Actually the sight of an agitated anger monger getting out of her leather chair, to play war general and hand out white feathers to anyone in the vicinity, is a sure sign that the angry reptiles of Oz are moving to a war footing yet again ...
Why would that be?
Uh huh, a curious thing happened with that splash, which linked to a tag "Taking on Terror", but which dropped another early link - it originally looked like this, with a link to an un-warlike story:
It's easy enough to see why that link dropped out ... fancy this heretic daring to mention mistakes in Afghanistan ...
Clearly he deserves a white feather from Dame Slap ...
At the same time as Dame Slap was demanding anger - as opposed to civilisation and humanity - other reptiles were heeding the call to arms ...
Well actually the pond is as Islamophobic as much as the next secularist or gay disturbed by gays getting caned in Indonesia, though it matches that with a sense that 'live and let live' is possible in a moderate world run without hysterical calls to anger (does demanding that people suggesting anger as the normal way of conducting the world's affairs be taken out and shot sound a tad angry?)
The pond likes to balance its Islamophobia with Christophobia, Scientologicaphobia, and dozens of other religious phobias (yes the sight of anyone burying spoons on the backyard is also like to induce a phobia).
But in all this, the pond doesn't blame the victims.
If there's anyone to be blamed, it's the war criminals.
Here's one admittedly minor war criminal reflecting on the war crimes in Iraq ...
So much has flowed from those original war crimes - the full interview is here ...
Of course in the old days war criminals could look for a job at NASA or such like ...
These days they get a job scribbling for the lizard Oz. (That story in the NY Times here - the pond's contribution to its Godwin's Swear Jar will probably end up with Médecins Sans Frontières ...)
It's worth bearing those war crimes in mind when reading the dog botherer's special form of pleading and devious tosh ...
"There undeniably would be no Isis if we had not invaded Iraq"
... but it's the unhappy duty of the pond to observe the time wasters and the ne'er do well war criminals scribbling furiously about their western values, including mayhem and destruction that saw thousands killed and millions displaced, and to what avail, in terms of comfort and relief from terror?
It's worth bearing those war crimes in mind when reading the dog botherer's special form of pleading and devious tosh ...
No actually, as noted above, the pond blames the war criminals who fucked everything up in the first place, and still managed to say - back in 2007 - how it was difficult for people to understand how crucial this battle this struggle in the middle east for their own security and Australia. That’s one of our great challenges as a government is to explain to people how this affects their security and the security of the entire world and, and that’s, that’s a debate we’re still running today.
2017, a decade on, and still the fulminating fuckwits are unwilling to admit how deeply and richly they fucked things up ...
It'd be interesting to read Kilcullen - a man who did actual time in the service and who has a wiki quoting him as saying ...
"There undeniably would be no Isis if we had not invaded Iraq"
... but it's the unhappy duty of the pond to observe the time wasters and the ne'er do well war criminals scribbling furiously about their western values, including mayhem and destruction that saw thousands killed and millions displaced, and to what avail, in terms of comfort and relief from terror?
What an insufferable fool this war criminal is ...
What really offends is the sweeping tone, the righteous blather that asserts it's impossible to rub stomach and chew gum ... that it's impossible to be appalled at the Catholic church's record on women and gays (amazingly abortion is still illegal in NSW and Queensland), while at the same time being appalled by barbaric Islamic fundamentalism ...
By the time the pond gets to the end of any dog botherer column, the anger is palpable ...
Here's a minor war criminal, who helped fuck up the world, lecturing the pond sanctimoniously about secularism, so that he can, in a back-handed way, defended the Catholic Church ...
Around this time, the pond usually reaches for a soma tablet ...
No, that's not going to do the job.
Better make it a Soma Pro ... oh heck, give the pond all the shelf stock ...
Ah, that's better, the last of the dog botherer can rush past the pond in dreamy silence ...
Oh fucketty fuck fuck, a fucking idiot from the right, a minor war criminal, talking of Balkanised media - in a company which puts a high quality mix of soma and kool aid in the water cooler each day - and proposing "sensibly curated mainstream media" as a cure to the ills of the world ...
Thanks, if chairman Rupert is the solution, the pond would prefer to drop another pill ...
And that brings the pond to prattling Polonius, way down the list, but never forgotten, because he too is pounding the same war drums ...
Fortunately, the pond isn't of the left, nor of the right, and it can acknowledge terrorism in all its multitude of forms. It can imagine the terror of living under Saddam Hussein, and it can imagine the terror of enduring an entire country turned into a war zone, with thousands dead and millions displaced.
The pond can also imagine what it's like to live each day knowing that up above is lurking a drone which can at any moment unleash untold destruction and death on a wedding party going about its celebratory business ...
And it can imagine the mindless destruction of killing a bunch of happy teenagers ... just as it can imagine Copts, Shia and Sunni mindlessly being killed in the name of illusory gods (there is no Jehovah, there is no Allah, a pox on all delusions).
But then it doesn't require much imagination to know that there's a lot of shit going down in the world, and a lot of it is motivated by economics ... not least the economics of pumping $110 billion in armaments into the middle east (and that's just one deal), or securing the oil, or in the case of the CIA, making sure there's a goodly supply of heroin flowing back to the States.
Golly gosh, did someone mention drugs?
Allow the pond to remind itself where prattling Polonius is positioning himself with this kind of rhetoric ...
Yes, Polonius is just the Devine in drag, not that there's anything wrong with a man wearing a frock ... and so to the read, in which all the usual guff is led by Polonius about the left intelligentsia ...
