As usual for a Sunday meditation, the pond dropped in on the tabloid rag that's even more shrieking, shouty and extreme than the angry old men shouting at clouds for the lizard Oz.
This was the banner that greeted the pond at an early morning shop at Broadway, though the locale's a little outside the demographic for the rag. With the reptile editor Paul Whittaker tipped to take his ruinous confrontational model to the reptiles of Oz, it's likely their failed business model will only get worse ...
Here's the sort of "opinion" you get at the Terrorist haven:
The poisonous fundamentalist Catholic Devine is, as usual, agitated about teh Islamics and this story which graced the Terror recently:
Now if you think about it for a nanosecond, that 102 year old motto is offensive to any sensible person. As useful and as relevant as some other Xian iconography:
Oh dear, Godwin's Law strikes again, but back to "In this sign conquer", or if you will In hoc signo vinces, and Constantine having a vision, as the pond Greg Hunted:
The historian bishop Eusebius of Caesaria states that Constantine was marching with his army (Eusebius does not specify the actual location of the event, but it is clearly not in the camp at Rome), when he looked up to the sun and saw a cross of light above it, and with it the Greek words "(ἐν) τούτῳ νίκα" ("In this, conquer"), a phrase often rendered into Latin as in hoc signo vinces ("in this sign, you will conquer").
At first, Constantine did not know the meaning of the apparition, but on the following night, he had a dream in which Christ explained to him that he should use the sign of the cross against his enemies. Eusebius then continues to describe the Labarum, the military standard used by Constantine in his later wars against Licinius, showing the Chi-Rho sign. The accounts by Lactantius and Eusebius, though not entirely consistent, have been connected to the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, having merged into a popular notion of Constantine seeing the Chi-Rho sign on the evening before the battle.
The phrase appears prominently placed as a motto on a ribbon unfurled with a passion cross to its left, beneath a window over the Scala Regia, adjacent to the equestrian statue of Emperor Constantine, in the Vatican. Emperors and other monarchs, having paid respects to the Pope, descended the Scala Regia, and would observe the light shining down through the window, with the motto, reminiscent of Constantine's vision, and be reminded to follow the Cross. They would thence turn right into the atrium of St. Peter's Basilica, ostensibly so inspired.
You can catch the pedants and the Wikinazis going at it by following the link, but the point is that surely there's no place in a modern army for this sort of half-arsed, mystical with a Christian and Vatican tinge, motto ...
No wonder some of the chaplains thought the time and the jig was up ...
Military historian Professor Peter Stanley from UNSW Canberra said: “The motto was acceptable 100 years ago but today has crusader connotations.” Despite the perceived crusader links, he said the motto actually comes from Emperor Constantine’s vision before he won the battle of Milviian Bridge in 312AD and converted to Christianity: “Jewish chaplains already have a separate badge with a Star of David, so Muslim chaplains would not be expected to wear the current badge. They would have one with a crescent.”
Army chaplains are understood to have pushed for the change. Former principal chaplain to the army Monsignor Greg Flynn said: “We have been aware of this coming down the track and most chaplains would agree with the change. It is a reality.”
Professor Tom Frane, former Bishop to the Defence Force, said: “It seems like a crusading motto — triumphal. It is not the first time it has been misinterpreted. If times have changed it is worth another look.”
Well it's worth more than just another look, but then, just to balance the books before getting on to the Devine, here's another one who's been offended:
The army imam, Sheik Mohamadu Nawas Saleem, has previously called for sharia law to be introduced into Australia.
He signed a petition supporting radical Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir, which has argued in favour of honour killings and said Muslim students should not be forced to honour Anzac Day.
Sheik Saleem works about 40 days a year for the Army and is paid $717 for each one: almost $30,000 a year.
The sheik did not respond to requests for comment.
Now no one should be forced to honour Anzac Day ... but it's also easy to see why the army imam didn't respond.
There he is, on a tidy little earner, while spouting nonsense elsewhere. Let us not argue whether Hizb ut-Tahrir is a radical group, because it's correct, and enough, to call it a rag tag fundamentalist group of ratbags, and the sheik did sign a petition online here...
