In which the pond makes its own Friday entertainment ...

 

The pond knew that the day would come, and looking at the top of the digital edition of the lizard Oz this day, that day had come...

The pond would have to make its own entertainment if it was going to find a few reasons to run a cartoon...

Luckily that blather by Paddy and Greg about the ACT bubble needed no counter - the reptile obsession with the ACT is only remarkable because it's never-ending - and in any case the pond needed no excuse to run the infallible Pope of the day ...

Getting to the immortal Rowe was a bit more tricky ...

The pond tried a detour, by way of Thiel of The Atlantic, or if you will, Barton Gellman's Peter Thiel is taking a break from democracy, it's one of his many, many disappointments ... (paywall, but soft enough to be worth a go)

There's a lot more comedy there, but speaking of taking a break from democracy ... Rick Santorum.

The pond idly googled his name and was disappointed that the google bot had been trained to be polite, but still Santorum's wiki came top, and within that top there was explicit mention of the Campaign for the neologism "santorum", which is to say "santorum" as "the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex." He (Dan Savage) created a web site, spreadingsantorum.com (and santorum.com), to promote the definition, which became a top internet search result, displacing the senator's official website on many search engines, including Google, Yahoo! Search, and Bing.

This is of course ancient, way back in 2003, but the frothy mixture is still around and turned up in The New Republic Rick Santorum Says Quiet Part Out Loud After Republican Election Losses, Republicans are annoyed that democracy is working.

Former Senator Rick Santorum complained that the major election losses Republicans suffered are actually a sign of how “pure democracies” are a bad form of government.
Republicans faced devastating losses on Tuesday, as voters in Ohio overwhelmingly chose to legalize marijuana and enshrine abortion rights in the state Constitution. In Virginia, Democrats flipped the state House of Representatives, taking control of the entire legislature. While abortion was not explicitly on the ballot, the future of reproductive rights in Virginia hinged on which party controlled the government.
“You put very sexy things like abortion and marijuana on the ballot, and a lot of young people come out and vote. It was a secret sauce for disaster in Ohio,” Santorum whined Tuesday night on Newsmax.
“Thank goodness that most of the states in this country don’t allow you to put everything on the ballot, because pure democracies are not the way to run a country.”

The frothy mixture could be found in other places, such as The Hill...but the pond still hadn't got to the reason for running the Rowe ...

Luckily Alyssa Milano produced for the Beast  GOP Debate Candidates Talked Tough, But Said Nothing ...

That's behind a paywall, so here's a sample ...

..Vivek Ramaswamy, who came off like a recurring character on The Office (and not in a good way), called the GOP a “party of losers,” and then attacked the moderators, the American people, the other candidates, and everybody but Trump.

If you asked me, “Alyssa, what was this debate really about?”—I’d have to tell you it was about who these people think our enemies are.

DeSantis thinks our enemy is China, but also college presidents, and the so-called “terrorists” at the southern border, where he vowed to (illegally) send troops. Tim Scott seems to think our greatest enemy is people who don’t share his version of Christianity. Chris Christie thinks it’s China, and would revert us back to cold war nuclear diplomacy to solve it. Vivek Ramaswamy clearly thinks our greatest enemy is sanity. Nikki Haley’s greatest enemy is Vivek Ramaswamy.

But what this all boils down to is that the worldview of these candidates is based on what they are against versus what they are for.

Most of the candidates adopted a “talk tough” policy on Iran, with Tim Scott implying he would take military action against that (potentially nuclear) country by “cutting off the head of the snake.” We’ve heard that line of thinking before: it got us into our nation’s longest war. Ron DeSantis told us that “if you harm a single hair on the head of an American,” there would be hell to pay. The translation of this is, of course, that these candidates are all-in for war.

This desperation ranged from calls to dramatically expand the Naval fleet, to send the military to the border, to ports of entry, to Mexico, to Venezuela, to do the work of diplomacy, because to this group, “Diplomacy is a weak strategy.”

Nikki Haley simultaneously said “we need to remember that we need friends,” and “I don’t care what my friends at the United Nations think.” Vivek Ramaswamy wants to go to war against the “deep state,” something he can’t actually identify. At the end of the day, though, we all know this recklessness would mean more dead Americans, and more dead civilians around the world.

Of course, none of them know how to pay for this radical military-industrial agenda.

They all want lower taxes. They claim they will slash regulations and bring us back to pre-COVID spending. None of them told us, you know, how they would do that.

