David Penberthy, trans fats, and workers unite, before they take away your right to be as fat as a pig in mud

(Above: saving the best trans fats for themselves, the greedy pigs).

Workers of the world unite, they're trying to strip away your fat, or worse, your right to be fat, or or worse still your right to die of diabetes at an early age.

Astonishing, alarming, perhaps even terrifying news, a conspiracy on a par with the news that the Copenhagen talk fest is indeed a cover which will see a world government in place by Christmas.

And as usual we have David Penberthy to thank for the news, with Penbo turning into a radical - perhaps even a dangerous socialist communist sympathizer - as he rights for the rights of workers to be liberated from the oppressive demagoguery of bourgeois extremists.

Yep, it's class war and that Penbo Karl Marx is thinking of taking to the streets with a call for revolution before the brothers and sisters are stripped of their right to be fat.

Here's his radical clarion call for freedom, under the banner A bourgeois recipe for working class palates.

Our supposedly classless society is showing signs of being divided into two camps where people’s private choices as individuals and their behaviour as families are regulated on the basis of their affluence.

And it’s in the area of nutrition, preventative health and exercise where the working class, for want of a better term, is increasingly being treated like a bunch of babies, while the more affluent members of society continue to live as they please.

Oh no, not the workers, won't someone think of the workers.

Hang on a second. Our supposedly classless society? On what planet Murdoch does this Rupert minion live? Is Penbo going to tell us how gherkins are important to our diet, or just sound like one?

It’s only a small thing but it’s a signifier for the times, a demonstration of a mindset which holds that working class people are unable to modify their behaviour, while the gentry can be trusted to keep its conduct in check. But get along to the SCG, that great people’s arena, where our knockabout, egalitarian society lets the members drink as much full-strength beer as they want and limits the great unwashed to light beer.

Uh oh, now I'm getting it. Seems Penbo mustn't be a member of the SCG - good thing, no need to let in ratbags who've drifted north from Adelaide, lower the tone of the joint way too much - and he's got some kind of grudge going about not being able to get as pissed as a parrot, and then throw full beer cans on the mug punters in front of him (or perhaps shake up a can and get the woman next to him into a nice spontaneous wet T-shirt competition).

And what else has upset him? Well it seems that the problem is Bob Carr, rabbiting on about the workers in the ponce way only Carr can manage: Stop kids being 'poisoned by fat'.

The wretched Carr has suggested that local councils might help prevent workers feasting on trans fats by taking a stand against fast food outlets using trans fats.

Now you might wonder what the fuss is all about, and heaven forfend I should say a kind word about Bob Carr.

But trans fats are - along with high fructose corn syrup - about the worst benefits of fast food cooking that America's managed to ship around the world, and along with soda (or fizz or pop or soft drink) surely helping the obesity epidemic along in grand style.

Fast food joints don't need to use trans fats, but choose to do so because of convenience and cost - they make oils able to be re-used for a longer time - but these days there are alternatives with less problematic implications for health available (here).

At the conference featuring Carr, this was also in the report of proceedings:

Food researcher at The George Institute, Professor Bruce Neal said councils could change how much salts and fats were hidden in processed food by giving their suppliers tough quality controls.

Professor Neal said governments could not change how much junk people ate, but they could cut the amount of salt and fat in pizza, pies and biscuits without anyone tasting the difference.

Um, no change to taste, no attempt to stop people eating junk food, and some gentle persuasion to stop fast food joints whipping up a trans fat shit burger, as opposed to a healthier alternative.

You silly goose - perhaps force fed on corn to produce an exquisite pate but a feeble mind - clearly you don't understand that this is social engineering of the most diabolical and threatening kind, and engineered by a man who likely eats lettuce for breakfast, and perhaps is even a rabbit in disguise:

Bob Carr is an aesthete and a health fanatic who as premier used to drink hot cups of water with a slice of lemon and probably still does. He abhors the binge-drinking culture of his chosen professional homes – journalism and, latterly, the labour movement. He famously once declared war on sausage rolls – “fat encased in fat” he called them – and was then advised by his minders to eat a meat pie for the cameras the next day to ward off any suggestions of eccentricity.

I raise those points not to tease him but to describe him. Australian men have a dumb tradition of teasing healthy people and it’s not something I am trying to do here. There is nothing wrong with not drinking grog and eating well.

Well bugger me dead, I'm glad we're not teasing Bob Carr, though the sight of him munching a carrot while wearing glasses always gets me laughing. Doesn't he know carrots only fix up your night vision?

What's that, it sounds like I'm teasing or tossing up urban myths like a tasty Greek cheese and a few choice Spanish olives in a delightful mixed leaf salad?

No, no, there's nothing wrong with eating well, and nothing wrong with eating really badly and running up huge bills on the Medicare system and overloading the hospital system so much that people whinge about socialized medicine.

... there’s a problem with telling everybody else that they have to do just that – and an even bigger problem in generalising about the working class as if they have a monopoly on bad diet and a lack of exercise.

We’re talking here about a hard core of uneducated poor people, or poor people who simply choose to act stupidly, by turning themselves and their kids into lard-arsed blimps.

Well they can just totter off an die, those lard-arsed blimps, and who would mind? Who would care? But what about the real workers, the subject of this vast conspiracy?

Banning fast food for the vast majority of sensible working class families who use it as a treat, or a stop-gap on a busy weeknight, is patronising in the extreme.

Um, but nobody actually suggested banning fast foods, they just suggested that fast food joints be persuaded to use a better brand of oil than ones loaded with trans fats. And it was even explicitly stated that no one was expecting to stop people eating as much junk food as they liked, just a hope that the junk food might be made more healthy without affecting the taste.

Where's the patronizing in that, unless you happen to be a git from Adelaide with a giant sized chip on your shoulder, somehow imagining in a festooned tabloid mind that you're a new Jimmy Porter starring in a revival of Look Back in Anger.

So what's make our angry young man Jimmy nee Penbo run?

Before we start banning things in Queen St, Campbelltown, we should also get along to Crown St, Surry Hills, on any day of the week and watch the more corpulent members of the middle class hoofing into gruyere soufflés and black puddings. And I say that with a bit of experience. No-one is shutting those joints down; perhaps it’s because they’ve got elegance and a good sommelier on their side.

But are they serving trans fats, you over-fed goose? And still comes the white hot anger of the angry young man:

We don’t need intervention, especially by a redundant and unrepresentative tier of government which Mr Carr often railed against as Premier.

Well I guess we now know that Penbo doesn't vote in council elections. So that's why they're unrepresentative. So what's his solution to the suggestions of this unrepresentative swill. More anti-biotics in chooks and pigs? Now don't be silly:

We need much more aggressive home economics education where every kid from the age of seven, and into high school, gets mandatory classes on food preparation, starting with the most basic master texts of cooking by geniuses such as Elizabeth David and Margaret Fulton and Jane Grigson and Stephanie Alexander, to show them that cooking is more fun, cheap, and more satisfying than a Big Mac will ever be.

Anyone with half a brain could read David’s 1955 classic A Book of Mediterranean Food and cook a different dinner every night until they die not of diabetes but old age.

Yes, you goose, but what if they prefer, being working class types, not to be a pretentious wanker food snob like you, but in their time pressed lives, and wanting a treat or a stop-gap, seek a little light relief by way of fast food, which their leftie radical socialist pinko pervert commie food teacher has informed them is full of trans fats and likely to kill them by Christmas, if not by the end of the week? Should we add guilt to their fast food trans fat diet? Should we add folic acid to bread and fluoride to water?

Well Jimmy Porter wasn't clear about the source of his anger, his rage, being more agin anything you might have on offer, than for anything in a world where chivalry is dead.

But the spewing Penbo gives us a few clues of how tough it must have been for him living in Adelaide, surrounded by wine buffs and foodies:

To finish on the class war theme, if you really want to make yourself spew, dig out a copy of last month’s edition of Fairfax’s excruciatingly pretentious The (Sydney) Magazine for its morally indifferent tribute to the star, in-house chefs seconded to the bigger investment firms and merchant banks around town, dishing up Michelin-starred cuisine to the long-suffering executives who are having to stay back quite late at the office because of that pesky GFC.

