In which the pond's alienation from the lizard Oz takes on a disproportionate air ...

 

The pond's alienation from the lizard Oz is now almost complete ... and now the pond has to rely on reader reports on its tree killing content, such as this one ...

..Further to the supposed journalism of Liam Mendes - I subdued my pride, and asked My Source for copy of his contribution to the Flagship for this day. On the front page of the tree killer version is a picture of Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s parents, with their pet snake, under heading ‘Jacinta’s rise to voice of her people’ (sic.) I concede that headings are not necessarily the work of Mendes.
The entire item seems to have come from ‘side ranging’ interview with parents ‘Dave’ and ‘Bess’. They express their pride in their daughter in several ways - as one hopes parents would - but offer little that might explain what is now claimed to be her political influence.
Inside we are offered photographs of baby Jacinta with half-brother, who died of leukaemia when she was aged 4. Her parents state that that event was a ‘pivotal moment in making Senator Price the woman she is today.’ There is very little detail of the intervening almost 4 decades. One other photograph shows Jacinta standing beside the honour board of her primary school in Alice Springs, where her name had just been inscribed as outstanding student for 1992, and where she is entered as ‘Jacinta Price’. Perhaps there was not space for the ‘Nampijinpa’, which, we have been told at other times, was how she was always known.
That is about it. Touch of parental pride, attempt at mawkish emotionalism, and no real detail of how Jacinta rose, nor of who are ‘her’ people. Looking at the c.v. that Dorothy has provided ('researcher' for Sharri?) - one might guess that Mendes, even when red ‘Exclusive’, is cheap.

The pond will let pass the knowing of someone who actually had a copy of the tree killing rag. We're all human. We all have friends who err ... and in any case redemption was at hand, because the news provoked this comment ...

Of course, the recent flurry of “Jacinta is headed for bigger and better things!” beat-ups fail to address the minor details -ie, the practical issues associated with how the hell she’d actually advance up the ranks. At present, she’s a Senator - wrong house to become PM. She’s a Territory representative - little power base. She’s a LNP representative - neither fish nor fowl, though she sits with the Nats, which is no road to the top. Plus, to state the obvious, she has a gender and ethnicity that are not really conducive to advancement in the conservative side of politics.But surely her raw political talent and intelligence will sweep all before her? Obvious response - what skills and nous? To date, her political expertise has consisted of claiming that there’s really no such thing as Indigenous concerns- an interesting way of managing the Indigenous Affairs portfolio. Her competence in other portfolios? Her leadership skills? 🤷  But hey, all she has to do is deal with these trifles and retain Reptile support - and win a Federal election -and she’ll be the next Menzies!

The pond felt deeply in debt and was wildly excited. Was this the first time an actual kind of emoji had managed to make it past blogger's deeply useless restraints and restrictions imposed on the posting of comments, such that even doing a hot link became an epic effort?

Yes, the pond spends more time in the comments section these days than it does contemplating the reptiles, and here's why ...

Petulant Peta still banging on about the Voice? What's the point? What's the point of petulant Peta herself? Each time she appears the grim spectre of the onion muncher returns to haunt the pond ...

The naked political point of petulant Peta's negativity is now clear, has always been clear, and the only reason the pond notes her is the excuse she offers for a couple of cartoons ...

Down below in the comments section, there was a vast desert, replete with war mongers...

Meanwhile, the reptiles had missed featuring the best and funniest story going the rounds, all the funnier for the pond because it happens to know the mob in comrade Dan's world that first hit on the bright idea ...

Once again the pond had to head off to the Graudian for the story, once again a cartoonist had beaten the lizard Oz to the punch ...

Meanwhile, the rich comedy that passes for US politics - and the role being played in it by Faux Noise and the likes of Hannity - was once again ignored, and yet there were rich pleasures to be found ...

The pond had gone to bed wondering how it might play out, and woke with the answer, but had to look outside the lizard Oz for the news ... (sorry, paywall)

For the second time in 24 hours, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) has failed to win the speakership on the House floor, pushing the right-wing leader's ambitions to the brink and bringing lawmakers closer to empowering an interim speaker after two weeks of legislative paralysis.
On Wednesday, 22 Republicans went against Jordan, putting his support at 199 votes, well short of the 217 needed to claim the gavel.
Troublingly for Jordan, he won two fewer votes in the second round than he did in the first, when 20 GOP lawmakers cast votes for seven other candidates, none of whom were in the running.
While four lawmakers who supported Jordan in the first round came out against him on the second ballot, only two Republicans who voted against him on Tuesday, Reps. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA) and Victoria Spartz (R-IN), fell into the Jordan column on Wednesday.
Jordan's opponents said the failure wasn't surprising.
“I think that somebody advising him thought it was a good idea to try to shine a spotlight on us and to try to shame us on the floor,” said Rep. Nick LaLota (R-NY). “That tactic obviously didn't work and probably dug some members in stronger than they would have been a couple of days ago.”

While at the Beast, the pond was again distracted by a bull at the Gaetz ...

There was a link to The Hill for the full yarn, Gaetz apologizes to colleague, 'anyone else who felt targeted' by fundraising email ...

Such a rich world out there, all theatrical performance, all about the money raising, and so little of it in the lizard Oz ... and there was even more fun that could only be noted by way of cartoon ...

All this is an elaborate preamble explaining how the pond ended up in this backwater story for a little dose of bitchiness ...

The pond knows nothing of the pair, but the ritual invocation of "woke" and the "woke agenda" was a sure indication that there was a dickhead of the first water nearby ... and it was time to resurrect that old cartoon ...

Meanwhile, the ruffling of legal feathers continued ...

Hmm, doesn't sound like an old curmudgeon who played the "woke" card might catch the drift, but there was still a gobbet to go ...