Allow the secularist pond to brood a moment about these ratbags ...
2. The Aim of Hizb ut-Tahrir
Its aim is to resume the Islamic way of life and to convey the Islamic da'wah to the world. This objective means bringing the Muslims back to living an Islamic way of life in Dar al-Islam and in an Islamic society such that all of life's affairs in society are administered according to the Shari'ah rules, and the viewpoint in it is the halal and the haram under the shade of the Islamic State, which is the Khilafah State. That state is the one in which Muslims appoint a Khaleefah and give him the bay'ah to listen and obey on condition that he rules according to the Book of Allah (swt) and the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah (saw) and on condition that he conveys Islam as a message to the world through da'wah and jihad.
The Party, as well, aims at the correct revival of the Ummah through enlightened thought. It also strives to bring her back to her previous might and glory such that she wrests the reins of initiative away from other states and nations, and returns to her rightful place as the first state in the world, as she was in the past, when she governs the world according to the laws of Islam.
It also aims to bring back the Islamic guidance for mankind and to lead the Ummah into a struggle with Kufr, its systems and its thoughts so that Islam encapsulates the world.
That's online here at the site, but irony alert and warning, if you click on the link, you will fuel the coffers of the anti-Kufrs with click bait advertising, ironically for such high level activities as casinos. So much for fundamentalists, living off the immoral earnings they derive from gambling, the hypocritical fuckwits ... Here's a sample link:
But back to the works and words of the fuckwitted ...
4. Hizb ut-Tahrir's Work
The work of Hizb ut-Tahrir is to carry the Islamic da'wah in order to change the situation of the corrupt society so that it is transformed into an Islamic society. It aims to do this by firstly changing the society's existing thoughts to Islamic thoughts so that such thoughts become the public opinion among the people, who are then driven to implement and act upon them. Secondly the Party works to change the emotions in the society until they become Islamic emotions that accept only that which pleases Allah (swt) and rebel against and detest anything which angers Allah (swt). Finally, the Party works to change the relationships in the society until they become Islamic relationships which proceed in accordance with the laws and solutions of Islam. These actions which the Party performs are political actions, since they relate to the affairs of the people in accordance with the Shari'ah rules and solutions, and politics in Islam is looking after the affairs of the people, either in opinion or in execution or both, according to the laws and solutions of Islam.
What is manifested in these political actions is culturing the Ummah with the Islamic culture in order to melt her with Islam and to cleanse her of the corrupt creeds, false thoughts and erroneous concepts including the influence of Kufr thoughts and opinions.
What is also manifested in these political actions is an intellectual and political struggle. The manifestation of an intellectual struggle is through the struggle against the thoughts and systems of Kufr. It is also manifested in the struggle against false thoughts, corrupt creeds and erroneous concepts by demonstrating their corruption, showing their error and presenting clearly the verdict of Islam concerning them.
And so on, excluding, of course in that talk of corrupt society, any talk of the immoral earnings from click baits that lead to casino sites ...
... which is why a secularist has to tread carefully these days, caught as they are likely to be, between the rantings of a Devine and the rantings of Islamic fundamentalists.
The dilemma is of course the result of the Christian churches sticking their beaks into everything ... army chaplains, school chaplains, hospital visit chaplains, church fete patty cake chaplains ... and thinking that only the Xians would have a monopoly on this sort of gig until the end times came ...
As a result, what you get from the Devine is a disenfranchised howl of pain ... and in aid of the pond's ongoing agitation about the need for the Terror to get rid of its blogs if it's to make its paywall work, here's the blog release which the Terrorists offered free unto the world ...
Now people can deconstruct this at their leisure, but what you must never do is point out that the Devine was behind the crusaders and their war in Iraq ... and hasn't that produced a tidy result.
What can a secularist do when fundamentalists insist on making war with each other, and one group of ratbag fundamentalists insists on the right - like southerners wanting to retain the Confederate flag - to shout In hoc signo vinces at all and sundry ...
Well, you end up with Akker Dakker ...
Such an infallibly, reliably, ineffabily stupid man ...
All that white powder and love of Hanoi really did his head in at an early age ...
