Tuesday, December 05, 2023

In which Dame Groan does her standard furriner groan, the reptiles persist in nuking the country, and the bromancer is more than usually offensive ...

 

The way that the world is currently turning, the pond is looking forward to a break. And the way the reptiles at the lizard Oz are currently turning, Saturnalia can't come soon enough ...




In relation to the Lehrmann matter, up there in the far right slot, it's remarkable how the reptiles have managed to gloss over a cool $130k for a year's rent - that's the figure mentioned in the Media Watch take down of the grubby Seven carry on - and ignore the obvious ...

...It is a clearcut case of chequebook journalism and all the more grubby because of who the money was paid to and Seven’s dishonest denial. 
And it had several media figures calling for Spotlight to be dropped from the list of nominees for the Walkley Awards Scoop of the Year, with former Walkley board member Mike Carlton tweeting:
It wasn’t a scoop. They bought it by paying Lehrmann’s rent. It was also a crap interview. - X, @MikeCarlton01, 29 November, 2023
Which Carlton went on to clarify in a second post, saying: 
By "crap interview" I mean it failed to expose a number of Lehrmann's collisions with fact and truth. All in all, a 3rd rate, sensationalist wank.- X, @MikeCarlton01, 29 November, 2023
Ouch.
At the end of last year, we said we doubted if Lehrmann’s defamation actions would ever get to court because we didn’t believe he’d want to be cross examined for the first time and rerun the rape trial in a civil court with a lower standard of proof.
But he did go ahead and will have to wear the consequences. 
And while it’s up to the judge to decide if Ten can prove that Higgins’s allegations on The Project were substantially true, we’re reminded of media law expert Michael Douglas’ comment to us last year: 
Like Ben Roberts-Smith’s case, a claim by Mr Lehrmann could expose him to the real risk of coming out looking worse. - Email, Michael Douglas, UWA Law School, 11 December, 2023
Or, as another media lawyer quipped, suing could be like a man going back into the lion’s den to retrieve his hat. 
Lehrmann may of course still win.
But it’s a reminder that taking action to protect your reputation does not come without risk. 

On another matter, the pond knew by rote that the reptiles would be fine at the notion of locking someone up on the suspicion that they might commit a crime, though a nanosecond's self-awareness should have warned the reptiles that their criminal behaviour might then put them in a deserved position of peril ... if not locked up for their current crimes, then certainly locked up for what the pond knows will be in tomorrow's edition ...

Never mind, there was good news below the fold ...





How has the pond come to think of a groaning as good news?

Well in a peculiar way, it's a relief, predictable and as comfortable as old slippers or the sun still rising ...

There she was, old faithful, gushing like a geyser, and given the alternatives, the pond suddenly felt a weird affection ...

No need to do any work or do any thinking or making any comments - long made redundant by endless repetition - as Dame Groan embarked on another round of migrant bashing ...

Nope, no need to pay attention, let her Groan away, slip in a few cartoons, and she'd be right ...




So obsessed, and speaking of obsessions, the pond always gets strange looks when it wanders into a supermarket ...






The pond refuses to use the bots ... the pond's first job was working as a "sales assistant", as they used to say, in a Coles variety store, and while it wasn't great, it was better than being a bot ... (and you could sneak free lime coolas if out the front of the store).

If you try to explain any of this great replacement theory to the surviving supermarket staff, you'll likely get a blank stare ... and you know that at some point the bots will get them, and eventually the pond will have to pay an even greater premium to avoid the bots ...

But the pond digresses, on with the almost bot-like migrant bashing ...




What a good chance to run a cartoon by Wilcox that the pond had neglected ...






The reptiles provided their own illustrations for the groaning Dame Bot ...






But there was simply no way to relieve the tedium of having been to this well so many times, only to discover the lead in the water ...




Is this the first time Dame Groan has been in favour of a tax? In the past, the pond seems to recall, she rarely seemed keen on taxing the rich ... 

Sorry, the pond slipped up there and made an actual comment about the actual content to hand in the Groaning. That won't happen again because the pond has filibustered its way to the final gobbet ...



