Miranda Devine, Clare Werbeloff again, Susan Boyle again, and the smarter nicer world of the intertubes

(Above: Clare Werbeloff, exemplar of the new intelligence, wit and love sweeping the intertubes to make the world a better, more loving and caring and intelligent place).

As the original and witty real Dorothy Parker once said, "what fresh hell is this?"

The answer is of course a column by Miranda the Devine, this time blessed with the header Chk-chk-boom sums up sensation.

Whatever the reasons, the collective intelligence of the internet decided Boyle and Werbeloff were the two people on the planet most worthy of listening to. But so far no one has figured out how to tap into that awesome power and make much money out of it.

That's right MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and dozens of other social and professional interaction networks, bugger off. Sure you might have sold your ideas, your connectivity for billions (why even to Rupert) but we don't think much of billions these days. That's just loose change where we come from, a pittance, a sop to your nerdish egos. Come back when you've figured out a way to tap into the awesome power and make some money out of it. Why then we might consider putting it up on Amazon and selling it off.

But wait, there's more, because Devine is now in love with collective intelligence, as expressed through the lovable Werbeloff.

MIT even has a Centre for Collective Intelligence, founded in 2006, whose basic research question is: "How can people and computers be connected so that - collectively - they act more intelligently than any individuals, groups, or computers have ever done before?"

Its researchers have explored the motivations of people who take part in "web-enabled collective intelligence systems", such as Wikipedia, Google, or YouTube. They found three motivators: money, love and glory. The new development, which has emerged in recent years, is that love and glory feature much more heavily in collective intelligence systems than money.

Hmm, that's deep. Well let's backtrack and see what it means for the rest of the Devine's column, which is first of all a re-hash of the already refried many times story of Clare Werbeloff, who achieved her fifteen minutes of fame by lying about witnessing a shooting at Kings Cross, and using the word wog a couple of times, along with what has been phonetically transcribed as 'chk-chk-boom' to describe the shooting.

Now aficionados of Russ Meyer, auteur of such masterpieces as Faster Pussycat Kill Kill and Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens might think that in comparison Werberloff produced only fair average wordplay in a dull, redneck, wog bashing way.

But Devine isn't content with recycling her fully sick endeavours (get down with it we can all boogie with the hip Devine), and so recycles the even older story of Susan Boyle, internet sensation on YouTube for singing a song in a British talent quest.

Okay, knowing what we now know about collective intelligence systems, and the heroic stories of this pair of internet legends, who will be forgotten about by close of business at the end of the financial year, what does it tell us about the close to saturation, almost full to overflowing intertubes?

Those millions of people who spread the Boyle and Werbeloff videos around must have been motivated by love, which, MIT says, can take many forms: intrinsic enjoyment of an activity, the opportunities to socialise with others, or the feeling they are making the world a better place.

Love!? Well forgive me but how does love and the feeling that you can make the world a better place intersect with Werbeloff? Oh right, because wogs are just soooh funny, and wog bashing is such an intrinsically enjoyable activity, and you can socialize with other wog bashers and feel you're making the world a better place, while enjoying the anarchist fun of punking and pwning the mainstream media.

If that's love, then we're all fucked, and let me channel a new wave of hate, fear and loathing so it can be directed against the columnist commentariat.

But don't think Devine rests just there with her dumb fatuity. She has, in the style of all good columnists, got a capper for her column:

In his 1994 book The Wisdom Of Crowds, James Surowiecki said "under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent and are often smarter than the smartest people in them". Maybe we can also collectively be nicer.

What, like Werbeloff, talking about wogs in a joyous, carefree way? We've leapt from her flipping wogs to being collectively nicer? Well I guess we'd be nicer, apart from the wogs of course, but what would the wogs know, because after all ... well, they're wogs ...

Yes, you see, deep down the Devine just loves Clare Werbeloff:

"I didn't think anything would come out of it," she told A Current Affair. "Aussies love to muck around with each other. They love jokes, and I just thought Australia would get it."

Well of course we did dear, and the only ones who didn't get it were the chinks and the nig nogs and the gooks and the towelheads. But they're wogs, and by definition lack an Aussie sense of humor, oi oi. And Miranda the Devine can't get enough of the statistics on the hits she's generated - over 500k views on YouTube, and endless online conversations:

Werbeloff had become instantly, globally famous on a scale that would have been unthinkable even five years ago. But why her? She was audacious, quick-witted, verbally dexterous, politically incorrect and inventive. A Nine caption writer had translated her catchy phrase into "chk-chk-boom", which looks as good as it sounds. It helped, too, that she was pretty, and typified the gen Y attitude of not taking anything seriously.

She also was engaging in the increasingly popular sport of "punking the news" - tricking the media into publishing a fake story, which made her a hero for all the bloggers forever predicting the death of the mainstream media.

