Dirty old war criminal ... dirty old Gaza bombing ... dirty old town ...

 

The pond knows much is going down at the moment. An evil man died long after he deserved to - it's not often you get a Nobel peace prize for helping initiate a genocide. 

Speaking of wars, King Chuck finds himself in them yet again. Uncle Elon is at war with his advertisers in appropriately musky language, and Pizzagate lives. 

The mango Mussolini was so upset at the way his war was going that he allegedly stopped eating and needed soothing by a spineless wonder often mistaken for a power-hungry jellyfish. 

Sydney's interchange is rife with victims of the spaghetti wars. Hall's war with Oates continues, providing late night comedians with relief from real wars.

But the pond is deeply perverse, so here's a little comedy as a starter before getting down to the reptiles. It came from a friend, who thought it might be of interest to the pond's readers, at least those literate in economics.

Back in the day, to the pond's eternal shame, amongst many nefarious things the pond got up to, one was writing reports for government extolling the benefits of the multiplier effect, which could be used to justify just about everything or anything, from throwing money at sporting events to throwing money at Hollywood moguls via runaway US boondoggle films ...

The pond knew it was nonsense at at the time and since then it's become a standard running household gag (you can apply multipliers to your breakfast cereal).

Those who can access John Quiggin on his substack (you can google it, but it requires an email address for starters), or can penetrate Crikey's paywall, will find him scribbling about this black art ...

A quick jump cut to the middle:

...Now let’s look at the input-output multipliers. Ernst & Young states that it obtained its multipliers from another consulting firm, REMPLAN, which presumably derived them from Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) input-output tables (the calculation isn’t hard). But if they had been preparing the report last century, they could have got the numbers directly from ABS. It’s worth reading in full the ABS explanation of why that’s no longer possible.
"The ABS frequently receives requests from users seeking updated input-output (I-O) multipliers. The ABS has not published I-O multipliers since the 1998-99 issue of our product Australian National Accounts: Input-Output Tables, and does not plan to compile and reissue this table. As such, the ABS is unable to support user requests for assistance with multipliers.
Production of multipliers was discontinued with the 2001-02 issue for several reasons. There was considerable debate in the user community as to their suitability for the purposes to which they were most commonly applied — that is, to produce measures of the size and impact of a particular project to support bids for industry assistance of various forms."

You know what's coming, and because there's the siren song of the reptiles, the pond will cut to the Grand Prix, without any of the preliminary dance asking Ernest & Young to explain themselves, because consultants gotta do what consultants do, and milk the taxpayer cash cow...

...To put it less politely, the I-O multiplier technique is utterly discredited. It makes sense only in the context of a deep depression, with plenty of unemployed workers and idle capital. In a context of near-full employment like the present, it simply shows that an event like the Grand Prix diverts workers and resources from other activities.
Given the scale of the public expenditure involved, it’s noteworthy that the government didn’t commission a proper analysis using a computable general equilibrium model, which could have done by one or two Victorian Treasury economists in the space of a few months. But of course, the answer would not have been the one the government wanted to hear.
All of this is likely to make readers’ heads spin, as is probably the intent. So let’s try a simpler way of looking at the issue. Instead of staging a car race, the Victorian government could have offered free return airfares to Melbourne to interstate and international visitors on a first-come first-served basis. At $2,000 a pop for internationals, and $100 return interstate (the cheapest fares currently on offer), the government could have covered the 8,800 international visitors and 72,000 interstate visitors claimed by Ernst & Young — and still had change.
The freebies scheme could improve on the Grand Prix by offering return tickets incorporating a weeklong stay, rather than the three days typical of racegoers. A sufficiently creative consulting firm could have spun this idea into an economic bonanza for Victoria. In reality, of course, the idea is every bit as nonsensical as it looks — though not as nonsensical as the Grand Prix.
Finally, given all the recent controversy about the Big Four consulting firms, just suppose that the Victorian government had bitten the bullet and decided to let the Grand Prix go to Sydney, then commissioned a Big Four firm to do an economic analysis of the decision. How likely is that the resulting report would have shown a massive economic loss to the state? Or would the consultants have avoided the errors described above and correctly concluded that Victoria was well rid of this noisy white elephant?

The pond's only excuse for its own reprehensible behaviour? The pond turned its tricks a damn sight cheaper than Ernest & Young working their devil magic:

Although the government lost more than $100 million on the 2023 Grand Prix, Ernst & Young found an economic benefit to the state of $266 million. 

Yeah, yeah, sure, whatever ... and now on with the reptiles offering the economy a gigantic bullshit multiplier ... just check out the stables in Surry Hills ...

There was the bro centre stage, purporting an in-depth examination of the mass murderer ...

Still, it was more likely to be of interest - another refracted insight into the weird mind of the bro = than "here no conflict of interest" simpleton Simon raging on ...

The pond realised its mistake the moment the bro's opening splash produced a fit of nausea such that the pond needed to downsize it ...

It was however a fair warning of what was to follow ...

The pond will allow the link offered by an esteemed correspondent to the obituary in the Graudian, because in the opening lede it acknowledges that he was seen as a war criminal.

To that you could add Simon Tisdall's Henry Kissinger dies celebrated, but why? His achievements have long since crumbled ...

But it was this piece in Rolling Stone, reviving memories of war, that caught the ponds's eye ...

Meanwhile, the bro's farewell was full of visual padding and huge snaps pandering to the war criminal ...

It provided the chance for another excerpt for an alternative view ...

Then it was back to the bro for the official lizard Oz line, intent on using a mass murderer to maintain his rage with Gough ...

Meanwhile, passing by that recommendation from a lying, loser rodent, it was back to Rolling Stone...

Speaking of fawning, what's remarkable is the shortness of the bro's fawning ... with this the final gobbet, marred by a strange ambivalence ...

