Wednesday, January 14, 2015

The pond is baaack, as Jack Nicholson once famously said, while swinging his axe at everything in sight ...

(Above: at least being away, there's been Pope cartoons to catch up on, and more Pope here).

In a way, the pond was grateful for the break.

There were so many loons on parade, all dressed in their finery, up to the hilt, and as bold as brass, and as many other mixed metaphors as you like, strutting and cawing in inimitable loon style, that the pond would likely have had a meltdown worse than the assorted technical malfunctions it faced.

Of all the mirthful explosions, surely the humour arising from the Faux Noise Birminglamb scandal (like another wag, the pond fears using the word 'ham' for fear of offending) was amongst the best.

The Daily "we loved Hitler" Quail gathered quite a collection here, though a kindly pond reader also provided a link to FoxnewsFacts where the Oswald Mosley-loving Flail found much of its copy.

It seems the prime Fox loon who featured in the Birminglamb scandal has decided to donate five hundred quid to the local Birminglamb kids' hospital as a way of getting out of jail, not understanding that the real prison he's in is his mind.

A prison he decided to expose on Faux Noise, like so many other Fox blondes ... yes, the pond also missed the chance to note the brain dead blonde Fox Supreme Court news reporter Shannon Bream coming out with ....

“If we know they were speaking unaccented French and they had ski masks on, do we even know what colour they were or what the tone of their skin was?" (here, and in many other locations near you).

And then there was that twittering twit, Chairman Rupert, deciding that collective guilt was the best way forward (as did Paul 'magic water man' Sheehan), seemingly unaware that collective guilt was a favourite trick of Hitler's mob (oh okay, while offline the Godwin's Law swear jar has been languishing).

That led to any number of tweets pointing out, in an economical number of characters, the absurdity in Murdoch's logic, led by J. K. Rowling and others.

Yes, only now is the pond catching up on the fun:


(Adam Hills here, ABC report here).

You see, the pond hung tough during the great outage of 2015. The idea of buying a tree killer actual hard copy newspaper was simply too preposterous, and instead the pond discovered/was reminded that free to air television actually existed.

As a result, the pond discovered that Mr T is still alive and will turn up on a multi-channel this very year, proving that when Marx allegedly scribbled religion was the opiate of the people, he didn't know free to air television was coming.

During the pond's sojourn amongst the blondes (hey, don't blame the pond, blame the executives who do the casting), the pond caught up with a reporter on ABC News 24 discussing recent 'random 'terrorist activities, while discussing a carefully targeted attack on a bunch of French cartoonists and an assault on people in a Jewish supermarket. It brought a whole new meaning to, and understanding of the word 'random' ...

Like many other of the pond's random encounters with loonish people ...

As when the pond caught up with Clint Eastwood's version of American Sniper.

The pond suspected the film was deeply dishonest, a classic and careful fudge designed not to alienate, so that gormless folk like The New Yorker's David Denby could write a balanced review of the "it's a war movie that's anti-war" kind (as you can discover here).

You know, really deep questions. Like the sniper carries a copy of the Bible acquired in his youth, but does he ever read it?

The film fudges many things, including sniper Kyle's death scene, and his relationship to God and the Bible, and to conducting crusades, and it was only when the pond was back on the intertubes that reports like Laura Miller's pre-film look at Kyle in Death of an American sniper could be accessed.

In Kyle’s version of the Iraq War, the parties consisted of Americans, who are good by virtue of being American, and fanatic Muslims whose “savage, despicable evil” led them to want to kill Americans simply because they are Christians. (Later in his service, Kyle had a blood-red “crusader cross” tattooed on his arm.) While he describes patriotism as the guiding force in his life, Kyle’s patriotism is of the visceral, Toby Keith variety. It consists of loving America — specifically, being overwhelmed emotionally by the National Anthem and flag, and filled with a desire to dedicate one’s life to such symbols — rather than a commitment to tangible democratic principles, such as civilian oversight of the military. That Iraqis, too, might have been patriotically motivated to defend their own country against foreign invaders like himself does not appear to have ever crossed Kyle’s mind.

And so on, but the chances of cinemas being picketed for showing a film celebrating legal killing in service of war criminals Bush and Cheny is remote. (Lindy West tried to grapple with the film in The Graudian here).

But it did remind the pond that, just as the Americans excel at world championships for baseball, and football, and other sports like hot dog eating, when seen in a world context, their heroes can seem like just fair average killing machines, and it was Simo Häyhä, a Finnish soldier up against the Russians, who showed how to snipe (Greg Hunt him here).