Your heart goes out to them.

Right, that does it. Penbo will have to be reported to the in-house right wing Chairman Rupert committee of commentariat columnists for dangerously radical thinking reminiscent of the outrage experienced in that Orwellian tract Animal Farm:

"The mystery of where the milk went to was soon cleared up. It was mixed every day into the pigs' mash. The early apples were now ripening, and the grass of the orchard was littered with windfalls. The animals had assumed as a matter of course that these would be shared out equally; one day, however, the order went forth that all the windfalls were to be collected and brought to the harness-room for the use of the pigs. At this some of the other animals murmered, but it was no use. All the pigs were in full agreement on this point, even Snowball and Napoleon. Squealer was sent to make the necessary explanations to the others.

'Comrades!' he cried. 'You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege? Many of us actually dislike milk and apples. I dislike them myself. Our sole object in taking these things is to preserve our health. Milk and apples (this has been proved by Science, comrades) contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a pig. We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of this farm depend on us. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink the milk and eat those apples. Do you know what would happen if we pigs failed in our duty? Jones would come back! Yes, Jones would come back! Surely, comrades,' cried Squealer almost pleadingly, skipping from side to side and whisking his tail, 'surely there is no one among you who wants to see Jones come back?'

Now if there was one thing that the animals were completely certain of, it was that they did not want Jones back. When it was put to them in this light, they had no more to say. The importance of keeping the pigs in good health was all too obvious. So it was agreed without further argument that the milk and the windfall apples (and also the main crop of apples when they ripened) should be reserved for the pigs alone."

And who can argue with that? Being rich is a different country, and they do things differently there. But no, Penbo is resolute in his rage, and his determination to assert the rights of the workers and berate the rich. Can the revolution come soon enough comrades?

There is of course another class of people who have coped quite differently with the GFC – by not working at all anymore, let alone staying back late, eschewing the duck leg confit with a rocket, parmesan and pear salad for something made from mincemeat, or getting along not to Neil Perry’s new grill bar but the Salvos.

Oh dear, a strident hysterical denunciation, chip on shoulder, all based on mis-reading of do gooders trying to do a little good.

Will someone please take Penbo somewhere and give him a bex, a nice lie down and a cup of tea. Just like the tea on offer in Tony Hancock's Look Back in Hunger:

MOTHER: Would you like a cup of tea, Penbo?

Penbo: Tea? Tea? Is that your answer to it all? Tea? The panacea to the middle class! The answer to all the problems facing mankind today? Have a cup of tea, Penbo! You both make me sick. You're dead, both of you. You're both mentally dead. Your souls are drowned in tea. Your minds are clogged up with tea bags. You're like two slop basins swimming around in a sea of tea! Just like this country, the whole rotten system, stained in a tea of apathy!

BROTHER: What's he mean, Mum?

MOTHER: I don't think he wants a cup of tea.

Perhaps he should drink a cup of trans fats every day instead. Just to show solidarity with the workers ...

(Below: expect this by Friday if the wicked Bob Carr has his way, and by the following Friday expect the UN to announce its new world government at Copenhagen, so the only way to get trans fats and tungsten light bulbs will be on the black market, along with heroin).

Janet Albrechtsen, Christopher Monckton, Copenhagen, and the known unknowns are unknown

(Above: eek, a UN bureaucrat intent on world domination. Approach with caution).

When certain paranoid loons gather in a corner of the pond, the talk always turns to various conspiracy theories, usually involving devious plans to take over the world. Black helicopters are frequently mentioned, and the U.N. is often involved.

If other loons look at them askance, as if they were paranoid, they mutter darkly, and look paranoid. After all, the UN has to date been exceptionally successful as a world government, quashing wars at a moment's notice, bringing China to heel in Tibet and the USA to task in Afghanistan, while its remarkable success in insisting on peace in the middle east and resolving the various disputes between Pakistan, India and the Taliban is noted even today as stellar proof of the incredible power of world government.

Even more notable is the way the UN has introduced a startling new homogeneity into the world with its brand of celebrity atheism so dominant that only a few persecuted Christians are left in isolated gulags such as Tasmania.

What could be left? Well surely to make this world government a fact in law, and where better to do it than at Copenhagen, under the guise of bringing climate change to heel, as explained fully by Janet Albrechtsen in Beware the UN's Copenhagen plot.

Albrechtsen's source? Why none other than that colorful British identity Christopher Monckton, high Tory and fierce fighter against the secular humanist tide that's seeking to sweep away all that's good in the world (and as usual you can start with his wiki here).

Emails started arriving telling me about a speech given by Christopher Monckton, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, at Bethel University in St Paul, Minnesota, on October 14. Monckton talked about something that no one has talked about in the lead-up to Copenhagen: the text of the draft Copenhagen treaty.

Even after Monckton’s speech, most of the media has duly ignored the substance of what he said. You don’t need me to find his St Paul address on YouTube. Interviewed on Monday morning by Alan Jones on Sydney radio station 2GB, Monckton warned that the aim of the Copenhagen draft treaty was to set up a transnational government on a scale the world has never before seen. Listening to the interview, my teenage daughters asked me whether this was true.

Well since Albrechtsen is too slack (or is it News Corp policy not to provide links away from their precious content?) here's one link under the typically alarmist header "Is Obama Poised to Cede US Sovereignty" wherein you can see Monckton in his full regalia three piece frock. And cherish Albrechtsen's wording: "a transnational government on a scale the world has never seen before".

Pinkie and the Brain have so much to learn about how it's done - taking over the world, I mean, and Monckton reliably veers between Pinkie and the Brain as he conjures up the end of western civilization as we know it. And it seems like Albrechtsen has drunk the snake oil and become a true believer.

So I read the draft treaty. The word government appears on page 18. Monckton says: “This is the first time I’ve ever seen any transnational treaty referring to a new body to be set up under that treaty as a government. But it’s the powers that are going to be given to this entirely unelected government that are so frightening.”

Frightening, I tells ya.

Monckton became aware of the extraordinary powers to be vested in this new world government only when a friend of his found an obscure UN website and hacked his way through several layers of complications before coming across a document that isn’t even called the draft treaty. It’s called a “note by the secretariat”. The moment he saw it, he went public and said: “Look, this is an outrage ... they have kept the sheer scope of this treaty quiet.”

Monckton says the aim of this new government is to have power to directly intervene in the financial, economic, tax and environmental affairs of all the nations that sign the Copenhagen treaty.

Yes, and what's even more cunning is that it will be a new government without any representatives, or any meeting place, except in dark alleyways and the back smoke-filled rooms of UN bureaucrats (well smoking's banned of course, but they feel the need to use dry ice so that the movie-makers will still be able to create a legitimate sense of sinister atmosphere).

In a sense, countries that sign international treaties always cede powers to a UN body responsible for implementing the treaty obligations. But the difference is that we usually understand the details of the obligations and the power ceded.

Now read the 181-page draft treaty. It is impossible to fully understand the convoluted UN verbiage. Yet even those incomprehensible clauses point to some nasty surprises that no politician has told us about. For example, Monckton says the drafters want this new world government to have control over once free markets: the financial and trading markets of nation-states. “The sheer ambition of this new world government is enormous right from the start; that’s even before it starts accreting powers to itself in the way that these entities inevitably always do,” he says.

Note the wording: "For example Monckton says", and "he says". Sense a little continental drift going on?

The reason for that power grab is clear enough from the draft treaty. Clause after complicated clause sets out the requirement that developed countries such as Australia pay their “adaptation debt” to developing countries. Clause 33 on page 39 says that by 2020 the scale of financial flows to support adaptation in developing countries must be at least $US67 billion ($73bn), or in the range of $US70bn to $US140bn a year.

Sounds huge doesn't it. Put up against the current dollar GDP of the United States of $14,151.2 billion, it's truly terrifying, all the more so because Obama is an Afrimerican Muslim born in Kenya still refusing to release his birth certificate even at this alarming point in time.

How developed countries will pay is far from clear. The draft text sets out various alternatives, including Option 7 on page 135, which provides for “a (global) levy of 2 per cent on international financial market (monetary) transactions to Annex I Parties”. This means industrialised countries such as Australia, if we sign.

