Fabulous Failure

Well someone had to say it, and it came about that a person of the female persuasion came into the Tavern for a short drink with a cherry and a parasol plonked in it and said it. Women do not like other women.  Silence fell. In fact (is it a fact yet, I wonder) women are more misogynist than men. 

And she dropped that just after someone had been leafing through some 'agony aunt' column somewhere and found a slightly off-putting cry of angst on the same subject.

Coming in on customers' conversations, as I do, can take one aback a bit. Just moments before as I was filling orders there was this chap sitting at a table sounding off. A qualified shrink, no less.  I was just delivering a tray of ale so I didn't catch it all, but what I did hear was young Seth Meyers saying....

As I overheard a group of women this past week in line at a store verbally tear apart a couple of women within their social circle who happened to be absent, I was taken aback by the vitriol. As I reflected on how women talk about other women, I thought about what I've heard so many women say over the years: "Girls are so much crueler to each other than men." Based on fifteen years of clinical work with women who represent virtually every possible demographic variable (Come on, I trained in New York City), I can assuredly report that the women I've worked with report more critical views of other women than the men do with their own male peers.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/insight-is-2020/201309/women-who-hate-other-women-the-psychological-root-snarky

Most women will tell you that they have survived at least one mean girl in their past: a girl who dismissed, put down, or even socially tormented them. ....

I had to serve other customers so didn't stay past the nodding heads (some female).  No argument, just agreement, so far, thought I.

I did get to thinking though. Barmen do a lot of that. It was Tanya Gold who had much to say about a couple of quite popular women and dropped that idea about woman hating women, but even before she had sat down and asked for her fancy dring we had a another lady whining about it too. That cry of angst I spoke of. 

Cary Tennis, her name. (Hah! And there was I thinking of Cary Grant and Cary being a man's name. But 'Tennis'?). I had to scratch m'head a bit as, well, I like women, even those who take a man's name. Women are always taking men's stuff though, so that's not new.  

Am I a female misogynist?

Being a woman, and a feminist, I really ought to like women better than I do.

I’m a young liberal female with a strange problem for that species: I think I may be a misogynist. It’s not just that I don’t like women — sometimes I seem to hate them.

I do have some dear female friends who are usually really different from my highly academic, simply dressed, too-philosophical self. They tend to have in common a piercing wit, a deep well of kindness, and an ability to identify with the misfit. And I try not to judge women on the way they initially present. But even when I get beyond the superficial things with a female, I very rarely find anyone whom I want to get to know further.

 http://www.salon.com/2005/11/02/female_misogynist/

I don’t feel that it’s at all defensible to privilege a certain gender, and while I wish I could have a circle of female bosom buddies, I just can’t see it happening. In truth I can’t get over the ways in which women seem, despite the great leaps we’ve made socially, sexually and in the workplace, 

to be blind to our own behavior. 

Why aren’t there more women who recognize and want to discuss deep psychological truths instead of nail polish colors or the latest celebrity gossip?

But I guess the more disturbing question I find myself asking is why, when in reality there must be as few deeply thinking, socially conscious men around, I seem to find so many more of them than their equivalent in the female gender? So far my answer to that question is to acknowledge that I have suffered some damage from my mother’s (emotionally distant, often quite hurtful, unrepentantly judgmental) ways, and that I’ve internalized, perhaps, an aversion to females on principle. Couple that with my dad’s desertion of the family when I was 10, and it might explain my tendency to seek male approval.

Perhaps, although I am mostly straight, the fact that I can find women sexually attractive means that I have a little of the lover’s worshipful, but often confused and sometimes angry, attitude in me. And I recognize that there are only so many people of either gender who have all the qualities that I find wonderful (open-minded, witty, caring) and that I should just keep seeking them in whatever gender they occur.

But even after this, I’m troubled by my decidedly un-feminist, rather callous dislike of women. I’m hoping you might have some insight that I, being entangled in the middle of all this, can’t see.

I could not bear to hear more ! Instead I turned to Tanya and asked her to explain. Boy did she go to town.  And on two women that have been made into a national treasure in some parts. 

Absolutely Fabulous was too spiteful to be funny. 

