Mad as hell, and maintaining the rage at all the spades ...

(Above: more Wilcox here)

The pond long ago decided to be fiercely intolerant of intolerance.

It didn't matter where it came from, or in what form, and whether accompanied by verbal bullying, capital letters, and a proclaimed desire to get down and dirty, or by any kind of ideological or theological presumption, whether religious or secular.

It so happens that the pond decided to fixate on right wing ideological and religious zealotry, but that's not to let the Stalinists off the hook.

Of course it's easier to do the defiance with words than in the flesh. In the flesh, boofheads can resort to violence, and besides being fiercely intolerant of violence, the pond is a profound coward.

This intolerance of the intolerant started long ago, when a woman in the extended Tamworth family mysteriously disappeared, was "sent away". Only later did it turn out that she was a woman of shame, had got herself pregnant, been sent to the big smoke to have a baby, which was confiscated by the Catholic church, and then returned to a solitary life as a scarlet woman ...

This sort of intolerance, this branding, comes in all forms and applies to all sorts of people, including but not limited to gays and sundry other minorities ...

Right now, for example, Saudi women are mounting a campaign to allow themselves the right to drive in one of the most reactionary countries in the world, and bemusingly, one of the United States' strongest allies, at least until the United States began to have open discussions with Iran.

Now the right to drive a car isn't a first world issue in an oil-rich state, it goes to the heart of outrageous fundamentalism:

Though no specific Saudi law bans women from driving, women are not issued licenses. Powerful clerics who hold far-reaching influence over the monarchy enforce the ban, warning that breaking it will spread "licentiousness." In the run-up to the campaign, police warned that anyone disturbing public order would be dealt with forcefully. 
Ultraconservative clerics also protested earlier in the week against the online petition campaign, which was launched in late September and says it has more than 16,000 signatures. The account's website, oct26driving.org, and official English language YouTube account were hacked on Friday, according to activists. (Saudi Arabia: Women's protest over driving ban kicks off)

How brave are the sixty or so women who have broken the ban?

How stupid the fundamentalists seeking to maintain the ban?

Powerful clerics who hold far-reaching influence over the monarchy enforce the driving ban, warning that breaking it will spread "licentiousness." A prominent cleric caused a stir when he said last month that medical studies show that driving a car harms a woman's ovaries. (here)

That report didn't name the prominent cleric, but let's give credit where credit is due, to monumental stupidity:

Earlier this month, judicial and psychological consultant Sheikh Saleh bin Saad al-Luhaydan claimed that driving could affect women’s ovaries and lead to their children having health problems. 
His comments provoked outrage among Saudis, with many mocking the Sheikh for his “great scientific discoveries.” (here)

Yes, in the usual way, there are sensible, moderate, middle of the road, 'live and let live and drive' Saudis, no doubt more than a few of them brave souls who've travelled abroad and discovered that the myth-makers are merely superstitious fools.

Because it isn't just about the driving:

According to Amnesty, women in Saudi Arabia “find it difficult to obtain work” due to the institute of guardianship that requires woman to get a male relative’s permission to get married, work, travel, undergo some surgical operations, undertake paid employment or get higher education.

Now here's an irony. That report comes from the Russia Today site, yet if you cared to trawl the intertubes you could find just as many examples of the Putin - Russian Orthodox mafia attempting the same demonisation of gays, and the diminishing of their rights ...

The mistake is to assume that your own moral relativism - where's the harm, live and let live - will be matched by equally obliging liberalism, or to assume that simple slurs can just be glossed over, and that there isn't a deeper ugliness involved.

Let's turn to Annabel Crabb, and one Derek Mitchell of Adelaide.

We assume the name is real, as is his letter, as quoted in Make-up or not rough judgment is hard to face:

...Here's my favourite piece of viewer feedback, which arrived with the arrestingly simple subject line: ''Oh Dear''. 
It continued, and I reproduce the correspondence in its entirety: ''Whoever did your make-up last night obviously doesn't like you. Did you sleep with her husband? You looked like a two-bit hooker ready for a bit of business on Hindley Street*. And I thought you were such a nice girl. Don't you dare come into my house looking like that again. Regards, Derek Mitchell.''

