In which the pond is distracted by secular liberals copping the blame for Caliphate-toting Islamics ...

(Above: Dennis Pryor on japes, and diddled, dished and done in The Age, 1st June 1981, just another pond moment from the archives. Click to enlarge to read).


So here's a jolly jape amongst chums.

Wait, before we go on, should the pond mention that "jape" has a sexual connotation?

More of that in the clipping above. But at least we've set the mood for dangerous ideas, by referencing Billy Bunter and Frank Richards.

Hey ho, hey nonnie no, on we go.

How about, in the quest for bold, dangerous and disturbing ideas, we invite a Catholic priest or a Salvation Army military man to speak on "Paedophilia for priests is morally justified"?

Or what about "Clitoridectomies for lustful, shameful women are morally justified"?

And so on and so forth.

Uthman Badar and the organisers of the Festival of Dangerous Ideas didn't even have the wit to add a question mark, as in Honour killings are morally justified?

Instead in a bit of exemplary trolling, they just ran with the statement Honour killings are morally justified, and then tried on a little bit of disingenuous tripe:

In a statement the Opera House appeared to blame the talk's title for giving the "wrong impression", while announcing that it had decided not to proceed with the session. 
"The Festival of Dangerous Ideas is intended to be a provocation to thought and discussion, rather than simply a provocation," the Opera House wrote on Facebook. 
"It is always a matter of balance and judgement, and in this case a line has been crossed." 
"It is clear from the public reaction that the title has given the wrong impression of what Mr Badar intended to discuss. 
Neither Mr Badar, the St James Ethics Centre, nor Sydney Opera House in any way advocates honour killings or condones any form of violence against women." (Festival of Dangerous Ideas: 'Honour killings' talk cancelled.

Uh huh. So why the trolling of the title?

Is the Festival of Dangerous Ideas just a way of saying that it's a forum for religious bears with very little brain? That's if a title doesn't mean what it says ...

As for Badar himself, the defence offered is risible:

Mr Badar told Fairfax Media on Tuesday that the session's cancellation is revealing of the extent and influence of Islamophobia in Australia. 

Actually at this moment in time, it would seem that the Islamophobia is directed at idle trolling provocateurs who think Honour killings are morally justified - sans question mark or other caveat - is a catchy title.

He blamed "baseless hysteria" for gagging the expression of ideas. 
"It also highlights, once more, that freedom of speech is a tool of power and nothing more," he said. 

Sadly freedom of speech doesn't offer carte blanche the freedom to be stupid ...

The pond has a vague idea of what Uthman Badar might have wanted to bang on about. Moral equivalence. You know, the United States does over Iraq, so it's fair game for Putin to fuck over the Ukraine, the west is full of hypocrites, so it's fair game for fundie Islamics to fuck over the west, and so forth and etc.

This sort of thing:

For most of recorded history parents have reluctantly sacrificed their children—sending them to kill or be killed for the honour of their nation, their flag, their king, their religion. But what about killing for the honour of one’s family? Overwhelmingly, those who condemn ‘honour killings’ are based in the liberal democracies of the West. The accuser and moral judge is the secular (white) westerner and the accused is the oriental other; the powerful condemn the powerless. By taking a particular cultural view of honour, some killings are condemned whilst others are celebrated. In turn, the act becomes a symbol of everything that is allegedly wrong with the other culture.

No, actually, it's a simple and very short speech. Sensible folk anywhere and everywhere think the notion of honour killing is fucked in the head. Period. End of speech.

Call them secular, white and western if you like, say its the powerful condemning the powerless, but that doesn't let off the patriarchy fucking over women.

The screed is now gone from the festival website, but the ever reliable Google still had it in cache (click to enlarge):

Here's what you cop now, as it's clear that the festival of dangerous ideas doesn't run to the festival of google caching:

What's worse, in the Google cache, the links were still active, and led to Hisb ut-Tahrir Australia, and to Badar's self-pitying facebook page here, and his twitter account here.

And so to the speaker:

Uthman Badar is spokesman for Hizb ut-Tahrir in Australia. Hizb ut-Tahrir is a global advocacy group working for positive change in the Muslim world via the re-establishment of the Islamic Caliphate. He is a well-known speaker, writer and activist in the Muslim community in Sydney.

The re-establishment of the Islamic Caliphate? Is that the worldwide caliphate where we all live under a single theocratic one-world Islamic government? Or is it just your average sectarian caliphate dispute? (Greg Hunt the caliphate here).

Whatever, now there's a truly fucked idea. Right up there with the twin towers conspiracists and scientological thinking.

The pond has a short answer. No. Just no. Apply it how and where you will. No ...

