Speaking of cancelled white men and MAMILs and yet another groaning and tilting at windmills ...

 

The pond had intended to start by noting that it woke to the news that the fascist-inclined dictator Putin had sent another journalist off to the gulag, and that Israel had admitted the faint possibility of murdering a journalist, but then if you criticise the deeply corrupt conduct of Israel's government you're accused of being anti-semitic ...

So instead the pond avoided the famine in Somalia and assorted other climate-related catastrophes around the world to start on a lighter note, because it found this contribution by a HUNster to western civilisation irresistible ...

The set up in The Graudian ...

The Herald Sun ran Price’s column over a full page on Saturday, allowing him to bemoan the inclusion of “coloured or Asian people” in television advertising, among other things.
Price framed himself as among a minority of white men who could no longer voice their opinion.

The payoff ...

...Price has ample opportunity to share his views. He has a regular column in one of the nation’s most widely read tabloids and is a host of Channel Ten’s The Project. He is also host of a program titled Australia Today, aired on LiSTNR and Triple M regionals.
The column prompted widespread criticism on social media. Victorian MP Martin Pakula tweeted: “When I’m old I want a regular spot on The Project and a full page spread in Melbourne’s highest selling daily newspaper to whinge about how I’ve been cancelled.”
Price responded: “Need to read the words Marty never said anything about being cancelled mate.”
The headline of the column was “I’m old, male and cancelled”. When this was pointed out to Price, he responded that he did not write the headlines.
Other headlines used on News Corp’s websites for the article included “Sick of free rides for women, people of colour” and “Non-binary bathrooms, no TV ads without coloured or Asian people: This old, white man is sick of it all”.

It always pleases the pond to come across someone stupider than the pond. It gives the pond some kind of perverse hope ...

And so to noting stories you won't be seeing in the lizard Oz ...

By golly, the reptiles always told the pond that the Tudge matter was a whole lot of nothing, which is why the pond looks forward to receiving its 650k of nothing ...

And looky look, the pond has to note just how many rats are leaving the Dominator's ship ...

Meanwhile, this is what you get at top of page in the lizard Oz tree killer edition ...

Bashing TG folk seems to be the new sport for reptiles and tykes and it was also on top of the digital edition, along with little England being given a good trussing by a hardy bunch of Tories ...

The pond's TG friend, who went to a Catholic school and endured abject misery, didn't see anything new in it all, but wanted to send a message to unhappy kids that you can survive and even prosper, and to always remember your Blake ...

And the gates of this Chapel were shut
And "Thou shalt not," writ over the door;
So I turned to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And priests and reptiles in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.

Astute readers will have noted that, speaking of irrelevant old white MAMILs persecuted, muzzled and silenced, the onion muncher was also on top of the digital page.

With a sigh the pond knew its duty and got on with the job ...

Meanwhile, on another planet featuring Dnsha Mistree and Sumit Ganguly last month ... inter alia ...

...Modi’s Independence Day speech is emblematic of a larger change taking place under his rule, which has faced criticism for democratic backsliding—moving away from the very constitution that came shortly after its independence. The prime minister and the BJP are working to unshackle India from its liberal and secular moorings, advancing a new national identity that champions Hindu supremacy. This enterprise is in fact antithetical to the very foundations of Hinduism, which is an inherently pluralistic faith.

Modi’s BJP government is also undercutting India’s institutions in unprecedented ways. It has made a mockery of India’s rich tradition of civil liberties by charging activists and dissidents with crimes under colonial-era laws. One egregious example is the case of left-wing activists detained under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act for alleged links to Maoist groups and allegedly fomenting riots. One of the accused, lifelong Jesuit activist Rev. Stan Swamy, died in custody last year. Furthermore, Modi and the BJP have co-opted much of the media and important private sector actors. Journalists have faced intimidation and harassment; prominent nongovernmental organizations have been cut off from foreign funding while others can receive overseas money only into accounts with a government-owned bank.

