Paul Sheehan, and why he and we would be better off if he set up camp in troll paradise ...

(Above: spot the Bob Brown and Julia Gillard lookalikes).

In other news on the weekend, Miranda the Devine returns to top form by making a reasoned, seasoned contribution to the debate:

In the annals of disturbing photographs in Australian politics, the tableau of a seated Julia Gillard and Bob Brown signing a pact in September, surrounded by their respective cauldron-stirrers, ranks right up near the Molotov-Ribbentrop deal. (Beware the Dam Busters).

The Molotov-Ribbentrop deal? Well we think she's referring to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Nazi Germany and Uncle Joe's Stalinist Soviet Union.

For a moment there we were stumped as to who might be who - after all the Greens are watermelons, green on the outside, but deeply red inside, but then it became clear. Gillard is truly red, and so must be Joe Stalin, and Bob Brown is uniquely qualified to be Ribbentrop - why perhaps he's even Hitler.

Time to round those homosexuals up and send them to the camps Bob ...

Could the Devine be trying to become Australia's female Glenn Beck? She certainly qualifies on the grounds of hysterical rhetoric and sheer stupidity.

But today is Monday, and the Devine's piece, when not polluting the digital ether, is now safely lining cocky cages around Sydney, and so we must move on to Captain Grumpy, Paul Sheehan, who in his own strident way does his best to sound even more hysterical in As the left sides with Muslims, Christians search for support.

Up against the Devine, who I rather like to think of as a kind of Josephine Goebbels figure for the deluded right, Sheehan does his very best to sound like a Father Charles Coughlin ...

Oh dear, this Godwin's Law thing is catching, rather like a fever hotter than a pepper sprout.

Sheehan's capper that tops the Devine as he broods about a Coptic rally in Martin Place?

The absence of the Greens was not interesting. It was predictable. Throughout Western Europe and Australia, the left has consistently made common cause with political Islam, an embrace of reactionary intolerance made without a shred of irony. Also absent was the broadcast arm of the Greens, the ABC, whose two 24-hour news networks could see no value in attending.

Oh dear. And I always thought that the left was full of godless atheists relentlessly promoting materialism as they sipped on their lattes and gulped their chardonnays. And I say that without a shred of irony, in much the same way as I can denounce Fairfax as the broadcast arm of Christians and Sheehan as an apologist for Christians, ready to embrace the reactionary intolerance of fundamentalist Baptists in the south ... all without a shred of irony or sense ...

Yes in the cause of unqualified assertions and rabid hysterical denunciations, Sheehan never leaves any stone unturned.

In the old days of course, scribblers like Sheehan would have been urging immigrants to leave their tribal loyalties behind and engage with the bright new world of dinki di Aussie egalitarianism and secular values. But not these days, or at least not when there's a free pass to handed out to Christians, especially if they present themselves well:

Martin Place is the symbolic centre, the point zero, of Australia's existence as a sophisticated economy. Last Wednesday it looked medieval. A forest of crucifixes sprouted among a sea of earnest faces that would look comfortable on ancient coins.

Uh huh. That's what we need, a return to the medieval. Let a million crucifixes bloom ... let superstition reign supreme.

Sheehan is indignant about the current extremist Muslim war on the Coptic Church, which culminated with a car bomb on New Year's Eve in a church in Alexandria, and which killed twenty three and wounded 95 others ... And yes, it's deplorable, since rust never sleeps, entropy always wins, and you never convert people by killing them, you just fuel the rage and more killing ...

But strangely Sheehan doesn't find the time to mention other recent car bombings.

Like the three car bombings in Iraq that managed to kill at least fifty two people and wound some 150 people, which passed almost unnoticed in the Australian media, but which you can read about here in Car Bombings Kill Dozens on Pilgrims' Route in Iraq. As best can be determined in that particular blame game, that's extremist Muslims attacking Shiite Muslims ...

But then Iraq has long been a quagmire as it's been taught the western democratic solution for change and transformation ... bomb the shit out of your enemies, perceived and otherwise. The dead particularly enjoy being part of a democratic society with the right to vote. Just wheel that ballot box over next to the grave, would you?

Back to the rally:

When Julia Gillard's name was mentioned, it was greeted by a stony silence from the crowd of between 1000 and 2000 people. When the name of Tony Abbott was mentioned, there was a burst of spontaneous applause. Abbott had sent a personal emissary from his shadow ministry, Senator Connie Fierravanti-Wells, who would deliver some telling news ...

... The American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 proved to be a disaster for the estimated two million Assyrian Christians. Roughly half have fled the country.

Oh dear, that's a naughty edit by the pond.