Freedom of speech doesn't mean I should have the right to be a provocateur and a troller and a twitterer:

So now it's liberals denying fundamentalists convenient platforms at the Opera House?

When Opera Australia just sacked a singer for publishing outrageous nonsense a year ago, and attempting to blame it on her husband?

That's the thing that really gets the pond's goat.

You see, while Uthman Badar is busy berating liberals, Miranda the Devine is blaming Trendy lefties giving voice to barbaric crime.

You see, Uthman Badar? You just handed a free kick to the rabid right wing fundamentalist conservative Catholic Miranda the Devine, at a time when the church is still reeling from the outrageous behaviour of its minions and servants, and even Barry "has someone got my bottle of Grange?" O'Farrell thought it was all a bit rich, and thought that Australian bishops conference general secretary Brian Lucas should do the decent thing and resign for "criminal inaction" (O'Farrell hits out at Catholic leaders).

You see, Uthman Badar? There's your moral equivalence at work.

If you can wade through the tedium of the Devine piece, How jihad became the latest fashion in Sydney, you come to this closing line:

...what hope is there when Sydney’s fashionable left-wing establishment fetes extremism, as if it is just another dinner party conversation starter.

Sure, at time of writing, she'd only scored eight truly rabid comments. And of course that closing line should have read:

...what hope is there, when Sydney’s rabid right wing establishment conservative fundamentalist Catholic nutters dine out on the extremism of a fundamentalist Islamic nutter, as if it is just another cheap point scoring conversation starter.

But at least you can see, Uthman Badar where you've left sensible secular liberals. A pox on both your houses ...

What's more, you've distracted then pond when there are serious matters afoot.

Dame Slap is busy today scribbling Security monitor or not, we are aware of jihadis (inside the paywall), and sure enough, down in the comments section came the calumny that jihadists had landed in Australia as boat people, who aren't genuine refugees but instead are wild eyed jihadi anarchists, and it's all the fault of the greenies ...

And Sharri Markson was wildly excited, always a disturbing, unpleasant sight at the best of times:

Yes, because not only should taxpayers pay for the ABC with their taxes, they should pay for content all over again.

Get them coming, get them going, get them coming and going and to'ing and fro'ing...

But hang on, what does that say? The ABC and SBS could for the first time charge viewers to watch content ...?

Well there's a reason not to read any further or to bother with a link.

What a prime doofus Markson is. Why does she label the piece EXCLUSIVE? Is that code for EXCLUSIVELY stupid?

The pond still has VHS tapes produced by the ABC - and really expensive they were!

$29.95 for a bloody opera, as distributed by Roadshow, and now it's just a magnetic particle morass, a testament to how the very hazy system didn't handle the years.

And right at this minute you can head off to the ABC shop and pay a modest fortune for taxpayer funded content (usually by Screen Australia or a state government body though it might also be Opera Australia) being screened on the taxpayer funded ABC and then sold through taxpayer funded ABC shops with the taxpayers being charged through the nose just to get the content in digital form on disc ... unless you happen to have a PVR and are happy with that bloody bug in the corner.

So it's absolutely not the first time the ABC or SBS has charged viewers to watch content.

The question is how and when they should charge for content, and good luck with the idea that iView is going to be the new business model.

Truth to tell, the Murdochians don't care about the taxpayers or the ABC recovering some costs.

They just want the ABC to join the charge, fleece the sheep, so that the unholy behaviour of Foxtel can go on unchallenged. Has anything changed since Bruce Guthrie wrote The pay TV cesspool last year?

Will the pond ever see an EXCLUSIVE in the Murdoch rags headed Competition watchdog should break up Foxtel monopoly: Ludlam?

Intervention by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to break up Foxtel's stranglehold on popular TV shows such as Game of Thrones would help reduce the number of Australians turning to piracy, according to Greens communications spokesperson Scott Ludlam.

Yes! Even international guests who turn up to digital conferences are astonished to learn that there's just one cable combine, charging like a wounded bull, and fucking over customers.

How about Foxtel is becoming a content monopolist?

And here's another headline: iiNet calls on consumer fight back to piracy plans...

And then there's many other matters, in Egypt and locally, what with the news that the peanut farmer is Baaaaacck in Queensland - and with the Abbott government frustrated in its desire to chop down trees - how bungled was that? - along with the Abbott government frustrated in its attempt to pose as a tree hugging carbon taxer, only to run on empty.

How weird is that?

So you see Uthman Badar, spending this morning listening to James Carleton and Simon Longstaff chew over your little muck up was just a painful waste of radio air time ...

But at least, as we often do, we always have more David Pope here, and more David Rowe here.