Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

From the Toronto Star, The End of the Necons, as America stands incompetent and morally bankrupt as a champion of human rights:

Excerpt: An America, too, whose diplomatic influence has cratered, due not only to the unilateral belligerence with which America went to war in Iraq, but also the incompetence subsequently exposed in almost every particular of its Iraq occupation: intelligence breakdowns; acrimonious relations between the civilian and military U.S. occupation leadership; rampant theft by contractors; and the failure to provide Iraqis with security, power, fresh water and other essentials even now, 43 months after the invasion. The resulting diplomatic void has been filled by China and Russia, now resisting U.S. calls for their imposition of sanctions against North Korea and Iran, respectively.

There also is the blighting of America's self-image as a champion of human rights, with U.S.-sanctioned torture of terrorist suspects Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Canadian citizen Maher Arar, and countless other detainees at Guantanamo Bay, at the network of covert CIA detention centres across Europe and the Middle East, and at Saddam Hussein's notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, reopened by U.S. forces to warehouse thousands of Iraqi citizens rousted from their homes in random sweeps. Bush's repeated lie that "America does not do torture" merely compounds the current distrust of the United States.

Marek Bage: "Naw, nothing friendly going on here."

Or here, either.

Richard Falk, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, in the International Herald Tribune,  refers to the ‘dubious verdict’ in Saddam’s trial.

Excerpt: The American stage managing of this judicial process in Baghdad has been evident to close observers all along. It always seemed legally dubious to initiate a criminal trial against Saddam, while the American occupation was encountering such strong resistance by Saddam loyalists, especially as the U.S.-led invasion was widely regarded throughout the world as itself embodying the crime of aggressive war, a crime for which surviving Nazi leaders were charged and punished at Nuremberg after World War II.

The cost of this political opportunism by the United States goes beyond the narrow circumstances of this trial. No one doubts that Saddam and the other defendants were substantively guilty of crimes against humanity when they killed 148 civilians in the town of Dujail back in 1982 after a failed assassination attempt; collective punishment is an international crime whatever the provocation. But the potential contribution to building a legal tradition of accountability applicable to political leaders has been undermined in this instance by the circumstances and auspices of the this tribunal - and by the way the prosecution proceeded.

Simon Warriner: "Yes, using retarded kids is beyond the pale, and so is cluster bombing the bejesus out of an area you are about to return to its rightfull owners whose kids will get blown to bits by your venality."

Hamas, which is going into a coalition government of 'National Unity' with its enemies al-Fatah from today, decided on a fitting gesture to signify the completion of its egregious and miserably failed term in office - it gulled a teenaged girl into blowing herself to bits with a bomb yesterday.

Details of the incident were reported on SBS World News last night.

The girl recorded her farewells and read out her testament in a television studio rigged up by Hamas with neatly lettered placards covered in Islamist slogans before she set off to an Israeli checkpoint.

An Israeli soldier was lightly injured in the explosion which blew the girl to smithereens.

Additional television footage recorded her mother being overwhelmed with well-wishers at her house. Some appeared to be laughing and smiling.

Not the mother, though.

She was blanched, unblinking and clearly in shock.

Talking about Fatah, they're the 'moderates' in the coalition with Hamas.

That says something, doesn't it?

Hey? Can anyone remember the details of the Fatah massacre in a Jewish kindergarten, I think at Eilat?

At some time in the 1960s? Or early '70s?

I recall the incident which occured when I was a child and was trying to find a mention of it in the web?

The closest I got was this Z-mag item complaining because the New York Times had the gall to report a separate attack on another Israeli kindergarten.

I think it's highly indicative that a massacre of actual toddlers (and their teacher) which foreshadowed the Beslan attacks by so many years seems to have faded now from popular memory.

Perhaps it's to help keep alive the myth that the conflict between the Arabs and Jews somehow just started with the outcome of the Six Day War.

Mr. Lyvers. You don't know what you're talking about.

The U.S., having decided that an Iranian victory would not serve its interests, began supporting Iraq: measures already underway to upgrade U.S.-Iraq relations were accelerated, high-level officials exchanged visits, and in February 1982 the State Department removed Iraq from its list of states supporting international terrorism.

