In which things get a bit bloodythirsty war monger with our Henry, but the pond is saved by a sermon from St Ando of the Bush ...

 

The pond hopes that the reptiles will deal with the Toowoomba matter with a little more discretion and respect for law and the rights of the parties involved than they did in relation to the Parliament House matter.

A kind correspondent forwarded a link to the pond referencing Hugh Selby's Paper mounts 'misleading' attack on Chief Justice. 

It was a fine read, though the pond is still trying to work out why they put inverted commas around 'misleading', because it contained incontrovertible proof that yet again Dame Slap had been misleading.

Indeedy do, Dame Slap is routinely misleading, and in relation to recent legal matters disgraceful to boot, and the pond entered the house of the long absent lord in a righteous mood for having red carded Dame Slap's recent offering. 

There's no need to spread her misleading nonsense when you can enjoy a dismissal of her risible reptile rubbish, and the pond will keep on red carding her on matters before the court until the cows, or at least the learned powdered wigs, come home ...

On the other hand, if the pond red carded every reptile that deserved it, there wouldn't be much going down, except perhaps a celebration of the real Dorothy Parker in the comments section.

So the pond looked around to find someone who could be given a green light only so that they could speed in to the pond, and serve as crash test dummies for commentators wanting a bit of sport (remember, axe handles for eels, tasty links and an ability to live in the real world for reptiles). 

What's happening at the top of the reptile edition this early Friday morning?

Hmm, there's the hole in the bucket man on the top far right hell bent on a war mongering holy crusade. 

The pond will have to approach him with a pair of tongs and at the minimum with a yellow card, though his juxtaposition next to a snap of massive destruction is boldly post-ironic...

Back to scanning the news, and discovered an alarming omission.

Say what? Absolutely no triumphalism about the complete MAGA-fication of the House and the GOP? There was this celebration by Lloyd Green in The Graudian, The Maga-fication of congressional Republicans is now complete ...

Charlie Sykes in The Bulwark was wildly excited ...

...Johnson fully-embraced the wooliest of the Kraken-level conspiracy theories including the bizarre lie that voting software came from “Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela.”
In a radio interview days after the November 2020 vote, Johnson said:
“In every election in American history, there’s some small element of fraud, irregularity, error. We just know that. You just accept that that’s the case,” acknowledged Johnson before pressing on:
But when you have it on a broad scale, when you have, you know a software system that is used all around the country that is suspect because it came from Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. When you have, you know, testimonials of people like this but in large numbers, it begs to be litigated and investigated. And the problem is, it’s exceedingly difficult to do that in a 45-day time window. You know, and that’s the problem that we’re up against.
And that’s why the president is so frustrated and that’s why so many, so many 71, 73 million Americans around the country feel like  the election was stolen from them.
“The allegations about these voting machines, some of them being rigged with this software by Dominion. Look, there’s a lot of merit to that. And when the president says the election is rigged, that’s what he’s talking about,” remarked Johnson at another point.
In another instance, Johnson said that his colleagues from Georgia were “so frustrated they want to pull their hair out” because “they know that in Georgia it really was rigged.”
Those were the kind of lies that cost Fox News $787 million; and that resulted in felony indictments for the biggest peddlers — and now guilty pleas from Jenna Ellis, Sydney Powell, and Kenneth Chesebro.
For Mike Johnson, however, they were a ladder.
On Wednesday not a single Republican voted against him. Not one. Not Mike Gallagher. Not Ken Buck. Not Mike Lawler.
Not one of the normies who rail about Trump’s insanity caucus in private; not one of the representatives who knows that Gaetz is a walking political hemorrhoid. Every one of them fell into line.
And when Johnson was asked about his support for the coup: 

Cue a clip of an old biddy shouting at reporters to shut up, and the pond decided a Luckovich would do as a stand-in, what with there not being time to mention Johnson's rabid hostility to gays and his Handmaid's Tale attitude to women's rights ...

