How goeth the reptile war on China, what with Twiggy throwing a fast curve ball (no, the pond knows not what it means, apart from tricky tedium)?
As always, the cult master had an image which conjured up a world of pain arising from the new war …
But image aside, the pond can't waste precious time on a big day out with the reptiles by dallying with the corporeal Korporaal …
You see, Moorice has spoken … and whenever Moorice speaks, the pond jumps to attention, especially when it's to help with the war on China …
Strange, back in the day, in 1995 to be precise, the climate denialist, coal-loving Moorice - we must keep those Chinese coal-fired power stations operating! - was something of a pioneer …
But I guess once you've made your squillions you can take a more relaxed approach, and join the pond in demanding a boycott of China, beginning with a refusal to ship any more coal to China, just to teach 'em a lesson ...
Of course when it comes to praising China's work and transparency, Moorice could have looked closer to home …
Why is it that the reptiles never go there?
Never mind, there's still time for Moorice to join the pond in a trade war the like of which the cunning, fiendish Chinese have never seen before …a trade war using coal, which will make the Donald's trade war seem like trade war diet Coke lite ...
Well, the pond is no lover of the Chinese government, but isn't that simply pathetic?
What the fuck does a cliché like "time will tell" mean, followed by the bullshit of "national interest means we should not return to business as usual."
What the fuck does a cliché like "time will tell" mean, followed by the bullshit of "national interest means we should not return to business as usual."
Why stop just when it might have got interesting. Does Moorice have even one single proposal, one humble suggestion, as to how we might not return to business as usual? Nope, nada, zip, nihil, nothing...
Come on reptiles, show some spine, this isn't 1939. It's not just a matter of dropping a few pamphlets and a column by Moorice by parachute over Beijing …
Come on reptiles, show some spine, this isn't 1939. It's not just a matter of dropping a few pamphlets and a column by Moorice by parachute over Beijing …
Confronted with this crisis, the pond turned to the bromancer for a second opinion.
Maybe he'd be made of sterner stuff than Moorice … maybe he'd give Twiggy a serve for his uppity ways and his kowtowing and his impudent assistance with testing ...
Maybe he'd be made of sterner stuff than Moorice … maybe he'd give Twiggy a serve for his uppity ways and his kowtowing and his impudent assistance with testing ...
And indeed the bromancer started strongly, with a dose of Janus-faced mythology and hyper-driven schizophrenic analysis of a Freudian kind ...
Shocking stuff, almost as shocking as the notion that the humble Hunt wouldn't have turned on his heels at once, left the room, left the building, and spurned the tests … but what do you know, the bromancer himself sounded humble, and remarkably positive, because, let's face it, we're all in this together ...
Yes, yes, but what to do, apart from the anodyne stupidity of "time will tell", and the bullshit of "national interest means we should not return to business as usual", because everyone knows that once the virus is a little bit more under control, the reptiles will return to climate science denialism, and shipping coal and iron ore to China, to keep those coal-fired power stations running, and to make sure it's business as usual, especially as the Australian economy is fucked with a capital F.
Say what? Et tu bromancer?
"… there's likely very little we can do to make it better."
"… there's likely very little we can do to make it better."
So it is just a phoney war, and the bromancer just put up his paws in surrender, and the pond felt like dropping another 1939 pamphlet, but instead decided to drop a cartoon …
… which of course is a segue into that other war currently doing the rounds …
Today Holman W. Jenkins was imported from the WSJ editorial board to take up the work of the valiant Adam, sometimes known as the admirable Crichton (not that the reptiles acknowledged the WSJ source, in much the same way that they refuse to admit Dame Slap is now an IPA hack), but the context at the top of the page wasn't the best one for the visiting Yank …
… what with the notion that the old should nobly die to save the economy in the Swedish way a tad upsetting next to a picture of an heroic old duck on the front line … and Boris presiding over a handshaking herd immunity disaster ...
… what with the notion that the old should nobly die to save the economy in the Swedish way a tad upsetting next to a picture of an heroic old duck on the front line … and Boris presiding over a handshaking herd immunity disaster ...
Oh who wouldn't turn to the US for advice, with so much winning?
(here for that graph and more)
Strangely, the hyperactive bromancer had transformed himself from China specialist to doctor in a trice, or perhaps a nanosecond, and he had expert words on the subject … with an evocative image that surely would have charmed Holman W. Jenkins and fulfilled his wildest dreams …
Lordy, lordy, was the pond and Holman W. Jenkins in for a shock, or what ...
Why young Adam must have reeled away in horror. What had the bromancer been taking? Surely there was a strong case to ...
… or at least run a Donald cartoon …
And yet the bromancer persisted in his heresy, sounding for all the world like that dreadful Dr Swan from the reprehensible alarmist ABC ...
What to say, what do do? Where's young Adam when he's needed? What about that damned Yankee Holman chappie and his love of the Swedes?
