So many ways to fuck up a meditative Sunday ...

(Above: some tasty Biblezines for you, and plenty more to google)

At last the mainstream media is paying actual attention to what's going on in public schools, with The Age leading the way, even getting this meditative Sunday off with an Oz style EXCLUSIVE at the top of the digital page. Well it actually appeared last night but hey, it's a slow weekend:

Yep, Uproar at 'Biblezine' sex tips for kids is full of juicy bits, as sex rears its ugly head one more time, though in the usual way, the sex is featured is the bizarre kind you get with fundamentalist Xians:

The magazines, Refuel 2 and Revolve 2 – which intersperse the text of the New Testament with dating advice, beauty tips and music reviews – warn girls not to go bra-less because "your nipples are much more noticeable and a distraction and temptation for men", and not to wear tube tops and low-rise jeans because men are "sexually stimulated by what they see". 
"The Bible says not to cause anyone else to sin. Are you putting sexual thoughts about your body into guys' heads? If you are showing a lot of skin you probably are," it states. Advertisement The material, produced by the News Corp-owned Nelson Bibles, America's largest Christian publishing house, also "exposes the lie of safe sex", claiming that condoms condone promiscuity, and urges those who think they are gay never to act on it. 
In response to an agony aunt-style question about, "How far can you go before you are no longer pure?", the document reads: "Let's put it this way: How much dog poop stirred into your cookie batter does it take to ruin the whole batter."

That's the kicker, right there. The News Corp-owned ...

Yep, Satan himself is pumping out Christian literature ... and never mind the injunctions about the sanctity of marriage. Hey, the bible approved of slavery and divorce.

Now imagine if a fundamentalist Islamic of the Taliban kind was roaming around pumping fundamentalist nonsense about sex into the minds of impressionable young people.

Oh wait, they are, and the Australian federal government is funding the schools ... and the ones that do Scientology and the ones that do Exclusive Brethren and the ones that teach creationism and the ones that ...

Okay, it's an old, old, ancient grey haired loon pond riff, but how pleasing to see The Age slowly coming to some kind of awareness.

The sweet old Pravda on the Yarra even delivered an editorial harumph today, under the header Children do not deserve this kind of religious instruction:

Zealotry is alive and well in Victoria. Its targets, however, are not anyone or any group who can bring their life experiences to bear in coping with its attention. The zealots are those who believe it appropriate to peddle their interpretations of the New Testament. The targets were grade six pupils at Torquay College. 
The strand of religion is not the point of concern. There is no argument against the Christian faith. It is the manner of its delivery and the content of its message that deserves opprobrium. It is fundamentalist claptrap masquerading as some sort of moral Christian code that will lead to a virtuous life. It is nothing of the sort. 
It is blinkered and prejudiced; in effect, a tract of negativity that can only stunt a young person's growth to maturity that should be based on inclusiveness and compassion towards their fellow human beings.

There are of course plenty of arguments against the Christian faith, but The Age is a slow learner, and then there's the business of offending the demographics ...

But at least the sweet Pravdans have started to pay attention, starting with a story they ran five days ago, Primary school principals shut down religious education classes (forced video to keep that Fairfax share price on the rise).

Inter alia, that story offered up this insight:

Joe Kelly has been principal of Cranbourne South Primary School for 15 years, and acknowledged that until two years ago he had been "blindly supporting" Access Ministries' presence. That was until he took a closer look at the actual classes and curriculum. 
"It is not education," Mr Kelly said. "It has no value whatsoever. It is rubbish - hollow and empty rhetoric … My school teachers are committed to teaching children, not indoctrinating them."

Good on you Joe Kelly, you're a pond hero first class.

Naturally Access has flinched with all the attention being paid:

Access Ministries says it did not approve the Biblezines, or their content, and they were a graduation gift from local churches, which normally donate traditional Bibles. 
In a statement, chief executive Evonne Paddison said: "This year there was a huge rush for the Bibles and, for reasons we do not yet understand, it seems as though 15 copies of Refuel 2 were handed out. Students were asked to return them on the day . . . Our agreed curriculum teaches the basic beliefs of the Christian faith and does not stray into areas of sexuality at all. We are extremely disappointed that this has occurred and will continue to investigate how it happened." 

Yes, because Refuel 2 looked so innocuous and so ... so decently Ixian:

How to attract godly girls?

Oh you poor pimpled hapless squeaky voiced hamburger flipping nerds ...

Meanwhile, in associated reading, The New Yorker's Margaret Talbot provided an exemplary insight into the fundamentalist mind set, when caught between castigating sex. women and contraception, and actually reducing the number of abortions.

You can read it all in Reading the Numbers, currently outside the paywall, but the pond feels so righteous, here's a long slab of the opening:

Last week’s report about the declining abortion rate in the United States was potentially good news for everyone, especially, one would think, for right-to-life groups. Most of them, though, weren’t cheering. A statement from Americans United for Life called the report “an abortion industry propaganda piece short on data and long on strained conclusions.” One problem was that the groups didn’t like the messenger. The report, which showed that between 2008 and 2011 the rate of abortions had fallen to its lowest level since 1973, came from the Guttmacher Institute. Guttmacher produces scrupulous research on reproductive health; it also supports abortion rights. But the bigger problem was the message itself, because the report made a persuasive case that the right-to-life movement cannot take credit for the decline in abortions. Since 2008, states have enacted more than a hundred laws related to abortion, most aimed at limiting access to the procedure. The researchers, however, concluded that the new laws, with few exceptions, had had little impact on the number of abortions. Instead, much of the decline is probably attributable to more effective contraception, some of it available through the federal funding—“Uncle Sugar,” in Mike Huckabee’s creepy coinage—that Republicans like to rail against. Right-to-lifers could be promoting contraception and touting its success in averting unwanted pregnancies, but that doesn’t seem to be news that they want to hear, let alone spread.

Let's see if we can do a formula:

Contraception + sex - abortion: bad
Sex - contraception + abortion: good

There can't be a better example of the failed mindset of the fundamentalist and sex than Australia's current PM.

There he was, at one moment, dedicating himself to a life of chastity, and the next thing you know, vows forsaken, he was out and about fornicating like a rabbit, and without contraception. How do we know? Well he fathered a child out of wedlock didn't he, or at least, he thought he did, because he didn't take precautions.

It turned out it wasn't his, and someone else had been fornicating without contraception.

Now the pond doesn't have any issue with fornicators, having religiously and with some fervour been at times a fornicator. But the old days, when you could fornicate without too much worry about STDs, provided there was some penicillin handy, are long gone, and it goes without saying that the easiest way to prevent an unwanted pregnancy and the abject pain of an abortion, is to use contraception.

And yet fundamentalist Xians and Islamics join together to assault condoms (yes they do, head off to the BBC for Islamic views on contraception).