Monckton’s warning to Americans that “in the next few weeks, unless you stop it, your President will sign your freedom, your democracy and your prosperity away forever” is colourful. But no more colourful than the language used by those who preach about the perils of climate change and the virtues of a hard-hitting Copenhagen treaty.

Ah yes, the continental drift is now well and truly underway. It's 'colourful language' the venerable Monckton is using, but of course no more colourful language than Clive Hamilton. But I thought we all hated Clive Hamilton for his colorful language and his exaggerations and distortion and hysteria when he preached the dangers of climate change. You mean one kind of clownish exaggeration and rhetoric and fear mongering is just colorful, but the other is despicable? Please explain:

Put aside Monckton’s comments.

Oh boy, that's rich. Fear mongering on the basis of Monckton for par after par, and now we have to put the dear boy aside? So that Albrechtsen can develop her own locally related theme of FUD, wherein Chairman Rudd replaces the illegal US Islamic President?

Ask yourself this: why has our government failed to explain the possible text of a treaty it wants Australia to sign? There has been no address from any Rudd minister to explain the draft treaty. No 3000-word essay from the thoughtful PM. No speech in parliament. No interview. No press release. Nothing.

Well how about we read one in The Australian, instead of a column written in the after glow of a half-baked English tosser, with a few questions thrown in at the end to add a sense of fear and loathing.

Presumably the hard-working Climate Change Minister Penny Wong has read the 181-page draft text. Presumably our central control and command PM has been briefed about the draft text. In Germany a few months ago, Kevin Rudd complained about the lack of “detailed programmatic specificity” going into the Copenhagen talks. Yet the draft text provides much detailed specificity about obligations on developed nations to transfer millions of dollars to developing countries under formulas to be set down by an unelected body. So why the silence? Are they hiding the details of this deal from us because most of the polls now suggest that action on climate change is becoming politically unpalatable?

And yet Albrechtsen claims to have read the document. What's preventing her from providing a detailed analysis of an unsigned document still subject to intense negotiations between many governments, and when all's said and done unlikely to be resolved and ratified at Copenhagen?

And what explains the media’s failure to report and analyse the only source document that offers any idea of what may happen in Copenhagen? Ignorance? Laziness? Stubborn adherence to the orthodox government line that a deal in Copenhagen is critical? An obsession with the politics of climate change rather than policy?

Hmm, is it ignorance, laziness or stubborn adherence to the orthodox sceptical argument that climate change isn't happening, or if it is, it's nothing to do with humans, and in either case, it's really just a vast conspiracy devised by compliant scientists so the UN can take over the world.

At least we have heard from Monckton. He told Jones there had already been a million hits on the link to his St Paul address. “So the message in America is now out ... Now you know about it and you need to spread the word.”

Ah the mysterious link that dare not speak it's name, and now with over a million hits, and the message is spreading, as the pods are being trucked to all parts of the country. The pods? Sorry that's another conspiracy:

What things?
I don't know what they are.
I never saw them before.
They looked like, uh,
great big seedpods.
Seedpods?
Where was the truck
coming from?
Santa Mira.
Get on your radio
and sound an all-points alarm.
Block all highways
and stop all traffic...
and call every law enforcement
agency in the state.
Operator, get me the Federal
Bureau of Investigation.
Yes, it's an emergency!

But hang on, the pods are the UN bureaucrats, block all the highways, stop all the traffic, get me Mick Keelty (he's retired, well get me the new Mick Keelty), and storm the steps of parliament house in Canberra to demand an answer! Yes operator, it's an emergency:

Perhaps now our PM and our Climate Change Minister can spare a few moments to tell us about the details they know about but have so far chosen not to tell us about.

You see, they're the ones, they know what we don't know, and they're not telling us about what we don't know because they know we don't know, and that's how they want us, as compliant sheep, with Chairman Rudd the likely new leader of the UN world government, seeing as how he's a Mandarin speaker and a Christian, and both China and the USA will see him as the sheep who will inherit the earth.

Oh, and here's how you write a column for The Australian. Take one extremist alarmist fruitloop, refuse to link to his video or to easily accessible sources of documentation (UN here),

raise the spectre of world government in guise of a UN treaty, play it down as 'colorful' language, and then demand answers from the knowing but secretive, furtive, recalcitrant, conspiratorial Chairman Rudd and his lickspittle lackey Penny Wong.

It's a living, but not much more, and the idea that people might pay for this kind of squawking? Well good luck with that ...

Yes poor old Mark Day is still banging on about how the public can't wait to rush to fling squillions at Rupert Murdoch, the cunning old fox, and his wonderful content, and you can read it all here in Newsday bets on internet users paying for local content.

Newsday?

Oh yes I know you're just hankering to fork out twenty bucks a month to keep up with the Long Island community ...

It's a funny old world, but each day loon pond provides fresh inspiration and joy. Relax, you're not the only loon in the world, we're all of us loons, ready to join Starship Troopers and nuke those bugs as they try to take over the world ... (and I'll bet you didn't know that the bugs were UN bureaucrats in disguise? Think about it).

(Below: eek, a UN bureaucrat in charge of the world after a successful Copenhagen, wonderful wonderful Copenhagen, convention).

Piers Akerman, shock horror censorship, and Hansard for your bedtime reading in the asylum

(Above: here back in February, and now Halloween draws near).

Poor dear sweet Piers Akerman is getting tremendously agitated about censorship and the evils of Chairman Rudd's Orwellian regime.

The turning point seems to involve a major scandal about the despatching of copies of Hansard to constituents, as outlined in Big Brother antics mocking openness:

Under the new rules, MPs could even be barred from sending constituents complete copies of the daily proceedings of Parliament as reported in Hansard.

This might sound like a claim from a conspiracy theorist but it was made by the Secretary of the Department of Finance and Deregulation, David Tune, and supported by the legal affairs manager in a Senate estimates committee. Worse, Senator Ludwig attempted to defend his department’s censorship role. The ramifications of this sort of censorship are extraordinary. Every citizen should have the right to read a full and accurate report of the proceedings of the national parliament.

A conspiracy theory from Akker Dakker? No, say it ain't so.

And Hansard on bits of paper, killing whole forests in the process, so we can wade through the verbiage from the bear pit?

Well I know Akker Dakker doesn't believe in climate change, but won't someone think of the trees. Better still, won't someone think of suffering humanity, with Hansard stuffed in their letter boxes (as for the children, well suffer little children, suffer, it could be your first Dick and Jane learn to read primer. See funny Kevin, see how he shrieks, see funny Malcolm see how he freaks).

The Rudd Government, through its minister, Senator Ludwig, disagrees.

The public servants responsible for conducting the censorship, Messrs Tune and Taylor, attempted to evade the issue when they were questioned on the possibility that MPs would be barred from sending out Hansard but their weasel words could not camouflage the enormity of their new power.

When asked by Tasmanian Senator Stephen Parry whether he could send out a complete Hansard of one day’s Senate proceedings, Mr Tune responded: “It would depend.”

Mr Taylor then interjected: “It would depend on exactly what was said in it, just because ... “

As South Australian Senator Cory Bernardi remarked: “This is a travesty of democracy, minister. That is what this is.’’ Senator Ludwig attempted to defend the Rudd Government’s new censorship regimen but there is no plausible excuse for a law which bans the distribution of the official record of the nation’s parliamentary proceedings.

Senator Bernardi is correct. It is a disgrace that the Government believes in barring the distribution of Hansard to the Australian people.

Huh? If I could be fagged to go fetch and read Hansard, all I'd have to do is click here for copies of the last sitting days in pdf format, and then if I wanted to really blow my mind by wandering through the hen house and listening to what the chooks had to say, I'd take a look at the past three years, here.

At that point, having been made clinically insane, I'd book myself into an asylum so I could catch up on Akerman's back catalogue of columns.

It's part of Akker Dakker getting upset about the censorship of communications from MP's, little understanding how upset the average Australian gets receiving communications from MP's.

In this locale, every so often Carmel Tebbutt and her spouse Anthony Albanese send us communications telling us how lucky we are to have a NSW Labor government, and a Federal Labor government.

