Monday is an exceptionally rich day for reptile lovers, and what with the Caterist's scientific expertise gushing from the paws (or even the pores), the pond missed out on a few reptile stragglers.
Sure, the afternoon slot at the pond is a bit like being trapped in old TV land in the wee hours …
But Jimbo was out and about and blessed with a reptile illustration, and it seems he was hastily running up the white flag, so attention should be paid ...
Lordy, lordy, not a nanosecond after those heavies were in Washington telling the Donald we were right behind him, Jimbo didn't seem so sure … or maybe we were right behind him, if you think of 'right' as a couple of US miles or more …
Is Jimbo hinting at the real thinking going down inside SloMo's world … or did someone give him a day pass and let him out to roam the range all on his own?
Issues? They sound more like doubting Thomas cold feet questions. Has Jimbo got the fear? But surely everything is full speed ahead in Donald land …
Oh the saucy doubts and fears, and won't someone think of the iron ore and the coal, and whatever might happen to Gina?
Ah you've got to hand it to Jimbo. Who else could scribble that we had no real trouble stabilising Iraq?Why the whole middle east is now tremendously stable … think stable Syria for starters …
Remember how stable Iraq and Iran were at the beginning of the year?
And now with bonus virus, it just keeps getting stabler and stabler. Tell us how it all ends Jimbo, the pond would love to hear … so many stables, it must be the Xmas manger a few months early ...
Moving along, how remiss of the pond to mark the Major down to the wee hours ...
The Major is in top notch paranoid form with dark mutterings about sinister manifestations, apparently unaware that News Corp is so toxic even some Murdochians can't stand the place and its enduring, unrelenting stupidity ...
The question is, how much do the reptiles really care about advancing the interests of African-Americans and Australian Aboriginals (though the pond really does wish the Major had talked of Aboriginal people, or indigenous Australians).
Never mind, if Fox News is any guide, we know what News Corp thinks …feel free to google away …
But Tucker's just one of many and we have the legendary expertise of the Bolter locally, as approved by judges, no less, and to his credit, the Major is also an expert in blaming the victims … victim blaming and shaming being a favourite reptile sport ...
Ah, the usual reptile pets are trotted out, but seeing how Warren Mundine got a mention, the pond thought it might take a trip back in time …
There's more here, if the print's too small, but what the heck … seeing as how we're apparently being too Aboriginal, why not another sample ...
Oh yes Lowitja, he's the new Messiah… the new reptile onion munching Messiah that is. He's much loved at the Sydney Institute, and he speaks there too, and he scribbles for the Daily Terror, and he's much loved by the Major, he loves Australia Day being where it is, and he doesn't mind the anthem either and yet, heaven forfend that the pond should quote a mere boxer …
Too easy to escape by invoking 'racial slur'? How about a milder tweet?
Ah yes, the token Aboriginal person knows that the best way to advance the cause is to exonerate the cops and blame the difficult, uppity, useless blacks, with their wretched inclination to violence and law-breaking (all except Warren Mundine of course, and the Mundine clan that has looted Redfern and kicked out the difficult, tricky blacks) …
Print again too small? No matter, it was All done and dusted long ago, and Redfern made safe for developers and hipsters, and the pond drives through it occasionally and wonders where all the black people went.
Never mind, they're gone, out of sight, out of mind, and thank the long absent lord for the miracles worked by the Mundine clan … now better get back to blaming the blacks and exonerating the cops ...
Oh yes, indeedy, if only everyone could understand that you can be too Aboriginal, and that the best way to get ahead is to be friendly with the onion muncher and besties with the Sydney Institute, and be lauded up hill and down dale by the Major, at least when he's not out hunting in the wilds for that missing Order of Lenin medal …
And if anything happens to go wrong, just remember, it's your own bloody fault ...
Meanwhile, if logic is your thing, please allow the pond to end with a cartoon celebrating Major Mitchell and reptile logic …
I think I just got bashed up by the police, I think I just became one of the vastly disproportionate number of black people jailed in Australia … well, stop making trouble, embrace reptile thinking, and all will be well …
Just to offer a little perspective - since 1983 Australia has been claiming 'historic bays' as part of its Territorial Sea, by rights and definitions set out in a series of international instruments. Our great friends and allies across the Pacific, with whom we stand, etc. have opposed those proclamations. Fortunately there is so much turnover in the Trump cabinet, and the nominees have so little experience or background, that it is unlikely that we will see a US fleet steaming through Van Diemen Gulf to make that opposition manifest. It would give Senator Molan something to think about, and would challenge the Lobbecke for an illustration.
