In which the pond forsakes the Devine and settles for the sedentary safety of nattering "Ned" shouting at clouds ...

  

No doubt there'll be many pleased that Miranda the Devine has stopped being a bludger and has returned to bully, harass and intimidate.

The personality cult can resume, but even though it's in the pond's mission statement, and the Devine had surfaced on the last day of January, the pond couldn't go there ... not yet. It's too early, that month of blissful peace can't come to a close just yet ...

For starters, the Devine was banging on about Clinton, and the pond had sat through Dame Slap doing that, and then there was comrade Bill, which sounded like a by the numbers routine.

Besides, it goes without saying that the Devine is absolutely in favour of corruption in high places - where would the Liberal and Labor parties be without it? - and any attempt to discover and punish corruption must be regarded as a gutless gimmick. 

And besides that besides, the lizards of Oz had already bunged on a Corbyn-like class war, and the pond had already managed to avoid that ...

But if not the Devine, then who? Well the pond believes that nattering "Ned" is a national treasure, in the same way that soothers, pacifiers and teething gel come in handy at certain times ...

Yes nattering "Ned" is a great pond favourite, and a reliable way to induce a relaxing cat nap in a second or two, handy for anyone who wants to nod off at lunch time ...and the more he yammers on about a crisis, the quicker comes the urge to close the eyes ...

Along with their paranoia about China, the reptiles are becoming increasingly anxious about the Pacific, and it's a measure of just how deep the concern might get that nattering "Ned" starts channelling a Labor politician ...

Indeedy, indeedy, it's certainly a vexed and vexing problem.

The pond wonders if anyone has thought of setting up a gulag or two in Pacific neighbours, using a little cash to grease the wheel, and ship an Australian problem elsewhere.

It's a great look, a gulag, and with a bit of luck the legal problems that arise can head up to a neighbouring high court, and everyone can get agitated about conditions, and the tone of corrupt buying out of problems can spread around the region, and next thing you know, Australia has a tremendous reputation ...

Strange no one in either of the major parties has thought of it yet ... yet it's exactly the sort of leadership role that might inspire a Duterte ...

The neo-colonial psychological shadow?

Oh come on, setting up a couple of gulags won't do any harm. 

Please, be fair. Every reptile on the lizard Oz knows it's only right and just to ship Australia's problems elsewhere - the mutton Dutton himself has said so - provided there's a little cash in the paw to make the problems go away, and what on earth is neo-colonial about that?

What's that, those couple of mentions of climate science by nattering "Ned", supposed to result in an existential battle?

Doesn't "Ned" read his fellow Murdochian scribblers? Hasn't he the first clue about the truth? Or even the real truth?

Ah, the Murdochians and the Bolter, doing their very best to draw attention to our Pacific neighbours to help them and to support them ...

Luckily no one in the Pacific can read the Bolter. You see, they're so backward, none of the reptiles can be heard anywhere outside Australia.

They're so backward and insular these islanders, unlike the lizards of Oz ...

And with that, for those few still awake, how about ending with a few more examples of our government at work for the good of the world, thanks to Wilcox, with more Wilcox here ...

In which Dame Slap does a Tomás de Torquemada ...

It will come as a shock to some that the HUNsters, the Terrorists and others in the Murdochian stables have had to resort to a promotion involving Enid Blyton, while flooding their rags with all sorts of gobbledegook and jibber jabber designed to suggest the cynical ploy was a deeply noble educational initiative.

The pond's question, driven by a quest for ideological purity, is whether the Murdochians are peddling the "revised", tamed editions, wherein such great characters as Dame Slap became Dame Snap .. or whether they've reverted to the original politically incorrect texts, because that's what reptiles who refuse to live in an Orwellian universe must do ...

The pond has its deepest, direst suspicions, and it's a question all the more potent and poignant because today is Dame Slap day at the lizard Oz ... who could imagine her going by the feeble, impotent name of Dame Snap?

Candidly speaking, isn't it about time that the reptiles of Oz got over Gillard and Clinton? The Donald remains obsessed with the election and with Clinton, and it's one of the more tedious aspects of a presidency with a limited vocabulary but with a range of narrow bigoted ideas ... though the pond admits that the Chance styling of "there is a cooling, and there's a heating" was wondrous to hear ...

Candidly speaking, how is it that a woman who lives inside a bubble which allows fantasies about UN climate conspiracies can speak of other bubble dwellers?

And with so many fresh wonders on a daily basis, why do the reptiles feel the need to brood over the past? 

Well, it's to lecture and to hector and to harangue and to provide moral guidance, and it's the perfect way to disappear into the past, as an aid to disappearing up the fundament ...

Real challenges? Ah yes, we're back in the world of unreal challenges ... but what's unreal is the way Dame Slap once again seizes on a metaphorical figure ... the Inquisitor ... 

