Miranda Devine, the anon Oz editorialist, and let's not forget George 'the mushroom' Souris ...

(Above: Rusty and Miranda the Devine set the tone for the end of the week).

The pond is dedicated to the proposition that all religion is pie in the sky, whether you call it kosher pie, a halal pie, or a wheat based gluten laden wafer pie of the kind approved by the Holy Father so that coeliacs may burn in hell without the intercession of Holy Communion (yes folks, it's all here in Wheat wafers and Holy Communion).

But for sheer alarmist downright cretinous stupidity, even the stupidity of religion has to cede ground to the wedge scribbles of Miranda the Devine in We must not bow to a pushy minority.

According to the Devine, halal food is the thin, soft edge of the wedge, which will soon see a pushy minority introduce strict Islmaic sharia law into Australia.

The opening for sharia law began with the relatively benign demand for halal food (meat from livestock slaughtered according to Islamic religious practice).

Yep, and from that "relatively" benign push for halal food and certification comes Islamic finance, comes a fundamental attack on Australia's fundamental laws, comes a devastating attack on Australia's democracy, comes the reduction of women to second class citizens, comes the curtailment of freedom of speech, comes the destruction of any compatibility with the European Court of Human Rights, comes the end of the the right to publish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed, comes the likelihood of any criticism of Mohammed resulting in the death penalty (perhaps by stoning), and comes the complete ruination of marriage, divorce and custody of children in the western style, and - it almost goes without saying - comes the redemption of Senator Cori Bernardi's bashing of all Muslims as just prescient insight rather than fear-mongering of the worst kind.

Next thing you know there'll be rioting in the streets and a reversion to the division Pauline Hanson years (despite John Howard saying she had the right to speak her mind), with vigilante groups springing up and grabbing their favourite bits of 4 be 2 to give anyone nearby a decent pounding.

But wait, you ask, if all this arises from the deadly danger of allowing halal food into the lucky country, what might arise from the notion of kosher food, currently in free distribution?

Will we further down the track have to confront the alarming notion that it's led to Jewish domination of the financial system, and perhaps the movie industry, and certainly the banks?

You see after the stoush last year about the certification of kosher food (Federal Government rejects supreme kashrut authority) there was much talk of Jewish law alarmingly and actively being put into practice in Australia. Right here, right now!:

There is no precedent in Jewish law that favours secular legal entities taking responsibility for kosher labelling. To the contrary, allowing secular courts this type of jurisdiction is non-traditional and can only limit Jewish religious freedom in this country. (No competition please, we're the Kashrut Authority)

Below: the dread result of Jewish law and Jewish religious freedom!

What next? The Pellist heretics talking of the application of Catholic canonical law in Australia?

Eek, they already do.Quickly race off to read Canon law could threaten Notre Dame Move, a quaint insight into the way canon law can affect property rights in Australia.

Golly gee, do you feel the need to do a Martin Luther and nail a protest to the nearest church door?

Or perhaps you feel the need to rush out and join a neo-Nazi group, and rush into the streets to do battle with other vigilante groups, using your preferred weaponry, solid baseball bats or water pipes favoured by Rusty and the gang in Romper Stomper.

Well you might if you follow the kind of hysteria regularly on view amongst the alarmist News hacks who reckon that somehow 1.7% of the country will manage to impose their iron will on the rest of us.

Once upon a time, in our family we used to eat fish on a Friday, and listen to the local representatives of the Church, ostensibly and allegedly chaste souls married to god, so they could spend their time hectoring and berating the local population about divorce, pre-marital sex, homosexuality, and all the other sins of the flesh. That worked out well, didn't it? Except for the long suffering children ....

Bugger it, damned if I won't be eating meat this Friday, or maybe some kosher or halal chicken, seeing as how the process is pretty much the same. Oh there's a few differences - halal requires a prayer to Allah before getting down to the slaughter, but not much else (Kosher and Halal).

Meanwhile, a big cheerio and shout out to the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, which somehow - with its submission to the Federal Government's multiculturalism inquiry in relation to sharia law - has allowed Miranda the Devine to pose as some kind of fierce secularist determined to keep our wonderful democratic system free of the blight of religious laws. Well played guys, but pardon us if we take away that gun ... we're worried for your feet.

Enough of the alarmist claptrap that emanates with such monotonous regularity from the tabloid News hacks - a pox on all religions and their stupid followers, and yes, that includes the Devine, who is a bit like a Manchester United soccer thug commenting on the manners of Liverpool hooligans - and let's get down and boogie with the anonymous editorialist at The Australian.

