Here's a lovely piece by Peter Ryan, ageing lefty-basher. It gracefully encapsulates what I've been thinking a lot lately, that Howard's persistence is finally paying off, and that the jackbooted fluffy wuffies really are on their way out. More and more people are finally realising that Howard really has got his lucid, humane eye on the truly Big Picture. (Unlike Keating, who had his reptilian, gimlet eye on one the size of a friggin' laptop screen.)

In the future, Howard, along with Reagan, Dubya and his old man, and Maggie Thatcher will all be remembered as great leaders. But Clinton, Keating, Whitlam, etcetera? They'll all be forgotten almost entirely. If they are remembered at all, it will only be as bad examples.

More on that infant-ingesting clown from Beijing: As this article states Mr. Zhu, the alleged artist -- a Christian -- is shown explaining to the doco maker "that he set up the baby-eating performance after realizing that no religion or secular law expressly forbade cannibalism".

Yeah, well, I reckon no religion or secular law expressly forbids shoving a live taipan up yer blurter while rollerblading back and forth along the top of a train as it rapidly approaches a tunnel, but that doesn't mean you should fucken do it!

Ugh! The pure, distilled idiocy of it!

Fuck but it shits me.

Here's a pretty unequivocal piece on how best to deal with terrorists from a former Seppolian soldier. It's as funny as it is persuasive.

Bob Ellis pads out a really threadbare piece on the cloning kerfuffle. His argument: because so many bubs are born in different ways, what's the difference if some are cloned?

But the sad old sot doesn't understand. There is a big difference. A cloned child is completely unlike any other that has come before, because it, er, has come before. It's a copy, not a unique being. It has no real parent, only an original. This is the unalterable fact from which so many ethical risks emanate.

These include the possibility of people using cloning for spare parts, or the rich and powerful using it to further increase their advantages (as a leftie Bob should be pissed off about that one).

And what about being the clone himself? Imagine knowing that you are in effect the twin of your "mother" or "father". Imagine realising that the only reason you exist is to replace your long dead twin, because your "parents" still can't get over his early death. That'd do your head in for sure.

Yep, there's enough about the mere idea of cloning to creep out any reasonably intelligent, compassionate person. No wonder the fluffs don't have a problem with it.

In this article about the fallout from a notorious doco about a baby-eating artist in China (see my post of 1/1/2003), the peckish performer in question is quoted as saying that it was his "duty as an artist to spark debate about morality and art". Yeah, well it's my duty as an artist to say that this guy's a fake and a tosser, not to mention an extremely sick fuck.

Talk about the end of civilization. Just do something truly revolting, call it art and the squitterati will herald you as a friggin' genius. (And moral considerations aside, where's the skill in what he did? If he'd expertly diced and fried it -- or perhaps juggled the body parts while riding a unicycle -- then he might have scored a few points for acumen. But nup. Couldn't be bothered. Just wolfed back the infant raw. What a talentless prick.)

This particular "performance" did take place in China, but it's just a matter of time before it happens here. My guess is that at the next Melbourne Whinge Festival some bong-suckling barbarian in a beanie will out-bleck! the Chinese cannibal. He'll pull about six titanic cones on the trot, get a ferocious attack of the munchies, then completely devour some poor bastard in the front row.

The cops will show up and arrest him, but not before he dismembers at least one or two of them. The Age will run a story about police brutality, and Barrie Kosky will be seen on Lateline quacking on pompously about "the death of creative freedom under Howard's totalitarian regime".

Fuck. I'm an atheist but I'm considering becoming a Christian just so I can pray for lightning bolts to strike these fucking tossers and turn them into piles of ash!

Now that would be a work of art. (Wouldn't get a grant for it, but.)

Are there any celebs who aren't either petty thieves, bong-sucklers, smack-heads or out-of-contol friggin' dipsos?

Boffins reckon that sex is actually good for the brain! But if that's true, then wouldn't that make this bloke the most intelligent man on earth?

Maybe he is, and he's just been hiding his light under a bushel...

Here are two great pieces on the power of tribal emotion to wash away rational thought in even quite brainy people.

Yet another thought on the Raelians: They're clearly not Christians. In fact, their whole philosophy is about as far away from that world-view as you can get. So why did they call the alleged cloned sproglet "Eve"?

Bloody unoriginal, I reckon.

Lazy cultists.

Gawd. Talk about "cutting edge"!

While I'm making predictions, here's another one: I read a letter in a recent print edition of The Oz. (Sorry, can't recall exactly which issue, so don't have a link or complete text.) Anyway, it was a pithy missive referring to the Windschuttle challenge to the "black armband" approach to Australian history. It more or less stated that "factual correctness" would -- or at least should -- challenge political correctness in the universities.

Well, I reckon this will be the start of a whole new process. Factual correctness will be abbreviated to "FC" and be invoked by non-fluffs in the same way that "PC" is currently invoked by fluffs. For example: "Er, I know I'm being really, um, FC, here. But shouldn't you be able to give me some sort of irrefutable, empirical evidence to back up your claim that all men are rapists?"

Similarly, the fluffs will claim that they are oppressed by the right-wing orthodoxy of factual correctness. Eventually we'll read headlines like: "Australian Union of Students demands an end to FC on Curtin University campus!"

Then we'll know for sure that things are improving.

Sorry, but here's yet another post on the Raelians (I know, I've got sects on the brain). This time I want to make a couple of predictions:

This report tells us that Clonaid has thousands lining up to be replicated. This number will surely grow the longer the cult is in the headlines. At 200 grand a pop, that's extremely big money. This whole cloning claim was clearly a scam to get hold of it (d'uh).

So, I reckon they'll keep taking orders, while all the time delaying inspection of the sprog like Saddam on valium.

Then what? The wannabe clonees will become extremely shat off and demand their money back. But it won't be forthcoming. With the authorities on their tails, the head Raelians will go underground. We won't hear anything of them for several months.

Then they'll hit the headlines again when their lifeless bodies are found in a basement in a secluded farmhouse somewhere in the French countryside. Yep, it'll end just as all them other wacky cults do: with a mass suicide.

You don't reckon? Just you wait and see.

Another thought on the Raelians: It seems odd that a cult that's so heavily into "free love" (i.e. mad rooting) should also be obsessed with cloning, which -- apart from being unethical -- is also hyper-clinical, antiseptic and therefore anti-sexual (sex being synonomous with all them sticky body fluids and all).

Also, Raelians say their interest in the technique is related to their desire to create physically and intellectually superior people. But cloning isn't improvement, it's just replication. So, invoking the super-race argument implies that the would-be clonee thinks he's already perfect.

That said, why do they bother with cloning at all? They just need to get all the sect members who want to be cloned to ditch their frangers and dutch caps before the next "sensual meditation" session (i.e. balls-to-the-wall clusterfuck) then harvest the resulting sprogs.

That'd save a lot of time and effort wouldn't it?

Speaking of the sad randomness of beauty, here's another example: Brigitte Boisellier, self-proclaimed human cloning mastermind. Okay, so she's not Claudia Schiffer, but she does scrub up alright. And that's pretty sad considering what she's just done (or at least, has been trying to do). Wouldn't it be easier to stomach if she was just really butt-ugly?

There are some good points in this Miranda Devine piece about how ferndamentalist zealotry has made things worse for da cute fwuffy aminals rather than better. She argues that halting small hazard reduction fires leads to an immense build-up of ground fuel that ultimately leads to massive conflagrations.

The article reminded me of some ferndies I saw begging for funds a fortnight ago in Sydney. Each wore a t-shirt with a picture of a koala on it and the words "Please help save my home" (followed by an exhortation to give to the Wilderness Society) written underneath. Having heard this ground fuel argument before, I looked at the t-shirts and had a quiet cack. I felt like saying: "Shouldn't that read, 'Please help destroy my home and me with it you arseholes!'?" But I didn't because one of the ferndies was a very scrumptious, bosomy babe and she flashed me this pearler of a smile. I just melted, I'm afraid.

(That's the really tragic thing about these young ferndie sheilas. Why do so many have to be so gorgeous? It's just too cruel!)

Please Lord, not again -- I beg you!

I love reading pieces sledging flashbulb addicts who think they can change the world. Here's another one.

Just had a thought I decided to run by you:

The destructive effect of all this moral relativism over the last thirty years has left the twitizens of Artsville (and other fluffy wuffy strongholds) in a weird situation. In their view there's no wrong or right any more -- only moral shades of grey. But why are they so certain of themselves? Because they've simply replaced wrong and right with two other concepts: "right-wing" and "left-wing" respectively. And what's a "right-wing" person? Why, someone who believes there's a difference between right and wrong, of course!

Hence, when a bunch of sexually constipated yokels slaughter thousands of innocent people, the fluffs have great difficulty in seeing why it's flat-out wrong. That is: America and her allies are run by "right-wing" (morally absolutist) governments. To be "right-wing" is wrong. Terrorism is against America, therefore it can be classified as "left-wing". To be "left-wing" is right. Hence the terrorists are right -- or at least not wrong.

So, it should be remembered that the fluffy wuffies aren't all morally wrong, they're just morally up-shit-creek-without-a-paddle.

Poor pricks.

I find this whole debate about fox hunting fascinating. Many of the fluffs campaigning against it say that it should be banned because it's cruel. But so's nature -- foxes particularly (ask any rabbit).

The blue-bloods who enjoy the ritual say they should be allowed to continue it because foxes are vermin, and the sport supplies a kind of agricultural service. But this is a tactical mistake (even though it's true) because the fluffs think of livestock domestication as oppression, so any tacit support of this receives no sympathy. I reckon that the blue-bloods should try a different tack and say that fox hunting is karmic retribution for all the cute wittle wild aminals dat da big mean foxes have killed. Then maybe the fluffs will remove the ban.

In a fascinating article in today's Age -- sorry, couldn't get link to work -- Gerard Henderson explains that many of today's Australian "conservatives" actually began their careers as lefties. It gives them greater credibility, I reckon, because it means that they've seen things from two different perspectives, and have made an informed choice about which is superior.

The same cannot be said of the lifelong lefties I've met in Artsville, many of whom started off as red-diaper babies then grew into smug, bong-suckling Stalinists without once having a questing, skeptical thought about the pre-packaged world-view that was handed to them by their parents, then reinforced by their uni tutors and peers. Odd that these people should see themselves as rebels. They're the most dutiful, unquestioning conformists you could imagine.