The Right feeds on violence again

Some days ago the reporter Lara Logan, whose interview with Jon Stewart I seem to remember posting somewhere, was beaten in a sexual assault while working in Egypt. She was rescued by some women and elements of the Egyptian army.

On reading about that I felt a bit sick and went about my day. Then the irrational Right started popping up like noxious weeds with opinions about it all.

I thought "What? It's a sickening act of violence perpetrated against someone who was doing her job - what other possible view could there be?"

But they seem to have been titillated into a piranha-like frenzy about it all.

Let's start with Jim Hoft:

CBS Reporter Logan Learns That Political Correctness Is a Killer. Lara Logan is lucky she's alive. Her liberal belief system almost got her killed on Friday. This talented reporter will never be the same.

Won't she Jim? Did you personally talk to her? You have an exact idea of her state of mind, do you? And I wasn't aware that professional journalism was a "liberal belief system"... though I guess it is when considering that crass and baseless pseudo-journalism is usually the province of the Right.

Why did this attractive blonde female reporter wander into Tahrir Square last Friday? Why would she think this was a good idea?

Oh... it's her fault is it? My... and when have we ever heard THAT before when talking about rape?
Another question... what exactly does "attractive blonde" have to do with anything?

Robert Stacy McCain - of "You buy the ticket. You take the ride" fame - shot his mouth off about it:

Please tell me what I am permitted to say when a gang of Egyptian men celebrates the end of the Mubarak regime by sexually assaulting an American TV news reporter.

I see... you're the victim here are you Robert? Should have known I guess - the loopy Right is always the victim as far as they're concerned. I'll let you know the next time I spill my coffee, because you'll surely be the victim then too.

By the way, Robert, I think Logan is South African.

Pamela Geller:

Lara Logan was repeatedly sexually assaulted by thugs yelling, "Jew! Jew!"...

Ah... now we come to the pseudo-journalism... and it gets worse

Worse still, CBS tried to keep the whole thing quiet and was forced to get in front of the story only when it became widely known that other media outlets were on to it. Who are they covering for?

Oh I don't know... maybe they are being sensitive to the needs of an employee who has been raped? No?

And why? Because the false narrative the media is painting of what is going on in Egypt is patently false, and this brutal sex attack points to something else entirely... Obama should make a statement addressing this horror and condemning the vile Islamic anti-semitism at the heart of Islam.

Because they wouldn't be rapists if only they weren't so horribly anti-semitic?

You're a total moron, Pam.

Nir Rosen apologized and lost his job, though he never blamed Logan for what happened to her. And mainstream media were content to focus on him... for some reason... and not so much on people like...

Debbie Schlussel, who FOX News use as their expert on Islam apparently because she's a film-critic - gee who could knock qualifications like that?

Schlussel is probably the worst of the bunch here. Read what she wrote and I won't have to tell you why:

As I’ve noted before, it bothers me not a lick when mainstream media reporters who keep telling us Muslims and Islam are peaceful get a taste of how "peaceful" Muslims and Islam really are. In fact, it kinda warms my heart. Still, it’s also a great reminder of just how "civilized" these "people" (or, as I like to call them in Arabic, "Bahai'm (Animals) are...

...Now you know what it’s like, Lara....

"There will be no further comment from CBS News and Correspondent Logan and her family respectfully request privacy at this time."

I just love it when the people of the profession of “the public’s right to know” suddenly want “privacy.” Tell it to your next interview subject, Lara. Of course CBS has no further comment. Wouldn’t wanna impugn the “peacefulness” of “Religion of Peace” animals, would we? Now, if they were Christians or Jews, well, then there would be comments galore.

So sad, too bad, Lara. No one told her to go there. She knew the risks. And she should have known what Islam is all about. Now she knows. Or so we’d hope. But in the case of the media vis-a-vis Islam, that’s a hope that’s generally unanswered.