It was a perfect storm, picked up by individuals who spread it across their social contacts with impressive speed.

Ah yes, inventive and politically incorrect. Of course the Devine would love her, of course she'd see Werbeloff as heralding a new dawn, a new collective intelligence where we'll all be smarter because we can send in the clowns and send up the wogs.

Why do I suddenly feel as if my IQ has dropped by ten points? Of course, I just read a Miranda the Devine column. If I keep doing it, soon enough my IQ will be down to zero, but that's okay I'll just go back on the intertubes and power up again in some group that spawns intelligence the way a bubble headed booby gets paid to write tripe about phenomena she doesn't have a clue about.

And being nicer is being able to deploy a little politically incorrect language? Well goody two shoes to that, goody goody gumdrops I say, because Miranda the Devine will surely understand when the intertubes celebrates her for being a dumb bitch. That's right, feel the love and the intelligence on the intertubes, female canines of the world.

How's that for verbally dextrous, quick witted, audacious on your feet thinking? Not to mention politically incorrect and soooh inventive ...

(Below: Clare loves to bake patty cakes for real, dinkum men).

Stephen Conroy, George Orwell, that ACMA black ban list, and a gaggle of eminent persons

We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent there will be no need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always—do not forget this Winston—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.

It's been awhile since we visited the subject of Senator Stephen Conroy, his planned internet filter at ISP level, and his secret blacklist of banned websites.

It's secret because of Catch 22 of course. Just as if you want to get out of combat duty, you're not really crazy, so you can't escape combat duty, because it's making you crazy, so Conroy can't publish his secret blacklist of banned websites, because if it was published, people would know what was on it, and then they'd want to go to the websites when they can't. Or they shouldn't. Because then their innocence would be perverted, by being introduced to perversion by a mechanism designed to protect their innocence.

Or whatever, some such line of specious reasoning as to why people can't be trusted, but politicians can, and why politicians can indulge in secrets and blacklists while pretending they operate in a democracy. 

Ah heck, why not just leak the list to Wikileaks so everyone can understand how silly it us - um, amend that, so everyone can see how bad and naughty the Russian mafia is to make the list seem like it's silly when it's really sublime. Yes it was those Russkis that made ACMA put a Brisbane dentist on the list, and seem incapable of getting him off it.

Anyhoo, the chance to see what's up in the world of our own Mary Whitehouse (just when we are going to see Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story?) comes along with the news that the government  is now thinking of a review of the website blacklist managed by ACMA (Review of website blacklist in wind).

Well that's a tremendous relief. So how's it going to work?

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy told a Senate estimates hearing yesterday that the Government was "considering options for greater transparency and accountability in respect of the blacklist", including a regular review of the list by a panel of eminent persons or parliamentary committee or a review of complaints by the classification board.

Oh right, it's still going to be secret - a criminal offence to publish it and show it to the light of day - but a secretive, furtive group of pompous prats and bearded bureaucrats will sit down every so often and go through the list to make sure everything is okay. Sounds like a safe haven for mates looking for an idle days' pay while clicking through to check that websites on the list are actually full of vile depravity. Come to think of it, that's the sort of work I'm looking for myself.

Here's the joke. According to the report, the blacklist contains 977 websites, in a world where there are zillions designed to serve up tasty porn. And as the intertubes fill up to overflowing, there's going to be zillions more. King Canute couldn't hold back this kind of tide himself, not even by sticking his finger in the leak in the wall of the dyke. 

Meantime, the filter will just result in a boondoggle for proxy servers, and a fresh bubble of mushroom farms serving up the tasty porn the customers want (in the same way the attempt to ban drugs breaks down in almost every nightclub in Sydney, not to mention every rugby league locker room).

As for reviews and transparency, don't make me chortle into  my instant coffee. I've worked in bureaucracies, I know what happens when your file gets mislaid. People will get back to you in the by and by, or the never never, or when the snows melt in glaciers - second thoughts, not that quickly. 

At this point some of you might be tempted to burst into song, as some day it may happen that like Ko Ko, you believe a victim must be found, and you've got a little list, of society offenders who might well be better off underground, and who would never be missed:

And that blacklist nuisance, which just now is rather rife,
The priggish prude — I've got him on the list!
All puritans, Mrs Grundys, and bluenose clowns of private life —
They'd none of 'em be missed — they'd none of 'em be missed.
And apologetic statesmen of a compromising kind,
Such as — What d'ye call him — Thing'em-bob, and likewise — Never-mind,
And 'St— Stephen — and What's-his-name, and also You-know-who —
The task of filling up the blanks I'd rather leave to you.
But it really doesn't matter whom you put upon the list,
For they'd none of 'em be missed — they'd none of 'em be missed!

You may put 'em on the list — you may put 'em on the list;
And they'll none of 'em be missed — they'll none of 'em be missed!