It invited us to laugh at female failure

Hmmmm. Women are not supposed to fail, or are we only to laugh at men being made fools of? 

Jennifer Saunders' sitcom about women who loathe themselves was always a sketch and never great situational comedy

 http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/06/absolutely-fabulous-was-too-spiteful-to-be-funny-it-invited-us-to-laugh-at-female-failure/

Absolutely Fabulous, which is about to make its cinema debut, is a comedy about women being useless. I watched it obediently in the 1990s — mostly for the clothes — and realise now, with more jaded eyes, that I was invited to laugh only at female failure. Failure is not a bad subject for comedy — it is actually one of the best, as Edmund Blackadder and Alan Partridge and David Brent tell us — but Absolutely Fabulous is too unsophisticated to be funny, and comedy without wit is spite.

Or perhaps it was about woman being stupid for a change? Better call it 'unsophisticated' I wonder if Tanya knows what sophistication is. Hint, Tanya. A five letter word beginning with F and ending in E.

Absolutely Fabulous is based on a single sketch from Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders who were, then, the only female sketch double act on TV. (French appeared in only one episode of Ab Fab, and instead graduated to The Vicar of Dibley, a more genial — though equally self-deceptive — fantasy.) 

Hmmmm. To my mind, The Vicar of Dibly simply added to the downward trajectory of the the BBC's attitude to religion. Colonel Blimp meets The C of E ArchBish o' Canturbury.

The running gag, and it is as old as Plautus is: a mother is parented by her child, who is more mature than she is. This is the original failure of Eddy (Saunders); she cannot look after her own daughter Saffron (Julia Sawalha), who becomes a dour prig. This, then, is what a real mother should be: joyless, and always in the kitchen.

Eddy, who is based upon the Jewish fashion PR Lynne Franks, is a wonderful subject for tragedy; and a complex one for comedy. She is incapable of being happy, because she has no core. She is tossed in the wind, clutching at fads (bum bags, Buddhism).

Eddy is, like Franks was, rich and successful — Franks ran her own business when few women did — but you never see that on screen; you never see Eddy doing anything functional. You see only the chaos that she lives in; the fear she has of herself; the self-disgust that is the comic engine of Ab Fab. Eddy loathes her body — its bumps, its excrescences, its leaks — with a terror and commitment which, while no doubt familiar to female viewers who turn to the Daily Mail for similar torment, is pitiless. And this is why Ab Fab was always a sketch and never a great situational comedy — Eddy is the butt of the joke. Always. 

Unless it is Patsy.

Eddy, you see, is the functional one in Absolutely Fabulous; the enabler. The other one is Patsy (Joanna Lumley), a woman whose physical beauty initially disguises (and I imagine makes palatable for an audience, unless the producers thought it hilarious to feature a drunk who also looks like Joanna Lumley) what I can only think is the cruellest and most accurate portrait of alcoholism I have seen in popular culture. Patsy gets drunk. No — that is wrong. Patsy is always drunk. Patsy falls over. Patsy wets herself. Patsy sets herself on fire.

All this is done without nuance, without wit and without shame. Patsy Stone does not belong in comedy. Mock the people who mock her, maybe. That could be comedy. This is something else. This is the stocks.

Jennifer Saunders has said that Ab Fab is really a comedy about friendship, which I imagine sits ill with Lynne Franks, who was once, apparently, her friend. The truth, I suspect, is sadder and, again, as old as Plautus: the BBC comedy department wanted a story about women who loathe themselves, and Saunders obliged.

Come on Tanya. Why can't you just say they look nice. 

Need a drink? Or three? 

Pax.

The Elegant and the Beautiful - aircraft, that is

It was a quiet morning when my friend James came in and dumped a tube of caulking stuff on the bar. "Bloody leaks" he said. "I've been trying to find and fill in where the water is coming in.". James is building a boat. Hand crafted. I wish him well. He is a sailor  - in his mind - although landed for quite a while now. He has dreams. I am waiting for him to say  "I am a sailor in a landlubbers body". Lord help us if he suddenly wants to be a lady sailor.

" So", he said as I pulled him a refreshing pint of the amber fluid, "I need a bit of balance. What would you think are the five most elegant /beautiful/ whatever aircraft designs ever". Well that got me thinking, I can tell you. There is barely one made since Montgolfier that I have not wanted to have a go in. I just love them all. 