The pond was alarmed. Sure, the bromancer was following the government line, but what if the bromancer and the government happened to be more right than the fuckwitted Yanks following the Fox line? Had we reached a peak level of Murdochian schizophrenia?
Well yes …
And now, even though the pond acknowledges it has meandered on far too long, and really should break off and do another post, the pond insists that it must serve up its daily dose of the savvy Savva.
Why? Well the savvy Savva today carried the imprimatur of the cult master, and even exhausted pond readers know that they must stand in awe and respect, and carry on regardless of all the previous winning …
Is that not inspirational? A phoenix in the shape of a galah rising from the ashes, and the beaked wonder hinting at a bizarre spectral Canberra figure emanating from the marketing department?
Lay on McSavva … and why not, for starters, smote the Trumpists ...
Uh oh. It was all going swimmingly, what with the ravaging of the Donald, and the celebration of SloMo, and then the pond came to the immovable "But" of the billy goat variety, and the chance of slipping in an immortal Rowe seemed to be slipping, but what the heck …
But now it seems that the war on China has turned into the war in Cooma, and the savvy Savva wasn't sounding that confident that things would go well in the new battlefield …
Yes, yes, yes, but surely there's some hope? Perhaps an infallible Pope cartoon might help?
Oh that didn't strike the right note, naughty infallible Pope, and nor did the but butting savvy Savva ...
Damn you infallible Pope, with your joke about schools and disadvantage.
Please try again, perhaps with a joke about the bridge to the other side, even if cruelly truncated by the gallery format ...
And for those still not tired of all the winning, a few more …
Won’t make this a long comment - must not be late for the Two Minutes Hate. We really have to show China the depth of our feeling, don’t we?. And I always like that bit at the end - How did Winston describe it?
ReplyDelete“ . . the figure of a Eurasian soldier who seemed to be advancing, huge and terrible, his sub-machine gun roaring, and seeming to spring out of the surface of the screen, so that some of the people in the front row actually flinched backwards in their seats. But in the same moment, drawing a sigh of relief from everybody, the hostile figure melted into the face of Big Brother. . . full of power and mysterious calm . . . Nobody heard what Big Brother was saying. It was merely a few words of encouragement, the sort of words that are uttered in the din of battle.”
I see items in the flagship from someone with the name ‘Newman’. That looks like a term from ‘Newspeak’ - but I can’t get access to the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary - the one that Syme claims won’t contain a single word that will become obsolete before the year 2050.
Other Anonymous
And Winston so perfectly describes a Trump rally, doesn't he.
DeleteIn their obsessive watching of the ABC, you would have thought that they would have noticed this:
ReplyDelete"Inquiries are always something that you do when you've had a cataclysmic event like this. For us it's what you must do after every event ... These need to be done independently." - Dr Margaret Harris from @WHO
https://twitter.com/abc730/status/1255086018174181376
Back a decade or so ago, when I was employed by the organisation, IBM had a management activity called 'Root Cause Analysis'. It was supposedly activated by either a project 'failure' or by a significant project 'success': ie, don't only analyse your failures to find out what to avoid, but also analyse your notable successes to find out what to repeatedly do.
DeleteDifficult concept to get across, that one - obviously WHO have never heard of it. IBM, I have to say, had a lot of very bright people working for it which the company management was never really good at getting full value from. I expect that WHO might just be a bit like that too. The Australian Public Service(s) are like that too.
Did you sing the IBM song with gusto, GB?
Delete"what if automation
idles half the nation
we'll still think for IBM!"
Absobloodylutely, Joe. In between renditions of The IBM Hymn:
DeleteThere's a thrill in store for all,
For we're about to toast,
The corporation known in every land.
We're here to cheer each pioneer
And also proudly boast
Of that "man of men," our friend and guiding hand.
The name of T. J. Watson means a courage none can stem;
And we feel honored to be here to toast the "IBM."
EVER ONWARD -- EVER ONWARD!
For the EVER ONWARD I.B.M.
I'd love to know the rest of the words for the IBM song, GB, if you can remember them.
DeleteYou can find it on plenty of sites on the web, Joe. Here's the rest of the words from an IBM link:
DeleteThat's the spirit that has brought us fame!
We're big, but bigger we will be
We can't fail for all can see
That to serve humanity has been our aim!
Our products now are known, in every zone,
Our reputation sparkles like a gem!
We've fought our way through -- and new
Fields we're sure to conquer too
For the EVER ONWARD I.B.M.
EVER ONWARD -- EVER ONWARD!
We're bound for the top to never fall!
Right here and now we thankfully
Pledge sincerest loyalty
To the corporation that's the best of all!
Our leaders we revere, and while we're here,
Let's show the world just what we think of them!
So let us sing, men! SING, MEN!
Once or twice then sing again
For the EVER ONWARD I.B.M.
