Got mit uns und dem Bolter ... or the Bolter the ...

The pond is looking forward to an early election, and perhaps earlier than expected.

After all, the principle was drummed into the pond like a drum stick pounding a tattoo on snare drum - yes, that's the art of the three word slogan, a drumming on the drum by the drummer man:

Oh it seems clear enough, and you can cop the links in that screen cap here, so what to make of this kite flying?

You can cop that story at The Graudian here, but it reminded the pond of one of its very favourite Tony Abbott quotes:

"It is an absolute principle of democracy that governments should not and must not say one thing before an election and do the opposite afterwards." Tony Abbott - August 22, 2011

Which reminded the pond of one of its very favourite quotes about Tony Abbott:

"I remember him saying, 'Tony, I would do anything for this job. The only thing I wouldn't do is sell my arse -- but I'd have to give serious thought to it'," Mr Windsor said.

Now there's a tidy package of homophobia and honest self-reflection ...

Meanwhile, having begun their war chant on the weekend, the reptiles are now loudly beating the editorial drums of war. Boots on ground, it sounds, boots on grounds:

However effective allied airstrikes are against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, it is already clear that combat forces on the ground will be needed if the “death cult”, as Tony Abbott correctly terms it, is to be vanquished. In The Weekend Australian on Saturday, the nation’s leading military experts warned that, without a substantial ground campaign, the conflict could grind to a stalemate if Western and Arab allies were unable to dislodge the terrorists from cities and push them back into Syria. Australian counter-terrorism expert David Kilcullen, a former adviser to David Petraeus when he was commander of US forces in Iraq and to former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, said a “one-two punch approach’’ against Islamic State would bring rapid results. Ground troops would need to stop the militants taking cover, exposing them to airstrikes, and in turn the ground troops would move forward. Peter Leahy, the former leader of the Australian Army when it was deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Peter Jennings, the head of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and the advisory team for the government’s new defence white paper, agreed recent US-led airstrikes had forced Islamic State into “guerilla mode”, making the group harder to defeat from the air alone.... (and more here, outside the paywall and away from the begging letters from the paupers of print).

Which puts the arse-selling Abbott in a difficult situation.

Already the money's heading out of the Treasury to blow up remote parts of the world, and now the war mongers are in full cry, and while the politicians are doing their best to present their current air operations as clean, and clinical, and without complications, those lies will be exposed in the coming months ...

Rowe caught the mood nicely this holiday Monday - well it is in Camperdown, and go cry to Argentina if you've got a rugger bugger problem with that - and more Rowe here:

Now there's a nice punctuation point, providing room for the pond to note that the fatuous, enormously stupid Paul Sheehan is at it again today, and on a holiday Monday!

Is there no end to the enormous sacrifices that the eastern suburbs are prepared to make to remind the peasants of their place?

Sheehan is of course suitably alarmed at the news that Australians are personally deep in debt. What else to do but conflate that with government debt, and blame the Greens, and the PUPsters and Labor, and ssssh, don't mention the war and the bombs or even the cost of the extravagant PLP scheme or all the tax breaks for the wealthy ...

So what's Sheehan's solution to debt?

Why it's to screw workers and to ensure that conditions on the roads are turned into a Mad Max free for all for zombie truckies and poorly maintained trucks, driven mad by the price gouging of the big duopoly of greed ...

Senator John Madigan, of the Democratic Labor Party, for example, issued a media release on September 25 that could have been drafted by the Australian Council of Trade Unions: "Australia [is] moving towards an American system of low wages and zero benefits … The individual contracts being pushed by Tony Abbott are worse than those of former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard." This is what the ACTU said about the same subject: "[It will] move Australia towards an American system of low wages and zero conditions … The Fair Work Amendment Bill that goes further than the Howard Government did in stripping away protections around individual contracts". 
Last Thursday, Senator Ricky Muir, of the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party, asked a question in Parliament which could have been drafted by the Transport Works Union: "Will the Government guarantee to retain the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal, which is the only body with powers to intervene when transport clients put pressure on truck drivers to drive in unsafe and unfair conditions?" 
That same day, the TWU issued this press statement: "The Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal is the only body with powers to intervene when transport clients like Coles use economic pressure to force faster deliveries at the expense of safe and fair conditions for truck drivers". 
No major debt reduction reforms are going to come of this Senate, leaving Australia deeper in debt than is healthy or wise. (more drivel here)

Yes indeed, but if you're killed by a truck driver zonked out on drugs, it'll take care of your health and your debt problems in a single bloody good crash ... unless you prefer to be a wage slave working for the man ...

