How lightly the learned Henry wears his learning, though the pond suspects that in the end it will all come down to "indigenous people"? Fuck them ...
Meanwhile the pond is grateful for that reference to "incredulous settlers". Some might be wondering what the word "incredulous" means, but rather than resorting to the full to overflowing intertubes, why not use this Wilcox for enlightenment ...
And so on with the learned Henry, grappling with the here and now in a way that boggled the pond ...
Indeed, indeed, the pond remembers the equal respect the Opium Wars offered, and as for the equal respect provided by slavery ...
And as for equal respect and the rule of law ...
Still, the pond is tremendously pleased that our Henry took the pond's mind off all recent business ... there's been so much mindless conformity - you could hardly call it intellectual - in the world of the reptiles, that it's always a pleasure to bump into a genuine wanker of the old school ...
Um, does that include wannabe dictators, aspirational authoritarians and manufacturers of monsters?
And so to the rest of the reptiles for Friday ...
Sussan? Ssorry, the pond can never get past the "ss". A groan about migrants? Much as the pond has the deepest respect for Dame Groan, the pond has been there so many times before when it comes to roughing up migrants that it could write the column in its sleep. The meretricious Merritt having yet another go at comrade Dan? What was that about nodding off? The pond is so tired of discussing the ways that the reptiles have ruined the Liberal party, and given comrade Dan new life, but if you must, Alan Kohler: If the Liberals hope to survive it must be as progressive conservatives.
And what about Brendan blathering on about Bazza?
Apparently the loon doesn't realise that Bazza's actually a Norwegian blue, stone dead, gone, definitely deceased, passed on, ceased to be, expired and gone to meet 'is maker, bereft of life, 'e rests in peace, 'e's off the twig, and so "hurting Humphries" is a mildly bemusing concept ...
So the pond had to move on to cackling Claire and didn't regret the choice ...
Significant mental distress? Well yes, contemplating Faux Noise and News Corp can do that to you, but harden up vulgar youff, because wearing masks and protesting is a sure way to ruin your lives.
Run wild and mask free with Killer, or take in cackling Claire's wise words and soon you'll be on an anxiety free course to breaking Godwin's Law with glee ...
The pond is pleased that cackling Claire mentioned climate change, because there's no reason to worry about that at all.
But the reptiles had it covered ...
That's in the business section so it doesn't count, and rest assured the Caterist will be along soon to explain why it's terribly wrong, but what a pleasing snap of a power station the reptiles dug up to go with it.
Uh huh, what a dud that was ...
As a one-time cardigan wearer, the pond recognises the syndrome and shuddered through the experience and came out of it with not a single quote, with everything hedged about with briars and verbiage.
No wonder News Corp will go on spreading climate science denialism until the baking hot cows come home, and once again the pond wonders if Acma is possibly the most useless government body on hand in the land.
Sorry, sorry, the pond almost forgot all about cackling Claire and the salvation of vulgar youff ...
Say what? At this point the pond began to wonder about just how sane cackling Claire was.
It turns out that anxiety about being woke can lead to all kinds of neuroses and troubles and worries ... as explained at
The Bulwark ...
And it's not just at
The Bulwark. It seems having an anxiety about the woke can lead to the delusion that the house of mouse is woke, when in fact they're more like a tricky Wile E. Coyote, and for anyone who can get past the NY Times paywall, there's much to amuse in
Man vs. Mouse: Ron DeSantis Finds Taking On Disney Is a Dicey Business, Republicans are increasingly taking on corporations they denounce as “woke.” The Florida governor is just the latest to find that it isn’t easy...
Sometimes it's better just to be dumb ...
Well the pond vaguely recalls that cackling Claire did mention importing American culture, and it seems she's doing her level best to import Marge ...
But that might seem mean and the pond wouldn't want to give the wrong impression. The pond is extremely grateful to cackling Claire for filling up a posting. The pond can't live by Henry alone, and is ever so umble and deeply indebted for the insights, to an almost Uriah Heep level ...
'I am well aware that I am the umblest person going,' said Uriah Heep, modestly; 'let the other be where he may. My mother is likewise a very umble person. We live in a numble abode, Master Copperfield, but have much to be thankful for. My father's former calling was umble. He was a sexton.'
'What is he now?' I asked.
'He is a partaker of glory at present, Master Copperfield, with Bazza and beyond hurt' said Uriah Heep. 'But we have much to be thankful for. How much have I to be thankful for reading the thoughts of cackling Claire!'
I asked Uriah if he had been reading cackling Claire for long?
'I have been reading her, going on four year, Master Copperfield,' said Uriah; shutting up browser, after carefully marking the place where he had left off. 'Since a year after my father's death. How much have I to be thankful for, in that! How much have I to be thankful for, in cackling Claire's kind intention to give me instructive articles each Friday, which would otherwise not lay within the umble means of mother and self ...
Some might think the pond has gone too far, but then some are about to read "Conservative values also promote gratitude", and the pond was only wanting to express gratitude, though her words, ever so gratefully and umbly received, were immediately followed by another terrifying banner likely to induce sleepless nights for vulgar youffs for months, tossing and turning in their anxiety ...
That blather about Nazi prison camps reminded the pond that Andrew Bridgen was recently kicked out of the Conservative Party for comparing Covid vaccines to the Holocaust ... which sent James O'Brien right off, and made the pond wonder if cackling Claire sometimes changed her voice, and rang in to his show ...
Whatever anyone thinks of social media, and the pond doesn't think much, time on Twitter isn't exactly the same as time spent in Auschwitz-Birkenau ...
And with that thought, the pond happily pronounces cackling Claire the reptile fuckwit of the week, an honour not lightly bestowed ... especially when you look at the competition, and our Henry's own entry this day ...
At this point the pond would usually turn to a cartoon to wrap things up, but the immortal Rowe seems to be on a break, and so the pond is left with an infallible Pope which surely can only mean something to Tasmanians ... because the pond finds the subject matter completely arcane and mysterious ...
Our Henry has certainly taken the dictum “Never apologise, never explain” to impressive new extremes today.
ReplyDeleteFor such a staunch defender of “Western values”, the hole in the bucket man (btw, RIP Harry Belafonte) must consider them to be extremely weak and fragile, if he believes that a Papal apology for a 500 year old decision is enough to weaken them.
To compress Claire’s cackle - “Close off your mind - you’ll be much, much more comfortable”.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buWA_xsT_Is
DeleteAnonymous - thank you for that link. It is quite new to me, and, I must admit, when I saw 'Tones and I' I wondered if it were some kind of link with the Onion Muncher (supposedly known as 'Tones' to some admirer/confidantes) but it goes much deeper than the OM was ever capable of reaching. And, yes, a possible antidote to the eClaire.
DeleteShe really does wander and waffle a lot doesn't she. But the bit I truly appreciated was this: "From marriage to the family unit, to the rule of law and democracy, conservatives tend to see that what has worked will likely again work in the future, and so it is our duty to future generations to preserve such traditions."
DeleteYep, and that's why human history, which has been dominated for millennia by "conservatives", has never changed - it's always been just perfect. So what about those appalling wokies who wouldn't let very young kids take up employment as chimney-sweeps, hey ? The kids could always "choose their own way" couldn't they ? And as for that frightful business of forcing suffrage onto women: they too were happy to "choose their own way" rather than having the obligation to choose between men to rule them thrust upon them.
So she's spot on, isn't she: it's just those evil wokies who thrust the obligation to vote onto women and took away the perfectly respectable employment of very young chimney-sweeps. Among many, many other woke indignities.
Chad, do you recall this one:
Deletehttps://youtu.be/NIOIKdylRcM
A very Australian performsnce all round.
So, today we have the benefit of the deep and broad classical education of Holely Henry who would like to sincerely assure us that "...by 1629, judge Juan de Solorzano y Pereira, Spain's pre-eminent authority on the law of the Americas, could dismiss the doctrine of discovery as being merely 'of antiquarian interest'." Right, so, from then on no more 'conquests' happened and all the lands that had been claimed under the Doctrine of Discovery had been returned to the ownership and control of "...human beings who, even if some lived in primitive tribes, had undeniably been made in God's image."
ReplyDeleteJust as well than that the whole of south America and much of north America had already been taken and occupied by those appallingly primitive Spaniards and Portuguese who believed wholeheartedly in the doctrine of discovery. And since there's about 217 million or so human inhabitants of Brazil, for instance, then there's a lot of the 'original inhabitants' in the place, isn't there.
So let's just see what Wikipedia says: "The Indigenous population was decimated by European diseases, declining from a pre-Columbian high of 2 to 3 million to some 300,000 as of 1997, distributed among 200 tribes. By the 2010 IBGE census, 817,000 Brazilians classified themselves as Indigenous, the same census registered 274 indigenous languages of 304 different indigenous ethnic groups." See: the indigenes are clearly thriving.
Hence clearly the Salamanca School's exposition was an unqualified success: "I love the University of Salamanca, for when the Spaniards were in doubt [and presumably the Portuguese too] as to the lawfulness of conquering America, the University of Salamanca gave it as their opinion that it was not."
