The beginning of the end times ... a Sunday meditation ...

The pond lives in a quiet neighbourhood. A merchant banker here, an elderly Greek Orthodox couple there, and so on and so forth ...

Oh sure the streets around feature first class rat runs, and nearby there's a Scientology school ruining the minds of young ones in a school building which was once a Catholic school dedicated to the ruining of the minds of young ones ...

But generally things are peaceful and nothing untoward happens, and then, just to serve as a distraction, a flyer was popped into the pond's letterbox by some unknown, crazed, delusional person ...

This was the top half ...

Weird shit, and the pond's German blut made it instinctively recoil at the first weird mention of "progressive Aryan" and it got even weirder when the pond looked at the second half ...

Now it's deeply offensively anti-Semitic weird shit as well, that goes without saying - how astonishing Nazis R Us should visit the neighbourhood - but it's also extremely odd in the way that it manages to mangle weird juxtapositions, such as a love of tatts and fantasy, while at the same time dissing modern Art, or putting the Greenies and the crazed loons of Australia First together.

It fried the pond's neurones thinking about the discordant disconnections.

The pond could only think that this is what happens when weird hipster shit moves into the neighbourhood, and a love of 1960s crap leads to a worship of beards, phonograms, record player needles gouging LPs, fluff on the stylus and other nonsense ... yes, even eight tracks and Phillips cassettes ...

And that illustration ... it had the same sort of bizarre quality the pond used to associate with Flirty Fishing ...

Well we could have selected some much fruitier illustrations but the pond generally doesn't like to do NSFW ...

Better to keep it under the blanket, and probably better to have left the flyer in the letter box, and let the rain reduce it to sludge ...

But it seemed just right for a Sunday meditation.

Is this sort of prime shit an indication we are in the end times? Has a bizarre, weird, cultish form of Hansonism even spread to Camperdown?

Is this where Cory Bernardi and George Christensen have led the country and the pond's letter box?

Never mind, it makes a change from the Catholics and the angry Sydney Anglicans and their complimentary women - apparently with Polywaffle bar this Sunday - and it's a reminder that in no small part thanks to the weirdness of News Corp, bigotry and prejudice now don't lurk just beneath the surface, they regularly float to the surface ...

And speaking of weird shit, how weird is it that weirdness also gets funded by the federal government ...

With the Athena school just around the corner, and along with Melbourne's Yarralinda school, featured recently in Public funding for schools associated with Church of Scientology revealed, though the pond has been fuming about it for years ...

Completely secular? Not a front? Why then, why not stop by, as the pond did recently, and pick up your own L. Ron Hubbard guide ...

Talk about a front. Oh they dress it up and walk around it, but it's got more front than Myers, especially given the hard times the poor old Melbourne Myers has fallen on ...

End times, it's the only logical explanation. There shall be a red-headed monster, and she shall rise and say "Please explain", and it shall herald the beginning of the end times, and weird religions shall stalk the earth ...

Speaking of weird religions, one last matter for a meditative Sunday, and it follows on from another Fairfax story, Atheists urge Australians not to joke around by putting Jedi as their religion on the census.

Since when did a non-belief and a non-faith decide that everyone must declare their non-belief as a faith, so that the Church of Atheists might celebrate the size of its congregation?

What the heck?

Well the pond recognises all faiths, but not the Church of Atheists ... the pond's just too much of an atheist for that nonsense of declaring its faith in being 'not religious'...

Mark yourself how you will ...

In which the pond does its best to ignore the Devine's barbaric trial by media, which achieved justice for no one, but did show how to do some splendid media bullying ...

Of course it would have been remiss of the pond not to have featured the Devine's impassioned plea for the Pellists ... the pond always celebrates the Catholic media commentariat's dutiful attention to the cause of the church ...

So let's not beat about the bush, let's not worry about the Devine hanging Cheltenham Girls High School out to dry in a shameless example of barbaric trial by media that achieved justice for no one - for that yarn, you may as well just look at Media Watch here ...

Besides, that wasn't a trial by media, that was a tremendously well researched story, done in such an in-depth way that some fancied they'd gone diving with James Cameron in The Abyss ...

Indeed, indeed. The pond hasn't talked to any News Corp staff directly, but it has talked to someone who has talked to an actual Daily Terror reader ...

But enough of that jolliness, let's get on with the Devine hating the Pell haters ...

Exactly what the pond would have expected. Don't do to the Pellists what you might do to the Cheltenham Girls High School ...

But let us not mention the open season on Cheltenham Girls High School, or the recent adjudication of the Press Council in relation to the Terror and Bill Shorten, or indeed, a Sydney judge's views on the behaviour of the Terrorists in relation to the Wran matter ...