And the movie also added a piquant sort of sauce to this sort of tripe, as featured in today's Oz:

Provided civilisation's got to hand a nifty M2010 ESR, and drones that can drop in on a wedding party from a distance, and any refuse can then be swept up and locked in a prison and given a decent going over with procedures once judged as torture in long forgotten days when it might have been possible to talk of the forces of civilisation ... before conservatives forgot what it meant to be conservative, and what it means to be civilised ... and whether the new Roman imperium conducting colonial adventures is the way to civilisation ... and whether shooting the shit and bombing the shit out of countries can lead them to civilisation ...

Phew, time for a catch-up on a Pope cartoon:


Yes, that'll do nicely for American sniper Daniel Pipes.

And then there were all the domestic stories that passed the pond by.

The Abbott government has begun its successful long march to the dismantling of bulk billing and Medicare and free health care, at the moment aided and abetted by the Labor party, which has refused to even manage to squeak like a mouse.

And in New South Wales,  Labor's Luke Foley's first major policy announcement was to make a bold move for his gambling mates and the racehorse industry, as if the legal killing of horses deserved even more help (Foley downplays tax proposal criticism).

If the anti-gay marriage Foley keeps going, it's likely that the Labor party will lose in the new seat of Newtown, but never mind, whatever happens, Foley and his Labor gang long ago lost the pond ...

A tax break for the racing industry as your first bold, brave policy initiative? Why even Rambling Oldman isn't that dumb ...

Even more amazing, on return, the pond couldn't begin to count the number of people complaining, at inordinate length and in remarkable detail, how their right to abuse Islamics and sundry other sects had been limited and hamstrung and hampered, while at the same time explaining at inordinate length and in remarkable detail how Islamic fundamentalists were fucked, while failing to note that sundry other fundamentalists, like Chairman Rupert, angry Sydney Anglicans, stupid Scientologists, fundie Catholics and Hindus and Jews, were also fucked in the head ...

Yes, you had to read Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Newspaper Edits Female World Leaders Out of Charlie Hebdo March to believe it ...

It seems Dame Slap in the lizard Oz today is just the latest in this conga line of whining clowns:


Uh huh. Yes, except if's Chris Kenny doing over the ABC, or any of the other conservative commentariat getting on their high horses and exuding outrage at being insulted and offended ...

What twaddle. Dame Slap is only interested in certain sorts of rights to insult and offend, much like that prize twat David Brooks, who truly excelled himself, early in the saga, with an epic bout of pompous portentousness:

Healthy societies, in other words, don’t suppress speech, but they do grant different standing to different sorts of people. Wise and considerate scholars are heard with high respect. Satirists are heard with bemused semirespect. Racists and anti-Semites are heard through a filter of opprobrium and disrespect. People who want to be heard attentively have to earn it through their conduct. 
The massacre at Charlie Hebdo should be an occasion to end speech codes. And it should remind us to be legally tolerant toward offensive voices, even as we are socially discriminating. (I Am Not Charlie Hebdo).

Oh just fuck off, or at least go away ... and take your socially discriminating cheese and cucumber sandwich with you ...

But of course the reward for twaddle is getting the hits, and Brooks did well over a thousand, so making sense is a secondary matter. Just score those outraged hits, and remember lard on the smarmy condescension like peanut butter and you're on your way ...

Yes, as a result of the great pond brown out of 2015, the pond missed all sorts of oddities and peculiarities, some of the most nauseating and hypocritical kind, like Vlad 'the impaler' Putin sending the Russian foreign minister to march in Paris.

Thank the long absent lord someone paused to note that Russia places 148 out of 180 in its PFI rating (Marching in Paris, yet blocking freedom of speech at home).

Vlad and his gang of gay-bashing thugs sent a tremor though the pond's TG friends by banning transgender people from getting a driver's licence in Russia (here and elsewhere). As a result, one of them thoughtfully sent the pond a link to that useful fool and facilitator and lickspittle forelock tugger Tom Switzer urging Appease Putin and avert a second Cold War (forced video at end of link).

Presumably Tom can keep his driver's license, so everything's hunky dory in the world ...

What else? Well naturally the pond was also given a link to Cardinal Raymond Burke blames 'radical feminists' for paedophile priests.

Is there nothing that radical feminists can't manage? No doubt radical feminists can also be blamed for Vlad the impaler and Chairman Rupert ...

Yes, all this and more, as the Rambling Oldman's campaign rolled out in the deep north, and the Currish Snail swung into action.



Of course the Currish Snail would like the election to be about nothing, and to blame Labor and to warn of assorted eccentrics, seeming incapable of realising that warning against eccentrics is a warning to take care when approaching the entire population of Queensland. Oh they'll get the government they deserve, no doubt about it.