The U.S. restored formal relations with Iraq in November 1984, but the U.S. had begun, several years earlier, to provide it with intelligence and military support.

The above quotes can be found here. I also recommend that you look into what is called Iraqgate. You may be surprised at what you learn. 

Although it is a stretch to call Saddam Hussein "Washington's best friend" during the period, there can be no doubt that he was being courted a very high levels. To imply otherwise is either ignorant or "being deliberately deceptive for propaganda purposes".

While no-one denies that Saddam Hussein should have been tried for his crimes, but in a proper court, not a kangaroo one, let’s not forget that when he committed some of the worst of those crimes he was regarded as an ally by the United States. Why should Saddam be tried for crimes and those who aided and abetted him, by commission or omission, not be tried? Good question.  It was the Americans and Brits who supplied the gas he dropped on the Kurds. But of course that would be real justice not the oxymoronic version the Americans have come up with and her toadying allies have supported.

No wonder many Iraqis consider Western justice to be a joke!

First Saddam and now Rumsfeld says Norman Solomon.

Excerpt: Saddam Hussein has received a death sentence for crimes he committed more than a year before Donald Rumsfeld shook his hand in Baghdad. Let's reach back into history and extract these facts:

* On Dec. 20, 1983, the Washington Post reported that Rumsfeld "visited Iraq in what U.S. officials said was an attempt to bolster the already improving U.S. relations with that country."

* Two days later, the New York Times cited a "senior American official" who "said that the United States remained ready to establish full diplomatic relations with Iraq and that it was up to the Iraqis."

And for all those who supported Saddam during his worst atrocities, Robert Fisk writes:

So America's one-time ally has been sentenced to death for war crimes he committed when he was Washington's best friend in the Arab world. America knew all about his atrocities and even supplied the gas--along with the British, of course--yet there we were yesterday declaring it to be, in the White House's words, another "great day for Iraq". That's what Tony Blair announced when Saddam Hussein was pulled from his hole in the ground on 13 December 2003. And now we're going to string him up, and it's another great day.

Of course, it couldn't happen to a better man. Nor a worse. It couldn't be a more just verdict--nor a more hypocritical one. It's difficult to think of a more suitable monster for the gallows, preferably dispatched by his executioner, the equally monstrous hangman of Abu Ghraib prison, Abu Widad, who would strike his victims on the head with an axe if they dared to condemn the leader of the Iraqi Socialist Baath Party before he hanged them. But Abu Widad was himself hanged at Abu Ghraib in 1985 after accepting a bribe to put a reprieved prisoner to death instead of the condemned man.

But we can't mention Abu Ghraib these days because we have followed Saddam's trail of shame into the very same institution. And so by hanging this awful man, we hope--don't we?--to look better than him, to remind Iraqis that life is better now than it was under Saddam.

And, in the words of Iraqi blogger, Riverbend:

Excerpt: Execute the dictator. It’s that simple. When American troops are being killed by the dozen, when the country you are occupying is threatening to break up into smaller countries, when you have militias and death squads roaming the streets and you’ve put a group of Mullahs in power- execute the dictator.

Everyone expected this verdict from the very first day of the trial. There was a brief interlude when, with the first judge, it was thought that it might actually be a coherent trial where Iraqis could hear explanations and see what happened. That was soon over with the prosecution’s first false witness. Events that followed were so ridiculous; it’s difficult to believe them even now.

The sound would suddenly disappear when the defense or one of the defendants got up to speak. We would hear the witnesses but no one could see them- hidden behind a curtain, their voices were changed. People who were supposed to have been dead in the Dujail incident were found to be very alive.

Judge after judge was brought in because the ones in court were seen as too fair. They didn’t instantly condemn the defendants (even if only for the sake of the media). The piece de resistance was the final judge they brought in. His reputation vies only that of Chalabi- a well-known thief and murderer who ran away to Iran to escape not political condemnation, but his father’s wrath after he stole from the restaurant his father ran.