The asterisk refers to a proposal that Hindley Street is Adelaide's red light district, but it's more a place where clubs and pubs are burned down for profit ... (Oh Adelaide and your aunts on the verandah(

Crabb has her own fun with Derek, wondering whether he's single, but it's amazing that someone thought they could get away with this sort of letter.

Now people will chatter inanely about how people look and what they wear on television, and this will get conflated with their competence as an interviewer, host or reporter.

That's tough. If you're paid above the average, you have to live with the downside of being a public figure on the box.

But even in jest, is it possible to imagine the mindset that would allow a man to propose to Crabb that she looks like a two-bit hooker? (not, the pond proposes, that there's anything wrong with being a two-bit hooker, except perhaps the pricing strategy).

It leads Crabb to brood about the fate of Julia Gillard, though perhaps that brooding might have been more to the point when Gillard was coping endless shit from all the cheap shot hoodlums lurking not just amongst the Murdochians, but all around the media ...

The pond intends to maintain the rage about Tony Abbott riding to power on the back of "ditch the witch" and "Bob Brown's bitch" posters for all eternity, or at least beyond the time the country has "ditched the prick", and he's had time to reflect on his sins, and perhaps turn even more balmy through guilt than Malcolm Fraser.

A prime example of abuse of language concealing an even deeper fundamentalist, fear and loathing mindset came this week with clap happy speaking in tongues Scott Morrison.

Should the pond abuse the man for being a fundie?

Well yes, because it's wise to be intolerant of the intolerant ... and because Morrison is an adept Orwellian himself, and he's had a very smooth ride, whipping up xenophobia and fear of others along the way, despite the occasional protest, as in Warwick McFadyen's Calling it as it is: the minister for debasing the language:

Let us call a spade a spade shall we, Scott Morrison? Your edict, Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, that detention staff and members of your department now refer to asylum seekers as ''illegal maritime arrivals'' is shameless and shameful. 
It is a brutish manipulation of language to suit your, and your government's, political purposes.

Morrison boasted that he wouldn't apologise for not using politically correct language.

Which is another way of saying he's perfectly happy to demonise people, and stick it to the hand-wringing wimps.

Well fuck him and if you're up to it, fuck the horse that he rode in on ... though perhaps the horse is innocent, and that's going too far.

With this sort of paranoid "Shire" attitude ready to burst back on to the beaches, what next?

Well next thing you know there'll be people launching an alleged 'anti-Semitic' assault in Sydney's eastern suburbs:

Hospital spokesman David Faktor told the ABC the victims had said it was an unprovoked attack and that they were targeted because they were Jewish. 
The families of the victims were very upset and cannot understand why people would want to hurt them. 
"You certainly don't come to Bondi and expect that," Mr Faktor said. "Maybe in Germany in the 1930s and Russia in the 1970s but, certainly in Sydney, Australia, Bondi, you just don't expect an unprovoked attack." (here, with forced video)

Welcome to the land of the bigots, where once again it's fashionable to assault the politically correct, who just want people to get along ...

A country where talking of refugees as people leads to a braying politician verbally assaulting people for being "politically correct".

Who knows what's really behind that particular bit of street violence, but it's mere reporting as an attack based on religion is a bad sign.

What a pity it is that fundamentalists pick the worst from their chosen texts, and routinely ignore the best ...

Now today comes more news of the pigs with their snouts deeply in the feeding trough, in Howard cabinet ministers who prefer VIP air  ...

Is it fair to use the Orwellian pigs, sitting down to sup with the farmer, as a metaphor for politicians?

Well you should be careful of calling a female presenter a two bit hooker, but when it comes to calling an intolerant spade a intolerant spade, sometimes a tolerant shovel won't do ...


(Below: more David Rowe here).