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Last updated on July 24th, 2017 at 08:19 am
The Byron Shire Echo’s Bob Ellis is a little sad and reflective this week following Bob Carr’s resignation as NSW Premier (Carr is one of few successful politicians for whom Ellis has worked). But he quickly returns to his usual happy level of butter-headed misanalysis:
Terrorism in Britain these last thirty years has killed fewer people than Dr Harold Shipton, and we are still not shooting tall, bearded doctors on sight.
We might, if they began swarming over trains and blowing themselves up. (Incidentally, the doctor’s name was Shipman.)
We still keep Mein Kampf on the shelves of suburban and country town libraries, but won’t let a Muslim cleric say what he’s supposed to say, that the values of the West are sinful, abominable, atrocious and stink in the nostrils of Allah, and will in due course be punished by the Almighty.
See, there’s a small problem here with that “in due course” deal; some clerics are kind of pro-active on it. And the Almighty isn’t the one doing the “punishing”, unless you consider a bunch of dopey human explosives to be Gods. Which Ellis may well do; his previous religion, the Australian Labor Party, hasn’t given much cause for worship of late.
(Via Ellis editor Raff)
Is Bob saying that the most extreme, Western-hating Muslim clerics are actually the mainstream of Islam? After all, they’re saying “what a Muslim cleric is supposed to say”, according to Bob.
That would be kind of damaging to all the “Islam is the religion of peace” talk that the perpetually concerned like so much.
Bob is really only of interest as a case study in the convergence of ‘leftism’ and mental illness. Researchers in this area might also be interested in the case of Eco Paul, the subject of a recent documentary made by his sister (on your dollar, of course). Eco sounds like a fairly harmless – even likeable – bloke, but his passion for recycling means that his flat “has no power, no running water, and is so jammed with rubbish that Eco Paul, as he likes to call himself, hasn’t been able to use the front door in years. He climbs in through a window.”
Is Bob saying that the most extreme, Western-hating Muslim clerics are actually the mainstream of Islam? After all, they’re saying “what a Muslim cleric is supposed to say”, according to Bob
.
Justice Higgins did not seem to agree with Mr Ellis.
Perhaps old Bob should have been called as an ‘expert witness’ in the trial of Danny Nalliah and Daniel Scot for religious intolerance.
Funny to think that Bob would agree with a couple of Christians on the nature of Islam.
Posted by pog-ma-thon on 2005 08 04 at 12:42 AM • permalink
Funny to think that Bob would agree with a couple of Christians on the nature of Islam.
Yes, well, pog-ma-thon, the thing is, Ellis is supporting a Muslim cleric’s hate speech, and Mr. Nalliah and Mr. Scott are going to jail for “vilifying” Muslims who produce that same hate speech.
Mr. Nalliah and Mr. Scott look at the what the Muslim cleric says and disagrees with has been said. They see the dark side, and call it such.
Ellis looks at the same speech, and then compares it to keeping a copy of Mein Kampf (you know, the one written by Hitler) on the library shelf. Ellis does see the dark side…..and supports it.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2005 08 04 at 12:56 AM • permalink
I don’t have a problem with Mein Kampf being on the bookshelf. A former housemate of mine had her copy in the case next to her books on witchcraft and herbal remedies. None of those helped her pick up an empty cup of coffee.
I had a copy of the Protocols of Zion floating around home also. The Protocols are the largest crock of shit (next to Battlefield Earth) ever written. I couldn’t get finish the Protocols, and it was a struggle for BE, also.
My issue is with the clerics and what they are supposed to say. When either all religions or none of them have exactly the same rights – perceived as well as actual – then I won’t have any problem with someone spouting off about Western decadence.
So my values are an abomination? That I have spent my adult life working to support myself, am now raising a child in trying times, I have never blown anybody up, nor even attempted to. Hell, I hardly drink these days! I try to do the right thing by people, and if I make a mistake, try to rectify it.