This never happened to her or any other mainstream media reporter when Mubarak was allowed to treat his country of savages in the only way they can be controlled.

Now that’s all gone. How fitting that Lara Logan was “liberated” by Muslims in Liberation Square while she was gushing over the other part of the “liberation.”

Hope you’re enjoying the revolution, Lara! Alhamdilllullah (oraise Allah)

The Internet... isn't quite big enough... for me to write about everything that is hideous in that tirade.

Where's Sarah?

Normally I don't put unpleasant pictures up on my blog... but sometimes you have to show it, so people know what you're talking about....

If this has been around before and has nauseated everyone already, sorry to subject you to it again, but I hadn't seen it:



On THE SAME PAGE that proudly presented this I found the following crap:

"I just do not understand why the Germans(Nazi's ) are hated so much. Really what did Hitler do that was so wrong, other than being a damn Catlik? So they started a war with half the world. First it was the Pollocks and Checks, well know bastions of retards and gypsies. The French, who cares, same goes for Norwegians, Swedes, Hollanders, and the British, all are strong holds of Joo's. The only bad thing that the Nazi's did was pick the Japs and Dago's to be friends with."

"I'd vote for a make-believe SS officer in a heartbeat over a real Communist Muslim homosexual black militant drug addict."

THESE are the thoughts of people who LIKE and ADMIRE Sarah Palin - and believe it or not are off a "Christian Forum" - and is the cesspool that would be thrilled to see her get somewhere...

France bans the Burqa, Iran bans the mullet.

I'm tempted to say banning the mullet might prove Iran's cultural advancement over France... but that would be having a joke and this is kind of serious....

"In an attempt to rid the country of "decadent Western cuts", Iran's culture ministry has produced a catalogue of haircuts that meet government approval. The list of banned styles includes ponytails, mullets and elaborate spikes."

Good thing I'm bald and don't need to worry about this when in Iran. Good thing my wife's culture runs to kimonos instead of burqas and there isn't legislation about what she can and can't wear.

Are we even now, children....Or do we have to ban something else?
Can I wear a ski mask in Paris?

I heard local radio host Lindy Burns relate an anecdote about how she started up a casual conversation with an Australian Muslim lady wearing a burqa. Burns said it was a nice colour. The lady commented that when she wears her purple one, people seem more afraid of her.

Is this what we have come to... where a colour will decide whether a bit of cultural attire evokes fear?

If a woman freely wants to wear a burqa I'm fine with that. If she wants to dress as a Klingon, I'm fine with that too.
How about we all just don't care what other people wear?

Just a comment on Melanie Phillips

Melanie Phillips is the author of 'The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle Over God, Truth and Power', yet another book that seeks to say there is something fundamentally wrong with the world and - you guessed it - it's all the fault of Obama, gay people (about whose rights she has used the word "toxic"), Muslims, the theory of evolution, and people concerned about climate change.

Yawning already?

Oh and all centres around the eternal plot to destroy Israel, naturally...

Political commentator Matthew Norman writes:

" On her Spectator-hosted blog, Melanie Phillips disabuses readers of the suspicion that she can be vulnerable to the lure of hysteria. Responding to Joe Biden’s criticism of Israel for building more homes in east Jerusalem, she disputes his assertion that the Palestinians deserve a state of their own.

“To put it another way,” she writes, nimbly twisting the VP’s point in vintage Mad Mel style, “why does Joe Biden think that Israel “deserves” to surrender? And why, once again, is a final solution being imposed by America on democratic and besieged Israel ? ?” Is it me being fanciful here, or might MM be using that “final solution” subtly to compare Barack Obama with Hitler ? a tactic previously reserved for the more ostentatiously in-bred extremity of the Tea Party spectrum? "

guffaw snort..

Now let's be clear... you cannot reasonably use the phrase "final solution" when talking about Israel and mean anything other than a direct comparison to Nazi evil.

Phillips is deliberately inferring Obama is a Nazi just as she explicitly says he's a revolutionary Marxist and secretly a Muslim.

