In which the pond does the hard yards with the dog botherer and the bromancer ...

 

The pond won't be making any notes on the Lehrmann matter because of its standard refusal to comment on matters before the court - in any case, it's hard to elucidate much sense out of "I don't recall".

In the past such scruples haven't stopped the likes of Dame Slap sticking her beak into the affair, but she's been remarkably silent as his examination has unfolded. 

Lerhmann is now in that peculiar condition of the dog having caught the car, or if you will, showing how the Streisand effect keeps working ... though there was a poignant juxtaposition this day, with Dame Slap at first right beside the reporting on the matter, then discreetly placed below the story, as she went about domestic business by providing a portrait of an aged family patriarch...

Well there's no reason to drag a respected and very aged patriarch into the pond, but unfortunately the case seems to have derailed the venerable Meade, who has been covering the trial for the Graudian, and so again she failed to deliver important Friday herpetology notes, and her duties were delegated to Tory, at one time one of the reptiles, working on the ill-fated News Corp blog The Punch, until she saw the light and went over to the dark side ... (well, the dark side in reptile terms) ...

There were only a few items of interest, though the news that the swishing Switzer was leaving RN to lurk in his thinktank den was enormously pleasing ...

No matter, the pond will carry on regardless, and there's a lot to disregard in this weekend's edition of the lizard Oz ... including nattering "Ned". The pond decided to pass on his offer of a morals test ...

 The pond is tired of the way the reptiles keep pandering to Benji and so decided to seek out out reptiles who can get on with important matters such as nuking the country, nuking renewables, denying climate science, berating Australian cricketers for being woke, demonising asylum seekers, taking inspiration from the Dutch falling for a barking mad hard right loon, and other matters deemed of crucial importance in the reptile mission to ruin the planet and lo, behold, down below the fold ...

The dog botherer doing climate science denialism ... sure, it's as aged and as hoary as an ancient mariner stopping one of three, and it hasn't weathered well, but what a relief to be back on familiar turf ... even the headline about city NIMBY'S - as if the dog botherer was deeply rustic - promised familiar pleasures ...

At this point it's best to get the illustrations out of the way ...

... so the dog botherer can lather up Melbourne as excitement protest city ... and yearn for the sweet days of coal and gas and nuking the country, as if wretched renewables had any chance against the rich pleasures of fossil fuels ...

Of course we've heard all this before ... as the pond has noted before ... but it does provide an excuse to run with an infallible Pope early in the yarn ...

Indeed, indeed ... over the mountains of the moon, down the valley of the shadow, ride boldly ride, the mutton Dutton replied, if bashing refugees doesn't give you electoral Eldorado, there's always visual pollution ...

Meanwhile, the dog botherer is apparently unaware that he's pretty much in the same far right pack of rabid hounds as Uncle Elon ...

Whatever you might call Uncle Elon, would you call him woke and sanctimonious?

But speaking of practical matters, hasn't the infallible Pope got his uncanny ability to capture the essence of spud down to a fine art?

If only he'd turn his pen towards the dog botherer, but the pond is content enough to be back on the farm and back in the land of climate science denialism ...

The pond guesses that the laughing five year old who loves his beef isn't the wretch who went on a dog botherer rant in Junkee ...

As an aside, actually the NSW government announced the $1.8 billion venture by way of press release back in September, and while the pond will leave others to check the dog botherer's maths, at that point the press release was talking of a target of 12 gigawatts of new renewable generation and 2 gigawatts of long duration storage by 2030.

But that's the fun of a dog botherer. One minute you're listening to rampant hysteria, and the next minute you have to look all over the place to discover what was actually proposed ...

Driving it all is the doggie boy's relentless hatred of renewables, and behind all that, is his absolutely top class, first water climate science denialism ...

You see? Any talk of climate science and its impacts deeply offends the dog botherer ... because there's nothing like insulting intelligence and dodging reality ...

...Global temperatures have broken new records in recent months, making this year the hottest on record, and perilously close to the threshold of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels that countries have agreed to hold to. Temperatures are now heading for a “hellish” 3C increase, unless urgent and drastic action is taken, but greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise.

Stiell said it was still possible to cut greenhouse gas emissions enough to stay within the crucial limit, but that further delay would be dangerous.