Got that from: https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/multimedia/everonward_trans.html
You can get a whole collection of IBM songs from here:
http://www.digibarn.com/collections/songs/ibm-songs/index.html
Maybe I'm just completely out of it, but I haven't heard of, or from, Glenda Korporaal in quite a while. Probably because I don't actually read the Australian. Remarkable, isn't it, who ends up in the broadsheet garbage dump.
ReplyDeleteSo, from Moorice: "It [China] has shamelessly pursued poorer countries with debt-trap diplomacy, turning many of them into de facto colonies." No, actually, Moorice, the term is 'suzerainty' which has been China's preferred approach throughout most of its history. You have to actually colonise - ie send settlers in numbers and take over a place for it to be a colony. As the Chinese happily believe that they are becoming Australia's suzerain, replacing the USA.
Hmmm, DP: "with an evocative image that surely would have charmed Holman W. Jenkins"
Talking about the Bromancer's "evocative image" of sick soldiers at Fort Riley, Kansas should remind us of an even bigger epidemic that the USA experienced not so long ago: much bigger that this COVID-19 picnic: the combined ravages of pneumonia, typhoid, diarrhea/dysentery, and malaria in the American Civil War. Of the estimated 620,000 deaths (currently having been re-estimated as about 750,000 deaths), "about two-thirds died from disease". That's about 413,000 (or 500,000 for the larger estimate), way more that the 61,000 or so currently estimated from COVID-19 at an average of 100,000 or so per disease.
http://www.pbs.org/mercy-street/uncover-history/behind-lens/disease/
Now to the Bromancer himself: "Commentators cite Sweden as a possible counter-example." Oh, and who are those "commentators ? Why little admirable Adam Creighton is one. Doesnt he write for the same media swamp as the Bromancer ?
Not much to comment upon from Savvy Savva today. The minor machinations of back country by-elections are not exactly compelling reading. But I am waiting expectantly to see how both the campaigning and the voting takes place. As Savvy Sav says: "Visits to community spaces, schools and rallies would be problematic. The vote itself could be a postal ballot."
Well, a 'postal ballot' given the current Post Office overload ? We shall see.
GB - A few weeks back I had expressed reservation about reference to an ‘Admirable Creighton’, even with ironic intent, because I thought that unfair to Barrie’s Crichton.
DeleteThinking about it later, the word ‘Adumbrate’ popped into an otherwise resting part of the brain. Since then, I have thought that fitted Creighton in several ways. Its actual meaning fits his feather-duster approach to marshalling evidence, it starts as a homophone for his given name, and includes ‘dumb’.
The Adumbrate Creighton.
Of course, in no way does this reflect on Dorothy’s usage, so enough of this wordplay. This is also a day with two (count ‘em - 2) Lobbeckes, and my semiotic cells keep thinking around a Phoenix Galah -
Other Anonymous
Adumbrate ... yeah, that's really good OA. Just a soupcon of adumbration, perhaps.
DeleteAnd for your reward:
https://youtu.be/IMXD4h5w8D8
Thank you GB; enjoyed those birds. Some versions of the story of the Phoenix mention its remarkably sweet song - I await Kez' explanation of the reverse symbolism of a Phoenix Galah.
DeleteOther Anonymous
DeleteThank you for that exceptional link GB – such beautiful, birdyful tweets!
And you are right OA, reverse symbolism is indeed what Lobbecke has delivered today in his scorching Savva piece.
On face value this illustration could (as noted by DP) be taken to portray a blazing Scomo finally triumphing over his inept handling of the bushfire crisis.
However, in an impressive feat of contrary codification the soothsaying cult master is virtually signifying the PM’s impending fiery demise upon the carbonised plains of Eden-Monaro.
Rather than rising phoenix-like from the ashes ScoMo has been grotesquely depicted as a paunchy Cacatua flammeus engaged in a politically fatal firebird dance.
I wonder who wrote that piece attributed to Greg Sheridan. Apart from the last para attributing some sort of agency to a scrap of RNA, or maybe the second para where the confusion and strange riddles presented by the government are pertrayed as a deliberate choice, it seems altogether too rational.
ReplyDeleteThe first piece is standard Sheridan bumf however, a bit conflicted as to whether to toady up to commercial interests or help the government dog whistle, but gets there in the end.
On another issue, folk with family in Merika tell me the media has changed their tune a bit. Apparantly, less effort is being made to spin Trump's demented ramblings into some sort of "play to the base" or some brilliant insight that escapes us lesser beings.
It seems the bleach and cleaning product therapies weren't well accepted.
When the folks back in Merika refer to "the media", does that include Fox News ? Or does Donald only love the OANN nowadays ?
DeleteIt seems Fox is less fulsome in it's praise - but still deranged.
DeleteI think maybe they're all (except OANN) beginning to entertain the thought that maybe the Donald won't get re-elected, and then maybe the knives will be out for all his most dedicated minions. Not excluding Roopie.
Delete