But at least it allows the pond to conclude with the latest Pope cartoon, and as always, more Pope here. What an uncanny resemblance:



20 comments:

  1. So good to have you back Dot.

    About this failure of some people like Kyle in American Sniper to be able to understand what may be motivating other people.

    This is because they lack 'Theory of Mind'. Wiki says about ToM: "Being able to attribute mental states to others and understanding them as causes of behavior implies, in part, that one must be able to conceive of the mind as a "generator of representations".

    If a person does not have a complete theory of mind it may be a sign of cognitive or developmental impairment."

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Similarly, a lot of people in the West have an inability to understand what might motivate Islamist extremists.

      Seems it's better to put your hands over your ears and keep saying "thy hate us for what we are, not what we do"

      Delete
  2. I'm going to Preston market today (or tomorrow), DP, and seek your advice on suitable attire. I can put a cartoon of a generic bearded bloke in a turban on the t-shirt with "I luv Mo", or a pic of Brandis captioned "Bigotry rulez!". Which is more likely to get me arrested, or bashed? The alternative is to hawk a barrowload of chook poop, labelled "Fresh from Holt St".

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. All three are exemplary suggestions Uncut Cash, though an actual photo of Mo McCackie would have more Martin Sharp credibility, while wrapping the chook poop like fush and chups wrappings in nicely shaped pages of the lizard Oz and the Daily Terror and handing the magic stuff out as samples would show a tender community concern for tomato growers of the world.

      Delete
  3. Talking of Fox loons - Jeanine Pirro must surely take the biscuit.

    http://www.vox.com/2015/1/12/7533159/fox-news-pirro-rant?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=vox&utm_content=share:article:top

    Apart from advocating a policy of 'killing them all' she thinks Pakistan is an Arab country and inviting Muslims to the US 'national cathedral' is a disgrace, Sharia law is about to be forced on the unsuspecting yanks, and interfaith dialogue is an abominable plot to muslimify us.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. "Our job is to arm those Muslims to the teeth, give them everything they need to take out these Islamic fanatics, let them do the job, and when they do, we need to simply ... look the other way."

      Scary stuff Anon. She forgot to add "and hopefully they will all kill each other" - isn't that what she meant?

      Delete
    2. Isn't that what happened in Afganistan in the 1980s?

      Delete
  4. "Healthy societies, in other words, don’t suppress speech, but they do grant different standing to different sorts of people. Wise and considerate scholars are heard with high respect. Satirists are heard with bemused semirespect. Racists and anti-Semites are heard through a filter of opprobrium and disrespect. People who want to be heard attentively have to earn it through their conduct."

    Where do lizard journalists fit in to all this? Are they are subset of "wise and considerate scholars?"

    ReplyDelete
  5. Stop the presses.
    Abbott has been snapped wearing a peachy-pink tie. He wore it to the cricket.
    The hair doesn't seem as slicked down either.
    I thought the New Year would usher in a new line of ties.
    He will wear blue every so often and then not at all. I wonder if the Hawaiian hula girl model will be on display.
    The make-over is on.

    Miss Pitty Pat

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yep , the forehead has had another Botox treatment too, Miss Pitty Pat .
      There's nothing it seems though, to stop the lies that so easily spew from his
      mouth.

      Delete
  6. Welcome back, I have missed my refreshing daily swim in the Loon Pond. As an Australian I collectively take responsibility for your NSW power issues and have had an American Sniper style red tattoo of a pond put on my arm in penance.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Good lord, life is steadying again, welcome back.

    While you were away, Rupert Murdoch's twitter account has hacked by a recaltricant old crank who has been tweeting all sorts of nonsense, yet no-one at News Ltd appears to have taken action.

    This modern world is doing me head in, it really is. Happily, the Coalition have started the year with a fistful of policy fart bubbles that seem to have pissed off all of Australia. Bring it on 2015, we are ready for you!

    ReplyDelete
  8. "...Clint Eastwood's version of American Sniper" - Eastwood! Gawdfuckmerome, what were ya thinkin' Dot? A usanal gopfuck that'll Kill Anything That Moves. in the name of liberty. Taking liberties that is. Imperial liberties like, say, those google fuckers:

    Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems --

    "As the self-described “radical centrist” New York Times columnist Tom Friedman wrote in 1999, sometimes it is not enough to leave the global dominance of American tech corporations to something as mercurial as “the free market”:

    "The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps."

    If anything has changed since those words were written, it is that Silicon Valley has grown restless with that passive role, aspiring instead to adorn the hidden fist like a velvet glove. Writing in 2013, Schmidt (Google Chairman) and Cohen ("the director of Google Ideas, an outfit that describes itself as Google’s in-house “think/do tank.”) stated,

    "What Lockheed Martin was to the twentieth century, technology and cyber-security companies will be to the twenty-first."

