The pond drones on a little, like an inner urban elitist News Ltd reptile ...

(Above: ye-haw and a shout out to Terry Southern ... if only he were around today).


It's not as if the pond didn't give the Daily Terror's editor fair warning.

Deprived of Miranda the Devine ranting about Islamics and the terror within, the pond immediately raced off to the Devine's blog, and sure enough there was a whiff of the Devine, essence of the Devine so to speak, but this time in the persona of a common gossip and scold, berating Bob Hawke and praising Hazel Hawke in such a way in Hazel Hawke held her dignity to the end that for the first time in many a decade the pond felt a whiff of sympathy for Hawke.

And here's the truly alarming thing, at least for the bean counters at the Terror. We didn't have to learn more, or offer up an email address, or pay a dime. It's like wandering around the ground floor at Myer, getting a whiff of a perfume here, the sweet smell of success and a body lotion there.

And it gets worse. This morning's Daily Terror offering features Tim Blair combining two favourite objects of spleen, the ABC, and Islamics, but if you head off to the Bleagh's blog, you can get all the classic talk of classic lefty blathertalk and climate change denialism and the vile ABC and the general filthiness of Islamics you like. For free.

Shut down the blogs, for the love of the long absent lord, shut down the blogs ... they're ruing your business plan by offering too many free samples.

Because, you see, it gets even worse. For some reason right at this moment the editors of the HUN have decided to make free to the world the Bolter's agitated portrait of Dandenong as a degenerate zone of rioting Islamic ratbags, in Towers of silence instead of honesty.

For free, and just a click away, and revealing it's all the fault of the ABC, SBS and Dreyfus. Islamic terror in Dandenong, all the fault of their ABC!

Oh ABC, that you should be responsible for everything wrong in the world, while the valiant minions of Murdoch, pushing shit up hill, as is their Augean/Sisyphean lot, trying to repair the damage, but losing, losing, and we all cartwheel into anarchy and chaos ...

The truth, for free!

What hope a Daily Terror paywall when the truth resounds throughout the land, a mere free click away?

But wait, because you see, it gets even worse. Right at the moment, while it's still free, Fairfax is offering a free anti-Islamic rant from Paul 'generally grumpy' Sheehan, in Twisting Islam to justify cruelty (yes, you have to endure a forced video for the pleasure)

Now generally grumpy Sheehan is cunning. He knows that if he indulges in just a straight bit of Islamic bashing, he'll get into trouble.

So he tosses in a few caveats, like:

... hundreds of families, mostly Muslim, are also in mourning because of the actions of psychopaths using Islam to justify their bloodlust. 

And:

Most Muslims are peaceful, like most non-Muslims ...

But he can't help himself, cherry picking quotes from the Qu'an urging violence, and going on a rant worthy of any News Ltd hack:

... the Koran groans under the weight of its own contradictions, with entreaties to kindness co-existing with exhortations to merciless war. If the Koran were only a text of peace and mercy, tens of thousands of Muslims could not invoke its verses to engage in violence. Those who gravitate to the wrathful messages of the Koran bring their own pathologies with them, which they then cloak in zealous piety. Apologists argue that those who use the Koran to justify violence are not Islamic. And in the West there is fearfulness to trigger the belligerent victimology that extreme Muslims use to cloak intransigence, separatism and special-pleading.

Now the pond routinely indulges in attacks on fundamentalism, but here's the thing.

It shows grace and consideration to be inclusive. The fundamentalists now in control of Israel for example are doing grave harm to that state, and Christian fundamentalist should always be mentioned in the same breath as Islamic fundamentalism. And where would we be without angry Sydney Anglicans and the Pellists? And lickspittle fellow travellers like Pearson and the Devine?

Naturally Sheehan doesn't even begin to consider such a balanced approach, a most generous pox on all their houses:

The most disturbing aspect of the record of violence of Muslims invoking the name of Islam in violence is that the public record understates, not overstates, the problem. Not included in the log of violent crimes are the outbreaks of civil violence such as the riots that have rocked Stockholm over the past week, where an urban underclass of predominantly Muslim immigrants, refugees and asylum-seekers and their children has erupted in violence, vandalism and attacks on police. You will not find the word ''Muslim'' in media reports.

Indeed. And what you won't find in Australian media reports, especially those emanating from hysterical right wing rat bags, is a debate that has at last got going in the United States, concerning the use of drones.

This to puts the pond in strange company, since it's generally been a flock of Pauls that have taken Obama and the drone campaign to task, as you can read in Rand Paul Responds to Obama's Drone Speech.

Now the pond has a particular dislike of drones, and talk of impersonal surgical technically skilled strikes (or even worse, the monumentally stupid John Kerry saying that the United States only uses drones when kids aren't around as targets, here).

Now if you look at the statistics, as presented in this analysis of the kills in recent years in Pakistan, which proposes that less than 2% since 2004 of the three thousand odd killed are high profile targets, but over 300 kids have somehow strayed into the killing zone (you complete doofus, John Kerry). Here, with links.

In the process, you can read a simple summary explaining why the pond finds the use of drones so disturbing:

"These are people that we're dropping bombs on, and if you really think about putting yourself in their shoes, there's invisible flying robots over their heads, that they can't see, that are dropping missiles around them, that changes their entire society," Grubbs said.

Invisible death from the sky, and what this ongoing use of drones does is legitimise them, such that, when terrorists acquire drones, as they surely will, they will have many examples to justify their use, and few compunctions about using them.

And then as drone terror rains down on the Bolter and perhaps even on Paul Sheehan, who once might have thought he was as safe as a bug in a snug eastern suburbs rug, what a wailing there will be ...

And then we might just borrow Sheehan's words, and only tweak them a little:

... the Bible groans under the weight of its own contradictions, with entreaties to kindness co-existing with exhortations to merciless war on unbelievers ... (Don't believe it? Don't get the pond started).

The most disturbing aspect of the record of violence of Christians, and even socialists born in Kenya invoking the name of  western civilisation and democracy in violence is that the public record understates, not overstates, the problem. Not included in the log of violent crimes are the outbreaks of civil violence such as the routine drone killings that have been conducted in a number of countries over the past year where an urban underclass of predominantly Muslim people suffer impersonal, detached cold-blooded death from the sky. You will not find the words "Christian democratic western civilisation" terrorists in media reports.

Ah well, as the pond's old mate Kurt Vonnegut used to say all the time, so it goes.

When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in a bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "so it goes.”

Which might make it okay if you're a Tralfamadorian on Tralfamadore ...

Balance, it seems, is only useful when it involves scales measuring the hysteria of local reptiles hacking out their bile ...

(Below: as usual, Tom Tomorrow is in the money).