It's a busy day at the reptiles, Monday is always the day when the finest and the boldest get out to strut their stuff, but the pond just wanted to note that Hillsong had finally made it to the attention of New Yorkers.
And there's going to be a lot more for the PM's favourite preacher to deal with when certain matters in the legal pipeline are given an airing. As Jimmy Cagney might have once said, top of the pedophile and sexual assault world ma ...
And so to the pond's popular segment, "ask the Major", which invariably seems to devolve around asking the Major why he routinely manages to get up himself and deeply up News Corp ...
You see the cunning of the Major? A beaming shot of the parrot and the proposal that it's social media distorting the debate, when nothing could match the parrot for stupidity and distortion ... but that's what happens when birds of a feather, galahs like Jones and the Major Mitchell get to squawking ...
And there you have it. The pond couldn't make up that sort of Major stupidity if it tried, whether it's proposing that coal-loving Joel is a form of diversity or the IPA, aka Gina's mob, deserves to be pandered to by a public broadcaster, or whether the term "researcher" should be deployed in all seriousness when it comes to tobacco spruikers celebrating the health benefits of inhaling the weed...
Yes, the IPA has long had form, and its current form of climate science denialism is helping fuck the planet but this has never bothered the lizards of Oz, deep into their own brand of denialism ...
A fair report? It was a damning report of a couple of dangerous and deeply misleading loons, a parrot and a former furniture salesman, and the horror is still here for all to see ...
So how do the reptiles get around that? Why the next item on the agenda is of a smirking fearless leader ...
That's as big a bit of hagiography as the pond could stand ...
"But so what?"
So he's a fucking loon, and so is his former furniture sales companion.
And the Major's never heard the parrot speak against vaccination?
Doesn't a complete misreading, distortion, and wilful, woeful misreporting of data relating to vaccination count?
Oh it's all there in the Media Watch yarn, but the pond has drunk from that well too often, time to move on to some Major "both siderism" ...
Yes, never mind accuracy or truth, just feel the width of sensationalism, and the ability to appeal to anti-vax and anti-mask loons in the United States ... just out-fox Fox to truly fuck the planet ...
Well the pond promised a Major deeply up himself and deeply up News Corp, and when has the Major ever failed the pond or failed to deliver?
The pond wishes it could spend more time insulting the Major, but it's Monday, and so the diviner of the movement of flood waters in quarries cries out for attention ...
That cheap purchase of a shot of a mosque from Getty, the cockroach of image suppliers for a beleaguered reptile graphics department, should give us an idea of where we're ultimately heading ...
Reasons to be cheerful, part 3? Ah, but then a cloud crosses the Caterist horizon ...
Yes, it has to be a serious crisis for the Caterist to so lightly skip over climate science, but let us remember the new trend in the world of right wing loons ... a love of fascists, dictators, and all that goes with it, including a hatred of gays, minorities, migrants and such like ...
You might call it the Tucker Carlson model for Caterists ...
That in full at Salon here, but see also Media Matters here ...
Ah yes, and the Caterist surfs on a wave of sunny fascist authoritarianism, Hungary and Tucker Carlson style, but then he's always been something of a crypto-fascist ... how sunny it is to get rid of the crypto, and just go the full quid ...
And now the pond would like to turn to the Oreo, because she has a minor announcement, world war three, with full-on nukes ...
You see? The pond has no time for The Global Times, but then the pond has no time for The Epoch Times as well ...
What deeply disturbs the pond is when loons of the reformed, recovering feminist kind get to yearning for a full-on nuclear war ...
Think the pond is exaggerating? Watch closely as the Oreo lathers herself up into a state of genuine hysteria ...
The world is exhausting its diplomatic options for managing the threat? What to do, oh what to do?
Well please allow the Oreo to make a suggestion. Nuclear weapons will be used against China and its staggeringly brutal and unashamedly immoral rhetoric, and will be used continuously, because after all, the allies in World War Two laid bare the stunningly successful and devastating effects of nuclear aggression ...
Bring on the nukes, the Oreo says, let us proceed to world war three with nukes forthwith, and then, deploying the Caterist line of logic, there'll be sunny skies ahead, because who will have a care about a minor virus or climate change fucking the planet, or fires raging in the US, Turkey and Greece?
And with that cheery thought lurking, the pond must now head into overtime because the onion muncher has returned from his work abroad ...
Now the pond has already noted that Crikey story about the onion muncher hanging around with a ratbag coal lover ...
The pond should have noted that Adani story, at least the beginning of it (sorry, the rest is behind the paywall)...
And so on and on, but when has a starry eyed coal lover like the onion muncher ever felt troubled by a fellow lover of coal ...
Meanwhile, back to the onion muncher in the lizard Oz ...
The great democracies? So that's what rampant Hindu nationalism and authoritarianism is called these days?
And now sadly the pond must finish with an Olympic competition. Having promised never to mention the Olympics, who knew that there would be an alternative games? And thanks to the immortal Rowe, these games are still available for review here ...
Sigh - the Major once again trying to rebadge dangerous misinformation as diverse opinion.
ReplyDeleteIf there are no facts, no right or wrong, just different beliefs, we can just sit here in a fog of indecision and do absolutely nothing. This is the prime object because it really benefits the incumbents as every little change involves a snarky debate with not much reference to reality.