“Every year of the baby steps we’ve been taking up to this point means that we need to be taking … bigger leaps with each following year if we are to stay in this race,” he said. “The science is absolutely clear.” (The pond loves to head off to the Graudian because that's the sort of intelligence insulting that sends the doggie boy into a frenzy)

The science is absolutely clear? Not to a devout denialist ... not when "virtue-signalling" can be deployed alongside "woke" to complete a full hand of reptile clichés ...

Actually Steve is one of those NIMBYs that the dog botherer started off deploring, at least if you read about his talk to the fnq mob who are all for it, provided it's not in their back yard ... with the immortal Rowe also aware of the problem ...

Whatever, it's been great, old times, the planet completely stuffed, and the dog botherer urging everyone to do nothing about it, and the pond hasn't had to think about Gaza or Ukraine or whatever ... and speaking of city NIMBYs, apparently they're snowflakes up against rustic ones ... in full NIMBY flight ...

Actually there's a fourth thing that's clear. The planet's stuffed, and the stuffing is going to get worse than a turkey at Thanksgiving in America, and the likes of the dog botherer are enthusiastically helping with the stuffing, at least while droughts and floods allow for a little more cropping ...

Does anyone remember this note in Crikey, outside the paywall, way back when, The 'torture' of writing about climate change at The Oz ...

2010! Here, have another cartoon, because the going is about to get tough ...

And so to the bonus, and here the going gets tough because the deluded pond thought for a nanosecond that the dog botherer would also provide refuge from war zones while railing about defence and the guvmint ...

Now fair warning, this bro piece is extremely long and he clearly got out of bed on the wrong side, as bromancers are wont to do, so there's a lot of hysterical frothing and foaming and a lot of snaps to pad it out even further, so the pond decided to get them out of the way in a giant Eisensteinian bro montage ...

 

None of them actually mean that much ...

Also the bro isn't in top form. His top form, his breeding program for women to save western civilisation from the coloured hordes, was celebrated by Tory ...

One for mum, one for dad, and one for Greg Sheridan?

Under the headline “We need babies more than we do migrants”, The Australian’s foreign editor, Greg Sheridan, argued that women are not having enough babies “because of an ideological and sexist denial of women’s choice”. That particular sentence linked to a story about how – because of education and employment – women are delaying having children and depending on IVF too much.

Sheridan graciously conceded that people have the right to make their own decisions about having babies, but said such choices are being made “in the face of coercive feminist and green ideology that depicts children as enemies of self-fulfilment and destroyers of the planet, and in an atmosphere where the entire western project is demonised”.

Women’s Agenda editor, Angela Priestley, pointed out that Sheridan did not mention the cost of living, the cost of childcare, the inadequacy of paid parental leave, the housing crisis, or the many women who are trying to have children, but can’t.

In response, Sheridan said that he does mention “the way we have structured our economies”, which includes all those things. Women want more children than they are having, he said.

On the ideology point, he said while some nations embrace “some degree of pro-natalist policy” green ideology’s “standard refrain” is that children wreak environmental damage and contribute to climate change, while particular feminists see children as “inherently and necessarily limiting self realisation”.

Pretty soft core Tory, there's a lot more comedy juice to be extracted in that material...

But then the pond is also delusional, as shown by thinking the bro would allow the pond to escape Murdochian pandering to Benji ...

That reminded the pond of that letter, which fell on deaf ears in reptile la la land, but could be found here ...

As for the steps?

Water off a duck's back to the bro ... and apparently to the Nine rags, which responded this way:

A statement from the executive editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, Tory Maguire, and editors of the mastheads said any newsroom staff who had signed the letter would be unable to participate in any reporting or production relating to the war going forward.

Perhaps they need the bro's help ... he knows how to feed the propaganda machine with all the right talking points ...

Interestingly, there was a similar story in WaPo back on 9th November ...Hundreds of journalists sign letter protesting coverage of Israel ... (paywall) ...

Briefly back to the bro, still at it and providing the pond with no relief ...

...because the pond thought that WaPo link to the actual letter was interesting, if only in a bro-Murdochian context ...

Israel’s devastating bombing campaign and media blockade in Gaza threatens newsgathering in an unprecedented fashion. We are running out of time.