All this has got the pond as mad as hell, so it's just as well that the fatuous, profoundly tedious Cardinal Pell spends this Sunday in the Terror - the least trusted newspaper in Australia - brooding about Cardinals and celebrating the Pope turning up on Rolling Stone. Yep, along with Boston Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Janet Jackson celebrating the joy of sex, Britney Spears, the passion of Kanye West with crown of thorns, Charles Manson, and semi-nude Red Hot Chili Peppers ...

When the Pope strips, that'll be the time to talk about an enormous bounce ...

And by the way what on earth does the header Pope tells cardinals they need actually mean? It's not even a bloody sentence ...

Meanwhile, the whole sorry story of blame-shifting and guilt in the Catholic church continues apace in stories such as Church claims lies, collusion on scandal, and Principal lied over claim that church was to blame for abuse (behind the paywall to keep the innocent pure).

Bottom line? The rats are blaming each other as the ship continues to sink ... and the bowl needed to wash away the sins is getting larger than Sydney harbour ...

And if that's not enough, just as you'd expect, the angry Sydney Anglicans, and Phillip Jensen in particular, chime in right on cue with Unmarried Mothers and the Science of Marriage.

The Jensenists really do know how to come up with stupid headers. Science of Marriage?

Yes, you see, that policy of blaming women and unmarried mothers had nothing to do with the god botherers and the bible bashers and the tub thumpers, it was all the fault of scientists:

...the thinking behind the practices of the 1950’s and 60’s was not that of moral conservatives but progressive, professional, best practice, science. 
Between the World Wars unmarried mothers were viewed in eugenic terms as “feebleminded” or “sexual delinquents”, whose children needed protection. WWII made the community wary of eugenics and so environmental factors were blamed and Freudian concern about early childhood experiences led to the ‘clean break theory’. The social workers, doctors, lawyers and psychologists followed the modern science of human behaviour. Unfortunately for the mothers and their children, like all utilitarian science, it took a generation to discover the full impact of the error. 
Sadly we Christians, having more confidence in modern professional best practice than the word of God, shared in this mistreatment of women.

What nauseating hypocrisy. What a stench of humbug.

So it was all the fault of eugenicists and shrinks that the Anglicans at Grafton abused the children in their care?

Suddenly the bowl of water needed to wash away the sins of the wicked and their apologists takes on the side of the Indian ocean.

Well if you can find eugenics and shrinks and science at work in the story Anglican Church offers compensation to NSW victims of abuse at children's home in Lismore, let the pond know.

There's more, lots more, equally offensive and hypocritical, and after the blame shifting and the guilt avoidance, where would we be without a bit of gay bashing:

Just before Christmas Sir Paul Coleridge, a long serving judge in the Family Division of Britain’s High Court, received an official, formal warning of judicial misconduct for airing his views that gay marriage is a minority issue affecting 0.1% of the community compared to the “destructive scourge” of divorce and family breakdown, which he has likened to an epidemic involving 3.8 million children in the family courts every year.

Gay marriage? How about mere gay survival in Africa, where the angry Anglicans and other fundamentalists have helped to build a world of hate and woe?

The Jensenists got the pond so agitated it threatened to ruin a peaceful Sunday morning, so instead, how about a few old Doonesbury cartoons?

The pond likes to keep a few Doonesburys to hand, like an axe in case of fire or an encounter with an Anglican or a Republican, and these made a nice series. Click to enlarge if you like:

And finally the pond has hit on some novel literature that might be circulated amongst Victorian schools.

You'll have to be an old hand to remember Flirty Fishing, but in the usual way, you can do a Greg Hunt and wiki it here.

The moral of the story?

So many religious loons, so many ways they can fuck with the minds of the young and fuck up sex, love, life and, it turns out, a meditative Sunday ...

The end of the world is night ... or even nigh ...

A kind correspondent alerted the pond to the news that the world is ending today.

You can read it here in Why the world is ending on Saturday, comfortable in the knowledge that such stories are essential to the survival of  7, Yahoo, the Bolter, the Mail online, jolly Joe Hockey, and News Corp's various rags online, even when it means recycling good old NPR.

To add to the mood of apocalyptic jollity, the pond dragged this one out of the vault.

Click to enlarge:

And so to enjoying the weekend, in a sustainable way ...

Devoted followers of the cult of Caterism will always treasure the Caterist tract Bitten by the dispiriting dogma of sustainability (behind the paywall to keep the infidels in darkness).

It was an epic moan:

Sustainability is "a leading-edge issue", which means no one has a clue what it is, not even Wikipedia. The best it can manage is that sustainability is "a multi-faceted concept" and "a matter of ongoing argument". So much for the wisdom of crowds...
...Sustainability may present itself as harmless mumbo-jumbo that helps build a brand, but its underlying philosophy is antithetical to freedom and to enterprise. 
 "The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow," Ayn Rand wrote in 1972. "They come to be accepted by degrees, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other until one day they are suddenly declared to be the country's official ideology." 
 Four decades later, her prophecy has been fulfilled. Sustainability is one of the three priority themes in the new Australian curriculum, polluting everything from algebra to zoology. 
 "The sustainability priority is futures-oriented, focusing on protecting environments and creating a more ecologically and socially just world through informed action," the curriculum says. 
 Students are encouraged to consider "that unlimited growth is unsustainable; sustainability - that biological systems need to remain diverse and productive over time; and rights of nature - recognition that humans and their natural environment are closely interrelated"...

And so on and on in a Randian way, no doubt before wending off to the nearest dispenser of social security.

What startled the pond was that yesterday jolly Joe Hockey produced a blizzard of "sustainabilities".

There were simply too many to count.

There it was in Reform or risk jobs, warns Joe Hockey (behind the paywall to try to keep things sustainable):

“We’re having a discussion about the quality of life we want people to have as they are ageing, and how sustainable that quality of life is. 
 “What is sustainable? What is the quality of healthcare? What is the quality of aged care? How are we going to get enough finance to live with dignity?”

And you could find the same refrain in Australia 'running out of money' for Medicare: Hockey (with forced video, to try to keep things sustainable).

With bells attached:

Mr Hockey said he was ''ringing an early warning bell'' about the sustainability of federal funding for vital programs, saying hard work will be needed in the future just to maintain the quality of life expected by most Australians.

Oh it was a noble but a desperate quest:


''If nothing happens, we will never get back into surplus, we'll never pay off debt. 
''We'll either have to have a massive increase in taxes, and that means fewer jobs at the end of the day, or we're going to have to look at ways we can restructure the system to make it sustainable.'' 

And it was time to shackle those old farts and put their bloody noses to the grindstone. Retire at 65? Heck Bismarck set that age because he knew most of the bludgers would be dead by 50. Now they're set to torment jolly Joe until they turn 85.