Whenever I read this sort of nonsense about the NSW Labor government, I fall into a deep depression, a deep blue black dog mad funk only matched by the thought of Jeff Kennett. I roam about the house screeching at the ghosts, then go outside to howl at the birds. You can imagine the impact this has on the neighbourhood, especially the dogs next door.

The only solution is to ban any communication from any MPs at any time. We'll meet occasionally in the media, and then I'll speak in the only meaningful way at the ballot box every three or four years. The idea of MPs using my taxpayers' money to send me communications that (a) all is well with the world, and splendid initiatives are being taken even as I read, or (b) that all is wrong with the world, and things are likely to fall apart next Friday, is exactly the sort of nonsense with which I will not put up.

Poor old Akkers gets himself into a tremendous twist about the attempt to muzzle the MPs and their words:

It is easy to see why the Government has acted so swiftly to bar MPs from communicating the full picture of its multiple failures to ordinary Australians.

It is - to use words that the censors have blocked from MPs communications in the past month - “dreadful’’, disgraceful”, “inept”, responsible for “mismanagement’’, “reckless’’, guilty of “incompetence’’ and “irresponsible’’.

I can publish those words here but they were all blacked out from newsletters that were prepared by NSW Senator Marise Payne and Victorian MP Jason Woods.

Well they would say that, wouldn't they, but not on my dollar. And not on my dollar do I want communications telling me that the current government is wonderful, graceful, ept, responsible for management, and guilty of responsible competence.

But not for Akker Dakker, who continues to froth and foam in a fair old tizz:

The Rudd Government’s media partners, the ABC and the Fairfax press, have been notably silent about this muzzling of MPs. Its actions are more in line with those of the totalitarian governments it wishes to join in the councils of the United Nations than of a Western liberal democracy. As usual, the voices of the Left are silent.

Last weekend, Mr Rudd was rubbing shoulders with regional leaders at an ASEAN summit in Thailand at which a human-rights commission was inaugurated. Australia is not a member of the 10-nation body but the Rudd Government’s new rules on censorship would have delighted the leaders of Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

If Australia is to play a leadership role in our region, it should not be in a backward direction toward the suppression of information and truth, but forward into the light.

Well it's left to the comments section for a few posters to note that the real issue with the Rudd government is its plan to censor the intertubes under cover of saving the children, at a level unmatched anywhere else than a few choice spots like China and Iran.

Up against that remarkable plan, stopping a few mendacious bits of nonsense from gibbering loon MPs almost feels like a public service.

Yet Akerman remains remarkably silent about this threat, as does much of News Corp. The only stout hearted reporter has been Asher Moses in the Fairfax media. As usual the voices of the right are silent when it comes to muzzling voices they don't like (pornographers) in the standard way approved by totalitarian governments.

Or some such thing.

Meanwhile, Akerman has been stoutly opposed to the national broadband network, and the opportunity to get the citizenry so wired they can collect the complete Hansard in pdf form, instead of using them as door stops - at least until they decide their inbox is better dedicated to spam selling Viagra.

Yet the NBN is coming at a price, a catch, a dud set of steak knives, and that price is Conroy's censorship scheme.

Come to think about it, it's been awhile since Conroy's filter trial was supposed to be revealed to a breathless and hushed world. An epic piece of stupidity a year in the making, and still no word, and no persecution from the News Corp hacks for this excursion into censorship on a national basis, which would have brought gasps of admiration from Goebbels (okay, another dollar in the Godwin's Law swear jar).

Go figure.

The trouble with Akerman is that he's such a loon and a gherkin that you almost feel like you might be better off reading Hansard. And at that point, in the distance I can see the doors to the asylum swinging open and kindly Nurse Ratched gesturing for me to step inside. How does it go again?

"Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn,
Apple seed and apple thorn,
Wire, briar, limber lock
Three geese in a flock
One flew East
One flew West
And one flew over the cuckoo's nest."

(Below: oh dear, 2008 edition. And we're still waiting for the 2009 edition. Will somebody tell Akker Dakker that he can't see the wood for the trees, or hasn't he heard about the dire need to ban Hansard from the intertubes because it constantly mentions child pornography and will likely get caught up in any sensible filter determined to eradicate the clucking of chooks from the intertubes).

Adam Ferrier, rubbers, anonymous comments, and a storm in a thimble

Call me paranoid - it's okay, all my friends do - but I have what I consider a healthy fear of the intertubes.

And in particular the power of the intertubes to upset your personal privacy.

First you need to understand that despite the surface gloss of anonymity, there are very few places to hide, and any that are effective hiding places will imply some kind of collateral criminality (ah yes Russia, land of the free). In the end, if someone wants to track you or your postings or your comments down, there are ways and means and tools to do it.

And if you go to the dark side regularly enough you will see all kinds of activities that make you fear for your computer, and certainly your bank account, and perhaps also your identity.

Over the years we've had a bit to do with internet security and the tendency of people not to guard their privacy or their personal lives, especially on social media sites, and seen some of the damage that can be done if things leak on to the intertubes and can never be called back.

There's always that first point of fear and a kind of astonished horror when you see the pointer moving around on your screen, and you nowhere near the computer, but the firewall's been breached and someone's rifling around your digital goods like a thief come over the back wall John Safran style in search of a pair of knickers to sniff.

The notion that putting up opinions and private insights under your own name, not expecting either professional or personal kick backs is one of those indulgences only loons in the mainstream media righteously trumpet, as they busily recycle whatever gossip and kick backs they can find about their target for the week (ethics when it comes to digging up the juice or photos from a Facebook site, to recycle in the likes of a Daily Terror type tabloid? Forget it Jake, it's Chairman Rupert's Chinatown, not to mention the gawkers of the world).

That's why this blog is anonymous, and while the opinions are designed to conform to the law of the land, they have to be taken as ideas either worth reading or not, without worrying about the person or the personality behind them. And why comments working to the same template are expected to be anonymous.

Fortunately most of the time no one bothers about searching out a name, and putting the name to an idea or a comment, perhaps because the odd bit of loonacy isn't worth the effort, and because in the end a combination of regulation and self-regulation takes care of business. Most blogging services for example offer the chance to either moderate or disable comments, and most bloggers spend their time having anxiety attacks about not getting any comments at all.

Only a deluded blogger would expect the faithful to run around the intertubes sprinkling comments like benedictions on the ramblings of the plus one hundred million souls who pour their hearts out to strangers on the full to overflowing web, and only a deluded soul would expect a damaging comment to survive without comments from others, or be whacked by a deletion.

Similarly only a truly delusional blogger would think a pen name sufficient to keep them hidden if someone decided to have a go at them for defamatory or criminal scribbles. Which is why the only terrorist activity we urge is a refusal to buy a hard copy of The Australian.

What's brought on this bout of introspection?

Of course it could only be The Paunch, and it's latest attempt to curry hits, this time with Adam Ferrier's delightfully silly Massive fail - the anti-social world of social meda.

Apparently traumatised some time ago by being hit on the head with a rubber, poor young Adam has decided that kind of schoolroom brutal bullying is a metaphor for anonymous behavior on the web:

Today I see something similar happening on the Internet, and today’s ‘rubber’ is ‘the anonymous comment’.

The anonymous comment is the bastard child of the Internet and social media, and is akin to giving the back row of the classroom an endless supply of rubbers, and perpetual amnesty. They are free to attack an author at all levels while remaining completely unaccountable for their actions. The impact of this is a constant fear of a pelting, and therefore suppression of speech and expression.

It never seems to have occurred to young Adam that perhaps instead of living in constant fear of a pelting, he should pick up the rubber and when the teacher's back is turned, throw the rubber back. Three things might happen: he can get pinged by the teacher, and excused from class, he can hit the rubber thrower, or he can hit an innocent bystander, and then a free for all rubber throwing fight can erupt, to the joy of all.

Because in the end an anonymous comment on the web hardly passes for a rubber to the back of the neck. It's either right, half right, or just the standard bit of loonacy that we accept in a world where Godwin's Law is made to be broken, and trolling can become a way of life for embittered wastrels with access to a keyboard.