I guess my place in hell is being prepared. I am atrocious. Damn, and I never realised it!
I guess I’d better dig up the skimpy dresses and start partying like it’s oh-six-ninety-nine.
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2005 08 04 at 01:05 AM • permalink
Did…did Bob Ellis just declare Jihad on us (the West)?
Posted by Richard_of_Oz on 2005 08 04 at 01:09 AM • permalink
So Bob supports mad mullahs such as the scum who murdered Steven Vincent in Basra the other day.
It appears he was killed because of his blog and other material he wrote for the MSM in which he criticised the influence Iranian fundamentalists were exerting in Southern Iraq.
Multiple gunshots to the head are an extreme form of censorship and just the sort of `punishment’ Bob fuckwit Ellis’ drivel supports.
I’m going to miss Vincent’s writing as his murder has robbed us of a unique insight into the psyche of Iraq’s people and I was looking forward to his next book from `the red zone’.
Multiple gunshots to the head is an extreme form of censorship but Bob fuckwit Ellis
<< … that the values of the West are sinful, abominable, atrocious and stink in the nostrils of Allah, and will in due course be punished by the Almighty.>>
As opposed to the values of Islam, presumably – lets see – the genital mutilation of girl children; the forcing of females into mantoos/bukhas/chadors/hijabs etc; the forcing of underage girls into arranged marriages (usually with first cousins); the vicious heartlessness towards ‘unbelievers’ (like the murderer of van Gogh telling his grieving mother that he could not care for her or sympathise with her because she is not a Muslim); the continual hateful ranting against Jews (why no arrests for hate speech?); the continual preaching of intolerance and hatred for the west by Islamic ‘religious leaders’; the production and disemmination of hate literature in every Muslim community; the high rate of crime by Muslim immigrants and their overrepresentation in prisons in every western country; the abomination of sharia law, with its primitive punishments such as stoning for ‘adultery’ (which includes being raped); the vile mistreatment and abuse of females in every Muslim country; the widespread sexual abuse of children in Muslim countries; the continued existence of slavery in the Muslim world … but hey! The problem isnt Islam, its western values.
If there is a terrorist attack in Australia, hopefully this traitorous useless waste of space will be right in the path of it. Lets hear his opinion of righteous imans then – if he survives, of course.
- That would be the same pious Bob Ellis who has spent his adult life drinking, lying, rejecting all gods and religion would it? The same Bob Ellis who admitted to an adulterous affair some years ago and accepted that he had fathered a child out of wedlock? That would seem to me to be someone distinctly at home in the tolerant west.
His behaviour would have seen him slaughtered long ago by the very people/religion/society he is now defending at the expense of the society that tolerates him.
So Ellis would be totally fine with Christian far right preachers saying what they’re supposed to; that homosexuals are going to hell, abortion is an abomination and Darwin was wrong. And if a campaign of abotion clinic bombings, violent anti-evolution school protests and gay bashings occured, perpertrated by Christian extremists, Ellis would be out there defending the preacher’s right to incite such violence?
No problem with that, right Ellis? Right, you disgusting, lying, hypocritical, washed-up, failed, sagging bag of communist bile and idiocy?
One fun thing about winning the cold war is watching marxism’s last desperate, tools like ellis and pilger, fade bitterly into squeaking irrelevence. A slow death thouroughly deserved by these disgusting people.
- forgot it also said “travel in health”- well not on the London Underground bob.
abc at midday current affairs did a piece on the good burghers of the Netherlands and Belgium being (20% at least)too afraid to travel on public transport.“authorities are surprised and troubled??? by this phenomenon.The rest of us worker bees aint.
Sounds like common sense to me.
“We just don’t trust them” said one woman commuter,provoking further amazement from the authorities and the abc.
Hyped by the unemotive abc as-“WESTERN NATIONS MIGHT BE LOSING THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BATTLE IN THE WAR ON TERRORISM”- not SO CALLED then? Just a common or garden old WAR.
