Janet Albrechtsen, Andrew Bolt, Luke Walladge, and surprise, surprise, big Mal for a dose of sense and sanity ...

(Above: big Mal with a mate).

It almost goes without saying that I will never vote for the Labor party - in whatever guise or level of government it presents itself - again.

Not that they've been able to rely on me in the past - what's the point of having a vote if you don't choose to exercise it - but there I've said it, and that's about all I can say or do about the matter of Julian Assange, since I can't add to my previous donations to Wikileaks, thanks to the financial disruptions surrounding the site.

Meanwhile, the gormless Robert McClelland shows we still produce fine lap poodles for the United States and Julia Gillard emerges from the sorry affair discredited and diminished. What on earth was all that talk of pre-emptively snatching away Assange's passport?

McClelland is a wretched figure, a man out of his depth, and able to understand only the three basic lap poodle commands - bark at strangers, whimper with pleasure at a few strokes, and stare devotedly and with adoration at the light shining out of the United States' backside.

I wish I could say I'll never buy a Volvo again, but I've never bought a Volvo before and was never likely to in the future, so it seems Ikea will have to wear the consequences of my one person trade ban (and there does the suckling pig in the Swedish restaurant up the road. Sob. Thank the lord the Dutch can keep me supplied with herring).

I realise this puts me in the awkward company of the likes of Geoffrey Robertson, John Pilger, Noam Chomsky and Jemima Khan - well at least I like the films of Ken Loach - but it also puts me in the company of every journalist and publisher around the world who has made use of a wikileak, and so by legal logic, should be sharing a cell with Assange for helping to bring down western civilisation as we know it.

There has been some sensible scribbling about the affair - just a little here and there amid the hysteria and the denunciations and the florid rhetoric - and former chairman Rudd has shown a more canny understanding of the way public opinion in Australia is blowing - to judge by unscientific newspaper polls and a torrent of comments - by turning the other cheek, and taking a swipe at US security.

Cameron Stewart put it nicely in WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange poised to be Labor's David Hicks, and indeed if the US government manages to get its way and organise a show trial in good old Stalinist fashion for Assange, the Gillard government will take a right old pounding.

As for the United States, reaction has become so demented that apparently one goose even proposed the assassination of Phillip Adams. Dear lord, do the Yanks begin to even understand, as their Roman imperium fades, just how astonishingly stupid they can appear to the rest of the world?

And today Malcolm Turnbull pops up with Political risk in making a martyr of Assange, a considered and intelligent piece springboarding off his experience of wiping Margaret Thatcher's dial with Peter Wright at the Spycatcher trial (not to mention the poll at the top of his piece running 90% in favour of Wikileaks). There's a nice coda to the Spycatcher trial here, suggesting that it prompted much needed intelligence reforms ...

Well, there's no point repeating what Turnbull has to say - there's already enough parrots in politics chanting yank Assange's passport, assassinate him, hang him high - but I did like big Mal's note on Gillard being out of her depth ... clearly she shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the deep end of the pool. And I did like the first comment out of the gate in response to big Mal's piece:

Malcolm, the Spycatcher case reminds me of what a fine mind you have.
And now you play second banana to an intellectual vandal called Tony Abbott. Pity.

Well that's where vaulting ambition gets you ... in the manner of Macbeth and a few emails so steeped in blood there's no point in returning.

Never mind, who'd have thunk the pond would find an unnerving meeting of minds with Malcolm Turnbull and Janet Albrechtsen in the one day.

Yep, over at The Australian, Dame Slap mounts a vigorous defence of that prime cut buffoon Andrew Bolt, in Bolt case reflects hollow commitment to free speech (and next week we look forward to her equally vigorous defence of Julian Assange, as opposed to a mere conservative stablemate in rightwing ratbaggery).

Albrechtsen is upset that Bolt and his employer Herald and Weekly Times Ltd are currently being sued for defamation, for expressing an opinion that some light-skinned people self-identify as Aboriginal, with Bolt proposing that this is divisive and produces the unfortunate result of entrenching racial differences.