Is there any irony here?

But at least that allows a final pivot for the day, and it's a beauty.

Now everybody has caught up on Ben Affleck v Bill Maher having an argument about Islam - it's on YouTube here  (there's an ad at the start) - but down under we have a Bolter version, as the Bolter runs up against wicked weak-kneed ABC liberals like Richard Glover and Amanda Vanstone:

...Howard government minister Amanda Vanstone, the ABC’s token “conservative”, told Age readers: “The Muslim and Christian religions have much in common ... Islam holds no monopoly on the production of radical fanatics. Hitler is a good example.” 
I can understand why Glover and Vanstone prefer to believe Islam is much like Christianity, with both producing their radical monsters — Islam, the Islamic State, and Christianity, Hitler. 
Hey, what better way to seem broadminded? What better excuse to avoid a bruising argument on Islam? And isn’t it honourable to hose down the bigots now trying to demonise our many peace-loving Muslims? 
But there is a problem here. It is called “facts”. And no good intentions can excuse a wilful and dangerous blindness. (Disclaimer: No, I am not Christian.) 
Fact one: The Islamic State actually claims it is Islamic, but the National Socialists never claimed they were Christian. The names of both organisations tell the story. 
Fact two: The Islamic State actually quotes Islam’s sacred texts — the Koran and Hadith — to legitimise its slaughters, but the Nazis never quoted the Bible to legitimise genocide.


Fact three. The Bolter is a fuckwit with a very limited awareness of historical facts.

In reality, many National Socialists remained Christian, and there was much interaction between conservative Christian institutions and the National Socialists (Christ himself was after all something of a socialist, his sermon on the mount told that story), and the Nazi theory of the poisonous Jew very much arose from centuries of demonisation of Jews by Christian churches and theologians ...

Of course the Nazis also used evolutionary theory to justify their ideology, but that's not the point ... just as it's idle to note that the Nazis were inclined to conduct their actual genocide in secrecy. Even the Nazis weren't so dumb as to think what they were doing wasn't an affront to humanity that might get them in trouble if discovered too early in the game ...

Because the pond is too lazy to do the typing, here's a gobbet:

Now there's plenty more in Cymet's History vs. Apologetics: The Holocaust, the Third Reich, and the Catholic Church, which can be previewed at Google books, here, and no doubt there is much in it that is historically contentious and debatable.

But it does give the lie to the Bolter's absolutes, his "nevers":

The Nazis could never find a justification in the Bible to kill all Jews, gypsies or the mentally “inferior” and never tried. 
They simply didn’t see themselves as soldiers of Christ in the way Islamic State jihadists insist they are warriors for Allah.

But in fact many Nazis did see themselves as soldiers for Christ. Not all, but enough to make the Bolter sound like the denialist fool he routinely is ....

Hitler himself was clever at playing the double-edged sword - using Christian traditions and institutions while subverting them to his own ends and agenda ....

Because the pond can't be bothered doing real history  today - hey, like Paul Sheehan, the pond is celebrating Labor day - let's just revert to an old favourite, the evil Bible:

"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow my self to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice… And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows . For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people." –Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 (Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942). 
 "Christianity could not content itself with building up its own altar; it was absolutely forced to undertake the destruction of the heathen altars. Only from this fanatical intolerance could its apodictic faith take form; this intolerance is, in fact, its absolute presupposition." -Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (It is quite obvious here that Hitler is referring to destructing the Judaism alters on which Christianity was founded.) 
 "The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew." -Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (The idea of the devil and the Jew came out of medieval anti-Jewish beliefs based on interpretations from the Bible. Martin Luther, and teachers after him, continued this “tradition” up until the 20th century.) 
 "With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her from her people." -Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (It is common in war for one race to rape another so that they can “defile” the race and assimilate their own. Hitler speaks about this very tactic here.) 
 “The best characterization is provided by the product of this religious education, the Jew himself. His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine. Of course, the latter made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business existence. In return, Christ was nailed to the cross, while our present- day party Christians debase themselves to begging for Jewish votes at elections and later try to arrange political swindles with atheistic Jewish parties-- and this against their own nation.”–Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf) 
 "…the fall of man in paradise has always been followed by his expulsion." -Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (See Genesis Chapter 3 where humankind is cast from Eden for their sins. Hitler compares this to the need to exterminate the Jews for their sin against Christ.) 
 “Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.” –Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf) 
 “The anti-Semitism of the new movement [Christian Social movement] was based on religious ideas instead of racial knowledge.” –Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (This quote is very interesting for it disperses the idea that Hitler raged war due to being an Aryan supremacist. He states quite clearly that he has a problem with Jews for their belief not race. That is why many German Jews died in WW2 regardless of their Aryan nationality.) 
 “Only in the steady and constant application of force lies the very first prerequisite for success. This persistence, however, can always and only arise from a definite spiritual conviction. Any violence which does not spring from a firm, spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain.” –Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (Here Hitler is admitting that his war against the Jews were so successful because of his strong Christian Spirituality.) 
 Quotes from Other Nazis about Hitler and Religion: 
 "Around 1937, when Hitler heard that at the instigation of the party and the SS vast numbers of his followers had left the church because it was obstinately opposing his plans, he nevertheless ordered his chief associates, above all Goering and Gobbels, to remain members of the church. He too would remain a member of the Catholic Church, he said, although he had no real attachment to it. And in fact he remained in the church until his suicide." (Inside the Third Reich by Albert Speer page 95-96) (and more here)  

Now the connections between the Nazis and Christianity were endless, complex and ambivalent. But the Nazi army had its chaplains:

And its slogans:

In fact like any tourist anxious to collect the badges of the towns they passed through, the Nazis loved their artefacts, and you can find a handy collection of them here.  

In fact you can find a whole swag of quotes and photos and table talk and lots more here in Hitler's Christianity.

The pond has absolutely no understanding why the Bolter feels the need to lie about and distort history and about Hitler and the Nazis. It's as fatuous and as silly as attempting to deny that Stalin and Mao were atheists ...

When it comes to religion, and its capacity to mislead its adherents, the pond has a healthy disregard for all of them, from Islamics through Catholic men gathered in secrecy to dispense new thoughts about gays and women to Scientologists and Calathumpians ... and yes, atheists who turned themselves into mini-deities ...

Oh okay, the pond has a fair idea about the Bolter and why he trawls like a trollop to the Xians in his audience. 

It's because acknowledging that Hitler's Germany and Italy's Mussolini had anything to do with Christianity might pose problems for Christianity v Islams, and for the Bolter's clash of civilisations thesis ...

Hitler, like the Islamic State and many other totalitarians, was actually an enemy of Christianity, not least because it defends the dignity of every individual, including the unborn and deformed, and resists their enslavement or destruction.

Angry Anglicans and conservative Catholics defend the dignity of gays and women?

What a fool he is ... and stupid to boot ...

Nowhere is Christ recorded urging followers to kill disbelievers. Christianity would be a very different faith had he done so. 
Instead, Christ urged followers to reach out to unbelievers not with a sword but with help — as recorded in the parable of the good Samaritan. When besieged by his enemies, Christ did not fight back but let himself be killed.

Indeed. Next week the Bolter explains how Christ would approve of sending refugees to the hell holes of Manus Island and Nauru and to Cambodia too ... while speaking in tongues ... it being such a good Samaritan thing to do ...

And when besieged by his enemies, Christ would explain that the wisest thing to do was bomb the shit out of said enemies, preferably with boots on ground to kick arse, boots on ground, boots on ground, and impose an impost on the taxpayer, and never mind what might have been said about no new taxes ...

Every day is a new day, but sheesh, on a Labour day it's sometimes a real labour ...

Is it any wonder this old cartoon struck a chord with the pond?

Or this just to hand, thanks to a correspondent, and more Glen Le Lievre here: