Regurgitation
Greg Sheridan writes, “In the past day or two I have dredged through a sample of Molloy’s academic writings on terrorism.” Let me guess: the sample was about 9 pages long?
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Greg Sheridan writes, “In the past day or two I have dredged through a sample of Molloy’s academic writings on terrorism.” Let me guess: the sample was about 9 pages long?
Come on- the Qld Nats ditched some idiot Dutchman in Proserpine because he was photographed with nazis thirty years ago; If the ALP doesn’t ditch this dingbat, they’ll lose every seat in Qld. Fine by me. Not only is Molloy an albatross, he’s an albatross with the clap.
Methinks “the sample” was a bumper sticker. Damn, this govt is classy.
‘Course, Milloy does sound like trouble for Labor, for this election in particular. Much as it galls me to think about appeasement of evildoers like Howard…
Yes, Mr Downer, “severe embarrasment”, do tell.
I agree- I thought the ignorant heckling of Downer last night was embarrasing- don’t those lefties have any manners?
Ivan Molloy’s crime is?
And who would have thought that, down among all this bottom-feeding pack behaviour, the singular Greg Sheridan would be clambering beneath the mob, to especially alone enjoy the morsels with his tongue?
Pity you never took the trouble to read read some of his research, Paul. You might actually learn something about the causes of terrorism.
If you really think there’s anything in this beatup, you probably believed everything about that Buck’s Night video, too.
The current Labor leadership is not rattled by this pompous nonsense the way Beazer might’ve been in the past.
Some years back a friend .. for want of a better term, told me that Greg Sheridan was a pundit worth reading. My own conclusion, after following this advice for some time is that Greg Sheridan is a complete ass. Technically the term “apologist” would apply, but it really doesn’t capture the strange contortions he goes through to justify the behaviours of his neo-con idols. During the height of the Iraq/WMD debate he was consistently seen desperately propping up positions that the Bush/Blair/Howard administrations had already abandoned as lost causes days beforehand.
I have read some of his research typical leftist academic waffle, blaming everyone and everything bar the purpetrators. The Sept 11 hijackers weren’t dispossessed, oppressed or otherwise persecuted, they were afluent, educated arseholes addled by blind hatred- sounds like a lot of blogs and their readership, in fact.
Err, Don Wigan —
If you read my post, apart from its single boomer-bashing line, you’ll see that I agree the whole thing is a media/Liberal beat-up, to say the very least.
And as for this single line, and the related issue of reading Molloy’s research, I’ve found him to be quite the rare bird here, at least in terms of what’s on — or even being talked about on — the Net. If you know of a single, Net-available article on terrorism written by Molloy, I’d be grateful for the URL.
I can confirm however, that Molloy seems to have written/edited the grand total of three monographs in two decades as an academic.
There’s this 33 page “working paper”: http://www.news. … 3102,00.html
Ivan Molloy
The Conflicts of Mindanao: Whilst the Revolution Rolls On, the Jihad Falters
(1983) Monash Asia Institute
http://books.buyaustralian.com/featuredbook1.asp?StoreURL=buyaustralian&bookid=0867462825
More substantially, at least in terms of page numbers, there’s this curiously-titled (considering the year it appeared in: 2002) book (apparently, it was ruled-off before September 11, and neither publisher nor author saw fit to let this trifling real-world event change anything http://www.spectrezine.org/reviews/precious2.htm ):
Ivan Molloy
Rolling Back Revolution: The Emergence of Low Intensity Conflict
(2002) Pluto Press (UK)
Finally and most recently, there’s a book carrying Molloy’s name as editor, but with little, if anything, inside it apparently written by him:
Ivan Molloy [and students http://www.usc.edu.au ... BookLaunchNews.htm ], edited by
The Eye of the Cyclone: Issues in Pacific Security
(2004) Pacific Islands Political Studies Association
“Eye of the Cyclone” is a collection of conference papers from a December 2002 gathering held at Molloy’s own university. Molloy’s direct contribution to the conference proceedings seems to have been limited to being a panellist. http://rspas.anu.edu.au/ … pipsa02dwhfinalrep.rtf However, he did there manage to somehow link September 11-style terrorism to his earlier research interests, apparently saying this circular nonsense from his panel chair:
“If the West in general and the US in particular are really serious about stamping out terrorism and state promoters of this activity, we would be turning our guns not only on the Russians, Chinese, Irish, Spanish, French, virtually all our allies and even back on ourselves, but most importantly also on the US itself,”
http://www.news.com.au/ … E3102,00.html
In conclusion, Molloy is an academic lightweight, whose views deserve derision not so for their point of view, as for their brevity and sparseness over time.
P.S. I’ve blogged extensively on September 11-style terrorism and its causes myself. “PB” writes: “The Sept 11 hijackers weren’t dispossessed, oppressed or otherwise persecuted, they were affluent, educated arseholes addled by blind hatred”. In this he is entirely correct, IMO, but for the hijackers being “affluent” (and/or its usual corollary, in well-paid jobs) — they weren’t, certainly relative to Saudi baby boomers generally. In turn this false, but commonly-made mental connection — that being well-educated and middle-class goes with having a job/”affluence” — is the key to understanding the real causes of terrorism as being economic and demographic, rather than ideological/religious.
‘Saudi baby boomers’??
Osama Bin Laden is the classic Saudi baby boomer, coming into adulthood in the mid-late 70s, when oil prices were around $100 a barrel, in 2004 dollars. Needless to say, his generation squandered this awesome wealth, although they did, funnily enough, manage to build large numbers of universities for Saudi’s brightest GenXers to get degrees-to-nowhere at.
Used to see heaps of them in London in the ’80s, pissed as farts staggering around Oxford St and the West End, picking up tarts and hitting every sleazy casino; good, devout wahabbis.