Friday, October 13, 2023

In which the pond marks down the hole in the bucket man, and then for the last voiceless time gets a dose of humbug from the lizard Oz editorialist ...

 

The pond has always been interested in the way that the delusional 'sov cit' movement managed to attract black people in the United States.

It's impossible to underestimate the attractions, appeals and charms of crackpot conspiracy theories, as shown off by the story in The Graudian Voice no campaigner claims Uluru statement supporters want ‘their own military’

Back in the day, there was Dame Slap claiming that climate science would be used by the UN to introduce world government ...

Step forward a certain Kerry White ...

...Kerry White, a Narungga elder, one-time One Nation candidate, and committee member of the Recognise a Better Way group, went on to allege the stolen generation “wasn’t stolen” and that there was “nothing wrong” with assimilation policies. The comments were made last week to an online talkshow hosted by fellow former One Nation candidates, where White is credited as a Narungga elder and Recognise A Better Way committee member.
“What they’re going to do, if they bring this voice in, they’re going to push for treaty … Once they do that, then the United Nations comes in, all the land that’s under native title now, that goes to the United Nations, it belongs all to the United Nations,” White told the ExCandidates podcast.
“And everybody, that’s white people, black people, doesn’t matter who they are, if you’re on that native title land, you don’t own nothing, not your house, not nothing.”

Never underestimate the appeal of crackpot conspiracy theories. The lizard Oz has shown the way for years ...

Meanwhile, over at the lizard Oz, the hole in the bucket man was carrying on in his usual way ...




It was entirely appropriate that shyte-stirring Henry should feature alongside a shyte-stirrer featuring in a lizard Oz shyte-stirring story ... but the pond decided to avoid that huge pile of shyte.

As for the hole in the bucket man, the pond knows perfectly well what the old bigot thinks of the Voice, and felt no need to offer a platform for more repetition of the bleeding obvious ... he's agin it.

So the pond decided to strip him of his gobbet status, and take out his putrescent ranting about the Voice and instead focus on the usual parade of portentous, pompous period references ...

Here the pond should note that the remnants of the lizard Oz graphics department helped our Henry by supporting a favourite tactic of racist deep south US politicians ... inviting Martin Luther King to join their cause, as well as John Locke ...



Now on with the portentous, pompous humbugging ...

...To say that is not to deny that when John Locke asserted, late in the 17th century, that God created human beings in a strict “state of equality”, so that “all power and jurisdiction (must be) reciprocal, no one having more than another”, the moral principle he set out was just an aspiration. But that aspiration has served as the lodestar of Western political development, allowing those who were once excluded to be encompassed within democracy’s ever-broader embrace. 
Democracy has, in other words, always had a compelling response to past political inequality: political equality. It does not make the last first; it makes them every bit as good as their fellow citizens.
That is because democracy is an exercise in shaping a shared present and a better future, not in relitigating an unchangeable past. It heeds Thomas Hobbes’ observation, based on the successive invasions that had crashed on England’s shores, that “there is scarcely a commonwealth in the world whose beginnings can in conscience be justified”.
And instead of imprisoning itself in the shadowy world of perpetual victims and perpetual perpetrators, it accepts Martin Luther King’s reminder that “we may all have come in different ships, but we’re in the same boat now”– with our duty being to decide together on its next destination.
There can consequently be no “dictatorship of the proletariat” in democracies: unlike Marxism, we do not pretend to cure past suffering by vesting those whose distant ancestors were wronged with political rights over others. Nor are there, in a liberal democracy, any special citizens who are constitutionally entitled to bellow, any more than there are half or quarter citizens whose voices the Constitution reduces to a whisper.
Indeed, the very idea of differential citizenship is a contradiction in terms, as democratic citizenship has, at least since Aristotle, always meant “the right to the full privileges and burdens of governing the city”, with “every secondary distinction – such as wealth or poverty, beauty or ugliness, wisdom or folly – erased”.
That is not only the essence of equal rights; it is also integral to liberal democracy’s capacity to absorb its inherent tensions. 
No system of government creates greater room for diversity; yet it requires enough unity to keep differences within bounds. It wants us to be strongly committed to our goals and values; yet also to accept those the democratic process determines, even when they conflict with our own. And it relies on what the ancients called “civic friendship” – the fellow feeling that makes us willing to help each other out – despite giving rise to enduring, passionately felt conflicts.
Political equality is a crucial part of the glue that makes those contradictions tolerable, assuring this round’s losers they will have a fair chance next time around. In contrast, if there are super-citizens on one side, who are guaranteed a privileged voice in the competition for costly benefits, and mere denizens – who believe they are always footing the bill – on the other, “civic friendship” metastasises into Trump-like fury.
That is why it is impossible to assess the voice without asking what sort of society it entails. The answer is straightforward: it entails a return to ascriptive rights; that is, to political distinctions based on descent.
Ascriptive rights were at the heart of pre-modern societies. In ancient Siam, every person received “dignity marks” – ranging from five for a slave to 100,000 for the heir apparent – by virtue of birth; to know a person’s marks was to know precisely how loud their voice would sound in public affairs. 

