Gerard Henderson, and still the sounds of old firefights disturbs the peace on the pond ...

(Above: the good old days).

There's a depressing predictability about the relentless squawking that erupts daily on the pond - and its causes, which usually involve predictions of despair and doom, and quite possibly the decline and fall of western civilisation as we know it.

Take The Australian - please someone take the lizard Oz - and its opinion pages.

What do we have today? Kevin Morgan in Rollout looking more and more like a Ponzi scheme proving that, in terms of rhetoric, The Australian's war against the NBN is sounding more and more like a verbal bout of Ponzi-ism.

A Ponzi scheme is of course a very particular kind of fraudulent investment scheme, and Morgan's rhetoric does him no credit, because using his definition of Ponzi scheme, you could berate the government about anything and everything. Fix the Murray Darling? Just a giant Ponzi scheme. Piss money against the wall on destroyers? Just a giant Ponzi scheme ...

And so on and on, with the writer infatuated with his clever dick rhetoric, and a new angle designed to alleviate the tedium and avoid the bleeding obvious conclusion ... that this is just another piece of confrontational confectionary designed to fill up the shelves in the Oz's anti-NBN store.

And there's no chance that the store will ever run short of such goods, because sure enough, in the way of a double barreled shotgun, there's Jennifer Hewett lining up with the other barrel in Cost is the growing issue for broadband. Hewett has absolutely nothing new to add to previous anti-NBN pieces, but when the Oz is in 'maintain the rage' mode, that doesn't matter.

But there is an upside ... as the NBN fills up the space, so The Australian's war on climate change, which once waxed on a daily basis, has now waned (and we thank the moon's phases for that phrase).

So with a dull sigh and a sob, we're forced to turn to Gerard Henderson, the prattling Polonius responsible for making Tuesday's Sydney Morning Herald, duller than watching a game of lawn bowls at the Tamworth City Bowling Club.

Hicks has little say about his memoir - and says little in it runs the header for Henderson's piece, and it could be handily turned, with a little fire and blacksmith artistry, in to Henderson has little to say that's new about Hicks and his memoir, and spends his column saying it.

Henderson's chief complaint? That Hicks has refused to offer himself up to the media to be torn to shreds, as a way of promoting his book, in contrast to John Howard, a professional politician, who to help along sales, has cheerfully monstered Peter Costello, and exposed himself to shoe throwing and a question from ... Peter Hicks. (just don't ask me to watch Q&A to find out more).

Why Howard's boldness has even extended to a launch with broadcaster Alan Jones, and no doubt the sharp tongued ratbag radio host will give Howard his standard savaging (in much the same way as he shows such a sharp eyed regard for the judicial process, as noted by Media Watch last night in All's not fair with Jones and war).

It seems that because Hicks isn't out and about, getting flayed alive by the media, he's not playing the game:

Some extracts of Guantanamo: My Journey have appeared in newspapers but there has been no high-profile launch by any of the author's well-connected supporters. Moreover, Hicks is not scheduled to undertake a book publicity tour.

Shocking, and outrageous, and a total dereliction of duty. The result?

It seems that Hicks has decided to write a book and leave it at that. This means that he can state his case without being questioned about his life or his story.

It doesn't mean that of course. Henderson spends the rest of his column asking questions about Hicks' life and his story, with the bottom line an explicit defence of the Howard government, and its treatment of Hicks.

Strangely, Henderson offers Hicks a sobriquet, "the Adelaide adventurer". Strange, because the meaning of adventurer as a 'soldier of fortune' is now lost behind the notion of a person seeking adventure, as a way to achieve success or make money through performing daring exploits. Even 'soldier of fortune' these days retains its romantic overtone, the idea of someone serving in an army to perform risky tasks for personal gain or for the sheer love of adventure.

Frankly someone who becomes a Muslim and heads off to Pakistan to join in border skirmishing isn't so much an adventurer as a goose. Only a colonial of the old empire school could find such behaviour pukka and a worthy demonstration of Oz adventuring pluck. This isn't Sean Connery and Michael Caine doing it in Kipling style in The Man Who Would Ke King.