Simon Warriner: "Just so we know ,the source of your info, I am assuming this would be the same O. North that was caught selling weapons to finance a particularly nasty war in Nicuragua without the approval of congress."

What are you suggesting now, Simon?

That the Al-Fateh web site was written by Oliver North?

This puts me in mind of people who, when shown some outrageous piece of Islamist twaddle from Iran or Ba'athist propaganda from Syria reproduced on line the the MEMRI site, attack the MEMRI site for being pro-Israeli.

As if that altered things.

It wouldn't matter if Beelzeebub or Baal themselves pointed to the Al-Fateh website?

It's a Hamas website that encourages kids to commit suicide bombing attacks against civilians. Admittedly, nothing unusual about that these days.

Would you have preferred it if Hayley Mills had pointed it out? Or maybe Pee Wee Herman?

Simon Warrinder, as your earlier posting suggests, the Israeli army has created a tourism spin-off from its wars. Yes, a chilling example of how violence may appear normal to our way of life. It's all part of the 'Infowar'. At its most bizarre, it even turns to philosophy and urban theory to soften its image.

The extracts below are from a piece by Eyal Weizman, an architect, writer and Director of Goldsmith's College Centre for Research Architecture. You can read his article at nettime or here.

He points to a military fascination with French theorists such as Deleuze and Guattari. Indeed, as far as the military is concerned, urban warfare is the ultimate post-modern form of conflict.

Weizman uses this example of an Israeli Defence Force (IDF) attack on the city of Nablus in April 2002.

During the battle soldiers moved within the city across hundreds of metres of 'overground tunnels' carved out through a dense urban structure. They used none of the city's streets, roads, alleys or courtyards, or any of the external doors, internal stairwells and windows, but moved horizontally through walls and vertically through holes blasted in ceilings and floors.

If you still believe, as the IDF would like you to, that moving through walls is a relatively gentle form of warfare, the following description of the sequence of events might change your mind.

A Palestinian woman identified only as Aisha, interviewed by a journalist for the Palestine Monitor, described the experience: "Imagine it - you're sitting in your living room, which you know so well; this is the room where the family watches television together after the evening meal, and suddenly that wall disappears with a deafening roar, the room fills with dust and debris, and through the wall pours one soldier after the other, screaming orders. You have no idea if they're after you, if they've come to take over your home, or if your house just lies on their route to somewhere else. The children are screaming, panicking. Is it possible to even begin to imagine the horror experienced by a five-year-old child as four, six, eight, 12 soldiers, their faces painted black, sub-machine-guns pointed everywhere, antennas protruding from their backpacks, making them look like giant alien bugs, blast their way through that wall?"

This is the new soldier/architect's response to the logic of 'smart bombs'. The latter have paradoxically resulted in higher numbers of civilian casualties simply because the illusion of precision gives the military-political complex the necessary justification to use explosives in civilian environments.

Here another use of theory as the ultimate 'smart weapon' becomes apparent. The military's seductive use of theoretical and technological discourse seeks to portray war as remote, quick and intellectual, exciting and even economically viable. Violence can thus be projected as tolerable and the public encouraged to support it. As such, the development and dissemination of new military technologies promote the fiction being projected into the public domain that a military solution is possible in situations where it is at best very doubtful.

When the military talks theory to itself, it seems to be about changing its organisational structure. When it talks theory to the public, it seems to be about projecting the image of a civilized and sophisticated military. And when the military 'talks' to the enemy, theory could be understood as a particularly intimidating weapon of 'shock and awe', the message being: 'You will never even understand that which kills you.'

There was some amazing follow-up to this bizarre incident involving Hamas gun-men hiding behind women human shields in a gun fight with the IDF outside a Mosque.

SBS-TV's broadcast of the German DW-TV news on Saturday 4 November (both German and English language editions) featured video overlay clearly showing one of the Hamas heroes fleeing the Mosque dressed as a woman.

He was bustled into a wating vehicle (which looked like it could have been an ambulance, even though he was running un-aided and appeared not to be injured).

He then fled the scene.

He was assisted by other men (not cross-dressed on this occasion).