Does it make any difference, or somehow affect the capacity of others to write or make comments? Only if they're utterly fey or thin-skinned or hapless or suffer from some other ailment, such as a teenager desperate to belong and therefore set up for a bout of cyber bullying (and if that leads to problematic consequences, see how long your anonymity lasts when the authorities come knocking).

But poor Adam is determined to feel maligned, persecuted, and put upon and calls down his universal right to be heard without anonymous comment:

Most people need to feel safe before expressing their opinion – especially if that opinion is new, controversial, or open to judgement. Therefore Under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the right to freedom of speech is in part “the right to hold opinions without interference.” However, ‘the anonymous comment’ is direct interference and intimidation. Many people will be reluctant to express themselves for fear of ridicule, judgment, or derision. There are little bullies sitting behind their computers everywhere throwing cyber rubbers at people’s heads everyday.

Oh the poor petals, the precious blossoms, the fragile little popsicles, melted in the glare of the noonday comment. Why he sounds as thin-skinned as Tim Blair.

Funnily enough he's writing for The Paunch, which is littered with anonymous comments - which gave up real quick on its early request that people use their real names - and somehow the thought of a barrage of comments by 'anonymouse' didn't stop him in his scribbling, or his ranting about intimidation and cyber rubbers. But then who's scared of anonymouses, or meeces in general?

Hey no, nonny no, never mind the irony, on we go:

The ugly effect of this is twofold a) those with certain views will stay quiet, leading to an increasingly homogenized world, one where difference to the norm isn’t tolerated, and b) the loudest voices will belong to those with the thickest skin. The sensitive person won’t put their hand up under these conditions.

Personally I take a twofold ugly effect from Ferrier's musings: a) he hasn't shut up, despite the best efforts of anonymous commenters, showing that difference to the norm continues apace and b) clearly this means he has a very thick skin and a very loud voice, since he's clearly not a sensitive person, since he's put up his hand under these turbulent, troublesome conditions.

Oh I see we're back on an irony riff. Hey ho, never mind, on we go:

The irony is that social media was going to give everyone a voice. However, in the new world order where everyone is anonymously policing everyone else’s behaviour there will be no one left brave enough to use this new found tool. Under such conditions scary things start to happen; without freedom of expression we soon lose freedom of thought. Social media may well be killing our entire society one anonymous comment at a time.

Oh yes, the intertubes are just like East Germany when the Stasi were at the height of their powers. Scary, whooooh. Soon we'll lose freedom of thought, killed by a flurry of cyber rubbers. But back to Ferrier's cry for freedom of expression:

As Voltaire said “I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write”. Although the platform for freedom of expression is provided - no one is defending our right to use it safely.

Um, but actually did Voltaire say it? Here's Wikiquote on the subject I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it:

Though these words are regularly attributed to Voltaire, they were first used by Evelyn Beatrice Hall, writing under the pseudonym of Stephen G Tallentyre in The Friends of Voltaire (1906), as a summation of Voltaire's beliefs on freedom of thought and expression.
Another possible source for the quote was proposed by Norbert Guterman, editor of "A Book of French Quotations," who noted a letter to M. le Riche (February 6, 1770) in which Voltaire is quoted as saying: "Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write" ("Monsieur l'abbé, je déteste ce que vous écrivez, mais je donnerai ma vie pour que vous puissiez continuer à écrire"). This remark, however, does not appear in the letter.

Oh no, ironies of irony. Writing under a pseudonym, as women used to do all the time because bloody men couldn't stand the thought of an uppity woman having an opinion worth airing (go George Eliot, go baby go).

Now comes for me what is the obligatory plug, wherein we learn that young Adam is in marketing, and therefore any kind of exposure or any kind of publicity is good, and therefore any comment that is anonymous cuts to the quick, the very heart, of marketing:

In my industry, marketing, the two main blog sites (Mumbrella and Campaign Brief) are rife with negative commentary from ‘the anonymous comment’. I am sure it’s the same in all walks of life.

His walk of life? Here's the profile for his first publication at The Paunch:

Adam Ferrier is a Consumer Psychologist and a Founding Partner of Naked Communications, Australia. After completing university with degrees in Psychology and Commerce Adam began his career as a psychologist working in maximum security prisons before making the natural, seamless, move into advertising. During this time Adam also managed to complete a post-graduate thesis into what makes people cool, and create a psychological board game ‘The Analyst’ (apparently selling well in the Benelux countries). Now at Naked, Adam works with the countries most ambitious marketers and some of the worlds most desired brands. Adam writes and talks about consumer behaviour, living in a branded world, and what it means to be cool (or not).

Eek, too much information. Couldn't he have done his post anonymously, or at least not put up a profile? Maybe a nice avatar - I'm thinking of a polar bear to give weight to the 'cool' angle.

I keed, I keed. Hopefully this gentle rubber ribbing won't traumatise Adam for life, because chances are he'll never read it, and what's not known never carries any weight. Yep the intertubes are unknowable, infinite so Miranda the Devine tells me, a comfort to us all, but back to Ferrier's heartfelt plight and a final plea for the nerds:

So to the editors, and contributors of these platforms I implore you to out the anonymous and don’t accept their comments. Take away the bullies rubber supply and let the intelligent, sensitive, nerds in the front row have their say too.

His piece was of course followed by twenty seven comments - a pretty good response for a bit of trolling (at time of writing), with the vast majority of responses decidedly anonymous, and the anonymous Eric leading the way:

Eric says: 06:42am | 27/10/09
I bet you knew that anonymous commenters would tell you this article is a crock—but you wrote it anyway. So much for your theory that differing opinions will be suppressed.

The Internet has indeed made it easier for people to share their opinions. It’s a bit tougher for those who don’t like dissent.

If you don’t like negative comments, simply post somewhere that doesn’t allow comments. You may not get many readers, but that’s your choice.

And no, this anonymous comment doesn’t prove your point. In fact it’s the opposite—you haven’t been silenced.

Well I'd like to call the whole thing a storm in a teacup, but I think that's really over-stating things. How about a storm in a thimble? Still it gave the punters a work out, in much the same way as they've been exercised on forums and communities since the days of usenet. One even got existential:

Mark Reid, what makes you think people who use a surname with their first name are using their actual surname? How do I know your Mark Reid? And who is Mark Reid?
Daffy Duck

Yes and nothing is but what is not. But at least it reminded me of that great Chuck Jones cartoon Duck Amuck, made in 1953, where the cartoonist applied the rubber with some real point and malice (you can watch it here, for the moment at least). Bloody anonymous surrealist animators:

Meantime, be very careful about your privacy on the intertubes, and make sure you preserve your anonymity as appropriate, because there's no doubt that cyber bullies - including Chairman Rupert's minions - are waiting to pounce - and anything from passwords to your actual identity can be stolen.

If the only price you pay - the one paid by Adam Ferrier - is that your name is attached to a very silly article, and circulated around the world in digital form, then you'll be lucky, because that's a very small price to pay. There are much bigger rubbers out there than anonymous comments, or anonymous scribblers, and what a useful insight that might have provided on The Paunch, Australia's most useless conversation ...

See, and I got through the whole piece without making a joke about condoms being rubbers. By golly, the intertubes is turning into a civilized, genteel place ...

Gerard Henderson, John Howard re-dux yet again, just a kindly uncle up against those tough Labor dudes ...

(Above: time for some deep thinking. Edwin Booth as Hamlet, with one of the great tragedies of history not the play, but that he never managed to play opposite Gerard Henderson).

Is there any explanation for the contrast between the satirical musings in Gerard Henderson's Media Watch Dog (here) and Gerard Henderson's desiccated, dry as dust - so dry even adding water doesn't help - regular Tuesday musings in the Sydney Morning Herald?

Well of course the Media Watch Dog is designed to ferret out incorrect political thinking and leftist waywardness in the ABC and the Fairfax Media. After all heresy hunting for heretics is a tough business and a little humor is needed, even if the humor is of the kind favored by an arch maiden aunt with Tory leanings and a castle out on the moors.

Naturally such flippant thinking isn't appropriate in the mainstream media, especially when the column is the subject of a vast international gambling operation, as a dozen or so addicts speculate on the number of times John Howard will get a mention in Henderson's scribbles.

