Greg Sheridan's Blocked Mind

Well, The Australian's foreign editor, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, is baaack at last following bypass surgery.

Understandably, he's not quite up to speed yet with the frequency of his columns, but the ideological rigidity of his views, as infallible as that of any medieval Pope, shows no diminution:

"[I]t is unequivocally a good thing that the Sri Lankan government defeated the Tamil Tigers, one of the most murderous and vicious of all terrorist groups, which enslaved children, murdered civilians and pioneered the suicide bomb." (Isolating Fiji, Sri Lanka or Myanmar would serve no useful purpose, 7/2/13)

I was particularly struck by Sheridan's tenuous connection with reality when I read the following in today's Australian:

"A Human Rights Watch report documenting dozens of cases of torture and rape of Tamils in the custody of Sri Lankan security forces claims the practice remains 'widespread and systematic' more than 3 years after the end of the civil war." ('Torture & rape of Tamils is widespread', Amanda Hodge)

As with his demonisation of Hamas - a 'death cult' - Sheridan's Tamil Tigers emerged, seemingly, out of some pit in Hell.

The very concept of a resistance movement like the LTTE emerging as a direct result of the failure of decades of peaceful, non-violent struggle by Sri Lanka's Tamil minority for such basic human rights as the preservation of their language, secularism, constitutional rights for the Tamil minority, a de-centralised administration, and an end to the caste system is, apparently, anathema to Sheridan.

Arteries can be unblocked but not, it seems, a blocked mind.