religious wars? Why haven't they persecuted or prosecuted George Bush for talking about a crusade?

Is that a suitable question, typical of the patronising hypocrisy permeating the level of debate in the commentariat columnists' industry?

Come on now, don't be silly. We've now jumped holus bolus, willy nilly and coitus interruptus from loony Hilaly to Race Discrimination Commissioner Graeme Innes talking about the racial profiling of victims of crime, not perpetrators:

This is typical of the patronising hypocrisy permeating the human rights industry. Since when did identifying the ethnicity of people convicted of a crime ever involve guesswork? And if racial stereotypes are unfair, then racial profiling of both crime victims and perpetrators would exculpate any stereotyped group. If, however, racial profiling confirmed an ethnic group was disproportionately involved in crime, then it would not be an ''incorrect stereotype'' but a truth.

Uh huh. But surely if there's a little racial profiling here, then it won't be long for a little racial profiling there, and grumpy Sheehan could scoff up his porridge (or gruel) with a self-satisfied righteous air as everybody's racially profiled, and the truth is revealed that it's "them" that's guilty. Like the blacks in America.

Hang on, there's Stepan Kerkasharian coming in at twelve o'clock high arguing that Innes' position is dangerous, and that having police ask victims about their ethnic origin might also be "dangerous".

Why then it's time for the grump Sheehan to change horses, cross streams, and bray and bicker from the very other side of the stream, seemingly in support of Innes:

Why? ''Publicity about the ethnicity of a victim,'' he (Kerkasharian) wrote, ''when there is no suggestion of a racial motive, could lead to copy-cat attacks.'' This is an argument made out of thin air. It is predicated entirely on the notion Australian society is seething with prejudice and in no way should crime and ethnicity be a subject fit for public consumption or transparency.

Oh I get it. We shouldn't talk about race at all, and the recent matter of the bashing of Indians in Melbourne should have been swept under the carpet, seeing as how Australia isn't seething with prejudice, and in no way should crime and ethnicity be a subject fit for public consumption or transparency.

Or some such thing, because truth to tell I simply don't have the foggiest idea what argument Sheehan is making or what point he seems to be scoring, a bit like Australia's soccer players.

But I do like - at the end of every commentariat class - to ask what I've learned today, and apart from the notion that invoking Nazis is a sure fire way to win an argument, Sheehan handsomely obliges with a summary which might just fit on your next PowerPoint presentation:

This is the bedrock belief of the human rights industry. Society is prejudiced and needs the civilising buffer of a large human rights machinery, and a human rights charter, policed and interpreted by the human rights industry, all funded by the taxpayer.

Yes, you see, they don't do what Sheehan wants, even though Sheehan thinks there are areas they should investigate, and so we're better off without a human rights industry altogether.

Because you see society isn't prejudiced, and neither is Paul Sheehan, except about Nazis and Hilaly and the human rights industry and Innes and unions and McAleer and Rhiannon, and he loves Iranian intellectuals and leftists and feminists and communists, and sheds a tear at their fate, and who could argue with that?

Oh dear, the logic's getting pretty tortured. How about a basic grump that flies in the face of all that's gone before?

Just don't ask too much about the most basic human right - freedom from violence.

What? Like the freedom of people on a boat in international waters, or the freedom from the violence and sanctions imposed on an entire population in Gaza or the freedom of Israel from rockets? Sheesh, don't ask!

Don't ask about who is populating our prisons, our criminal justice systems and the organisations on the published watch lists of ASIO. Because we can't handle that sort of truth.

Bugger me dead. Did Sheehan just quote Colonel Jessep?

Kaffee: I want the truth!
Col. Jessep: [shouts] You can’t handle the truth!

Orderlies, place that commentariat columnist under arrest and take him away. Never mind his human rights, and pay no heed to any do gooder member of the human rights industry interested in his welfare.

Pilfering quotes from liberal Hollywood movies with a confused plot line is illegal and immoral, and worse still indicative of the illogical bile making up most of Sheehan's incoherent column. Sure it might have been voted the twenty-ninth greatest American movie quote of all time, but it's use, in place of reasoned argument, is simply unconscionable and inexcusable.

Why it reminds me of the worst of the scribblings that used to emanate from Dr. Goebbels' propaganda machine berating leftists, feminists, the human rights industry and homosexuals.

Sigh. Orderlies, place that loon pond blogger under arrest. When will people learn that once they use the Nazis as a reference point, they've become Glenn Beck and lost the debate ...

(Below: total war on the human rights industry, and a nice family snap of Goebbels, Hitler and Leni Reifenstahl to get the week going in a Godwin friendly way).