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.

Context for Tucson

"Gabrielle Giffords was targeted by the Tea Party Right on the basis that she supported the Obama health care plan – a plan that Beck and others like him have regularly explained to millions of Americans as representing totalitarian communism. Indeed, Sarah Palin’s notorious gun site map was only part of the eliminationist rhetoric unleashed against Giffords. For instance, her local Republican opponents held a fundraising event for his campaign that included the following message: ‘Get on Target for Victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly.’"

Follow the below links to two articles, one post-Tucson recent, and one from August 2009, by Jeff Sparrow, an Australian Left-wing writer:

Have We Got A Show For You!
The Social Significance of the Arizona massacre.

There's a lot to read.
If you believe gun culture is healthy and the Tea Party are just nice people... you will blow a gasket.

"The toxic milieu of the Patriots spawned Timothy McVeigh — and a wave of other domestic terrorists responsible for over 40 violent incidents between 1995 and 2000.
The militias faded after the Clinton years, partly because of the economic recovery, partly because the far right felt less visceral antipathy to George W Bush and partly, perhaps, because the "war on terror" provided an external focus for internal rage. Yet, all through the Bush administration, the conservative infrastructure pushed the same populist message: the president was a swaggering Texan man of the people; his enemies, effete and treacherous intellectuals.
That strategy reached its nadir at the last election with the McCain/Palin ticket. Sarah Palin campaigned on almost nothing other than her anti-elitism: for her supporters, Palin was an ordinary hockey mom coming to clean up Washington, her very inexperience proof of virtue. In that respect, Obama’s victory — the defeat of the oxymoronic "Team Maverick" by a black liberal — was seen as the end of the so-called "Southern strategy", with the Republicans’ preferred talking points decisively rejected by an increasingly young and increasingly multicultural electorate.
In the wake of the Obama landslide, many Republican strategists recognised a need to change course but the populist forces they unleashed now possess their own momentum..."

12,400 people were killed in Mexico's narco-wars in 2010.

36 known criminals were murdered in the gangland wars in Melbourne Australia between 1998 and 2010... and we made a TV miniseries about it.

Animal Kingdom

A film about the Melbourne underworld, based around a true and horrific event I remember.

Weird Week

This week isn't even over yet but it has been an extraordinary one in local news.

Magpie lists his five biggest items for the 'How-The-Fuck-Does-That-Happen?' award...

1/ Carl Williams, the baby-faced kingpin of a vicious gang war in the Melbourne underworld in jail for 2 years of a 35 year sentence... beaten to death by another prisoner - on CCTV in a maximum security prison at Barwon Heads.

2/ National Rugby League club Melbourne Storm stripped of two major and three minor premierships and fined $1,600,000 for salary cap breaches in one of the biggest scandals ever in Australian sport.

3/ Nearly 300 allegations of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in this state since 1996, perpetrated by approximately 100 priests.... and in all that just 1 priest has been defrocked as a result.

4/ On the day of the worst bushfires in Australian history the state police commissioner got her hair done and went out for dinner. She now heads the reconstruction authority.

5/ Crown Casino in Melbourne has confirmed that gamblers leave about $4000 a week at tables and poker machines. After 2 years it goes to the State Revenue Office.

Advice for Pope Benedict XVI

I have in front of me a "Working with Children Check Application Guide and Form"....

Once this is processed I get back a card that certifies I have been subject to police check and that I am not a sex offender and have no criminal record.
The application form is 6 pages long.

After I have completed this and I get my card, it will be okay for me to assist in coaching children's football on a public oval in broad daylight, with all their parents and guardians standing around watching, and in the company of about 20 other adults - parents all - who are doing the same thing, and have the same card....
At no point during the kids football training does anyone even go indoors to a locker room.

Now...
When a psychiatrist warned that a priest may have had a sex-thing for kids... I really don't think it was too much to ask of the future Pope Benedict XVI to have taken it a little more seriously.
Even if it was the 1980s.

Still... he hasn't started another Crusade yet.

Sydney terrorism suspects convicted

Between 2005 and 2006, ASIO (Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation) identified a plot to mount a major terrorist strike on Australian soil.

9 men were arrested, 4 pleaded guilty to lesser offences and the other 5 were found guilty and sentenced today to 23 to 28 years in prison in the biggest terrorism trial yet seen in this country.

