The pond thanks the reader who alerted it to this valuable item, and agrees it might well come in handy, if converted to a reptile reactor control and monitoring system, but hurry, the last the pond noticed there was only a short time remaining to work out how to ship it from Skegness in Lincolnshire …and please make sure you've measured the back yard ...
As for the reptiles, what a dismal crew this day …
The pond avoided the Caterist for fear, like that notorious broken clock, that the pond might agree with him on the matter of Xi and Hong Kong, but Dame Groan looked tempting, what with her fear of pesky furriners, and sure enough, the reptiles agreed, assigning her a lesser cartoonist … not the cult master, but still …
Once Dame Groan gets the bit between her teeth, and gets to talking about pesky, difficult furriners ruining the country, there's no stopping her ...
Let's fact it, Treasury's reputation has taken a severe battering after the JobKeeper costing error?
Dame Groan and the pond clearly read different newspapers, because according to the reptiles, it was something of a triumph, and has kept the national debt safe, and was a remarkable feat all round …but back to those pesky, difficult, tricky furriners ...
Strange. Astute readers will notice that the pond avoided our Adam's standard bleat about regulations ruining everything, but there was a moment when he too turned his attention to pesky, difficult furriners … and the pond couldn't resist including a gobbet ...
The Happy Dragon, fried lice and sweet and sour chicken?
Well they say that a stereotype and a cliché are never far from reptile mind, but what's this, an owner with limited English allowed into the country, and unable to understand that perhaps he shouldn't want to run a sweat shop in the approved reptile manner?
Well, Dame Groan's not having any of that ...
The pond's only excuse for running Dame Groan?
It helps pass the time … and that things could be worse, because we could be living in the United States, which is completely and comprehensively fucked, in no small part thanks to the mighty deeds and works of the Dirty Digger … and naturally that was top of page …
The pond did appreciate being reminded why it wouldn't be voting for Labor at the next election … thanks Joel, dinkum clean Oz coal lover, oi, oi, oi … but on with the US …
Sorry, the line between church and state was eroded back in 2019 when the Supreme Court ruled that a cross could stand on public land (NPR here), but do go on, because the pond has a supply of cartoons to hand, including an infallible Pope …
Sorry, the pond just had to slip that truck in, what with trucks being in the news of late ...
Indeed, and it didn't take long for the cartoons to follow …
As for the church being the place where Presidents have worshipped? We all know where the Donald worships, and he was out worshipping on Memorial Day … getting his exercise by riding a cart, and giving the good old thumbs a solid work out …
Well the pond did warn it had some cartoons handy, and so to another warning ...
Yes, there have been some remarkable events, but why are the reptiles so sensitive? After all, the death of a man has been replayed endlessly, in a way that makes the riots seem like small beer, and besides the Donald has been very helpful ...
How weird did it get?
While the country was in flames, somehow the Donald managed to drag Sleepy Joe into it ...
Actually there's some real domestic terrorism going down, and its leader is …
… but time to wrap up the reporting, because soon Cameron will get on with the interpreting ...
It must be hard to refract Fox News attitudes through a different lens to report US events to Australian readers …
… but Cameron gives it a shot ...
So the Donald is cynically using protests for his own political purposes, and is doing nothing to quell the flames, and it turns out that it's an even better tactic than the ones he'd recently deployed, and was only yesterday being heiled by the dog botherer for?
Well time to wrap up the analysis, and time for our Cameron to see light at the end of the rioting tunnel for the Donald ...
As usual, it was left to the immortal Rowe to follow Cameron's urging and to think again … with more thinking again here …
Ah yes, good old Faux News, but for a bonus, the pond turned not to the usual reptile wars, given yet another airing …
… as if the Donald wasn't the commander in chief of conspiracy theories … come on down Sleepy Joe… but to a piece that blindsided the pond and made it think it had stumbled across a completely different rag …
Say what?
The pond had been blind-sided, as if hit by a runaway truck or perhaps a charging cop car … and it seemed there were local lessons to be learned …
Ah, there just had to be a reptile wrinkle.
Is it possible to care about indigenous Australians, but also to worry about the fate of the environment, including unusual frogs and birds, especially as indigenous Australians claim a special bond with the land, and if following traditional ways, use creatures as totems? Perhaps we might even learn something from indigenous Australians, instead of locking them up?