You gotta feel sorry for the Aussie Abos and the Indonesians and Taiwanese and a lot of Africans and north Americans and Canadians and Caribbeans who simply didn't have the benefit of Salamanca and were just taken over as essentially 'terra nullius'.
So thanks for that explanation, Henry, as to why us conquering Europeans are totally blameless in terms of colonisation - except for the non-Catholic Europeans who'd never heard of Salamanca.
Maybe that's why the Catholic empires (particularly Spain and Portugal) declined so rapidly in the years after 1629, GB. They weren't allowed to colonise any more lands and were forced to hand back the ones they had.
DeleteAin't history a wondrous thing?
Yeah, Merc, especially when you're looking back on it and not waiting in expectation for it.
DeleteAnd I forgot the Philippines: part of Salamanca Spain until the Americans invaded in 1899.
I confess though, that I thought Henry was having just a bit of a joke based on telling us that Salamanca U had clearly reversed the teaching of the Pope and that invading and colonising other people's lands by force wasn't 'legal' but that nevertheless we went right on doing even more of it. But no, it mainly wasn't the Catholics who did (other than the Philippines, Vietnam, "New" Caledonia etc) but the evil Protestants: north America, Canada (whence those Catholic Franks had been mostly expelled), Australia and NZ, parts of Pacific east Asia, India, large parts of Africa and the Middle East etc.
Then I remembered that reptiles have no sense of humour and simply can't have a joke with anybody.
Gotta love DP.
ReplyDeleteWho else would have Wile E. Coyote, Uriah Heep,a Norwegian Blue and
"Our Henry" not O. Henry running free range through the windmills of her mind?
If I ever get to Oz I'll just have to visit her hometown of Tamworth.
Perhaps there is something in the water that produced both a DP and a Barnaby
Joyce, not to mention the Big Golden Guitar that was christened by Slim Dusty
himself.
DP'S blog, Barnaby Joyce, Slim Dusty, the Big Golden Guitar, by Zeus you lot have
been secretly assimilating this once innocent rustic, there isn't ten Jerseymen in
the state familiar with such things.
Struth, I'll be seeing Bunyips next, sport a budgie smuggler on my next trip
to the beach and become a Sydney Swans rooter, er, fan.
Can't wait till we face GrueBleen's Melbourne Demons again.
Much as I respect the Demons, JM - they would have won 6 successive premierships from 1955 to 1960 inclusive if they hadn't allowed themselves to be spooked by Collingwood in 1958 - but I followed my father by supporting St Kilda (which, as you know, is named after the Lady of St Kilda, a trading ship from the St Kilda islands that parked offshore in 1841 and part of whose name was assigned to the shore region where she moored and traded).
DeleteSt Kilda - which clearly has a very famous club song as I expect you can guess; something about "go marching in" - has in its century-plus existence won only one premiership, defeating Collingwood by 1 solitary point (kicked in the last minute of the game in 1966) whereupon almost the entire MCG (about 90,000 or so) burst into that song. Oh, so emotional.
And of course it's needless to say that if your team is going to beat Collingwood in a grand final, it has to be by either 100 points, or just 1. So satisfying.
PS: the Aussie term for a 'rooter' (other than 'sex-crazed') is a barracker. The traditional story about which is that in the very early days of formalised Aussie Rules, major games were played on a ground that was situated between St Kilda Rd (oops, there we go again) and Queens Rd near the Victoria Barracks which was then the temporary home for many Aussie soldiers.
DeleteSo, when an Aussie Rules game was played, residents of the Victoria Barracks would come down and crowd around the ground to cheer the players on. They were very noisy, and hence were referred to by the non-residents of Victoria Barracks derisively as "barrackers".
But then, I have also come across reference to 'barrackers' as noisy English soccer fans back some many decades ago. Take your pick of the origin stories or simply believe both of them.
GB,
DeleteI have run across and wondered where barracker came from.
So the St. Kilda barrackers are in the same boat as the British World Cup fans,
waiting since 1966.
I have noted amateur Aussie Rules League players in Central Park on
occasion and there has been a pro league since the 1990's.
And there was an article in the paper about some schools eschewing the costs
of American football, financial and physical, adopting Aussie Rules footy
as it is more exciting than our soccer plus the aggressiveness - for better or
worse - appeals to the teen male navigating growing up into a man.
Tell 'em to be wary of the Aussie Rules effect, JM: lasting brain damage from concussion resulting from in-game 'tackles'.
