Old dogmas get another chance to pee on the post ...

An excellent question, and luckily the pond has the answers.

For starters, it doesn't do to be gay or TG, you just can't trust them:

He also questioned, in a book published in 2004, whether gay, lesbian and transgender teachers should teach sex education in schools.

And it should be a nation of smokers:

Dr Donnelly has previously attracted controversy for designing an anti-smoking program funded by tobacco company Phillip Morris for Australian and New Zealand schools.

Well at least it should be a nation of quislings who take money from big tobacco and never mind the damage or the harm tobacco does to the health of the nation.

And it certainly should be a nation in love with violence and physical punishment:

"What would you, as you've been involved with this for so long, describe as the best punishment you can come across even if it is one that has gone away?" asked 2UE host Justin Smith. "I'm not alluding to the strap here. I don't think you would ever resort to that. You would never advocate bringing that back surely?" 
Dr Donnelly responded by saying, "Well" followed by a pause – an answer that surprised Mr Smith. Dr Donnelly continued: "I grew up in Broadmeadows, a housing commission estate in Melbourne, and we had a Scottish phys-ed teacher. 
"Whenever there were any discipline problems he would actually take the boy behind the shed and say, 'We can either talk about this or you can throw the first punch'. 
"That teacher would probably lose his job now but it was very effective. He only had to do it once and the kids were pretty well behaved for the rest of the year." 
Dr Donnelly went on to say "those days are gone". But questioned further on the merits of corporal punishment, he said: "If the school community is in favour of it then I have got no problem if it's done properly. 
"There are one or two schools around Australia that I know where it actually is approved of and they do do it. I'm sure they only do it very rarely." 
Dr Donnelly contrasted corporal punishment with "time out" zones which he said do not work because children can relax and avoid class work. (the rest here, with forced video)


Yes you certainly don't want a nation of relaxed children enjoying life.

Better to take them down behind the shed and give them a taste of the biff and the what for, so they can learn about power imbalances for the rest of their life, and how to physically bully someone into conformity and ...

Yep, that was the illustration to Jacqueline Maley's Kevin Donnelly on a hiding to nothing, in which she invoked Roald Dahl's school daze ...

Meanwhile, what do you get if you can be bothered clicking on Donnelly's doddering How to teach what it means to be Australian?

Well it's wreathed in dreams of long ago, and memories of Empire and the British, and yearning for long lost times ...

Now that Islamic State terrorism has arrived on our soil it's time to ask the question: what does it mean to be Australian? 
There's no denying that during the 1950s and 1960s the prevailing mood was nationalistic and pro-British. When I was at school, for example, every Monday morning at assembly we neatly lined up in rows, saluted the flag and sang God save the Queen. With our hands on our hearts children would then recite the oath of allegiance and promise to "cheerfully obey my parents, teachers and the law". 

Who knows what school Donnelly went to, or when, but here he commits the sin of omission.

The standard routine in NSW public schools was "I honour my God, I serve my Queen, I salute my Flag". (Trust the monarchists to remember it aright, and to yearn for the days when there weren't any "brawny females" and "sissified males" here. Oh the horror of sissies. Thank the long absent lord Prof David Flint is no sissy.).

Never mind, the marching and the flag waving and the god talk was a fine example of indoctrination. It was rampant religious fanaticism, rampant worship of a foreign Queen and rampant worship of jingoistic imperialism, with a Protestant twist that saw Catholics as likely Fenian deviants.

And that's what Donnelly yearns for, as its swept away by the wicked socialists and that flamboyant Al Grassby with his hideous ties (yes there are two "s's" in Grassby, Greg Hunt him here, which just goes to show the dangers of historians rabbiting on about spelling):

The world map on the back of our workbooks was covered in red, proving that the sun never set on the British Commonwealth. 
Fast-forward to Al Grasby (sic) and the Whitlam government in the early 1970s when multiculturalism was born and everything began to change. Against the background of Vietnam moratoriums and the counter-culture movement, what Geoffrey Blainey described as the "three cheers view" of history became superfluous and representative of a bygone era. 

Yes just like spelling someone's name correctly.

Australia had to cut the umbilical cord to Westminster and assert its independence. As a result of waves of post-war immigration we were now a nation of diverse cultures where those who came to live here were free to celebrate and hold on to what makes them unique. 
Governments spent millions resourcing classroom materials and programs to celebrate diversity and difference. Saluting the flag was jingoistic, the bronzed ANZAC a caricature (or, at worst misogynistic) and British settlement an invasion. 
At its extreme, multiculturalism championed the view that all cultures are equal and that embracing tolerance and respect meant that it was impossible to discriminate and argue that some beliefs or practices are un-Australian. 
Initiatives like the Howard Government's Discovering Democracy and Values Education programmes, where children were taught to appreciate the institutions, values and beliefs that make us unique and bind us as a nation, were derided as conservative, Anglophobic and binary. 
The result? Generations of young people are ignorant of the nation's history and fail to see why democracy, for all its limitations, should be preferred before all other forms of government.

It's the stupidity of these mournful conservatives that they don't have the first clue - about Gallipoli as a military exercise, or red ragger Simpson and his socialist donkey, or the result of their desire to put religion back into schools, the way that once free and secular education, has now become radicalised by government funding, and turned into contending religious forces. Education as a tower of religous babel ...

Yet when it comes to the crunch, these days these conservatives always resort to secular values to support their case:

Cultural relativism, like the argument put by the Green's Senator Peter Whish-Wilson that it is wrong to use the word "terrorism" as it demonises people, also fails the pub or barbecue test. 
Forcing child brides to marry, female circumcision, refusing to accept the division between church and state and believing that anyone not of your religion or faith doesn't deserve to live are cultural practices that Australians reject. 

Well abusing gays, supporting corporal punishment or doing the dirty work for big tobacco doesn't cut the mustard either, but it's always pick and choose when it comes to the secular values that attract conservatives.

Celebrating diversity and difference is only feasible when there is a willingness to commit to and protect the values and beliefs that underpin and sustain tolerance and accepting others.

Except of course that it's the conservative way not to underpin and sustain tolerance and to accept others but to blame the likes of Gough and that Grasby man,

Oh heck,  just take them down behind the shed and give them a good thumping.

...such beliefs, values and institutions have not developed by accident or in a vacuum. 
They are associated with a unique form of government that has evolved from Westminster, a legal system based on common law and a moral code of behaviour drawing on Judeo-Christian beliefs and significant historical events like the Reformation and the Enlightenment.

And there you have it. The standard confusions and conflations.

No mention of the ancient Greeks, just Westminister, no mention of Roman law, just common law, no mention of the weird and wonderful mix that sees Christians celebrating pagan festivals at Xmas time ... no coherent understanding of the way the Renaissance helped end the sort of failed understanding offered up to the world by a genocidal god and a delusional garden of eden ...

Just the usual nostalgia for lost empire and the British, as if those days will ever come again in these rapidly changing days that we live in ...

As for Judeo-Christian beliefs?

Enough of that jibber jabber. Off to Cambodia with you, and think yourself lucky for peddling that codswallop about the good Samaritan ...

But then what would you expect of a man who signs himself off as a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Catholic University?

Well there's a good reason why the pond rarely bothers with Fairfax opinion pages these days, and there it is in a nutshell:

If that's what it means to be Australian these days, it seems it means silly old buggers rabbiting on, with Sheehan doing his jihadist stuff, and Donnelly boxing the ears of the newcomers, just like the proddies used to box the ears of Irish Catholics in the old days.

Well, if that's what it means to be part of Team Australia, count the pond out ...

As the immortal real Dorothy put it, you can't teach an old dogma new tricks ...

In which the pond discovers the source of Jean-Paul Sartre's La Nausée

Well there's a voice for sanity, and you can find the full cartoon at First Dog here.

Now let's hear from the clinically insane:

Greater than the cold war?

Oh come on, he couldn't have said that, could he, not even the depths of hysteria whipped up by the Murdochians, and in the strutting and posing and fear-mongering lathered up by a government which now fancies itself as Churchillian.

But yes, if you read George Brandis claims Australia faces security threat greater than cold war, you cop this blood chilling, blood curdling sight - the bookshelf man in full war cry:

Fuck the pond dead, what a drongo, how futile was First Dog's attempt at a little sanity ...

Luckily the pond had just recently read Jonathan Holmes' Islamic State is not an existential threat to us.

Holmes was responding to a previous Brandis outing wherein the bookman called out the dogs of war and announced we were facing an existential threat.

You can find bookshelf man Brandis's brush with Jean-Paul Sartre in Brandis: Islamic State's caliphate ambitions an 'existential threat' to Australia, though the book man did it in the typical fuckwitted tones of a devious, deviant lawyer: "represents or seeks to be an existential threat to us".

"Seeks to be"? Well yes, but Brandis seeks to run a fascist inclined terrorist state, which punishes journalists for daring to report on his government's activities, but that doesn't mean he's achieved his aims just yet, and seeking it isn't the same as accomplishing it, though perhaps it's fair to say he does represent an existential threat.

Never mind, Holmes belled this sort of rhetorical silliness cat:

An existential threat! When I left the United Kingdom in 1982, hundreds of missiles armed with nuclear warheads, some a thousand times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, were trained by the Soviet Union on those small islands. As NevilShute's On The Beach not unrealistically portrayed it, a full-scale nuclear exchange would have threatened human existence even in far-off Australia. That was an existential threat. 
ISIL is brutal, and merciless. It undoubtedly threatens the lives and well-being of some hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions – of people in northern Iraq and eastern Syria. It has made clear that it wants its followers to kill Australians too. But, whatever it "seeks to be", it is not and never will be an existential threat to Australia.

There is a point to all this rhetoric. Brandis wants to introduce the most intrusive government measures this country has seen outside world war two, and to add punitive measures to ensure that there's a cloak of invisibility around the intrusions. For all the crap he talked about freedom, he is the epitome of Big Brother. And all the small government, we must be Tea Party free humbuggers lap it up like a cat at a bowl of milk.

Holmes also made the obvious point that if we were going to talk about existential threats, it might be wise to take climate science seriously, but the jihadists in the Abbott government - notably but not exclusively Cory Bernardi - resolutely refuse:

"If we do not change our ways," warned Professor Cory, "and greenhouse gas emissions keep growing as they are now, global average temperatures are predicted to rise by 4.5 degrees by the year 2100. That would mean a hotter world than at any time in the last few million years." 
It's the kind of talk that is privately dismissed by many prominent members of the Coalition government, and publicly derided by most of their supporters in the media, as "global warming alarmism". 
Tony Abbott did not attend Tuesday's United Nations climate change summit (forced video at end of link) in New York. But he will, of course, be in New York on Wednesday to help decide what to do about the Islamic State of the Levant.

Sure enough, forget the climate science, and watch as Abbott turned up to mouth hypocritical pieties, strength in diversity, and other mugwump hogwash of the disingenuous kind, given the way he's been dog whistling for conflict for years.

A free multicultural future, "a beacon of hope and exemplar of unity-in-diversity" and so on and so forth ...

How funny didit get?

“Perhaps the realisation is now dawning for all peoples, all cultures and all faiths that it can never be right to kill in the name of God,” he said.

So let's go bomb the shit out of someone.

Yes, the pond noted last night that already the first shots of dazed and bewildered innocents wandering through bombed ruins had begun to filter out on to the news services.

As for that beacon of hope and exemplar of the true and the just and the righteous and all the other bullshit words routinely deployed by this unctuous, mealy-mouthed politician, how's it actually working out in practice?

That's right, and in that Graudian story, Asylum seekers: Morrison to sign resettlement deal with Cambodia, is a tale of national disgrace and infamy.

At the moment the deal is secret, the UNHCR has been cut out of the loop, and at the heart of it is the cynical use of bribery, and of cash in the paw reportedly amounting to some $40 million:

Despite the dearth of details, the refugee plan has been roundly criticized by NGOs and opposition politicians, who say Australia is shirking its international obligations to ensure that the asylum seekers are resettled in a country that can guarantee their safety. 
They accuse Australia of ignoring the Cambodian government’s history of human rights abuses to make the deal happen, and of sending the refugees to one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in the region. Cambodia also has a poor record on handling asylum seekers. 
In 2009, Cambodia forcibly deported 20 Uighur asylum seekers back to China before thoroughly assessing their asylum claims. (The Cambodia Daily, full story here).

Nauseating, and there's a lot more detail in the Graudian about the reality of the country Morrison is now doing deals with ... in particular the comments of an actual Christian, as opposed to the faux Christianity of the speaker in tongues:

Sister Denise Coghlan, director of the Jesuit Refugee Service in Phnom Penh, said the news of the impending MOU was “stunning,” particularly because of a failure of the Cambodian government to consult with civil society groups.

Is there any upside this desperate day?

Well at least there's no need to go hitting head with hammer to do self-harm.

The tabloids have been having a field day with the lone wolf routine, so the pond has boycotted them.

It was left to the NT News to provide some balanced front page coverage without the Photoshopped hysteria or cornball puns that routinely feature on the pages of the Daily Terror, which the pond suspects isn't of use even for wrapping dead fish, lest the fish object to the stench emanating from its pages:

And the pond has now made its black ban on the reptiles at the lizard Oz official.

There'll be no links to the digital rag, nor any including of the rag's ratbag feral rightwing commentariat in the national conversation so long as the link leads to an embarrassing, pleading, begging letter for subscriptions.

Click on Greg "bromance" Sheridan in full uxorious flight today, and what do you get?

Clicking on that produces this:

Yep, there's the nausea at the thought of seeing Sheridan quivering in awe and licking the boots of statesman Abbott (with the Shortened one thrown in for purported bullshit balance), and then there's the nausea of someone in the lizard Oz's marketing department shouting at the pond.

Well NO THANKS. NO ACCESS IS FINE, IT DOESN'T MATTER TO THE POND THAT SHERIDAN IS HOWLING AT THE MOON AND WITH HIS FEARLESS LEADER.

