Friday, October 19, 2012

Wally's Cultural Critique

IT IS almost worth the cost and inconvenience of coping with illegal aliens to see how much their treatment -- "bureaucratic violence" no less -- has encouraged Waleed Aly to unleash the inner dill. As Radio National listeners will know, Wally can talk the leg off an iron pot, keep it up for hours and never say anything entirely coherent, which isn't part of his job description anyway. He's just there to be Wally, the ABC's non-explosive Muslim, the fellow who can always be counted upon to tut-tut at the latest demonstration of his co-religionists' irritability before putting everything into the correct context. This always seems to be that Muslims would not be angry if the rest of Australia (and the world) did not annoy them so much. As Wally explained after the recent Sydney riot:
...when Gallup polled 35 Muslim majority countries, it found that of all the gripes the Muslim world has against the West, among the most pervasive is the West's ''disrespect for Islam''.

And it is this disrespect that is the overarching grievance that subsumes others. Everything, global and local, can be thrown into this vortex: Swiss minaret bans, French niqab bans, military invasions, drone strikes, racist stereotyping, anti-immigrant politics, and yes, even films so ridiculously bad that, left to their own devices, they would simply lampoon themselves.

This is what gives Innocence of Muslims meaning: not its content, but its context. It's a symbol of contempt, which is why protests against it so quickly turn into an orgy of anti-Americanism. So, ''Obama, Obama, we love Osama'' they scream, mainly because it's the most offensive rhyme they can muster. Osama, too, is a symbol; the most repugnant one in their arsenal. How better to prove you exist than to say something outrageous?

That's Wally's standard apologia whenever the Beard Brigade get boisterous, and trouper that he is, he can normally be counted upon to recite those polished rationalisations without a flub. Today, with the spirit very much upon him, Wally lets slip the veil and uses his latest Age column to give Australia a real whacking. Here he is, working himself toward a frothing climax:
Reflecting on the infamous Abu Ghraib prison scandal, Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo observed that such things become possible when the perpetrators feel anonymous, when they don't have a sense of personal responsibility for their actions, and have tacit approval from authority figures. And the obvious differences between Nauru and Abu Ghraib aside, isn't that what's happening here?
Nauru and Abu Ghraib? Yep, same thing except totally different. Then, with the blood rushing to his head or somewhere, Wally really unloads:
This is a culture of belligerence, trickling down from the political leadership. Again, just like White Australia. It's a culture that sees the sneaky denial of rights as a virtue. A culture that sheds tears for those who die at sea trying to get here, but barely blinks when people are killed after being sent home. A culture that watches a detainee attempt suicide, and dozens of people give up on the idea of asylum, and then chalks it up as a win.
Pretty rotten culture we have here, apparently. Not to worry. Leave it to Wally and his mates. They are working hard to make Australia a whole lot less annoying







25 comments:

  1. His position would be a lot more convincing if he could actually show there WAS someone killed after being sent home - he'd struggle to even find someone sent home in the first place! But that's us whiteys at our sneaky denial of rights again - charging thousands of dollars to allow British citizens to emigrate, but paying thousands to the middle-easterners to settle here.

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  2. Of course he's going to trash Australia because there is nothing positive to say about the Islamic "cultures" these asylum seekers are fleeing. Of course it's never their fault that these cultures are murderously sexist, homophobic and corrupt - it's our fault for providing them with an alternative. Or maybe, just maybe, we're too kind-hearted for our own good and represent nothing but a juicy target ripe for a shakedown. Either way, we're damned in their eyes.

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  3. If "Willy Wad" was right then the people smugglers would go out of business on the spot. Who would want to travel to evil Australia when you have such shining beacons of cultural superiority all around the muslim world to choose from.

    As for the brain damaged Sri Lankan that got smacked around... if he tried to act psychotic in a "tolerant" Muslim country... he might find himself in hole in the ground sooner than he thought. They spit at mentally ill people in those countries.

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  4. Minaret bans? In Saudi Arabia they don't just ban minarets, they ban churches, and put you to death for proselytising. No-one rioting and murdering over that. Niqab bans? In various parts of the Ummah, it's mandatory to wear the niqab, or the headscarf at least. Is this a mark of contempt for our values? No rioting in the west over that either.

    What a load of self-indulgent, facile tosh. Aly doesn't seem to appreciate the distinction between explanation and justification. And the Age gives space to it. Don't they have any capacity for self-examination down at Spencer St when contemplating why fewer and fewer people want to read such infantile stuff?

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  5. I demand that you free those poor red, green and blue refugees from their couped up spaces in your pocket... your wallet that is.

    Let the tormented cash out of their confined spaces and prison banks and give them in to my worthy hands so I may commandeer them.

    Human Rights Lawyer

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  6. I really need Wally to explain to me why, since our culture is so rotten, contemptuous, racist and evil, so many of his co-religionists are so anxious to get here. I don't see Australians queuing outside the Saudi embassy busting to resettle there. Why don't his co-religionists stop in in the Muslim countries through which they invariably transit, where they will be treated with proper respect?

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    1. Dear Sould. It is Centrelink Centrelink and Centrelink again.Now why would Wally's friends urn down good money for sitting on their rear ends.

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  7. To borrow a well known phrase from the State of Origin Cockroach camp, "Wally's a Wanker"

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  8. You see, a large group of rioting Islamic thugs from Western Sydney doesn't represent all Muslims, you dumb red neck!

    Tis' the lone voice of a well-to-do celebrity academic/commentator which speaks for the Muslim heartland.

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    1. Racist!!! You called him a redneck! Racist!

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  9. Leave it to Wally and his mates.

    Or better, let Wally and his mates leave for a Muslim paradise.

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  10. In a certainly beard free institution many years ago while training to be a "gentleman" and leader of men [mostly in those days] a very senior much decorated NCO talking to us was quite blunt about respect - "If you want to be bloody well respected you have got to bloody well earn it. Your diggers will see through a bloody poser like looking through an open window". If he is still alive a half hour with this NCO would do Wonky Wally's perspective on respect good. So far a large number of Wally's mob have done 2/3rds of 3/5ths of FA to deserve it.

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    1. Become a Muslim and you will get all the undeserved respect you want from western pushovers.

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  11. "It's a symbol of contempt"

    Correct. And may there be many, many more.

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  12. I am shocked to find out from Mr Waleed that, in my Kafka-esque country, horrors straight out of Der Process are routinely inflicted on the needy:

    "You can't ban asylum seekers from having access to lawyers, but you can insist they fill out a specific form if they want one, and then refuse to give them the form. You can limit the time lawyers have with their clients to make their work impossible. And if they manage to apply, you can delay the process by using translators who speak the wrong language, or who belong to rival ethnic groups."

    With this sort of thing going on, I would have thought that someone, perhaps a pro bono lawyer or an activist, would have documented a few of these appalling cases and taken them to the Refugee Review Tribunal so they can be properly investigated and the perpetrators severely punished in the media.

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    1. Hide forms, deny lawyers, wrong translator - please lets not be too critical of Waleed, with great policy suggestions like these we should be encouraging him to write more!

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  13. Waleed Aly, the thinking man's Keyser Trad.

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  14. Respect can only be earned it is not a right. Muslims per sec have earned very little respect from the time of their inception. Invasion and forced conversion with all the other niceties that accompany it do not sit well with a free thinking person. Wally is taqiya personified,a lie is only a lie if told to another muslim but only of the same sect, all other lies and mayhem are apparently OK with allah. Wally would benefit from some factual re-education. Wayne of middle earth

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  15. I rarely agree with Waleed Aly, but I generally find him reasonably fair and logical, albeit with the usual leftist multi-culti tilt and a predictable inability to see the obvious huge problems with Islam. But this was an exceptionally poor effort, full of ridiculous emotive stuff with no evidence at all. It looks like he has been fed some rubbish from some space-cadet junior lawyer mates who do the asylum seeker work (government funded of course) - a very unreliable source.
    I have worked in the Department for a long time and I am always amused at how people on the left, especially the younger ones who have no idea how anything works outside their small world, think that the public service (especially DIAC) is a bunch of drones being directed by sinister puppet masters at the top who have a secret right-wing agenda. In fact the people at the top are time-servers whose greatest fear is doing anything that stands out or that might attract any sort of criticism from outside. If a case officer is rejecting too many cases, he will be "counselled" or even moved elsewhere. Approval is always easier because nobody complains about it, it does not go to review or even the courts, and it is less work too. There is no way there would be a policy of deliberately assigning the wrong interpreters, for instance - apart from anything else, it would mean paying twice for the interpreter, which would blow out the budget a bit. And the "White Australia" stuff is pure drivel - anyone who expressed such sentiments at work would probably be dismissed and would be immediately tackled by their colleagues as well.

    By the way, did anyone else notice that in the illustration with Aly's article, there was a crucifix hanging on the barbed wire - what the hell was that supposed to be about?

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  16. What I find most annoying about Islam is that as a religion its just so passe, irrelevant, been there done that and back again. Nothing in Islam or its utterly boring religious preoccupation with insults to the Prophet or whatever else they are obsessed about is either original or interesting. Its just the same old bog standard religious crap that Western civilization moved on from 500 years ago.

    What was so wrong with our once pleasant country that we had to bugger it up by importing these useless and parasitic twits and must therefore now have to go through the same old process of rational re-education of these childish idiots who are not even out of their religious pyjamas yet.




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  17. Anonymous said...

    "Reflecting on the infamous Abu Ghraib prison scandal, Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo observed that such things become possible when the perpetrators feel anonymous, when they don't have a sense of personal responsibility for their actions, and have tacit approval from authority figures."

    What, like moderate Islamic fools getting stuck into whatever is the latest riot after getting the moderate gee-up at the moderate mosque?

    Waleed Ali is supposedly the "moderate", acceptable face of Islam (according to "Charlie" Pickering, Fairfax and the ABC) yet I wouldn't tolerate input on Australian affairs from that slimy, slippery, sneaky snake any more than I would from "Sheik" Hilali.

    He lives (with his blanketed wife) in a temporary Australian reality, where -for the time being- he gets away with being the booster for a broken, damaged way of life, and presumes to treat the rest of us as fools.

    mr.simmon

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  18. To think that Aly's career is in no small part a consequence of his adherence to a religion that has literally murdered and destroyed its way to global prominence, is an obscenity. And it is this barbarity, bizarrely, which has fueled a fascination among the facile who provide him with a platform.
    And where's the once-prominent Mrs. Aly been keeping of late? Maybe she's gotten tired of donning all those layers required for public appearances. I've never seen a woman so trussed up in material modesty before. The last time I saw her she made the Virgin Mary look wanton, and bore an uncanny resemblance to a bad taste lamp shade from the 70's.
    Ah, yes, all those elements do indeed make Aly irresistible to the inconsistencies and hypocrisies that are the Left.

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  19. mojo, Unrepentant YankOctober 20, 2012 at 5:42 AM

    Contempt for the contemptible?

    It's haram.

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  20. I demand equal comment time on the ABC. On Breakfast Friday morning, ABC indulged in a lot of Catholic bashing and then had a Muslim news commentator talking about the news. Where is the Catholic commentator? The Buddhist commentator? The Hindu? The Coptic?

    And really, the Koran has to be the biggest manifesto for paedophilia around, yet we have to respect it and its practitioners and damn to hell the bible and Catholic practitioners ...

    One last thing. I believe we should double the age pension and halve unemployment benefits. Then we would know what the true unemployment figure was.

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  21. As always Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a fascinating speaker, listen especially to her closing words amongst them; "There is a great deal to admire about Islam, it's just outdated".

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssPephYG3p4

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