Genuflecting and forelock-tugging at the splendid sight of the genuflecting forelock-tuggers ...

Every so often, the pond just has to pause and admire.

The diligence, the hard work, the tireless, relentless burnishing and polishing, done on a daily basis, and never mind the hagiographic excess. Astonishing, admirable ...

If Australians worked as hard as the knob polishing reptiles at the lizard Oz, what a great and prosperous country it would be.

What a wonderful role model Dennis 'the bouffant one' Shanahan provides. Each day out there, doing the hard yards, genuflecting, forelock tugging, with not a dissident thought to mind, Chris Mitchell's kool aid coursing through the veins like a fiery liquor ...

Invariably the pond is always reminded of that cart-horse Boxer, and his companion Clover:

These two had great difficulty in thinking anything out for themselves, but having once accepted the pigs as their teachers, they absorbed everything that they were told, and passed it on to the other animals by simple arguments. They were unfailing in their attendance at the secret meetings in the barn, and led the singing of ‘Beasts of Murdoch’, with which the meetings always ended. (here and no need to slip a coin into the Orwell's Law swear jar).

There's no need to actually read Shanahan. Each piece rigorously conforms to the second law:

2. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, or is Tony Abbott, is a friend ...

So let's turn away from this remarkable human endeavour to contemplate another human marvel, because today is Caterist day:

Now the pond guesses what you might be thinking.

In a single blow, the Caterists have broken the shackles that blight freedom. At last the pond is able to berate ten pound Poms like the PM, because failing to demonise this wretched minority would allow terror to flourish.

Has the country ever been in a greater state of terror? QED, it's all the fault of that wicked minority of British invaders with their colonial mind set and their class system and their poncy ways and their funny  accents.

Please feel free to demonise away, and if you want to turn birther, and maintain the rage, feel free, here.

You see, foreign imports like the Caterists are as much of a threat to the environment, as much urban terrorists, as are the common rabbit, the starling, the Indian Mynah bird, the thistle and the cane toad (and that's just the beginning of an endless list of invaders threatening the natives).

And all this before the pond has read a jot or a whit of the Caterists explaining how it's good to be a bigot!

You see, the trouble is those bloody pesky liberals, who are always willing to live and let live.

You know, the sort that call out the pond for calling the Caterists supreme, sublime fuckwits.

Oh I say, steady on Ms Parker, they say, that's pretty uncalled for and untoward, even though there's clear and present evidence that the Caterists are short of a sausage for a barbie and definitely short of a lamb in the top paddock.

Can't we have a little civilised discourse, these cardigan wearers bleat, little understanding that when you're dealing with crazed, bigoted fundamentalists, there's no room for compromise or balance or an attempt at understanding.

...In fact, the quasi-intellectual arguments of groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir were created in Western universities. Academe, the commentariat and the media facilitated this ideological and strategic evolution. 
It was in the affluent societies in the West, rather than the slums of Gaza or Karachi, that adherents of the political religion found the freedom and resources to spread the notion of an “illiberal cybercaliphate”. 
“It was from London, with its global links, that it could promote its agenda internationally and, until recently, without fear of surveillance or prosecution, establishing branches in Sweden and The Netherlands as well as the UK,” write Jones and Smith. 
It is clear that liberal democracies made a catastrophic mistake by trying to appease these ideological cranks with the manners of multiculturalism. They were distracted from their purpose by the fear of marginalising, demonising or otherwise contravening the rights of minorities. 
The Islamists have been happy to play that little game, adopting the guise of the meek and dispossessed, caught at the wrong end of an imbalance of power. 
The civilised, educated, technological, advanced modern state, which we trusted for our protection, has proved no match for the suicide bomber.

Indeed, indeed. Pathetic snivelling academics - never mind that the Caterists are quoting a couple of academics - and wretched civilised, educated, technological advanced states are no match for suicide bombers, not even when armed with drones that can deal death to wedding parties from the skies ...

What can we do, oh what can we do?

Well first and foremost, we need to get rid of these wretches and replace them with tough-minded, bigoted barbarians, who will dish out death and destruction to the terrorists.

Put society on a war footing, declare martial law, nobble the intertubes, impose rigorous censorship standards, fight fire with fire ...

Which is why the pond humbly suggests that Nick Cater himself might be the perfect foot soldier.

We need brave analysts ready to don a suicide vest, march against terror and explode the device to prove that scribblers for the lizard Oz can be as irrational and as insane as your average religious fundamentalist ...

What else? Well pace the academics that the Caterists quoted in the column - while reviling academics - we have to report a serious breach of Godwin's Law:

Jones and Smith conclude that Islamism is best understood not as a form of religious extremism but as an ideology, or more precisely a “political religion”, closely akin to the illiberal totalitarian movements of the 20th century. Islamism has more in common with Nazism, a political religion if ever there were one, than it does with traditional religious faith.

So what was the religion that led to the war in Iraq in 2003?