Of course Senator Connie Fierravanti-Wells made no mention of the way that the American-led, Australian Liberal party endorsed, certified, backed and promoted invasion of Iraq has made a complete mess of the country, and seen ongoing violence on all sides ... (and I dare say she wouldn't have been too forthcoming about Afghanistan either).

Now in what can only be interpreted as the most bizarre turn of events, the Christian Tony Abbott is hailed as the redemptive face of Christianity, or so Paul Sheehan tells us ... because he's gung ho for Coptic immigration ...

Naturally Sheehan is keen to paint the Labor party as being thoroughly pro-Muslim, and a fierce devotee of Sheikh Taj el-Din al Hilaly:

Australia's most contentious mainstream Muslim cleric, Sheikh Taj el-Din al Hilaly, the former grand mufti of Australia, is an import from Egypt. He was installed as a permanent resident by the Keating Labor government, over the objections of the security service. His Labor connections are well known and self-advertised.

Which means that this little incident must have taken place in an alternative universe, as Kevin Rudd cops sheik-up:

Controversial cleric Sheik Taj el-Din al-Hilaly yesterday accused Labor leader Kevin Rudd of "Islamophobia".

He told the Herald Sun plans for his all-inclusive party - dubbed the Australian Peace Party - will go ahead despite opposition from Mr Rudd, who said Australians would never vote for a man who denigrated women and defended gang rapists.

The sheik said yesterday Mr Rudd's comments indicated Labor was worried.

"This is the best indication of the importance of this party and Rudd is talking Islamophobia and exposing his true position," he said.

"This party will give society protection from such views.

So that's why they got rid of former chairman Rudd. He crossed the Sheikh, and we all know the Sheikh runs the show, in much the same way as invisible dons run the mafia ...

Dearie me, who would have thought that the Islamic fundamentalists had such a grip on the Labor party. And there I was thinking that the Greens and Labor were kissing cousins to Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany and their vile atheistic ways ...

Meanwhile, Sheehan, who has long opposed the rate of immigration into Australia (why a piece by him back in 1996 even made it into a case study of irresponsible inflaming of passion and disregard for the meaning of the original research at the Australian Human Rights Commission), now wants some kind of open slather on immigration, provided the people involved are decently Christian:

At the rally in Martin Place, Senator Fierravanti-Wells announced that a Coalition government would reintroduce a program for Coptic refugees from religious persecution in Egypt, a program discarded by the Rudd government.

Next week, a piece by Paul Sheehan campaigning for the rights of refugees fleeing persecution inspired by western democratic countries bombing the shit out of them in Iraq and Afghanistan? Don't hold your breath ...

There are of course other examples of Sheehan's deviant desire to play petty politics. The Coptic bombing took place during the time Julia Gillard was on holidays, and the acting Minister issued a statement deploring the bombing - so many bombings to deplore these days, it usually becomes a matter of rote. Sheehan's take:

No statement was issued by Julia Gillard.

And so on and so forth at great length, as Captain Grumpy lathers himself up into hysterics, and promotes Australia as the solution, the haven, for the Coptic church.

Meanwhile, outside the world of the public sector unions, while religious intolerance remains endemic across the Muslim world and Australia's refugee and asylum-seeker process remains a debacle, support for Labor is showing signs of disintegrating among Australians who take discrimination against Christians seriously.

Meanwhile outside the world of ranting, handsomely paid, eccentric Fairfax columnists, the support for the NSW Labor government has disintegrated because Australians take seriously the matter of infrastructure and proper management of the state. And on a federal level, the issue of the Coptic church and the current sufferings of its members is a minor matter, overlooked and disregarded in much the same way as the matters of Iraq and Afghanistan are conveniently ignored by both sides ... until the next load of boat people washes up on the northern shores ...

But I'm eternally hopeful that there will be many Australians who take the matter of discrimination against vile, bilious commentariat commentators like Sheehan and Devine seriously. They do a disservice to themselves, the rags for which they scribble, and the causes they promote, and indeed the country itself ... because no lie or distortion is too small to press into their despicable service ...

These days the kind of provocation Sheehan scribbles would be denounced on many boards as a kind of perverse, insulting, provocative trolling.

Could we have a program for commentariat refugees from political persecution, which will see them given safe haven ... in Antarctica? Turn it into troll paradise?

Oh well, the pond is for dreaming, but what a magnificent dream ...

(Below: and now a couple of cartoons for persecuted atheists everywhere, who find it troublesome to join in either a mindless murderous jihad, or a holy war crusade for western civilisation, with or without John 8:12 etched into the gun barrel - Bible references on rifle sighs used in Afghanistan to be removed).