But as a time wasting folly,  it actually goes a bit beyond a laugh, and Conroy's attempts to wriggle off the hook of his own stupidity grow more bizarre by the day. As if a bunch of furtive boffins in a back room would somehow increase transparency and accountability.

But while it's a nonsense and a folly and it won't work, and people will find workarounds, and every day there will be a fresh scandal, like the daily decisions of rugby league referees, it reminds me once again of how nicely George Orwell saw the future:

There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

Cameras in the streets and censors sitting in your computers and monitors checking emails around the world. Sound familiar? Lordy, these days even the darkness isn't that safe.

The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.

And of course the object of banning is banning, the object of censorship is censorship, and soon enough orgasms will be banned. Don't trust me, trust George Orwell.

Janet Albrechtsen, Barack Obama, Sobbing, Tears and the messiah journeys to bizarro world

There's something so sweet about Janet Albrechtsen trawling through Barack Obama's short record to find signs that he's really just President Bush in drag.

That's right, Bush lives, his policies live, and they call the result Obama.

Ah, the fecklessness of those in search of a messiah. Anti-war group Code Pink is wondering whether Obama is a “war criminal”. The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch are also disappointed. But Obama needn’t have bothered inviting human rights leaders to his 90-minute tea and biscuits, please-still-love-me routine at the White House last week. The more they cry foul, the clearer it becomes to a wider audience that Obama is behaving like a President responsible for the nation’s security, just as president Bush did.

Ah yes, and Joe Biden is just like Dick Cheney. Speaking of Dick Cheney, someone forgot to tell him that Obama is behaving just like Bush in his concern for the nation's security. (And it also escaped his daughter Liz Cheney):

Asked on CNN's "State of the Union" if he thought Obama has made Americans less safe with those actions, Cheney replied, "I do."

"I think those programs were absolutely essential to the success we enjoyed of being able to collect the intelligence that let us defeat all further attempts to launch attacks against the United States since 9/11," Cheney said.

"I think that's a great success story. It was done legally. It was done in accordance with our constitutional practices and principles," he said. "President Obama campaigned against it all across the country. And now he is making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack." (source here).

But hey ho, meanwhile Albrechtsen keeps trawling through Obama's record to establish that he's really a right winger in the guise of a socialist satanist.

Of course, Obama could never meet the great expectations surrounding his presidency. Indeed, the greatness of Obama’s presidency will depend on him disappointing Rundle’s “global Left”, not to mention al-Qa’ida. The responsibility of power means the 44th President has already proved he is more pragmatic than ideological. As much as the Left will loathe this, the unfolding of his presidency is a lesson in the old adage that the office changes the man more than the man changes the office.

Last November The New York Times was effusive in its praise about Obama’s promise to “restore Americans’ civil liberties and their tattered reputation around the world”. In office, Obama is talking like a Bushie, disappointed Times editorial writers noted in March.

Good lord, for the love of God, will someone tell Dick Cheney this, and tell him to shut up, instead of constantly attacking Obama when that's like attacking his former doll puppet Bush.

If you want to trawl through Albrechtsen's careful reading of the runes, and the chicken entrails to establish just how Obama is disappointing the left, and is actually a reincarnation of Bush, toddle off to Obama makes 'em sob again.

It's bizarrely wonderful to see someone so desperate to inflict pain on the left that she's grateful a socialist liberal like that ne'er do well Obama is the vessel for her spleen.

In this bizarro world, everything that Obama does that is remotely Bush-like is good, and anything that Obama does that has no connection to Bush is bad. It's a win-win world for the despairing, struck down by the news that the Republicans are now in total disarray. And amongst whom can we count the shattered?

Al-Qa’ida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri is also disappointed: “America came to us with a new face.” But it was a ruse, he says. They have not “changed their crimes, aggressions, thefts and their scandals”, he says in a statement released by the SITE Intelligence Group.

Phew, that's a relief. You mean that closet Islamic terrorist - say his full name slowly and carefully - Barack Hussein Obama - wasn't in fact a Manchurian candidate for Al-Qa'ida? Funny, I remember the days when if you went to an Islamic school in Indonesia and didn't put your hand in the right position at the right time, you were quacking like a duck, and might well be one.

But it seems Guy Rundle and Bob Dylan are also upset with Obama, especially since he's been revealed as a Manchurian candidate for right wing responsibility, and now comes the crowning glory, with Obama facing hard times trying to close down Guantanamo Bay, which in reality has been complicated by an outburst of NIMBY politics from both Democrats and Republicans reeling from fear mongering about terrorists in peoples back yards.

What's most wondrous about Albrechtsen's column is its totally irrational neglect of the cut and thrust of politics, the pragmatism of decision-making or the general tendency of Obama's presidency, which has left the more extreme elements in the Republican party announcing that the demise of America is imminent. (Anyone feel like a tea party?) I mean, the man came out of Chicago politics, and knocked off Hillary Clinton? And you were expecting what, St Francis of Assisi?