The pond can't now recall the number of times Dame Bot has groaned about the need to cut back on pesky, difficult, uppity furriners - it's well beyond a zillion - but the pond can now seize the moment to run a stray immortal Rowe from a few days ago ...




Meanwhile, the lizard Oz editorialist can stand in for all the "hardheads" wanting to nuke the country ...




Luckily with the header featuring the "hardheads" out of the way - as if being a boofhead thug in the Swiss bank accounts man's style is a virtue - the pond can swallow the whole nuke the country thing in one bite ...




Yes, there was that immortal line "At this stage, the cost benefits are difficult to determine" but the reptiles won't give up on the SMR dream and the yearning to nuke the country ...

Meanwhile there doesn't seem to have been any advance on that story in the AFR about a month ago ...




There was a classic exchange at the bottom of that story ...

Reuters reported the US Department of Energy had agreed to provide $US1.35 billion to the collapsed project over 10 years, of which about $US600 million had been disbursed since 2014.
Municipal participants in the project were unnerved when the indicative wholesale cost of power from the Utah project jumped to $US89 per megawatt hour ($A137/MWh) from $US58/ MWh last January.
Mr Bowen said: “The opposition’s only energy policy is small modular reactors. Today, the most advanced prototype in the US has been cancelled. The LNP’s plan for energy security is just more hot air from Peter Dutton.”
Mr O’Brien responded: “Is Bowen arguing that wind power is dead because the world’s leading supplier Siemens is seeking a €15 billion [$25 billion] government bailout, or the days of solar are over because plans for the world’s largest solar plant, Sun Cable, has run into trouble, or that hydro should be ignored because Snowy 2.0 has doubled in price since Labor came to office?
“Such arguments would be as false as the line Labor is running against nuclear.”
NuScale has been developing the technology since 2000 but has experienced multiple setbacks and missed deadlines. Commercial deployment isn’t expected before 2030 in North America, pushing its likely availability in Australia out to the 2040s.
Longer term, the Liberal Party-aligned Blueprint Institute said in a report issued last month ago that SMRs could play a role in decarbonising the grid after 2040, and would likely help reduce costs.

Short term? Bung on a do, any old do will do, and nuking the country is a splendid do ... and should carry on right up to the election, and then you can pretend that Snowy 2.0 had nothing to do with Malware or the rest  of the gang ...

Relax, dudes, it's all under control, no need to panic, climate science is on the right course, and so is the planet ...




And so to the lizard Oz's resident armchair general, the bromancer himself. 

The pond wondered whether it should indulge his latest obscenity, but truth to tell, it's an excellent example of how the bromancer hasn't seen a killing field he doesn't like, provided he's not in it ...




Actually it's not just Hamas ... there are far right fundamentalist theocrats in the Netanyahu government that are in the grip of their own death cult ... and it's been a cult for years ...

Way back in February 2022 Amnesty International released a report which was spit on a griddle, Israel's apartheid against Palestinians: a cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity ...

Inter alia ...

Israeli authorities must be held accountable for committing the crime of apartheid against Palestinians, Amnesty International said today in a damning new report. The investigation details how Israel enforces a system of oppression and domination against the Palestinian people wherever it has control over their rights. This includes Palestinians living in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), as well as displaced refugees in other countries.
The comprehensive report, Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime against Humanity, sets out how massive seizures of Palestinian land and property, unlawful killings, forcible transfer, drastic movement restrictions, and the denial of nationality and citizenship to Palestinians are all components of a system which amounts to apartheid under international law. This system is maintained by violations which Amnesty International found to constitute apartheid as a crime against humanity, as defined in the Rome Statute and Apartheid Convention.
Amnesty International is calling on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to consider the crime of apartheid in its current investigation in the OPT and calls on all states to exercise universal jurisdiction to bring perpetrators of apartheid crimes to justice.
“There is no possible justification for a system built around the institutionalized and prolonged racist oppression of millions of people. Apartheid has no place in our world, and states which choose to make allowances for Israel will find themselves on the wrong side of history. Governments who continue to supply Israel with arms and shield it from accountability at the UN are supporting a system of apartheid, undermining the international legal order, and exacerbating the suffering of the Palestinian people. The international community must face up to the reality of Israel’s apartheid, and pursue the many avenues to justice which remain shamefully unexplored.”
Amnesty International’s findings build on a growing body of work by Palestinian, Israeli and international NGOs, who have increasingly applied the apartheid framework to the situation in Israel and/or the OPT.

