In which the latte sipping crowd listen to Bobby and cheer on human rights in China and Saudi Arabia, thanks to Barry Cohen ...

(Above: perhaps the end lyrics should read Saudi Arabia, I'll give you weaponry to shelter from the storm).

Belatedly, long after its over, we pause to recognise the birthday of Bob Dylan:

The funny thing about Dylan was that he changed the landscape of an earth which he ceased to inhabit with anything like the same power of innovation himself.

Well I guess we know what Peter Craven was trying to say. He likes early Dylan better than middle or late Dylan.

If you want a convoluted thesis explaining this, along with the bizarre notion that Dylan is simply an invention of baby boomers (perhaps in much the same way as Shakespeare hasn't been much use to anyone since Elizabethans shuffled off this mortal coil), then hustle along to Peter Craven's Dylan's times, they changed everything.

It would be unfair to blame Dylan for all the gibberish and excruciating writing that's been trotted out to celebrate his birthday - a bit like blaming Shakespeare for the screeds of excessive, myopic and wretched text surrounding him - but surely enough is enough.

The most excruciating, typically enough, came from Michael Henderson in The Spectator, typically enough reprinted in The Australian under the header Bob Dylan: Still on the road and still pulling the crowds, wherein Henderson explains sagely how Bobby isn't a genius like Lorenz Hart or Ira Gerswhin or Stephen Sondheim. Perhaps we can now look forward to Henderson's explanation that Mozart isn't a genius like Beethoven, Mahler or Wagner.

Henderson manages to find grace in one record Blood on the Tracks (1975) - because it's absent cringe-making protest songs, jokers and clowns - whereas Craven finds Dylan's career ended in 1966 with Blonde on Blonde. Is there anything more stupid than the sight of people elevating their personal taste to some kind of exemplary canon?

Meanwhile, we gird our loins, or don our chastity belt for the Monday ritual of reading Generally grumpy Paul Sheehan, and what a relief, because Sheehan is yet again railing against and reviling various NSW institutions, as you can see in Crippling blow to a destructive machine.

This will be of no use or interest to anyone except those with a fixation on navel fluff, but for what it's worth, the NSW Industrial Relations Commission continues to be the source of all NSW's woes, except for WorkCover, which shares the blame, because it disgracefully has achieved five times the rate of prosecution and conviction for workplace safety violations compared to Victoria or Queensland.

It's all the fault of the unions, and the Greens prostrating themselves to their union paymasters, so here's hoping that Sheehan encounters a stapler in his workplace, and it accidentally fills him full of staples. Now that should make him even grumpier.

Meanwhile, for a rant that truly rallies a full blown set of stereotypes and the prejudices, the pond must look further afield, and there coming to the rescue is Barry Cohen with Left ignores the truly oppressed.

Cohen leads with his right steel capped boot as he explains how few countries in the Middle East have ever experienced 'freedom':

This must come as a shock to the motley collection of left-wing academics, students, trade unionists, journalists and the idiot brigade that controls Sydney's Marrickville council.

Indeed. Quite possibly it also must come as a shock to the United States and its lickspittle fellow travellers, who year in and year out, have enabled the kind of oppression to be found in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, to name just a couple of prominent western allies.

The current rumbling from the underground of Saudi Arabian women who want to be allowed to drive - a practise banned in 1990 because "Women's driving of cars contradicts the sound Islamic attitude of the Saudi citizen, who is jealous about his sacred ideals" - is just the most bizarre moment in recent attempts to give some basic human rights to women in the kingdom (David Randall: Miffed over free speech? Try being a woman driver in Saudi Arabia).

It almost goes without saying that Saudi Arabia contributed 15 Saudi nationals to the 19 hijackers identified as being responsible for 9/11, and that its government funds virulent Wahhabism throughout the world.

The United States response to what is a profoundly undemocratic and repressive regime? Let's revert to a couple of wiki moments:

... On October 20, 2010, U.S. State Department notified Congress of its intention to make the biggest arms sale in American history - an estimated $60.5 billion purchase by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The package represents a considerable improvement in the offensive capability of the Saudi armed forces. (here for more details).

And along with George Bush's visits, and King Abdullah's return visits in 2008 came the happy proposition that ...