Either the hysterical Republicans are wrong, or Albrechtsen should rush over and explain to them just how Bush-like Obama really is. But actually it sounds more like she's just intent on a little splenetic relief, involving local lefties still starry eyed at the hope of an Obama redemption:

For some on the Left, the Obama presidency may well be a case of what began in tears ends in tears, of a different, more bitter taste. More canny observers knew that the Obama who presented before the presidential elections would change once in office. When Bob Ellis - who described Obama as “the present world’s likely saviour” - expresses his disillusionment, we will know Obama is on the right track.

Bob Ellis? As if that egg and tomato sauce stained wretch has anything to offer the world than his own perpetual disillusionment, whether it be in love, lovers, politics, politicians, the world or himself. It's the romantic journey of the narcissist.

But I doubt if even Ellis would clutch at the kind of straw Albrechtsen's clutching at. Come to think of it, it's more like a bale of hay to celebrate the notion that somehow Obama is just more of the same from George Bush. If he is, the world is in serious trouble, and the tears will be bitter indeed. Because that would mean America has copped its two worst Presidents in a row. 

Here's hoping that Afghanistan doesn't become Obama's Iraq, and here's hoping that he finds a way out of the torture (nee enhanced interrogation techniques) that Bush and Cheney gave the world as a way of advancing freedom, truth and justice in a democratic world.

For the moment, let's just settle for George Bush being the worst President in recent times, aided and abetted by his willfully blind cheer squad commentariat - which even now takes an unseemly pleasure whenever people are forced to face harsh reality and disillusionment and bitter tears. 

So angry, and so unhappy, and yes with Obama in power, it has to be said, such losers.

Peter Costello, Sol Trujillo, and the disaster that is Telstra

(Above: Sol Trujillo trying to fend off Peter Costello).

It's always a grand if rare sight to see a crocodile shedding tears, but it's even grander to see Peter Costello draw himself up to his full height of righteous indignation and unload on Sol Trujillo, late and unlamented head of Telstra.

Perhaps a better parallel might be Pontius Pilate washing his hands of any involvement in the matter of Christ's crucifixion, or Telstra's recent disastrous performance.

The way Costello tells the story, in The only victim here is Telstra's share price, the Coalition government was heroic in its endeavours to introduce competition into the telecommunications sector:

Before 1997, Telstra had been a public monopoly. The then Coalition government, at great political cost, decided to make it a private sector company and open it to competition.

There is no advantage in replacing a public monopoly with a private one. Competition meant withdrawing the privileges Telstra enjoyed as a government entity so other companies could compete on a fair basis. Telstra management liked the privatisation but they were very hostile to removing the monopoly privileges.

What Costello elides over is that this privatization was perhaps the greatest bungle the government managed in its decade of power, performed by the zealots who believe in the marketplace and privatization, without understanding the necessary conditions for effective competition.

In short, he who controlled the pipes would always hold the upper hand. The government at the time was warned of not having the guts to produce a structural separation between Telstra's in ground network, and its retail activities, and it ducked the bullet.

It was too hard, and that failure of nerve has bedeviled every activity undertaken by Telstra and its competitors ever since.

For Costello to start heaping all the blame on Trujillo is so rich that you could only serve it as a Christmas fruit cake. Not that anyone could reasonably expect the Coalition to have had any understanding of how the Internet has subsequently developed, but they can't now pretend they were never warned by those who could, and in any case by those who understood that leaving the pipes in Telstra's purview was a recipe for disaster.

According to Costello, blessed with hindsight but still lacking in any wisdom, it was all so simple. The problems arose because they brought in some damn Yankees to run the show:

Most famous of these was Phil Burgess, who was head of regulatory affairs.

Burgess waged unrelenting war against the regulatory regime which allowed competition to Telstra on fair and reasonable terms as determined by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

He thought Telstra should not have to let competitors use its network at the kind of prices the ACCC was talking about. Telstra took every legal point that it could - eventually ending up in the High Court, where it lost.

A war that could only have been waged because of the botched privatization. And the ACCC as the umpire for a failed privatization scheme? Didn't anyone notice how tough it is for rugby league referees when thugs take the field?

And worse still, when the coalition embarked on its mission, it loaded the board with people like former National Farmers' Federation president Donald McGauchie, supposedly a mate at ease with the big end of town, who eventually ended up a hapless chairman of the board.

The setting up of the new Telstra could in fact only be compared to the appointment of Jonathan Shier to run the ABC. And the only victim isn't Telstra's share price, it's the mugs who bought into Telstra as part of John Howard and Peter Costello's picket fence view of Australians becoming a nation of shareholders (thereby paying again for what they already owned).