The columns were of course - if we may be so bold with our metaphors - a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black, since Bolt's transparent intention was to be mischievous, divisive and use his columns to target light-skinned people (and having worked with a light skinned blonde person who rightly identified as aboriginal - since the world and her school mates and her work mates knew her past and believed her black - Bolt's assumptions about such people are profoundly offensive).

Where we part with Albrechtsen is her feeble attempt to defend Bolt:

Never mind that Bolt acknowledged that these people may have identified as Aboriginal for "the most heartfelt and honest of reasons". Never mind that Bolt expressly says he is not accusing them of opportunism. His aim is that we move "beyond black and white to find what unites us and not to invent such racist and trivial excuses to divide".

Uh huh. Well if you can believe that pile of tosh, you can believe anything, because at the heart of Bolt's charge - light-skinned blacks advancing their careers by applying for positions, prizes and scholarship by self-identifying as Aboriginal - is a clear suggestion of cynical opportunism, and to claim anything else is the most disingenuous and dishonest reading of the reason for Bolt's scribbles ...

Where we agree with Albrechtsen is that Bolt shouldn't have ended up in court for being Bolt. In any normal day, there are at least ten good reasons to sue Bolt for being either profoundly stupid or profoundly offensive, but all that would do is clog the courts and add to the outrageous preening sense of self-esteem (mixed with a paranoid persecution complex) that the man already possesses ...

Well you can read Albrechtsen's defence of her "white conservative man loathed by the Left" and you might wonder why - if the pious platitudes involved about not entrenching racial differences - are at the heart of Bolt's scribbles, she feels the need to raise the matter of Bolt's whiteness?

Clearly she's failed to heed Bolt's poignant suggestion that we move "beyond black and white to find what unites us and not to invent such racist and trivial excuses to divide".

Yes indoody, as much as you can find what unites you with a "white conservative", as opposed to say a black or a brindle conservative, or put more plainly, a conservative ...

Yep, we understand Albrechtsen when she says:

It's unfortunate that this needs to be said again and again. Freedom of expression is meaningless if it does not include a right to be offensive.

Which is why, no doubt, she exercises her right to be offensive on a weekly basis and Bolt on a daily, and why - as if we haven't already copped enough from her about Bolt, she then drags in Mark Steyn as "another white conservative writer".

Not of course that colour has anything to do with anything ... it's just that we're all seeking what unites us with white conservatives ...

Well you can read Albrechtsen rabbiting on in her plaintive way, defending the way the empowered, like Bolt, can spend their time cheerfully abusing the disempowered, then get a tad discomforted when the disempowered use the law to strike back ...

But I prefer what might be called the Luke Walladge defence, as outlined in his piece In defence of Andrew Bolt:

There's no bullshit pretence by Walladge that what Bolt said was pious or meaningful or in any way to do with unity. It was destructive, aggressive, condescending and sneering, and Walladge highlights Bolt's thoughts thus:

(in the) ...two columns he wrote last year, opining that certain light or white-skinned people identified themselves as Aboriginal and suggesting their choosing to do so was proof of "a whole new fashion in academia, the arts and professional activism".

Bolt added that "for many of these fair Aborigines, the choice to be Aboriginal can seem almost arbitrary and intensely political".

And now for the Walladge defence:

It's not really surprising that someone's suing Andrew Bolt. Andrew Bolt is an offensive, myopic, aggressively ignorant buffoon whose popularity I have yet to find a decent explanation for and whose arguments, if they are worthy of the title, are usually so full of disingenuity, casuistry, strawmen remarks and simple bias as to render them useless for anything other than lining a parrot cage.

In short, Andrew Bolt is a total flogger.

Indeed. I couldn't put it better myself. And truth to tell when it comes to outrageousness, Bolt is merely a predictable shadow, a pale piece of puffery up against the cavortings of that circus clown Glenn Beck, another product of the Murdoch empire ...

But there's one caveat I'd place on the Walladge defence, when he scribbles:

Simply put, short of violence or malicious untruth people ought to be able to say whatever they want, whenever they want - if nothing else, it makes it easier to identify the idiots. Bolt's right to free speech, after all, does include the right to be taken seriously. And if Pat Eatock finds Bolt so stupid, so objectionable, then she should take up the cudgels, defend her position and show us all why Bolt is wrong.