Ancient Siam? Phew, he really is pissing into the wind these days...

Back to conspiracy theories. Just why did the pond mention Kerry White?

Well here's our sanctimonious, preening, insufferably righteous Henry taking a pot shot at Indigenous 'leets ...

...The fact is that the Indigenous elite is neither separate nor different: it has all the accoutrements of its non-Indigenous counterparts, with the self-righteousness of victimhood to boot. But those whose lives have been blighted by the policies that elite has promoted are both different and separate: separated from the rest of us by poverty, ill-health, violence and early death.
We, as a nation, are responsible for that tragedy – it occurred under our watch, it is a sin of this generation, not of those who came before. And correcting it by ending the separatist policies that have caused it is our foremost moral responsibility.
That is the sole benefit this ill-conceived referendum has wrought. It has forced into the open the question that should have been asked long ago: Are we one country or two? With that question now starkly posed, it won’t be buried again. 

That line's worth repeating for emphahsis ...

...The fact is that the Indigenous elite is neither separate nor different: it has all the accoutrements of its non-Indigenous counterparts, with the self-righteousness of victimhood to boot.

And here's White doing the same ...

...Recognise A Better Way, formerly led by Mundine, has since merged with Fair Australia, the no campaign from conservative lobby group Advance. The merger formed Australians For Unity, the main no campaign vehicle granted tax-deductible status to receive donations.
White is listed as a committee member of Recognise A Better Way on its website alongside Gary Johns, the former deputy prime minister John Anderson, and Indigenous woman Janetia Knapp, who appears in Fair Australia advertisements.
In the podcast interview, White accused leading yes campaigners Thomas Mayo, Marcia Langton and their “cronies” of “feathering their own nest” and concocting a hidden plan to create a second parliament and their own military.
She alleged the Uluru dialogues were “hate-filled meetings against the white people in the government”; pointing to the Uluru statement, she alleged “25 of those pages were for dictating what they want”.
“They want a new building in Canberra, they want as many people in their little group as what sits in the whole federal parliament now, they want it matched even, right, and then they go on to say that they want their own frickin military,” White incorrectly claimed.
“Why the hell would they want their own military? Because they’re the Communist party of Australia. There’s a war coming and you need to choose a side and it’s not a yes or no, it’s about do we stand up for Australia and kick them lot out? Or do we let them tell us what to do?”

Of course not everybody can have a successful career managing to adopt the policies of both major parties and then marrying into the Sydney Institute, but isn't it wondrous what keeping the right sort of company will do for you ...

Meanwhile, if you want a genuine conspiracy, try reading the Graudian yarn Revealed: the secretive rightwing firm providing 'clout' for voice no campaign ...

What else? Again the lizard Oz was shooting blanks ...





The sight of the lickspittle, fellow travelling Adams, who's hung around the Chairman Emeritus for years for his own benefit while purporting to be vaguely leftie,  was almost down there with Claire's cackle, but luckily the pond had a cartoon to hand from the infallible Pope for both her and Ben ...





And after all that, there was nothing for it but for the pond to get a serve from a wondrously self-serving lizard Oz editorialist ...




Yep, in the manner of the mango Mussolini, it's all about them. As for poor old Noel Pearson, has he at last learned that if you lie down with dogs you get fleas, and if you swim with reptiles, you can end up in a death roll? Not to mention poor old Pat Dodson, with a neighsayer at the door ...






Meanwhile, the insufferable lizard Oz editorialist kept on and on ...




Ah yes, there's a certain way forward ...





At this point the lizard Oz editorialist was interrupted by the remnants of the graphics department, sticking in two huge snaps as if that would somehow balance things, and make things right ...






Not on the pond's watch. Back to the lizard Oz editorialist, successfully imitating a puffer fish and making it all about them ...





Nattering "Ned"?! We all know his interminable, turgid capacity for tedious humbugging and the inevitable result ...