Perhaps she imagines she's some kind of Grand Inquisitor ...

Did Dame Slap pause even for a nanosecond to think about what it might mean to invoke an "inquisitor"?

Leaving aside Frank Zappa's central scrutinizer and the nonsense of Star Wars, it puts the Dame squarely in the role of an official in the inquisition, designed to eliminate heresy and all other things contrary to the doctrines and teachings of Dame Slap ...

Would she be worried by this? Probably not, because it resonates so with the not so crypto part of the crypto-fascist mind set ...

Dame Slap probably sees El Greco ...

... while the pond reverts to the original, genuine, no substitutes accepted, Dame Slap ...

... which is why the pond will be watching very closely to see if the reptiles have gone politically correct and weak at the knees with their Enid Blyton promotion ...

And so it's on to more Dame Slapian talk of the Inquisitor conducting a grand, completely tone deaf Inquisition ...

It really is beyond the valley of the delusional, all this stuff.

Whenever the pond thinks that at last the Dame has jumped the shark and nuked the fridge and can never do any better, there she goes, shoves a shark on the barbie and nukes the back yard ...

On and on she rambles, as if trying to outdo Coleridge in the matter of opiate dreaming ...

Says the inquisitor, bringing the night to a close ....?

Only in Dame Slap land, or perhaps the more fundamentalist parts of the Catholic church, or in the Catholic Boys' and Girls' Daily ...

And how about that narcissist conclusion, whereby thanks go to the Inquisitor and Dame Slap, because the two women have been tortured to see the light and to confess their heresies and their infamy,  and so the noble Dame has passed on a "genuine legacy to the women of tomorrow" ...which can only mean a three course serving of self-serving delusionalism ...

Never mind, forget the past, and the ramblings of a reptile who seems to find it increasingly hard to say anything with a modicum of sense and relevance.

At this very moment, Malware and the poodle are intent on passing on a genuine legacy to the people of tomorrow, though you won't find Dame Slap's inquisitor to be very inquiring about the present, with nary a hint of a Grand Inquisition into present nonsense ...

That must be left to Canberra's very own Pope, back to issuing daily encyclicals here ...

In which the pond sees signs of life in the stifling orthodoxies of the onion muncher ...

The pond has been wondering of late whether Rowe's twitter feed, and the pond's banner needs a freshen up in relation to the tired onion muncher, who by Xmas seemed well past his use-by date ...

Year after year, he's been a reliable source of monumental silliness, and yet each time the pond thinks he should be let out on the back paddock, or humanely put down, the onion muncher keeps turning up like a blow-fly to the cow pat ...

Having been cruelly abandoned by the Caterists, the pond could turn to what was the flavour on the reptile bedpost overnight, and sure enough, there was the onion muncher with a multitude of comments ...

Arriving at this point was easy ... this is how desperate the Terrorists have got trying to create an uproar ...

 

It goes without saying that the Terrorists reserve the right to deliver a wet, slobbery sloppy kiss to the lips, uninvited, though possibly using the tongue on the first such kiss might be going a tad far...

It didn't get much better down in the opinion section, what with the only sightings being an arm-breaker and the doofus Marcus ...

Now credit where credit is due. 

Marcus is just a wannabe loser dropkick, always ready to cavort with the herd, or in this case Caroline Overington, because it was Overington that set off the latest bout of Islamic hysteria in the reptiles with this yesterday ...

The pond had thought of going there, but it was such a modest dress in an Islamic teacup storm, that it couldn't summon the energy ...

Overington ranted on about the importance of the bikini and Bondi and all the rest of it, though strangely drew the line by not celebrating nude bathing, as she lathered herself up in an Islamic panic designed to show that she was a genuine reptile ...

The pond only decided to get on the case when the lizards of Oz made a feature of it today ...and the onion muncher came out on parade, or if you will, stood up and saluted the reptile flag ...

  

What do you know? How the reptiles loved that cheeky snap ...

And the onion muncher was standing by, ready and waiting with quotes ...

Indeed, indeed. The pond deplores fundamentalist religions and is flabbergasted at the outrageous attire that some of them maintain even now, while weird preachers spruik outlandish death cults involving crucifix worship ...

  

Ah yes, mainstream Australian values on view as always in the Catholic Boys' Daily  ...and the onion muncher front and centre ...

The pond thought that the onion muncher had done enough to give the pond, and perhaps Rowe, pause for thought before deciding to toss him from the top of the page.

Sure it was pathetic, sure it was just a small cow-pat in the back paddock, but he'd shown up and done his duty ...

A very old-fashioned view on modesty?

The right to defy stifling orthodoxy?

This from a loon who joined Islamic fundamentalists in fighting gay marriage on the beaches and in the fields and the streets?