The Fairfaxians also seem to think that they've tightened up their paywall, but it's a risible and pathetic effort.

The problem with the Fairfaxians is that there's not much in the way of content worth a link, unless you count their cynical putting of an advertisement in front of a sample of John Oliver, while the full segment is being given away for free on YouTube.

The pond is still stewing about it. The Faifaxians even had the cheek to put their own logo on the excerpt. Look, up there in the right hand corner:

Did they pay Oliver who can be found at YouTube here and without advertising or a Fairfax Media logo?

Or did they plead the standard fair use excerpt bullshit and never mind the commercial gain?

Not to worry, if Fairfax can do it, so can the pond. We will cheerfully pirate content, and evade the Fairfax paywall as required, and plead that it's strictly for fair use, educational and informational purposes ...

Meanwhile, the typos have got so bad that the pond spends all its time getting visual frights:

The pond was going to click through on both those stories, but then got interupted.

Now people in glass houses shouldn't through stones, and the pond is littered with errors, but then we can only afford amateur New Zealand subs disemployed by John Key ... but at least the pond doesn't yammer on about being professional and a much needed element of society, and being a bastion of freedom, liberty and balance and such like ... while running Paul "magic water" Sheehan ...

Up against the genuine horrors of this wretched day, these matters are small comfort, but that's all the comfort the pond gets these days contemplating a spineless, supine media, as a contemptible government runs amuk ...

Ha, got you, take a look at mengamuk - as descriptive of Tony Abbott's as any doing the rounds - before peddling 'amok' to the pond ...

At least the Fairfaxians have a decent couple of cartoonists, and by golly David Rowe - more Rowe here - and the Pope - more Papal material here - are in exceptional form.

But they'd need to be, considering the nature of this government, which is swerving from the banal to the actively wicked, with the wingman and the magic cloak man front and centre:

Clammering with the Fairfaxians ...

The pond doesn't mind the Fairfaxians catching up on John Oliver, which is offered up on the internet for free - his savaging of the Miss American Pageant could be found uploaded on YouTube, here, back on September 21st.

Hey, it's content, and any port in a storm, and who minds talking about something that had already chalked up nigh on three million views the last time the pond checked.

But what was that bit about "clammering"? Was it some arcane variant on the clamming done by mollusks? (Of course you can spell that mollusc too if you like but that's another story).

It was all the more poignant in that Oliver, now required viewing the minute he's uploaded, had much fun sending up Miss America's capacity to celebrate fun scholars:

In the end, the Fairfaxians clamoured or clambered to get it right.

But the question the pond has to ask is who will pay for the pond's suffering? They want people to pay for this sort of typo, headlining free content?

So this is where professional journalism has ended?

Get it up late, and then clammer to get it right, just beneath the big bold masthead?

Clammering always?

Well keep clammering ...

It's coal, coal, coal for Australia, dance Ms Bishop dance, but no clicks for the reptiles ...

The pond was going to click on Tobias Feakin's piece for the reptiles at the lizard Oz, and ask him why he thought:

(a) the jihadist social media machine was in any way streetwise? Did he think the Pope taking to twitter was like, man, really down there with it, cool, hip daddyo, and any other bit of 1950s argot he could muster ...

(b) Governments needed to keep up with the allegedly streetwise jihadist social media machine on a streetwise level, as opposed to monitoring it for security issues and such like...

Did Tobias have any understanding that any time Government attempted to be street wise it was invariably lame?

Did Tobias understand that lumping all the work on Government was peculiar in a rag ostensibly dedicated to small government, yet always whining and moaning about what Government should be doing? Like keep up, streetwise, with crazed fundamentalists ...

Did it occur to him it might have been more interesting to have a splash saying Murdoch newspapers need to keep up with the allegedly - in Tobias's lunchtime - streetwise jihadist social media machine?

The problem, of course, is that any time the Murdoch media attempts to be street wise, it's invariably lame.

And then pond was thinking about asking Greg Sheridan a few questions:

Like why Greg 'the bromancer' Sheridan continues to exist ... and to scribble ...

Like why in the splash he posed such a straw man, straw dog set of polar opposites, so no doubt in a simplistic way in the full piece, he could simple-mindedly demolish the straw, and marvel at the strength of his intellect, while infuriating readers who can hold more than 1 and 0 in their minds at the same time ... though perhaps unable to be absolutely indifferent to Sheridan's routine daily stupidities ...

But then a marvellous, wonderful thing happened.

When the pond clicked on the splashes for the stories, up popped an all-devouring, all-consuming page of the kind that you routinely see on the lowest kind of sites, usually offering you a chance to make a cool million by working for thirty minutes a day at home, or a cool movie player that could handle the avant garde flv files you're downloading, or a computer cleansing program which will fix everything, including your control of your computer ...