The length of this lizard Oz editorial suggested a defensiveness, and an awareness of a deep guilt ... and so on and on it went, the calling for a bowl of water, and the obsessive compulsive washing of the hands, down there with Pontius Pilate and Lady Macbeth...




Roll that last insult around on the tongue and see how it tastes ...

Whatever the result, as a nation we must continue to strive for proper recognition of Indigenous Australians in a form that will help deliver the fruits of reconciliation for everybody ...

Pardon the pond while it takes time out to joke on its vomit ...

It's not just on Albo, it's on all the wretched reptiles, and the Chairman Emeritus ... and no amount of humbug can wipe away the guilt or the responsibility... while the pond is left to mourn the way that it had already run that relevant cartoon ...






As for that other matter the pond refuses to touch, Wilcox managed to work up a cartoon that evoked a general response to any issue that might arise ...






22 comments:

  1. Today’s Sydney Morning Herald has an article on the Onion Muncher’s appointment to the Fox board. Nobody quoted -including the Major - has very much to say about his suitability for the role -
    https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.smh.com.au%2Fbusiness%2Fcompanies%2Ftony-abbott-and-the-meeting-of-minds-at-fox-20231012-p5ebr6.html

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "Abbott ticks seven of the 10 boxes, according to the board, and is likely to earn anywhere between $467,000 and $543,000 depending on his extra duties, a similar return to his earning power for two years as prime minister."

      To those who have, more will be given.

      Delete
  2. It’s often difficult to stomach the rubbish churned out by the Oz and the wider Murdoch media, but today’s offerings literally made my guts clench and induced feelings of nausea.

    Stuff News, its publications, its shills, quislings and propagandists, and most of all, stuff its Chairman Emeritus. Has any other person or organisation ever done so much damage to our society?

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    1. No they are evil and should be removed from being able to either reside in Australia or own any publishing establishment. They are sowing the seeds of the Americanisation of our political system. Do any of the family have citizenship of Australia or has Rupert had to relinquish his Australian citizenship to take up his American citizenship.

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    2. Oh I think those seeds were planted a generation or two ago and have well and truly sprouted by now. 'Dutts' has no idea of, or interest in, government but only in winning power by waging war on all those Green-left-wokies that keep taking seats off the Coalition. Just like the US.

      Delete
  3. Hi Dorothy,

    I’m surprised with Henry’s love of an ancient philosopher he hasn’t tried this tack;

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/slavery/ethics/philosophers_1.shtml

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    1. Apparently Aristotle reckons that: "Natural slaves were slaves because their souls weren't complete - they lacked certain qualities, such as the ability to think properly, and so they needed to have masters to tell them what to do." Well I don't know about people with incomplete souls (the Trinity's soul manufacturing process fails yet again?) but we all know about the millions who just love their 'strongman rulers': time and time again over thousands of years of documented human history we've seen that, and never so much as today.

      So it seems that "the ability to think properly" is extremely uncommon in homo sapiens sapiens. Since the Earth has maybe a billion more years of habitability - unless we really do manage to annihilate the place - I wonder what our successors, if any, will be like.

      And I wonder what we'd be like if we only had a half-way decent education system for our own young and didn't rely on whatever rationality and reason that they, if any, develop for themselves.

      Delete
    2. Hi GB,

      It’s amazing how quickly the line between subjugation and paternalism starts to blur and overlap.

      “Do what I tell you! It will be good for you!”

      Delete
    3. It may even be that 'paternalism' - being taught to unconditionally obey one's father from an early age - is a major part of the problem.

      Delete
    4. And the early Christians found a very convenient scapegoat for slavery - the Fall of Man.
      Good Christian souls could feel comforted that they had not egregiously sinned against god, because they were not slaves.

      Delete
    5. Yeah, and there was also the 'Curse of Ham' visited upon Ham's sons because Ham had seen Noah drunk and naked and therefore they had to serve Noah's other sons as virtual slaves (and they had dark skin, too). But that curse was only made by Noah and was not supported by the then Duality so it was ok to later free the slaves.

      Delete
  4. "Never underestimate the appeal of crackpot conspiracy theories." Oh indeed not, and now the 'believers' number in the multi-millions and are all connected by worldwide social media. Once more may I draw your attention to the tails of a normal distribution curve when the number of 'observations' is very large: in short, long and fat. That is more, and crazier, crazies and many more crazy ideas to appeal to them.

    So, Kerry White reckons that the stolen generation "wasn't stolen" which means she agrees with Andrew Bolt. I wonder how much of a turn on that would be for both of them.