Of course Costello has some easy shots at the departing Sol, who's performance was truly abysmal, and who, in seeking to disguise it, has lampooned the country for being racist and backward. (Costello lets Chairman Rudd off the hook for farewelling Trujillo with an 'adios' but really if Rudd had any style he would have said hasta la vista baby).

I guess when you act like a corporate cowboy, you shouldn't be too hurt if people call you a cowboy.

The farce that was Telstra culminated in Labor having to devise some fancy footwork to step around the incumbent monster when it refused to participate in any sensible way in the broadband tender process. This allows Costello a fine flurry of scare mongering:

The upshot is that when Labor's tender failed, the Rudd Government decided to commit taxpayer funds to a fibre network with no business plan, no guarantee of commercial return, no due diligence - with no process - just to save face on the collapsed tender. It is a gamble of unprecedented proportion. Unless the Government listens to some reason about this proposal it could be one of Australia's great commercial disasters.

Actually, it sounds more like the inept launch of Telstra into the marketplace by the coalition, which has stung the proverbial mum and dad shareholders, fleecing the value of the shares of billions. If you want one of Australia's great commercial disasters, look no further than Telstra, and don't look beyond its founding fathers, Howard and Costello.

And if we never get structural separation - which is really what the new broadband plan attempts - we will go on having Telstra as the cuckoo in the nest for an eternity.

But who does Costello think is to blame?

The Telstra directors could not have been surprised things ended the way they did under Trujillo. His previous track record was there for all to see. In my view, the board has a lot of explaining to do. It's about judgment and performance. It is not about race.

Well yes, it's not about race. It's about judgment and performance. And for ducking the hard, obvious question way back when, Costello and the coalition have a lot of explaining to do.

So enough with the pious crocodile tears. Telstra shareholders have been shedding them in abundance thanks to the disaster the coalition launched into the marketplace ...

Gerard Henderson, Quentin Bryce, and GGs above the fray

It wouldn't be a Tuesday without the dull earnestness of Polonius:

Yet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard, for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay’d for. There; my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch’d, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!

Excellent advice, yes yes, but can we just get on with it, get Ophelia drowned and Hamlet dead, and over and done with? 

Wait a moment, impatient strangers, wise words these are, and you would do well to heed them my friends, especially the bit about the apparel and the need for rank and station, especially when amongst the perfidious French.

But stay, who softly approaches and speaks his own words of wisdom, and for the benefit of our governors, and speaks in kindly but firmly tones to the likes of wretched vassals who dare to speak ill of our glorious Governor General (yes you Glenn Milne with your story entitled Soaring price of Bryce, as if a dull rhyme suddenly gives you wit above your station).

Yes it's Gerard Henderson, a knight in amour of the kind worshipped by Miranda the Devine, galloping to the defence of GG Quentin Bryce, and her spending 200k to spruce up the GG residences.

It is a fact of life that old houses require constant maintenance which is invariably expensive. Security also costs money. Moreover, it is difficult to imagine that someone like Quentin Bryce or Kevin Rudd are overly fixated on the quality of a roof or the look of a gate.

Take that, you vile and gaudy Milne.

After an exhausting tour of the recent history of GG's, handing out gongs and scolds - see Heads of state are above the fray if you want the full tour - Henderson settles in to the serious business of defending recent GG Jeffrey and current GG Bryce - Jeffry against the charge he was too coalition in his ADF carry ons, and Bryce for her recent tour of Africa.

Both judgments are harsh. As governor-general, it was proper that Jeffery should visit ADF personnel on overseas service. Moreover, it would be improper for him to be other than supportive of the ADF - even if Australia's commitment in Iraq was controversial. It's much the same with Bryce. When she receives visitors to Australia, or when she travels on official business overseas, Bryce has no alternative but to be seen to be supportive of Australia's UN aspirations, even if this matter engenders some domestic controversy.

Oh I say sir, nicely stroked to cover. That should teach those pesky critics, those prattling knaves like that Akerman chappie, a short, sharp lesson. 

The governor-general and state governors hold a position which is above party politics. Unless they are unsuited to the job or exhibit serious character defects or become overly outspoken, it makes sense to support them - or at least refrain from carping criticism. Both Jeffery and Bryce were successful governors, in Western Australia and Queensland respectively, before moving to Yarralumla, and both were well-qualified for appointment as the Queen's representative in Australia.

Well there we have it. A member of the commentariat columnists' union rebuking his fellow columnists for carping criticisms of an unkind kind. What's more, there's no problem spending  14k on painting a gate in these troubled times when we've all been urged to spend to save the country from a devastating recession.

... the evidence suggests there are few examples of expenses-of-office rorting by appointed officials or politicians in Australia. Australia is an important player in the world but is physically isolated and has a relatively small population. Consequently, it makes sense for governors-general, prime ministers, ministers and opposition leaders to travel overseas.