There have been so many, and of course the first and easiest to mind was the Spitfire, but I half-think he was expecting that one so I didn't say it. So I gave him five as I tidied the bottles and wiped the tables.

1. The Cat. I am not particulalry a cat person but The Cat, the Catalina PBY is to me just a dream machine. It is over 80 years old now and few of its type have ever come close.

The Cat is very old now but there are examples still lovingly restored, maintained and flying. The side 'bay' windows  were gun ports. Some restored ones have uprated turbo-prop engines and there is at least one with four engines.  Properly fitted out, it would make a fine Gentlemen's Flying Residence. 

It was designed well before WW2, saw sterling srvice in the Pacific and even in British waters, and continued serving long after.

Would I have one? Oh yes. My island is perfectly suited with bays and lakes and sheltered harbours. It would fit in well.

2. I have to put the Hunter at #2. The Hunter is  very much a 'female' plane. All aircraft are spoken of as 'she' but some, like the Hunter are curvey and smooth and just look girly: Privately owned ones are now surprisingly plentiful. 

 On some mid to later models the guns needed a way of stopping ejected shellcases hitting the fuselage so collection was effected in the 'Sabrinas' which protruded below and named after a 50's 60's pin-up girl of that name. 

That one is called 'Miss Demeanour'. It always turns heads. And she not only looks good but has a sound, the 'blue note'.

 3. The Vulcan is almost unique in its delta design. Designed as the main 'Nuclear Deterrant' for the RAF (along with the Valiant and the Victor - hmmm. now there was a unique design), the only 'hot' action it saw was against the Argentinians in the Falkland Isles. 

The Americans wanted one to study when they were designing the Space Shuttle but they were refused in a fit of pique after one was shot down over Maryland by an Air National Guard fighter whilst on exercise - at the American's request - testing their radar defences. There are no flying examples since earlier this year, to Britain's great shame.

It is to Britain's shame that successive Governments have failed to provide the wherewithall to keep, maintain and fly regularly every type of fighting plane made in Britain since WW2.  We don't even have a flying Buccaneer. I would have included a Bucc in this list but even I have to say it is far from elegant as you can get It is a Brute. 

The Vulcan is Loved. The British public knows what it likes even when what it likes is tatt. This aircraft is pure Taste though. And noise.

4. It is to a civilian we next turn. The Icon A5 is possibly the most beautiful little plane ever designed. It may take another generation before a more thought-through design comes along. 

Meanwhile there will be 'copies'. 

Amphibious and for the general (sports) aviation fraternity, its cockpit (for two)

looks more like a sports car. It is a 'sports' plane for enjoyment rather than long travel. The wings swivel and fold back for towing behind a car.

The design concept was initiated by a pilot who used to fly the next on my list. He saw the niche created by a new 'sports' licence for limited performance planes that 'everymen' could afford to buy. He also saw the opportunity for a water craft. 
Combining several features not scoped before or together, the A5 is just a stunning machine. And sheer fun.

Ond on to the plane flown by the boss of the Icon Co. The F16. This is the modern Hunter equivalent. Just as widely used by many air forces, it is relatively cheap for a fighter but 'looks' just how a modern fighter should look. Fast, sleek, fit for purpose.

It goes like a bat out of hell and, befitting its ascribed gender, there are even squadrons of them flown by lady pilots.  IF this is a female aircraft, it is the sort you might want to steer clear of. She has curves but a lot of sharp edges and plenty of pointy bits too. And she is a right show-off.

"Well there you are", I said to James. "Make of it as you will". I pulled another pint for the lad.

"I might put that on at Nourishing Obscurity", he said.

And so he did: http://www.nourishingobscurity.com/2016/08/amfortass-favourite-planes/

I didn't bore him with the plane I would have as my personal battle-steed. (see it the top, right wall). There is always a place for an ugly girl if she behaves well and treats you aright. So the Bucc she is. Built like a brick bog. Everyone who flew it said, the only replacement for a Bucc is another Bucc. 