Never mind, the pond's duties have been done and this certainly hasn't been a trial by blog ... but since this effort by the Devine is decidedly light measure - perhaps the stench of hypocrisy made the keyboard sticky - the pond felt the need to cover Akker Dakker as well.

It's been awhile since we looked at the bloated Billy Bunter from the lower fourth at Greyfriars school, and it seems instead of frequenting the tuckshop, he's been off in the good old USA.

The pond is certain that there will be at least one genuine Akker Dakker Bunterish gem amongst the dross, but to save space, we've forsaken the photo of Akker Dakker and the fancy Terror lay out ... after all, we have our own snaps of Akker Dakker...

And instead we settled for the blog ...

Now everyone will have their own Akker Dakker favourite moment, but the pond cherished a couple:

... wow, the US will have a president who knows what it's like to be pregnant ...

... the greatest beauty parade on earth. The candidates promises are either as vague as pouting bikini girls' hopes or... as sexist as an Akker Dakker column ...

But at the same time, how disappointing that Akker Dakker seems to think that teh Donald is something of a loon ...

Well, speaking of shallow and reactionary ...

How odd that the shallow and reactionary Akker Dakker has failed to unify. Is he mad not to unify with the Chairman's shallow and reactionary call to unify with the shallow and reactionary candidate?

Troubled times these, when even a Bunter is disturbed by the rumblings in the tuckshop ...

And now to catch up with a devine Pope cartoon, and more Papal pleasures here ...

In which, thanks to the Devine Terrorists, the pond gets its irony for the week in a single tabloid editorial day ...

Above all, the pond loves irony ... and if it comes with a hefty dose of sanctimonious, righteous hypocrisy, so much the better ...

The pond has always taken the view that some reptiles prefer the gutter, which is fine. There's a place for gutters, for those who prefer to look at the mud rather than the stars, and surely there's no better exponent of the gutter in Australia than the Daily and the Sunday Terrorists.

But gutter dwellers are rarely pleased with their station in life. They have an overweening desire to strut and parade and display their finery and pretend they're actual journalists, as opposed to yellow press exponents of the fine art of gutter trash talk ...

This often produces rich contradictions, and sometimes a catching up, when those in a position to judge notice the reptile antics...

Now please, note well, that splash at the top of the page from the Devine, on parade in the Terror this day bemoaning trial by media and how barbaric and unjust it is, and how it achieves justice for no one. The pond will revert to this as something of a chant in due course...

But in the interim please allow the pond to dance and clap hands with glee at the first of the Terror wars. 

Advice of the war turned up on the Daily Terror site for a nanosecond before dancing into oblivion. But here's the crime ...

And here's the conclusion ...

Nothing happens of course. 

The rascally, insolent gutter dwellers go on their relentlessly distorting way, none the worse for a little wear and tear. 

Few bother to head off to the Press Council here to read the judgement in full, and in a specialist site like Mumbrella, here, the news that the gutter rag was misleading and unfair will quickly become just another report, filed alongside all the others, just another other example of the outrageously misleading, and unfair, and partisan behaviour of the Terrorists ...

You wouldn't even use the rag to wipe your shoes, not if you wanted a bright and balanced shine.

But now to return to that Devine jibber jabber about the unfairness of trial by media. 

Recently a Sydney judge also had some unkind words to say about the Daily Terror and its relentlessly exploitative coverage of the daughter of a Premier.

You can read about at Fairfax in Judge launches scathing attack on media's coverage of Harriet Wran ... and while roaming, you might want to remember Media Watch celebrating another reptile war, one in which the Devine featured prominently, Beating up a ban, in which the Devine orchestrated perhaps the most spectacular trial by media of all, because of her astonishing obsession with maintaining the right of bullies to bully.

But enough of the Devine's venomous, poisonous hypocrisy, because that's just part of the pond's staple diet.

That Fairfax report was back on July 27th, and it took the slow-thinking reptiles a little time to come to a boil of righteous hypocritical indignation.

When the kettle whistle began to shriek this day, it provided the pond with all the irony it needed for the week ahead. No need for three servings of steak or irony pills this week to keep up the iron in the blood, no need for a dose of Devine snake venom ...

But through it all, let us remember the Devine chant about trial by media and justice and all the usual stuff afforded to Cheltenham Girls High School... 

And now, to begin at the beginning of the Terrorist's Ginsbergian howl ... because clearly the learned judge poked the reptiles where it hurt the most. 

In their pride, as if gutter dwellers should put in such fine and fancy airs ...