It's certainly disheartening to see an old codger play the cliché-laden "woke" card, with drivel about the 
"woke agenda", but the pond suspects that's what happens if you think the lizard Oz offers a style guide ...

And so to what the pond has been avoiding the entire time, and there's a reason, and it came with this splash yesterday, a standard bit of Oz recycling, this time from The Times ...

The pond had no idea what would be proportionate. Would driving everyone in Gaza into Egypt be proportionate? 

It would certainly have a Biblical resonance? Would the bombing of every hospital in Gaza be proportionate?

In the end, there was only drivel ...

...On previous occasions Israel has degraded the capability of Hamas before withdrawing. This time, I am sure, they will not think this enough. And sadly, I believe they will be right. The prospect before us, therefore, is a grim one. Nevertheless the international community and humanitarians everywhere should want Israel to succeed and should not impose on it expectations or conditions that prevent it from doing so.

If Israel fails, or falls short, this will not reduce the suffering in Gaza, it will simply prolong fighting and increase the number of innocents who die.

The Oslo peace process in the early 1990s made progress because the Palestine Liberation Organisation was on the verge of bankruptcy after the fall of the Soviet Union and Yasser Arafat’s decision to support the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait deprived it of its main funders. At this moment the Israelis perceived that they, too, could benefit from negotiations. They saw that they couldn’t hold on for ever without a deal with the Palestinians.

If Israel defeats Hamas such a moment might (it just might) come again. Israel would have to want it, and often it has not. There are zealots in Israel too and many who want to crush not only Hamas but any Palestinian aspirations. But perhaps (perhaps) the disastrous security failure of the Netanyahu government might change Israeli politics enough to make it possible. Maybe there will be a dawning understanding that swapping land for peace remains the only way of living securely.

Yet this is entirely dependent on the success of the operation against Hamas. Because Israel cannot reasonably be expected to relax its guard or share the land with murderous fundamentalist neighbours drunk on killing, raping and kidnapping. Israel is a democracy. And anybody proposing accommodation with Hamas will not win, or deserve to win, power.

There was a moment when Israel was urged to talk with Hamas because they were the elected government of part of Palestine. This was always a naive policy, but now it is an impossible one. So believers in peace have got to hope that Israel wins as quickly and decisively and completely as the dreadful situation allows. For this is what proportionate really means. And Israel’s actions must be proportionate.

The pond can't believe that it's quoting a wild-eyed grundle, grundling away, but there you go (paywall and with the comments section neutered for fear of a ruckus) ...

...You watch it all and wonder what sort of wilderness of mirrors cross and double-cross this is, a raid on the 50th anniversary of the Arabs last near-victory, in which an ultra-tech garrison state was invaded by young men on motorbikes. Working for an organisation Israel has propped up for decades. Attacking a beleaguered prime minister who is now the leader of a national government. Which promises a destruction of Hamas. A mission which licenses unlimited violence against the innocent in the eyes of the world — even though there is absolutely no real belief or intent by Israel that such a mission will be completed.

You wonder whether any of that last paragraph is even worth saying any more, or just puts one in the company of the endless armchair warriors, as seven decades fall away, the present sutures itself to the 1930s, and the significant majority of Zionists who are supporting Israel’s extermination of Gaza take on the cold, remorseless, style which has an echo of their former oppressors, who now project their flag on to the Wagnerian centrepiece of Berlin. 

As you find a meta-conclusion to waffle your way out of an inconclusive piece, waiting not for the next bombs to fall, but for the next thousand.

It was the only response the pond could muster to the proportionate amount of verbiage and waffle doing the rounds, which inevitably, if reluctantly, brings the pond to the lizard Oz editorialist ...

Hang on, hang on, that "if it was targeted" is the get out clause, but nothing can walk around the appalling spectacle of a hospital copping a bomb ...

It's not irrational to get agitated about human suffering of any kind, at least if you happen to be capable of a little humanity.

Nor is there any immediate prospect of knowing the truth, what with the way that misinformation and disinformation can be flung into the world.

There have been many victims thus far, and the immortal Rowe noted one of them ...

The aforementioned hapless Finkelstein scribbled ...

...To ask this question as one of numbers - as a contest between the numbers killed by one or the other side - is to realise immediately that it is unanswerable. And that to even attempt to answer it is obscene. There is not a single innocent death that could put right what was done to my mother. Not one. To think that it would be right to kill a random German to make up for the murder of Aunt Trude and another for the murder of Uncle Jan and a third for young cousin Fritz is repulsive.
The mathematics of netting off one innocent lost life with another is a morally unacceptable exercise. And to draw up a table in which the death of a Nazi guard is equated with the death of someone they killed is worse still. This idea of proportional numbers is warped...

So the deeply warped lizard Oz editorialist immediately began to cite proportionate numbers ...

Never mind the hospital, proportionately upsetting as it might be. What about the ethnic cleansing and the driving of a million people from their homes. Is that proportionate? Is the notion of collective guilt and punishment proportionate? Is the taking away of food, water and power from millions proportionate? Fears grow people are dehydrating to death in Gaza as clean water runs out.

What's that? The lizard Oz editorialist already purchased what Wilcox was offering?

Meanwhile, for anyone wanting to get past the Haaretz soft paywall by handing over an email, you can read assorted editorials of the kind never seen in the lizard Oz...

And there was this particularly prescient one back in September ...

... and that's why the pond can be found reading almost anything else in preference to the lizard Oz editorialists, or the rag for which they scribble ...

Ah yes, the proportionate response, and any suggestion that the proportionate response might be disproportionate is anti-Semitic ...

As to removing colonial blinkers, the lizard Oz still proudly wears them. Wore them during the Voice, still wearing them now ...

So it goes ...