Also, ITV footage shown on Jim Leherer's Newshour programme broadcast Saturday afternoon included images of men mixing with the women outside the Mosque including, bizarely, a video-crew.

While the heroic Hamas guys were fleeing, women were left crouching behing sand dumps and blocks of masonry, two being killed and others wounded.

You can see why the political Left is so keen to support Hamas.

Roslyn Ross "But you don't want perspective, you want playground definitions of good and evil, right and wrong, them and us and I leave you to it".

Except, of course, Sheik Hilaly's sexist comments were adamantly denounced by Muslims, too.

There's really no need to defend him by a withdrawl into cultural relativism. And if he was Jewish, you wouldn't bother.

Solomon Wakeling: "Nevertheless the feminist reaction to O'Shanes comments was quite viceral, almost "politically correct" in its intensity and her views cannot therefore be attributed to feminists as a class."

I don't recall any feminist reaction to Pat's remarks. I suppose there must have been some.

Malcolm Fraser's speech at the Law and Justice Foundation on October 31 is well worth reading for anyone who missed it.

Fraser talks about the Howard Government using the 'Muslim issue' a la Tampa for the next election and the dangers this poses for Australia.

He says there are some important questions for Australia:

There are some important questions for Australians.

Why the Australian Government is the only western government as I am advised which has accepted that the Military Tribunals provide a reasonable standard of justice for its own people? A situation which the United States, the founder of those Military Tribunals, does not accept for its own American citizens. It is one of the great wonders of Major Mori, Hicks’ Marine lawyer that the Australian Government does absolutely nothing to achieve a fair trail and that it parrots American defences of the military tribunals, from notes sent to it by the Pentagon.

We now have a growing number of people who appear not to matter to those in authority. I probably should have said at the beginning that I call this Who matters, how many. Not only David Hicks, Cornelia Rau, Vivien Alvarez Solon. Not only our indigenous population who’s problems seem low on the government’s agenda, but increasingly refugees or potential refugees. We know the government sought to excise all of Australia from our migration zone. In the process the government would have broken a promise made only last year to keep children out of detention. This time it was going to be detention in some off shore prison. Out of sight, and the government would have hoped, quite out of mind.

Roslyn Ross "But you don't want perspective, you want playground definitions of good and evil, right and wrong, them and us and I leave you to it".

Bit like you and the rights of Israeli citizens, no?

The lie of moral relativism. There is no right or wrong only perspective. The complete kit of any moral charlaton.

There is a wrong and there is a right. Inside the Catholic Church there were perpetrators of sexual abuse and protectors of those abusers. These people were wrong and deserved earthly punishment. There is no sense of perspective to be had.

Equally it is the same case for Hilaly and his supporters. Women are not "pieces of meat". It is not for any other person to decide outside of the women if she is "asking for it". To think in any other way is wrong. It it should be condemned as such. Finding the equivalent crime does not take away or excuse the crime under attention.

The truly disgusting part about the moral relativist and their sense of "perspective" is just how arbitrary it really all is. How much sense of perspective has Rosyln Ross ever brought to the table when discussing the "crimes" of Israel? How much moral equivalence?

Therein endeth the lesson.

Geoff, posting references and notes which are relevant to the position debated and the article quoted makes sense.

Posting references, as you have done, which relate to nothing, merely makes you look foolish.

Jay, life is grey. It is not black and white and not either/or. I stated quite clearly that Hilaly deserved condemnation but that does not prevent me, or anyone else applying intelligence, to look at what underlies his words and actions.

Seeking to understand why he said what he said does not automatically mean one ignores what he said. But there's probably a subtlety there which eludes you.

The point, which you seem determined to miss, is that the major religions are still, inherently sexist. They may not use the words which Hilaly does but they still treat women as second class citizens.

But you don't want perspective, you want playground definitions of good and evil, right and wrong, them and us and I leave you to it.

Roslyn Ross: "Hilaly is not the problem".

Actually, he is the problem. He and those of his ilk. Rightly, many Muslims have spoken out against his words. I congratulate those Muslims and I am proud to live along side of them. By attempting to deflect attention away from him and his words, by finding a moral equivalence, you shame these people and you shame yourself.