Set the pension age to 100, the pond says, and then let's talk sustainability:

“As England and a number of other countries are focusing ... we have to look at ways to continue to increase it as we live longer,” Hockey told journalists on the eve of the G20 finance ministers meeting in Sydney, which he is hosting. 
“Really we’re having a discussion about quality of life we want people to have as they are ageing and how sustainable that quality of life is. 
“I would challenge everyone in Australia to have a mature debate about the quality of life we want our ageing population to have.” (Joe Hockey says Australians may have to work past the age of 67)

And it wasn't just jolly Joe. That great white dope from Queensland, Peter Dutton, was also on a sustainability jag:

Health Minister Peter Dutton has opened the door to a GP co-payment warning of an ''unsustainable'' rise in the cost of health care...
Addressing a Committee for Economic Development of Australia event in Brisbane on Wednesday, Mr Dutton said factors such as ageing, the growing prevalence of diseases such as diabetes and Alzheimer's disease and new technologies had placed the health system ''on an unsustainable path''. Treasury forecasts annual Commonwealth health spending will grow from the current level of $62 billion to $75 billion by 2016-17, and balloon from its current level of 4 per cent of GDP to 7 per cent by 2050. 
As the government considers the initial recommendations of its Commission of Audit and prepares for what is expected to be a horror first budget, Mr Dutton warned: ''Doing nothing about sustainability is just not an option.'' (Health Minister Peter Dutton opens door to GP co-payment)

But then the parrots were only mimicking the wise words of the head parrot back in January:

Abbott warned that "the recovery remains fragile". 
"The challenge, everywhere, is to promote sustainable, private sector-led growth and employment and to avoid government-knows-best action for action's sake," he said. 
"It's worth noting if only to remind ourselves of the good that can be done that in the past few decades, more has been achieved to reduce poverty than in any other period in history." 
Mr Abbott, chairman of the G20 forum, noted that in the fellow member nations of China, India and Indonesia, "many hundreds of millions (of people) have been lifted from subsistence to the middle class". 
He said these successes were helped by technological change but the key was for business investment and smaller government to provide sustainable growth.  (Tony Abbott optimistic about 'fragile' recovery, behind the paywall because we're on a sustainability drive).

It seems that four things are now certain.

In addition to death and taxes, we can rate the chances of harmful mumbo jumbo coming from Liberal politicians doing Chicken Little impersonations in spiralling circles of doom and despair as degree one of certainty, as is the chance that Nick Cater will assault a Liberal politician for beating the sustainability drum, as is the chance that Liberal politicians will do anything about income inequality or any suggestion whatsoever that the rich should go fair dibs ...

It's also certain to make the job of the professional hagiographers more difficult.

After all, all this jibber jabber is building to a shit storm of a budget, on the principle that the punters will hopefully forget about it by the time the next election rolls around (quick, bring on that WA thingie right now)

What to do, what to do?

How about the bouffant one running this line? Labor leader's aggressive style is not going to cut it down the pub (hidden behind the paywall to avoid unsustainable hysteria).

What's more bizarre?

The notion that the bouffant one can be found in the front or the public bar with a bunch of hard hats and wharfies and so can ascertain the mood of pubs around the land, or the bouffant one abusing Bill Shorten for being aggressive, while one of the most aggressive leaders of the opposition in history - the man who made Mark Latham look like he was in nappies even when he broke the arms of taxi cab drivers - swanned into power, and never mind the simpering simpletons at the lizard Oz gasping at his awesome aggression and manly MAMIL behaviour.

In truth the bouffant one has absolutely nothing to say that couldn't have been said more pungently and quickly as "Bill Shorten, two legs, baaad", "Tony Abbott four legs, total baaaadaaaasss"

But wait, there's more, way more for your weekend comedy reading.

The reptiles at the lizard Oz also offered yet another cliche of our times, "elites", courtesy of that man of the ordinary people, humble Joe Blow himself, Bjorn Lomborg, scribbling furiously and opening with a flourish:

At the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos last month, leading participants called for a rapid shift to cleaner energy to tackle climate change. There is something unsettling about the global power elite jetting into an exclusive Swiss ski resort and telling the rest of the world to stop using fossil fuels.

Oops, big brother alert, big brother alert. Censorship required. Who was it that was unsettling?

Oh right, that unsettling member of the global power elite jetting into the exclusive Swiss ski resort ...

And telling the rest of the world to keep on buying Australia's fossil fuels ... (and cranking up the laughs with a goodies v baddies rendering of the Syrian war, as you can remember by strolling down memory lane here).

What's really unsettling is that Lomborg's Myths and wishful thinking pollute global warming debate (behind the paywall because the reptiles are desperate to be sustainable) is simply a cut and paste, a warmed up rehash of an older piece.

It should go without saying that Lomborg has absolutely nothing new to say, but continues on his way as a denier dressed as a dissembler.

Lomborg is one of those who moved from the complete denialist stage to the more devious stage, which is to say that yes climate change is real and happening, but everybody's doing it wrong except Lomborg. (The Five Stages of Climate Denial).

Here's how it goes:

Yep, it's just a short step from outright denialism of the early Lomborg days to suggesting that all that's needed is a little low cost cash, and for the world to harden the fuck up - or be resilient (no doubt in a sustainable way):

In the long run, current investment in green research and development will help drive the price of future renewable energy below that of fossil fuels, enabling a choice that is both environmentally and economically sound. 
In the meantime, even dramatic cuts in CO2 emissions will have very little impact on hurricanes 50 to 100 years from now. Lifting billions of people out of poverty, however, would not only be intrinsically good; it would also make societies much more resilient in the face of extreme weather, whether caused by global warming or not. 
Unfortunately, as we saw at Davos, the global climate debate is polluted with myths and wishful thinking. If we want to do more good at lower cost, we should start by cleaning it up.

Now there's a classic example of wishful thinking, you might say. Or you might wonder how Lomborg knows all these things? Well because he says it - make it so - and if it's good enough for him, it's certainly good enough for the reptiles and it should be good enough for you ...

Oh and in the interim, if you want to read the unpolished gem, as it was run some eight days ago, you can find it here under the header The Davos Apocalypse.

Now there's a sustainable business plan. Find eight day old glass full drivel, offered for free on the full to overflowing intertubes, re-package it, and charge the mug punters an unsustainable price.

What else? Well some might be amused to see Grace Collier seem to have some sort of brain spasm in Lend Lease has big questions to answer (behind the paywall because there's never enough jokes about the business plan of The Australian being sustainable), wherein she demands that Lend Lease and its head honchos be the first to front the Royal Commission in relation to its contracting practices, its relationship to big unions and to small businesses.

Steady on Grace, that sort of jibber jabber simply isn't sustainable. Please take lessons from Dame Judith Sloan instructing workers that a seven day working week is their lot, and for the minimum wage puh...lease. How else will the reptiles get cheap coffee on a Sunday at 6 am?

But let's not stop there, because the pond has a special place for Angela Shanahan, rarely sighted these days on the digital rotating splash of doom at the lizard Oz, but there she is today with Stay-home mums productive too (behind the paywall because wives of working dads need sustainable pin money).

It's everything you could wish for from a Shanahan. Incoherent, rambling, but full of a keening and a moaning about how stay at home mums are mistreated and given a bad shake of the sauce bottle when it comes to coating the pineapple and the prawns.

It seems that breeders must maintain the rage, as the Awesome Mothers Association is doing (pdf of tax rebates and income splitting demands here) , and guess what, in these unsustainable times?