Oh go kiss a ring...

... or lurk with stifling orthodoxies and look saintly and pious as the lame, the halt and the sick approach for a benediction ...

Around this point the pond lost interest, but feels in fairness that it should add the rest of the report on the basis that one in a million might be faintly interested ...

2012!? And suddenly the onion muncher and the reptiles are in a state of alarum and indignation at the start of 2018?

Oh it's going to be a long year, but already the onion muncher is showing good form ...

And now, because there's only so much of the local reptiles that the pond can stand, why not import a few foreign reptiles?

In which the Caterists take a holyday and the pond decides to visit Rome ...

This is what happens when the Caterists set the country on course for a sugar high, then slink off into the night, leaving the pond bereft and heartbroken ...

Someone lets the poodle out, and the poodle, up to his gills on the white stuff, decides to announce, with the fully tone deaf Malware in full cry beside him, that Australia will become a nation of war mongers, and isn't that good ...

Not only were the reptiles mocking it ...others were wondering how joining in a global arms race might improve the prospects for humanity ...

Who else but the poodle could be so gung ho, so tone deaf and so silly?

Australia's defence exports are worth about $2 billion a year — but Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne said he wants that figure to be higher. "We sell a veritable welter of [defence] products, but we haven't really taken it to the next level, which is to seriously compete in the world for a part of what is a $1.5 trillion part of the world economy," he told the ABC's AM program. "We have a high reputation for quality and capability — we need to turn that into products and services."

And that's what happens when the Caterists ship out and leave the pond high and dry.

It has to pay attention to the real world, and the things that delight local cartoonists. The products of war, the death machine, and the services that go with it, the killing fields and repression and havoc.

Oh let loose the poodle of war, alongside the other dogs ...

Naturally Rowe was also on a sugar high, and keen to advertise Australian products and services ...

As always, there's more Rowe here, and in the meantime, the pond began to wander free-form style around the lizard Oz to see what else might catch the eye and serve as a Caterist substitute, Caterist-lite if you will...

The reptiles were naturally agitated about power prices - all this dreadful renewable energy, dinkum Aussie coal oi, oi, oi - and selling modest dress to Islamic countries was also a winner, but being perverse, and reading the Catholic Boys' Daily, naturally the pond was drawn to this story ...

Say what?

It reminded the pond of that old Protestant saw about the church of Rome and the whore of Babylon, as featured in Luther's bible ...

Poor old one-time Protestant David Marr tried to eradicate the idea, thinking it a form of religious bigotry, and yet, when he came to writing up the Royal Commission at length here?

...the political challenge that must be faced across the country now the commission has finished its work is how to grapple with Rome – an old, shrewd and complicated institution that has never quite abandoned its role as a world power. 
Rome still sees itself as the judge and protector of its priests. Local bishops can’t sack them – they can stand them aside but not sack them. And Rome has never issued an unambiguous directive to priests and members of religious orders who become aware of child abuse in their ranks to call the police. 
Coleridge cited lots of talk but no “structured discussions” on the point. Canon lawyers assembled by the chief royal commissioner, Peter McClellan, debated the issue for hours. Leo XIII seemed to say something quite promising but in the end they couldn’t turn up a clear direction from the church to report priestly abusers to the state. 
McClellan thought the discussion extraordinary. How can church law be so opaque? “Maybe I’m just an ordinary common lawyer, but we normally say things in simple words.” The canon lawyers balked. McClellan suggested Rome might adopt a plain formula: “Obey civil law.” 
What emerged from the evidence of church lawyers, theologians and a slew of bishops about the workings of Rome in Australia was the blueprint of an organisation perfectly suited to eluding control. Coleridge made rather a joke of it: “When I hear people talk about the monolithic Catholic church, I think to myself, which church are we in? It’s like herding cats … ”

And then, a little further down the page ...

...the church is a foreign power. In 2014 it used its status as a little state to deny vital documents to the commission. The refusal was not blanket. Rome’s obstinacy came hedged about with respectful rhetoric. But when it mattered the church said no. 
McClellan got the message: “Our experience is that documents generated in Rome in relation to a perpetrating priest won’t be available to civil authorities in the state where the priest lives. That’s what it amounts to.” 
Third, the church really doesn’t exist. It’s everywhere but nowhere. It has no more legal form in Australia than a gathering of book clubs. All those dioceses and orders with their immense property holdings are mere unincorporated associations. Among other things: they can’t be sued. 
Fourth, no one here can issue orders to every corner of the Australian church. There’s a local bishops conference with considerable authority. But all decisions that really matter are referred to Rome. And bishops have no authority over the orders that run schools and hospitals. Between priests and brothers is a great divide. And the orders have been found to be sheltering appalling numbers of paedophiles.

