In which the dog botherer fails anthropology 101 ...

The pond is always befuddled for choice on a weekend. 

But the dog botherer outraged is always a splendid sight to see, though it's odd that on the front digital splash the outrage should be about "maligning," and the header for the story should turn to "racist attacks" ...

Now a little background reading is always wise before talking about Nauru, though it involves wandering back a couple of years:

Victoria's most senior judge has called on the Abbott government to do ''all in its power'' to support Nauru's Chief Justice, who has been forced into exile. Supreme Court Chief Justice Marilyn Warren compared the cancellation of Chief Justice Geoffrey Eames' visa to re-enter Nauru with recent attempts to fire senior judges in Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka when they have reminded their respective governments they must obey the law. (more here at Fairfax February 2014)

In the end Eames resigned - Graudian here - but that's not an end to the reading, as here at the ABC:

A former Nauru solicitor-general says a police investigation into alleged kickbacks from an Australian phosphate company to Nauru's president and justice minister was well advanced at the time of police commissioner Richard Britten's sacking in July 2013. Steven Bliim, an Australian barrister, served as Nauru's solicitor-general from December 2012 until his resignation in January 2014.

And without brooding too long on that matter, there were other matters, as per Fairfax here ...

Nauru's justification for sacking and deporting its resident magistrate of three years has been branded ''ridiculous, false and defamatory'' by the tiny country's exiled Chief Justice and ''outrageous'' by the man himself. Two days after arresting Peter Law and putting him on a plane to Australia under police guard, the Nauru government justified its actions by accusing him of misdemeanours ranging from being ''drunk and disorderly'' and derelict in his duty to improper conduct towards staff and cases. Declaring it important that justice not only be done but ''be seen to be done'', the government said it had chosen to banish Mr Law ''before any more damage is done to the reputation and good standing of the Nauru judiciary''.

Now there's a reliable laugh ... the reputation and good standing of the Nauru judiciary.

Sadly for the dog botherer, none of this has to do with race ... cronyism and corruption are inclined to be colour-blind.

And in recent years, Australia has poured an enormous amount of money - call it rewards, call it loot, call it whatever you like, call it make out like a bandit while you can - into the country, plenty of tasty bundles of loose slippery cash ready to be pocketed ...

Another sure sign of corrupt and despotic behaviour is the banishing or exclusion of the media. Or rather letting in to the country only a few servile, lickspittle types guaranteed to put the right sort of spin on their reporting ...

Well we all know how that worked out, and who was the first amongst the few willing or able to do the right thing... (Media Watch here)

So be it ...

Such a self-satisfied, complacent air of smug self-congratulation.

Well there's plenty more unseemly material available on the full to overflowing intertubes about Nauru, none of it racist, much of it about the behaviour of the government, to loose the term loosely, and much of it ranging from the problematic to the nauseating, but the pond must, as always, get around to the latest dog botherer outrage ... so here we go ...

 

Now for starters, the pond would love to know how Nauruans constitute a race, as opposed to say, an ethnic or a national grouping ...

If the pond does a Greg Hunt, having stepped around the walri frolicking in the Pacific ocean, it's possible to come up with this here:

The indigenous peoples of Nauru are an ethnicity, which inhabit the Pacific island of Nauru. They are most likely a blend of other Pacific peoples.

It is typical, the pond regrets to say, in these free-wheeling libertarian days, where idle abuse is seen as freedom of speech, that the pond must observe that the dog botherer routinely talks through his arse ...

The flatulent fool makes the mistake of confusing race with country ...

But what really had the pond rolling Jaffas down the aisle was the way that the dog botherer shed crocodile tears about Nauru being a disadvantaged post-colonial country, when Australia has spent a shit load of money making it a craven client state willing to do the bidding and the work of its masters, and paid handsomely for the pleasure, with the main fuss in country seemingly arising over the division of the spoils ...

But observing this, or noting the conditions of the gulag doesn't have anything to do with race.

That line "Bongiorno maligns a race" is about as silly as the pond being charged with a thought crime for saying that "Chris Kenny represents all that's profoundly stupid about the croweater race."

As usual, the reptiles are generous - perhaps too generous - and so there's another gobbet from a man who wouldn't have passed the social anthropology course at UNE way back when ...

What's the bet that the main bee in the bonnet of the dog botherer will be the usual suspects? The ABC, the Graudian, Amnesty, Waleed Aly, the greenies, the leftist greenie ABC, and anyone else appalled at the way Australia persists in maintaining a gulag when the time is long past for resolving the situation ...

There's only one certainty arising from this. Those locked away in this island paradise will continue to be locked away for the foreseeable, interminable future, and Australia will continue to pour shitloads of money into a country riven by corruption and cronyism, and the country's government will continue to maintain a media boycott, selecting a few servile cronies to turn up every so often.

The resulting silence will continue to be a boon, and allow the dog botherer to strut around with the peculiar, vain boast that only he and A Current Affair have been allowed in country...

Of course you might read through all this dog botherer pandering guff, and come away thinking that all is for the best in Nauru. That would rely on trusting the word and insights of a man who would fail anthropology 101 ...

Those who think it's past time for a change might wonder what the dog botherer sees as a solution to a situation which has produced negative headlines around the world for years...

Sorry.

He didn't say ...

And now for those who go in search of the fair go, they can join First Dog in the hunt here for the full cartoon ...