More than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s four-week siege. Included in the mounting death toll are at least 36 journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, in what the group calls the deadliest conflict for journalists since it began tracking deaths in 1992. Scores more have been injured, detained, gone missing or seen their family members killed. 

As reporters, editors, photographers, producers, and other workers in newsrooms around the world, we are appalled at the slaughter of our colleagues and their families by the Israeli military and government. 

We are writing to urge an end to violence against journalists in Gaza and to call on Western newsroom leaders to be clear-eyed in coverage of Israel’s repeated atrocities against Palestinians.  

Reporters in the besieged Gaza Strip are contending with extensive power outages, food and water shortages and a breakdown of the medical system. They have been killed while visibly working as press, as well as at night in their homes. An investigation from Reporters Without Borders also shows deliberate targeting of journalists during two Oct. 13 Israeli strikes in South Lebanon, which killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and injured six other journalists.

Reporters’ families have been killed, too. Wael Dahdouh, Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief and a household name in the Arab world, learned on-air Oct. 25 that his wife, children, and other relatives had been killed in an Israeli airstrike. A Nov. 5 strike on the home of journalist Mohammad Abu Hassir of Wafa News Agency killed him and 42 family members.

Israel has blocked foreign press entry, heavily restricted telecommunications and bombed press offices. Some 50 media headquarters in Gaza have been hit in the past month. Israeli forces explicitly warned newsrooms they “cannot guarantee” the safety of their employees from airstrikes. Taken with a decades-long pattern of lethally targeting journalists, Israel’s actions show wide scale suppression of speech.

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate has urged Western journalists to publicly condemn the targeting of journalists. “[We] call on our fellow journalists around the world to take action to stop the horrifying bombardment of our people in Gaza,” the group said on Oct. 31 in a published statement.

We are heeding that call. 

We stand with our colleagues in Gaza and herald their brave efforts at reporting in the midst of carnage and destruction. Without them, many of the horrors on the ground would remain invisible. 

We join press associations including Reporters Without Borders, the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association and the International Federation of Journalists in demanding an explicit commitment from Israel to end the violence against journalists and other civilians. Western newsrooms benefit tremendously from the work of Gazan journalists and must take immediate steps to call for their protection.

We also hold Western newsrooms accountable for dehumanizing rhetoric that has served to justify ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Double-standards, inaccuracies and fallacies abound in American publications and have been well-documented. More than 500 journalists signed an open letter in 2021 outlining concerns that U.S. media outlets ignore Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. Yet the call for fair coverage has gone unanswered.

Newsrooms have instead undermined Palestinian, Arab and Muslim perspectives, dismissing them as unreliable and have invoked inflammatory language that reinforces Islamophobic and racist tropes. They have printed misinformation spread by Israeli officials and failed to scrutinize indiscriminate killing of civilians in Gaza — committed with the support of the U.S. government. 

Since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, in which more than 1,200 Israelis, including four journalists, were killed and some 240 others captured, these issues have compounded. News coverage has positioned the attack as the starting point of the conflict without offering necessary historical context — that Gaza is a de facto prison of refugees from historic Palestine, that Israel’s occupation is illegal under international law, and that Palestinians are bombarded and massacred regularly by the Israeli government.

U.N. experts have warned they are “convinced that the Palestinian people are at grave risk of genocide," yet Western outlets remain hesitant to quote genocide experts and accurately describe the existential threat unfolding in Gaza.

This is our job: to hold power to account. Otherwise we risk becoming accessories to genocide.

We are renewing the call for journalists to tell the full truth without fear or favor. To use precise terms that are well-defined by international human rights organizations, including “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide.” To recognize that contorting our words to hide evidence of war crimes or Israel’s oppression of Palestinians is journalistic malpractice and an abdication of moral clarity.

The urgency of this moment cannot be overstated. It is imperative that we change course.

###

Writers of the letter are a group of U.S.-based reporters at both local and national newsrooms. Some members of the group were also involved in a 2021 open letter outlining concerns with U.S. media coverage of Palestine.

All signatures have been verified. About 600 current and former journalists signed the letter as of its publication on Nov. 9, 2023. About 600 more have signed since, bringing the total to about 1200. All numbers have been updated as of Nov. 13, 2023.

More than 30 journalists have since asked to have their signatures removed, fearing reprisal from their employers. Those employers include the Associated Press, the Washington Post, Bloomberg, McClatchy, the Chicago Tribune, LAist, the Modesto Bee, KCRW, and KQED.

Dare one talk of cancel culture, though at last report, there had been a verified total of 1,514 signatures, albeit small beer up against the machine ...

Now on with some refugee bashing ... and never mind that the last time there was an actual election in Gaza, some fifty per cent of the current population were too young to vote and have since been denied an opportunity to express an opinion ...but still cop the displacement, the ethnic cleansing, the slaughter, and the gulag ... and as for that blather about "liberal democracy", has the pond got a barking mad far right bunch of fundamentalist theocrats to sell you ...

Luckily by this point the bro had run out of steam, and so it was time for a general complaint, and an anxiety attack about his war with China not happening by Xmas ...

Yes, there's going to be a lot of that ...

And so on and so forth, and the bro was shocked, shocked he tells ya ... bring on the war with China by Xmas ...

Had the bro finished? He was just winding up, as wind machines are inclined to do ...

Does all this sound familiar? Back in 2019 the bro was ranting Feeble defence is still our nation's shame... (no link, it's the lizard Oz)

..The Abbott government announced we would get the first replacement subs by the mid-2020s. That has now slipped a decade and the first of the new subs, if everything goes according to plan, will be fully deployable by 2034 or 2035, according to Defence planning. If we get a new one every two years after that we get our full fleet by 2057. This could conceivably happen a bit earlier or a bit later.

For the sake of rounding, say we get our full fleet by 2059. That means we identified an urgent national priority in 2009 and took about 50 years to address it — 10 years longer than the time from the start of World War I to the end of World War II.

That is not a sign of a nation that takes its own security remotely seriously.

The poor old Collins will be serving antiques, living museums, relics of a bygone era before they are all replaced.

And 12 are not enough anyway.

When the Russians rudely and somewhat bizarrely sent a warship to sit menacingly off the Brisbane coast during the G20 meeting we hosted there in 2014, we couldn’t even send a single submarine to shadow it.

They were all — or those of them that were serviceable at the time — on the other side of Australia. If only the Russians had done the polite thing and given us proper advance notice.

A more realistic number for subs would be 18, with nine based on one side of the continent and nine on the other.

The second biggest defence project is the new anti-submarine warfare frigates, a $38bn commitment. We are increasing from eight to nine, though the new frigates will be much bigger and more powerful than the old. This is part of our recognition of our advancing maritime challenge.

So when do we get all nine? Not before 2042-43. We don’t get the first one until 2030. If everything goes to schedule, a huge if, we will be able to retire the last Anzac frigate and replace it after the Anzac has been in service 36 years. And the frigates, though simpler than the subs, will have huge complexities associated with them. As usual, we chose a design that does not yet exist in a physical ship. BAE, the company involved, makes very good ships and will do a good job for us. But it will only just have built the first of its new design when it is building the first of ours.

As defence analyst Marcus Hellyer has pointed out, our ships will use a different helicopter, different weapons, different radar, a different combat management system. Any chance of a time slippage do you think?

The most on time of the big projects is the 72 Joint Strike Fighter F-35s we are buying. Despite the nonsense you’ll read here and there, these are superb planes and will be regionally superior.

Their delivery date has already slipped a great deal but theoretically, if everything goes right from here, we get all 72 by 2023.

That’s more or less the good news. The JSFs are meant to replace the Hornets, the Super Hornets and the Growlers. But ask yourself this — can we really defend and secure in all circumstances an area the size of the continental US with 70-odd aircraft?

Dammit, until the bro is appointed supreme commander of Australian defence forces, he's going to have to keep scribbling in a rage, venting hysterically, for decades to come ... though perhaps with the right breeding program there can be a plentiful supply of bro rage machines ...

But the government has always been in a mess to the bro... and the message arising from the never-ending mess is clear. It's time for the bro to be appointed supreme leader in charge of defence ...

That way we can all avoid the tirades .... and others can be left to sit around in the news room, following the advice of this old but still relevant cartoon ...