And another I would have in my hangar for personal, fun use, is the Gnat. Of course. It was Perfect.  For me, at any rate. A Beautiful Lady.

Pax.

Twice a Knight

There are few chaps who can say they have been Knighted twice, but here is one standing behind the bar having a celebratory swifty with the cheering customers. Yes, it has been a little while in the planning but tonight I was inducted into an Order of Knights.  Again.

It has been many years since I hung my old armour on the wall, afixed my Lance to the wall above the bar, stowed my sword just beneath the bar top (never know when it may be needed) and packed away my chain mail in tissue paper. Out they all came again and do you know what?.... they have shrunk ! 

Here in the deep south of this beautiful island there is a small garrison, surrounded on all sides by Hillary's Village, where a group of old Knights gather to pray and prepare for combat. Think of the Alamo, you American cousins. We stand no chance at all against the onslaughts of the wicked and foul, but by the Lord Harry we are gearing up to ride onto the field.

Yes, I know. One could easily say that the Order is hard-pressed if it has to conscript knackered old shytes whose days of battle were long ago. But we live in dire times.

I am pleased to announce that I am now a 

Knight of the Order of the Southern Cross.

 I don't get to wear my black armour with the kingly gold and silver bits very often and I have sent it off to the balcksmith to be 'let out' a bit. But I did get to stand in my Tavern Keeper's apron before my fellows, pledge my allegience and swear my Oath. They let me off the slap around the face due to my obvious bearing and personal presence! 

The Order was formed in 1919 and remained secret for many years. Back then there was considerable discrimination against Catholics in Oz and we did not have an Anti-Discrimination Commissioner. Not that the current ones do anything to aid sound chaps.  They are on the side of the foul.  We had to fight Masons back then, and their influence on the government. Catholic youth suffered.  It was common for companies hiring employees to say 

"NO Catholics".

We fought and we won. Nowadays it is not so secretive but nevertheless the Order does not shout its presence about. If it is known at all it is for owning and running the third largest Aged Care organisation in the Nation. That was a battle too. Not quite so opposed but a challenge nonetheless.

It is barely understood these days that Knights, back in the day of the Knights in general, were all Catholic. Those days were before the 'reformation'. After that, secular Kings usurped the role of Knighthood induction. 

Knights were not always good men. Every man a sinner and some on the way to sainthood. Today we take only sound fellows. Like me, it seems. 

I had three days of Masses and Communion and no end of Rosaries said to prepare my soul for this Honour and this Duty. I have washed the floor of the crypt with tears for my sins.  Pray for me.

I am Commissioned to take this garrison to Battle as soon as we get up to strength. There is a war going on and we are once again called.

The drinks are on the house and the taps are flowing. Do not be concerned that the Tavern will not be properly manned.

Pax.

What Does Wales Sound Like?

Ahh, yes. Good question. Choirs, gutteral tongue or a high-pitched wailing you can hear 50 leagues away underwater? 

Nope, neither. Its the sound of Freedom, as we say.

Take some hills and valleys, the promise of a sunny day with the fog lifting, and some bad boys out to 'get'em'. That duggaduggadugga ain't gunfire but shutters.

Just lie back in your chair with a fine Ale, and watch them go by.

They are in the 'Mach Loop' low-flying area (LFA).

About those tight turns around mountains and cliffs: those who prefer the sea for their jollies also like to see high-speed turns.  

 That should impress a few whales.

Pax

American Exceptionalism

Throughout History there have been countries and individual leaders who have considered themselves 'Exceptional'.  They have tried to change the world to better reflect their image of themselves. 

In our age it is America's turn in the barrel. For being in the barrel is where the self-accolade of 'Exceptional' most often leads.

Japan in recent history considered its 'race' superior to all others. A massive defeat after its attempt to impose that self-declared superiority, saw the Emperor forced to broadcast that he was not in fact the son of a god and the japanese were not any higher up the food chain than anyone else.

The Japanese had competion from Germany at the time. Supposed allies, the Arayan 'Volk' were convinced by a murderous meglomaniac that they should rule the world, because, well, they were blond and had blue eyes. and could run entire phrases together into one word.  A nation of shopkeepers stood alone against that idea until they could garner some help from others.