We've managed to avoid this anonymous pseudo-blogger for a couple of blissful weeks of peace and joy, but there he or she is, at it again with Gillard must grapple with climate, carbon and cant. For a stunning bout of cant and hypocrisy, it easily outdoes Miranda the Devine, and that, as we all know, is an exceptional achievement.

You see The Australian supports a market-based mechanism for pricing carbon for a problem its opinion pages have long opined doesn't exist. Everybody likes it, except for Tony Abbott:

The odd man out is Tony Abbott. By thumbing his nose at the market approach, he almost guarantees his carbon abatement will cost more per tonne than under an ETS or carbon tax. And it involves picking winning projects, a process fraught with the risk of governments making costly mistakes, such as those cited above.

Uh huh. The recalcitrant wretch. Even Malcolm Turnbull has had enough - Turnbull singes Abbott on Climate, and you can see big Mal's policy teeth being extracted and him singing the praises of David Cameron as a visionary here in Turnbull discusses broadband and climate policy.

Uh huh. So you'd expect the anonymous editorialist to come out with a swinging assault on Abbott for getting everything wrong and arse about? Wrong, totally wrong. He's doing the right thing, which is proposing a foolhardy and expensive policy, because he can sell it:

... voters understand that the Opposition Leader's plan allows us to get on with abating carbon without drastic changes to our economy, while we wait to see what the rest of the world does. Even the government's own climate change adviser, Ross Garnaut, has always argued that Australia cannot go it alone. Politically, Mr Abbott holds the upper hand. His clear, strong and consistent "stop the great big new tax" message contrasts against a confused government message.

Yes, it's a strong, clear and consistent - and even by The Australian's own judgment - a more expensive and wrong-headed, muddle wombat policy, and so he's doing a jolly good job for the country.

Even better, Abbott's stupidity is all Julia Gillard's fault. She should stop blaming him for a fear-mongering campaign, and let him get on with the important business of mounting a fear-mongering campaign. Only in The Australian.

And if that's not enough, the anonymous editorialist delivers even more righteous cant in Quigley probe is no smear. Of course as soon as you read a defensive header like that you realise that The Australian has in fact been involved in a smear campaign against Mike Quigley because it's a cheap and easy way of playing the man, and so playing the NBN. What a surpassing hypocritical rag it is. Throw more mud at it Conroy, the thicker and the smellier, right from the bottom of the swamp, the better ...

There is of course a much more important issue with the NBN. Why Armidale? The wretches will never vote Labor, and after taking the agrarian socialism on offer, they're likely to turn towards the Nationals, the ungrateful pups, yet here in Newtown, there are people longing to return to the fold, and get a fast connection. Hang on, can I have a bit of that smelly mud saved for Senator Conroy?

Speaking of Armidale, I once spent years living and suffering there, and so did George Souris, the new minister for the y'arts in NSW, and what do you know, when I returned to Australia, the first thing I read about was George's grand plans for museums in Australia. In railway tunnels ... (Rail tunnels loom large in arts plans).

Yep, a museum dedicated to Aboriginal culture down in the ground - quite possibly this means the mushroom growers will have to share the space withe Aboriginal community - and another for war history, based on the bizarre notion that somehow this can replicate the Churchill war rooms in London, as opposed to say the bunkers infested by Colonel Gaddafi and Adolf Hitler.

This after having just toured New York's finest, including MOMA, the Metropolitan, the Whitney (which is on the move with a US$750 million building for the meatpacking district - that's 750 mil George), the Frick, the Guggenheim, PS1, various Chelsea galleries, and discovering some fine Bruce Wrighton photographs at a private gallery on 57th street (and there are examples here at time of writing).

George's way of matching the big apple? A couple of museums in basement abandoned railway tunnels?

George, George, the only art to come out of New York's subway tunnels, apart from the sometimes fetching wall decorations and the often skilled buskers, is the original The Taking of Pelham 1,2,3.

Style, George style. Instead of burying the blacks and the military in the basement, why not save the space for mad aunts, or use the money to clean up the subway stations and install some artworks to alleviate the unremitting gloom?

Is it a way of making the state Labor party look good, or is it just another way of saying that New South Wales is completely and utterly doomed?

I know, I know. Just a bunch of silly rhetorical questions. I swear to the long absent lord we're totally, fully doomed ...

(Below: in the flesh, and apart from the machine, this Wrighton photograph has the tonality and impact of a Hopper painting).