ISOR = Islamic Sickos Of Rape

Islamist Sickos

They're doing some terrible things in the new Caliphate. There's the beheadings they video and post onYouTube, there's the mass murder and pit graves thing they've done with their prisoners, the slavery they've packed the women and children off into, and this whole business of Koran-or-the-sword with the very narrow-minded version of Islam they're throwing around.

And then there's this.

The stories have a sickening similarity. After sustained aerial attack, when soldiers walk into newly emptied, dusty streets in Iraq, dotted with dead bodies and mangled car carcasses, they have found naked women, bound and left on the ground, who have been raped repeatedly.  

Then there are the three "rooms of horror" in Mosul prison where clusters of women have been kept locked up and raped at will.  

Army chief Lieutenant-General David Morrison told me he is "disgusted" by the reports of sustained sexual violence. The ADF has already begun training its forces to be prepared to confront the aftermath of rape in wars.

I don't know about you, but I kind of draw the line when it comes to extending an understanding sort of hand. In a nutshell, these IS people are enacting a real life version of '120 Days of Sodom'. I don't know what the rationale is - I'm not going to be sympathetic with any religious claptrap - when you set up a rape-prison, you're on your own. Justice will come looking for you and it won't be playing nice.

The thing is, with the beheadings and the mass murders, they were trying to put a political point across. It doesn't make it okay, but the rationale has its own logic. It's terrorism. They're busy putting the terror into terrorism. Our society is so delicate and sensitive, it censors 'Salo', a movie based on the fiction of '120 Days of Sodom'. These people are doing it for real. Still, when you go around setting up a rape prison that's something that can be straight out of a book by the Marquis de Sade, that's just gratuitous sexual violence. What possible rationale could there be but out-and-out depravity?

This leads me to think that maybe war is justified. Maybe we can't just sit idly by and let this medieval savagery mixed with a Sadist Dystopia flourish, and still call ourselves civilised. We have to draw the line somewhere in the sand, otherwise there's no point in having institutions like the UN or the Hague.

But then I seem to recall we said the same sort of things about Saddam Hussein - and that turned out to be this current bit of mess. Tony Abbott is rarely right, but he did have it pegged when he described Syria as baddies fighting baddies. One does not necessarily get involved with the enemy fighting its enemy, and the enemy-of-an-enemy is still your enemy. But here we are, sending troops, right into this conflagration.

It's as if the Middle East is this kind of whirlpool of human misery and the rest of the world simply can't help but be sucked into it, gurgling all the way down. We in the first world would much prefer to sit in the comfort of our suburban existence but the world is simply dragging us off to face the black hole of human consciousness. It's terrifying and nauseating. This war with the the Islamic State of Rapists - or ISOR as I now like to now call them - is going to be a stomach turning existential nightmare.

It's War (Again)

I'm Away From Blogging For A Week And You Start A War?

Most of the wars since 1901 have been declared one way or another. The ones that weren't tended to be way too short or way too locking in legitimacy to gain popular support. At least this is what history books told you.

This week I found myself asking myself "hang on, did we just go to war? With the Islamic State?" I don't know about you, but it seemed that was exactly what has happened. It was odd that one minute Tony Abbott was going on about raising the terror alert to 'high' and the next thing you know we're sending planes and pilots and military advisers to Iraq, in order to fight the IS.

The ALP took a bipartisan stand against IS, but I don't think they really debated any point before the troops were dispatched. It was almost as if the flurry of activity to send troops and planes and bombs overwhelmed our poor little Prime Minister's head he forgot to actually declare war. Or perhaps it was simply that they do not wish to confer upon ISIS/ISIL/ /Islamic State/The Caliphate (and whatever else it wants to call itself) a proper stately status. And so it is off to war we go.

I don't want to say this too loudly but the whole blogging thing for me started about the time the West decided to go to Iraq in the first place so coming back here to blogger and seeing a war kicking off in Iraq again makes it all 'Deja Vu All Over Again'.

A lot of theories are going around about just what is going on with IS. All the beheadings and mass murder of prisoners hasn't exactly endeared themselves to the world, and the whole propaganda they are running to recruit Islamists to fight with them, is entirely hostile to just about everybody except other violent Islamists. Rumour has it that IS were the Islamists that even Al-Qaeda thought were too hard core. Now they have oil and they're selling the stuff on the black market to the tune of US$2m a day. Statehood can be lucrative if you can get yourself an Iraqi oil well.

Beheadings and mass killings in this day and age really is over the top and harks back to medieval horrors. The fact that they do this on video and post it on YouTube makes you appreciate just how far we haven't come from the year 1014AD. Hence, I understand the urge to go and blast the living daylights out of these savages - using the full savagery of modern weaponry. It just strikes me that this is one of those wars with no proper exit scenario. The other side is wanting a full apocalypse. Go Figure. Indeed, you could easily argue this is Gulf War Phase III and nothing is going to change. We're just up for more expenditure and caskets.

The most irritating thing about all this might be that Tony Abbott is banking on being a war time statesman with all of this stuff, which sits in line with the thought that patriotism is the first refuge of the scoundrel. We can begin to understand the recent budget as a 'pre-emptive' war time budget.

View From The Couch - 29/Jul/2014

Who Asked You, Peter Reith?