Take up the cudgels? Like in a highly visible, well paid position as News Corp jester and blogger? In your dreams ...

What you're likely to get instead is Janet Albrechtsen defending Andrew Bolt defending Tim Blair defending Miranda the Devine defending Janet Albrechtsen defending Rupert Murdoch ... in an overwhelmingly dominant media empire where alternative voices are silenced and left to the City Hub (or other city throwaway of your choice).

In that game scribbling for the ABC's The Drum is like pissing in the wind (oh we do love our pointless pointing percy metaphors here at the pond), while the comfortable commentariat spend their well-heeled time whining about their persecution complex ...

What, you mean we can't just bludgeon someone around the head with our opinions, and a bit of verbal 4 be 2?

And sadly it turns the underlying assumptions about freedom of speech, and the right to be obtuse quickly get overturned by Walladge himself in his prize piece of buffoonery in Julian Assange is not your friend, wherein he mightily smotes Assange for daring to transmit leaked information into the ether ...

Indeed. Strangely however I never thought Assange was my friend, but it's more than passing strange to see Walladge defending Bolt's right to be a buffoon one week, and then launching a vicious assault on Assange the next. What happened to the buffoon defence?

It's a truly wondrous splendid frothing and foaming at the mouth, worthy of Andrew Bolt in his heyday, but it's also such a paranoid wretched rant in support of the imperium that I couldn't be fucked quoting it ...

No doubt Walladge is now looking forward to the Swedish trial, the deporting and then the show trial and imprisonment of Assange in the United States. Yeay, that'll do a lot for freedom of speech ...

Be careful what you wish for.

But I guess he's got his defence right:

I love the fact that Andrew Bolt has the right to be so obnoxious, so ridiculous and so laughably nonsensical. Because his right to be a flogger means that I have the right to call him an offensive, myopic, aggressively ignorant buffoon whose popularity I have yet to find a decent explanation for. And I'll be damned if I support any attempt to silence either of us.

I guess in our hearts we're all buffonish floggers, and yes Walladge is singularly, unnervingly like Andrew Bolt in his capacity for buffonish flogging ...

Which leaves Malcolm Turnbull as the sole voice of sweet reason.

Go big Mal, hit us with a little sweet reason, and as you remember your role in the Spycatcher affair, what a pleasure to find a piece devoid of the usual political hypocrisies and forelock tugging pieties.

Yes, I take back what I said, let's just have a soupcon of big Mal's tasty reasonableness, it reminds me of turkish delight. May I kiss your icing sugar crusted lips?

Extravagant demonisation of Assange and the leaks only makes them more exciting than they are. Is it really a story that American diplomats think Silvio Berlusconi is a skirt chaser or that Kevin Rudd was a control freak presiding over a chaotic, dysfunctional government? It would be amazing if they had reached any other conclusion.

Yes, just as every revelation to date - judging by the second hand sources quoting the originals - has seen lip smacking, salivating talk of amazing scandals, when in reality not a single new idea has emerged (why I can even take you to a dozen more important security points in Sydney than the dumb Americans could find, and if you don't know the way to Pine Gap, allow me to provide you with a map).

Just as the vindictive pursuit of Peter Wright turned his book into an international bestseller, so the furious attacks on Assange are likely to be counterproductive. It is hard to know what to say about the Swedish sexual assault charges, other than to observe that the facts so far outlined by the prosecution would constitute an unlikely basis for a prosecution in Australia.

American politicians might use their time more productively working out how a 23-year-old army private had access to so much confidential material and was able to copy it and hand it over to WikiLeaks. The long-term damage from the leaked cables is likely to be that it confirms that despite spending billions on security and the war against terror, the US government is unable to preserve the security and confidence of those it deals with around the world. It will take a lot of reassurance before the chilling impact of these leaks wears off.

There's more, but ever mindful of fair use provisions, I leave it to you to read the rest of the piece in peace.

Meanwhile, it's just another day on the pond, spent in company of other buffoons ... Bolt, Albrechtsen, and now a splendid new companion Luke Walladge ...

(Below: a recently discovered snap of a heavily disguised Janet Albrechtsen out on the hustings, campaigning for Andrew Bolt, borrowed from Jonathan Green here).