Stay at home moms deserve a better tax break, because it's not cheap staying at home to indoctrinate your child in Catholicism or some other fundamentalist religion.

You see, middle class mums on child care get a non-means tested tax benefit, and score all sorts of childcare which amounts to "at least $6401", compared to an "average $3112 for Family Tax Benefit Part B".

What's that you say? Who's bleating for the singles and others without kids who get taxed and sweet f.a.?

Steady, steady.

Family benefits should be neutral, but family subsidies are being subtly redirected to families where the mother is employed. 
Family tax benefits were not envisaged as welfare. They replaced income-tax deductions as compensation for bearing the burden of multiple dependants. Effectively large families, where the mother is not employed, subsidise smaller, richer families where both parents work. But employment does not equal productivity. Most women work because they have to. They resent being treated as economic units.

You see, benefits aren't welfare!

Now don't go citing dictionary definitions that say welfare can be defined as financial or other aid or benefits provided, especially by the government to people in need, or hot linking to the list of Australian government benefits here designed to assist the welfare of various social groups ...

That sort of high and mighty Humpty Dumpty nonsense simply isn't sustainable.

And the real marvel throughout the entire Shanahan bleat? Not one mention of Tony Abbott or his PPL scheme ...

Truly they know how to toe the ideological line, those hagiographers ...

Finally for those who maintain an interest in technology, that pompous prat and eastern suburbs ne'er do well, the silvertail (should that be silverfish?) Malcolm Turnbull, has performed yet another astonishing feat.

Federal Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has told ABC Local Radio that Tasmanian Liberal leader Will Hodgman has convinced him to look further into the option of using Aurora Energy power poles to deliver the NBN.
Tasmanian Liberal Leader Will Hodgman may not be the only one drinking the "fibre-to-the-premises Kool Aid" after he offered Federal Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull a taste in a meeting earlier this week. 
One day after desrcibing Mr Hodgman's enthusiasm for a full fibre-optic NBN as drinking the "fibre-to-the-premises Kool aid", Mr Turnbull says that Mr Hodgman has convinced him to look into the using state-owned power poles to deliver the NBN.

You see, Turnbull is so unaccustomed to the internet he probably thinks that a story on 936 ABC Hobart, Turnbull takes sip of Hodgman's fibre-to-the-premises Kool Aid didn't cross the Tasman and probably won't until the next set of yachts return to their eastern suburbs berths after the next Sydney to Hobart ...

It turns out Tasmania is very special because they have actual power poles - unlike any other state in Australia - and they're proposing to waive any rental on the poles if fibre optic cabling is draped off them ... just so they can have a better system.

Somebody's convinced them that Malcolm Turnbull's roll out is a completely fucked alternative, and who can argue with that, except a devious, deviant simpleton like Turnbull?

It seems poor old Will Hodgman can see his preciouss slipping away, so Turnbull offered to consider poles and stuff, knowing he could stiff the poor prawn whichever way the election turned out.

Remember the good old days of Akker Dakker and Nick Minchin, our  cushy rorter in America?

The shouting and the screaming? About all the uglification? Minchin with Look up in the sky! There's an ugly downside to Labor's broadband project, Akker Dakker with Powerful arguments for Rudd to go underground.

Now it turns out Tasmanians are ready for a few cables in the sky, anything but the half-baked pile of string and sealing wax crap Turnbull cheerfully calls Australia's broadband future...

Well strangely enough the pond has a power pole just outside the front of the house, and it already has Optus and Foxtel cables festooned on it, piles of shit both, and a mouldy pile of rain-sodden copper a-mouldering in the ground like John Brown's body in his grave.

We'll be more than happy to see the lot replaced with a single cable, hugh on high, with infinitely more capacity and speed ...

If big Mal is going to sip Tasmanian kool aid, he can come around the pond's place and we'll dose him up on Camperdown kool aid.

Heck we might even throw in one of Young Henry's, Trew Brew, and Batch Brews that litter the joint ... (oh yes, Tamworth might think it's the centre of the universe, but Newtown is the home of the craft brewers, here)

Too much comedy, too many laughs. Time to get legless for the weekend, in a sustainable way of course, while remembering all the memes ...

"He must think I'm a fucking dog, forgives the blow first friendly scratch at the ear ..."

(Above: more Leunig here)

Does it get any cheekier or post-modernist hipster ironic than the spectacle offered up by the position the Australian government has got itself into in relation to the Chinese government?

In the old days, China relied on the treatment of Aboriginal citizens for counter-attack when its abuse of human rights were noted. Now they have a new club, and it isn't even George Brandis's plans to censor the intertubes:

The Abbott government has suffered the ignominy of having its asylum seeker policy publicly criticised by another foreign government – this time China, a country with its own chequered human rights record. 
In a sign of lingering bilateral tension between Australia and its largest trading partner, China’s vice-minister of foreign affairs, Li Baodong, said he was concerned about the “very important issue” of the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers, especially children, who arrive in Australia by boat. “Indeed, we have proposed this question very candidly and also stated our concerns,” Mr Li told reporters in Beijing. 
“We also asked if these refugees will be illegally repatriated to other countries.” (here)

Of course they mentioned the Aborigines too, but that's water off a duck's back to Tony Abbott. How's your Spanish?

China expresó su preocupación por el trato a los refugiados en Australia y la situación de los aborígenes, dice el comunicado de prensa. (here)

And of course the reptiles at the lizard Oz were sent into a frenzy at the news that Iranian authorities had made a few agitated remarks about the violence and mistreatment in Australian-run detention centres, which saw the death of a 24 year old Iranian man.

Naturally Abbott bunkered down and foamed and frothed about being fair but firm, or is that firm but fair, but this has a long way to play out. Why even the Daily Terror, the least trusted newspaper in Australia, seems to think there might be the need for ongoing investigation, at least if you take a look at today's top splash:

If you read the story, Shocking claims after Manus Island bloodbath: security guards 'stomped on Iranian asylum seeker's head, killing him' (forced video), it will take some fancy dancing to stay fair but firm while mounting a murder investigation:

As blame is exchanged on the Manus Island detention centre bloodbath, it has been claimed that the Iranian asylum seeker killed on Monday night may have been murdered by out-of-control guards who stomped his skull as he lay defenceless on the ground. 
According to an account from an Australian guard working for security contractor GS4, obtained by New Corp, local guards working for GS4 were in a frenzy and jumped on the man’s head in a rage on Monday night, inside the detention compound. But Papua New Guinea clearly believes the Australians are covering up, with Prime Minister Peter O’Neill insisting that no New Guineans were involved in any of the troubles, which led to the one death and two others being medi-vacced to Australia. 

And the corollary?

The debacle — apparently a combination of poor crowd control, inadequate fencing and furious asylum seekers, who have been unable to get answers on what their future holds — has raised serious questions about Australia’s reliance on outsourced security in far-flung offshore centres.

Yep, what we need is better, more effective gulags.