And that is, of course, because they can’t. They want 600 ships, without saying if the Navy wants 600 ships, or how you and I are going to pay for it. And make no mistake, paying for it means taxes or more debt. Taxes for war, but not for the programs people need. They will always find a way to pay for war.

There was not a single person on that stage who told the whole truth to us. And that’s the real message here: They all told us they wanted to project strength, to talk tough, to carry on the Teddy Roosevelt philosophy of carrying a big stick, but throwing out his “speak softly” advice.

The American people need a president who is for diplomacy, decency, humanity, and peace. We can’t afford a single minute of the alternative—not in treasure, and not in the blood it will surely cost.

They are all weak candidates, and not because they’re all getting crushed by Trump in the polls. It’s because they lack a realistic vision that provides for a hopeful future and all they have to sell is fear and anger.

Yep, there's the excuse ...

Golly, if only the pond could recall Ivanka, but all the pond could recall was that hair and that hair toss ... it was distilled essence of Farrah Fawcett and the pond suddenly became nostalgic for the '70s ...

 

The hair, gentleman readers, focus on the hair, so that Ivanka might have aspirations ...

Meanwhile, back at the lizard Oz, the pond had decided to issue Henry a red card for the day. 

First of all the pretentious, portentous humbug gave up on all his arcane references and pompous parades of philosophers and historical figures ...

Secondly he came out with this epic billy goat buttism ...

...To say that is not to suggest Israel is incapable of making mistakes: states, in this world of ours, are not saints. But unlike Hamas’s murderers, the perpetrators of any breaches will face a powerful, vigorously independent judiciary that enforces the law of armed conflict as part of domestic law. Even more importantly, they will face a body of citizens that remains as intensely committed as it has ever been to Israel’s abiding values, including the rule of law.

That, in the end, is the fundamental difference between barbarism and civilisation: between those who know no law and those who live by the biblical command to “follow justice and justice alone”. 

Was it only in September that thousands upon thousands were still taking to the streets to protest and places like the Beeb were running background explanations, such as Israel judicial reform explained: What is the crisis about?

Over at Amnesty, back in September you could read 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.

Below is a brief guide to what’s happening, why the overhaul could make things even worse – and why, despite its serious flaws, Israel’s judiciary must not be made subordinate to the government.

And in that brief guide there was this kicker ...

It’s impossible to talk about Israel’s judiciary without highlighting its ongoing role in enforcing and maintaining apartheid against Palestinians. Over the years, the Supreme Court has issued numerous rulings which paved the way for the Israeli government and military to commit human rights violations against Palestinians.

The court has greenlighted the demolition of thousands of Palestinian homes, and approved the destruction of entire villages. In 2018, for example, it ruled that the village of Khan al-Ahmar in the occupied West Bank could be razed to make way for illegal settlements. In 2022, the court approved the demolition of nine villages in Masafer Yatta in the occupied West Bank and the forcible transfer of the 1,150 Palestinians who live there.

Israel’s Supreme Court has upheld countless administrative detention orders, under which Palestinians can be detained for months or years without charge or trial. It upheld Israel’s unlawful policy of withholding Palestinians’ bodies for use as bargaining chips, and a law which permits the force-feeding of prisoners on hunger strike. In 2021, the Supreme Court upheld the 2018 “nation state law”, which has become a pillar of Israel’s apartheid system. The nation state law constitutionally enshrines the oppression and domination of Palestinians – it defines Israel as the exclusive “nation state of the Jewish people”, and calls settlement expansion a “national value” which the Israeli state should promote.

The Supreme Court has upheld a law which imposes arbitrary, racially-motivated restrictions on Palestinian family unification. And just a few weeks ago, the court ruled that the Israeli military could punitively demolish the occupied East Jerusalem home of a child detainee, putting his entire family at risk of displacement.

The establishment of Israeli settlements in the OPT amounts to a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Collective punishment, such as punitive demolition, also constitutes a war crime, as does the forcible transfer of civilians in occupied territory.

Amnesty International’s research has shown that Israeli authorities systematically commit gross human rights violations, including war crimes and crimes against humanity, in order to maintain their system of oppression and domination against Palestinians. By ruling that violations can go ahead, Israel’s judiciary plays a key role in providing a veneer of legality to crimes under international law, and in upholding and strengthening the apartheid system.

Horse laugh time, until you go hoarse ...

