Miranda Devine, the fiendish fearsome greens, and yet again the end of the world nigh ...

(Above: memories).

Sometimes the best part of a column by loony commentariat commenters is getting to read the wags at the end, and so it is with Miranda the Devine's heartfelt piece Felled by an invidious green plot, scribbled in support of John Gay, former chairman of Gunns.

Finally, Miranda Devine is supporting a gay! Typically, it is a timber mining executive.

The rest of the column is such a loaded, prejudiced piece of bilious hogwash it is of course perfectly impossible to judge the truth of 'he said, they said', 'he did, they did' accusations, except of course to say that all greens are bad, and all timber fellers good.

The point of all the fear mongering? Let's cut to the chase and the final par, since sometimes Miranda the Devine is so excruciating to read, a short cut is the only answer:

What the green movement has done to Tasmania's timber industry, it will do to the rest of the country. Those purported 13 per cent of people planning to vote for the Greens on Saturday had better understand exactly what they are voting for. It's not about saving trees. It's about ''moving backwards'' to the dark ages.

And who's to say the dark ages were worse than the medievalism of the Catholic church, the Devine's pet institution?

It's at moments like that kind of verbal extremism that I like to wander back to the good old days of Lake Pedder, which you can read about here, and in its wiki here and also here. No doubt way back when there were Devines scribbling about how Tasmania would move backwards to the dark ages unless Pedder was flooded, and as a result a couple of creatures disappeared forever from the face of the planet.

There was a better outcome with the proposed Franklin dam, and no doubt there were Devines scribbling furiously about how Tasmania would move backwards to the dark ages, but truth to tell, on balance it's hard not to argue that things worked out better than they might have if the unreconstructed tear it up, flood it, fuck it over brigade had had their unbridled way. Lord knows we find it hard to quote Bob Hawke, but here he is in the wiki:

And as you look at the arguments and the positions of political parties today you see a complete replication of what we experienced back there in 1983. The conservatives: they never change, they never learn. What was their argument back then? You can't do this, it will cost jobs. It will cost economic growth. You can't do it, you mustn't do it.

Indeed. For a state that trades on tourism and its unblemished beauty and its handsome wilderness and its untainted foods, some Tasmanians go to any lengths to bugger up the charm of the place - and its economic potential - in order to keep Japan and its paper wrapping fetish well supplied. So much paper and box and gift wrapping abuse, such an exercise in futility.

But back to the Devine. Perhaps the funniest thing in her solemn study of the travails of Gay is the way she fails to mention the vicious bloody minded legal action embarked on by Gunns as a way of enforcing their pulp mill mania.

And when it comes to where the pulp mill went off the rails she has to resort to the wretched Paul Lennon blathering on about Malcolm Turnbull and Geoffrey Cousins:

Lennon blames the then environment minister, Malcolm Turnbull, for ''sitting on his hands'' over approval for the pulp mill before the 2007 election, under the onslaught of a campaign in his eastern suburbs Sydney seat of Wentworth by the businessman Geoffrey Cousins, who appeared out of nowhere to wage a virulent campaign against the mill.

Phew, at last a reason not to vote Liberal. They're a bunch of do nothing greens, easily swayed by businessmen waging virulent campaigns. Hang on that means big Mal and Geoffrey Cousins and Dick "stop the growth now" Smith are greens. Eek, the greens is all around us.

But it's when the Devine gets into paranoid deluded assertions that the fun really begins:

The delay, Lennon says, stopped the pulp mill in its tracks. Gunns is now in closed-door negotiations with the Wilderness Society over whether it will be allowed to continue with the mill.

Say what? The Wilderness Society is so badly split it couldn't organise a chook raffle in a leagues club (Wilderness Society split, Split leaves activists in the Wilderness).

Wouldn't it be better if Gunns talked to actual banks or investors willing to invest in the pulp mill? Hardened souls who might brave the greens, and who think that the financials of the place are more than an each way bet.

Gunns says its northern Tasmanian pulp mill site is ready to develop, if it secures investment.

The company's latest profit statement reveals it is still working on mill finance, five years after selecting the site...

... In April, Gunns called for investors in the Tamar Valley pulp mill and is talking to three parties. (Gunns pulp mill ready, but waiting).

Then of course there's the variant argument that Tasmania might be better off if it claimed its environmental management will be better than Indonesia's or Malaysia's

''Who is actually going to believe that environmental management is going to be better in Indonesia or Malaysia,'' Lennon says. The campaign ''exposes the real agenda of Greens''.

Um, don't the greens get agitated with Indonesia and Malaysia too? Is the real agenda only to persecute poor hapless innocent forestry workers in Tasmania, as well as iddie biddie Gunns?

