Mark Day, Chairman Rupert, Commodore Frank, silicon chips and pirate radio and someone's dreaming ...

(Above: a jolly jape amongst chums).

Dearie me, dear sweet old chairman Rupert warrior Mark Day can be relied on to produce a light spot in a dark old day.

You know how it goes this sorry Monday, as the phoney war in the election campaign settles in like rain clouds:

The silicon chip inside her head
Gets switched to overload
And nobody’s gonna go to school today
She’s gonna make them stay at home
And daddy doesn’t understand it
He always said she was good as gold
And he can see no reasons
'Cos there are no reasons
What reason do you need to be show-ow-ow-ow-own?

Tell me why
I don’t like Mondays
Tell me why
I don’t like Mondays
Tell me why
I don’t like Mondays
I wanna shoo-oo-woo-woo-woo-oot the whole day down

Now that's out in the open, it's a relief to turn to Fiji's dictator mustn't get away with censorship attempt, and discover that Chairman Rupert is possibly a fabulous, fantastic freedom fighter:

The internet, Rupert Murdoch famously declared in 1993, is "an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere".

It was a comment that caused the Chinese to slam shut the door to Western media. Now, almost two decades on and in a much smaller pond, Murdoch is being invited to back up his words with deeds.

Lordy, you'd swear Chairman Rupert was a veritable Googler, off valiantly fighting the Chinese government and their perfidious censoring ways.

Quick, immediately take one swig of Jack Shafer's Eight More Reasons To Distrust Murdoch, in which he tracks the many ways that Chairman Rupert has kowtowed to the Chinese government.

There was the time in 1993 that Chairman Rupert yanked the BBC World Service from his Star TV signal to soothe the Chinese government and break the bamboo curtain. There was the time he sold his interest in the Hong Kong paper the South China Morning Post to Beijing friendly interests, there was the time he did over Chris Patten over a book, not that Patten doesn't deserve a good going over on a daily basis, but because it clearly wasn't on principle, unless you call currying favour a sound business principle, and so on and so on, as Shafer ticks them off and Chairman Rupert shows he understands that in the middle kingdom, obeisance to the current emperor is all the go, and bugger the peasants. They can eat rice, while the royalty tuck into the meat dishes ...

Then of course there's the intertubes itself, which Chairman Rupert famously declared to be an unambiguous threat to newspaper moguls everywhere, and got in such a sulk about it, he decided to put a British newspaper with a long and memorable tradition behind it, into a black hole, so no one, not google, or casual readers, might partake of its feast, without first crossing the palm of the robber baron in charge ...

Oh yes, it makes for rich and ironical reading when you cop this blast from Day:

The internet has already been shown as one of democracy's greatest assets, a point made by Murdoch with his "unambiguous threat" speech of 1993. Anyone connected anywhere can search for information at myriad levels. It is the ultimate tool of transparency, and transparency is the greatest fear of dictators.

Transparency? Search for myriad levels of information in The Times? Say what?

Behind a monolithic pay wall intent on keeping the merest glimmer of sunlight secured in teh fundament?

Well we've campaigned long and hard here at the pond against Conroy and his filter, because the intertubes is the ultimate tool of transparency, but I'll be damned if I saw a campaign in The Australian against it, never mind that the lizard Oz was ready to campaign at the drop of a hat against every other form of boat person terrorist and climate change alarmist they could find ...

Perhaps we should re-prhase Day's line. It is the ultimate tool of transparency, and transparency is the greatest fear of dictators and media moguls.

Never mind, the real point of Day's piece is to bleat about the way Chairman Rupert and his paper the Fiji Times is being done over by the government of dictator Frank Bainimarama. The problem here is that Day presents his anti-censorship rant in the context of News Ltd copping a financial pounding, since Bainmarma has decreed that News sell down its 100% holding to 10%, and there won't be many buyers for a business ostensibly priced at $100 million, but only entitled to print government flavoured press releases these day.

You see, Chairman Rupert could drop a $100 million as loose change - he's dropping a hell of a lot more to make a commercial point with The Times - and if he really truly cared, he and his minions wouldn't be squawking about the commercial terms, but how they might take care of the wretched, hapless Fijians writhing under dictatorial rule (you know when Commodore Frank can rely on the support of conman Peter Foster that things have indeed come to a pretty pass. Warning, this site might affect your mind, even if your computer emerges unscathed).

Anyhoo, all this leads Mark Day to think about Chairman Rupert turning freedom fighter:

Can a bunch of internet-enabled freedom fighters or radio pirates bring down a dictator?

He must be dreaming, tell me he's dreaming. Here's Day getting up the hopes of Usaia Waqatairewa, a Fijian expat living in Sydney, and dreaming of toppling Chairman Frank. And who can argue with that?

"We could, with a little help, establish a web news service aimed at keeping the people of Fiji informed about their illegal government."

Waqatairewa agrees there may be some limits to this approach, as the internet is not yet ubiquitous in Fiji. "I told News that even better than a website would be to put a boat into international waters near Fiji and broadcast our message against the government on AM and FM because in every home, in every village, there is a radio.

"Sure, the dictatorship might try to jam us, but we would simply move frequencies. The ship need only be a floating transmitter, because we could send the signal from Australia on a live stream over the net. It would not be difficult to do."

Waqatairewa says he raised the idea with News but has not had a response. That's not surprising given the fluid situation, the ticklish diplomatic issues and concerns for the Times staff.

Not had a response? How remarkable, how surprising.

Actually it's not surprising because Chairman Rupert is about as much a freedom fighter as William Randolph Hearst, and Hearst's idea of a good time was whipping up stories that led to the Spanish-American war. The average redback spider would rest undisturbed in Chairman Rupert's wallet for a century unless there was some kind of profit in it for News Corp ...

But if democracy and the freedom of the press are to mean anything, Bainimarama's actions cannot be ignored or appeased. In the old days, we might have sent a gunboat. The idea of a pirate radio ship roaming the South Seas is far more appealing.

That'll be the day. Chairman Rupert funding a pirate radio ship, as opposed to sending out his minions to send juveniles to prison for downloading movies and mp3s? Or moaning how people should pay for intellectual property rights, while on a daily basis his minions in various rags around the globe traduce the property rights of others?

Surely this is a grotesque travesty?

Someone please for the love of the lord, and in a kindly way, since Day's hostility to Commodore Frank is impeccable and appropriate, won't someone tell him he's dreaming ...

Meanwhile, pity the poor Fijians and the poor buggers trying to keep the Fiji Times afloat, and thinking that Chairman Rupert might be the solution.

Of course I could be wrong, I could be proven wrong in the time it takes a media mogul to sign a cheque.

Gee I love day dreaming ... it helps Monday pass in the quiver of a resting eyelid ...

(Below: I don't like Mondays, and I don't like Bob Geldof either, so this should really fry your silicon chip).