ReplyDeleteChadwick.
I hope they don't come steaming through to liberate Port Phillip Bay then. And I suppose the South Aussies would like to keep St Vincent and Spencer Gulfs too.
DeleteHi Dorothy,
ReplyDelete“Part of that strategy was seen a few days ago when Australia stated that Chinese claims in the South China Sea were illegal. More will be needed - especially a unified regional position on territorial claims and dispute mechanisms.”
Arrr, Jim Lad! are you worried that we may be approaching a Grotian Moment?
“Grotian Moment is a term that signifies a "paradigm-shifting development in which new rules and doctrines of customary international law emerge with unusual rapidity and acceptance."
The United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) codified in 1982 was based on the work ‘Mare Liberum’ (The Free Sea) by the Seventeenth Century Dutch diplomat and jurist Hugo Grotius.
Grotius claimed that the high seas were international territory and any country was free to use it for maritime trade. In addition, Grotius' assertion that war is justifiable only when it serves a right (just war theory) became a guide for international law relating to the use of force and self-defence.
Incongruously Grotius’s views were based on his defence of his cousin, the captain Jacob van Heemskerk, who whilst employed by the United Amsterdam Company captured a Portuguese carrack, the Santa Catarina, off what is now Singapore in 1603 even though he had no authorisation. The Santa Catarina was loaded with high end products from China and Japan including 1200 bales of Chinese raw silk worth 2.2 million guilders and several hundred ounces of musk.
The Portuguese naturally demanded the return of their cargo and a faction of the Companies shareholders (mostly Mennonite) objected to the forceful capture on moral grounds. Grotius as a jurist drafted a polemical defence of the seizure claiming that the Portuguese were fair game as their policy of Mare Clausum (closed sea) interfered with international trade.
https://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/roots-of-international-law-in-1603-incident-off-changi
Considering that China was forcibly opened to foreign trade by the European powers in the Nineteenth Century and that they were later joined by US gunboats which patrolled the coastal waters and rivers of China well into the Twentieth Century, it’s unsurprising that the Chinese have little interest in the sanctimonious calls for FONOPS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangtze_Patrol
DiddyWrote
Thanks DW - and, yes, such an interesting area of law, because it traces efforts over the long term for nations to seek sensible ways to go about that international trade thing.
ReplyDeleteChadwick
Ah yes, from back in the days of that fine naval entrepreneur, (Sir) Francis Drake.
DeleteInformative links DW, as usual. Particularly liked this morning’s effort in making the Caterist look like the goose on the loose.
ReplyDeleteI think, as Dorothy alluded, the article is just a bit of free ranging filler for Gen.Jim.
The fact is the base was and has been built....over years, as everyone watched, from the day the first bucket was dredged. That is an intrigue of its own......
@Chadwick.....your point on the massive staff turnover of our most bigly deranged ally is a valid point.....and no less challenging for Molan than it would be for Lobbecke.
CA.
Yeah, but I suppose it is a bit of a dilemma, CA: whether to keep the same set of idiots around to make the same mistakes over and over, or get in a new bunch of idiots to make the same mistakes, plus a few new ones,, over and over.
DeleteSo the Major Mitch is "an Ambassador for the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation". Well I never ... never have heard of the AIEF before, that is. And from that moral vantage point, the Major would like to instruct his media colleagues that: "Journalists need to get to know the Aboriginal world as it is and report it factually rather than parade their own moral virtue."
ReplyDeleteCan't argue with that, can we ... except that I'm not sure I've ever seen a reptile get to know anything as it really is or report anything "factually". But then, as Maj. Mitch says: "Journalists who refuse to engage with the facts ... are being used as political pawns..."
Wau, that's one helluva revelation, isn't it. But as to the AIEF, maybe this is relevant:
Indigenous student warns boarding school can be 'distressing' as dropout rates are questioned
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-25/indigenous-education-scholarships-come-under-question/10514762
Just as well we have the ABC to report on these things "factually, isn't it.