There's a lot more at the link, but that sets the scene nicely for the paranoia on parade in the Catholic Boys' Daily ...

Strange the good bishop didn't mention all the good work done by the church in the matter of abused children, whereby the local church authorities acted as a chapter for a foreign government pulling the strings from Rome ...

Oh how sweet it was to read, and how wondrous the denials and the insistence on local autonomy ...

International links?

Is that how the Pope is viewed these days? And the local church doesn't act on behalf of the church of Rome?

Why it seems like Catholics down under are now living in a religious crowned Republic ...

Of course Malware's government has made a mess of this legislation, with many unintended consequences, but there's nothing new in that. Just ask anyone hooked up to HFC ...

What was pleasing was the pond being reminded that even when the Caterist cat went away, there would be many other wonders designed to replace the cat and amuse the mice ...

And that brings the pond back full circle to Australia doing a Rambo, and Malware and the poodle drawing a first blood strike from the real Pope, resident in Canberra, with more papal missives here ...

And look, there's some dinkum Oz coal, oi, oi, oi ... won't the reptiles be pleased ...

In which the Major fails and falls at the first pond hurdle ...

And now a brief apologetic note on why the Major Mitchell didn’t make it into the pond this day.

You see, the Major fell at the first Aboriginal hurdle.

 Please allow the pond to quote from Creative Spirits here:

“Aborigine” 
‘Aborigine’ comes from the Latin words ‘ab’ meaning from and ‘origine’ meaning beginning or origin. It expresses that Aboriginal people have been there from the beginning of time. ‘Aborigine’ is a noun for an Aboriginal person (male or female). The media, which is still using this name, has been called on to abandon using ‘Aborigine’ because its use has “negative effects on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ self-esteem and mental health” 

See the original for the footnotes, but the pond can understand this.

‘Aborigine’ carries a huge load of unwanted cultural abuse on its back …

But is the alternative “Aboriginal”, as deployed by the Major and the lizards of Oz, a good replacement?

Can an adjective do the work of a noun? Back to Creative Spirits:

Aboriginal is an adjective and used to describe ‘Aboriginal people’, ‘Aboriginal houses’ or an ‘Aboriginal viewpoint’. 
Some sources use it as a noun which I and many other people think is wrong. 
‘Aboriginal’ is often written with a capital ‘A’ to show respect to Aboriginal people but also to differentiate Australian Aboriginal people from the aboriginal people all over the world. 
Using ‘Aboriginal people’ or ‘Aboriginal person’ has been recommended by the Aboriginal Advisory Group of Community Legal Centres NSW because they are “more positive and empowering terms”. 
If you want to be exact you would need to talk about “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people” because people from the Torres Strait identify strongly with their islands. 

Well yes, never the dangling adjective, always as a modifier, as in 'Aboriginal people' (and there’s more at the link above).

The pond doesn't like being a grammar Nazi, but the pond is old-fashioned enough to think that an adjective shouldn’t be paid to do the work of a noun, no matter the amount of overtime involved, with overtime rare enough in the gig economy.

The reason "Aboriginal" is used in that offensive dangling way is that it’s the sort of mealy-mouthed, half-baked way that certain journalists  employ ... as a way of avoiding using "Aborigine" and thereby offending Aboriginal people.

But using one word incorrectly to replace another word that might be perceived as offensive is also pretty offensive.

How difficult would it have been for the Major and the lizards of Oz to have led with ABC misreads many Aboriginal people?

Then they could have rabbited on about how "Too often journalists on the left seem unaware of the use of 'Aboriginal' and 'Aborigines'".

Instead it's left to ratbag institutions of the ABC kind to use this form of words, as in this randomly plucked example:

There, that's not hard, not too hard at all, and Creative Spirits has other useful suggestions at the link.

Damn you ABC, damn you and your liberal kind to hell.

The Major and his lizard cohort did try to change the tone, as can be seen in the google splash:

But it was too late for the pond. It would have spent the entire piece thinking that the Major was a fuckwit, without the first clue.

Empowerment is the real issue?

Don't get the pond started on "real issue". What the fuck is an "unreal issue"?

It's such a lazy, sloppy use of words, to scribble about "real issues", typical of the penny a word school of mindless journalism.

But back to empowerment.

How about asking Aboriginal people how they’d like to be addressed, and what they think of adjectives doing the work of nouns?

Wouldn't that be empowering? Creative Spirits is happy to offer a view.

Some Aboriginal people would likely join the pond in assuring you that, on an average day, the Major looks and sounds as silly and as arrogant as Humpty Dumpty, without beginning to wonder if he pays his adjectives at time and a half ...

And now, rather than ending with Humpty himself - the pond has rather overdone good old Humpty over the years - how about a cartoon?