That's right, in the Herald, Henderson - known hereabouts as the prattling Polonius - always likes to indulge in ancestor worship, and we never tire of his love of John Howard. Just as he never tires of his love of John Howard.

In this week's outing, under the header Wielding the whip on asylum seekers: both sides have done it, tipsters seeking a guide to the Melbourne cup will note that carrying a heavy weight doesn't necessarily handicap a reliable, steady stayer with a lot of gumption and a plodding willingness to do the hard yards.

Which is a roundabout way of announcing this week's results:

1st mention of John Howard: second paragraph.

Number of mentions of John Howard: seven

Sure it's a short odds result, a highly predictable low yield blue sky return, but it's this kind of safe betting that makes Henderson such a favorite amongst the punters.

But why do we get such regular, reliable results? Well it's because as well as prattling, our Polonius loves to pontificate, and give little lectures about Australian history, often with a skew which would suggest that billiards might be a more natural game than punting for his skills. Hold on, here we go:

... Over the past couple of weeks Rudd, with Labor ministers and backbenchers, and even pro-Labor spin-doctors like Tim Gartrell and Bruce Hawker, have successfully identified the Howard government with the incarceration of children behind fences in mandatory detention. Few Liberals or Nationals ever challenge this assertion.

The fact is that mandatory detention was introduced during Paul Keating's prime ministership, in 1991 , as is documented in James Jupp's book From White Australia to Woomera. Moreover, in 1994 - the midpoint of the Keating Government - about 350 children were in detention. It was Howard who abandoned the policy of detaining children with their families - in response to considerable criticism from Coalition supporters and opponents alike.

You see, poor John Howard stopped locking up children, unlike the wretched Paul Keating, and never you mind about idle ABC leftist talk about lying about children overboard, or contriving sundry solutions such as the Woomera Immigration Reception and Processing centre, the Baxter Immigration Reception and Processing Centre, or "reception" facilities in Nauru, while cranking up the dog whistling rhetoric in a way designed to appeal to both Wilson "Ironbar" Tuckey and Pauline Hanson supporters.

No, no, no, it's all Paul Keating's doing. John Howard was just a softie, doing what he could to repair the damage left by Keating. It's the Labor party that's always been the tough guys:

Historically, Labor has taken a hardline approach on unauthorised boat arrivals. In 1975, during what turned out to be his final year in office, Gough Whitlam went out of his way to stop South Vietnamese anti-communists from settling in Australia. This was despite their having a genuine fear of persecution from the Vietnamese communist regime that came to power that year.

Come to think of it, Howard was just channeling Bob Hawke when he muttered something about determining who could come to the country:

In 1977, speaking as ALP president, Bob Hawke campaigned against the arrival of Vietnamese boat people in Darwin. He declared: "Any sovereign country has the right to determine how it will exercise its compassion and how it will increase its population". Howard quoted Hawke's statement in Parliament in August 1984. Howard's 2001 claim that "we will determine who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they will come" effectively channelled Hawke's position of a quarter of a century earlier.

Eerie, ghostly, especially when you consider that Malcolm Fraser - that turncoat - did it best of all as a precedent:

Many Liberals have scant knowledge of, or interest in, contemporary history. So it's not surprising when they are outflanked by Rudd Labor and presented as heartless types who, alone, would maintain a policy of mandatory detention while children suffered and adults harmed themselves. The truth is that all recent Australian governments have struggled with the problem of how to handle unauthorised arrivals - particularly visible ones by sea. Malcolm Fraser's Coalition government did best. Even so, most Indochinese refugees who arrived at the time were taken in an orderly fashion from camps in Malaysia and, later, from Vietnam itself.

Now you can see how villainous history can be, especially if Liberals fail to know their history. Which goes like this. John Keating and Bob Hawke evil, dour, malign, bleak-hearted socialists; Malcolm Fraser and John Howard kind and caring, and doing what they can to repair the damage left by the leftie savages.

Okay, but now that John Howard has been established as just a kind hearted avuncular type, a hapless helpless follower in the footsteps of the heartless Labor regimes that preceded him, what next?

Well what next seems to be a befuddled mix of P. J. O'Rourke, Chris Berg, and weird signals. First the Berg and O'Rourke bit:

Unauthorised arrivals, whether by sea or air, tend to be both personally courageous and entrepreneurial. Consequently, they invariably make first-class citizens when given the chance to become Australians. Often unauthorised arrivals, who successfully claim asylum status, adapt better than those who come under the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees-authorised annual refugee intake. However, both Labor and Coalition know unauthorised immigration is politically unpopular.

Invariably? And you thought they were potential terrorists full of drugs and disease. Take that Wilson Tuckey.

Then the weird signals bit, which somehow reminds me of Virginia Trioli at the ABC making strange finger signs about weirdos like Barnaby Joyce:

The best way for Australia to stop the odious practice of people smuggling - and prevent an inevitable loss of life at sea - is for Australia to put up a large red "stop" sign out the front. This can be accompanied by a small green "go" sign out the back. In other words, Australia should be sympathetic to boat people who claim persecution and pass security checks. But we should proclaim the need for the orderly arrival of refugees.

But if it's a traffic light, where's the amber? And where on earth are we going to put the small green "go" sign out the back? Mad uncle Wilson Tuckey is sure to find it, and it'll send him into yet another frenzy. Hmm, in the old days when the Indians spoke about whites speaking with forked tongue, is this what they meant?

Ah golly, it's all sounding too hard. How about a final wrap up with a bit of fudge, and a yearning to return to the kindly days of the John Howard Pacific solution:

The unintended consequence of the Government's criticism of the Opposition on this issue has been to send out a message that Australia is now softer on border protection. In reality, Rudd's Indonesian solution may turn out to be tougher and crueller than Howard's Pacific solution. Australia had some say about how asylum seekers were handled in Nauru and Manus Island. We will have less influence about what goes on in Indonesian detention centres.

What a pity Henderson falls at the last hurdle and fails to call for a return to the Pacific solution. Perhaps that's why racing over jumps should be banned, it's not for the faint hearted.

Yep, it's just another week where everything continues the same: a quick jab at the ABC and Kerry O'Brien for a "soft interview" with Chairman Rudd, and then a trawl through history to establish that John Howard got it right, and everyone else has always regularly, reliably got it wrong.

It's a bit like going to the Catholic mass - here's a wafer, rejoice that Satan is defeated once again, and never mind the next week's sinning, a little confession and contrition will see you right.

Which leads me to ask if Gerard Henderson should now be crowned the most boring repetitious commentariat columnist going around at the moment? Almost as dull as his hero John Howard.

Never mind. While writing about Henderson is a guaranteed way to ensure the hits on this site plummet to abysmal lows, we live in hope for that fine White Cotton ring-in day when his column features zero mentions of John Howard. That'll mean the international betting ring will collapse, and Henderson might have stepped out of his ABC-fixated world, and found something interesting to say ...

More matter with less art and history? Good luck with that, I'm betting third paragraph and five mentions for John Howard in next week's column ...

Polonius: What do you read, my lord?

Hamlet: Words, words, words.

(Below: you got this far? Poor dears, here's something for the gentleman reader, and ladies too, as we mingle sex and death in a chilling evocation of the best years of the long playing record. Now there's history for you).

Dvir Abramovich, a gabble of atheists, and a gabble of excuses for an absent god, may she come back and explain herself sometime

(Above: a painting by that atheist Picasso. The point? Well surely the atheism and rampant satyrism helps explain all those squiggles).

Too often we forget that befuddled thinking about religion owes a lot to the Jewish faith, but fortunately - just as we spend too much time with the heresies of Jensenism and Pellism - along comes Dvir Abramovich to remind us, courtesy of Celebrity atheists expose their hypocrisy.

These days it's all too common to find the religiously inclined coat trailing along behind the likes of Hitchens, Harris, Onfray, Dennet, and Dawkins, who naturally get labelled as fundamentalists. You see, if you believe what you say to be true, you're naturally a fundamentalist, unlike those of a religious persuasion, who have weighed all the evidence in a balanced way, and come up with a dispassionate truth. Here's how it's done:

Works such as Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, Sam Harris' End of Faith, Michel Onfray's The Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam and Daniel Dennet's Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon are bare-knuckled, no-holds barred tracts that sometimes resemble the declarations of fundamentalists who are absolutely convinced of their truth.