...human rights in the kingdom including women’s rights, religious rights, and free speech rights is not in any way considered an obstacle in the relationship since the relationship focuses more on government-oriented issues rather than public-oriented issues. (wiki)

Here's hoping that a wanker like Cohen never actually has to visit Saudi Arabia in company with a woman and expect her to drive because he's imbibed a little too much, thereby risking the wrath of the religious police.

It almost goes without saying that back in the day when Cohen was a righteous member of the Hawke government, toeing the line on Saudi Arabia went with the turf, which makes his blather about the motley collection of lefties unaware of what happens in the middle east all the more offensive.

Just as you can discover that Hawke himself is still at it, leading a trade mission last year for Australian businesses to get down and do business with countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates (Bob Hawke in Gulf trade push). But then Hawke saw nothing wrong with doing the dance with Burma, until a few people pointed out the obvious ...

The bottom line in the Cohen tirade, him being an apologist for everything Israeli, is that the more the Arab regimes can be painted as oppressive, and repressive, the more Israel comes out smelling of roses, with a 'get out of jail' card for its own various and extensive crimes. (How many other countries can manage to build a Berlin wall and be acclaimed for its humanitarian activities?)

Cohen even has the cheek to note Freedom House's worst of the worst category in relation to 'freedom' which, along with the likes of Belarus, Chad, the Ivory Coast, Syira and Western Sahara, also includes Saudi Arabia and China.

So it's only lefties and the loons at Marrickville council that ignores the lack of liberties and the oppression in China?

Tell that to Gina Rinehart and the Minerals Council of Australia (perhaps you might like to read the clarion call for human rights in China in the Minerals Council of Australia's submission to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in relation to an Australia/China FTA. Caution: irony alert set to high).

Meanwhile, Cohen is still blathering on in a predictable way about the usual stereotypes:

Which begs the question. Why did they remain silent all those years? How did the "geniuses" in our universities, the media, trade unions and politics get conned by the propaganda of the Palestinians and their Arab cohorts? Was it stupidity, ideology and bribery or just the latest fad of the cafe latte set who searched to find something to replace their love affair with the Soviet Union and its satraps when they collapsed in 1989?

Which begs the question. When is Cohen going to do something about the mote in his historical eye when it comes to countries like Saudi Arabia and China? Or is the desire to buy oil and sell coal and iron ore the guide to and bottom line for all things concerning human rights?

Well having dropped the standard red flag about the latte set - as if no one drinks good coffee in Israel - he wraps it up with another rhetorical flourish:

To pretend the proposals being put forward by the Palestinians and their supporters are a peaceful solution is ignorance, stupidity or blatant anti-semitism.

Of course you could just as easily scribble:

To pretend the proposals being put forward by the the right wing Israeli government and their supporters are a peaceful solution is ignorance, stupidity or blatant anti-semitism towards the semitic Arab population of the Middle East.

Sadly solutions rarely emerge from the one eyed, especially the one eyed who think evoking the caffe latte set is a form of wit, or perhaps a definitive kind of knockdown argument.

But then Cohen has found a wonderful forum in his old age - it almost goes without saying that it's The Australian - wherein he can be free to rant about such things as marriage equality because it'll lead to bestiality, paedophilia and cats and dogs living together.

Come to think of it, Cohen himself isn't far from the best thinkers of the middle east when it comes to oppression, as you'll discover if you re-acquaint yourself with Opposing gay marriage doesn't mean I'm barking, wherein the oppression of homosexuals and equal rights is judged to be a good and right thing.

Come on Bazza, hit us with an explanation of how Opposing women drivers doesn't mean I'm barking ... (and for a little more fun with that, see Barry Cohen embarrasses himself in his old age).

Then Bazza can get on with the business of sorting the middle east so that Israel keeps everything, and a little more, all in the nonsensical name of human rights and democracy.

Tell that to the Arabs kicked out of the land called Israel and denied the right to return, while refugees from Russia litter the landscape and produce the likes of ratbags like Avigdor Lieberman and the Yisrael Beiteinu party ...

Whether or not you think of Lieberman, as Martin Peretz does, as a neo-fascist, a certified gangster, and the Israeli equivalent of Jörg Haider, it's typical of Cohen to lump everything at the feet of the latte-sipping set.

Guess that means Lieberman loves his coffee too ...

(Below: a hawk in search of coffee?)