Instead of a header and a teaser par, you copped a begging, pleading, demanding pop-up, and this was it ...

Yes they're now that desperate.

Of course the pond could still have found the columns via google, but frankly the pond was so pleased that the reptiles were so desperate that we did a little jig of joy and decided today not to pay any attention whatsoever to the reptiles.

Sorry reptiles, you flashed a "never to become a Murdoch subscriber at any time for any reason" reader, and it seems only fair not to bother having a conversation ... it's not worth the click or the link, which would see stray, random pond readers, who might innocently click on a link, assailed by this sort of aggro pop up.

That's visual assault and battery. Why the pond may as well send a stray reader off to 4chan.

You see reptiles you've actually helped, are currently helping and will no doubt in the future continue to help the killing of the planet, with your regular, devoted attention to climate denialism ... who wants unrestricted access to denialism?

Jon Stewart was in fine form this week on the follies and all it took was some ice and a glass of water, and a giant towel to mop up the oceans:

Yes the pond can get better insights on the luddites by heading off to a comedy channel than by reading the reptile luddites at the Oz.

And there's bonus comedy elsewhere. Like David Rowe, and more Rowe here. Now there's a man worth a link, at least until the equally desperate Fairfaxians get sniffy:

Ah that old riff. Good old Tom Ewell and poor unhappy Marilyn, and its coal, coal, coal for Australia ...

It's not much of a movie, The Seven Year Itch - if you want pure Billy Wilder it has to be Some Like It Hot, which way back when introduced to the pond the idea that a man could marry a man because, let's face it, nobody's perfect.

But even average Wilder deployed to send up Julie Bishop and the Abbott government and the Murdochians, and their scandalous failures in relation to climate science is a better use of Marilyn Monroe's image than spending a nanosecond with the reptiles. Take it away Billy, remind the pond's gentleman readers of days of lost innocence:

The dog whistler's pets parade in full public view ...

(Above: now there's a handy use for the burqa, and more Pope here, as it's coal, coal, coal for Australia).

In these darkening times, the pond is always on the lookout for light relief, and that's why the pond frequently thanks the long absent lord for George Christensen being a member of the national parliament.

Just the other day Christensen criticised Jacqui Lambie for confusing and conflating assorted issues in her recent outbursts on the burqa and Islam and so forth and etc.

Yes, there he was in George Christensen says Jacqui Lambie is doing anti-burqa movement a disservice.

Now Lambie has her own problems - when the leader of your party says you're a bear of very little brain, the likelihood is that you'll get stuck in a tree when you go looking for honey.

But Christensen's remarks were a particular kind of doozy, as ratbag radicals took aim at each other:

Queensland National MP George Christensen told Fairfax Media that while he agreed with the points Senator Lambie had been attempting to make regarding Islamic law and the burqa, she had no idea how to argue the case and was doing the campaign to ban the burqa a disservice. 
"She goes too far and quite frankly she doesn't know how to argue the key point, she's doing the argument actually no favours and she should shut up because she doesn't know what she's talking about," he said.

Uh huh. To prove his point and to prove his own capacity for insight, Christensen then came out with this tweet:

WTF? How did the Daily Mail and Sharia law get into the debate on the burqa?

Now there's a confusion and conflation of epic proportions.

Clearly Christensen hasn't the foggiest clue how to argue the case and is doing the campaign to ban the burqa a disservice.

There has been absolutely no indication that Sharia law stands a snowball's chance in hell of getting up in this country, any more than demands by Jews to bury cutlery in the garden.

For starters, there's the matter of pig, and even though the pond is on the wagon, the principle of alcohol. The pond feels about pigs much as Homer Simpson did

Lisa: “I’m going to become a vegetarian”. 
Homer: “Does that mean you’re not going to eat any pork?” 
Lisa: “Yes”.
Homser:  “Bacon?” 
Lisa: “Yes Dad” 
Homer: "Ham?” 
Lisa: “Dad all those meats come from the same animal”.
Homer:  “Right Lisa, some wonderful, magical animal!"

And that's long before we get to matters like chopping off hands, or a decent stoning, as approved by the Old Testament ...

In fact the more Christensen went on, the vaguer and stupider he sounded:

"Jacqui Lambie mangles the message which is a shame when it comes to the issue of the burqa because there are serious concerns about it which many people have; having your face completely covered just instils fear in people," he said. 
"It's alarming," he continued, "it's not conducive to human connection and it also causes a security concern, you don't know who's under it." 
Mr Christensen denied he was "whipping up" fears about Muslims and said the country needed to debate the issue of the burqa being worn in public.

That's the best he's got? It instils fear, it's alarming, it's not conducive to human connection, as if the pond wanted to go up and establish a human connection with any crazy stranger wearing religious insignia in the street?