The political debate will be healthier in Australia when political conservatives and social democrats alike accept that the offices of the governor-general and prime minister are at the core of Australian democracy and deserve respect.

Well I never. Does that mean we should respect the likes of Richard Butler for his short, sorry stint as governor of Tasmania? (Henderson didn't). Or the proposal that bonnie Prince Charlie be our king? (let's see the commentariat chew on that particular environmental activist and aspirational tampon).

The notion that somehow the office - or the people who infest it - are ethereally above the political fray, embodying some regal concept of I know not quite what, is one of the quainter notions that Henderson has led with in recent times,  but entirely within his aspiration to be Polonius to the nation.

The idea that heads of state are above the fray, and only there to remind the peasants that they're working to produce taxes so that someone can be a grandee in a lodge doling out cheese and cucumber sandwiches to their ever so grateful servants somehow brings out the Sex Pistols in me. Why I feel a certain faintness coming over me, like a Milne or an Akerman. Time to put on the steel capped boots methinks, odd bodkins:

God save the queen
The fascist regime
They made you a moron
Potential H-bomb

God save the queen
She ain't no human being
There is no future
In England's dreaming

Don't be told what you want
Don't be told what you need
There's no future, no future,
No future for you

God save the queen
We mean it man
We love our queen
God saves

God save the queen
'Cause tourists are money
And our figurehead
Is not what she seems

Oh God save history
God save your mad parade
Oh Lord God have mercy
All crimes are paid

When there's no future
How can there be sin
We're the flowers in the dustbin
We're the poison in your human machine
We're the future, your future

God save the queen
We mean it man
We love our queen
God saves

God save the queen
We mean it man
And there is no future
In England's dreaming

No future, no future,
No future for you
No future, no future,
No future for me

Piers Akerman, Clare Werbeloff, President Obama, Chairman Rudd and a boom time had by all

(Above: President Obama and Chairman Rudd. Our very own Chairman Rudd is on the right cheering on the brave Oz lads as they battle the infidels).

You have to admire - even if it's in a perverse way - the sheer monomaniacal cheekiness of Piers Akerman, as exemplified by Our cocked-up and loaded leadership.

Like a Napoleonic general turning up to check out the state of the Russian campaign, Akerman is a late arrival on the storm in the teacup world of Clare Werbeloff - a nineteen year old woman who achieved her allotted fifteen minutes of fame by lying to camera about witnessing a shooting involving a couple of 'wogs', skinny and fat.

She instantly became the cover girl for conservatives anxious to relive the glories of the Cronulla riots with a bit of verbal wog bashing, and as a crowning glory for her kind of media junkie show boating, she even earned herself an outing on Network Nine's A Current Affair. Never mind all her intertubes exposure, that's like getting a private audience with the Pope.

Akerman, our very own fat owl of the remove, a scholar worthy of the tradition of study celebrated in Billy Bunter schoolday stories, sagely observes that this matter is now a moment deserving of deeply scholarly study:

Media students will study this incident for years and argue whether Werbeloff exploited the media in her desire for fame, or whether the media exploited her in its desire to bring as many eyeballs as possible to a particular website.

I guess that's so he and his colleagues can - down the track - berate media students and cultural studies students for wasting their time and taxpayers' money on studying such foolishness, while the rest of the caravan has moved on. But there's a downside:

The finer point of her telling a major untruth will be permitted to slip away because fame for fame’s sake fascinates.

Hmm, do I detect a moral to the tale coming on? A sting like a sharp scorpion? Is there some way - meretricious and fatuous - that Clare can be linked to others? And the intertubes be included as the last resort of infamy? Perhaps with the kind of gigantic throw - a leap from one story to another - beloved of television current affairs comperes, and sent up by The Chaser team on a regular basis.

Why surely for a past master like Akerman, old hand at concocting silly metaphors and irrelevant distractions, it's a doddle:

That the chk-chk BOOM phenomenon has played out on the national political scene here and in America and is continuing to affect the political direction of both nations seems to have escaped most media commentators, possibly because they support the aims of these left-leaning leaders.

Yet Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and US President Barack Obama are as much creations of the connected world as Werbeloff - and their agendas are far more destructive than a teenager’s desire for fame.

Yep, you probably hadn't realized up to this moment that there is an intricate, deep, nay profound link between the president of the United States and a boofhead bogan girl (with a tattoo of the Southern Cross on her foot) telling porkies about seeing a street shooting. They're creations of the intertubes. Oh damn you intertubes, is there nothing you're not responsible for, no crime in the streets, no scurrilous leader. Why even North Korea's atomic bomb is probably your fault. If only we knew how or why you do these things.

Rudd and Obama used activists behind the political agencies GetUp and MoveOn to sign up supporters and publicise their propaganda before their elections. Having snowed their audiences, it is now chk-chk BOOM time.