Frazzledy Fran on abc r.n. this a.m.
interviewing(rubber stamping) ex judge MARY GAUDRON about david hicks.
m.g.“What Howard says is DANGEROUS”.
and “a KANGAROO COURT”,“OUR RIGHTS ARE AT RISK,TRUTH IS AT RISK”..
fk -“Why do YOU think the Howard government has not DEMANDED the return of DETAINEES
LIKE THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT”
no mention of the UNLIKELIHOOD of the british demanding back their detainees from gitmo AFTER THE LONDON BOMBINGS.
that in itself means kelly is either biased or a very poor journalist not fit to do public broadcasting…this sounds like a job for Mediatwats!
mary gaudron(so much time on my hands,so little to do except make mischief politically),wrings out a tearful”it HORRIFIES ME”.
frazzly then leaps astride the space shuttle,unfortunately good news about the repairs,but-“CONCERNS REMAIN THOUGH”..
>“won’t let a Muslim cleric say what he’s supposed to say”
Radical Muslim clerics *have* been free in Britain for years to preach whatever they’ve wanted to preach.
Posted by Blithering Bunny on 2005 08 04 at 04:59 AM • permalink
- o/t RED kerry o’brien’s 7.30 report “INTERVIEWS” – read UNASHAMEDLY SHOWCASES Get up.org.org(as kerry puts it)stumbling over the terminology.TEN MINUTES of publically funded time in which they give a guided tour,display the web address and chortle delightedly with the founders,obviously all naughty boys together-some more ageing than others.
THIS sounds like a job for MEDIATWATS—
left wing,publically funded think tank.
In the defense of the ravings of a lunatic, and possibly the person I detest seeing on the TV most (now there’s a clear benefit of moving to the US, haven’t seen him since…)
He did say “in Britain”, and the bulk of the IRA killings occured outside Britain (in Northern Ireland mainly, but elsewhere too).
I think the numbers support the claim, less than 250 people were killed “in Britain” by the IRA.
Of course the analysis is lunacy, but the IRAs activities don’t invalidate that particular premise.
“Terrorism in Britain these last thirty years has killed fewer people than Dr Harold Shipton”
When a lefty on a message board said that Americans’ concern about terrorism was exaggerated, I mentioned two smoking holes in downtown Manhattan where a couple skyscrapers used to be. His sneering, condescending response was that more Americans died from aspirin that year than terrorism.
#23 – officially Northern Ireland is part of Britain,
That’s what the whole point of the IRA. They want Northern Ireland to cease to be part of Britain, and to unite with the rest of the island of Ireland.
People in Northern Ireland have the same British citizenship and the same passport as Scotland, England and Wales. They elect members of Parliament who sit in Westminster.
More than 3,200 have died in Northern Ireland since the “troubles” flared up again in 1969.
TItbit of information.
When the Republic of Ireland came into being on 18 April 1949, the British Parliament passed the Ireland Act, which declared that although Eire had ceased to be part of His Majesty’s dominions, the Republic of Ireland is not a foreign country. Citizens of Ireland have the right to vote in UK elections, stand for office, etc, just like British citizens.Posted by pog-ma-thon on 2005 08 04 at 11:01 AM • permalink
Terrorism in Britain these last thirty years has killed fewer people than Dr Harold Shipton, and we are still not shooting tall, bearded doctors on sight.
His sneering, condescending response was that more Americans died from aspirin that year than terrorism.
These two comments are just typical of the kind of self-important and completely oblivious garbage I’ve come to expect from the left these days. They open their mouths and say anything at all to avoid having to face the facts on the ground. It’s a kind of personality disorder, I think, characteristic of people who have knee-jerk denial hardwired into the brain.
#26 – you better tell the British Government about this new region that is mysteriously now part of Britain.