...the perpetrators of any breaches will face a powerful, vigorously independent judiciary that enforces the law of armed conflict as part of domestic law.

As an atheist, the pond is indifferent to the nonsense of both Islam and Judaism, but equally there's no reason to indulge in Islamophobia or anti-Semitism, a double irony because for what the term is worth - not much - Palestinians are also Semites ...

So with the hole in the bucket man red-carded, there wasn't much else around emanating from the reptile hive mind bunkered in the 'leet inner city Surry Hills fortress ... (the pond resisted the temptation to mention the finest baristas in the world)

If our Henry had been red-carded, the pond certainly wasn't going to waste time on a Lynch mob, but was that somebody having a go at the craven Craven?

Not that the pond has the slightest interest in the feud, but it'd have to do ...

It is of course the reptile business model. Post a bit of shit-stirring by the craven Craven, stand back and wait for a reaction, and having got it, stand back and wait for the craven Craven to have another crack, while indolent bystanders watch the academic cockfighters go at it ... though one is now a tragic feather duster only able to kick up a little dust ...

The upside to the sport is the way that the reptiles insist on running huge snaps of the players ...

How soon before the craven Craven takes the bait? More to the point, how soon will the pond tire of this particular sport?

Yes, yes, and so on and so forth, and in the next chapter, the craven Craven hurls himself back into the attention-seeking narcissist fray ...

What else? Well keen-eyed punters will have noted up in the far right corner of the digital edition, instead of the usual far right reptile ranters, there was a splash for this ...

Everything at stake? Clearly Marcus hasn't been reading the lizard Oz, where nothing is at stake. 

But hustlers gotta hustle, and the reptiles gotta pretend to care by putting together their annual greenie list ... as a distraction from the heroic work of Lloydie of the Amazon, the dog botherer and sundry other climate science denialists who routinely parade in the rag ...

Meanwhile, on another planet, as noted by an esteemed correspondent ... Small modular nuclear reactor that was hailed by Coalition as future cancelled due to rising costs

The only company to have a small modular nuclear power plant approved in the US – cited by the Australian opposition as evidence of a “burgeoning” global nuclear industry – has cancelled its first project due to rising costs.

NuScale Power announced on Wednesday that it had dropped plans to build a long-promised “carbon free power project” in Idaho. It blamed the decision on a lack of subscribers for the plant’s electricity.

The Coalition’s energy and climate spokesperson, Ted O’Brien, has cited NuScale’s technology as part of the opposition’s contentious argument that Australia should lift a national ban on nuclear energy and that small modular reactors (SMRs) could be an affordable replacement for its ageing coal-fired power plants.

In an opinion piece in the Australian earlier this year, O’Brien said the company’s integrated reactors, starting with the Idaho plant in 2029, offered “exceptional flexibility” and were an example “of a burgeoning nuclear industry for next-generation technology” in the US.

The pond really does hate that Graudian affectation.

'the Australian' should be The Australian, if only to pluck it out of the ruck, and not confuse the rag with Australians, who shouldn't have to wear the shame or the defamatory libel, but back to the lizard Oz for the  hucksterism, and no, the pond doesn't want to see the Green List ...

The reptiles repeated the plug with a huge snap ...

The pond should at this point revive fond memories of that ARC affair and all the ark jokes it produced because it makes all this blather about missions and purpose entirely pointless...

How about Graham Readfearn's What does a Jordan Peterson conference say about the future of climate change? Apparently we’re headed towards ‘human flourishing’

The bromancer was in ecstasy, arcing like a carbon arc projector, and so was Dame Slap, and a gaggle of gooey-eyed reptiles, and just look at the line up ...

In a year likely to be the hottest on record and beset by floods, heatwaves and temperature records on land and in the ocean, speakers characterised climate change as a minor speed bump in a journey towards “human flourishing”.

According to one panellist, the author Alex Epstein (one of his books is called The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels), lots more fossil fuels would make the world a much better place.

Peterson himself has been corrected by experts for his opinions about climate models and the role of carbon dioxide in warming, while also interviewing many contrarian scientists.

He has defined the term “net zero” as a “conspiracy run by narcissistic poseurs” who will “worsen environmental conditions” and are “hellbent” on power.

Several high-profile Australian conservative politicians were in attendance, along with the three former prime ministers (Scott Morrison, Tony Abbott and John Howard) and two former deputy PMs (Barnaby Joyce and John Anderson).