Apparently not, at least not in the land of the reptiles …and all that righteous talk in an instant lowered in tone by a cheap shot, as if people were incapable of having more than one idea in the noggin at the one time …
But it is possible, though perhaps not in reptile la la land … perhaps we need the infallible Pope for that … reminding us of old reptile cartoons and old reptile heroes ...
DP - yes, for a few lines there, it seemed Dean Bagaric had written something worth reading. But this is the lead author of a ‘scholarly’ paper headed ‘The Moral Justification of Torture’, published by the University of San Francisco Law Review in 2005.
ReplyDeleteAfter citing other lawyers who appear in the mass media - Dershowitz seems to have appealed to the junior author, who, presumably, did the literature search - the paper offers five circumstances in which ‘torture is acceptable’. These are justified with variations of those weird hypotheticals about switching runaway trains, that are trotted out in second-rate management tests. As with those, it ignores the immense amount of information implicit in how the circumstances are framed. In the train-switching, the candidate is told exactly how many people will be killed in the explosion on the main line, and that so many children will be in the bus approaching the level crossing on the branch line. And appealing to the Hulk is not a solution.
Untroubled by that, Bagaric and Clarke offer an equation to help make the decision to use torture. Yep, that probably swung it with the editors of the USFLR - an equation. That makes it all scientific - no?
Bagaric has been cited approvingly by the mighty intellects who prop up ‘Quadrant’, for a contribution to the Flagship in May 2010, with the similarly catchy title ‘Honesty is not always the best policy position’.
It was written to justify the behaviour of Tony Abbott, and done in these terms -
‘Abbott’s lies arguably fall into the second category. He is occasionally expedient with the truth on no-core issues to attract his audience. Is it justifiable? Yes, if it is a means to improve the greater community good by removing an incompetent government.’
Again, the then Professor (of law) offered precisely three circumstances in which he deems lying to be quite acceptable. Again, so scientific. He gives us -
‘The second exception to the general prohibition against lying is where it is necessary to achieve social goods that cannot be secured (at all or at least not very effectively) through transparent means.’
to exculpate - even praise - Abbott.
OK - it is all a contribution to freedom of speech. I have resisted the urge to make cheap puns about the links between ‘torts’ and ‘torture’.
Perhaps the polite thing to say is that you would not want to rely on the Dean’s reasonings if you were before the courts, and that, like it or not, is where our laws are tested.
Other Anonymous
Yes, Bagaric's post did seem to be promising, and it does deal with the single most utterly shameful aspect of Australia. And I rather think the point about the respective percentages of the populations comprised by Australian indigenes versus NZ indigenes versus 'African Americans' is germane (just don't ask about the American, or Canadian, indigenes).
DeleteThe claim that Australia is the world's most successful multicultural society [ https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=australia+claims+to+be+most+multicultural ] is sadly laughable, though the fact is that "In 2015, an estimated 28 percent of the Australian population was born overseas" I suppose does give them some clout that the aboriginals simply don't have. It certainly gives them more votes in toto.
Thanks for the background OA, it's good to know who you are dealing with, especially if they might be lying - for the social good of course!
DeleteIt's also good to know that those in power, the gaolers, the military or police are best placed to decide what constitutes the greater community good. It has always worked out so well in the past, hasn't it?
The past is an alien country, Bef, they do things differently there.
DeleteBut I must say that having listened to Leigh Sales tonight speaking of how the current events are strange in a nation based on law and freedom. Sure it is: the law of the KKK for instance. It's like the past never happened, so there never was a Kent State. And there never was a Zoot Suit riot. And there never was the events if the 'freedom rides' (including mob murders) and the revolt against the Vietnam war and so on and so forth.
America has never, ever been "the land of the free" nor very much "the home of the brave". What planet do these people live on ?
Well, Befuddled, we have a group of folk whose business interests have been much involved in gas, telling us, through the NATIONAL COVID-19 COORDINATION COMMISSION, that our national interest needs, nay - IS, gas. All we have to do is watch our money provide necessary infrastructure. Which, of course, is absolutely the opposite of those silly subsidies for other sources of energy that have so skewed the sacred 'market'.
DeleteOther Anonymous
Repeats: when we do it, it's holy; when you do it, it's devilish.
DeleteThanks for that research OA. The pond knew the form, but it's always a joy when the comments section is way more interesting than the reptile content, and there's no need for the pond's torturing of the truism that you can take the reptile out of the hood, but you can't take the hood out of the reptile ...
Delete