Both Japan and Germany had ideas about a New World Order. Hah !

( As an aside, and not many people know this, Japan and Germany had a plan for Oz. As this great brown land is closer to Japan and they had a Rising Sun on their flag, the Emporor was going to get the Sunshine State and all the rest attached on the Big Island, and Germany would take Tasmania for their bit of Southern Hemisphere Reich.)

We could not muster that sized crowd in Tas even today !!

One can continue going back and back, taking in even the more benign Empires like the British who ruled a third of the world at one point and considered that there were just two sorts of people: Englishmen and Furriners.

Some, older Englishmen still harbour a sense of exceptionalism. I put my hand up. People revolt ! 

Now the world is again facing a revolt. It is both from outside the claimant nation and within.

Wiki describes American Exceptionalism thus: 

American exceptionalism is one of three related ideas. The first is that the history of the United States is inherently different from other nations. In this view, American exceptionalism stems from its emergence from the American Revolution, thereby becoming what political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset called "the first new nation" and developing a uniquely American ideology, "Americanism", based on liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, republicanism, democracy and laissez-faire for business. This ideology itself is often referred to as "American exceptionalism." 

Second is the idea that the US has a unique mission to transform the world. As Abraham Lincoln put it in the Gettysburg address(1863), Americans have a duty to see that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." 

Third is the sense that its history and its mission give the United States a superiority over other nations.

Although the term does not necessarily imply superiority, many neoconservative and other American conservative writers have promoted its use in that sense. To them, the U.S. is like the biblical "City upon a Hill" —a phrase evoked by British colonists to North America as early as 1630—and exempt from historical forces that have affected other countries. The theme of exceptionalism is a common target for attacks from liberals and groups that adhere to Democrat ideologies.

Hmmmm. I think Wiki is affected by editors from the liberal persuasion.  

The theory of the exceptionalism of the U.S. can be traced to Alexis de Tocqueville, the first writer to describe the country as "exceptional" in 1831 and 1840.

American uniqueness as a nation has been proposed by many writers. Historian Dorothy Ross discusses three major currents in the emerging post-war thinking around American exceptionalism:

1. Protestant American Christians believed American progress would lead to the Christian Millennium.

2. American writers also linked their history to the development of liberty in Anglo-Saxon England, even back to the traditions of the Teutonic tribes that conquered the western Roman empire.

3. Other American writers looked to the "millennial newness" of America, seeing the mass of "virgin land" promised an escape from the decay that befell earlier republics.

Riding with the rest of the nation on the wave of post-depression prosperity, academics in the U.S. redefined American exceptionalism as befitting a nation that was to lead the world, with the newer United States ready to serve the older European societies as an example of a country liberated and free from Marxist and socialist destinies. More recently, socialists and other writers have tried to discover or describe this exceptionalism of the U.S. within and outside its borders.

Does anyone see what is going wrong here? 

Yes, there are some exceptionally fine people in America, but....

I caught a speech recently by a much admired fellow; one who could lead a good nation to better times. But even he has a major flaw which reflects his nation's most momentous flaw.

Listen for yourself. It is a fine speech and this is but extracts. The very first part clearly shows the problem.

Protest is in America's DNA. America was started by Protestants. They consciously decided and made 'real' their ideals that a nation could be built on Laws. 

Man's Laws. 

Under God, of course. They tried hard to have it both ways. But once on that slippery slope......

They actually did a pretty good job of outlining the main features in their Declaration of Independence and their Constitution.  First Class documents. Expressions of noble intent. 

How is that going, by the way? 

In recent years that 'Law' is breaking down. Even the Law-Makers don't obey the laws they make. Few in power even follow the Constitution. Another same old  'New World Order' is floated in high places and the same old enemy of man struts the world stage.

America has forgotten. 

America did not get off to a good start. Now it IS a Power and Principality; it HAS Spiritual Wickedness in its High Places.

The Bible that the good man Trey Gowdy quotes was not written by his Protestant Pastor, no matter how fine a chap he, too, might be. It was put together by Catholics; the very Church that the Protestants left to start their 'new world'.  Trey and his pastor would not have it at all were it not for the original Christian Church they protest against.