Like Werbeloff a week ago, Rudd and Obama were busily saying anything and everything to get their heads on TV and their words into the blogosphere before their respective elections. That their claims were often as false as Werbeloff’s shooting account is only now becoming apparent to many. Chk-chk BOOM.

Ah these devious creatures of the intertubes, snowing their audiences. But wait a second Akerman himself is regularly on the intertubes snowing his audience? Does this mean that his claims are as often as false as Werbeloff's shooting account? Or that perhaps there's a sinister link between him and Obama and Chairman Rudd?

Who knows? Could be. Meantime, Akerman is so compelled by Werbeloff's creation of the term chk-chk boom to describe the shooting that he goes into a belabored count down of all that's offended him about Obama and Rudd. Well not so much about Obama as Akerman's noir hatred for his bete noir in this sin city of ours, Kevin Rudd:

Remember the computers for schoolchildren? Chk-chk BOOM.

Rudd’s claim that “I am not a socialist. I have never been a socialist and I never will be a socialist?” Chk-chk BOOM.

And so on. I counted some fifteen chk-chk booms deployed at this point in Akerman's column, detailing lies and calumnies. I guess when all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail. But you know all of them already so let's cut to the chase:

It would probably be possible to fill these pages with more examples of Rudd’s untruths, fairytales, spin, call it what you will, but as he has not delivered the transparency in Government he promised in Opposition, the above should be sufficient to demonstrate his embrace of Werbeloff’s chk-chk BOOM principle.

Eureka! The chk-chk boom principle. Science at work in a tabloid.

Somewhere along the line Akerman seems to have forgotten about the disgraceful Obama - the poor socialist lad doesn't score even one chk-chk boom - and instead to round out the column, he settles for what passes as Akerman humor:

If Werbeloff’s publicity campaign had not imploded so demonstratively, she would have provided an ideal candidate for one of Rudd’s “look at moi, look at moi” moments. This would have been a couple made in heaven.

While YouTubers have now driven more than 800,000 viewings of the Kings Cross fibber and variations of her narrative, they will unfortunately have to wait for the ultimate duet, Clare Werbeloff and Kevin Rudd rapping together.

Chk-chk BOOM.

But hang on a minute, shouldn't it be Werbeloff and Akerman, seeing as how she's surfed in to town to save a tabloid columnist with a tired need for a passing gag to fill up the fish and chips wrapping? Especially as they both love the flag, and hate to see what Chairman Rudd is doing to it and the country (why he's probably a patron of the rugby league referees club).

Well I guess as a tabloid rant, it passes muster, but it sometimes feels these days as if Akerman is on cruise control, phoning it in, and now happy to descend to the most obvious levels of carpentry to cobble together a column. It's always been thus, you say? Well maybe, but to link Obama to Werbeloff and then forget to include him in the chk-chk boom rant suggests signs of vagueness in the Akerman.

I guess age gets to us all. 

Now never mind what you've learned by reading this - you already knew about Akerman hated chairman Rudd, and you quite likely had heard of Clare - and it would be possible to fill these pages with many more examples of Akerman's relentless monomania, but enough already, so how about you go about the day with a song which also features the word 'boom':

I got a girl named Daisy She almost drives me crazy
Got a girl named Daisy She almost drives me crazy
She knows how to love me, yes indeed
Boy, you don't know what she's doin' to me

Tutti frutti, oh rutti, tutti frutti, oh rutti
Tutti frutti, oh rutti, tutti frutti, oh rutti
Tutti frutti, oh rutti
A wop bop a loo bop a lop bam bam

I got a girl named Sue I said, she knows just what to do
I got a girl named Sue She knows just what to do
She rocks to the East, she rocks to the West
But she's the girl that I love best

Tutti frutti, oh rutti, tutti frutti, oh rutti
Tutti frutti, oh rutti, tutti frutti, oh rutti
Tutti frutti, oh rutti
A wop bop a loo bop a lop bam boom

(Below: Clare Werbeloff showing off what motivates President Obama and Chairman Rudd).

* Correction: the photos at the top of this item apparently show Clare Werbeloff and a friend, not President Obama and Chairman Rudd, as incorrectly alleged by the caption. But hey, what's good enough for Akerman is surely good enough for all of us. After all, patriotism and wrapping yourself in the flag is the last refuge for politicians and tabloid newspaper columnists, as likely a set of scoundrels as you'll encounter since the days of transportation to Botany Bay.

Cardinal George Pell, Ian Plimer, the climate catastrophe bandwagon, and science in the original Latin mass

(Above: not just a man who loves to wear a good frock, but a handy amateur scientist).

Joy to the world, we have a new scientific expert who has come amongst us to lead his flock to safety, away from the satanists who espouse climate change as a quasi-religious cause.