They are under the false impression that Northern Ireland isn’t part of Britain.
http://www.direct.gov.uk/Gtgl1/GuideToGovernment/AboutBritain/
AboutBritainArticles/fs/en?CONTENT_ID=10012517&chk=loPvDsOf course that link contains an & and hence will be wrecked by the crappy linking code on this site, it’s the “Key facts about the United Kingdom” link on
http://www.direct.gov.uk/Gtgl1/GuideToGovernment/AboutBritain/fs/enBetter tell the CIA as well, they seem also have the same misunderstanding:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/uk.htmlAny idea why they would use such a retarded name as “The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”? Do you think the US might try “The United States of America and Ohio”.
[Urls turned into copy-paste only by the Administrator. Expression Engine currently has trouble with certain character entities in urls.]
Still time to get those buffoons rezoned as an impact area for live-fire training…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 08 04 at 11:59 AM • permalink
“Terrorism in Britain these last thirty years has killed fewer people than Dr Harold Shipton, and we are still not shooting tall, bearded doctors on sight.”
Dr Shipman killed 230 over several years
Lockerbie airliner bombing – a terrorist attack by the Islamic “Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya” – 270 in one day
Posted by Kosmopolit on 2005 08 04 at 12:26 PM • permalink
Sigh, looks like it wrecked the Google url…trying again: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=“Harold+Shipman”
I’m perfectly willing to grant moral equivalence between Islamist clerics and the Nazis, if Bob Ellis wishes.
Mein Kampf, of course, did not get its wide distribution in English-language libraries until after the Nazis were defeated and all once-Nazi lands had been occupied. And during the fighting, Owen Mosley and other Fascist leaders were imprisoned for the duration.
So here’s the deal, Bob; we put these preaching clerics in prison for the duration of the war on terror, and bar the Koran from our libraries until after OBL has blown out his own brains and his successors have surrendered.
Do we have a bargain?
Posted by Warmongering Lunatic on 2005 08 04 at 01:30 PM • permalink
#29 You’d better tell the French
#26 – you better tell the British Government about this new region that is mysteriously now part of Britain.
They are under the false impression that Northern Ireland isn’t part of Britain.
Very clever Sam. Except from your link there is no such thing as ‘Britain’ either. There is Great Britain – the island consisting of England, Scotland and Wales – and there is Northern Ireland – the northern part of the island of Ireland. The two of these make up the United Kingdom.
However even if we do give you your little semantics game then you still have the fact that putting together Lockerbie, the PIRA, Copeland, 7/7 you get far more than the 250ish that Shipman killed.
Oh and the reason you should tell the French? The island of Great Britain was historically so named as to distinguish it from the region of France called Brittany (Bretagne and Grande Bretagne). Therefore if you want to be strictly accurate Britain is actually a region of France and you really should tell them they have a bunch of terrorist secessionists on the loose.
regards
jon
I agree once you factor in all those you get way above 250. Great Britain does not have, shall we say, a peaceful history 🙂
I was only responding to the IRA bit.
But when people refer to Britain now, they mean Great Britain. That much I think everyone can agree on – they do not however mean Northern Ireland, if they did they’d use refer to the UK (or they are going to get misinterpreted by lots of people).
But when people refer to Britain now, they mean Great Britain. That much I think everyone can agree on – they do not however mean Northern Ireland, if they did they’d use refer to the UK (or they are going to get misinterpreted by lots of people).
Fair enough, Not being an Australian I have no idea how things are referred to over there. On the otherhand everyone I know here would use Britain and UK interchangably and if they are talking about just the island of Great Britain, particularly in relation to Northern Ireland they would say ‘mainland Britain’ -eg do a search on BBC news and you will find numerous references to mainland Britain.
regards
Jon
Ellis’ Shipman comment is just typical of the arguments you get from the left. My experience talking with the left is that they argue as if they’re still in an undergraduate debating society. They look for one-liners that are seemingly designed to illicit claps and cheers from an imaginary audience. It doesn’t matter if the said line doesn’t stand up to even a moment’s scrutiny. The problem is they begin to believe these cute word games constitute real arguments.