He decries the diminishing of Christian Religion and the rise of Gummunt, yet fails to see the inevitability when you start a nation by protesting against the one  (Church)and building up the other (Gummunt).  Hello!! 

And then there is the very success of the age. "The business of America is business", said some President, and it does do it well. Technology and 'innovation' have become players in the war on the Soul. As Joel Kotkin observed:

"Now from San Francisco to Washington and Brussels, the tech oligarchs are something less attractive: a fearsome threat whose ambitions to control our future politics, media, and commerce seem without limits. 

Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix, and Uber may be improving our lives in many ways, but they also are disrupting old industries—and the lives of the many thousands of people employed by them. And as the tech boom has expanded, these individuals and companies have gathered economic resources to match their ambitions.

And as their fortunes have ballooned, so has their hubris. They see themselves as somehow better than the scum of Wall Street or the trolls in Houston or Detroit. It’s their intelligence, not just their money, that makes them the proper global rulers. [in their own view]. In their contempt for the less cognitively gifted, they are waging what The Atlantic recently called “a war on stupid people.”

Trey Gowdy is not alone in being an outstanding American, a good man, honest, intelligent and worried. There are many fine American people of any and all religions and none. They go about their lives with honesty and sound Christian values. They are confronted by others, not so nice, with 'American values', whatever they are. And no values at all except perhaps selfish, narcissitic, hubristic ones. Or marxist, feminist, criminalist and a host of other -ists' substitutes for values. The former good people, some of whom I know well, are becoming outnumbered by the latter not-good people. What is a really big worry is that many of those not-good people actually think they are Christians. 

Some, astonishingly, call themselves Catholics !!

"Americans" are no longer exceptional except in their own myth. 

Meanwhile there is an 'Exception' that the protestants do not even recognise.

Today I was up early to go to go down to the Crypt for a special Mass. It is the

 Feast Day of The Assumption of Mary.

Mary was the exception we need to acknowledge. One woman, chosen. 

You and I are not exceptional. Our nations are not exceptional. Thinking otherwise and saying so leads to HUBRIS. It is poisonous.

Mary had no hubris. She willingly gave herself as the 'Handmaiden to the Lord'.
Her humility is what America and all 'exceptional' nations lacks.

"Hail Mary, Full of Grace, the Lord is with thee. 
Blessed art thou among women and 
blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus."

Trey's bible tells us that Mary is and was the only human being born perfect enough to be the Mother of Christ. She will be the one to crush the serpent's head and it is she that ushers in the only New World Order that will last forever. She will stand, with the moon under foot, stars around her head. (One may, if one wishes, see this as highly symbolic being as Islam has the moon as its symbol. She will crush that Satanic creed).

She is in Heaven having been taken up there, Body and Soul. No other being but Christ himself went bodily to Heaven. Christ 'Ascended' of His own Power: Mary was taken up by His power too. 

THAT is Exceptional.

Just as He will come again, He will bring His Mother with Him. Our Mother.

So today we Hail Mary.

Drink to her.

Pax.

Let's You and Him Fight.

Last month I reported on some of my own activities beyond the Tavern, concerning friends in strife. Since then another friend has run into bother of a similar sort and she asked me to give my thoughts.  I was happy to oblige, of course. 

What was that bother, that strife? The same abortion issue. My friend Kathy has been arrested for simply wanting to help women. It is not called that by the 'authorities' of course. It is called 'Intimidation'.  Or 'Harassment'. I say, NO. It is about love, respect and Life itself.

Pregnant women who are under strain need help. They need that person who is willing to step up and offer a helping hand. It is often women standing praying and handing leaflets out, and offering an empathetic and comforting shoulder. Men can too, and do. The Police are set upon them ! Half of the babies and all of the expectant mothers are women. The babies are killed and the mothers suffer, often for years after. Feminists care not. The greens care not. Lefties in general care not.

They are dysfunctional.

Here is what I wrote for Kathy.  You can find it, stripped down - without illustrations -  at: 

http://thefreedomsproject.com/38-2/

and it includes parts I have said here before.

http://parzivalshorse.blogspot.com.au/2016/07/martyrdom.html

So, onward.