They were all Australian Muslims, found guilty on the evidence of stockpiling chemicals and weapons, and were in possession of a mass of propagandist paraphernalia, including videos of ritual executions. When sentenced, they all smiled.

I should point out that the Australian Muslim community in general denounces terrorism in all forms and actively works with police and moderating influences. These men were the exception and not representative of the vast majority of Muslims.

The trial went for 10 months. The court heard the five jihadists wanted to terrify and intimidate the Australian public and Government in retaliation for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Australia is a close ally of the United States.

Never revealed was the target. It's not totally clear whether this is because one had not been decided, or it has been deemed better that it not be revealed. Either way the prosecution did not reveal it, which I find curious. The jury heard from 300 witnesses, examined 3,000 exhibits, watched 30 days of surveillance tapes and listened to 18 hours of phone intercepts.

The ringleader had stored enough ammunition to keep firing for 37 hours.

Blogger-nut sighted

In the US, a female teacher, Amy Bishop, shot three people dead Friday, and wounded three others, after learning she had been denied tenure at an Alabama university. Tragic incident. She can't have been okay in the head.

Implications for gun control? Well... none it seems.

Now... some people who fly in the same blog stream as magpie will know of a certain neocon loon. I was willing to bet HE had it all worked out, and I was not disappointed:

"Amy Bishop, Detained in Huntsville University Faculty Murders, is Harvard-Trained Left-Wing Professor." says he.

Right. She was Left-wing and went to Harvard. Ergo it was obvious she was going to kill someone. Genius. Perhaps everyone who ever went to Harvard and doesn't believe in American hegemony through force of arms should be pre-emptively jailed. Dunno.

Perhaps someone should take HIM away in a straitjacket before he goes on a rampage after hearing an academic sneer at Sarah Palin (He's real tough though...shows pictures of male models to a blogger he doesn't like and swears he had abs like that 20 years ago).

Appropriating a tragic and violent crime to serve one's personal political paranoia is loathsome and without merit. It's not the first time this blogger has done this. And if she was a life-long Republican and an avowed neoconservative, it still wouldn't mean jack shit as far as the case goes.

No coverage I have seen indicates her political leaning - whatever it actually is - had anything to do with the crime. Unless Bishop was a member of a radical organisation the remainder of which is an immediate threat to public safety, there is absolutely no reason to even hypothesize what her political leanings are.

Scientology accused of violent crime

Today independent senator Nick Xenophon castigated Scientology as being a criminal organisation and called for an inquiry into their tax exempt status.
He referred to allegations by former members - some of them members for decades - of unlawful imprisonment, coerced abortions, physical violence, and blackmail.

He stated "It is alleged that information about suspicious deaths and child abuse has been destroyed and one follower has admitted that he was coerced by the organisation into perjuring himself into deaths of his two daughters.....These victims of Scientology claim it is an abusive manipulative and violent organisation."
The prime minister was careful with his words but described the allegations as "grave".
He said ‘‘Many people in Australia have real concerns about Scientology....I share some of those concerns. Let us proceed carefully and look carefully at the material he (Xenophon) has provided before we make a decision on further parliamentary action.’’

This morning I was listening to a radio interview between ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) host Jon Faine and a leader-spokesperson for the Australian branch of the church of Scientology. I like Faine as a savage questioner, most of the time.

Faine took the church spokesman to pieces when the latter refused to answer a simple yes-no question as to whether the church would respond to questions honestly if under oath in a court of law.
Under oath....
"I don't care to answer that" is not an okay response. That's contempt of court, and if you lie it's perjury.

The clear implication was that when it came down to a choice between compliance to the law of the land and protecting the interests of the church... the law of the land would be disregarded. I couldn't believe how stupid the spokesman was for tacitly admitting that.

Personally I try not to indulge in casual Scientology-bashing.
True, it looks fun for all their stable of goofy celebrities and, apparently, an inheritance of really bad science fiction as their theology, but each to their own...
It's when they prey on the mentally vulnerable that I get hostile.

There are other cults, at a local level, that I would go after ahead of Scientology. The cult called The Exclusive Brethren probably tops my list because of their extreme separatism and alleged political influence.
But if any of these allegations that Xenophon has aired are true... then they need to answer the charges.

Looking forward to seeing what develops from this.