Unfortunately, the most important lessons from the independence movement seem to be lost on India’s contemporary leaders, as shown by their approach to religious pluralism and democratic institutions. Although India’s leading revolutionaries were committed to nonviolence, tensions between Hindus and Muslims marred the independence movement. These tensions pulled the British Raj apart, and two new countries emerged in its place: India and Pakistan. This week also marks the anniversary of the Partition of India, which triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters as Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs were forced to flee in different directions across the new border. A few months later, India and Pakistan went to war over the status of Jammu and Kashmir—a disagreement that still plagues the subcontinent.

The pond could go on quoting, but it's enough to note that as usual, the knights and dames man is completely clueless, and the only surprise is that the pond is surprised yet again ...

Only the onion muncher could propose that English is the way forward ... and meanwhile, back on that other planet ...

Modi’s speech reflects how he and the BJP appear to embrace some of these traits. By lionizing fringe actors from the independence movement—including those who exacerbated religious tensions—they are rewriting history to suit their own political agenda. They have undermined civil liberties and shown basic disregard for political opposition. Taking a page from Jinnah’s book, Modi has ensured that any substantive decision must come through him. Such a system may work in the short term, but what happens when Modi is no longer prime minister?

The contrast with then-Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s epic “A Tryst With Destiny” speech, delivered on Aug. 14, 1947, couldn’t be starker. Nehru said he sought to “bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic, and progressive nation.” Most poignantly, he highlighted that India’s religious pluralism was integral to the newly founded country: “All of us, to whatever religion we may belong, are equally the children of India, with equal rights, privileges, and obligations.”

India’s Independence Day has traditionally provided an opportunity to reflect on the horrors of colonialism and the dangers of religious discord while also celebrating the vibrance of the country’s democracy. Modi’s speech this week reflects the departure that India’s contemporary leaders have made from these foundational values.

And so to the final gobbet, and the revelation that this was just reptile pandering, a just for a boring, irrelevant old fart to score top of the page ma thanks to an edited speech with no highlights ... just pandering and fawning ...

Edited? Wasn't there already more than enough of this simpering crap?

If India is relying on the onion muncher's strong instincts, the pond has a knighthood or perhaps a dame to flog them ...

Meanwhile, what was happening at the bottom of the page?

There was simplistic Simon rallying the mutton Dutton to rally his troops, and bizarrely Ticky seemed to think that little England might be in some sort of trouble, but the pond was assured that after Brexit, plucky little England would flourish and dominate the world ... why, they speak English in some parts of the land, or so the pond is told, though Professor Higgins might dispute the notion ...

But with even heavier heart, the pond knew its duty ... it was time for a groaning, and the only question was whether the reptiles would run a shot of the most Satanic thing to be seen on the planet ... the unmitigated evil of a windmill, which in turn would require a Don Quixote-like feuding or even an impaling ...

It goes without saying, but the pond routinely says it, that there's never anything original in a good Groan, but harking back to Tony Bleagh is a new level even for the groaner ... though as it's in the cause of nuking the country and the planet, the pond will let it pass ...

That said, the pond does regret that it couldn't help simplistic Simon with his rallying of the mutton Dutton ...

The pond shouldn't get distracted by a Wilcox, the pond should stick to the matter at hand, including the nuking of the planet ...

Even so, the pond should note that there's an "even so", which is a refined form of Billy Goat buttism ... and eek, oh noes, there's no way to edit out the shot of a monstrosity too inhuman for human eyes to bear ... (if thine eye or wind turbine offends thee, pluck it out, and you'll be on the way to being a good Groaner).

Relax, just as the Caterist mentioned small nuclear modular reactors, so the echo can be heard running wild down the valleys, groaning with glee ...

Ah yes, plucky little England, but all will be well now a minuscule of Tories have given it a good trussing ...

On with belling the cat or nuking the planet, as you wish ...

Yes! Still the yearning for coal is palpable in the Groaner. 

Why, love of coal in the heaving breast is roughly equivalent to the passion that erupted in Wuthering Heights, with coal cast in the role of the alluring Heathcliff ...

Oh the good old days of 24/7 coal-fired generation, oh the tragedy of coal leaving the system ...