Hilaly deserved to be flayed (non-violently of course), and he was. The same way the Catholic Church was flayed, and rightly deserved to be, over child abuse going back decades.

There was no finding moral equivalence in that episode. There was no pulling out the quotes of Muslim, Jewish or any other religious leaders. One either supported that behaviour from the church (which was wrong) or one did not (which was right). Pure and very simple.

On the St Augustine issue. If he were to make the same quotes today he would be rightly flayed. In the age we live in I doubt he would, but one will never know. If he did make such statements and I was asked if he would make a good "Australian citizen", my answer would be NO.

I have no time for your defence. You are standing on quicksand and the more you wriggle about the more you sink.

Geoff:  You might like to substantiate your claim that my discussion of the inherent misogyny in religion is a form of bigotry! The 'fear and hatred' of women in religion is well known and has been the subject of numerous books, none of which I would expect you to have read. The article I cited was relevant to the point I was making but it is hardly the only such article available.

By the way, the Archbishop of Perth, Roger Herft, was quoted in Friday’s Sydney Morning Herald making the same point. I guess he’s a bigot too for saying :

“the divinely sanctioned world view authenticated by the selective use of scripture …. Keeps women in subjection.”

He compared Sydney diocese’s refusal to ordain women priests with some Islam thinking that repressed women.

You said: You have produced a number of quotes purporting to be of Christian and Jewish religious origin to make out some spurious equivalence argument to dilute the significance of the ugly and dangerous nonsense spewed by that clerical lunatic, and others of the same ilk, just a few days ago.

The quotes were to support my claim that misogyny is present in all religious teachings, particularly the Big Five. They are relevant because Muslim bashing gets no-one anywhere and creates only more division in society. If you had read my post properly I also said Hilaly should be condemned for what he said, but of course, your mind went blank at that point.

When we have a problem which needs to be solved, taking a mature, rational and reasoned approach is going to get us further than simply jumping up and down playground style and pointing fingers.

Hilaly is not the problem. The misogyny inherent in Islam is the problem but, to understand that misogyny and to see it in perspective, one needs to understand that misogyny is inherent in all religions, most particularly in those which are practised in fundamentalist form.

My first response to Hilaly was to seek to understand it. I happen to believe that governments need to be judicious about immigrant selection. I don't think any people who follow fundamentalist religion, and that includes Christian, Jewish, Hinduism and Islam, are going to fit into a secular society like Australia. The very nature of their beliefs and the closed system in which they operate means that they and their children can never belong.

But, I would make the point that this applies not just to Muslims, who are being singled out at this point, but to any fundamentalist religion which requires its followers to live in a way which is incompatible with the values and lifestyle of the greater community.

You said: no matter how many centuries ago these words were supposed to have been said, to bolster a truly dishonest claim that this is moral equivalence.

The moral equivalence, if you can comprehend the distinction, is that Hilaly said what he said because of the beliefs inherent in his religion. Those sorts of beliefs are still found in other religions it is just that people are not taping the fundamentalist Christians, Jews or Hindus.

You said: And of course even the "quotes" are vicious fabrications. In the entire vast realm of cyberspace

Really? Then how do you account for the comprehensive Notes and References from the authors. You might like to do some reading.

Notes

[1] As well as Muslims and Buddhists, Jews and Muslims, etc. For disagreements within each, see below.

[2] For example, Hunsburger (1995): "Those, who make the strongest claim to being 'true believers' of Christianity (and possibly other major world religions), and who reportedly follow traditional religious teachings most scrupulously, are also those who tend to be the most intolerant of their fellow human beings". See also Armstrong (1993, p. 49); Brown (1988, pp. 98-99); Batson, Schoenrade, & Ventis (1993); Donahue (1985).

[3] For example Article of Religion #18 of the Book of Common Prayer (1968, p. 619): "They also are to be had accursed that presume to say, That every man shall be saved by the Law or Sect which he professeth..."; see also Hunsburger (1995, p. 124) and Moore & Kramer (2000).