That’s why these blogs are so good. These throw-away lines can be shown, in minute detail, for what they really are- usually vacuous analogies and non sequiters. As posters have done today with Ellis’ ridiculous comparison.
I cringed when I heard this cleric on the radio:
Abdul Nasser Ben Brika, also known as Abu Bakr, maintains he is no threat to Australia despite acknowledging that some of his students have attended terrorist training camps and his refusal to tell them not to engage in violence.
He has been under watch by ASIO for some time, his passport has been revoked and in June agents raided his home and removed a number of documents.
“I am not involved in anything here. I am teaching my brothers here the Koran and the Sunna and I’m trying my best to keep myself, my family, my kids and my… the Muslims close to this religion,” he said.
“I am telling you that my religion doesn’t tolerate other religion. It doesn’t tolerate. The only one law which needs to spread – it can be here or anywhere else – has to be Islam.
“According to my religion, jihad is a part of my religion and what you have to understand that anyone who fights for the sake of Allah, the first when he dies, the first drop of blood that comes from him out, all his sin will be forgiven.”
He has a pregnant wife and six children.
more here PM Condems Muslim cleric’s comments and here Australian Islamic leader defends jihad and here Islamic council condems attacks on terrorism comments – if the shoe fits….
1. He’s breeding.
2. If he’s no threat I will eat my hat.I just wanted to shout at the radio – doesn’t achieve much, but I felt better.
When the moonbats are baying I like to tell them that 18,000 people die in Australia because of medical malpractice each year and less than 500 from guns, so I’d like to ban doctors and have a gun.
—Nora
Posted by The Thin Man Returns on 2005 08 04 at 09:03 PM • permalink
The left supported and were apologists for Hitler at the beginning of WWII also.
At the risk of going OT, I can’t let that one go past.
German socialists and communists were the bitterest enemies of Hitler, and you can guess what happened to them when he came to power. On the other hand, Hitler cosied up to the conservative forces, who then faithfully supported him until WWII started going sour.
In the international arena too, many conservatives were happy to reach an accommodation with Hitler. Need I mention which party Neville Chamberlain belonged to?
Of course, the USSR and many communists behaved shamefully when Poland was dismembered, but the entire left did not follow suit.
Overall, communism wins the 20th century award for brutality, oppression, lying, and general bastardry, but the Right also tried hard to win the award. A pox on both their houses!
Posted by Lionel Mandrake on 2005 08 04 at 10:21 PM • permalink
So you’ve addressed that German socialists were opposed to the Nazis…no argument there, although the Nazis and the various commie groups were really two birds of a feather as far as their penchant for street warfare in the late 1920s and calls for the overthrow of the Weimar Republic went. But somehow you completely neglected to say anything about the rest of the world, where much the left did cheerlead or tacitly supported the Nazis because of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Until the Wehrmacht went East, of course.
In the interest of fairness though, I’ll note that Poland and Czechoslovakia would probably have been fucked all the same if the power struggle at the end of Weimar had resulted in the Communists rising to power instead, what with Eastern Europe then being trapped between two rather determined (to put it charitably) Communist countries from the East and West. Chalk that up to the shameful behaviour of Chamberlain et al., who I doubt would have stood up to an emerging Communist bloc any more than they did to the Nazis.
However, perhaps you’ve also noticed that the number of righties today who actually defend the 1930s conservative appeaseniks is, well, close to nil. It’s difficult to say the same thing about lefties, among whom it’s still fashionable to defend the behaviour of the Left during the run-up to WWII. Not that this is much of a surprise, since large swathes of the Left (and I’m talking about actual socialists here, not confused touchy-feely social democrat types) also still deny having been wrong about the USSR from, well, 1919 to 1989.
- Yeah thats right egg.
Another thing to be conveniently ignored by the left.
Go here if you want to read more.
Here is the url if the link doesnt work.
http://jonjayray.tripod.com/hitler.html
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