With the Taliban attempting to outdo the Taliban, and assorted states in the United States actually outdoing the Taliban, and the mad Mullahs of Iran matching it with the Taliban, it's worth remembering something that won't be featured in the lizard Oz.
The pond isn't usually given to anniversary rituals, but this is a day others outside the News Corp thought bubble have noted ...
Any of those headlines can be googled or jeevesd or ducked or binged or whatever, just as you can easily discover news of the morality police at work in assorted American states, egged on by the worse excesses of the GOP, always willing to ruin a Beetlejuice while banning everything in sight... just not in the lizard Oz ...
What you will find this day is the pond handing out red cards in wild abandon, even as the reptiles seem to have suddenly rediscovered the Ukraine war, mainly as a stick with which to beat the Feds ...
Strange that there's never any mention of the GOP wanting to abandon Ukraine to a sociopath ...
On with the red cards, and there's one for nattering "Ned" and there's one for Dame Slap, and are there any contenders for a red card lining up down below in the comments section?
Sure, a huge red card for Brendan O'Neill sticking his colonial beak into the stew, why doesn't he just fuck off and help get together some prison hulks for foreigners?
Naturally there's a huge red card for the bromancer, with the nakedly racist statement that there's no racism in Australia, and a milk-laden red card for the oscillating fan wringing his hands, and what the hell is garrulous Gemma still doing hanging around after the weekend shift clocked in at 6 am? There's a red card for just hanging around too long ...
The result of course is that the pond has cut off its nose to spite its face, and there aren't many reptiles left standing after the decimation (more like 1 in 2 than 1 in 10), what with Polonius having to be saved for the Sunday meditation.
With a deep sigh and a sense of disbelief - still climate science denialism after all these years - the pond turned to the Bjorn again one for a bog standard serve ...
The pond clicked on that hot link to
global warming, not knowing what to expect, and bizarrely this is what it led to ...
And so on and so forth, and it wasn't even by Lloydie of the Amazon, last heard from on the 27th August 2023, and apparently still on a search for Colonel Fawcett ...
Back with Bjorn for more of the usual ...
The most recent scientific study? Is there a link? Is there a reference? Might we have the names of the scientists who did the study? There are many studies and of course there were many reasons for the ferocity of the fires, but there was also
this in the Graudian ...
Just this morning the pond woke to yet another story from the BBC news hour brining news from the north ...
'Everything here is impacted by climate change'
The remote islands of Svalbard are seeing warming two times faster than other areas of the Arctic and five to seven times faster than the rest of the world.
A number of residents are taking part in global protests over the weekend against the burning of fossil fuels.
Hilde Falun Strom lives in the Svalbard capital. She explained to Newshour how the climate has changed over the years. (sound
here)
And so on, and meanwhile, the reptiles dish out this Bjorn-again guff ...
An even worse adviser? The Bjorn-again one, who, in a just world, would be treated as a criminal for his criminal climate science denialism, instead of being offered a regular slot in the lizard Oz to peddle his denialist wares ...
Here, have a cartoon to celebrate ...
And so to the bonus, and here the pond allowed the dog botherer, even though like all the other reptiles, he was carrying on about the Voice, and in a most unfortunate way ...
Actually it turns out that the dog botherer isn't much of a speech writer, but the pond had some sympathy for a man given to endlessly bothering dogs, because he's at the heart of the racist war mongering that's been going down, as noted in the
Weekly Beast ...
That sample leaves out the worst of the racist abuse doing the social media rounds ... but why does the dog botherer always have to sound like a mind-numbed parrot only capable of blathering about "groupthink", while surrounded by a bunch of groupthinkers?
The pond clicked on that hot link, just to satisfy its own curiosity and anyone else who wondered where it might have taken them, and as usual, it didn't lead to the outside world, it stayed in the hive mind, because it was the dog botherer referencing himself ...
Nah, not really. Talk about naked referential fluff gathering and navel gazing.
Carry on with your speechifying, but after the pond takes a short break to visit a
Crikey story about the groupthinkers (paywall):
The pond was astonished that the lizard Oz did so well in the survey, and it shows that the dog botherer's efforts have done something to help the hive mind achieve a balance ... but as for helping with the speechwriting, forget it ...
Around this point the pond wondered if it might have been better for the dog botherer to try cartooning, in infallible Pope style ...
Meanwhile, the dog botherer was still going ...
No, no, no, you can't say that about The Price is Wrong. She's a gigantic twit, alarmingly stupid, for no apparent reason a lickspittle fellow traveller with colonialists ... as any decent toonist would note, in the style of the immortal Rowe...
Sorry, dog botherer, the pond didn't come for a celebration of the colonial mindset ...
Around this point the pond began to nod off. It's the aim of most political speechifying and the dog botherer was exceptionally skilled at the art ...
There had been a mention of petulant Peta and the pond thought it should note the other News Corp yarn that turned up in the Beast, a reminder of why it's a Friday must read ...
The pond understands the problem. It turns up in all sorts of places ...
Meanwhile, the dog botherer was still yammering away interminably, heart no doubt in the right place, but sounding like a total bore ...
Here's the problem. The dog botherer keeps on turning the other cheek to the likes of the Sydney Institute's Mundine and The Price is Wrong, and yet if given half a chance, they'd eat him for lunch ...
Both siderism and touchy feely do gooderism have long left the debate. It's turned nasty, full of negativity, and the sort of aggro you'd expect from a boofhead Queensland plod turned on by the violence, and likely it will be the end of the whole thing ...
That's why the dog botherer's banal speechifying was so dispiriting. With friends, like these, who needs enemies, and in the end, the pond was just hoping for the dog botherer to end ... and at last he ran out of steam...
If this referendum fails? He's already thrown in the towel, he's signalled that it's time to start shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic, and that's why, in a desperate search to be positive, the pond decided to end with a win ... any win would do ...
So have the Reptiles hit peak Voice obsession / hatred yet? Or does that only arrive when an entire dead tree edition of the Oz is devoted to the subject?
ReplyDeleteHere we go with Bjornagain again: "The study [no reference given, of course] also finds temperatures increasing half a degree Celsius in the first two decades of this century have caused an additional 116,000 heat deaths annually. But warmer temperatures now also avoid 283,000 cold deaths every year." This is the typical reptile nonsense of 'As it is now, so it will always be'. Does Bjorny even begin to contemplate that as temperatures continue to rise - yes, that means the current trends will go on, and even increase - the heat deaths will keep on increasing while the cold deaths decrease and that very soon heat deaths will outnumber cold deaths and that the number of heat deaths will keep on growing while the number of cold deaths keeps on falling. No, I didn't really think that something that simple could ever occur to a simpleton.
ReplyDeleteAnd we also get: "...recognise that both climate change and carbon-cutting policies incur costs. We should carefully negotiate a middle pathway where we aim for effective approaches that do the most to reduce damages at a reasonable cost." He (and they) just don't even begin to get the idea that we (and they) simply can't "reduce damages". All we can do is slow the increase of damages as the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere keeps on increasing with every year we keep on increasing our emissions.
So, "Panic is a terrible adviser." And stupid denialists are even worse.
Yes, we must not allow ourselves to be influenced by costly climate alarmism. So much better to have the easy column from the Copenhagen Consensus - which, funnily enough, is now located in Lowell, Massachusetts - to tell us how to manage fires across our land. What a waste of time that Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements was. Why, it got all carried away by the observations that our (still recent) severe (must not use the ‘c’ word - ‘catastrophic’) fires were generated in grass, including crops and crop residues, which are such a natural for ‘controlled fires’ to burn away fuels. And, of course - ‘enhanced’ forest management. I guess that follows the famous Trump plan of raking the forest floor; Bjorn seems to assume we know what his ‘enhanced’ is all about.