Let’s You and Him Fight

There is a ‘game’ played by dysfunctional people and described by psychiatrist Dr Eric Berne in his capital little book, “The Games People Play”. People often disagree with one another. A protagonist with an ax to grind and a lack of moral, civil or mental sufficiency, sets her or his victim up against external overwhelming forces.

They may disagree with the victim and have no cogent or legitimate argument so they call in the police with their ‘authority’ and a gun on their hips, and the Courts that have the full panoply of process and procedure, backed by Laws made by the complainant’s friends.

The Laws, the legislators, the police become complicit in gross acts of indecency and bring that Law and authority and panoply into disrespect when they do not punish such dysfunctional protagonists.

And they are complicit.

Chapter 5 Section 109. of the Constitution of Australia.

Inconsistency of laws

When a law of a State is inconsistent with a law of the Commonwealth, the latter shall prevail, and the former shall, to the extent of the inconsistency, be invalid.

Section 116 of the Constitution of Australia 

Commonwealth not to legislate in respect of religion

Section 116 precludes the Commonwealth of Australia (i.e., the federal parliament) from making laws for establishing any religion, imposing any religious observance, or prohibiting the free exercise of any religion.

In the Village that it takes to raise a child, we continue on our way in similar fashion to the Muslims, offering innocents as martyrs to Satan. In Oz alone 100,000 innocents every year. 100,000 babies in the womb, murdered. Every year.

It is the Village mentality that is destroying the sanctity of life, the family, marriage, indeed, Virtue. We need to take a stand.

Yes, yes, I am an old Knight and Tavern Keeper and I should have my old heart filled with sympathy for the mothers whose lifestyle would be cramped by disposable nappies. And I AM sympathetic to them and acknowledge the demands of parenthood. I am a parent myself.

But frankly the very life, let alone lifestyle of the babies is more important. They have a higher and more pressing priority. Life.

And that took me out of the tavern the other week, twice.

First to my weekly vigil outside the abortuary in Hobart where I say a Rosary. This is an exercise of my religious freedom of expression as mentioned in Section 116 of our Constitution. I say the Rosary not only for the souls of those babies, but for Christ to ease the sufferings of the mothers who will suffer for years after their abortions;

and for the fathers who are denied a voice in the matter and yet are denounced; and for the women who ‘nurse’ in that charnal house, holding the hands of the women they invade and abuse, and cart away the pieces of the little human beings that were, up ’til then where they should naturally and rightly be; and for the doctor who flies in from Melbourne to kill babies, with the aid and protection of our Government’s wicked laws that punish any objection.

The second outing took me to the Court where my friends were arraigned in charges of being horrible people and breaking the law. These were martyrs , albeit not assassinated or murdered. Yet.

Graham Preston and Ray and little Penny are my friends. I say ‘little’ as she is very tiny middle-aged woman and almost blind. They were arrested last year and their ‘case’ has dragged through the court costing them much money – and the taxpayer too.

The ‘complainant’ that secured the arrest of these malcontents who want to draw attention to the awful Law of the Land and to God’s Liberating Law, lied under oath in the court and broke the same law herself by recording the conversation she had with Graham.

That Law is the mendaciously named ‘Reproductive Health Act’ which ensures the invasion of a mother’s reproductive organs and the killing of babies, protected from any voice raised in caution, or assistance for the mother and baby. Or indeed, praying for them. It also prohibits any recording within 150 metres of the building wherein babies are slaughtered.

The complainant lied. Perjury; playing ‘Let’s you and him fight’; perverting the course of justice.

The Magistrate, unfortunately, cared not a jot. Such is the justice in our Courts for anyone who dares seek justice for the innocent. It just isn’t.

You can see from the picture below that Graham’s signs were insulting, demeaning and Intimidating. Indeed, the Prosecutor described the picture of a healthy baby in the womb – similar to ones you will find any medical textbook on the subject – as “GRAPHIC !!”.

Graham's 'Insulting', 'Intimidating', demeaning' signs as he 'harasses' people driving past

Shock, horror.

Of course it is graphic. Photographic. Of something natural and good.

But here, far worse it seems than the nightly ‘graphic’ depictions of bombs and bodies in the street, on our TV screens. It frightened, intimidated, insulted.

