First a preamble. The pond was a little too young for the the uprising in Hungary, but the pond was around for the Czech spring, the Polish Solidarity affair, the East German matter and sundry other examples (a war in Afghanistan anyone?) of the Russian imperium.
And judging by Russia's behaviour in the recent sports doping scandal, the latest Tsar hasn't forgotten the inspirational ways of the East Germans ...
And judging by Russia's behaviour in the recent sports doping scandal, the latest Tsar hasn't forgotten the inspirational ways of the East Germans ...
This isn't to overlook the obvious need to be able to rub tummy and chew gum at the same time, when contemplating the United States in Chile, Vietnam, Iraq and assorted other places (a war in Afghanistan anyone?)
Sometimes it's possible to marvel at the Bay of Pigs, at the same time as contemplating a lifetime dictator, as if a good medical system was sufficient compensation.
In all these matters, the pond has managed to alienate people on left and right, but it always reserves its empathy for the poor buggers facing up to the tanks ready to run over them, as they were wont to do in Tiananmen Square ...
Wherever it would be impossible to blog in a pond way (try shouting out to the world that you're a proud secular atheist in some Islamic countries, watch out for that machete) or indulge in the joy of fucking whomever you like or even get around to driving a car in a complimentary womanly way, the pond is inclined to take a view ...
And the pond takes a particular view of those quisling, lickspittle, fellow travelling lap dogs who like to dissemble and say it's not all that bad.
Tom Switzer is perhaps the most tedious and egregious example of this, as he worships at the altar of Putin and seeks to ameliorate his more outrageous examples.
But as the Switzer's become something of an ABC and Fairfaxian cockroach, it's left to Michael Sexton to face the pond's wrath with this little outing for the reptiles ...
Wherever it would be impossible to blog in a pond way (try shouting out to the world that you're a proud secular atheist in some Islamic countries, watch out for that machete) or indulge in the joy of fucking whomever you like or even get around to driving a car in a complimentary womanly way, the pond is inclined to take a view ...
And the pond takes a particular view of those quisling, lickspittle, fellow travelling lap dogs who like to dissemble and say it's not all that bad.
Tom Switzer is perhaps the most tedious and egregious example of this, as he worships at the altar of Putin and seeks to ameliorate his more outrageous examples.
But as the Switzer's become something of an ABC and Fairfaxian cockroach, it's left to Michael Sexton to face the pond's wrath with this little outing for the reptiles ...
Now the pond realises that Sexton has a book to flog, but this sort of Trumpian nonsense - chief amongst them the notion that it's an unproven allegation - is exactly the sort of stuff that serves as a smokescreen of the kind that RT routinely peddles...
Even the Donald, screaming and kicking all the way, finally got his lines right ...
Even the Donald, screaming and kicking all the way, finally got his lines right ...
This isn't news. The Russians have long been experts at mind-fucking, with perhaps one of the best recent examples coming with the downing of MH-17, with all sorts of nonsensical explanations being peddled, while the findings of a typically careful air crash investigation report were dismissed out of hand (the BBC presented an extensive summary here). Yes, the United States has also been tardy about 'fessing up about the shooting down of civilian aircraft and paying compensation, but that just proves the pond's point.
Doing a Sexton routine and attempting to minimise activities that are corrupt doesn't help things get better. It just encourages the rascals and makes matters worse.
Sexton's apologetics are of a particularly lightweight and egregious kind, of the sort the pond usually associates with that droning bumble bee Switzer ...
Well no, actually. This sort of realpolitik crap, let Putin do what he want, is the sort of appeasing nonsense that Chamberlain indulged in way back when ...
Drawing attention to the imperial tendencies in the latest Tsar doesn't mean that the activities of the American imperialists similarly interfering in elections can't also be mentioned in the same breath.
And blithely washing the paws and suggesting that we're all modern folk now, and all the fuss is to do with outdated historical enmities is exactly the sort of delusional wish-fulfilment the latest Tsar loves to hear ...
Take Brexit as an example: imagine if the Russians had managed to influence the vote in order to get the leave vote up, as a way of weakening Europe.
Of course they didn't need to, they had foppish Boris Johnson and the like to manage it for them, but that sort of interference in the domestic affairs of another country - as actually took place in the US presidential election - should be of more than passing interest, as it should be in relation to the Ukraine, Crimea, and the hapless Baltic states who must now be looking over their shoulders with some degree of nervousness ...
Of course they didn't need to, they had foppish Boris Johnson and the like to manage it for them, but that sort of interference in the domestic affairs of another country - as actually took place in the US presidential election - should be of more than passing interest, as it should be in relation to the Ukraine, Crimea, and the hapless Baltic states who must now be looking over their shoulders with some degree of nervousness ...
As for Syria, with refugees pouring into Europe in the hundreds of thousands, and even a few turning up in Australia - despite the best efforts of the mutton Dutton - the war there is of more than passing interest to the world ...