[4] Admonitions against women (their beauty, their voice etc) are rather common in the Wisdom Literature; e.g. in Ecclus. 9:8, also in Prov. 5:3-6; and in "The words of Ahikar", cca. 7th century BCE. See pp. 270-275 in Winton (1961).

[5] A notable exception is Eccl. 7:26: "And I find more bitter than death the woman, whose heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands: whoso pleaseth God shall escape from her?". Merkin (1987, p. 403) writes of its author: "his distrust of women's wiles verges on virtual misogyny". Ben Sirah, whose Book of Wisdom belongs to the Apocrypha, also has a lengthy attack on women, culminating in "For from garments cometh a moth, and from women wickedness". (Ecclus. 42:13).

[6] Hassan (1991) makes a similar attempt vis a vis Islam, interpreting the Koran so as to take off its misogynic edge.

[7] For example, Power's (1995) analysis of Augustine ("one of the men who made the West", p. 5). According to her, "...Augustine legitimated a situation where violence of men to women became progressively more acceptable" (p. 229).

[8] Milne (1989): ..."the biblical text itself is structured as male mythology; Trible (1990, p. 95) who describes as "scandalous" the translation of Deut. 32:18 "God who gave you birth" by the Jerusalem Bible as : 'God who fathered you; c.f. Tappa (1986, p. 101): "...Christianity has been captured by a patriarchal system... Patriarchy has created God in man's image".

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By the way, I did link the article. I also explained why I had not linked it in the first place. I truly had not thought you lot would get hysterical about a few religious quotes. There you go.

You said: I can't speak for C Parsons, Roslyn Ross. But I can say for certain I haven't learnt anything more. There is not a single thing about this issue, and about you, that I didn't know already.  

What a remarkably well informed man you are. Perhaps we could have a discussion on Karen Armstrong's views on misogyny in religion. Or the Laws of Manu and how they impacted on Hindu women? What are your thoughts?      

C Parsons, I think it is a purely factual statement to say that some women do lie about Sexual Assault. I have heard from those who practice in the area that it can be common in Family law, especially in bitter custody battles. I think O'Shane's comments were ill-advised and, grudgingly accept, that it created an implication that she was biased. I think what she ought to have said in defence of Geoff Clark was that he was entitled, like anyone else, to the presumption of innocence (and also, as she did in fact say, that this does not therefore mean that the women are lying but that they had a rebuttable presumption of a bona fide claim). Nevertheless the feminist reaction to O'Shanes comments was quite viceral, almost "politically correct" in its intensity and her views cannot therefore be attributed to feminists as a class.

I cannot for the life of me see the connection to Hilaly. These comments were made more than a year ago and they do not address the issue of whether women invite rape by their dress. I expect as a feminist Pat O'Shane would be rightly apalled by such an opinion attributed to her.

Simon Warriner: "The torture and genocide of a people was presented as holiday infotainment for the world tourist, along the lines of "see what we are up against, aren't we doing it tough"

Perhaps The Burnie Advocate could give equal time to Hamas?

Maybe it could reprint highlights of the Hamas constitution (Article 7) calling on Muslims everywhere to kill Jews wherever they find them?

Maybe tourists could visit some bomb factories? Or take part in a rocket attack on a Jewish settlement?

Maybe the tourists could hide behind some Palestinian women for safety to better experience the frisson of combat?

Or tie a bomb to a retarded kid and nudge him toward an Israeli checkpoint?

It's important that people know why we support the Palestinian Authority in all of this?

I was treated to an article in my local paper "The Advocate" in Burnie, Tas two Saturdays ago. In the travel section was a full page effort promoting "behind the scenes tours of Israel's anti Arab military machine. A more slickly written peice of propoganda I have never seen. It must have appeared elsewhere because a collegue mentioned it got a comment on that journalistic molehill that is the Sunrise program on 7.

The torture and genocide of a people was presented as holiday infotainment for the world tourist, along the lines of "see what we are up against, aren't we doing it tough"

If this is what passes for a holiday, should we be surprised if some of our youth think that denigrating a mentally disadvantaged school mate passes as entertainment.  