Indeed, indeed. One can imagine the learned editorialist turning to Miranda the Devine and saying, in the matter of Pell, "These circumstances invite public scrutiny. If that upsets a Pellist or a Devine, then so be it."

Of course there's zip, zilch, nada, nihil chance of that happening, and the average reader might think that this is where the reptiles would let the matter rest. 

But the puffed up pomposity of the gutter dweller is a marvel to behold, and so irked was the rag, that it went on and on and on, and so the pond must follow ... because this is a maxed out, cranked up to 11 irony alert ...

Indeed, indeed. One can just imagine the stern editorialist speaking to the Devine, and saying forget all this talk of trial by media and how barbaric and unjust it is, and how it achieves justice for no one, because the readers have every right to know exactly what is going on behind the scenes with the Pellists, and it is the Sunday Terrorist's right and duty to inform them, or at least to supply them with a rich overload of pompous, sanctimonious, righteous hypocrisy ...

But the matter didn't end there, and on we had to trudge ...

Indeed, indeed. One can just imagine the stern editorialist speaking to the Devine, and saying forget all this talk of trial by media and how barbaric and unjust it is, and how it achieves justice for no one, because it is the Sunday Terrorist's right to investigate what happened with the Pellists and to publish what actually happened ...

But just when an ordinary, average mug punter might think it all ended there, they were reminded that there's no end to the fancy dress ponce airs and ambitions of the tabloid yellow press gutter dwellers, as they imagine in a very fanciful way that they're actual journalists, as opposed to being a low rent down under tabloid version of Faux Noise ...

Indeed, indeed. One can just imagine the stern editorialist speaking to the Devine, and saying forget all this talk of trial by media and how barbaric and unjust it is, and how it achieves justice for no one, and reminding her that it is completely unrealistic that a prince of the church could expect not to be the subject of public scrutiny in such circumstances, and so one must applaud the ABC in its diligence in reporting on the matter ...

And there it might have been expected that this display of wounded pride, and tortured spleen and hurt feelings, might have ended, but when a reptile's ego is punctured, how they love to go on, in an indignant and righteous way ...

Oh indeed, indeed. One can just imagine the stern editorialist speaking to the Devine, and saying forget all this talk of trial by media and how barbaric and unjust it is, and how it achieves justice for no one. 

The Devine should remember that the church's experiences show how pedophilia can impact everyone, from the very poor to the very privileged, and while it is regrettable that a few might be put in danger or suffer mental health issues, any damage to the church's reputation was of its own making. It would, given the rampant and continuing charges of pedophilia and cover-up, for the church to expect that this would not be accompanied by the rigorous scrutiny a tabloid gutter rag might offer ...

Of course, you might breath a sigh of relief, not to be a Wran, used shamelessly by gutter journalists, cluck clucking and tut tutting while trying to kill more trees and generate more gutter clicks ...

Norman

(The coldness turning to tight fury) 
What do you mean about caring? Have you ever seen one of those News Corp places? Inside? Laughing and tears and cruel eyes studying you... and my mother or my daughter or my father there? Why? Have they harmed you? They're as harmless as... one of these stuffed birds. 
The Pond 
I am sorry. I only felt... it seemed they were harming you. I meant... 
Norman    
(High fury now) 
Well? 
You meant well? 
News Corp people always mean well, they cluck their thick tongues and shake their heads and suggest so very delicately that...

Ah Terrorists, kissing cousins to the greatest division of News Corp of all ...

Indeed, indeed ...

And plenty more front pages here ...

In which the pond discusses the many failures of prattling Polonius, SSM hating fundamentalist Catholics and angry Sydney Anglicans clutching their complimentary woman doll ...

With all the clapping of hands, laughing and dancing with glee about Malware, some might have thought that the pond had forgotten dear old prattling Polonius, but no, it was important to be reminded yet again how it's all the fault of immigrants, and simply nothing to do with westerners who for centuries thought it was their right to traverse the world, looting it, setting up empires, dishing it out to the colonials, and otherwise behaving with flagrant disregard, culminating with a first world war over fair shares of the pie, and then a second world war because of further unhappiness about the pie sharing ...

So it goes, and it takes a singular effort by an adept historian to ignore history, and in such cases the pond always relies on prattling Polonius ...

Now this is surely a most admirable Polonius outing, working at at his finest levels of historical insight.

Who could better leading off with Hilaire Belloc, a splendid choice, perhaps only matched if he'd chosen G. K. Chesterton or C. S. Lewis, or perhaps Giovannino Guareschi - oh wait, wasn't Don Camillo Italian? perhaps best not to go there, you know, the European disease, Mediterraneans, wot wot and all that - and then that excellent attempt to pretend that Polonius himself was some kind of wise agnostic, acknowledging that he really doesn't understand the human condition ...