Hang on, is that Vladimir on the line? Can someone conjure up good old Uncle Joe? Is Sheriff Joe available? Oh hang on, they're doing his good works in Queensland already.

So there's the solution. Put Newman Campbell in charge. He'll know how to be firm, and all this talk of fairness will evaporate like spit on a shovel on a hot summer's day ...

Remember all that outrage at pink batt deaths? Royal Commissions? Oh shush, let's just have an internal inquiry, and waiter, bring very large bowls of water ...

Never mind, it's Friday, and you don't get to experience that sense of relief if you happen to be in a gulag on Manus island.

But it left the pond inclined to leave the commentariat alone. After all, is there any point in reading the quisling Graham "Swiss bank accounts" Richardson scribbling for the reptiles at the lizard Oz, and pretending to be left of Tony Abbott, why even more left than Genghis Khan, and now - having sabotaged Labor for years - pretending to hold Abbott to account?

What a preposterous nauseating spectacle ...

Oh wait there's an even more nauseating spectacle ...

Yep, it's the bouffant one, still hard at work knob polishing and grovelling, this time ostensibly concerned for the poor, trudging the lonely hard-working road of the Sisyphean hagiographer. Or is that Hercules up to his fifth labor, carting the shit out of the Augean stables?

Let's have some good news. How about When Tony went to Sophie's wedding?

Yep, back in the day, the rorter Abbott routinely dipped his porky nose in the trough, travelling to weddings and other junkets around the land, in fine Slipper style, and only took a back step when he was found out. As for the watchdog?

Say what? Who, which, what watchdog?

The failure of the department in charge of MP entitlements to provide a ruling follows a pattern in which it has been unwilling to comment or take action on any of the examples of questionable travel claims revealed by Fairfax Media. 
And it comes as the Australian National Audit Office interrogates the "effectiveness of the Department of Finance's administration of travel entitlements provided to parliamentarians". (more here)

Steady, don't get excited. The Audit Office is due to table in ... autumn 2015 ...

And then came this astonishing news:

Yes, even as he goes about the business of demolishing, ruining and obliterating the NBN, at his master's bidding, big Mal still has the wood on Tony Abbott. Abbott is so disliked that even a servile prat and ponce from Sydney's eastern suburbs can win a popularity poll, as you can read in Malcolm Turnbull trumps Tony Abbott in poll.

Yes, even as the sycophant fellow travels while Brandis raises the spectre of internet censorship, he still stays ahead of Abbott.

It doesn't ultimately mean much - Malcolm Fraser was routinely reviled and loathed yet the head prefect still won a few elections - but sheesh, when even jolly Joe Hockey does better, it'd be wise for the current head prefect not to look in a mirror ... or a painting. Who knows what the Dorian Gray visage might be hiding?

And at the same time, the news from WA unleashed some compelling speculation, as you can read in WA half-Senate election spells a whole lot of uncertainty for Tony Abbott.

Could the rest of the Abbott government's term see it reliant on the votes of Clive Palmer, in which case whither the reptiles at the lizard Oz and their war on Palmer? After all, if Abbott lies down in bed with Clive ...

And will he be reliant on the rabid DLP senator John Madigan, who will likely introduce all the old Catholic Harradine abortion and associated 'family' routines? And can South Australia look to Nick Xenophon for boondoggles while the gambling industry groans?

However it falls, it'll be a most just irony if Abbott continues to be tortured and to find a need to introduce some kind of consensus to get things through the Senate.

And so to yet another breach of Godwin's Law.

Students of the Nuremberg Trials will remember that one of the favourite excuses for committing a crime was "following orders". "Befehl Ist Befehl" didn't generally work, of course, though there were exceptions, as you can find by doing a Greg Hunt on Superior orders.

But in any case none of this has to do with the moral or legal culpability, guilt and responsibility of the superior who issued the orders, in this case Tony Abbott in consort with Scott Morrison.

So the pond had to remind itself why Abbott ordered the Royal Commission into the pink batts affair.

No, it wasn't petty spite and cheap political payback, it was noble and high minded.


"Australians deserve a full explanation of this massive policy failure to ensure such a disaster never happens again," Mr Abbott told News Corp. 
But the Government is also keen to ensure the Royal Commission focuses on the role played by former ministers and senior public servants - instead of examining the reasons behind numerous fires caused by faulty installation. 
Terms of reference - to be unveiled today - include identifying "risks arising from the program and the assessment and management of those risks". 
It will also look at whether any changes should be made by the government to its "laws, practices, processes, procedures and systems" to ensure that similar tragedies don't happen again. (here)

Uh huh. Manus island?

Ah, forget it, it's only an Iranian asylum seeker. Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown, and the man in charge puts Deadwood's Al Swearengen to shame. Come to think of it, the pond does the foul-mouthed Swearengen a disservice. He was an honest rogue, not a hypocritical one ... (but at last you get to an explanation of the header to this piece, it's an Al Swearengen quote)

Suicides, a possible murder, and yet it all rolls on, and as Waleed Aly notes, here, the government will likely enough get away with murder and no one will care much:

Through it all we maintain the heroic ability to exonerate ourselves through the fiction that we played no part in their misery, or that those who riot are immorally cynical. But the cynicism is ours. Even the briefest sampling of commercial talkback radio this week revealed a streak within us that sees a detainee's death merely as comeuppance. The political truth is that there is almost nothing any government could do that the electorate would deem too brutal, which is precisely how we got here. 
A poll last month had 60 per cent of us urging the Abbott government to ''increase the severity'' of our policies towards asylum seekers. That's not a pragmatic policy judgment. We find something cathartic about this official form of violence. 
The truth is we've never really come to terms with why it is people get on boats, and why it is that, faced with hopeless inaction once they're detained, they protest. In fact, our public conversation isn't even terribly interested in knowing. That's why, when we do finally discover the facts of Manus, they will mean nothing.

A pox on all their houses, but to end on a light note, if you've ever wondered who helped cultivate that sheltered sense of parochialism, paranoia and xenophobia, have a look at this Liberal advertisement from the October 1980 Malcolm Fraser government bid to get itself re-elected. Click to enlarge:

The pond's boondoggling spiv of the week competition hots up ...

(Above: a certain winner in the pond's spiv, toff and prat of the week competition?)

The pond doesn't usually do short form - if you're going to rant, you need to rant and howl at the moon at length.

But this piece in ZDNet, Lobby pushing for Australian piracy crackdown donates millions, which explains how policy-making works in Australia, deserves as wide a circulation as possible:

As Attorney-General George Brandis looks to clamp down on online copyright infringement, one of the main members of the recently renamed content industry lobby group, the Australian Screen Association (ASA) has been revealed to have donated close to AU$4 million to the Liberal and Labor parties since 1998. 
The Australian Screen Association, which until last year went under the name of the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), represents some of the biggest film studios in the world, including Universal, 20th Century Fox, Disney, Paramount, and Village Roadshow. The latter was listed as the main litigant in AFACT's case against internet service provider iiNet several years ago, where AFACT tried and failed to hold iiNet liable for its users sharing films over BitTorrent. iiNet had declined to pass warning notices sent from AFACT about users infringing on copyright onto the iiNet account holders. 
The High Court found that iiNet had no direct power to prevent its customers from using BitTorrent other than deactivating a customer's account, and that the notices AFACT had sent to iiNet were not in a form that iiNet would be in a position to pass onto its users.