But then reading the Devine is always a topsy turvy surreal experience. After delivering a litany of complaints about the treatment of Gay, along with requisite adjectives, like chilling, damaged the company, wrecked the state economy, clear warning, emboldened activists, bogus campaigns, catastrophic, conscience-less dishonesty, hero of the working people, cowardly institutional investors, greenies in suits traducing Gay and Japan, dropping Tasmania like a hot potato, personal vilification, torture, home under assault, stink bombs, dead possums spitting, media sitting on the fence, a good man's reputation destroyed, family tormented, security system installed, rock bottom prices for winery and hardware sales, quasi-religious force, and so on and on and so forth and etc, we come to this:

One Tasmanian political insider says Gay's failure was that he was ''out of touch with the way to operate a modern business''.

''He's a lovely bloke but he didn't have the skills or the layers of bureaucracy, or the PR people you need to manage the campaign for the pulp mill.

No doubt that's all the fault of the greens too.

Meanwhile, I'm always astonished - and astonished by the way I'm astonished - at the way the Devine, a stout hearted Catholic, ascribes evil to religion:

Like any quasi-religious force, the environmentalists needed an arcadia to save and a demon to fight. The cute island state and the ''rapacious logger'' fitted the bill.

Why that sounds just like the Catholic church. Fighting demons and offering up arcadia of a pie in the sky in the by and by. Or the Devine herself, come to think about it:

Like any quasi-religious force, the ratbag commentariat commentator needs an arcadia to save and a demon to fight. The cute Gunns pulp mill and the ''rapacious greenies'' fits the bill.

As for the actual truth of the matter, who knows. We make only one guarantee. You won't have a clue from reading Devine's one-sided account.

Will the Devine's alarmist hysterical fear mongering, conveniently raised just a couple of days out of the election, a tad surprising for an issue that's been burbling along for years, affect the turn out for a greens vote this Saturday?

Unlikely, as the presence of a frothing, foaming, fuming ratbag at the entrance to the polling booth might create a temporary sense of unease, but finally not become a distraction from the decision to be made.

And also unlikely if you judge the result of the lathering by the many negative responses in the comments to the piece. To take just a couple on the front page (and never mind the typos):

The "evil" Greens are at it again, with their dastardly plans to stop poor little innocent logging corporations from turning old growth forest into paper. I can only imagine the terrible impact it will have on stationary cupboards around the globe. The horror of having to email that excel spreadsheet rather than print it out in all it's papery glory. Such a tragedy. All those paper shredders around the world going unused. It really brings a tear to the eye.
Miranda, you so right. Tasmania should unroll the NBN folley and bank it's future on paper. Don't let those Greens take us back to the dark ages with their zany ideas of an economy not built on producing paper. Paper is the future. Can't everyone see that? Thank you Miranda for speaking out. Lets stop the craziness before it's too late!

Humour as a response to paranoid foaming? Yep, it's the only way. You could try the informed debate approach:

Thank you for this Miranda. You made me go and look to see what information there was on the Net regarding this matter. This is what I found..
http://www.wilderness.org.au/campaigns/gunns-pulp-mill
http://www.gunnspulpmill.com.au/faqs.html
http://www.wilderness.org.au/campaigns/gunns-pulp-mill/tas-future-threatened-pulp-mill
http://www.tamarpulpmill.info/
http://www.tasmaniapulpmill.info/
http://www.foe.org.au/media-releases/2007/turnbull-decision-on-gunns-mill-fails-tasmanias-forests/

Readers might get a bit more balanced viewpoint off looking at both sides of the argument. Even a cursory skim of the evidence seems to indicate that your article might be just a tad biased... Just a tad.

Could we just add Kevin Rudd's $110 million gift to Gunns pulp mill?

But of course a calm moderate debate with the likes of the Devine is simply impossible. That's why she's a loon pond hall of famer.

Meanwhile, just as I watch television to see the expensively mounted advertising distracting from the terrible American and Australian dramas to hand, from now on I'll read Miranda the Devine simply so I can soak up the comments attached to her column.

It's a way of restoring a little hope and a little sanity and a little faith and perhaps even a little charity as I brood about my hill of beans in this troubled world ... and perhaps even a sense of balance. She might be paid a shit load of money to abuse anyone to the left of Ghengis Khan, but the more extreme she gets, the more the centre holds ...

Put it another way. Quick, write as much abuse as you can, because soon she's heading off to News Corp, no doubt as a way to lure enraged punters behind Chairman Rupert's paywall. Now let's count down the days before we can light the fireworks and celebrate ... in a green, environmentally sensitive way of course ..

(Below: more memories from the corner of my mind).