The pond is not of their world ...

This really is a special day, especially at the Sunday Terror, the least trusted newspaper in Australia, where the loons come out and howl at the moon ...

Of course any other day of the week, Akker Dakker would be moaning and groaning about all the lefties and the do gooders and the hand wringers wanting apologies to the blacks, or being sorry about the mistreatment of gays, or sorry about the history of abuse women have suffered over the years ...

Sorry? Never apologise, never look back, never say you're sorry, never put on the black armband ...

Here you go, back in November 2008:

Many Australians were moved by the Hollywood-style apology to Aborigines delivered by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in February. 
Rudd’s address embraced the widely-accepted politically correct notion that white Australians were collectively guilty of crimes against black Australians. 
It was unequivocal in its recognition of the so-called Stolen Generations, though no court had found any basis for such claims, and it held out the hope that practical solutions might replace the symbolism of rhetoric. 
It would be an understatement to say there was an orgy of smug self-congratulation among those who had supported the false, black armband view of Australian history.

And so on and so forth, at endless tedious barking mad Akker Dakker length. No apologies then, or even an apology for a lack of apology.

Not symbolism, not rhetoric, and not another hand-out, just reality. Worth 1000 sorries any day.

Akker Dakker is such a goose he doesn't even seem to understand that his latest display of historical bile - what a toad he is, if we can mix our species - is about as clear an indication as any you could want that the crazed right wingers view the national curriculum not as an educative process, but as an ideological club.

But hey, not doubt the ALP will apologise for union war crimes, if any can be found, the very moment that Akker Dakker apologises for the war crimes of Pig Iron Bob Menzies.

Heck, drag Ming the Merciless from his grave and make him apologise and then stick him next to Tony Abbott while Abbott himself apologises, followed by the rest of the Liberal party and their commentariat flunkies. There's a few things that require an apology:

And while we're at it, an apology for the ongoing misrepresentation of deserter and leftie Simpson by donkey right wing members of the commentariat wouldn't go astray either.

Of course it would be interesting to have a curriculum which explored both sides, but when you're a zealot of the fascist Akker Dakker kind, you won't even find a scale or a balance in a butcher's shop.

But since this is meditative Sunday and while on matters of history, if you ever wanted evidence of why the Catholic church managed so well under Franco in Spain, and came to a perfectly reasonable understanding with Mussolini, here it is:

Yep, the Catholic church has always done well with jingoism and patriotism and chauvinism, and shrouding itself with the prevailing national ideology, and what a perfect job George Pell does, when taking time out from his other work as one of the world's leading climate scientists.

Truly Pellism is right at home in the least trusted newspaper in Australia, jostling cheek to jowl with the likes of the very jowly Akker Dakker.

It also produces extraordinary comedy:

We are an outpost of Western civilisation. It is one thing to oppose England in the cricket, but it is foolish not to acknowledge the British origins of our institutions - except the Catholic Church.

Why you could run that riff - except the Catholic Church - right through the rest of the Pellist blather.

Parliament, the law, schools, hospitals and military all follow British models. And Europe, like the Americas and Australia, cannot be understood without the Judaeo-Christian tradition - except the Catholic Church.

For these reasons, among others, I commend the national school curriculum review - but please, let's except the Catholic Church.

A curriculum which does not mention James Cook and has no secondary references to the First Fleet or the Anzacs is badly skewed - and where's the Catholic Church, even if it comes from wog land?

Christianity is mentioned only 11 times, once more than Islam. Europe, Britain and the US are mentioned 76 times, while Asia is referred to more than 200 times, as is the concept of sustainability for the planet - and what about the Catholic Church, which let's face it, is much more important than a sustainable planet, because you're all going to hell ...

All the evils of the Industrial Revolution are listed, while the prosperity it brought is ignored - and how could they overlook the Catholic Church  while I recycle this kind of Nick Cater tripe?

Children need to know our convicts were never slaves and they integrated into society, and that transportation was stopped as Australian society became one of the success stories of colonial history - and never mind the Catholic Church simply refusing to understand that forced convict labour was indeed a kind of slavery.

The ILO even devised a Forced Labour Convention to look at this area, and while the "unfree labour" it discusses is a form of forced labour, it doesn't score an exemption, because in the old days, convicts were placed at the disposal of private individuals and companies. (more on unfree labour here).

But where were we? Oh yes:

Children who do not know our national achievements are deprived because they cannot know what makes us tick, especially if they have little knowledge of the the malevolent, mischievous, duplicitous, fascist loving ways of the Catholic church.

But gather around little ones, and we'll tell you a tale of threatening penguins tying thumbs behind back with string and making the child kneel on the hot concrete in the Tamworth sun, and the spanking and the whacking on the cheeks and the hands and the bums, and the rulers flashing at the knuckles and the cane soaring through the air with a snickering sound, and the assigning of Dunce caps and the standing in the corner, and that's before we get on to the mental abuse of the rote recital of the catechism, with an error getting us back to the physical abuse ... and everyone truly grateful for not being at the Christian Brothers where the leather strap took on the mythic form of legend.

It is, perhaps a tad unfortunate, that Cardinal Pell should have chosen this very day to celebrate national achievements, with the past week having been dedicated in the media to the singular behaviour of assorted Marist brothers, and the astonishing acknowledgment that the molestation of children wasn't perceived as an actual crime, but as a personal or moral failure, and perhaps as something requiring counselling or some form of spiritual direction (Jailed child sex offender still has Marist Brother title, with transcript).

And that getting rid of the odd smell still lingering in the air would involve "quite a bit of paperwork" and anyway I'm not sure that the word 'crime' would have come into my mind. (Inquiry hears paedophile still a member of Catholic order).

But back to Pell and his jingoism, which is of the quaint British kind, with a European flavour sufficient to get the Catholic church out of wog jail.

Once upon a time, it was the bog Irish and the wog Italians who were perceived as not belonging to the British tradition - they were deviant Catholics, don't you know:

The Catholic dogs,
jump like frogs,
eat no meat in Friday

The correct response?

When the Catholics ring the bell
all the Proddies will go to hell!

Her Proddie Majesty and her spawn included, no doubt.

It was all very tribal and as strong in the 1950s as it was in the day when Cardinal Mannix led the charge against conscription in the first world war and was perceived by the ruling Protestant establishment as a traitor who ruined the war effort.

What did Carolyn Landon learn from it as a five year old?

I had no idea what a Protestant actually was, but I certainly realised it left me branded as different and hopeless. This was, possibly, the most important lesson I learnt at St Joseph's Catholic Primary School: the lesson of religious intolerance. It made no sense to me, but I soon began to recognise that religious prejudice was  everywhere. (here)

The pond learned that lesson too, but flash forward, and now how do we define "the other", those who are different and alien and foreign and suspect and possibly weird, most certainly strange?

Show us the way, Pellists:

Australia Day should be when we rejoice in our national achievements while giving thanks for who we are. 
We should count our blessings by comparing our situation with neighbouring countries and our long-term allies. By most standards we rate well. 
On other occasions we can mark the dark stains on our national history, but on Australia Day we acknowledge our strengths so we can draw on them to remedy our mistakes. Acknowledging the injustice done to Aborigines is essential. More needs to be done. 
Australia welcomes more migrants, by percentage, than any other country and a similarly high percentage of refugees. This diversity is enriching. 
Nearly all these migrants come to us because ours society built on traditional European values. We should know more about Asia, but we do not belong to Asia. We are not of that world.

See how it's done? A quick hop and a jump and we're away from British values to traditional European values, and therefore the Catholic church, and meanwhile, let's not mention swarthy gents from the middle East setting out certain values. Let's just conflate Judeo-Christian with Roman and Greek, in the manner of a Murdochian lackey.

And certainly let's not mention the blacks on the very day we celebrate the nation, which just so happens to be the day that the country was invaded. Never mind, much injustice might have been done, and more needs to be done, so why not do it on the very day some of them get a tad upset about the invasion ...

And as for Asia? We are not of that world.

The other, the alien, the foreign, the new dogs and frogs ...

And from there it's just a short hop and a skip to rioting on the beach at Cronulla ...

What's left? Well how about a pox on the Akker Dakkers and the Pellists of this world, so up themselves they've lost any notion of a balanced view of the world ....

(Below: and so, thank the long absent lord, to a few cartoons, and plenty more here at the Australian Cartoon Museum, well worth the visit).