ReplyDeleteFortunately our local elected representatives, particularly the Federal one - Littleproud - are not swayed by the reports of that Royal Commission. Certainly we have seen nothing from him to promote the local action and co-ordination at all levels of government that the Commission recommended. Well - all three levels around here are essentially branch meetings of the Nationals, so, they are just naturally in regular communication anyway, or will be, once that Voice distraction is put aside.
It will be interesting to see how local, National-voting, grain producers around here carry out their ‘controlled fires’ from November.
Bjorn: To "prevent future fires" start "controlled fires to burn away fuels". Or, how to show you are a complete idiot in less than 30 words.
DeleteIf you are feeling strong you could read Danielle Celermajer's book, Summertime, about the 2019 fires near Kangaroo Valley.
Neat riposte, Joe. Thank you for the lead to Danielle Celermajer. It will be interesting to see if it is in our local library, for starters.
DeleteOn the subject of fuel - if I might presume on our hostess here, I will repeat comments from the 'Wangary' event in South Australia -
'What is known as the Wangary bushfire, in South Australia, in 2005, killed 9 people and injured another 115 as it raced, at up to 100 kilometres an hour, with temperatures reaching 1 000 °C. The remarkable factor was that that happened across land that is cropped or grazed. Most people would have rated the 780 square kilometres as ‘large cleared areas’ before they were burnt. It was not a fire as most people see on TV news - it was a rolling fire storm, making an explosive mixture from bits of chaff and stubble swept up in the wind front it generated. That fire front was a product of a prolonged period of particularly hot, dry weather; all it needed was a local (‘we know best how to manage the land’) to drive through stubble in the ute with the home-made tailpipe, igniting a fire trail behind him, to get that front rolling.'
Here we go, Doggy Bov would like us to know that it's all about "...running emotive left-of-centre lines instead of diligent right-of-centre arguments". Yeah, of course that's it Doggy Bov, you just keep on telling yourself that, day after day.
ReplyDeleteBut then the Weekly Beast passes on the Bov's assertion that "...the no case is 'overwhelmingly based on fear'." So which is it then ? "right-of-centre arguments" or "based on fear"? And would it be asking way too much of the Boverer to expect him to actually know the difference.
Oh, but what the Bov puts into Albanese's mouth: "A reform as historic as this ... needs bipartisan support." No it doesn't, Doggy Bov, it needs decency and rationality - and even maybe some sense and sensibility - on "both" sides, and all it's got from the "right-of-centre" is lies and hatred and racism. Plus the abject stupidity of claiming that colonialism has had no lasting effects in Australia from a genuine 'half caste Aunty Thoma' whom it appears is projecting her own comfortable state onto many, many others who are still suffering.
Now here's something from Doggy Bov speaking from his Albanese imitation: "One flaw of our Yes campaign has been to assume voters knew the long genesis of the voice. For many it arose quite suddenly out of the political process, a request foisted upon them with little preceding rationale." Now quite apart from a million or two Aussie voters born overseas or to parents born overseas who couldn't be expected to know much about an Indigene Voce, that means as usual that there are millions of locally born of local parents who really have no idea what's happening in their own country.. Is this why they elected Abbott then Turnbull then Morrison for just short of 9 years ? Because they really haven't got a clue about the politics of their own country?
ReplyDeleteBut we couldn't say that's why Canavan and Joyce keep getting elected, could we Chad ?
But hey, their usual tactics of "projecting, flipping, politicising and bothsidsing" have never failed the reptiles and wingnuts yet, have they.
Hi Dorothy,
ReplyDeleteLuck, Serendipity, or just plain genius. This is just perfect;
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/commentisfree/2023/sep/16/pink-cockatoo-australian-bird-of-the-year-guardian-birdlife
As usual Loon Pond nails it.
An interesting read for anyone with a bit of spare time:
ReplyDelete‘I saw how grotesquely unqualified so many of us were’: Rory Stewart on his decade as a Tory MP
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/sep/16/rory-stewart-tory-mp-decade-incompetent
"I had learned how much we lied to ourselves to conceal our failures..."