It's interesting Peter Reith has taken this moment to tell us he thinks the future Liberal Party leader has to be Julie Bishop. Peter Reith, an awful character at the best of times, did have a big mouth so it's not surprising he's chosen to speak out of turn; and yet he's basically sending up a weather balloon to see what happens when he nominates Julie Bishop. It's weird because it's hard to think of an equivalent happening right now where maybe a retired former minster like say Lindsay Tanner randomly nominating Tanya Plibersek to be the next Labor leader. Its hard to get my head around. basically, he's answering a question that hasn't been asked with an answer that probably isn't wanted by anybody. It might be true that Joe Hockey isn't the next best candidate after Tony Abbott - but why are we even talking about this now, when Tony is making his best impression as an international statesman?

I am not saying there is likely to be any leadership change in Tony Abbott's first term or even his second term. Gillard's knifing of Rudd with the support of Bill Shorten and others is not about to be replicated by the Coalition. However, of Australia's 28 prime ministers, only seven have been in office for more than four years so it's not unreasonable to suggest that after Abbott has had the job for at least four years or more, anything could happen.

Really now, Mr. Reith? Do tell!

We're Not Talking About The Band Severed Heads Here

The headline reads: Sydney man pictured with severed heads. It sounds like the guy is having a whale of a time.

However, a friend of the pair told Fairfax Media they have no intention of ever returning.
"They say they've never lived a better life than what they’re living now and 'you don't know what youse are missing out on, especially with the turn of events happening now [with the establishment of a caliphate in Iraq]," said the friend, who didn't want to be identified.

"People say they're worried these guys will come back but they understand that if they leave the country to go to Syria or Iraq they're not coming back. They're after two things - victory for Islam or martyrdom."

But the Attorney-General emphasised that home-grown terrorism remains a significant domestic threat.

He will seek to introduce legislation to parliament to make it an offence to encourage terrorism.

"One thing no one should think is that this is a problem on the other side of the world," said Brandis. "This is a problem that exists and germinates within our suburbs."

Argh. It's hard to tell who has the lower IQ - the guy who uses the plural of you as 'youse', or the Attorney General of this land - "Champion of Bigots" George Brandis - who thinks he can write a law to prohibit encouraging terrorism; especially when you consider the reason he wants to champion bigots is in the name of free speech and freedom of expression. The contradiction of his position had me in stitches of laughter until I realised he's going to try it anyway and waste everybody's time and money.

It's not good that there's some angry Arab-Australian running around chopping heads in Syria, but it seems the horse has bolted. The guy doesn't want to come back anyway. Meanwhile the rest of ISIS/ISIL is busy getting medieval on people's asses. They're placing decapitated heads on spikes. I mean, that's Vlad-Tepes-Krazy.

Work For The Dole Is A Kind Of Employment, No?

I don't get the conservative mental fixation about the imagined dole-bludgers. It's like they don't understand that at a certain point some people are not employable. That could be a point in time, or a point in the person's life, but being employable in the broadest sense, narrows so much that people cannot make the grade. They might be too old to do what is necessary; they might just be too inexperienced; or dare I say too stupid to do anything of value; and then there are some who are a combination of all sort of elements that make a person unemployable.

And at a certain point, society is better off just paying these people off in some way so they don't turn to a life of petty crime or become destitute and turn to a life of violent crime. It's not a difficult concept to understand but you keep meeting people who say, "but it's our tax money being wasted" as if how that money was spent was their decision to make (it's not, it's the government's) and ignores the fact that the money spent staves off enough desperation it probably is doing a lot of social good. This is why our society came up with a safety net in the first place. it really isn't a whole lot of money, and anybody living on it, isn't having a wonderful life unless of course they live at home with wealthy parents.  And yes, such people exist - I know a couple myself - but you still wouldn't want to be them. It seems stupidly ungenerous to want to begrudge them the pittance and punish the long-term unemployed or the young unemployed with "work for the dole schemes".

A burning question that ought to be raised is "do they work?" According to people who have made a study, they don't.

But Professor Jeff Borland from the University of Melbourne - who conducted the only empirical study of the Howard government's work for the dole scheme - says years of research show such schemes are unlikely to help people find jobs.

''The international evidence is overwhelming,'' he said. ''It's hard to believe that the government couldn't understand that this isn't the best way to improve people's employability.

''I guess you have to conclude that there are other reasons for wanting to expand the program, and the title of the scheme [work for the dole] suggests it's being done for political reasons.''

Labor has warned businesses will face a deluge of fake job applications under the government's measures.

Employment Minister Eric Abetz said that could be a fair criticism.

''We as a government do not want box-ticking to take place,'' he told ABC TV. ''We don't want red tape and inconvenience to employers, but what we do want is a genuine attempt by the job seeker to obtain employment."

No box ticking! It's going to be hell from next year when all these companies are going to get their inboxes of their emails stuffed with resumes from people who don't really want a job but are forced to put on a very good show of pretending to want a job. You wouldn't want to employ any of them, and they don't really want to be employed. The charade is going to be unbearable. And what good does the government think it's going to achieve? Especially when we know it doesn't do anything tangibly beneficial.

It's just bullying by the government. If this business of having to apply for 40jobs per month for 6 months before they get the dole comes into play, it's going to be unwanted-resume-hell for every company out there. It totally ignores the reality of the marketplace.