Oh never mind, you can't argue with the Caterists,  because Caterists are genuine medievalists, and they get very upset if anyone starts talking about the evil of talking relentlessly about evil, or Satan, or perhaps even transubstantiation:

The self-loathing arguments of moral equivalence, which fail to draw a distinction between those who carry out atrocities and those who want to stop them, passes almost unnoticed. On Friday West Australian Labor MP Alannah MacTiernan tweeted: “The jihadi threat is real but many Australians also see Abbott as a terror as he takes a wrecking ball to our social infrastructure.” 
Whish-Wilson gets caught up in semantics. “We have been hearing a lot about ‘evil’, ‘unspeakable evil’, ‘unfathomable evil’ and ‘pure evil’, he said. “While it might be the case that in many people’s minds the atrocious and despicable acts we have seen on social media are evil, that evil did not just spring out of the ground.” 
 Indeed not. The crazy utopian ideology, powered by grievance and revenge, must have flourished somewhere, as the University of Queensland’s David Martin Jones and MLR Smith from King’s College London discuss in their recent book, Sacred Violence: Political Religion in a Secular Age. They have little time for the metaphysics of critical theory. Instead they study terrorism empirically.

But, but, but:  Academe, the commentariat and the media facilitated this ideological and strategic evolution. 

How is the cause in any way the answer?

As for atrocities like droning a wedding party, why that's merely collateral damage. Let's not have any false moral equivalence or self-loathing at the pond. If you happen to get yourself in drone's harm's way, don't come squealing to the pond ...

As for studying terrorism empirically, is empirical the new code word for hysterical fear and loathing and idle abuse?

Okay, if you like, you're welcome to evade the paywall, and kill off a few more brain cells by reading The 'political religion' born in the liberal West, because it's clear that Saudi Arabia had absolutely nothing to do with the spreading of Wahhabism fundamentalism ...

Instead you will find the Caterists revealing to an unknowing and uncaring world that the real criminals aren't the terrorists or the fundamentalists, but the cardigan wearers, the do-gooders, or, those favourite words of the fuckwit Caterists, the "bien pensants" ...

Hang on, what does bien-pensant mean? According to the dictionary it refers to right-minded people, those who hold orthodox views, conformists, you know, like good thinking conservatives. It's only in recent times that it's been flipped on its head and used to describe people who accept or espouse fashionable ideas without much critical thought ... like the fuckwitted Caterists ...

So the right to be a bigot includes the right to abuse words flippantly transported from the French into English to do odious duty? Yes, every day is fun day on the pond ...

That said, there's only one solution to dangerous academics creating radical Islam and then feeding the Caterists lines to be quoted by them like idle parrots ...

It's time for the Caterists to slip on that suicide vest and take out a few bien pensants, to teach them a lesson Rambo-style ...

Why not hang around the water cooler at the lizard Oz and set it off? The Caterists could scrub the world clean of a few idle scribblers and all those academics who feature as columnists in the rag, the lot of them as soft as a baby's bottom pampered with talcum powder ...

And now if you please, or if you don't, as if the pond cares what soft westerners think, it's time for a change of pace.

The pond was ever so pleased to see this piece in Crikey yesterday involving Hendo.

You can catch the original and the attached links here, along with news from Bill Leak and Bolter watching, but the pond just wanted the whole prattling Polonius Hendo thing to be immortalised:

It's always delicious when a pedant, accustomed to railing at the failures of others, and giving no mercy, is caught out in an error, and then offers the most feeble excuses imaginable, the kind that would be given no quarter if offered up by an enemy.

Well it's an inspiration for the pond. The next time a tipo turns up, remember it's (a) the fault of NZ subbies; (b) the pond was reading in haste and mis-read or tiped too quickly; (c) it's all the fault of Hendo for daring to fawn all over Cardinal Pell and the Catholic church; (d) it's all Hendo's fault for writing grovelling puff pieces which the pond occasionally quotes, not realising the tedium and ennui that ensues; and (e) the pond has just had a particularly busy week, and is in the middle of another busy week, and anticipates a future busy week, so shit happens; and (f) senility and age obliges the pond to reference ancient totems like John Laws and Rex Mossop as making "deliberate mistakes", as opposed to errors induced by Hendo-like senility ...

The golden tonsils? So, so ancient ...

The truth is, Hendo's getting weirder and weirder, and his newsletter exudes a most peculiar form of masochism, up there with the humble cilice, and the question now is how long the reptiles will fellow travel with him, before even they realise he isn't helping them kill trees or flog digital subscriptions, except amongst those in search of comedy gold ... and then you'd be better off reading about it in Crikey ...

Finally is there any news from the climate denialists?

Well yes, Tony Abbott phoned in this very morning to RN, sounding suspiciously throaty - could it be that camping isn't quite the same as life on Sydney's north shore? And then came the news that the climate denialists were joining together in a boycott:

(the full version with links here, no hot links above, screen cap only)

Yep, such excellent company. That's as fine a gaggle of climate terrorists and denialists as could be imagined.

What an exclusive club, and Tony Abbott once more is showing the way ... those ten pound Poms. Not content with fucking up Australia, they're determined to fuck up the world ...

Is there any positive news?

Well yes, that invisible man David Johnston - who seems invisible even when he's present in the room or on the air - is copping a hammering from the cartoonists. Couldn't happen to a nicer feller ...

(Below: more Rowe here)

(Below: and here for the rest of First Dog)

Nigeria? Whatever happened to those hundred girls? Forget it Dave, that's not the holy land, that's just Nigeria ... it might just as well be North Korea for all that it matters to the righteous ...