Bondi Junction - Dooda Lies Again

Not just at Shepherd’s Bush: Westfield centres appear all over the place, with one located in the eastern Sydney suburb of Bondi Junction, a place named not for a rail station - though there is one there now - but for a Tramway junction which was part of the Australian city’s extensive network that was finally abandoned in 1962. Now that centre is notorious for something else.

As the BBC has told, “A knife-wielding man who killed six people in a Sydney shopping centre before being shot dead has been identified by Australian police. Joel Cauchi, 40, sent the crowded Westfield Bondi Junction complex into panic on Saturday when he began stabbing people with a long blade. Five women and a man died. Several others, including a baby, were injured”.

Worse, the baby’s mother was one of those killed. But none of this was allowed to distract from the obligatory rush to conclude that the attack had something to do with a group that The Usual Suspects out there on the right love to hate. Someone knifing people? It had to be what Dubya Bush liked to call TRRR. So the person wielding the knife had to be a TRRRST.

Who, then, among the pantheon of bad faith media “personalities” would like to lead off? Enter stage right, or perhaps that should be stage far right, the deeply unpleasant Dan Wootton to whine “If terror can come to Bondi, Australia - with a small baby among those attacked by this savage - then nowhere in the west is safe. Change is needed. When will we wake up?”

But even Desperate Dan stopped short of Going There, of using the M-Word, as in Scary Muslims™. No such compunction for TalkTV’s flap-mouthed bigot Julia Hartley Brewer. “Another day. Another terror attack by another Islamist terrorist. Six dead, others seriously injured, including a baby”.

And, sadly, there was more. “Today, it’s Australia’s turn, the other day it was France’s. It’ll be our turn again next. How long do our Governments think we’re going to put up with this?” However, the New South Wales Police Commissioner told that “she would not describe the stabbings as an ‘act of terror’, reiterating that police believed there was ‘no ideological motivation’”.

So Ms Hartley Dooda had not only come out with another all too predictable slice of flat-out bigotry, she had lied, while accusing politicians, interest groups, and anyone else of whom she wishes to make an example of, yes, you got it, lying. Worse, she left her outburst live throughout yesterday and, apparently, overnight. Worse still, she initially doubled down on her claim, in a Tweet, X, or whatever Muskrat is calling it this week, that is still live.

Off she trilled: “I couldn't care less what colour skin someone has. I DO care about what is inside people's heads. Islamist ideology is the problem, not Muslim people. But you knew that already, didn't you? Keep your head in the sand, I'm sure that will work out well for you”. But Islam, or Islamism, or Islamists, or anything to do with ideology, had nothing to do with it.

And so it came to pass that eventually Ms Hartley Dooda relented. “My tweet below was incorrect. The attack in Sydney was not an Islamist terror attack, it was carried out by a man the police have since named as Joel Cauchi who they say had mental health problems not an ideological motive. I doubt that will be much consolation to the families of his victims”. Meaning what?

Meaning she was right really. Plus it doesn’t explain leaving the claim live for so long. Ah, but she had that covered. “Oh, and the reason I didn't retract sooner was simply because I was out and busy all day yesterday enjoying the sunshine with my lovely family and didn't look at Twitter or the news again until this morning. You guys should try that sometime”.

And to that I call bullshit. She was on Twitter, and Tweeting, at 1115 hours. Maybe the being “out and busy all day” didn’t happen until later in the day. Maybe she didn’t see all the news from the Australian authorities stressing that it wasn’t terrorism. Maybe she takes so little interest in actual facts that there is no point taking any notice of her incessant whining.

She’s not objected to the ratio, though. I’ll just leave that one there.

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