Well sensible readers will have stopped long ago, but the pond is determined to insist that the Terror must forthwith abolish its blogs. People should have to pay to read the fat owl of the remove's nonsense.
The only competition here is to guess by which paragraph will multiculturalism and the ABC have been deplored and blamed for everything, and Tony Abbott praised as an heroic figure right to shout In hoc signo vinces at all and sundry as a proud crusader:
Stupid people writing stupid things urging stupid wars and stupid mayhem from the comfort of their armchair warrior keyboards, and finding dupes and fools willing to do their knavish work ... and in this context it's worth re-visiting Robert Manne's 2005 piece Murdoch's War, and noting how neatly Glen Le Lievre caught the essence of fat owl logic (Le Lievre twitters here):
Speaking of which, why not take a magic carpet ride back to the fat owl scribbling furiously in 2006 when he was berating Bomber Beasley for getting it wrong ...
...It goes without saying that there is a certain amount of hypocrisy in claiming support for a party policy using precisely the same US intelligence sources which the ALP and others opposed to the US policy on Iraq have long been ridiculing for supposedly providing false intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s armoury of weapons of mass destruction. Not that it was ever a secret that he had them; even those in President Clinton’s administration such as his National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger, warned: “He will use those WMD again, as he has 10 times since 1983.”
(On the matter of the missing WMD, critics might care to read Iraqi general Georges Sada’s book Saddam’s Secrets, in which the former second-in-command of Saddam’s air force says Iraq moved WMD into Syria before the war by loading biological, chemical and nuclear weapons he was trying to build into civilian 747 aircraft from which all passenger seats were removed.)
But it goes without saying that if Beazley were to pull Australian troops out of Iraq, he would, as Prime Minister John Howard said, “guarantee a victory for the terrorists in Iraq - it’s as simple as that”.
Howard’s view of the National Intelligence Assessment was backed by an unlikely ally in Beazley’s former chief-of-staff Michael Costello, a former secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, who wrote in The Australian: “Bush constantly emphasises that the spread of democratic processes, pluralism and support for moderate forces will eventually work against the terrorists.
“So does the NIE, not just once but in several places.
“It says democratic reform efforts in Muslim majority nations during the next five years will drive a wedge between intransigent extremists and groups willing to use the political processes to achieve their local objectives. There is a risk that such reforms could be destabilising in the transition period, but that’s the case whenever countries move towards democracy.”
As for the oft-repeated mantra that the terrorist threat has increased since Iraq, just consider that the World Trade Centre was first bombed in 1993, a 1994 plot to bring down US passenger planes over the Pacific was foiled by Philippines police, al-Qaeda triggered a 100kg bomb in Riyadh in 1995 and bombed the barracks of US pilots there in 1996, in 1997 bin Laden declared war on the US, and in 1998 al-Qaeda simultaneously bombed US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
The fat owl of the remove had the cheek to head that piece Beazley's misjudgments are starting to add up ...
Note enough a decade gone, and how tattered and worn and shabby that cheap rhetoric looks. Perhaps now the fat owl can add Paris to his list ...
Sad to say, the Murdochian misjudgements long ago added up to a pile of horseshit bigger than the Augean stables and urgent need of a good Tamworthian muck out ...
Just remember if you contribute a cent to the Murdochian empire you are funding crusading fools as surely as if you were to vote for Tony Abbott ...
This is what you get ... a scientologist cultist celebrated, while a crusader war is conducted ...
And absurd headlines are mashed and beaten up into a foaming frenzy ...
How did we end up getting involved in a civil war between Shia and Sunni? Trapped between crusaders, fundie Catholics and Kufr haters ...
Ask the crusaders and their fundamentalist Xian friends and their axis of weevils ...
Never mind, there's just time for a cartoon, and remember you can get a daily cartoon here at the NY:
Oh Dear. Sharri Markson was detained by Israeli security after being caught taking down details of Syrian fighters being secretly treated in an Israeli hospital. This is the same dipstick that faked her way into a London hospital to interview bombing victims by claiming to be a relative, and was renowned for scrabbling through rival's rubbish bins in an effort to get some dirt on them.
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