Sadly the pond had promised not to go through its listicle of current climate-related disasters - it woke to the news of Somalia, but would absolutely not mention John Harris in The Graudian ...

...Here, clearly, is yet another victory for the hard-right Toryism that now seems to run the party, and a reminder of the financial links that connect Conservative politics with big hydrocarbon companies and devout sceptics and deniers. It is not hard to detect the influence of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the climate-sceptic lobby group founded in 2009 by Margaret Thatcher’s one-time chancellor Nigel Lawson, which now numbers the fantastically influential Tory backbencher Steve Baker among its trustees (three years ago, work by the Open Democracy journalist Peter Geoghegan revealed that the foundation’s chair was the co-owner of a company that had donated £25,000 to Johnson’s and Jeremy Hunt’s leadership campaigns in 2019 and £100,000 to Vote Leave; this year, another firm he own gave £10,000 to Braverman’s short-lived leadership campaign). Baker’s European Research Group of Conservative MPs now blurs into the Net Zero Research Group: another Tory MP to watch is the latter’s chair, Craig Mackinlay, a former deputy leader of Ukip who has skilfully channelled the fierce climate denial of his former party into his new one. Mackinlay thinks the pursuit of net zero is an “elite delusion”, which suggests a familiar sleight of hand: using a confected idea of the put-upon masses to protect the interest of fossil-fuel giants.

A lot of what is happening reflects the nostalgia that surfaced in our exit from the EU – this time centred on half-remembered visions of a coal bunker in the back garden and Sunday-afternoon motoring on a tank full of five-star petrol. There is also a sense of the same twitchy paranoia that courses around the Daily Mail, GB News and the more worked-up corners of the internet: a conviction, in essence, that anything even remotely associated with the political left must be a conspiracy to limit people’s freedom, and a power grab by the state, and the climate crisis is no exception. As evidenced by the Tories’ leadership contest, what all this leads to is utterly absurd: people claiming that “woke” social attitudes are a huge threat to civilisation and that illegal immigration is even more dangerous, and then responding to 40C heat, failed harvests and endless floods by effectively telling us that no one need worry.

There is something truly monstrous about that, but it highlights a way of thinking that we are going to be living with for the next two years at least. By way of symbolising it, at last week’s final leadership hustings at Wembley Arena, one member of the audience asked Truss if she might be prepared to abolish motorway speed limits. “We need to be prepared to look at that,” she replied. In that mind-boggling moment, there was a sharp sense of where we are about to be taken: deep into the realms of doing what you want whatever the consequences, thanks to petrolhead politics: the credo of people apparently happy to let the world burn.

And the pond was absolutely not going to mention Adam Morton ... with his bloody useless listicles ...

The Pakistan disaster follows record-breaking heatwaves and drought across China, the US and western Europe this year that have dried rivers, fuelled wildfires, hit food and energy production and sent temperatures north of 40C in places where temperatures are not supposed to be 40C. The expert scientific view is clear: this is what a climate crisis looks like. This is how it happens.

The chance of extreme events is increasing because emissions aren’t slowing down. A global state of the climate report last week found the atmospheric concentration of heat-trapping carbon dioxide grew at the fifth-fastest rate on record in 2021 to reach its highest point in 800,000 years.

Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide loads the dice, increasing the risk of events on the scale of Australia’s catastrophic 2019-20 bushfires and the repeat “once in a century” floods that have swamped Lismore.

If this all sounds familiar, fair enough. It should be...

It should be? Not in the land of the Groaner,  but the pond will confess to promises broken ...

Meanwhile, in another country, carbon credit rorting will carry on in style. Perhaps an infallible Pope before getting to the final gobbet of groaning?

As for the gobbet, thankfully it's short ...

Hard-headed, cautious analysis and action? Yep, that's what nuking the country and the planet with technology currently off in the never never is called in the lizard Oz ... and by golly if it takes a Tony Bleagh and a groaning, there's hope yet ...

And so to wrap up with consensus, and don't you worry a whit or jot about Qantas, Joyce, 4 Corners, or industrial relations ...take an immortal Rowe instead...