Still it provided a sufficient space for a last gobbet from Rolling Stone ...

The immortal Rowe also saw him off ...

UPDATE: the pond has added this to its scumbag reading list ... because there's nothing like virality, though the air quotes are entirely useless ...

“Murderous scumbag”: Anthony Bourdain’s brutal takedown of "war criminal" Henry Kissinger goes viral

"Once you've been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands," Bourdain wrote. "You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking.

"Witness what Henry did in Cambodia ― the fruits of his genius for statesmanship ― and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to [Serbian President Slobodan] Milošević,” Bourdain wrote...

... “Any journalist who has ever been polite to Henry Kissinger, you know, f—k that person,” Bourdain said. “I’m a big believer in moral gray areas, but, when it comes to that guy, in my view he should not be able to eat at a restaurant in New York.”

UPDATE II - the tributes keep flowing: Henry Kissinger Was One of the 20th Century’s Greatest Monsters (paywall)

Bonus thought:

If whoever carves the tombstone wants something a bit longer than that, to really show the depth and subtlety of Dr. Kissinger’s thought, they could quote his classic justification for the Nixon administration’s decision to back the 1973 coup against Chile’s democratic socialist President Salvador Allende:
“I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be allowed to decide for themselves.”
In the coming days, you can expect to hear a lot of adjectives like “controversial” and “polarizing” being used to describe Kissinger. In many cases, this will be mixed in with respect for his intellect and his many diplomatic accomplishments. “He made a lot of controversial decisions, but…”
The reality is that Henry Kissinger was one of the most monstrous figures to have risen to power in a Western society since the end of World War II. It’s a stain on our national conscience that “Dr. K” never saw the inside of a jail cell.

Another question:

What Kind of Country Would Honor This Man?
During the final decades of his life, “Dr. K” had to be careful which countries he traveled to—lest he end up in a police station. Even some close American allies were off-limits. A judge in Spain, for example, wanted Kissinger questioned about Spanish citizens who had been disappeared in Chile during Pinochet’s reign of terror following the coup against Salvador Allende.
But in the U.S. he was treated as a respected elder statesman to the bitter end. The bookers for television news channels loved to bring him on to weigh in on geopolitical developments. Presidents of both parties brought him to the White House to dispense advice about matters military and diplomatic.
Biden hadn’t done that yet by the time Kissinger died, but Carter did it and so did Reagan. So did Bush Sr. and Clinton and Bush Jr. and Obama and Trump. I don’t know if any of them were tactless enough to bring up Chile or Cambodia or East Timor in any of these conversations. I’m not sure he would have been bothered if they had. He lived to the age of 100 and, as far as I know, he never showed the slightest sign of regret about any of it.
As an atheist, I’m denied this particular comfort, but those who believe in an afterlife may take comfort in the thought that he’ll finally face justice now.
According to a 2001 article in LA Weekly, the novelist Gore Vidal once went with a friend to the Sistine Chapel and saw Dr. Kissinger “gazing thoughtfully” at “the Hell section of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment.”
“Look,” Vidal told his friend. “He’s apartment-hunting.”

And then it was time to look below the fold to the rest of the reptile rabble ...

Good old Shoe standing in for the bro and ranting at defence? Nah, been there, done that zillions of times with the bro.

The meretricious Merritt suddenly finding UN interference appealing? Lordy, long absent lordy, what will the reptiles say about that?

Cackling Claire blathering about immigration? Nah, Dame Groan's got that covered. 

Ancient Troy covering the war criminal? Sorry, the pond's had enough of being in the front row for mass murder ...

Oh wait, that caveat would also cover our Henry, but heck, the pond has to find space for revisionist Henry, if only because it's Friday and only because he's there, doing the usual, and there's little by way of alternative ...

A "complex reality"?

The hole in the bucket man, one-eyed to the bitter end, wouldn't know complex reality if it bit him on the bum ...

The pond has noted it before of course. Back in the day the empire was full of news of Jewish terrorists ...

If you head off to Trove you can find the talk in the mighty Glen Innes Examiner, close enough to Tamworth to bask in reflected glory ...back on Tuesday, 2nd July 1946, and on page one no less ...

Then there was this note in the Kalgoorlie Miner, where the term "Jewish terrorists" was also deployed, because it was a commonplace way back when ... this time Wednesday 15th January 1947 ...

Of course the English, with dreams of fading empire, had helped create the mess ... which continues to this day ...

The reptiles sought to distract with a useless snap ...

... but in the end, there was no way to avoid the hole in the bucket man, busy rewriting the past ...

Yes, apparently it was everyone else's fault, and Jewish terrorists had nothing to do with it, though the pond did admire the neat trick of pointing out the way that the English also managed to fuck up the sub-continent ...

And so it was on to a last gobbet of cold comfort ... from a scribbler apparently watching the obliteration of Gaza, and Palestinians on the West Bank, with enormous equanimity and poise ... because why not, when you're so one-eyed, suffering of certain kinds is invisible to you, and deafness affords relief from the wailing and the sackcloth and the ashes ...

Collective punishment, collective displacement, war crimes, genocide as revenge and a final solution? All good ...

Meanwhile, the extermination is almost complete, and Henry - though whether Kissinger or Ergas is hard to tell - would surely approve ...

Head south to stay out of trouble you say? If only ...

And with that, the pond finds it impossible to come up with a segue to the infallible Pope for the day, but will run it anyway ...

And there was one loss the pond noted, and this was a favourite song...

You could sing it about almost any town - Tamworth, Sydney - and wherever the pond was, the pond sang along with gusto, and even vary the lyrics to suit the moment, as in dirty old war criminal, dirty old Gaza bombing, dirty old apologist ... (don't flinch at the teeth) ...