We have been led to a place where the banality of evil is passed of as entertainment, and we are the poorer for it. Shock and awe is not a movie, it is people's homes blown to the shithouse, kids ripped limb from limb and the dust made toxic for an eternity by depleted uranium.

All this based on a proven series of lies, then we witness Israel drop tens of thousands of cluster bombs on Lebanon in the dying days of an assault that was as justifiable as a kicking I once witnessed a gang member give an old man for spilling his beer in a public bar.

And we wonder why our boys think humiliating a girl with diminished mental capacity is entertaining.

Those who would claim they know what is best for this nation need to explain how supportting tyranny and mass murder of non combatants is acceptable behaviour and why we are doing it. Protecting us from evil terrorists is not enough. One wrong does not and never has justified another. Especially when the other side of the arguement has decided that turning themselves into human handgrenades is an acceptable option.

Anyone with half a brain knows that adding fuel to a fire will not put it out, only the removal of fuel, oxygen or heat will do that. As adults and parents we have a moral responsibilty to lead by example. The example being set our children is one of bullying leaders, spinless, souless and incompetant journalism and a vacuous public obsessed with sport, the latest toys, and any threat to their ability to enjoy the previous two items. I despair for our kids, I truly do.

And, it is news to me that every 'quote' has to be linked on Webdiary. Many are not, but given that Geoff and C.Parsons are keen to learn more. Here is the link.

No Roslyn Ross. It's only when you come out with your bigotted nonsense that you have an obligation to link. So that all can see for themselves the way your mind operates. Come to think of it, that's all the time.

You have produced a number of quotes purporting to be of Christian and Jewish religious origin to make out some spurious equivalence argument to dilute the significance of the ugly and dangerous nonsense spewed by that clerical lunatic, and others of the same ilk, just a few days ago. Even if the quotes are accurate, what kind of a person could possibly regard them as in the slightest bit relevant?

The spiritual leader of Australian Muslims makes some appalling comments about rape victims being uncovered meat? So what is your first response? To troll the internet for something equally obscene, no matter how obscure and unknown, no matter how many centuries ago these words were supposed to have been said, to bolster a truly dishonest claim that this is moral equivalence.

And of course even the "quotes" are vicious fabrications. In the entire vast realm of cyberspace, the only reference to these "quotes", in the context you have claimed, is on this one website. You found it. You failed to link it until after C Parsons had. You have given not the slightest piece of information about who is behind this site, this secondary source,  whose material you have lifted to make your case. 

And you continue to post here, without apology, without apparent embarassment and without retraction or correction, even though your stuff has been exposed for what it is more times than I can remember.

I can't speak for C Parsons, Roslyn Ross. But I can say for certain I haven't learnt anything more. There is not a single thing about this issue, and about you, that I didn't know already.        

C Parsons if St Augustine is Jewish my good ole sunday school teacher has lot to answer for! What else was he lying about?

Perhaps where not the only ones that go to heaven? Maybe we should just all sit in a room by ourselves, pull the curtain across and pretend nobody else made it?

I will have to have a word to St Peter. He's a Hindu, no?

Richard:   Thanks. Stuff happens. It gave the boys a bit of fun I am sure making the most of the mistakes thinking they were mine.

I probably should have thought of posting the link as it is an interesting article. Daniela Kramer is an Israeli social sciences researcher from Oranim-School of Education of the Kibbutz Movement  and Michael Moore is Associate Professor of social psychology at the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa.

The religious quotes came from their article which is titled Women are the Root of All Evil: the Misogyny of Religions, which is an examination of selected writings of the five major world religions.

I guess at the time of writing I thought the 'quotes' were interesting enough rather than the article itself although clearly some Webdiarists are keen to learn more.

Hi Margo, good to see you on deck.

Hi Michael. How is Tully and how is YOUR drupal? I'm visiting David in the course of rendezvousing with Noel Hadjimichael about his current passion - educating future citizens about how our democracy works through student parliaments in schools. Very Exciting.  David is showing me how the back room of the site works - I suppose I'm putting my toe on the deck to see how it feels.

I'll drink to that, hey St Augustine.

Margo: Hi Phil. I've just published my first comment in the new system! And it was easy!