    In internal emails Stratfor’s vice president for intelligence, Fred Burton (himself a former State Department security official), wrote:

    Google is getting WH [White House] and State Dept support and air cover. In reality they are doing things the CIA cannot do…

    Google Ideas ... hard core are the arms contractors and career military: active U.S. Cyber Command chieftains, and even the admiral responsible for all U.S. military operations in Latin America from 2006 to 2009. Tying up the package are Jared Cohen and the chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt..

    NSA chief General Keith Alexander wrote to Brin, “Your insights as a key member of the Defense Industrial Base are valuable to ensure ESF’s (Enduring Security Framework) efforts have measurable impact.”

    The Department of Homeland Security defines the Defense Industrial Base as “the worldwide industrial complex that enables research and development, as well as design, production, delivery, and maintenance of military weapons systems, subsystems, and components or parts, to meet U.S. military requirements [emphasis added].” The Defense Industrial Base provides “products and services that are essential to mobilize, deploy, and sustain military operations.”

    ReplyDelete
  9. So good to have you back, DP - and of course this also means getting back some of my favourite DP commenters, like Miss Pitty Pat. But where's Diddy Wrote? Gorgeous Dunny? Dannosaurus? They've become part of the whole joyous package for moi :)
    Mish

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    1. Yes indeed Mish, but the pond endorses anyone or everyone, even Tony Abbott, who treats January as slack bastard month. There are some Australian traditions that are sacred, and the more the Liberal party blathers about noses to the grindstone while pissing off for the break, the more the pond cherishes the month ...

      Delete
  10. From another planet:
    http://www.conservapedia.com/Liberal
    http://www.conservapedia.com/Milton_Friedman

    http://www.conservapedia.com/Liberal_censorship
    http://www.conservapedia.com/Liberalism_and_bestiality
    http://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism_and_bestiality
    http://www.conservapedia.com/Militant_atheism
    http://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism_and_mass_murder
    http://www.conservapedia.com/Moral_failures_of_the_atheist_community
    http://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism_and_rape
    Oh yeah, Brendan O'neill, good one usanals.
    Brendan the contrary atheist knows he has the measure of new atheists on this. What a winner!
    http://www.conservapedia.com/Gun_control
    http://www.conservapedia.com/Irreligion_and_domestic_violence
    http://www.conservapedia.com/Ayn_Rand#Similarities_to_George_Orwell
    http://www.conservapedia.com/Friedrich_Hayek

    Hey there, you Abbott Lieberal fascists,

    For the financial problem: We demand:

    a) A strong progressive tax on capital that will truly expropriate a portion of all wealth.

    b) The seizure of all the possessions of the religious congregations and the abolition of all the bishoprics, which constitute an enormous liability on the Nation and on the privileges of the poor.

    c) The revision of all military contracts and the seizure of 85 percent of the profits therein.

    http://www.conservapedia.com/Category:Nazism
    http://www.conservapedia.com/Nazi_Germany_and_homosexuality
    http://www.conservapedia.com/Adolf_Hitler#Hitler_and_the_Theory_of_Evolution
    http://www.conservapedia.com/Question_evolution!_campaign#The_15_questions_that_evolutionists_cannot_satisfactorily_answer
    http://www.conservapedia.com/Nazi_Germany#Hitler.27s_Table_Talk
    http://www.conservapedia.com/Similarities_between_Communism,_Nazism_and_liberalism
    http://www.conservapedia.com/Fascist#National_Recovery_Administration

    http://www.conservapedia.com/Internet_evangelism

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. http://www.conservapedia.com/Liberal_bias
      http://www.conservapedia.com/Views_on_atheists#Atheism_is_significantly_less_appealing_to_women
      http://www.conservapedia.com/Atheist_Population

      Delete
  11. Some home truths about the house of Saud - who are on about the same level as ISIS when it comes to atrocities, but are widely supported by the west.

    “A hundred billion dollars buys you a lot of silence,”

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-arabias-history-of-hypocrisy-we-choose-to-ignore-9978493.html

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Now Anon don't get the pond started on the Wahhabists of Saud or we could be here all year. Especially if you mention the way Chairman Rupert has sold his business soul to the Wahhabists ... while the empire pretends it's against Islamic fundamentalism. There's something so funny about such endless stupidity that it's deeply entrancing ...

      Delete
    2. Forgot to add, good link, thanks. The more this Saud outrage is pointed out the better ...

      Delete

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