DeleteHere’s another character from the Australian Catholic University who really should be writing for the Lizard Oz - he’d get along famously with Henry!
ReplyDeletehttps://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.smh.com.au%2Fworld%2Feurope%2Fcut-price-coronation-why-charles-is-wrong-to-modernise-the-monarchy-20230426-p5d3gv.html
(Article liberated from the SMH)
Hmm: "The British monarchy, like every other monarchy, lives or dies on its respect for tradition..." But 'tradition' is created anew every generation, isn't it. What keeps a monarchy alive is great pomp and circumstance, and the Poms still have plenty of that - it's what makes the British Monarchy into such a successful tourism earner for the Brits.
Delete"The idea of anointing a sovereign goes back much further – to the prophet Samuel in the Bible." Oh, I thought it went back further than that - back to Sargon of Akkad (the human world's very first 'emperor') back in 2334 BCE.
Thanks for the liberation Anon. But oh dear, Mr Pattenden needs to update himself on succession rules!
ReplyDelete"cackling Claire ..." and the Blind Spots.
ReplyDeleteAs a substitute to "Progressive ideologies send the wrong message to kids" by Claire Lehmann
- what an offensive title - here is a laugh a minute conservative media mess as found via co-Editor-in-Chief of the "Social Science and Medicine-Mental Health journal" used by Claire in her story.
The old chestnut:
"studies have repeatedly found that conservatives—both politicians and laymen—tend to be more conventionally attractive than liberals (and have better sex lives)." below entitled (geddit) ""How to Understand the Well-Being Gap between Liberals and Conservatives".
Or just conservatives blind spots:
“In a sense, attractive individuals have a blind spot that leads them to not see the need for more government support or aid in society,” Palmer and Peterson argue." ... "The authors, Rolfe Daus Peterson of Susquehanna University and Carl L Palmer of Illinois State University, wrote: “Controlling for socioeconomic status, we found that more attractive individuals are more likely to report higher levels of political efficacy, identify as conservative and identify as Republican.”
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/jan/31/hunky-tory-attractive-people-more-likely-to-be-rightwing-study-finds
Where do the reptiles get all the culture warriors from? And using McGorry without a quote - evil.
Reptile CW Test:
Q: "what is the time to mental health issues or unhappiness"
A: From 1 minute past 2 hours.
Then - Your hired!
Jean Twenge "... also denied that she was outright opposed to technology: "Smartphone or internet use of up to an hour or two a day is not linked with mental health issues or unhappiness... It's two hours a day and beyond that that's the issue."[21]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Twenge
"Each generation thinks it invented sex; each generation is totally mistaken. Anything along that line today was commonplace both in Pompeii and in Victorian England; the differences lie only in the degree of coverup — if any.“
~ Robert A. Heinlein
https://quotepark.com/quotes/1944365-robert-a-heinlein-each-generation-thinks-it-invented-sex-each-gener/
If anyone can find the journal "social science and medicine-mental health journal" edited by Catherine Gimbrone, I'll be impressed. Elsivier & Georgetown.
"How to Understand the Well-Being Gap between Liberals and Conservatives
"In a recent essay for Social Science & Medicine–Mental Health, epidemiologist Catherine Gimbrone and coauthors identified a significant gap in depressive attitudes between liberal and conservative teens
...
"In a similar vein, studies have repeatedly found that conservatives—both politicians and laymen—tend to be more conventionally attractive than liberals (and have better sex lives). Moreover, people who are healthier in childhood have been shown to be more likely to become conservative as adults. Meanwhile, people with high measured cognitive ability are also more likely to support economic conservatism (and cultural liberalism)."
...
https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2023/03/how-to-understand-the-well-being-gap-between-liberals-and-conservatives/
Except....
"The generation game
"It makes no sense, but typecasting generations is more popular than ever"
https://insidestory.org.au/the-generation-game/
Yeah, all sorts of imaginary ramblings get published in pseudo-science "journals" don't they. So what exactly is American Affairs and its 'contributor' list:
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Affairs
On the other hand:
The generation game
It makes no sense, but typecasting generations is more popular than ever
JOHN QUIGGIN 5 SEPTEMBER 2017 1765 WORDS
is probably worth a read:
"'Every generation thinks it invented sex, and every generation is wrong.' As that quotation from the American writer Robert Heinlein suggests, we all experience as unique and revelatory the transformations we undergo through the course of our lives, from childhood to puberty, adulthood, parenthood and old age. As a matter of logic and observation, though, these processes are experienced at all times and in all places, and differ more in detail than essentials."