Geoff Pahoff: "Typically, you [Roslyn Ross] have not provided the links to the sites from which you have lifted these "religious quotes".

She Googled a website in a vain effort to look knowledgeable.

She then cherry-picked the bits that speak poorly of Judaism. And is too poorly educated to realise that St Augustine wasn't Jewish.

Thus endeth the lesson.

Roslyn Ross, quoting St Augustine;

"Augustine (354-430): "It is still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in any woman, "Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who hast not made me a woman."

But other Jewish religious writings are more specific."

Saint Augustine wasn't Jewish.

He was born, raised and educated as a Christian.

But don't let that get in your way of your daily dose of gratuitous Jew baiting.

Solomon Wakeling: "Bringing out Pat O'Shane as if there were any connection here is baffling."

See Roslyn's comment below about how misogyny is deeply seated in our society.

Like St Augustine, Pat O'Shane was raised a Catholic.

She is a noted feminist and left wing activist. Yet she still manged to suggest that women lie about sexual assault.

This must be because of the Jewish influences that worries Roslyn so much.

I'm just being helpful in explaining the moral underpinnings of the left wing of the women's movement.

If Abu Ghraib has indeed pushed people over a 'moral threshold' as to what is or is not acceptable, it is only because it taps into a deeply entrenched misogyny in the society.  

And more recently, while considering the uproar over the Australian Imam's comments in regard to women, we need to look deeper than the surface to understand what is going on.  

The reality is that while Hilaly's comments should rightly be condemned, such attitudes are a part not only of Islam but of all religions and simmer beneath the surface of secular society as well.

Kim Beazley touched upon this and he is right. Thirty or forty years ago women were said to be 'asking for it' if they were raped, and forty or fifty years ago, a child out of wedlock was such a shame, for a woman, not a man, that parents and society in most cases forced her to have the child as secretly as possible and to give it up for adoption.

Hatred or fear of women, which is what it is all about, has been part and parcel of all religions for millenia ..... at least since the patriarchal age when God 'became a man.'

Christian teaching says: "Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church" (I Cor 14: 34, 35).

In the words of Augustine:

Augustine (354-430): "It is still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in any woman."

The Jewish morning prayer, for men is brief and totally misogynistic:

"Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who hast not made me a woman."

But other Jewish religious writings are more specific:

"Women are said to have four qualities: gluttony, obedientness, laziness, and jealousness. Rabbi Yehuda says: wrathfulness and loquaciousness. Rabbi Levi says: also stealing and harlotry" (p. 488-489, # 110).

And, in the same vein as the Muslims, Jewish teaching says:

"Anything a man wants to do with his wife, he shall do. It is like meat that has come from the slaughterhouse; wants to eat it salted, he eats it. Roasted--he eats it. Boiled--he eats it." (p. 491, # 165).

Hinduism's Mahabharata teaches that:

 'women are the root of all evil' 

And
India's other great religious work, the Ramayana is in full agreement, saying:

"women are impure by their very birth, they blight all virtues, their nature is to be vicious, fickle and sharp-tongued.  "

By all means let us condemn what Hilaly said but in order not to be hypocrites we need to remember that Islam is not alone in its attitudes toward women and that all religions are still tainted with this ancienty hatred and fear.

Even the Christians, who have had their enlightenments and reformations still have a Pope who refuses to treat women as equals and maintains that only men may be priests ..... despite the clear evidence that Jesus accepted men and women as equals and that women acted as priests in the early years of the Christian Church.

Not that religion has ever let facts or justice get in the way of power and subjugation to serve its own ends.

Richard:  Apparently this comment wasn't posted correctly the first time.  At Roslyn's request I've repaired it. 

Mike Lyvers & Jay, actually I do find that quote hard to believe but I assume it has been verified. She doesn't appear to have paid very close attention to Hilaly's comments, as he was clearly stating that it was the woman's fault, not merely that there was increased likelihood. I stand corrected, anyhow.

C Parsons, yes but Omran specifically distanced himself from the idea that women invite rape. Bringing out Pat O'Shane as if there were any connection here is baffling.