So all that love of Rome and worship of the Pellists is just so much camouflage?

It reminded the pond of arm-breaking Mark Latham in one of his sane moments ...

Only a rusted-on apologist for the Church could doubt the evidence pointing to p-edophilia among Catholic priests. But that’s Henderson for you. His first and most enduring loyalty is to Rome. His main role in public life is to defend his hero, George Pell — even though, as Henderson acknowledges, Pell “accompanied Gerald Ridsdale, a priest who was convicted of p-edophilia, to court in Victoria in 1993”. Can you bear it? (Crikey in 2013 here).

Yes, Polonius was at it again in his Media Watch Dog, the cheerful agnostic at work ...

As for that matter was Brennan ...

But the pond was determined to press on, pausing only for a meme ...

Indeed, indeed, and if you think it was right to embark on a war in Iraq and call it a crusade because you happen to be completely tone deaf and unaware of the consequences of your actions, feel free to call yourself George W. Bush ... and say another prayer to your deity ...

But let us not talk of launching wars in the middle east - it is after all, the singular right of western powers to launch wars willy nilly where they will and to hell with the natives - and let us return to Polonius, even if the pond, bored as usual by prattling Polonius into fitful tedium,  had once again allowed itself to be distracted ...

There's more hard yards to be done ... more equivocations so that the bigotry and prejudices might attempt to be concealed, in the way that camouflage used to be dragged over unsightly military objects ...

What the pond most loves here, is a conservative berating Islamics for their deeply ingrained sexism, and their hostility to homosexuality and adultery, while he himself, the questioning agnostic, apparently yearns for a secular, libertarian society ... where the Pellists rule in Rome free of the ABC.

And if you believe that one, write to the pond about its offer of a harbour bridge at a bargain price.

As if somehow conservatives, fundamentalist Catholics campaigning against SSM, angry Sydney Anglicans and their complimentary women, don't show the same inclinations as the jihadists ... though they've had to stop burning women as witches and jailing gays, though that was a proud tradition not so long ago ...

Well it's not a matter of Christophobia to discuss such matters, in much the same way as it's not a thought crime to air claims being made by people who apparently stepped forward of their own free will to say what they claimed the Pellists had done long ago ...

Yet that is acclaimed a trial by media, whereas a discussion of everything that is wrong with Islam, by routinely linking it with Radical Islam, is merely a discussion of such matters, and not a trial by prattling Polonius at all ...

Well thankfully the pond has a foot in all camps, which is to say a pox on fundamentalist Islamics and a pox on fundamentalist anti-SSM Catholics and a pox on angry Sydney Anglicans and their 'complimentary women' (this week with a box of Jaffas and a bowl of popcorn), and a pox on the dissembling, half-baked prattling Polonius, always quivering and waving his jittery fingers about, as if that would distract from his innate tendency to pedantry and prejudice ...

(Below: and speaking of pedantry, it never gets old, this one by First Dog, and the pond thought it was time for a re-run, and it can still be found here).

In which Malware cops it coming and going, and will continue to cop it until he's gone ...

(Above: found here, and more there).

Who can forget or forgive the behaviour of the viper former chairman Rudd during the Gillard years? The leakings and the betrayals and the back-stabbing...

So of course Malware's going to cop a pounding for his recent decision on the matter of Chairman Rudd's delusions, even though it's obvious enough that the former chairman is delusional and narcissist, and not just because Kristina Keneally says he is.

Get your average Labor party numbers man speaking anonymously in a back room, and even they'll be backing Helen Clark over the chairman, while recognising that she's also probably a long shot up against the usual forces at work ...

Naturally the Kiwis see Malware's Captain's Call (as such things are now called) as a sign of hope for Clark, and naturally only a few days ago, the usual conservative forces were shouting from the rooftops for the right decision to be made ...

Would you like an avocado with your reptile opinions?

But of course once the decision was made, the old rule - get Malware coming, get Malware going - was followed and the reptiles launched into full-scale assault. 

If it wasn't for the Queen Victoria copper-tinted NBN, the pond might have felt a tinge of sympathy for Malware, but as it was, the pond laughed and clapped hands and danced with glee ...

Yes, it was the bromancer, no doubt channelling the onion munching wall puncher, storming on to the front page alongside the news of a righteous Rudd ...

And so to the shock and the horror and the outrage ...

Hmm, so Tony Abbott never told the Ruddster he was unsuitable for the job, never indicated that the Australian government would prefer to support Helen Clark as a candidate?

Why didn't someone tell the Bolter that before he took to his blog yesterday?

Tony Abbott had actually solved the problem for him?

What sayeth the bromancer to this in his final few whimpering lines?

Yes, they're going to keep on getting him, coming and going, until in the end, worn down, harassed and bedraggled, ankles well and truly bitten and ravaged, he will be gone ...

This is but the first step in the long campaign. Soon enough there will come the ugliness of the plebiscite - another gift of the onion muncher - and more talk about it being all about his leadership, and all the pond will be able to do is laugh, dance and clap hands with glee, and brood about the NBN a little more ...

Now just for the record, for completists and masochists, and perhaps for sadists too, here's the rest of what the Bolter scribbled a few days ago ...

And now that Turnbull hasn't backed Rudd, can we just check again on the bromancer channeling the onion muncher?

But was the Bolter placated as he tracked the news yesterday?

Of course not, they'll keep at him, coming and going ...

Coming, going and in due course gone, and the pond's not the only one to clap hands, laugh and dance with glee ...

Pity the poor onion, and if you can manage to forget the NBN and think of Malware as an onion, pity the poor Malware ...

In which the pond refuses to take the side door, despite Angela Shanahan's kind suggestion it should do so ...

For years, the pond witnessed wickedness and evil in action.

Odd language perhaps, for an atheist, but then how else to describe the harassment of women by protestors, when these women were already tortured and suffering the traumatic event of an abortion?

It was full blown harassment too, by way of cameras, invective and abuse, and pictures on the sidewalk, not much different in nature, spitefulness or attitude from the sort of harassment that the hate group the Westboro Baptist Church routinely offers in the United States.

The pond routinely made its displeasure known, but the protestors thrived on the abuse, and responded with jeers and intimidation. Hate unfortunately only fuels haters, and so it went in Camperdown for years, until the abortion clinic was closed down and turned into apartments, and the tearful women and the abusive protestors went elsewhere.

If anyone wondered why the protestors were allowed to behave this way, there was always the cry of freedom of speech and the pavements belonged to everyone, and never mind the suffering of the women.

As anyone who's been involved in an abortion knows, it isn't a carefree act of indifference, but a decision weighed and agonised over, and usually arrived at as the least difficult alternative. It isn't a frivolous matter, and it deserves gravitas, respect and decency, but none of this mattered to the protestors, who offered none, and instead were intent on calumny and vile abuse.

Eventually protestors came to protest against the fanatics and the fundamentalists, but this only made for an ugly scene for the women seeking an abortion, and in some forward-thinking states, concerned about women exercising their legal rights and their right to control what happens to their bodies, law-makers sensibly decided that enough was enough.

But bigotry repressed is never enough for a Shanahan, and so we cop this today in the lizard Oz:

Only a loon of the first water could see the abuse and the heckling of distressed women as a form of "public discourse", as opposed to ugly harassment of the most offensive kind, but that's a Shanahan for you. And the same goes for "freedom for abortion speech", which is code for freedom to go on verbally assaulting, photographing and attacking women going about their lawful, and personally extremely painful, business.

This is a matter of some personal pain for the pond, so it has no time to be kind to that smirking fundamentalist bigot featured in the reptile splash, but let's see what she has to say in her pandering to bigotry of the most base kind ...

Yes, there you have it. "Most people wanting abortion went in the side door."

As for that vile malarkey, that talk of joining in prayer, and sort of becoming a Canberra institution, "the people outside the abortion clinic", how carefree Shanahan is with the women about to make a decision of great personal moment. "The people going inside the abortion clinic .... made to enter by the side door."

Send them in the side door, brand them as the harlots and wanton hussies that they are, let the fundamentalists control the front door with their righteousness and bigotry ...

Just contemplating it got the pond angry all over again ...

Only a Shanahan. Preventing harassment is a dangerous development.

Well good on the ACT, and good on Tasmania and Victoria and long may the exclusion zones continue. We could have used one in Camperdown and stopped a lot of suffering and persecution of innocent women who had committed no crime ... except in the eyes of zealots and fundamentalists and religious nutters ...

Of course in the United States things are a little more extreme. There they celebrate the shooting of doctors ... no doubt we can expect a piece from Shanahan expressing concern that suppressing the right to celebrate murder is a dangerous development. After all, all those wanton women are committing murder and should be locked away in a secular prison before spending an eternity in hell, right?

It never ends, this harassment, this persecution by bigoted fundamentalists, and when it comes to abortion, fundamentalist Catholics are up there with the worst of them ...