You see fundamentalists! Whereas any balanced believer in religion knows for at least half the day that what they believe in is nonsense, and thus they have a crisis of faith, out of which they return all the stronger for the experience.

What's even worse, these bare-knuckled fundamentalists, unlike any believer in god, are thriving, and angry:

Hitchens and Dawkins, who are the leaders of the New Atheism movement, have received the most media spotlight and are driving the growth of this industry. Hitchens presented recently at Sydney's Festival of Dangerous Ideas and appeared on ABC TV's Q & A program. And Dawkins will headline next year's Atheist Convention in Melbourne.

These atheists are angry that religion has not gone away and is thriving in various parts of the world. After all, calling other peoples' belief a delusion is not exactly respectful. Indeed, distinguished doctor and broadcaster Lord Winston found Dawkins' attitude to religious faith patronising, insulting and counterproductive, noting that it "portrays science in a bad light".

Even worse, they build straw dogs and burn them. Like pagans. Like that deviant Tao Te Ching which said "heaven and earth are heatless, treating creatures like straw dogs". Next thing you know, we'll be in a Sam Peckinpah movie, with the rapes and the killings and the boiling oil and the man traps:

Hitchens and Dawkins build a straw man — they select the worst offences that have been done in the name of religion to prove that religion is a dangerous force and a kind of virus that infects the mind. At one point Hitchens writes, "Religious belief is not merely false but also actually harmful. But I think it is a mistake to condescend to those who claim 'faith'."

Employing a new name, Dawkins says atheists should refer to themselves as "brights" labelling the devout as "dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads" while Hitchens describes the religious mind as "literal and limited".

Oh so cruel. Fair, but really, bare knuckled creationist cruel.

According to Hitchens (who discovered two years ago that he is Jewish by way of his mother) the Jews could have been the "carriers of philosophy instead of arid monotheism". What about Spinoza, Wittgenstein, Isaiah Berlin, Derrida, Maimonides, Emmanuel Levinas, Martin Buber, Karl Popper, Walter Benjamin and Ayn Rand to name only a few. Does it seem like Judaism is bereft of philosophers? He writes of kosher dietary laws: "In microcosm, this apparently trivial fetish shows how religion and faith and superstition distort our whole picture of the world."

Ayn Rand to name only a few? Would that be the same Ayn Rand who in Atlas Shrugged wrote so, and then in a 1964 Playboy interview spake thus?

They claim that they perceive a mode of being superior to your existence on this earth. The mystics of spirit call it “another dimension,” which consists of denying dimensions. The mystics of muscle call it “the future,” which consists of denying the present. To exist is to possess identity. What identity are they able to give to their superior realm? They keep telling you what it is not, but never tell you what it is. All their identifications consist of negating: God is that which no human mind can know, they say—and proceed to demand that you consider it knowledge—God is non-man, heaven is non-earth, soul is non-body, virtue is non-profit, A is non-A, perception is non-sensory, knowledge is non-reason. Their definitions are not acts of defining, but of wiping out. [Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged]

(Playboy 1964): Has no religion, in your estimation, ever offered anything of constructive value to human life?

Rand: Qua religion, no—in the sense of blind belief, belief unsupported by, or contrary to, the facts of reality and the conclusions of reason. Faith, as such, is extremely detrimental to human life: it is the negation of reason. But you must remember that religion is an early form of philosophy, that the first attempts to explain the universe, to give a coherent frame of reference to man’s life and a code of moral values, were made by religion, before men graduated or developed enough to have philosophy.

Damn you constructivists, peddling your false views. How did you get into the list of Jewish philosophers? But back to the modern devils:

So, the bottom line for these athiests is this: we are free to believe in whatever as long as it's not God.

For Hitchens and co, religion does little good and secularism hardly any evil. Never mind that tyrants devoid of religion such as Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Mao and Pol Pot perpetrated the worst atrocities in history. As H. Allen Orr, professor of biology at the University of Rochester, observed, the 20th century was an experiment in secularism that produced secular evil, responsible for the unprecedented murder of more than 100 million.

Yes, never mind that Hitler purported religion, so long as it suited his political purposes, and never mind the profound futility of arguing that secularism can outdo religion in perverted killings, when in reality World War 11 was dressed up as a holy war, and even these days some loons manage to conflate the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq with holy wars. Why next thing I bet the scientists will cop the blame:

Dawkins is mute on the terrors unleashed by science and technology, used by genocidal regimes such as Hitler's Germany, in a century that proved to be the worst tyranny mankind has ever seen. And what about weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear and biological bombs developed by scientists?

Yes indeed and what about jihads, and the current ongoing simmering feud between Jews and Arabs in the middle east, and the fact that Israel has - for purely secular reasons? - armed itself with nuclear weapons. Never mind, let's be even handed about this:

Does that mean that all atheists and scientists are evil? Of course not. The point is that fanatics can be found in both religion and atheism.

How can anyone argue that not a single human benefit has resulted from religious faith? There are millions who every day selflessly dedicate their lives to helping others all in the name of religious belief. The cruelty and viciousness of the past and the abuse of religion in the present cannot extinguish the solidarity and good-heartedness of people of faith.

Most would agree with the words of former atheist, Oxford University professor of historical theology Alister McGrath, who said: "There are some forms of religion that are pathological, that damage people. For every one of these atrocities, which must cause all of us deep concern, there are 10,000 unreported acts of kindness, generosity, and so forth arising from religious commitment."

Oh go tell that to the gays and the women ground down by assorted mad religious beliefs over the centuries.

You see the atheists just get religion and theology all muddled up, and what comes out of their mouths is a mess, much like today's civilization, which has the ring of the cult of the Baals about it:

True religious values are grounded in notions of community, charity, mercy and peace. All too often today we focus on individualism, greed and instant gratification.

Phew, we're deep in, I think I'll pause for a cup of string bag tea.

Oh yes, that kicked in, instant gratification. Am I greedy to buy them in 100 bag lots?

Anyone wishing to discredit theology should at least know some. The God Delusion contains very little examination of Jewish theology and dismisses the finest minds of Western thinkers and theologians who have written on sublime theological questions as "infantile".

No, no, never. I care as much as anyone how many angels you can fit on the head of a pin, and whether the number of grains of sand on a beach can conjure up the number of days we'll spend in heaven.

Hitchens cites the Binding of Isaac and "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" injunction as brutish and stupid. Yet, scholars have interpreted the binding as ending child sacrifice and the injunction as a caution against excessive vengeance. Hitchens says that the God of Moses never refers to compassion and human friendship, overlooking "love your neighbour as yourself".

Well indeed, just as my favorite book Leviticus ensures happy families, with the strict injunction that anyone cursing their mother or father shall surely be put to death, while it's always been a comfort to me that god put every first-born child of every family in Egypt to death, not to mention the odd command to kill off suckling infants or dash them upon the rocks (frolic here for more fun with children).

For his part, Dawkins is clearly out of his depth when it comes to Jewish teachings and ethics. He claims, for instance, that "love thy neighbour" meant only "love another Jew". He apparently is not aware that in the same chapter, Jews are commanded to love the stranger that lives in their land as they would themselves. When Jesus, himself a Jew, was asked "Who is my neighbour" he did not refer to other Jews, but to a Samaritan, considered at that time as heretical and unclean.

Above all, for Dawkins and his contemporaries, billions of people across the globe have accepted stupid and harmful ideas.

Okay, it's about now that we should roll out some scientists, don' you think, to put that Dawkins in his place for suggesting that belief in pie in the sky by and by is perhaps a tad optimistic.

Yet that iconic scientist Einstein, believed that God represented a great mind that sustained the laws of nature. We know for sure that he was not stupid or delusional. He famously remarked, "God doesn't play with the universe" and noted, when referring to the extraordinary intricacies of the universe: "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science." Einstein believed that a humble, open-ended religious attitude to the cosmos was preferable to a completely non-religious approach.

