Crikey, Google ends censorship in China, now for Conroy ...

Google ends censorship in China?

Crikey, after they've finished that mammoth task, can they come over here and sort out Senator Stephen Conroy?

Not that we want to be Media Watch, while that bunch of fey leftie irritants to Andrew Bolt and The Australian are taking a way too long break, but there's a key difference between a short punchy header and a short punch drunk header. Literalism has its pitfalls.

Fortunately when you click through you get Margart Simons rather larger and more well proportioned header Google May Pull Out of China Following Attempt to Access Human Rights Emails.

Indeed. And if you head over to Crikey you get assorted links on the story.

And you can also follow up on that other item in the splash Stupid Summer news, which turns out to be Ruth Brown's News goes on holiday.

I'm guessing header writers at Crikey go on holidays too.

Google has already given Conroy a short, sharp jab (Our views on Mandatory ISP Filtering), but I won't be the only one hoping that they give him a smack down this coming year as he weasels and squirms his way through the mire to bring his outrageous scheme to fruition ...

Meantime, Margaret Simons has been spreading other new year joy to anyone who will listen with Will Aussies pay for Murdoch's news, which tells of a survey suggesting seven out of 10 Australians would not consider paying anything at all to access online the musings of Chairman Rupert's minions. Okay, it's just a straw in the wind, but I like the cut of the jib of the straw.

Now let's sit around and wait for The Australian's riposte to Crikey:

Google ends censorship in Australia.

Perhaps followed by The Australian's opinion pages no longer the preserve of right wing loons and climate change deniers.

Am I dreaming, or is the year of the tiger shaping up to deliver a blow or two to the eye of the tiger?

Fortunately, there was one visionary who saw the problems we face today ...

... the whole system of education must be so organized as to use the boy's free time for the useful training of his body. He has no right to hang about in idleness during these years, to make the streets and movie-houses unsafe; after his day's work he should steel and harden his young body, so that later life will not find him too soft. To begin this and also carry it out, to direct and guide it, is the task of education, and not just the pumping of so-called wisdom. We must also do away withthe conception that the treatment of the body is the affair of every individual. There is no freedom to sin at the cost of posterity and hence of the race.

And he was profoundly aware of the dangers of decadence:

Parallel to the training of the body, a struggle against the poisoning of the soul must begin. Our whole public life today is like a hothouse for sexual ideas and stimulations. Just look at the bill of fare served up in our movies, vaudeville and theaters and on the internet, and you will hardly be able to deny that this is not the right kind of food, particularly for the youth. In shop windows and billboards the vilest means are used to attract the attention of the crowd.

Anyone who has not lost the ability to think himself into their soul must realize that this must cause great damage in the youth. This sensual, sultry atmosphere leads to ideas and stimulations at a time when the boy should have no understanding of such things. The result of this kind of education can be studied in present-day youth, and it is not exactly gratifying. They mature too early and consequently grow old before their time.

Sometimes the public learns of court proceedings which permit shattering insights into the emotional life of our fourteen-and fifteen-year-olds. Who will be surprised that even in these age-groups syphilis, the internet and video games begin to seek their victims? And is it not deplorable to see a good number of these physically weak, spiritually corrupted young men obtaining their introduction to marriage through big-city whores or via vile pornography on the internet?

No, anyone who wants to attack prostitution must first of all help to eliminate its spiritual basis. He must clear away the filth of the moral plague of big-city ' civilization ' and he must do this ruthlessly and without wavering in the face of all the shouting and screaming that will naturally be let loose about censorship and the right of free speech.

If we do not lift the youth out of the morass of their present-day environment, they will drown in it. Anyone who refuses to see these things supports them, and thereby makes himself an accomplice in the slow prostitution of our future which, whether we like it or not, lies in the coming generation.

This cleansing of our culture must be extended to nearly all fields. Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, the vile internet and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service of a moral political, and cultural idea.

Public life must be freed from the stifling perfume of our modern eroticism, just as it must be freed from all unmanly, prudish hypocrisy. In all these things the goal and the road must be determined by concern for the preservation of the health of our people in body and soul. The right of personal freedom recedes before the duty to preserve the race.

Jawohl mein fuhrer, I can walk, and apologies for bringing your text a little more up to date, and now - if you've recently suffered through Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds, and his attempt to outdo YouTube and the sundry parodies of Downfall with his own brand of ridiculous camp humour - you might just be in the mood for this latest variant to the nth degree: