Everywhere a sea of brown and oh the canaries were singing so sweetly ...

(Above: thanks to a reader for reminding the pond of a day which should never be forgotten - it was worth taking the trip here)


This weekend the pond is heading off to Melbourne to enlist in the white army dedicated to doing battle with the brown. The Orientalists. The tribalists. The strong hating on the weak.

As the beloved leader noted yesterday:

I’d suggest also this: which nation most clearly shows white in conflict with brown, Western civilisation in conflict with the Oriental; capitalism in conflict with the tribal; reason in conflict with the “romantic”, the strong in conflict with the weak? In every fault line, Israel is on the opposite side to a certain kind of tribal Leftist. Israel is once again the canary in the coal mine of civilisation. 

Ah the canaries in the coal mine.

It reminded the pond of that classic text:

The black-haired brown youff lies in wait for hours on end, satanically glaring at and spying on the unsuspicious girl whom he plans to seduce, adulterating her blood and removing her from the bosom of her own people. The brown youff uses every possible means to undermine the racial foundations of a subjugated people. In his systematic efforts to ruin girls and women he strives to break down the last barriers of discrimination between him and other peoples. The brown youffs were responsible for bringing negroes into the Yarra valley, with the ultimate idea of bastardizing the white race which they hate and thus lowering its cultural and political level so that the brown youff might dominate. For as long as a people remain racially pure and are conscious of the treasure of their blood, they can never be overcome by the brown youff. Never in this world can the brown youff become master of any people except a bastardized people.

Oh okay, it was Adolf, and if you substitute Jew for brown youffs and the Rhineland for the Yarra valley, you're deep into Mein Kampf.

And no, the pond isn't going to put any fine into the Godwin's Law swear jar, because this is too serious a matter.

It seems, if you read The Age, that brown people have taken over the Victorian government and are intending to allow limp wristed games of soccer to take place on the sacred, hallowed turf of the MCG. (MCG infuriates AFL over decision to host world soccer powerhouses).

It's a crisis in western civilisation. No, not the sad and untimely death noted on the right, though he was of the liberal left.

Look, there on the left, on the left of the page, where you can find decent Victorians under assault by the tribalists and the orientalists and the brown people playing soccer.

It's through these simple tricks that the brown people steal the healthy precious bodily fluids, the vital essences of the Victorian people, and weaken them, and prepare them for a game played by brown people.

What's that you say? The pond is being offensively racist and problematic? No, no, no, this is a war in the coal mine of civilisation, and the AFL is the canary, and when you're a fuck-witted racist, everything looks like a race war ...

It provides a very easy guide to reading the papers this day.

The pond simply can't have enough talk of white v brown and the coal mine of civilisation, which is why when you read Senators may defy Tony Abbott on hate laws, you can find three valiant cultural warriors - Bob Day, Cory Bernardi and Dean Smith - standing up to the brown people, and arguing for the right of white people to remind the world of the dangers of the brown people.

Switch over to Boris Johnson pleading that The Kurds need the West's protection, and the first question that springs to mind isn't to help the Kurds, but  to ask Boris aren't the Kurds brown people?

Should the west be taking the side of brown people no matter how deserving or how in need?

And right here in NSW, there is evidence of the ongoing deviance of brown people.

Now you might assert that brown people had nothing whatsoever to do with this familiar scene:

This latest corruption inquiry has painted a reassuringly familiar picture. There is the property developer, ensconced in his luxury motor car (in this case a Bentley), surreptitiously slipping a bent politician or two a wad full of the folding stuff.  (here, forced video at end of link)

But somewhere in the coal mine of civilisation, the canary is whistling a tune ...

After all, why else would Kate McClymont have titled her piece Tim Owen and a stack of bibles hit trouble at ICAC, if on some deep, deep level it wasn't about an imperilled white Christian civilisation under dire assault from an assault on a stack of bibles?

Meanwhile, over at the reptile park, Michael Gawenda joined the lizards in berating Media Watch, Paul Barry, the ABC, in Barry's muddled Media Watch a waste of time (behind the paywall, because fools and their money are easily parted).

It turned out that Gawenda actually thought much the same as Barry:

For what it’s worth, I think Carlton should have been allowed to apologise to those he abused and then gone on writing his Saturday column.

Uh huh. Turns out it's not worth much.

Then Gawenda went on to abuse Barry for muddled thinking, while defending Bill Leak's indefensible cartoon, and the pond was wondering where it was all coming from. Until this:

To reinforce all this Barry recalled the cartoon by Michael Leunig that The Age had refused to publish. He quoted Leunig at some length about how he has been abused and vilified by people who dislike his views on Israel and the Palestinians and how it was a pity that the SMH apologised for the fat Jew cartoon because such an apology makes it harder for cartoonists to tell the truths that some people do not want to hear. 
Barry did not show the cartoon that The Age refused to publish, which I imagine made it hard for people to know what he was on about. 
Well I was the editor of The Age at the time and I refused to publish the cartoon.

It would have been a lot more honest of Gawenda if he'd started off his piece saying he had a bone to pick with Barry, and it was personal, and he stood by his decision and yes he still had a chip on his shoulder.

As for knowing what Barry was on about, you just have to head off to Media Watch here, to see the cartoon that offended Gawenda's sensitivities.

It's dated 2002, and in it a Work Brings Freedom sign transforms into War Brings Peace.

Now there's an irony. Now doubt in twelve years time, someone will be contemplating how war brought peace in 2014 ...

Up against Bill Leak's cartoon, which Gawenda takes the trouble to defend, it now seems unexceptional. Dated by subsequent events.

In that case, why is Leak’s cartoon ethically equivalent to one the published in the SMH? It is clearly a Hamas fighter in the cartoon and not any sort of representative image of Palestinians. He is not suggesting that long-suffering Palestinians are sending their children off to be human shields or to die for the cause. He is saying that this is a strategy employed by Hamas. Is that not at least arguable?

Yep, it's wrong to present anti-Semitism, but smearing Palestinians as fundamentalist crazed Islamics engaged in child sacrifice is at least arguable. So here's the argument:

Gawenda wasn't up to this bit of the argument.

Instead he signed off with this sort of mealy mouthed piety:

It is important to examine all these issues, issues I believe a program like Media Watch ought to tackle. Unfortunately, Barry’s attempt to tackle these issues was muddled and in my view, in the end a waste of time.

Uh huh. It turns out that reading Gawena was a complete waste of time.

He had skin in the game, and that led to a very muddled and muddied attempt to tackle the issues.

Never mind, he has his supporters, including Andrew Bolt: I'd defend Israel even if every one of its leaders were like Michael Gawenda.

Now there's an irony. Somewhere the pond can hear the faint sounds of that canary.

Who to blame? Well all the pond can do is point the finger at brown people, and sigh with relief at the knowledge that there are no brown Jewish people in Israel  ... is there nothing these exotic Orientalists and tribalists won't ruin?

And now enough of all that, because the pond remains fixated on meta-splaining the metadata, as recently reported in No, minister Turnbull, IP addresses aren't part of routine billing data collection.

Yep, big Mal got it wrong, which helps explain why you can read in The Graudian Data retention: Liberal backbencher calls for metadata warrant requirement.

The pond was pleased when last night 24 dropped big Mal's self-serving speech in mid-stream - these days he's sounding much more like a self-pleasing useless fop than a useful fool. But you can if you like refer to it on his website here and somewhere near the end you'll come to this:

And so I issued a challenge to journalists and our major media organisations - who do have the requisite reporters and networks overseas to do the story justice - to do a comparison of what other countries are doing and what technologies are being deployed. 
After three years of frustration and complaints, the only two people to actually do an international comparison were not from the mainstream press at all: They were Phil Dobbie and Josh Taylor, who write for industry publications CommsDay and ZDNet. The ABC was no exception. They devoted hundreds of hours to talking about broadband but with the biggest international news gathering network in the nation, they resolutely failed to do anything to give Australians the comparative information they deserved. 
We should, intellectually, get out more.


Yes, we should get out more and keep the company of luddites like Tony Abbott and George Brandis, and act like a useless tool to help sell their surveillance policies and their half-arsed broadband (not to mention the pond's miserable life with Optus.The Optus The).

And so the pond took up the challenge and read a couple of recent offerings from Josh Taylor:

In an early discussion paper to the company's product development forum, NBN Co flagged that it would retain the fibre to the premises speed tiers — 12Mbps/1Mbps, 25Mbps/5Mbps, 50Mbps/20Mbps, and 100Mbps/40Mbps — on fibre to the node, but indicated that the latter two tiers would be advertised as offering speeds "up to" the speeds represented, with fibre to the node often unable to offer the top tier speeds on VDSL over the copper lines. This resulted in the ACCC admitting in June that such representations could be construed as misleading to consumers. "At its face, that would be misleading," ACCC chair Rod Sims said at the time. (here)

Turnbull's admission that the data retention regime is likely to be easily circumvented, and may be costly and difficult for ISPs to implement comes as the government begins discussions with ISPs over how best to implement the scheme. (here)

How about Dobbie?

...a blanket approach offering rich metadata to any law enforcement agency that wants it is probably not the best way forward. There needs to be a clearer definition of the various types of metadata, some of which should require a warrant to access. (here)

Ah there's the danger. When you actually start reading the geeks, you come to understand what a useless futtock Turnbull is ..

Somewhere no doubt there's a canary whistling in a coal mine ...

And now, between Gawenda and David Pope, here's why the pond will always go with Pope, and more Pope here, and before the Pope, a little Walt Whitman to provide a context:

O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done; 
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won; 
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, 
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring: 
But O heart! heart! heart! 
O the bleeding drops of red, 
Where on the deck my Captain lies, 
Fallen cold and dead. 

O Captain! My Captain! rise up and hear the bells; 
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills; 
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding; 
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; 
Here captain! dear father! 
This arm beneath your head; 
It is some dream that on the deck, 
You've fallen cold and dead. 

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still; 
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will; 
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done; 
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won; 
 Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells! 
But I, with mournful tread, 
Walk the deck my captain lies, 
Fallen cold and dead. (an original handwritten draft can be Greg Hunted here)