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    1. Talking about "crackpot conspiracy theories" today's Guardian Katharine Murphy column is on the mark:
      "This opposition leader makes things up regularly, sometimes several times a day, with growing confidence. He’s fully intent on shaping his own reality, and why wouldn’t he be? Dutton’s accusations and inventions are amplified much more often than they are factchecked, parsed or decoded, because there is so much bollocking and barracking in the public square, people can’t see the bullshit."
      Peter Dutton is Australia’s figurehead of fear and fake news, like Trump but without charisma
      https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/2023/oct/14/peter-dutton-is-australias-figurehead-of-fear-and-fake-news-like-trump-but-without-charisma

      Delete
  5. "The performance of bureaucracy has been a key issue in this referendum debate."

    Well, yes, the unelected policy makers at The Australian have been the main advocates for the "No" campaign (Sheridan: Departments of Defence Force and Home Affairs; Albrechtsen: Attorney-General's Department and of course the Great White Leader at Large, Paul Kelly: Department for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Affairs. Sorry, Kenny may attempt division in the ranks, but we all know he is better as Chief Scientist).

    Hate to be a doubting Thomas, but perhaps we could have some evidence of articles where The Australian has championed indigenous rights. Even in this article, the unelected unknown editor seems to suggest the Mabo ruling was wrong and that the High Court is accused of being activist for decisions which may favour Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.

    Bipartisanship is a two-way street and if Albanese failed to achieve bipartisanship, it is also the fault of Littleproud and Dutton. Littleproud dumped on the Voice from the get-go and Dutton has made disparaging remarks about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Peoples' representatives who were arguing for the "Yes" campaign. So a no vote will certainly reflect the ill-will of the Coalition and the Murdoch media towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.

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  6. In masturbation news, today’s “Daily Beast” column over at the Graudian reports that Lizard Oz Reptiles won big at the News in-house awards. How surprising.

    https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/oct/13/first-nations-journalists-brace-for-voice-referendum-coverage-they-cant-tap-out-of

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    1. Oh yeah, those 'journos' are really something, aren't they. So in today's 'Weekly Beast' (Guardian) we have the thrilling story of how an outstanding Sky News journo Simon Love detected a frightening attempt to insult the Israelis by lighting up the Flinders Street station in ... wait for it ... in green. What an insult !

      So what love had to say was: “It follows concerns raised to Sky news from members of the Jewish Community about the display,” which Love posted on X (formerly Twitter). Wau - concerns raised by the Jewish Community, no less, about Flinders Street station turning green.

      But, BG, butt "...after making some inquiries, Love clarified the lights were a tribute to mark World Mental Health Day and had been planned for some time.
      Love deleted his tweet after journalists suggested he do so
      ."

      Put that man down for a Walkley or two !

      Delete
  7. "The length of this lizard Oz editorial suggested a defensiveness ..." No, it more than 'suggested' the usual reptile propensity to prevaricate and lie and misinform and disinform and generally ghost everything being discussed.

    "...and an awareness of a deep guilt..." Oh c'mon, the reptiles actually being aware of guilt ? Not any time in this millennium.

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  8. We can but dream...

    Perchance They Won't Deliver

    Despite furious condemnation from the reptiles all around
    The Voice was heard and Yes had won the day
    And from No campaign headquarters came the low and mournful sound -
    Of Oz No-hopers wailing in dismay

    All the white-blindfolded writers from the right wing near and far
    Had gathered at the masthead overnight
    For the reptiles thought for certain that to lose would be bizarre -
    They'd done their worst to frighten and incite

    There was Sheridan that herpetile, who was always spouting froth
    When appearing on TV or radio
    For none could match his arrogance or pietistic wrath -
    When quizzed on things he clearly didn't know

    And Henry of the Long Ago just could not comprehend
    How all his history lectures were in vain
    And a Yes result was more than his archaic brain could stand -
    He'd never quote Thucydides again

    And Dutton’s lip was quivering, at the shame of his defeat
    He was feeling like he'd just been mashed and fried
    And as for No Way Tony, he sat crumpled in his seat
    Munching onions - so he wouldn't cry

    As for all the other Notards, they mostly took their loss
    By drowning out their pain in alcohol
    But soon dawned the realisation that The Spud was still their boss -
    And as such they had no hope at all!

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    Replies
    1. Oh, let it be, Kez, just let it be !

      Delete
    2. Kez - whatever the result, your work (work?) has given me comfort - and quite some out-loud laughter. Thank you

      Delete

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