"Misogynist Monsoons"
by Joel Bowman
“The Prophet married her when she was six years old and he
consummated his marriage when she was nine years old,
and then she remained with him for nine years.”
~ Sahih al-Bukhari, Book 63, Hadith 122
Buenos Aires, Argentina - "We were going to write to you about the engines of history today, dear reader, continuing on from last week’s Notes. But the past will have to wait. Today, it is the lunacy of the present that presses upon us...
Every now and then, in moments of apparent weakness, when your correspondent’s well-honed cynicism is found wanting, we discover, in our quietude, a sympathetic fiber inclined toward the chattering class of the unpopular press. They can’t all be that fatuous, that doltish, that cruel and stupid, we reckon on behalf of our colleagues in the mainstream news, forgetting for a moment the gushing Niagara of evidence to the contrary.
Surely, we reason, there exists some redeeming artifact aboard the sinking legacy-media vessel, some part worth rescuing from the barbed wire canoe as it slips beneath the waves, a single salvageable utensil ensnarled in the mangled, rusted heap?
Misogynist Monsoons: Then a headline catches our eye, like the one below, and our basic sanity awakens as though from deep, restorative slumber. From Australia’s ABC:
According to the article: The growing intensity of natural disasters across Asia is leading to increasing numbers of child marriages of girls, according to aid organizations... Climate change is now believed to be a leading contributor to more frequent and younger nuptials. Yes, gentle reader, you read that correctly: climate change... “leading contributor”... younger nuptials. That is to say, the region that suffers the highest incidence of child bride-making in the world, a practice it has committed for millennia on end, is suddenly the passive victim of the most utterly precedented phenomenon of all: the weather.
And just when you thought it was safe to turn on the air conditioning again! One can only imagine the imminent surge of misogynist monsoons, white supremacist squalls, transphobic tsunamis and cisgender cyclones boiling on the horizon of the author’s short-circuiting imagination.
The Other Untouchables: And there’s a bonus aspect for the managerial class, too. Since global warming climate change comes directly from your indulgent, first world lifestyle (per Paris’s deputy mayor and petit fonctionnaire du jour), the child bride travesty is, naturally, your fault. (And really, whose else could it be?)
Continues the article: "After a natural disaster in Bangladesh, child marriages can surge by up to 39 per cent, according to the International Rescue Committee. South Asia, one of the most vulnerable regions to the impacts of climate change, accounts for most of the world’s child marriages. Bangladesh has the highest rate in Asia according to Plan International, with more than 50 per cent of girls married before they turn 18."
Nevermind that taking child brides is a canonical tenet of Islamic (and Hindu) texts, and that it has been a stain on that part of the world since Mo played striker for the Mecca Minors. Noticing that Bangladesh is a 91% Muslim country (plus 8% Hindu)... and that Muslims (and Hindus) are by far and away the largest perpetrators of this practice... the reader will nonetheless search the article in vain for any keywords associated with those, shall we say, “untouchable” faiths. Nothing to see there, the author assures us, for although... “Twelve million girls are tipped to become child brides this year, according to Plan International. Child marriage is a global problem across cultures and religions.”
Sure it is. Suuure it is. Such hard-hitting journalism, by the bye, comes courtesy of the gutless sham that is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), which owes its regrettable existence to A$1.2 billion in annual government subsidies, the vast majority of which is funded directly by Australian taxpayers via federal allocations.
This is the same vestigial organ of the fourth estate that served up such editorial enviro-gruel as, “How Trump inspired this queer-centered, climate change religion” (April, 2025), “Fears climate change is contributing to gender-based violence” (June, 2025), and “Climate Crisis Threatening Disabled Australians’ Access to Nature” (December, 2025).
The Prejudice of Diminished Standards: Still, calling the individual author of this article silly names would be easy. So here goes... You, unlettered scribe at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, are a saddle-goose. A fopdoodle. A wantwit. You are thirty seconds in an hourglass. A two-slice loaf. A dolthead. A mooncalf. A bipedal ass. Moreover, you are a traitor to your sisters, whom you twice scorn... first for running cover for actual child rapists, and second for accepting a taxpayer-funded salary to gaslight your readers into thinking it is they who are to blame!
What next, Minneapolis air conditioning addicts at fault for a seasonal surge in Somali FMG? Gas stove usage in East Birmingham responsible for an uptick in transgender bridal miscarriages in Pakistan? And what about bride burnings, a regional practice among both Hindus and Muslims in which women are brutally murdered by the groom’s family for not carrying sufficient dowry into the marriage.
At about ten so-called “dowry deaths” per hundred thousand women in the north Indian state of Uttarakhand alone, the beastly perpetrators of these crimes claim victims at roughly the rate of gun-related homicides in Houston, Texas. (Though with about five times the population, the absolute numbers are commensurately higher.) Naturally, we hear a lot about the latter from the gun-shy ABC... not so much about the former.
Hmm... Does the ABC consider climate change a “major driver” of systematic femicide in Uttarakhand, too? Or perhaps there’s a cowboy in a pick-up truck somewhere in Texas who needs castigating for the direct actions of heinous individuals he’s never met on the other side of the planet?
Because as we all know, nothing bad can ever happen in the world without it first and foremost being the exclusive fault of civilized people in developed, western societies politely going about their business. And therein lies the stealthy prejudice of diminished standards, as mindlessly practiced by ABC authors and their irksome ilk across mainstream media; the relentless, solipsistic drive to center themselves in the universe as the cause and cure of all life’s ills.
Meanwhile, according to their own website, 2026-27 funding for the ABC was recently boosted by a cool A$87 million, in large part due to new allocations for its Indo-Pacific Broadcasting Strategy. Which is to say, expect more bile from the Corpse’s talentless pool of global hall monitors and do-gooders. That ahead of us, we’ll gladly return to our musings on the past, next time. As always, stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World."
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