Incidentally, Sky News is engaging in a bit of cancel culture of their own
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/aug/04/sky-news-australia-purges-several-videos-from-youtube-after-ban-over-covid-misinformation
"Unlike those removed by YouTube – which clearly state they were removed by YouTube for violating community guidelines – these videos state they were removed by the uploader, Sky News."
Not issues they want to debate?
It's his job, Bef, and he pursues it doggedly.
DeleteBut talking about "opinions" and "cancel culture", what about all those European nations that have banned publishing any 'holocaust denial' writings ? Will Murdochratia campaign to have that ended ?
And what about the laws against libel and slander ? Shouldn't it be campaigning to have laws against them quashed ? Just think of what could be written about Roopie if they were.
Of course we don't have specific laws against holocaust denialism in Australia, we just have "various laws against 'hate speech' and 'racial vilification'" and the reptiles are consistently preaching against them.
The reptiles seem to be be clearing the decks a bit of late with videos disappearing and the likes of the Maj and the Bromancer stepping back a little from the barking mad inhabitants of the herpetarium (I know this is only a matter of degree as they have all been touched by the great spirit to a greater or lesser degree).
DeleteOur colourfully plumed correspondent basically says "oops - my bad" about the Jones segment that lead to the YouTube ban. No social responsibility as a publisher, no recognition of previous misbehaviour just a rather lame excuse.
As DP pointed out recently there are plenty of examples on social media of folk who bought the misinformation and have subsequently paid the price
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57958358
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1423794706388029440
If you are providing a platform for bullshit that could cause some of the users to make fatal decisions do you have any responsibility? Obviously not if your entire business model is based on bullshit.
Regarding the freedom of expression argument, I can think of lots of examples of views that were too hot to handle. The likes of Emu Nugent were keen at one stage to debate the issue of paedophilia. Proponents of a world caliphate attracted the attention of the authorities but I don't recall them getting much of a run in the media. Teenage suicide diaries?
Seems that it is only a very narrow range of highly politicised issues that require all this "debate".
"Despite his struggle with the virus, Mr Harmon still said he would reject being jabbed, saying his religious faith would protect him."
DeleteAnd so it did, for Mr Harmon is now in Heaven, forever lustily singing the praises of "God". I really cannot understand why "the faithful" consider a 'passing over' to be heartbreaking, surely, if one really, truly believes, it is a time for rejoicing.
And from Mr Lawrenson about the vaccine: "He said to me: 'It's a gene thing, an experimental thing. You're putting something in your body that hasn't been thoroughly tested.'"
Of course the virus - also something entering your body - has been fully tested, not least by Mr Lawrenson acting self-sacrificingly on our behalf. And he was "a Cambridge University graduate" so he must have had all the knowledge and reasoning capability to decide life and death matters on behalf of his "loved ones".
I wonder if he ever ate or drank anything that hadn't "been fully tested".
It happened a longish time ago, so I can't remember everything that was said about why people shouldn't wear car seat belts, but plenty were against them. That's putting on your body something that hasn't "been fully tested", isn't it. But we didn't have "social media" other than newspaper letter-writer columns and 'over the back fence' gossip, so it all faded away fairly quickly.
But then, Bef, I guess people only have any responsibility for things you get caught doing, and who's going to charge social media contributors with manslaughter because some people who were convinced by them, then died like Leslie Lawrenson.
"What Worries the World?"
ReplyDelete"Would you say things in this country are heading in the right direction, or are they off on the wrong track?"
Ask a stupid question...
Maj. Mitch, Cater, Oreo and the Onion Muncher all in one day ? It must be retarded children's day, surely.
ReplyDeleteJapan invasion of China should be remembered
ReplyDeleteWell the Chinese sure remember it, ww, but I'm not sure anybody else much can "remember" it because they never really heard about it in the first place.
DeleteAftr all, the Japanese have basically trashed any wartime documents that might provide evidence of the millions they slaughtered in the 1937-1945 (now dated as 1931-1945 by the Chinese) invasion of China.
But in the Nanking (now named Nanjing) massacre of 1937-38, the Japanese slaughtered between 40,000 and 300,000 (depending in whose guesses you believe):
"...the best documented of Japanese atrocities in China owing to the presence of Western observers who were eyewitnesses to the mass slaughter, rape and looting that the Japanese inflicted on the unfortunate population of the Chinese capital."
https://www.pacificwar.org.au/JapWarCrimes/TenWarCrimes/Rape_Nanking.html
Western observers, eh ? Who would have thought ... Oh well, only about 80,000 were wiped out in Hiroshima by the first nuke.
Hi Dorothy,
ReplyDelete“Twitter, for example, banned US president Donald Trump last year, something no real media company would even consider.”
Firstly Twitter didn’t ban Trump last year they permanently banned him on the 8th January 2021, two days after he incited a full blown insurrection at the Capitol building.
Secondly it should be FORMER US president Donald Trump or does Mitchell still cling to the hope that the Orange One will be back in the White House by September.
Finally it would appear a “real media company” like Mitchell’s stablemate Fox, don’t cancel compulsive liars like Trump, they just edit out the bits that would get them sued or banned themselves;
https://www.salon.com/2021/08/08/trump-spokesperson-blasts-fox-news-for-censoring-his-latest-interview_partner/
An excellent piece of journalism from the man still searching for that elusive Order Of Lenin medal.
DiddyWrote
Sheesh, DW, details, details, and worse, you sound like you don't expect the medal to be found, but surely, it's just lurking around the corner, out of sight, a little like the hunt for the Major's sanity ...
Delete