This is what Graham had to say as I pulled him a refreshing pint afterward.

""Well the verdict has been given and the three of us were found guilty.

The magistrate (Catherine Rheinburger) came in and simply said that she had put her reasons for the verdict in writing (23pages) and referred us to the last page which concluded with “For all the above reasons I am satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt of all the charges against Mr Preston and Mr and Mrs Stallard.”

Then there was some discussion about sentencing. My record of convictions was produced and as well as the other actual convictions I have it also had [sic] the last time I was in court, claiming I was hit with $750 costs when in fact we won that case! The magistrate sort of believed that was an error and it probably didn’t matter much as there were plenty of other convictions to look at.

Ray and Penny had no police record. She went out for about 20 minutes and on return said that Ray and Penny would each have a 12 month good behaviour bond but no conviction recorded.

For myself I received a $3000 fine to be paid within 28 days!

The short time period doesn’t matter much though as on principle I don’t intend to pay as I do not believe we have acted wrongly. The magistrate did not say anything about what jail time there would be for not paying.

Hopefully this will now go on to appeal in the High Court and if we win there the fine will not need to be paid anyway. Christopher (the Lawyer acing partly Pro-Bono) has taken away the decision to examine it closely but we are keen to go on with the appeal. This means unfortunately that we need to try to raise some more funds to help cover further legal costs. If anyone has some bright ideas as to how to do that we would like to hear them as the crowdfunding effort did not raise a great deal.

Apart from nearly freezing this morning I did not have any particular problems when I was on the streets. I will be back out there tomorrow for a couple of hours before heading back to Brisbane. There were quite a few media there today and I did an interview after the verdict was given.

Thanks again for your support and hopefully we can help people see how important it is that we win this free speech case.""

The maximum fine in Tasmania, by the way, is $9750 and a year in jail, and Graham has already spent over 800 days and nights in jail over the past few years for his belief in Life and Freedom of religious expression.

I watched the journalists interview Graham and mostly they were polite, except for one. The ABC sent their award-winning Court and Crime reporter. She scowled. She had sat in the court scowling too. No chance of an impartial report from her, thought I, and this was confirmed a few minutes later when I spoke to her.

She brushed aside my questions as to whether she would be reporting about the main prosecution witness lying on oath. No word on that has appeared. I asked her what she thought of the charges over all and she was scathing.

I asked if she was going to report the Prosecutors’ description of a photograph as ‘graphic’. Hah! No chance. I pointed out that the photograph was of a healthy baby in the womb. Her response astounded….

“It is as intimidating as holding up a picture of Hitler outside a place where Jews congregate.”

The mind reels at such bias, but what do we expect in our taxpayer-funded media.

Independent? Impartial? Intent on maliciously ‘reporting’ in the worst possible light.

The Act passed into Tasmanian Law to great cheers. It has become a ‘model’ for other States to copy and ‘enhance’. Victoria and the ACT have followed.There is plenty of scope for being a martyr these days. Innocents will suffer.

Kathy Clubb has been arrested in Victoria and now faces the Magistrate. I have little doubt that the Court will do as the Tasmanian Court did. In the ACT an ex-Brigadier, a gallant man who served his country, did as I do. He said his Rosary. Silently. Discreetly.

He was arrested for bowing his head as he silently thought the name ‘Jesus’.

That is how the Policeman with his gun knew Molloy was ‘protesting’ intimidating, harassing and demeaning poor soon-to-be-ex-mothers.

$750 fine.

The lawyers are going to have to get the guts and strength of the people they are representing. The Constitution is clear. In Hobart it was mentioned only briefly. It needs to be shouted out.

An 'Intimidating' Weapon ? 
You can be arrested.

The States play the same dysfunctional game. They know that the laws they pass conflict with the Constitution, but they make YOU take a case to Court – at your huge expense of course.

One or two people saying the Rosary outside an Abortuary may well be recognised by our Heavenly Advocate, Our Lady, but the public are not going to wake up and the draconian anti-Christian Laws will continue to be rolled out across Australia until a much larger group of people all stand and say the Rosary.

50 should bring the TV news crews to the Court.

100 would bring International TV News crews.

Take courage.

Organise.

Pray.

Pax.