Phillips... One more bigmouth who has decided HER heritage and HER faith are the gold standard by which everything can be measured for virtue and justice, and anything outside of that experience is to be despised or devalued. All the world must fight HER fight. All the world is topsy turvy and only SHE can explain it.

piss off Melanie

The BNP and the anti-immigrant who is emigrating

This is from a few days back...

The British National Party - the ultra-Right party with a pathological hatred of immigrants - has been forced by law to scrap its whites-only membership laws. Members voted to change the party's constitution so that black and Asian people can join - if you can imagine that they would want to.

The leader Nick Griffin - a Holocaust denier - said on Sunday anyone can join if they agree that the country should stay "fundamentally British"... thereby being suitably vague while ensuring that everyone knows exactly what he means.

A funny sequel to this is their extension of an offer of membership to none other than Australia's own Pauline Hanson, who after years of banshee-like wailing on the fringes of Australian politics has decided that, for all her oft-professed patriotism, she will say goodbye to Australia "forever" and emigrate to Britain.

Griffin said she would not be regarded as an ''immigrant sponger'' .
What charm.

Pauline Hanson is a sort of Australian Palin except without Palin's physical appeal and a voice that is actually more grating on the ear, if you can believe that. She opposed non-white immigration and generally had well-deserved pariah status among the major parties.

Goodbye Pauline. Good riddance and don't come crawling back when you discover the weather is not as nice as it is in Queensland.

Fringe extremism in Australia

Okay after a couple of nice non-political posts, I come back to hate-based fringe groups and the question of how far free speech should extend...

A New South Wales (that's an Australian state) radio station presenter has been revealed to be the administrator of racist, anti-immigration groups on Facebook, according to this linked article from The Age newspaper. These groups are called "Fuck Off, We're Full", "Stop the Islamisation of Australia while we still can", "Australian Conservative United Party", the "Australian Protectionist Party" and "Australians against Multiculturalism".

The article says "she ridiculed foreigners who did not have a good grasp of English, claimed the Islamic faith was destroying the Australian way of life and said that attacked Indian students should go back home to study." (Indian students have been targeted in recent acts of street violence)

Management of the station are planning to discipline the presenter, whatever that means.

The article concludes with "In April, a contractor for one of Australia's largest Defence Department-linked companies was suspended after she was alleged to have been involved as an administrator of the neo-Nazi web forum "Blood & Honour"." I emphasise here that this was a separate and unrelated case and there is no Right-wing conspiracy being illuminated here.

The radio station in question is noted for multicultural programming. The presenter says in her defence that it is "unfortunate" that patriotism was now regarded as racism, and "This country is beautiful the way it is, and like most average citizens, [I] do not want our society to change to suit others' needs."

I'll take that apart and retort thus...

1/ I am of the opinion that most educated Australians would regard it as unfortunate instead that racism can get ennobled as patriotism. We KNOW what patriotism is and is not, Miss Presenter.

2/ I too do not want our society changed to suit others' needs. Specifically YOUR needs, which apparently are to give yourself a national identity based on vilifying Australians from other cultures - and foreigners - and condoning acts of violence against foreign students, in 'our' name.

Free speech...? No. She is condoning and perhaps inciting acts of violence based on race and linguistic disposition.
Private vs public life? No. Both are in the public domain and there is clear conflict of interest with the policies of her employer.
Sad? Yes.
We should be better than this.

"M" is for moron

Republican Party in the US misspelling the word "conference" ON THEIR BANNER as they set about trying to attract "working class white Democrats" by insisting on English language-only initiatives. Oh the irony...

"Isn't this Right wing in this country in a nutshell?" asks Cenk Uyger of The Young Turks. More of Uyger's pointed and funny presentation of this latest act of small-minded conservative idiocy is here on Youtube.

Related coverage and comments here.

(quietmagpie uses spelling that is standard in Australia, and speaks two languages).