Writes: Nick Catoggio:
That’s the whole party in one clip. There’s Johnson, smug at having been not merely absolved by his colleagues for abetting a coup attempt but commended for it with their nomination for speaker. There’s Scalise and Elise Stefanik, two members of leadership leering like gargoyles at the idea that they should care about the party’s turn toward insurrectionism. And there’s Virginia Foxx, one of the elder statesmen in the conference, goading the press to just shut up about it already.
Participants, enablers, apologists. That’s the House GOP. They’ve moved on from their attempt to block the peaceful transfer of power, they’re eager for you to know —unlike a certain someone for whom they’ll all be campaigning three or four months from now.

Don't be glum, Charlie. Each day the pond can forget about the horrors of war and instead enjoy the horrors of the United States ...

Oh and there was yet another massacre - apparently the body count is up to 18 - but why in the name of the lizard Oz would any reptile care about the American killing fields - so comfortably familiar that mass murder doesn't rate a mention - when the Gaza bloodlust is running strong ... 

Forget it Jake, we're heading into the celebratory holyday season ...

Already the rumours are spreading ...Maine Massacre Suspect’s Anti-Transgender, Extremist Views Emerge Amid Pleas For Gun Control

Speaking of crazies with a lust for blood, old Henry was in strong form, but the pond could only stomach a little, before pulling out the yellow card, and proceeding with caution, with only the usual philosophical humbug and arcane references making the cut ...

...The great pioneers of the law of war, who, in Immanuel Kant’s words, had “stared evil in the face”, understood that all too well.

Thus, Christian Wolff, who introduced the distinction between combatants and non-combatants in his 1749 treatise on the Law of Nations, emphasised that the distinction could only be sustained if the combatants on each side clearly demarcated themselves from their civilian counterparts; if they didn’t, they were no better than pirates, who deserved to be erased from the face of the Earth.

Equally, Emer de Vattel, whose Law of Nations (1758) is widely regarded as the basis of modern international law, left little doubt about the status of those who are “guilty of enormous breaches of the law of nations”, such as that of hiding behind captive civilians: “Enemies of the human race, who injure all nations by trampling underfoot the foundations of humanity’s common safety, they must be refused any quarter.”

It would, for sure, be better were all that far behind us: if the soaring ambitions of post-war international humanitarian law had been realised, and the mechanisms set out in the UN Charter had succeeded in abolishing Ares, the god of war and rage, altogether. That they haven’t is a tragedy; to pretend they have would be a folly. Rather, in a world where the lions show no sign of being ready to lie down with the lambs, Israel is, as were the Allies in World War II, locked in a struggle that will determine whether it survives or perishes.

To prevail, the Allies unhesitatingly deployed every means at their disposal, including a blockade immeasurably more severe than any imposed on Gaza; and by persevering without truce or pause until their adversaries were forced to their knees, they opened a freer and more prosperous future not only for the Allies but for millions of Germans and Japanese. 

In exactly the same way, the road to a freer and more prosperous future for both Israelis and Palestinians runs first and foremost through the complete elimination of Hamas’s capacity to rain death and destruction on those it hates. 

The level of delusion in all this is remarkable. What Israel is cultivating is an even greater level of hatred with no end game - bar mass displacement, and ethnic cleansing - in sight, and here it's worth remembering a little history on how they got there ...Blowback: How Israel Went From Helping Create Hamas to Bombing It ...

...did you also know that Hamas — which is an Arabic acronym for “Islamic Resistance Movement” — would probably not exist today were it not for the Jewish state? That the Israelis helped turn a bunch of fringe Palestinian Islamists in the late 1970s into one of the world’s most notorious militant groups? That Hamas is blowback?

This isn’t a conspiracy theory. Listen to former Israeli officials such as Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s. Segev later told a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat (who himself referred to Hamas as “a creature of Israel.”)

“The Israeli government gave me a budget,” the retired brigadier general confessed, “and the military government gives to the mosques.”

“Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades, told the Wall Street Journal in 2009. Back in the mid-1980s, Cohen even wrote an official report to his superiors warning them not to play divide-and-rule in the Occupied Territories, by backing Palestinian Islamists against Palestinian secularists. “I … suggest focusing our efforts on finding ways to break up this monster before this reality jumps in our face,” he wrote.

And a little more recent history would have helped the hole in the bucket man when he got around to quoting Bob approvingly ... (strange times indeed) ...

Will mistakes be made in pursuing that goal? Undoubtedly: that is in the nature of war. But in Israel, unlike every other country in its region, a fearless press, a thriving civil society, an actively engaged citizenry and an independent judiciary that rigorously enforces the rules of war will ensure they are promptly identified, debated and corrected.

That is what Bob Hawke, who was consistently mindful of the Palestinians’ plight, so lucidly grasped in 1974, when he vehemently rejected the Whitlam government’s “morally repugnant policy of ‘even-handedness’ ”. 

An independent judiciary? The pond would love to have what the hole in the bucket man is drinking (cask wine for everyone on the house), because it was only a few months ago that Benji's brigade of far right loons was seeking to destroy what was left of Israel's judicial system, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets. 

The pond isn't in the habit of quoting Amnesty, but the hole in the bucket man has triggered the pond yet again ...

This was back in September, which now seems an eternity ago - Defending the rule of law, enforcing apartheid – the double life of Israel’s judiciary...

The Israeli government’s plans for a judicial overhaul continue to face intense opposition. On 12 September 2023, Israel’s Supreme Court (sitting as the High Court of Justice) began hearing petitions against the first piece of overhaul legislation, which was passed by the Israeli Knesset in July. Since the overhaul was first announced at the beginning of 2023, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have taken part in protests against the plans. Israeli police have in some cases responded with excessive force and have carried out dozens of arbitrary arrests.

The overhaul is designed to erode judicial review and weaken the oversight powers of Israel’s Supreme Court. It has alarming implications for human rights, particularly for Palestinians, as well as other marginalized groups in Israel.

Dangerous though these plans are, the fact remains that Israel’s judiciary has regularly upheld laws, policies and practices which help to maintain and enforce Israel’s system of apartheid against Palestinians – the Supreme Court has signed off on many of the violations that underpin the apartheid system.

Ah, the apartheid word, but as any settler worth their colonial salt would know ...

What else? Unfortunately cackling Claire was in the same turf ...

... wilfully confusing and wantonly justifying mass murder, as reptiles are wont to do, so the pond red carded Claire and the rest of the bunch, knowing that relief and a bonus was to hand with St Ando's pious sermon from the bush ...

Ando is a much treasured loon who visits these pages infrequently, to the pond's deep regret ... and yet he always manages to deliver a corker (that's what you had to do to get a decent glass of sugary sweet Ben Ean moselle, pop the cork, and make a joke about it being a dinkum leg opener. Ah, good times with Australian men of the Tamworth bush kind).

Sorry, no time for nostalgia, on with St. Ando of the bush, preaching hope and redemption, and the ancient Greeks, though perhaps without all that Spartan gayness of the well-cut 300 kind...

Hmm, the trouble is, if the "West", whatever that is, only has Ando of the bush to offer, then the "West", whatever that is, could be considered to be comprehensively climate science-denying stuffed ... but do go on ...

Ah, the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship. The pond was wondering when that prize bunch of loons might intrude on the conversation.

Better minds than the pond, with more time and ability to do research, have been ARCing for some time ...

DeSmog did some awk, awking here ...

The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) was launched by Jordan Peterson in 2023 and includes “public intellectuals” Arthur Brooks, Niall Ferguson, and Bjorn Lomborg among the 30 individuals on its initial organizing committee. ARC’s CEO and co-founder Baroness Philippa Stroud is the former CEO of the pro-Bexit Legatum Institute.

From February to April 2023, near the time of ARC’s launch, Jordan Peterson interviewed several key individuals downplaying the need for action on climate change including Judith Curry, Bjorn Lomborg, Alex Epstein, and Steven E Koonin. In a his interview with Judith Curry, Peterson expressed the view that “one of the consequences of extra carbon dioxide output is that the planet has greened 15% since the dawn of the millennia.” Speaking with Lomborg, who is also on the ARC organizing committee, Peterson commented: “I see the climate apocalyptic catastrophizing as a form of religious striving. I think it’s unsophisticated and ill-aimed and contaminated with a fair bit of malevolence.”

According to its launch announcement, “ARC will focus initially on six fundamental questions, ranging from the proper nature of our orienting stories to the role of family, free exchange, environmental stewardship, and productive governance.”

According to its privacy policy, Alliance for Responsible Citizenship Limited is incorporated in England and Wales under company number 10519995.

UK Companies House documents show a company matching that number originally operated under the name Prosperity UK 2017 Limited until it was renamed Alliance for Responsible Citizenship Limited on January 20, 2023. A number of the directors of the original organization stayed on, and are also closely tied to the Legatum Institute, a London-based think tank with ties to the United-Arab-Emirates-based Legatum Group.

That was just the background, the pond likes to think of them as Jordie's mob, ripe and ready for a detoxing somewhere in Russia, and the connections to the Legatum Group would gladden the heart and stir the soul of anyone with a taste for rich, ripe conspiracies ... but the pond couldn't reproduce all of DeSmog's diligent work, the pond had to move on ...

At this point, the reptiles indulged Ando with a huge snap ... but the pond knows he's full of modesty and it's not about him, so helped him by downsizing it ...

The pond decided to get that other snap out of the way because DeSmog had done a roll call showing off some of the fine Australian minds ARCing like a spot welder or an old carbon arc projector, Jordies the lot of them, just a step away from that Russian detox...

And let's not forget the hastie pastie or Mandy ...

And fear not, Ando was there, in the best of company ...

Such a great gaggle, and many more, but the pond should return to the reading of the day ...

Say what? The pond always thought it was the Xians wot done it. As the Roman historian Gibbon observed (which is to say, not Roman, but Roman) ...

...As the happiness of a future life is the great object of religion, we may hear without surprise or scandal that the introduction, or at least the abuse of Christianity, had some influence on the decline and fall of the Roman empire. The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity; the active virtues of society were discouraged; and the last remains of military spirit were buried in the cloister: a large portion of public and private wealth was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion; and the soldiers' pay was lavished on the useless multitudes of both sexes who could only plead the merits of abstinence and chastity. 

Faith, zeal, curiosity, and more earthly passions of malice and ambition, kindled the flame of theological discord; the church, and even the state, were distracted by religious factions, whose conflicts were sometimes bloody and always implacable; the attention of the emperors was diverted from camps to synods; the Roman world was oppressed by a new species of tyranny; and the persecuted sects became the secret enemies of their country. 

Yet party-spirit, however pernicious or absurd, is a principle of union as well as of dissension. The bishops, from eighteen hundred pulpits, inculcated the duty of passive obedience to a lawful and orthodox sovereign; their frequent assemblies and perpetual correspondence maintained the communion of distant churches; and the benevolent temper of the Gospel was strengthened, though confirmed, by the spiritual alliance of the Catholics. The sacred indolence of the monks was devoutly embraced by a servile and effeminate age ...

Okay, okay, the pond cheated, and used a wiki, and perhaps in this TG hating age, the use of "servile and effeminate" is exactly the sort of language Ando would love ...

Luckily, this being Henry's ancient studies day, the whole damn Gibbon is to hand at Project Gutenberg ...

For its sins, the pond once read the entire six volumes, and has now managed to forget the experience completely, except for a numbing sensation on the tongue and the occasional glazing of the eyes ... but then you can get that reading Ando too ... and if "identity politics" gets a mention, the pond is likely to run screaming from the room ...

It's a gigantic gathering of the loons, and the reptiles will be there in abundance and already the pond can hear the siren song! As the pond's favourite quotes would have it ...

Hurry up. The loons! The loons! They're welcoming us back. Look! Look! Oh, look, I've spotted the loons! Oh! Oh, they're so lovely. I never saw such big loons in my life. The loons have been calling for rain all night long. Rain! Rain! Bring us the rain!

Here's a couple of Wilcox cartoons to help the loons with their risible London ruminations, designed to provide the reptiles, and so the pond, with more chaff, which, as nature takes its course, will lead to more dung and manure of the St Ando of the bush kind ...