As for the Ukraine, the pond can think of several reasons - aided by a Greg Hunt-like ability to step around southern walri - as to why the Ukrainians might have taken a view of the disgraceful Viktor Yanukovych ... and his Russian toadying, corrupt ways ...
These days the planet is a small one, and it would be nice to think that nation states might enable tribes of citizens who share enough commonality and want to live together to be able to do it in relative peace and harmony. (World government will come soon enough thanks to climate science if Dame Slap is a good guide).
Tell that one to Uncle Joe or the new Tsar, or if push comes to shove, the Donald and the GOPers, as they go about the business of looting as much of the world as they can control or influence...
Sensible people might not want a cold war, but sensible people might also not want a world divvied up by the Trumpist gang of nepotics or the new Tsar.
Sensible people might not want a cold war, but sensible people might also not want a world divvied up by the Trumpist gang of nepotics or the new Tsar.
Well Sexton gets to flog his book and the pond gets a chance to blog, but the notion that the situation in other parts of the world should be of no interest as we merrily bowl along is the philosophy of loons, fools or knaves ...
And speaking of loons and the privileged enjoying a chukka or two while chuckling about the peasants, it would be remiss not to wrap things up with an infallible Pope, with more papal humour here ...
Reading the Sexton's wiffle-waffle indicated to me that maybe it's time yet again to explicate the Gish Gallop. A reminder from RationalWiki:
ReplyDeleteThe Gish Gallop (also known as proof by verbosity[1] and the Trump Tirade[2]) is the fallacious debate tactic of drowning your opponent in a flood of individually-weak arguments in order to prevent rebuttal of the whole argument collection without great effort. The Gish Gallop is a belt-fed version of the on the spot fallacy, as it's unreasonable for anyone to have a well-composed answer immediately available to every argument present in the Gallop. The Gish Gallop is named after creationist Duane Gish, who often abused it.
[ Refer: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop ]
There's only one thing wrong with that description: a Trump Tirade doesn't actually involve "a flood of individually-weak arguments" so much as a flood of outright lies. Now Sexton isn't as creatively imaginative as The Donald, so he doesn't actually deliver a "flood" of lies, but he does drop 'em in wherever he can.
And the whole problem with a Trump Tirade is that you can't refute him: it's the old political dilemma - "Never complain, never explain, because your friends don't need it and your enemies won't believe you anyway."
So, who exactly does believe Sexton's repeated crap about the USA overthrowing the Ukraine's elected kleptomaniac Russophile president ? Why, Putin and Trump do - and the whole panoply of Murdochratic reptiles do, too.
The pond was a little too young for the the uprising in Hungary,
ReplyDeleteOh DP, you missed a great year. Why, in Australia alone we had:
1. a visit from Her Britannic Majesty
2. the biggest flood ever of the Murray River, and;
3. the great Melbourne 'Friendly Games' in which, for the first time in the Modern Olympics, the closing ceremony was gloriously informalised with the competitors mingling in comradeship instead of formally marching in regimented national teams. And that was even after the Hungary-Russia water polo "match".
And it was the birth year of, inter alia, David Koch, Steve Vizard, Jana Wendt, Ernie Dingo, Yunupingu, Shane Gould.
On the wider stage:
1. Nikita Khrushchev attacks the veneration of Josef Stalin in a speech "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences". Do you think anybody will ever do this for Donald Trump ?
2. The first episode of As the World Turns is broadcast on the CBS television network in the United States.
3. Elvis Presley performs "Hound Dog", on The Milton Berle Show, scandalizing the audience with his suggestive hip movements.
4. The first Lockheed U-2 spy plane flight over the Soviet Union.
5. The hard disk drive is invented by an IBM team led by Reynold B. Johnson.
6. The world's first commercial nuclear power plant is opened at Calder Hall in England
7. Red Army troops invade Hungary.
8. Israel invades the Sinai Peninsula and pushes Egyptian forces back toward the Suez Canal.
9. Fidel Castro and his followers land in Cuba in the boat Granma.
And that's only a very small sample. But particularly with the 'immigrants' arriving we saw the beginning of the end of the 'meat and three veg plus a glass of beer' Australian cuisine. Only a couple of years after that, I was eating falafel in an Egyptian cafe in Prahran and drinking red wine that had never been characterised as "a fourpenny dark".
Hi GB,
DeleteWhen your commercial nuclear facility also has the dual purpose of producing weapon grade plutonium for bombs and nuclear sub reactors you occasionally get accidents.
When the brand name gets a bad reputation the simplest thing to do is to just change the name.
Calder Hall, Seascale, Windscale, Sellafield. All the same place.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2007/apr/18/energy.nuclearindustry
DiddyWrote
I'd never even remotely made that connection, so thanks for that DW. Fancy "Great" (Let's Make It Again) Britain being able to claim the world's first nuclear power accident - decades before Three Mile Island.
DeleteLike most "history" it's just one damn thing after another, isn't it.