It reminded the pond of a genuine penguin sighting the other day in the streets of Glebe. There were two of them in full regalia, and all the old memories of being tortured by hot, sweaty, extremely grumpy Dominican nuns in the Tamworth sun returned.

These days the full regalia is a cut-down, streamlined affair, but still eccentric enough, especially on a warm spring day, though not quite up to the sort of  images of nuns Fellini used in his films to scare the pond senseless:

By golly, is that why when the pond has nightmares, it's a sure bet Sally Field will fly into view?

Eek, take it away, oh for the love of Homer's pig, take if away.

Now if Christensen wants to go full French, as a determined secularist and sensualist, the pond is always ready to go all the way with him.

But you have to argue the case coherently. The only sensible ground is security, but the trouble with that is that the head gear is the least of the security risks. You're not going to fit too many high explosives in a belt around your head.

There's a good argument that in certain matters identification is important - getting through Customs, attending a police station or a court, getting into a bank which already has the right to take a view on motorcycle helmets and so forth.

But these are limited matters, and might be attended to by the same laws that punish people for wearing Richard Nixon masks when doing a bank job. What a cruel defamation of a wonderful man.

Is George going around saying people can't wear party masks honouring wonderful men like Richard Nixon and Ronnie Raygun?

The real danger in concealing weaponry or explosives surely lies in the expansive dress.

In which case what to do about the mumu?

By golly that doesn't look quite right.

Now the pond has the perfect secularist solution. No one should be allowed to wear any religious signs in the street. That takes care of the nuns, angry Anglicans, vexatious priests and their ostentatious collars, Christians with crucifixes - as if the pond wants to look at reminders of either a suicide or a filicide - and Scientologists wearing dumb grins after giving even more money to a pyramid scheme in the pursuit of aliens ... yes, even the kippah, or the pilleus cornutus would have to go.

Now the pond would also make sacrifices. That wonderful dress garnished with garlic, wooden stakes and silver bullets would have to stay in the wardrobe, and the pond would have to promise not to wear the witch costume that bedevils and torments evangelicals on Halloween ... maybe the Goths would have to make a gesture too, like only wearing skulls indoors... Sorry head bangers that goes for you too ...

But before we get to that point, it might be wise to have an intelligent discussion, which seems to be way beyond George, full of fear, loathing, paranoia and irrational emotional surges of rhetoric as bad as Lambie.

Poor old big Mal tried to pour oil on troubled waters, when he might have been doing something more useful, like fix the fucking useless broadband in this country, but in the meantime, George had doubled down:

"Team Australia needs to make this decision [to ban the burqa]," he said.

Team Australia? If the pond is on George's team, is there any way to get out of the team?

"There are many views in the community on this. People think that it shouldn't be allowed in public places. I think if you ask the majority of the community you'd find an overwhelming no answer. It would be interesting to take a poll." 
Prime Minister Tony Abbott urged people last week not to "fret" about a person's religion or clothing but the outspoken Queensland MP appeared to rebuke his leader. 
"If someone walked into a bank with a full covering like that I'd be fretting about it. There are legitimate security issues that people have when someone walks into a public place where you cannot identify them," he said. (here, forced video at end of link) 

Uh huh. More garbled, alarmist hysteria, this time confusing and conflating the interior of a bank with a public place.

The trouble of course is that Abbott's selective dog whistling and blather about team Australia has empowered all the right wing ratbags, but it got the pond to musing with the partner about how things can change in a lifetime.

There was a time when it was men who had to take off their hats to attend a Catholic service - yes hipsters, men wore hats, stay proud and pork pied - and women had to cover their heads, and anyone who forgot and wore a scarf would cop a lot of disdainful looks. And the pond attended Lutheran services in Adelaide which rigorously separated men and women across the aisle, a routine done as much by Jews as Islamics.

Now the pond finds all this of stuff offensive, but the question for libertarians and liberals is how much they want government to intrude on private behaviour and private beliefs, even when displayed in public.

Twits like Christensen twittering away do very little to inform this kind of debate, or help in reaching a consensus, yet Christensen had the pride and the hubris to suggest he was doing a better job than Jacqui Lambie ...

But then George has been in training as a professional fuckwit from an early age. You have to head off to Vexnews here to get an insight into his upbringing, as revealed in a student newspaper:

Vexnews even provided a pdf of the student publication here.

The pond takes the view that once a ratbag, usually a continuing ratbag in politics, and Christensen routinely confirms the thesis.

But where's Tony Abbott to denounce him as a bear with very little brain?

Colourful? What a pathetic nakedly obvious dog whistler he is ...

It's war, war, war as the gathering darkness looms and the light dims and freedom has to be destroyed to save freedom, and did we mention you need war to maintain peace?

(Above: the front page of the Currish Snail on 20th February 1942. Note the helpful arrow on the map for southerners who didn't have a clue).

So the terror machine has kicked into high gear.

The Daily Terror - terror by name, terrorist by nature - is in a high state of alarm, jumping at shadows, saying boo to sundry gooses, shouting panic and alarum, and it seems we're now at war with every Islamic in the house.

Of course the myth of the bronzed ANZAC is taking a bit of a pounding, as citizens look around nervously and blubbering fearful journalists pound their keyboards in abject panic, but then the bombing of Darwin gave the lie to a brave and stoic citizenry ...

Yes half the poor buggers fled town, but then they had good reason, because in those days the authorities were intent on maintaining calm.

These days panic and fear is perceived to be good for business, for selling tree killers, by the Murdochians and Fairfaxians, while Abbott gets to strut and preen and pose as a war hero and count the surge in the polls ... with to date, nary a blow struck.

No doubt if a terrorist victim is finally produced there'll be a State funeral and much righteous sobbing and crocodile tears ...

Right at the moment?

Lucas frights? A pun in the face of dire emergency, a bit like the Riddler or the Joker? Even the reptiles can't keep a straight face?

How stupid can it get?

Never underestimate the capacity of Australians schooled by Murdochians to be stupid ...

Three football fans said they were "furious and humiliated" after being detained at a rugby league match for using their mobile telephones in a manner an onlooker deemed suspicious. 
Dozens of people who claim they were unfairly swept up by authorities in the past few weeks are pursuing legal action, as the terrorism climate heats up in Australia. 
Three men of Middle Eastern appearance were pointed out by a spectator at the Roosters-Cowboys game on Friday night because they were using their mobile phones in a way that did not match what was happening on the field, Fairfax Media understands. Criminal lawyer Adam Houda, representing the three men, is considering legal action if police do not issue an apology, Criminal lawyer Adam Houda, representing the three men, is considering legal action if police do not issue an apology, Photo: James Brickwood 
They were removed by police in the 60th minute and questioned for about half an hour. The three men were so incensed they contacted lawyer Adam Houda, who will demand an apology or take civil action on the men's behalf. "It was a humiliating experience," Mr Houda said. "They are angry; they're furious." 
A police spokesman disputed the men's accounts, saying they were not arrested or detained. "No issues arose from discussions with police and they were allowed to return to their seats," he said. (at the Fairfaxians here)

Hang on, hang on. The pond knows bugger all about boofhead thugby league and cares even less, except that bum sniffing isn't as popular as it is in rugger, but it was at the sixty minute mark, and the cops questioned them for a half hour and then allowed them to return to their seats, to watch the rest of the game, which finished at the eighty minute mark?

So they got to watch the cleaners go to work?

So who or what has set all this hysteria, panic, and fear in motion? Is there a clue in the coverage?

Yep, you'll notice the ponce pretending to be Churchill just below that story.

Or are we dealing with Abbott the Christian crusader, referencing Ephesians 4:1?

Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart...

Well Rowe caught the likeness exactly today, and it wasn't to Churchill:

(and more Rowe here).

By golly, that demented, demonic look. It's a dead ringer for General

Yep you can get it on a T shirt.

So what's the point of it all?

Well the reptiles show the result of all their diligent fear-mongering:

Yep, keep them jumping at mobile phones and you can laugh all the way to the polls ...

Whenever the pond is confronted by this sort of mass hysteria, the only way forward is to revert to George Orwell ...

... do you not remember, too, that it was just at that moment, when panic was spreading and all seemed lost, that Comrade Abbott sprang forward with a cry of ‘Death to Humanity!’ and sank his teeth in Jones’s leg? Surely you remember THAT, comrades?” exclaimed Squealer, frisking from side to side. 
Now when Squealer described the scene so graphically, it seemed to the animals that they did remember it. At any rate, they remembered that at the critical moment of the battle Snowball had turned to flee. But Boxer was still a little uneasy. 
“I do not believe that Snowball was a traitor at the beginning,” he said finally. “What he has done since is different. But I believe that at the Battle of the Cowshed he was a good comrade.” 
“Our Leader, Comrade Abbott,” announced Squealer, speaking very slowly and firmly, “has stated categorically — categorically, comrade — that Snowball was Jones’s agent from the very beginning — yes, and from long before the Rebellion was ever thought of.” 
“Ah, that is different!” said Boxer. “If Comrade Abbott says it, it must be right.” 
“That is the true spirit, comrade!” cried Squealer, but it was noticed he cast a very ugly look at Boxer with his little twinkling eyes. He turned to go, then paused and added impressively: “I warn every animal on this farm to keep his eyes very wide open. For we have reason to think that some of Snowball’s secret agents are lurking among us at this moment!” (the full text here, with the usurper and pretender Abbott replaced by Napoleon)

Yes, there are secret agents lurking amongst us at this very moment, sowers of fear, generators of loathing. Oh they're not that secret, they hawk newspapers and polish knobs ...

Even the Fairfaxians are at it ...

Oh dear, such anguish.

Why the terrorists almost kicked the AFL off the front page. Almost ... I mean there's terror and then there's too much giving in to terror ...

How did the HUNsters deal with the dilemma?

Terror? What Terror?

The revisionist Reviser had an each way bet:

So it was left to the infidel northerners to clear the front page of heretical southern religions and to focus on other heretical religions:

What a dismal collection of rags. Truth to tell, if you buy any of them, you're rewarding the spreading of terror ...

It so distracted the pond - that's what living in fear, and giving up freedom to save your freedom will do for you - that we almost forgot that today is Caterist day ...

Perhaps that's because the droll Caterists are sounding even more fuckwitted than usual, unimaginable and theoretically impossible as that might be ...

You can get around the paywall to read Our six-year climate obsession left us at a standstill if you like, but the chances are you'll be embittered at the waste of time involved. Even free involves a cost ...

The Caterists spend their time trawling through the thoughts of Randal G. Stewart - bears of little brain are often inclined to do this, repeat and regurgitate the thoughts of others, quoting at length, and then marvelling at the mightiness of their deeds.

Meanwhile, the Caterists don't bother to reconcile praise of New Zealand for achieving growth at no cost to the planet, with the implicit Caterist belief - explicit elswehere - that there's no need to worry about the planet, not when it should be full steam growth ahead ... and to hell with that tooth fairy, climate science ...

So how do the Caterists deal with the NZ attitude to climate science, given that the NZdders have a firmly enunciated set of targets (here) and have begun to feel the winds of change as a first port of call for islanders feeling the seas of change, as in Tuvalu climate family granted New Zealand residency on appeal.

So how do the Caterists deal with the difficulty of reconciling the notion that the carbon tax, easily convertible into an ETS, has ruined the Australian economy, while New Zealand has bounded ahead?

Why with the usual mealy mouthed hypocrisy and stupidity:

Meanwhile in New Zealand they have being doing what they do best: turning rainwater into protein and flogging it to the world. It is a simple business plan, but they execute it well. They have not been diverted by the interminable arguments on planetary warming. The Kiwis have a carbon reduction policy that ticks the symbolic boxes without dulling their competitive edge.

Symbolic boxes? Well that's one more box than the Abbott government has ticked.

Could it be that they haven't been diverted by the interminable stupidity of the Caterists and the reptiles at the lizard Oz, because the Key government accepts the science?

Never mind, let's see what the Caterists can offer by way of original thinking and scientific excellence:

The implication of Stewart’s report is that the chief saboteurs of climate change policy were not right-wing warriors and their cashed-up friends in the fossil-fuel business but the epistemic community itself: the politicians, technocrats, the media and, of course, the scientists. It is a sore point, judging from last week’s QandA on the ABC, when five eminent scientists sat on the panel talking about everything but the warming of the planet. The show had been running for 55 minutes before the program’s producers, presumably as an afterthought, allowed Jacqui Hoepner to ask her question. 
 “It’s now been 25 years since the first World Climate Conference, yet the public is more divided than ever,” she said. “If winning people over with more facts and less opinions was plan A, what’s plan B?” 
Brian Schmidt and Ian Chubb blamed poor education. Suzanne Cory blamed the felling of forests. Peter Doherty blamed our failure to care. Tony Jones blamed Maur­ice Newman before announcing that, sadly, that was all they had time for. 
The circus is over and the caravan moves on.

That's it? They didn't turn over Q and A to a discussion of climate science, and so the circus is over and the caravan has moved on?

The public is more divided than ever and it's all the fault of the epistemic community?

So the Caterists think that Q and A is the repository of wisdom, and if scientists on Q and A fail to speak at length on the matter, it's all over, done and dusted?

It's impossible to begin to describe the ineffable stupidity ...

Meanwhile, on an alternative planet, where you can get information running wild, beyond the ken of the reptiles scribbling for the lizard Oz, you can read World May Blow Through Global Warming Pollution Limited in 30 Years.

Oh and there's a big shindig going down in New York. Yep there are all sorts of stories going down about the pow wow at the NY Times:

As for that poll?

Uh huh, fuckwitted Republicans of the Caterist lizard Oz Murdochian epistemic kind ...

But as it's not on Q and A, so apparently that makes it a matter of sublime unimportance and irrelevance ... the caravan has already moved on, and somebody forgot to tell the New Yorkers.

And then there's Mr Terrorism himself, and Pope caught his contribution nicely, and more Popery here.