There's plenty more, and all the pond can do is commend it as a read.

Can policy be bought in Australia?

Why do you ask?

Tin pot banana republic?

Why do you ask? And surely you meant to say:

Tin pot banana monarchy ... all hail Prince Chuck.

Meanwhile, what to say about a man who thinks nothing of feathering his nest with books who plots and schemes and gets gung ho to feather Hollywood's nest by censoring and filtering the intertubes?

Why do you ask?

Say hello to the next Stephen Conroy, and the new boss, same dingbat as the old one ...

All that blather about rights and freedom and Tim Wilson. So much horseshit as the combine flexes its generous muscles ...

And we're right back with Conroy and ISPs doing the heavy lifting and a great big filter and ...

There is a profound and perverse irony at work here. The biggest thing standing in the way of content suppliers delivering their content on the intertubes and people paying in a seemly way for the product isn't piracy.

It's the shithouse broadband at work in Australia. Talk to people who do the streaming. The pond occasionally does and they just roll their eyes at the idea of sending HD quality moving pictures over the full to overflowing intertubes in bulk.

So where's big Mal?

Eyeroll.

Big Mal is off taking care of his mates, here in The Guardian ...

But while he was goofing off, the goose began to feel the heat from a most unexpected source:

Despite romping away in the opinion polls, and within striking distance of the highly difficult task of gaining a majority in Tasmania's Hare-Clark elected lower house, Tasmanian Liberal leader Will Hodgman has been overheard saying to a colleague that Malcolm Turnbull's plan to switch the National Broadband Network (NBN) over to a fibre-to-the-node network could cost him the election. 
As captured by the ABC, Hodgman told fellow shadow minister Jacquie Petrusma that the issue "could cost us the election; anyway, that's democracy". 
Hodgman later said that he NBN is a critical piece of infrastructure for Tasmania, but there are a number of issues that could lose either major political party in the upcoming state election. (again from ZDNet here)

Well Hodgman would try to clarify his remarks, wouldn't he, but the truth came with the news that he'd made a brief visit to Sydney to see big Mal, as you can read in Hodgman, Turnbull in NBN talks.

The pond has always made fun of Tasmanians, especially in their boondoggle harridan Harradine days, but it seems that they understand the difference between fibre and string and sealing wax and tin cans.

Let the boondoggles begin again ...

Come on down carpet baggers, the country is open for business.

What's that? We have another contender for spiv, toff and prat of the week?

The hagiographer's work and duty never ends ...

So that's how the Fairfaxians led their digital edition.

It's an obvious angle on a story that demands attention.

But when the hagiography gets to be tough going, the genuine hagiographer gets going:

There, that's how it's gone, you ignore the story entirely, and you explain - for benefit of Indonesians - how everything is for the best of all worlds, and everything is working spiffingly well for benefit of Indonesians, and you put it right at the top of the page, with a story below about how the brave PM is standing up to cyber giants ...

Yep, you don't get to be an ingenious craven lickspittle and knob polisher without knowing all the angles on the billiard table of life.

The top of the page splash was of course an EXCLUSIVE on the digital edition, though how UN figures are the EXCLUSIVE domain of the reptiles at the lizard Oz must remain a mystery:

You see, that's how it's done, and there below, in the interests of fairness and balance, there's none of that unsavoury business of the Fairfaxians, screaming that there's blood, there's blood everywhere.

Instead you cop "We're no cannibals, Manus MP". And we all know what that means. Just when did you stop beating your wife, you cannibal ...

What a pity the government didn't seem to be up to the job of crowing about the wonders of its policies at work - perhaps it might have been thought a little unseemly just after a death dealing riot.

Unfortunately, the only ones interested in responding to the slavering, slobbering, simpering reptiles happened to be Indonesian, only given space right at the end of the story, as you'll note if you evade the paywall here :

The Australian was last night seeking a response to the data from Mr Morrison’s office. 
An Indonesian presidential adviser, former long-time foreign minister Hassan Wirajuda, yesterday dismissed the reduced flow as “a temporary phenomenon”. Dr Wirajuda’s reply suggests Canberra has a long way to go to persuade the Yudhoyono administration. 
“Yes, for a while Indonesia may benefit, because temporarily potential refugees might postpone their intention to go to Australia,” he said. “But who can guarantee that next year they will not try again, because the root causes, like conflicts, war, poverty, push people to migrate.” 
Dr Wirajuda said his experience over more than a decade of dealing with refugee flow through the region suggested the slowdown was temporary.

Silly, outrageous, shocking Dr Wirajuda.

He needs to go to a re-education camp to be reminded that conflicts, war, poverty  and etc have nothing to do with it. These are filthy rich economic refugees without a shred of decency or shame, because life in Iran and Syria and Somalia and such like is one jolly hockey sticks romp ...

Naturally the Oz wouldn't be a genuinely hagiographic news service if it the spin of the day wasn't accompanied by a member of the commentariat fronting up for service, and how lucky the readers of the Oz are to have Greg "How I learnt to love Tony Abbott" Sheridan on hand.

It turns out, if you can summon the energy to evade the paywall, and suffer yet another fit of ennui and rage, that Keeping the friendship afloat is a masterly piece of dissembling evasion, in which Sheridan explains the many reasons why Indonesia and Indonesians have for distrusting the current regime in Canberra.

Naturally Snowden cops the blame for starters, which reminded the pond that if you wanted an alternative view of the activities of Snowden - beyond the standard bleat of "treasonous traitor" - you might well read David Cole's The Three Leakers and What to Do About Them, for The New York Review of Books, outside the paywall at the moment.

After dusting up Snowden, Sheridan lets loose with an epic fit of masochism:

It strikes them (Indonesians) that this was all about Australian smugness, the desire of Australians to see themselves as morally superior. Now they believe the new policy, again, is all about Australian selfishness, that it shows a lack of Australian engagement in the region. They believe Australia has played to fear and prejudice and that we don’t care about the effects of Australian policy on Indonesia; in particular, that we don’t really care what Indonesia’s views are. This is where it links up with the Snowden issue. Australia has the power to do things, so it does them, whether Indonesia likes it or not. Similarly, they believe Indonesian views are only of importance in Australia if they reinforce one side or the other of our domestic political arguments. They also see the Abbott government’s determination on this issue as a disregard for the importance of the Indonesian relationship itself. And the fact that we constantly talk about the issue means that anything they don’t like about it is endlessly replayed in their media. 

Could a member of the commentariat be any more condescending?

Speaking of Indonesians as a collective hive mind, so dumb that the moment Australians talk about an issue, it's endlessly recycled in the Indonesian media, because, you know, feed the chooks and they will cluck ...