Frontbenchers from the conservative opposition Angus Taylor, Andrew Hastie and Dan Tehan were there, as well as senators Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and James Paterson. Several other Australian federal and state politicians and rightwing figures also reportedly attended, including the New South Wales independent MP Mark Latham and former NSW premier Dominic Perrottet.

The new speaker of the US House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, sent a recorded message, and the former speaker Kevin McCarthy was there in person. The UK cabinet ministers Michael Gove and Kemi Badenoch also made speeches.

ARC was launched earlier this year and company records show its two shareholders are British investor and Brexiter Sir Paul Marshall and a Dubai-based investment management firm.

Say what? No mention of Barners? As noted by said esteemed correspondent, Barnaby Joyce among politicians gifted trips to Jordan Peterson-led conservative conference.

At least a few of those politicians did not need to dig far into their own pockets for the privilege of being there.

Updates to the register of members’ interests this week show Joyce was flown business class return between Sydney and London for the conference.

The deal also included accommodation and “hospitality” for four nights – all paid for by the Peterson-led group.

It appears the same deal was offered to at least two others. Paterson, who was the first to update his register of interests, declared he had also been gifted a return flight, accommodation and hospitality by ARC to attend.

Nationals MP Anne Webster also declared she was a fully funded guest.

While promoting reading material, there was also that yarn about Bid being under the Erica hammer ...

Eric Abetz behind push to dump moderate Liberals, including Bridget Archer, party sources say, Veteran adviser criticises Tasmanian rightwing powerbroker’s ‘factional warfare’ to ‘blast Bridget out of the party’

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, now the reptiles want to pretend they're all greenie and that technology will save the day?

There was another snap of the hustlers hustling...

... but do they realise the company they're keeping?

Per Readfearn ...

Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish political scientist and climate contrarian, gave a set-piece speech claiming as the world got richer, fewer people would die from natural disasters. Economies would keep growing and people would be more prosperous in the future, with climate change only marginally slowing that progress.

Michael Shellenberger, an American pro-nuclear energy and environment commentator, gave a speech where he discounted the impact of extreme weather events.

“Sea level rise is the climate impact I am the least worried about,” he said. “The reason for that is that I have been to the Netherlands, one-third of which is below sea level.”

While Shellenberger isn’t that worried about sea level rise, the Dutch government certainly is.

Last year Dutch sea level rise experts, including from the country’s program that coordinates the nation’s defences against flooding, wrote in a research paper that the Dutch delta was “extremely vulnerable to [sea level rise]” and an acceleration in the rate of sea level rise “may have a major impact on the livability of the delta for future generations” within decades.

There were “large uncertainties” in how high sea levels would rise, they wrote, mainly because of the difficulty in predicting how much ice could be lost from Antarctica.

The “potential consequences for the Dutch delta may be huge”, the experts wrote, and could accumulate “on all aspects that are relevant to delta management in a rather short time”.

Strategies to cope with rising sea levels in the future in the nation “all involved prolonged and massive investments in construction and maintenance and have profound impacts on present and future land use,” the Dutch experts wrote...

And so on, but the pond wanted to get to the punchline. First the set-up:

..Shellenberger said globally, “carbon emissions have been flat and slightly declined over the last decade” and that this was “extraordinary news” that people wouldn’t read in major newspapers.

It is true that growth in emissions from burning fossil fuels has slowed and, according to the Global Carbon Project, has risen by just 0.5% in the last decade.

But what that means is that emissions remain at historically high levels with CO2 accumulating in the atmosphere, bringing modern day temperatures higher than at any time in at least 100,000 years.

Shellenberger said a “story of environmental progress” had come last month in a report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), which said global CO2 emissions could peak this year.

“None of this you will read about in the mainstream news media which has just been delivering stories of catastrophe and apocalypse,” he said.

The punchline?

...there have been lots of stories of catastrophes. Because there have been lots of catastrophes.

Meanwhile, there was a final gobbet celebrating the hustlers hustling ...

And there, it was done, and what do you know, they were beavering away in the ACT, and the pond guesses that Paddy and Brownie missed that ACT angle ...

All up, the pond is not so secretly pleased it made its own entertainment this day. 

It stopped the pond from doing a Wilcox brooding ...

And thereby be better placed to enjoy the Luckovich comedy ...

... though if the hole in the bucket man keeps on blathering, the pond might have to line up for this handy gadget ...