Anders Behring Breivik is evil, not insane

Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik has been declared criminally insane. Not surprisingly, a lot of Norwegians are more than a tad pissed off with that finding, since it basically lets the scumbag off the hook.

Personally, I don't think the guy is nuts. A lunatic couldn't be so focused for so long on such a diabolical and destructive goal. I reckon he had all his marbles intact and in place. They were just very nasty marbles. 

It's kind of ironic that much of this tendency to absolve people of their responsibility for heinous acts -- instead blaming society, or genetics, or fast food, or whatever -- has come from the Left. Yet it was the Left that Breivik hated more than anything, and did most harm to.

The finding of insanity also puts a big hole in the argument that he was somehow goaded into his killing spree by conservative figures such as George Pell, John Howard, Keith Windschuttle and others. I mean, if he's howling at the moon mad, then anything could have set him off, surely.

Really, it makes a whole lot more sense to say the guy is sane and responsible for what he did. And he did it because he's one mean-as-shit sonofabitch. Evil, in short.

Is Walkley winner Julian Assange a true journalist?

There has long been disagreement over whether Julian Assange is a dinkum journo. The Walkley judges certainly think he qualifies, having just awarded him a bloody great gong. And Margaret Simmons of Crikey certainly reckons he is.

But I suspect this is mainly because Assange has stuck it to the Yanks big time. I doubt very much he would have qualified in their eyes were he not such an anti-American leftie.

Call me old fashioned, but I thought journalists actually had to write stuff themselves. The Wikileaks founder has done very little of that. But he's certainly published mountains of correspondence that others have written (and not for publication). So he's not really a journo; he's more of an online press baron, really. Yep, he's kind of a hip young leftie Rupert Murdoch who doesn't pay his, er, employees (just nicks their work outright, actually).

And it's interesting that all the leftie hacks are arcing up about Rupert's tolerance of phone hacking at one of his papers, making all these insinuations that it's going on throughout the rest of his empire as well. Being such noble defenders of the right to privacy, you'd think they might be a tad annoyed about Assange leaking all that secret information, particularly when doing so could easily have put innocent lives at risk.

But nup. All transgressions are forgiven as long as you hate what they hate. Hell, they'll even laud (and award) you for 'em!

Drunk Fremantle burglar calls cops out of guilt

The "dumb criminals" genre is popular across all media. There are plenty of amusing examples to satisfy its fans. And here's a local lawbreaker who fits into that category, but who also has an intriguingly strong moral conscience.

See, this young Fremantle bloke got drunk, then broke into a nearby house and stole a laptop. Stricken with guilt he then called the plods, told them what he had done and asked them to come and pick him up!

So not only did the plonk, or whatever he was skolling, bring out his true criminality, it also made him want to 'fess up; to tell the truth.

In vino veritas indeed.

Friends of Monash Bushland outraged over nothing

Sometimes greenies are so desperate to be offended it's just incredible. Take the Friends of Monash Bushland group. They've been arcing up about the clearing of trees for a temporary car park right next to Charles Gairdner Hospital. As The West Australian reports:

They say the bush provided and important ecological linkage between Kings Park and other bush belts in the area, as well as being home to the endangered black cockatoo.

The spokeswoman said the block was also had "important healing value" for patients of the hospital.

If you have a squizz at the area in question on Google Earth, you'll see it's a tiny block of bush that's already surrounded by massive hospital buildings. And the suburb of Nedlands is on the other side of Monash Avenue. The area is heavily built up for miles around. So this argument that it's a crucial part of some chain of vegetation going west is just silly.

That said, perhaps a hundred metres from the block in question is a huge expanse of bushland called Kings Park. Hell, it's not like there's a lack of trees in close proximity to the hospital. So if any black cockatoos have been living in the ones being cleared they don't have far to fly to find a whole lot more.

Similarly, the loss of any supposed "healing effect" that the tiny area promotes would be counteracted by the presence of all those trees in Kings Park, surely. Even according to their own nutty, er, reasoning the outraged reaction of these activists seems way over the top.

Anyway, if applied consistently it would mean the very houses they're living in are a scourge upon the natural environment. So they should demolish them and sod off, shouldn't they?

Comment trolls should be laughed at, not unmasked

Nasty anonymous commenters can be annoying (although usually they're just sad). And I think they lack cohones for not using their own names. But this push by Labor MP Andrew Waddell to demand that they publicly identify themselves strikes me as petty and pointless. It's also pretty authoritarian.

By writing their puerile and vindictive comments all they do is reveal their own sad emotional state. Sure, the fact that there are so many people like this out there is a bit of a worry. It's a phenomenon that needs to be studied, if anything. So we shouldn't outlaw the evidence.

And if people get upset by troll comments they should just learn to shrug them off. These people have nothing worthwhile to add, so why be bothered by their hatred? That old schoolyard saying about "sticks and stones" is certainly worth remembering here.