You don’t have to change, Bushbred, but you seem think that you can change other people. You say that you know more about the Middle East than ‘someone like (me)’. I say you know nothing. I don’t follow any “Bush Routine”, whatever that is, and your writing is certainly “crude”, as you say; certainly too crude to convince anyone that you are educated, and certainly too crude to pass any tertiary course without a lot of help from someone else.

Perhaps all your ‘learning’ and knowledge is in your poor, addled mind.

I am also a great-grandfather, and if you think your grandchildren and great grandchildren are doing anything but humour and old man, you are greatly mistaken. The young have to, and will, work out society and life for themselves.

You don’t seem to know much about anything, Bushbred. As a “SmartArse”, I know that you are full of the proverbial, and you “sharing the blame” would be totally at odds with your arrogance and ignorance.

It is said that: ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing’. You are an excellent example of that old adage. You have just soaked up a little of someone else’s Leftist rubbish to pretentiously parrot, in the belief that people will be fooled by your claims to being an “historian”.

You are far too silly to bother with, and are now on my ‘ignore as a crackpot’ list. Most posters seem to ignore your rambling, and I’m joining them.

And if you look here, Savage Pencil...
http://www.abc.net.au/sundayprofile/stories/s1060425.htm

Here...
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/relrpt/stories/s1233723.htm

And here...
http://www.theage.com.au/news/letters/sheikh-hilali-why-he-must-go/2006/10/27/1161749315684.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

...you'll see that muslims are by no means united in support of Hilali.

If George Pell made a provocative statement about Islamic women, do you doubt that the Arab media would stir the pot by casting him as Australia's sole Christian leader?

It suits xenophobes and the media to have a chief baddy to home in on, even if it means excluding other points of view in a debate. As I said, it ain't necessarily so.

For Leigh

Are you OK, mate, certainly I must have really hurt your feelings by the tirade you fired back at me.

Do you do these things at home, for I was worried about your wife, kids and grandkids.

All I could do after the bombshell was look for any of your beliefs that are separate to mine.

Well, first was your implication that I'm a lefty possibly that you are a righty not so much a Nazi, but conservatively-minded.

Your mentioning in an earlier thread that you are not much for Obama also means that you could have been sympathetic for Bush - and indeed which has me wondering what you want for the future of our world right now.

Further, I must say as with you, I have had similar problems with Paul'l especially regarding my anger concerning modern Israel with its nuclear arsenal that Arabic nations are not allowed to have.

Also my anger at America for interfering too much in the UN, which was originally devised to only be managed by multipower, not singular power, the way Britain ruined the League of Nations and as America has pretty well ruined the UN.

Could go on, Leigh, but was wondering if you should see your specialist about this problem, and I really don't mind you calling me, that rambling old bastard from Buntine, because in my last year with the Mandurah Golf Club only relegated to playing nine holes by myself, I was called an old bastard for not getting a move on.

Trouble with Buntine, there is nothing much left right now, having been only a typical railway town of the steam-train days, with not even a wheat-bin now there.

Still not too worried about myself, only about yourself, mate,

Regards - BB, WA.

There is much too little proper analysis of Australian media's reporting on the middle east conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and on Islam so it's very good to read David Chibo's piece.

I studied communications at a Sydney university in the late 1980s and undertook a comparison of European (mainly Nazi German) media coverage of Jewish issues in the 1930 with Australian media coverage of Palestinian and Islamic issues in the 1980s.

The results were frightening; the one-dimensional, racist portrayal of Jews in the 1930s was almost identical to the contemporary Australia media's portrayal of Muslims even down to shared caricatures of huge-nosed, money-grubbing evil looking menaces in the 30s German media and the 80s Australian media.

I am heartedly sick of the fact that Muslims and Arabs specifically appear to be fair game in a way that no other ethnic group in Australia is. The sort of blanket racist remarks that can be made in respectable company against Arabs/Muslims would not be tolerated if the word African or Jew or Asian replaced Arab/Muslim.

If we want to encourage a modern, pluralistic Islam to flourish in Australia the last thing we should be doing is denigrating Islam and Arabs. You wanna encourage sympathy with the Islamist cause from young Australian Muslims/Arabs then continue to marginalise these young Muslims and Arabs by spewing your hate-filled lies about Islam and make no effort to distinguish between ordinary Muslims and the extreme radicals of the Islamist movement. Well done David and keep up the good work.

Bushbred,

You don't reply to my postings (sigh) perhaps I'm not rude enough,as I've asked you before,on another thread, please describe your qualifications in history, if you're self-taught I don't mind, knowledge and capacity are more important. I'm annoyed with the ad hominem arguments and the general sniping back and forth, which I think from memory, you were instrumental in initiating.

This is a disappointing article. I have worked and travelled in Iran, Kashmir and Morocco and visited a couple of other Muslim countries, as well as read exentsively on what is happening in the middle east.

The author David Chibo uses the framework of Orientalism to construct a whiny, victim-politics view of mass media coverage of violent crime, misogyny and terrorism involving people of various levels of association with Islam. Unfortunately Orientalism is explicitly NOT about truth, but 'truth' - a way of reframing events for political advantage in the Western media and academic value system.

I understand well his frustration at the negative reporting being myself part of a subculture that is a target of politically correct media contempt, but my advice to him is respond in an adult fashion, recognising the extensive attempts of the media to be fair, and that justice is in the criticisms due to the actual crimes committed by terrorists, wife-beaters, sister-murderers and outright gangsters who happen to use Islam to design and justify their horrible crimes.

I saw in Iran how proud, well-educated people had had great injustice done to their reputation in international media. When they incarcerate or execute the mullahs who created human rights horrors against Sunni muslims, women, Bahais, Jews, Christians, children, writers, and the educated class, I will know their honour vindicated.

In short David, its real. Live with it. Protest the murderers, as well as the bias, and help defeat them both. I support you in that.