Hallelujah you cry, that's a relief. And who is this blessed deliverer you ask? Why it's none other than Cardinal George Pell, schooled at the blessed Loreto Convent and St Patrick's College in the grand gold rush town of Ballarat Victoria, before moving on to study for the priesthood at Corpus Christi Collge, Werribee and Propaganda Fide College in Rome. He was ordained a Catholic priest in December 1966, and has remained a mover and a shaker in the church ever since.

But how, you ask, does a priestly approach to the world prepare one for rigorous scientific debate, especially if you're going to lash out at those dastardly true believers, as Pell does in  Global Warming Pauses? Well it's simple, just read one book and it will change your life:

It is rare to read a new book likely to make a huge difference to public opinion. Professor Ian Plimer's 500 page book with 2300 footnotes "Heaven and Earth. Global Warming: The Missing Science" is such a book. 30,000 copies were sold in its first month.

Wow, there's some knockdown science right off the blocks: 2,300 footnotes! Five hundred pages! 30,000 copies sold in the first month! Science on the march. Yep, in the true Catholic manner, never mind the quality, feel the width. 

Want more data?

Originally we were warned about the "greenhouse effect"; then it was "global warming", followed in turn by "climate change". Now we talk about reducing the "carbon footprint". The light is dawning and 30 per cent of scientists are sceptics or deniers.

30 per cent! What a pity Cardinal Pell forgot to footnote that little tidbit, but I presume he's referencing the heroic eight hundred souls who gathered in New York City in March, courtesy of the Heartland Institute to denounce the paranoid hysterics.

And don't worry about being a non-scientist. It's easy to form your own views, and indeedy to develop your very own set of scientific explanations:

Non-scientists should not blindly follow expert opinion and this includes Plimer. To the extent we can, we should examine their evidence. While it is still early days in the debate, Plimer's critics have been heavy with the abuse and short on counter evidence.

We should also look back at history for more accurate information and ignore computer models of the long-term future. Climate models making claims for decades into the future cannot work, because we do not know enough about many factors which influence weather, such as the level of activity of the sun, the earth's orbit and wobbles, the level of cloud cover, volcanoes.

Gulp, volcanoes? You mean L. Ron Hubbard was right? Those volcanoes are the source of all our troubles?

You know, I just love the glibness, above all the glibness. Critics heavy with abuse, short on counter evidence. How about turning a claim into a fact? Easy, a bit like transubstantiation turns wine and bread into blood and flesh (and if you can believe that, I guess anything in scientific thinking is a doddle):

One basic claim of Plimer is that an increase of carbon dioxide does not cause temperature rises, but might follow such rises.

What do we make of these facts? The carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continues to rise, but the world's temperature has not risen since 1998.

In Roman times and in the Medieval Warming (900 - 1300 A.D.) temperatures were higher than today by five and six degrees Celsius. No industries then!

In different Ice Ages the earth's atmosphere contained five and ten times the amount of carbon dioxide today.

Evidence shows the wheels are falling from the climate catastrophe bandwagon.

Ah yes, it's just a bandwagon, and we're not talking about Vincente Minelli's 1953 musical The Band Wagon. 

And what would a sensible approach to husbanding (or wifeing) the earth's precious resources?

Australia, with its tiny economy, is no longer aiming to lead the world. The threat of massive job losses and increasing awareness of new evidence will provoke even greater caution in the future.

Aww, but we're always so good at leading the world, we're always number one at the Olympics (oh alright a little bit lower but we act like we're top of the world even when come fifth). 

And speaking of a climate catastrophe bandwagon, why are we only talking about the threat of massive job losses when it's clear true believers on a quasi-religious mission with the zealotry of  ... well zealots or Jesuits ... threaten to tear down western civilization as we know it.

But at least I can now relax. Plimer and the prattling priest Pell assure me that all is safe, even if we don't quite know what safe means or where we might be headed.

Plimer is not a climate change denier, because history shows the planet is dynamic and the climate is always changing, sometimes drastically.

Ice Ages have come and gone and we don't know why. History has seen glaciers at the equator and at one time Scandinavia was under 5 kilometres of ice. Sea levels have been 130 metres lower than today. Some consolation comes from the fact that ice sheets predominated for only 20 per cent of the earth's history.

Plimer demonstrates that a considerable amount of scientific evidence has been produced to counter the still predominant view that human activity, especially through industry, has polluted the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, which will produce disastrous climate changes including a rise in temperature, a melting of the ice caps and rising sea levels.

Hooray, let's get on with fornication so we can bring that population level up from 6 billion to nine billion in a couple of decades.

And yo, lads, dig up that coal and ship it out as fast as you can, and never mind the city slickers preaching about being clever and devising new ways to generate energy for an energy hungry world. True conservatives never have the imagination to imagine a future that could be different, so we'll just keep on doddling along the way things are, thank you very much, and everything will tootle along nicely.

Now explain to me again why did we ever get rid of the Latin mass?