The issue that erupted around Hicks was his subsequent mis-treatment by the Howard government, and its singular reluctance to do anything about him or his Guantanamo predicament. The British government managed it with other prisoners, and the United States managed to appoint a singular military officer to his case (and then punished the military officer for his dedication to duty).

But the Howard government in a fit of petulance and pique typical of the more vindictive and petty-minded aspects of Howard's personality, sat on its thumbs, and so the agitation about Hicks began.

It's possible to have no time for Hicks, and also possible to have no time for the Howard government's antics while he endured years in Guantanamo.

Henderson of course has no time for such subtle distinctions:

During his incarceration, Hicks had many vocal supporters among left-wing professionals. They have been quiet following the publication of his memoirs and his apparent refusal to do as he promised and fully account for his terrorist training and his relationship with al-Qaeda.

Yep, it's once again with the 'left-wing professionals'. Or should that be the professional left wing?

But here's the thing. It was the improper incarceration and the Howard government's refusal to do anything about it that was the problem. Once that issue went away, it was 'meh' and on with life ...

Here at the pond, we have absolutely no interest in Hicks' memoir, and we won't be forking over hard won cash for it (besides, if you wait, the remainder table is sure to beckon - sheesh, he hasn't even done a tour of the bookshops, signing copies). No doubt he fails to explain his decision to embark on an Islamic crusade - how to explain getting religion and thinking Pakistan is worth the fight - and no doubt some foolish people might construe this as him being an "Adelaide adventurer".

That said, and despite his best attempts to stir the muddy waters of the pond, we won't be lining up to buy John Howard's Lazarus Rising either. Sure there might be signed copies available in book stores, but it too will be full of self-serving justifications for policy failures and mean excuses for sterling examples of vindictive, petty minded behaviour.

In due course, the remainder table is sure to beckon, and then the second hand bookstores, and then if I'm around long enough, the final indignity of dozens of copies floating around in St Vinnies and Salvation Army shops, or perhaps cheek and jowl with Frank Moorhouse purple pornographic prose in the cat people op shop. And that's the time to strike, though by that time I suspect it will be even harder to give a toss.

O quam cito transit gloria mundi, as they used to remind the pope, which of course will lead you on to ubi sunt, and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say:
Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday?
And this first Summer month that brings the Rose
Shall take Jamshyd and Kaikobad away.

Though strangely the wiki on ubu sunt misses out on one of my favourite pieces in the style:

Summer grass:
all that remains
of warriors' dreams (Basho, here).

Oh dear, the next thing you know, we'll be on to memento mori, or timor mortis conturbat me, or Horace's wise advice, Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero (Seize the day, trusting as little as possible to the future).

Well I guess it brings us to our reading for the day:

The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun?
One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.
The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.
The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.
All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full: unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.
All things are full of labor; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.

There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after. (Ecclesiastes, the King James version here).

What's that you say? The pond's gone quietly mad and got religion?

By golly, who'd have thunk it.

Reading the bible is more interesting than reading the stale, dreary and unprofitable thoughts of the various minions of Murdoch sent to do battle in the NBN wars, or the scribbles of Gerard Henderson, still valiantly fighting a rear guard action for John Howard and his wayward post-colonial adventurism, imagining that David Hicks continues to be a matter of hot contention now that he's out of his incarceration and capable of scribbling his memoirs.

No thanks to John Howard.

But here's the only bit of fun - the splendid irony that both memoirs hit the shops at the same time jostling for sales and the attention of our prattling Polonius, torn between his desire to sing the song of Howard, and do David Hicks down ...

Well at least in the matter of Henderson and Hicks, I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw ...

(Below: who's that missing the bus? Could it be Gerard Henderson? Or just old Alf, in North by North West? Yes, anything, anything to alleviate the daily monotony of reading the chattering class of inner city sophisticated elitists with their predictable ponderings).