It's as if he wanted to illustrate the point he wanted to make about smug morally superior attitudes by being smug and superior ... as if the Indonesian media has nothing better to do than read the Australian media and replay it like a bunch of intertube bots ...

And then it gets worse:

Finally, this all plays into the Indonesian sense of victimhood. Australia stands in for hundreds of years of European misbehaviour in Asia. That is an Indonesian stereotype of Australia. 

Because you know bribing Papua New Guinea to house Australia's problems is an Indonesian stereotype. And now, let's make a genuine effort to insult the entire country:

From Australia’s point of view, many Australians see Indonesia as a nation that won’t actually do anything substantial about a shared problem, which can never take helpful co-operative action in a timely fashion, which takes offence where none is intended, which values the form of a good relationship, but which is not prepared to take concrete steps to make that relationship productive for both nations. 

So what's the real point of the piece? Well naturally it's "me, me, me" and Tony Abbott and a fit of handwringing about the way the ungrateful Indonesians simply don't seem to get it:

 In truth, Abbott is doing exactly what he said he would do before the election, and it is working. It is also benefiting Indonesia, as the numbers of people coming into Indonesia purely in order to come to Australia has declined sharply. 

And there it stands revealed, the whole thing has been a made to order, made to fit piece to reinforce, as in an echo chamber, the ostensible "exclusive" news which led the paper, and which replaced any mention of Manus Islands beyond "cannibal".

But all the same Manus Island must rear its ugly head, even in Sheridan's world:

The biggest threat to the Abbott government’s policies is just the sheer scale and complexity of holding everything together. The Manus Island disturbances are part of the serious battle of wills that the Rudd and Gillard governments so dismally failed. 
The Abbott government must mobilise whatever level of resources is needed to make Manus work properly, including in a way that respects the human rights of everyone involved. 
A failed policy would be infinitely more expensive. It would also, long term, damage the vitally important relationship with Indonesia.

At which point, the pond confesses to having collapsed into hysteria.

Maintain the rage, stick the course, battle the wills, splash the cash, and at the same time do it in a way that respects the human rights of everyone involved.

Some days the pond wonders what it must be like to wake up and look in the mirror while working as a Murdoch hack ...

But let's not end with hysteria, let's end with some good news.

Is it unseemly to dance on the grave of a failed site?

Generally no, but the pond is always happy to make an exception, at least when it comes to Menzies House.

The last post was a rabid bit of tripe about students and collectivism and students, on the 3rd February and then silence, and now this:

"There's room for everyone" runs the slogan, without seeming to realise that these loons are only fit for the pond, at the far end where the quacking and the loon calls can drift off into the breeze without disturbing anyone ...

And now, just to remind everyone that it's business as usual with Indonesia, the Daily Terror also ignored Manus island, and came up with a most creditable cover:

Only in Murdoch la la land ...

And so to sweets, and a serve of the soggy suet pudding that can never become a souffle:

It's a reminder, if one was needed, never to go to a raving ranting one eyed ideologue for a grasp of economics or any useful insight into the challenges faced by manufacturers confronted by a world economy.

Fortunately there are alternatives. You could for example read Alcoa contradicts Joe Hockey on reasons for smelter shutdown (forced video at end of link):

... in a statement a company spokeswoman confirmed ''the carbon tax was not a factor in the decision''.
Yep, in the usual Bolter way, reality has nothing to do with it. If ever you want a man to argue black should be white ...

The thing that titillates the pond is what will happen when in due course the carbon tax is abolished, and climate change continues on its slow and steady way, and manufacturing in Australian remains under the hammer, and Abbott and his motley crew will have to stand in the full glare of the sun and deliver the goods ...

Which inevitably brings us to a genuine sweet, a David Rowe cartoon, and more Rowe here (and don't forget to check out David Pope, who for this day only before it shuttles down the gallery, gives Thompson and the ALP a really rotten apple serve here.

 

Corruption and colonialism, both alive and well ... if being sick is your idea of being well ...

It's as good an example of modern colonialism as can be found.

A rich country exports its problems to another, much poorer country, using cash as a bait and a bribe, and the poor country, beguiled by the cash, allows a portion of its land to be occupied and exploited by the rich country.

The rich country dumps what it perceives to be detritus, useless and irritating baggage in the poor country. Problem solved.

When there are problems with the solution, blame the poor country, or the people employed by the rich country to maintain order in the poor country.

Whatever you do, don't blame politicians on both sides of the aisle. After all, they only exported the problems because they didn't want the sort of unseemly and embarrassing behaviour that was seen when they ran the gulags onshore and caused the Howard government so much pain ...

Because we should all remember that politicians bleed too. Oh how they suffer at the sight of suffering, especially if it turns up in the polls ...

There's something to be said for the naked honesty of the brutality of dictators. They have no problems running their gulags onshore. Stalin, North Korea? Why not have a gulag or a camp at home? Where's the harm? Keeps people in line.

Today there's not been much attention paid to offshore events by the local media commentariat. After all, out of sight is out of mind, and failing business models mean there's no hands on deck or on the ground.

The few who've bothered - like Tory Shepherd, reprinted in the least trusted newspaper in Australia - don't know what to say: Reports about what happened to Manus detainees are contradictory and distance makes it harder to get the truth.

It sounds like chaos over there. There are no images, no video or pictures available as the paper goes to print — rare in the Age of the iPhone. Just rumours and glimpses of anarchy. 
The Government has been keen, particularly in recent weeks, to paint asylum seekers as people who are willing to act illegally, who are therefore untrustworthy.

Wombats in the dark and not a single word explaining the bleeding obvious, that Australia has exported its problems and if shit happens it won't be on home turf and that's enough for the politicians.

No doubt an inquiry will be held, bowls of water will be called for, paws will be ritually washed and cleansed, and throughout the land we'll hear the mantra "nothing to do with me".

Some cluck clucking and tut tutting, individuals blamed, politicians absolved, the country that pays to run its gulag at ease and continuing to dump people on their colonial patch, and both sides of the house free to go on with the business of demonising and persecuting the aliens ... shedding crocodile tears every so often in a bid to seem human.

The only other bizarre thing is that the politicians that sponsored the colonial solution - former chairman Rudd heading the pack in an attempt to save his own skin - routinely purport on their day off on  to be Christians.

They should wear the brands, Her Majesty's modern day colonialists and gulag keepers with pride ...

And meanwhile the media reports events with the same sombre tones as are reserved for the failure of Australian athletes at what is perhaps the most offensive and corrupt Olympic games in many a year - perhaps since Hitler himself so nakedly turned them to his own purposes (bugger the Godwin's Law swear jar, it's not the pond's fault it's full to overflowing).

