Stephen Conroy, and once again with the filter, oi vey, ach wey ...

Like one of those cheerful moles ready to turn up anywhere and do the right thing in a game of "whack the mole", Senator Stephen Conroy turns up on pages of The Punch to spout his usual nonsense, thereby ensuring that The Punch retains its reputation as the home for bad political pennies given a home because they'll write for free.

Conroy: Don't believe the myths on the ISP filter is Conroy's attempt to answer Eliza Cussen's Top 10 internet filter lies, but if you read Cussen and Conroy, you'd have to give her each round in the smackdown, and Conroy's rebuttal evidence for a Top 10 reasons why Conroy is a twit.

Naturally Conroy sent the punters into a frenzy, and at last count, he had very friends amongst the hundred plus who spent their precious online time writing abusive comments.

I'm reminded that in China, the whack a mole game is called 扑傻瓜, literally smack those fools (and let's not get bogged down as to whether it should be called whacamole in honor of one brand, or a more generic whack-a-mole).

I particularly like this thrust from Conroy:

For Ms Cussen to compare Australia’s policy with countries like China and Iran is ludicrous.

Which reminded me of Conroy's outing not so longer ago on Hungry Beast, and if you'll pardon me quoting myself, here's the nub of it, with Conroy leading off:

"Google at the moment filters an enormous amount of material on behalf of the Chinese government; they filter an enormous amount of material on behalf of the Thai government."

This said by way of explanation of how they could help implement his own great big new filter.

Google Australia's head of policy, Iarla Flynn, said the company had a bias in favour of freedom of expression in everything it did and Conroy's comparisons between how Australia and China deal with access to information were not "helpful or relevant".

Well of course these days Google and the Chinese government aren't such chums, with the government outraged because its spies couldn't warn it about Google gazumping them a week before Google's official deadline as to whether they might abandon the mainland for Hong Kong.

But since Conroy saw no harm in Google doing splendid work for the Chinese government, what can you say? Ludicrous is as ludicrous does, especially when defending the indefensible.

The long and the short of all this nonsense is that I'm building up a list of governments that won't get my vote until hell freezes over. Chairman Rudd's government is on the list, courtesy of Conroy and sundry other matters, along with the NSW government, including but not limited the usual reasons, such as their huge list of failed policies, unimaginable mismanagement and extraordinary incompetence.

Heck, I'd like to be in the UK right now, and offered a chance to vote just so I could do a miniscule payback against the lickspittle lackeys who rushed off to yet another desert adventure in the middle east, as if they'd learnt nothing from the Tripartite Aggression in the nineteen fifties. Yep, David Cameron might be a git, but at least he's a fresh git, and he doesn't have the blood on his hands in the way that the Blair-ites do. Posturing ain't the same as doing.

But I guess we should get back to Conroy - the trouble being that Conroy's mantras of nonsense lead to tedium, ennui and endless repetition.

Here he is, again, explaining why his list can't be made public:

The Refused Classification Content list cannot be made public because if it was, it would simply be a catalogue to direct people to specific URLs that are Refused Classification. Also, publishing links to child abuse content is a criminal offence. The Government has held a public consultation on improved transparency measures to ensure the public have confidence in the list and the submissions will feed into the legislative framework.

Confidence in Conroy, his department, and his government in this matter?

Well I'm sure if you asked the Chinese government, they'd explain with similar delicacy why it's simply impossible to reveal to the public the machinations of government, while arranging many splendid sessions to improve transparency measures (and taking a list of the people who dared to turn up and ask about improved transparency measures).

The only benefit for the historian contemplating the Canute-like ways of Conroy is a trip back in time to the Papists and their wondrous Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

Way back, when the Catholic church got together a list of prohibited publications - the final edition was published in 1948, before being abolished in 1966 - the Vatican censorship roulette wheel actually had a considerable impact on society and thinking. The likes of Johannes Kepler ended up on the list, along with botanists, geographers, and cosmographers.

Of course the church regularly got it wrong, so there were lists of corrections correcting the lists, which were published in an Index Expurgatorius.

By the twentieth century, the index had well and truly run off the rails, and it never amounted to a hill of beans in the long run in terms of repressing ideas, alternative thinking to the constipated ways of the conservative Catholic hierarchy, or Lawrentian scribbles about Lady Jane and John Thomas playing hide and seek.

As the wiki on the index notes under the sub-header Modern day irrelevance:

In the twentieth century, the overall number of published books has increased dramatically, so that a new book of fiction is printed in the United States every thirty minutes. Simultaneously, the standards by which items are judged as immoral has shifted by significant margins.

The Index now includes a small fraction of the possibly objectionable material (sexual, scientific or theological) that is available in the multimedia world of the 21st century. For instance, while the Index prohibits the works of a few pre-1948 authors such as D. H. Lawrence on the grounds of sexual offensiveness, that number is negligible compared to the quantity of pornography available at the end of the 20th century.

Anyone in Conroy's department think about the billions of pages now online, let alone other media? Let alone ways of hiding it or transmitting it, way beyond the purview of Conroy's simple-minded filter.

The ironies abound - for example, Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf never made it on to the Catholic list, nor did Darwin's key work, while Lawrence and Joyce also missed out:

"We looked everywhere for a mention of Charles Darwin, for example. There was nothing," said Wolf, referring to the British scientist who proposed the theory of evolution and enraged those who believe literally in the biblical story of creation.

Adolf Hitler's hate-filled ideology, "Mein Kampf", was also never put on the Index, though Wolf and his team did discover evidence that the censors considered what to do about Hitler, with discussions in the office going on for years and a decision constantly postponed.

All this became about once the Vatican opened up the secrets of its forbidden book list, by throwing open the archive to scholars (here). Thereby providing a handy list for perverts to read and frolic through as they check out the rich set of works handily ticked as sure to upset Catholic thinking, with a possible waft of sexual perversion along with theological perversity.

Meantime, the likes of Sartre, de Beauvoir, Zola, Denis Diderot, Milton, Locke, Galileo, Roussau, Hume, Descartes, John Milton, Gide and Hume all copped a hit. Even sweet old Laurence Sterne. Oh Tristram Shandy, did it come to that! (There's details of other writers who earned a guernsey here - hmm, must give old Sterne another read, he made it to the list!)

At some point or another, an online equivalent to Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita will come along and challenge Conroy, and he will once again be embedded in the kind of papist folly that haunted the Vatican for centuries.

Not that the Index did much to save the children or keep pedophilia under control in the Church.

Strange that, since Conroy keeps rabbiting on about saving the children.

Meanwhile, what's the chance of the report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse in Ireland, available here, getting caught up in Conroy's filter?

If you want a vivid description of vicious sadism visited on helpless, powerless children, why not take a wander through some of its pages?

I was playing basketball one day and Br ...X... came over to me and said to me, says he “I have some sweets for you upstairs...”. ...(He told me)... to come up to his room. I genuinely thought I was going to get some sweets. He went into his room and came out naked, he told me take off my clothes, he rubbed some oil on me and he buggered me, I was in a bad way after that. He took me into his room and locked the door, and it was oral sex and all of that. ... I don’t like talking about it.

It's as good a guide to pedophiliac behaviour as you might find on the internet, and the level of physical violence and ritual humiliation and punishment is extraordinary. I used to think the nuns gave me a hard time, but it turns out it was nothing.

One time in the class, my arms would be black and blue, both arms, because I couldn’t read a couple of lines in Irish, he ...(Br X)... beat me.... He’d put you in the corner, your hands would be up like that ...(displayed arms raised)... if you dropped them you’d get the leather. He put me in the back of the class and he’d tell you to run to him, he’d put his fist out like that ...(indicated fist and outstretched arm)... and you’d run into it.... It would be the kick in the shins you would get off him. As soon as you hit the deck he would pull you up by the ears for what we used to call the rabbit punch, you know, like that ...indicated hand movement... with the side of his hand on the neck, he’d chop you, you’d go down on the deck. I was out ...(unconscious)... that day, you’d be reeling ... an 11 year old child. (here)

Yep, as a textbook for sadists with access to children, I couldn't imagine much worse.

That said, there's no point trying to ban the Catholic Church or filter its presence online, anymore than there's any point trying to take down Mein Kampf. Mushrooms always grow best in the dark.

Meanwhile, what does Conroy think his filter will do?

Ms Cussen claims the Government’s policy won’t protect children from viewing harmful ‘stuff’ online. As I have said, the Government has never claimed filtering is a silver bullet solution.

Well what on earth will it be? A clay pot solution? A fig leaf solution? A fudge and deceive solution? Or just a half-assed empty gesture solution from a thick-headed government?

You know, reality is always worse than works of fiction. Pornography involving children is illegal and should be prosecuted with the same vigour that the Catholic church is being persecuted for its many failings and errors. A filter won't do anything about the real problem, which is children mis-treated and abused.

What a pity Conroy doesn't have a grasp of the reality of institutional brutality, and what a pity he doesn't understand that banning as a solution is a centuries old failure.

If only banning, or at least filtering the Catholic church was an effective solution ...

I’ll never forget the cat-o’-nine-tails, 10 tongs ...(thongs)... it used to have knots across the bottom. Observing other boys stripped and the blood running down as they were being flogged across the body, it was terrible. There must have been a new rule by the Government at some stage because it happened no more. (here)

Now there's a useful role for Government.