Um, would that be the same Einstein that wrote:

I received your letter of June 10th. I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist.
- Albert Einstein, letter to Guy H. Raner Jr, July 2, 1945, responding to a rumor that a Jesuit priest had caused Einstein to convert from atheism; quoted by Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic, Vol. 5, No. 2

Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression. Mistrust of every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude toward the convictions that were alive in any specific social environment - an attitude that has never again left me, even though, later on, it has been tempered by a better insight into the causal connections.
- Albert Einstein, Autobiographical Notes, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp (here).

Einstein didn't like to get into arguments with believers about god, even if he considered the notion of a personal god a childlike one. He didn't have the crusading spirit - perhaps having better science to fry - noting that fervent atheists tend to get more excited as part of the process of a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in their youth.

But please let's not chalk this kind of agnosticism as one up to religion.

Okay, moving along, who else have we got?

Consider also that in A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking ends his brilliant book (which sold more than 8 million copies) with the following: "If we discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable by everyone, not just by a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we should know the mind of God."

Um, yes but Hawking isn't quite sure about the who or what of this god:

So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self- contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?

The best you can say for Hawking is that he's an agnostic or a deist, working to some kind of giant watch-maker logic which involves him working out how the creator got the mainspring working and so made the watch tick.

Um, perhaps we need to strip away any notion of literalism as an alternative argument:

Dawkins and Hitchens assume all believers accept the Bible literally, which in the case of the majority of Jews and other co-religionists, has never been true. Theologians have often questioned institutional religion and have criticised the use of rigid orthodoxy and demagoguery to instill fear and obedience. In fact, most who embrace religious faith at the same time also exercise a healthy dose of skepticism and do not defend the way religion is often manipulated and distorted. Very few follow religion blindly.

Yippee, well maybe then they wouldn't blindly try to include a few scientists in the debate by blindly trying to distort their points of view and beliefs. And they wouldn't come up with romantic, humanist stuff, long the turf of artists and philosophers who don't see the need of religion as a preferred explanation for life, love, pain and the whole damn thing:

The telescope and the microscope that Hitchens says has made religion redundant, does not answer for us why we are here and what is the purpose of human existence. Atoms and black holes leave little space for expounding on the measure of man, sin, holiness, dignity and the human spirit, sorrow, beauty, love, alienation and mortality.

Dr Owen Anderson, professor of philosophy at Arizona State University, says the problem with the argument promoted by Hitchens and Dawkins when he asks: "Can all reality be explained as atoms in motion? Is belief in something besides atoms mere superstition?"

Well if you're offering this up as a way of letting in a belief in theosophical theory, astrology, spiritualism, witchcraft, neo paganism, witchcraft, hippiedom, scientology, exorcism, ancestor worship, spectrology, parapsychology, reincarnation, naturism and the like, feel free, but be careful what you wish for.

Tina Beatie in her book The New Atheists: The Twilight of Reason and the War of Religion maintains that atheists are engaged in religious belief themselves because naturalists as authors such as Dawkins and Hitchens use their own beliefs to invest their life with meaning. Ironic, isn't it?

Well it'd be ironic to someone who thinks that beliefs are a way to invest life with meaning, and in a storm, any belief will do provided it doesn't just involve the contemplation of atoms in motion. Because of course if you only have humanity and a one way ticket to the grave (as opposed to a nice belief structure that offers you a glorious or perhaps problematic afterlife if you've been naughty), then it's hard not to get a little depressed sometime.

The usual way out of this impasse is to do a little light hand wringing in the Anglican style, and it's nice to see that the Jewish faith offers the same possibility of compromise, and worrying about the dangers of fundamentalism of any persuasion:

Lord Winston agrees: "Think there is a body of scientific opinion from my scientific colleagues who seem to believe that science is the absolute truth and that religious and spiritual values are to be discounted.

"Some people, both scientists and religious people, deal with uncertainty by being certain. That is dangerous in the fundamentalists and it is dangerous in the fundamentalist scientists."

Ah well, it's about time now for what we might call the Rebel Without a Cause moment, which took place when James Dean heads off to the planetarium at Griffith Observatory, and - confronted with the endless remote universe, and the eventual destruction of this planet by an expanding sun - Jimmie moos like a cow. What else to do?

One has to concede that a something inexplicably mysterious took place at the birth of the universe. I read that several years ago, astronomers working with NASA concluded that time began 13.7 billion years ago, a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. At that instant, the universe expanded from "submicroscopic to astronomical size in the blink of an eye". The great mystery is why it would want to do that. Thomas Nagel, the philosopher notes that even if we accept evolution and that the necessary seed material was present at the time of the Big Bang, there is no scientific theory as to why the material existed in the first place, and how did such material come into existence.

All we have done is to keep pushing the great question one step back. World-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking put it best, "Why does the universe go to the bother of existing?"

Well indeedy, who knows, but imagine sticking to explanations conceived of thousands of years ago as the best we can manage. Which is why it's sad that we then have to resort to the truth and beauty argument.

Many would identify with the father who's compelled to believe in the divine when he notices the beauty and perfection of his daughter's ears. Hitchens mocks him, pointing out that ears always need a clean out, are mass-produced and cats have lovelier ears. A moment of pure love is missed.

Yes, but what's the beauty of ears or pure love got to do with an absent god, who long ago left the playing field and left humanity to its rather pitiful and poorly designed skills, never mind the shapeliness of an ear, an eye, a breast, or even dare one say it, a cock.

Okay, so we come to what is the usual attempt to reclaim the turf, often done in the form of questions designed to be unsettling:

Dawkins claims that religion is a form of child abuse since parents teach their kids to believe in certain religious creeds. Is it fair to compare real child abuse with parents instilling in their children religious morals and codes?

Since you ask, yes, teaching a child to believe in a talking snake and creationsim (or scientology for that matter) is a form of abuse. Physical abuse is one thing, mental abuse another, but both are forms of abuse.

Dawkins and Hitchens celebrate art over religion, forgetting that the wonder and mystery of the universe and God's role in it have provided inspiration for countless artists. Michelangelo's Creation of Adam paintings at the Sistine Chapel is only one such example.

And there are thousands of examples of art by atheists, agnostics and deists. Like the argument about whether religion or atheism is the best at devising killing machines, it's futile and silly and deeply irrelevant to the uses that art may be put to (after all, Eisenstein made films as a homage to communism until he discovered the madness of Ivan the Terrible made for fruitier drama).

Dawkins remarks that the human brain is a "design nightmare". Well, since we use that organ to contemplate these and other complex subjects, it can't be that badly designed.

Oh please! Can somebody bring me a new hard drive, and why not give the worthy Abramovich one while we're at it. If it's so bloody good, why haven't we worked out a solution to all that's wrong with the world. And where's god when we need her?

In his introduction to The God Delusion Dawkins states: "If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put if down."

I wonder for how many readers this is true.

Who knows and who cares. It's just another day at the new badge the National Times, as they try to stir the pot and attract readers who will join in the fun.

But if this is the best Dr. Dvir Abramovich can come up with, I'm thinking that readers who will get to the end of it will likely as not be atheists by the time they put it down. In that sense, his shoddy arguments and patch work thinking create the ripe conditions for teenage rebellion which, as Einstein observed, often leads to eruptions of fundamentalist atheists.

So it goes ...

(Below: a quote and a painting by René Magritte, surrealist and one time communist, and fraudulent producer of fake paintings. Now pardon me if I put my head under a pillow case for a moment as I seek a modicum of elegance).

Progressive atheists and Fascist Catholics are not very interesting. While on the way to Antwerp yesterday, I passed near the camp at Breendonc [sic] (the Belgian Buchenwald), and the memories this camp brought back are far from being able to provide any rationale for the universe. As for the progressive atheists you mention, who dream of horsewhipping the whole world, they are obviously incapable of making anything but trouble. We don’t have to do anything about such "engagés" so long as they leave us more or less in peace. However, when "culture" is at stake, their titles—Catholics, Fascists, atheists, progressives, etc.—are reason enough for one to be disgusted at the prospect of collaborating with them. For them, it’s not enough to take a "quick turn round the floor with a modicum of elegance." They wouldn’t hesitate to stop you if it were necessary.

—Letter from René Magritte to G. Puel, May 22, 1955