Whatever happens on the ice and snow of Sochi in the next couple of weeks, one thing is certain: this Winter Olympics is the greatest financial boondoggle in the history of the Games. Back in 2007, Vladimir Putin said that Russia would spend twelve billion dollars on the Games. The actual amount is more than fifty billion. (By comparison, Vancouver’s Games, in 2010, cost seven billion dollars.) Exhaustive investigations by the opposition figures Boris Nemtsov, Leonid Martynyuk, and Alexei Navalny reveal dubious cost overruns and outright embezzlement. And all this lavish spending (largely paid for by Russian taxpayers) has been, as Nemtsov and Martynyuk write, “controlled largely by businesspeople and companies close to Putin.” 
Sochi is emblematic of Russia’s economy: conflicts of interest and cronyism are endemic. (The Sochi Effect, The New Yorker, currently outside the paywall here)

Enough already.

The pond is in need of a little light relief, and what better way than to read Julian Clarke's valiant defence of the evil empire.

It seems that rascally, wicked Paul Barry and Media Watch have been very naughty talking down the grand strides being made by the evil empire, as you can read - paywall permitting - in News Corp slams ABC's Media Watch.

It's a herculean task, and amongst other things what fun to see Clarke defend the empire's populist click bait littered site.

Media Watch also mocked as “click bait” some of “the top stories” on News-owned news.com.au, Australia’s most popular news website. 
But Media Watch did not seek any data from news.com.au about which stories were most-read. Had it done so it would have found none of its examples were on the list. 
“We never said they were the most popular,” Mr Barry said. Mr Clarke said: “The fact is people read both quirky and serious stories — not that you’d know that from Barry’s sneering and selective reporting.”

Indeed. The pond has absolutely no idea why the shocking and outrageous Paul Barry has come up with such a far-fetched idea, so we trotted over to confirm how wrong he was here:

(no hot links, screen cap)

Look, this very day there's vital information about implants, ugly F1 cars, the Viking apocalypse, and an explanation of why a supermodel wore a swordfish during a photoshoot ...

The tragedy, it seems, is that none of these stories are popular.

The site simply runs them as a public service, and as a way, perhaps, of making Wittgenstein blush as he comes to understand his inadequacy as an intellect up against the fine, feathered, peacock display of the best brains at news.com.au.

For the rest of the piece, Clarke indulges in standard News Corp practice, shooting the ABC messenger while attempting to pretend that all is well in print and digital land:

The episode also displayed a “lack of understanding about the media business”, he said. 
 “Barry quoted the Herald Sun’s circulation as being under 400,000 sales per day. If Media Watch was attempting to give the viewers some insight into the newspaper business, it may have pointed out that the Herald Sun’s total audience, print and digital, is larger this year than last year and that the public are happily paying for the digital version,” Mr Clarke said.

But as the pond noted yesterday, the rabbit was already out of the hutch last week, courtesy of mUmBRELLA, and stories such as The data is finally in. Newspapers aren't going to get enough digital subscribers.

Despite a lack of transparency from the major newspaper publishers, that question is now starting to be answered within the scraps of information they are sharing. 
And it now seems likely that while paywalls are going to bring in some dollars – they will be nowhere enough to make up the shortfall. And they will probably be the hardest earned media dollars out there. The pattern is beginning to look like an initial surge of loyal subscribers when a paywall is first activated, but then growth quickly stalls. It suggests the market size is far smaller than publishers would have hoped. 
The clearest part of the picture comes with News Corp’s The Australian, which was first to move to a paywall model, initially as a freemium (some content free, premium stuff for subscribers only) offer, then as a metered (a certain number of free articles per month) model.

Well you can head off to mUmBRELLA for the figures and the calculations, but you might wonder why Tim Burrowes isn't given the same rough slagging as Paul Barry.

And that's because mUmBRELLA is below the radar as old media spends its time slagging other old media - in the case of News Corp, the ABC and Fairfax - without the old media having the first clue that young horses are already contentedly grazing in other fields for their information and opinion.

Everyone knows that Chairman Rupert only keeps the loss-making lizard Oz running as a folly and as a source of political influence and power and he's been doing it for years.

And why not. Assemble a cast of opinion hacks and get them to type like monkeys day in day out, week in week out, following the party line.

Even for a dedicated follower of loons with a deep interest in their peculiar territorial and mating calls, it can produce a sense of ennui, tedium, boredom and existential despair.

Look at Dame Slap today:

Talk about a commentariat running on empty.

With newspaper subscriptions falling, News Corp needs to do something different. Fast!

You see, Craig Thompson has finally gone, and good riddance, and now in New South Wales, Eddie Obeid has been displaced by Liberal MPs Chris Hartcher, Chris Spence and Darren Webber ... with questions raised about corrupt payments (Liberal MPs face suspension for links to ICAC inquiry). In that story you'll find this:

Australian Water, which became one of the largest donors to the NSW Liberals before the 2011 state election, was allegedly one of the sources of the payments. 

And if you backtrack a little further, say to February 2013 you'll find this, Questions about Senator's involvement with Sydney Water:

Arthur Sinodinos was appointed chairman of Australian Water Holdings the day before the Obeid family signed a secret deal to buy one third of the company. He insists he was not told by the management of that arrangement. 
Under the Senator's chairmanship, Australian Water Holdings went on to become a key donor to the State Liberal Party. 
And a few months later, after the Liberals won power in the state, the company signed a 25-year deal with the new government to install infrastructure in Sydney's north-west growth corridor that increased the value of the company from $9 million to $75 million.

The third estate was supposed to earn its way by taking a fierce and fearless look at both sides of the aisle, instead of spending its days urging Bill Shorten to become a success by turning into Tony Abbott.

It's not just unions and the Labor party who get up to the neck in it.

Why not, instead of spending all their days union bashing, don't the commentariat spent a bit of time checking out the corruption on both sides of the aisle. 

Why, for example, do they consistently overlook the naked corruption and greed at work amongst developers and the corporate side of the construction industry, which in Sydney at least would make the builders of Sochi blush at their lack of ambition ...

It brings us back to James Surowiecki's observations on the Sochi effect:

... an economic boost based on corrupt spending is an illusion, the equivalent of a sugar high. Paolo Mauro, an economist at the I.M.F., says simply, “Corruption is bad for economic growth.” It’s well documented that corruption discourages investment, because it makes businesses uncertain about what it takes to get ahead; as one study put it, “Arbitrariness kills.” Corruption also skews government spending. The economists Vito Tanzi and Hamid Davoodi found that corruption leads politicians to overinvest in low-quality infrastructure projects while skimping on maintaining existing projects. (It’s easier to collect bribes on new construction than on maintenance.) And, in a pathbreaking study nearly twenty years ago, Mauro found that countries with high levels of corruption spent little on education. In economist-speak, corrupt politicians put too much money into physical capital and not enough into human capital. Crony construction capitalism leaves us with too few teachers and too many ski jumps to nowhere.

Uh huh, but why would anyone expect that a corporation which has just made out like a bandit at taxpayers' expense, with a windfall derived from phoney internal transactions designed to conform to the law while thwarting the intent of the law, concern itself with real journalism?

Why it's a lot easier to shout at Paul Barry and the ABC ... and follow the party line mandated by Chairman Rupert ...

And so once again it's left to the cartoonists to contemplate the real scandal of the day.

More Pope here and more Rowe here: