Akerman's Cult of Death

When the comedy act that is Andrew Bolt's column gets a little stale I occasionally turn to the Daily Tele and have a gander at Piers Akerman's rantings. His latest offering is perhaps sadder than it is funny however. It's called Standing Against the Cult of Death. Who's a member of this cult of death I hear you ask? Osama bin Laden gets an honourable mention, and I don't think too many people would argue with that. But get this: the ideological component of this death cult includes, or is at least tacitly supported by...you guessed it...Fairfax and the ABC...

The well-meaning idiots who embrace the bizarre notions of moral and cultural equivalence and proselytise in ugly, angular sentences of a world in which all values are relative, a world in which there are no truths, play directly into the hands of those who would deny life in their worship of death.

Incredible as it may seem, the left-leaning churches which have forged a toxic pact with the secular environmentally linked organisations are among the first to retreat in the war against this cult of death.

Politically correct media organisations like the ABC and the Fairfax newspapers also engage in ludicrous contortions in their efforts to avoid branding the enemy as such, preferring to play semantic games as if there were doubts about whether those who target civilians should be called terrorists or activists. Be assured there are no doubts in the minds of the victims.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Cup of Tea? Lie Down? This article is straight out of the RWDB playbook, basically placing bin Laden and any critic of the way in which this "War on Terror" is being implemented in the same basket. In one breath he complains about "bizarre notions of moral and cultural equivalence" and in the next he equates the crazed ramblings of al-Qaida terrorists with the reporting and opinion found in on the national broadcaster and the pages of the Sydney Morning Herald.

He achieves this by putting words in the mouths of others and strawman arguments. Playing "semantic games games as if there were doubts about whether those who target civilians should be called terrorists or activists"? Who, on the pages of The Age, or the Sydney Morning Herald, or the ABC, has argued that thoise who murder civilians would more aptly be referred to as activists? Or which "secular environmentally linked organisation" (WTF!?) do they belong to?

Throw in a few conservative catch phrases like "politically correct", close with a "support the troops" and you've got the perfect Murdoch right-wing pundit column.

It's so boring.