Of course we've been here before. Where others talked of peace and harmony possibly helping with security, Polonius, in ancient days, was a warlike quisling and a fellow traveller with warriors (strictly from the comfort of a leather chair)... and it explains why the pond gets on with some Xians better than with Polonius and his kind ...
This is the first part of what one Christian wrote back in the day, in response to Polonius in angry war monger mode ...
Well yes indeed, we have lost the place, and as it turns out we have lost the peace ...
This is why it's important to be able to massage stomach and chew gum ...
It's possible to enjoy this Pope cartoon, with more papal pleasures here ...and all that it says about barking mad Christian fundamentalists - sounding just like Daesh - in our midst ...
... and yet be able to celebrate affinities with Dr Peter Matheson, scribbling back in 2003 in response to prattling Polonius, rarely willing to admit his vomitous past scribbling ...
And now, speaking of, and walking amongst the mad, as the pond must do, what better way to throw to prattling Polonius having a last prattle ...
Indeed, indeed, and even when it comes to history, Polonius loves rhetoric above insight. It wasn't the assassination at Sarajevo that lit the fire that started the first world war.
The events that led to that war were many and complex, and the pond can do no better than recommend Luigi Albertini's three volume set The Origins of the War of 1914 (Amazon here) before indulging in glib nonsense. The pond had to endure it as a set text ...
Then we might move on to the notion of young men knowing nothing about the world. It's understandable, in that apparently Polonius had no actual youth, always having been a stuffed bore and a dull pedant, but the point about young people not knowing what they do, is that they are easily persuaded (many believe in theological nonsense), can be swayed to fundamentalism, often have a belief that this world offers them nothing (a belief the world often rewards), and have far too much testosterone for their own good ...
The same forces are at work when a teenager gets behind the wheel of a car and treats it as a licensed killing machine, or thinks that the way to a good relationship is by thumping the shit out of a partner, because that's the way dear old dad conducted his marriage ...
The pond could go on and on, but this has already taken on far too much length, a kind of extended dirge in memory of war criminals and their fellow travellers, who frequently fail to remember what they've done, and the damage they've caused, directly or indirectly ...
It's time for a little light relief. While doing the shopping this morning, the pond chanced on a Terrorist headline which produced a little shiver of secular joy ...
And then came this Rowe cartoon, offering the prospect of more joy to come ... with more Rowe here ...
A most interesting read especially the piece where the excuse for a man Kenny is quoted as Alexander working hard he would not work in an iron lung.
ReplyDeleteYour work is very much appreciated Dorothy keep it up as we are starved of good analysis of current affairs.
How do the nitwits manage to twist their thinking so that blaming the warmongers who made the ME a mess into blaming the victims?
ReplyDeleteSheesh they are desperadoes - I wish the bloody train would come and take them away.
Albertini as set text? For realsies? What on earth were you studying?
ReplyDeleteI've probably read 20 books on the origin of the first world war (most recently the proceedings of a conference of international relations experts trying to unpick it), and while none of them can agree with each other (and I couldn't tell you why it started, its abiding mystery being the source of my continued interest) they would all agree that Princip's actions provided at most the opportunity, but not the motive. Coincidentally, my copies of Albertini arrived via Amazon a few weeks ago, but I haven't got around to cracking them open.
But since I always enjoy quibbling with a quibbler - Princip was not 23 when he whacked the Archduke. He was 19. At 23, he was dying of tuberculosis in an Austrian cell in Theresienstadt.
For the pond's many sins, FrankD, the sentence was post-grad history ... and after reading Albertini, it seemed best not to attempt further research on the start of the war, since he'd done more than enough, and like you, the pond was none the wiser, apart from the usual notion of human lunacy (mixed with colonial greed, wild adventurism and fools imagining it remained a jolly jape amongst chums, as if nobody had read what happened to the French in the mud of Agincourt).
DeleteBut what a delight to see you quibble with the quibbler. These days the pond can't be bothered with close readings of the prattler, but loves it when others whack the mole ...
Never mind of course that the right wing (armchair) culture warriors seem to be constitutionally incapable of acknowledging the centuries long project of Western terrorism, especially in the 20th and 21st centuries.
ReplyDeletewww.thirdworldtraveler.com/Terrorism/Terrorism_watch.html
And the dark irony of the orange monster being in Saudi Arabia when the Manchester murders occurred. And how he referred to the multi-billion sale of "beautiful weapons" to the Saudis too.
And the well known fact that the Saudis are the PRINCIPAL source/sponsor of the various mosques and madrasas all over the Western world, and especially in the UK, where unhinged young men are radicalized.
And the well known fact that both the Saudi government and private Saudi citizens too, provide the finances for terrorist groups their murderous activities.
Ah yes, mass terrorism involving children:
Delete"But the deadliest school-related massacre in American history happened in 1927, at an elementary school in Bath, Mich. A school board member named Andrew Kehoe, upset over a burdensome property tax, wired the building with dynamite and set it off in the morning of May 18. Kehoe’s actions killed 45 people, 38 of whom were children."
I wonder what madrassas it was that radicalized him.
"It is time for us to get angry" says Dame Slap.
ReplyDeleteBut just what does she think will be done with all this "anger" ? Invade Afghanistan and Iraq all over again ? Carpet bomb Libya like the Yanquis once carpet bombed Cambodia ? Pack every suspected Muslim up into internment camps ?
What exactly does she think should be done ?