Nothing happened of course, except that the country drifted even further to the right, empowering a gang of fundamentalist theocratic thugs to do even worse things ...

The bromancer, of course, a barking mad fundamentalist himself, gave not a whit or a jot ...




Catholic? Did someone mention Catholicism? What's the Pope got to say? Per WaPo (paywall) ...






How else could it be interpreted? Clearly that senior official has never met the bromancer, or seen the work of the lizard Oz graphics department, running a shot of an heroic Benji ...




What is he actually achieving? Well apart from reducing Gaza to rubble, rendering it uninhabitable, he's also got the neighbours a little agitated ...




The pond never thought it would agree with Edrogan on anything, but somehow, "butcher of Gaza" seems to fit the current circumstances ...





The pond has become alarmingly radicalised this past month. The pond has nothing in common with Islamic fundamentalists, and in certain countries, the pond and partner would be beheaded in a trice,  but there's something deeply offensive about what's happening in Gaza, and the bromancer tries to be as offensive about it as he can ... 

On any given day, he can be offensive, and on this day, he rises to the killing fields occasion to be deeply offensive as only a barking mad Xian can be ...





Dear sweet long absent lord, not the mindless rote repetition of the Catholic catechism ...

So how's it going in Gaza?

Just another day of slaughter, confusion, chaos, displacement, and collective punishment, with orders given via the internet, in a country where charging a phone or connecting to receive instructions is impossible for most ...

Send them south, trap them there, and then get amongst them ...






So much news, so easy for the allegedly brotherly love Xian  bromancer to ignore ...




At this point the reptiles slipped in a snap of Wong ...






... as if that would distract the pond from the offensiveness of that line from the bromancer ...

Israel is not exempt from ethical and moral considerations as a result of all this, but the Israeli military conducts itself as well as any Western military would in similar circumstances.

Uh huh ... a meaningless and pathetic billy goat butt ...

What, like Iraq or like the defoliating Vietnam? Or just another days butchery and chaos? Per the Graudian ...





And so on and on ... and how complacent and comfortable is the armchair general in his armchair ...

How weird has it got? The pond has taken to reading Aljazeera, just to catch up on the news in stories such as Israel orders evacuations as onslaught on Gaza widens ...

Israel has ordered Palestinians to evacuate several more areas as it widens its bombardment of the Gaza Strip, killing hundreds.
The Israeli military declared on Monday via the social media site X that it was defining “safe areas” for Gaza civilians to minimise harm to them. However, hundreds more Palestinians have been killed since the onslaught resumed on Friday, and it is unclear where civilians might seek safety.
Al Jazeera journalists on the ground say it is difficult to heed the orders in real time, with nowhere safe remaining in the enclave.
Israel published a map on Friday, dividing Gaza into “evacuation zones” and asking people to follow their announcements for their safety. However, the maps, which include nearly 2,500 grids, have confused many, while unreliable internet and electricity make keeping updated a challenge.
On Monday, an update with three arrows pointing south was issued. The instruction came the day after the Israeli military said it had expanded its ground operation to all of Gaza, targeting “Hamas centres in all” of the enclave.

They used X? That's beyond a sick Uncle Elon joke ...

The pond has even taken to reading the occasional grundling in Crikey. The pond had thought any grundle was too deeply weird,  and yet ... in a context where some are allegedly saying that what Hamas did was worse than the Holocaust ...




Sorry, grundler, the bromancer is holding the line ... rock steady in his armchair, what with there never having been a killing field he didn't like, and good prep for that war with China by Xmas ...





Greater amenity for Palestinians? There's nothing like rubble for greater life amenity ...






Now for the south, and even more rubble, and as for amenity ...

But now the pond must leave the war criminals and their criminal defenders, and continue with its promised series ...

Part one yesterday came from Richard Cohen's Making History, and featured a few pages from his book. The pond feels obliged to provide a link to Simon and Schuster and a note on Cohen ...

Richard Cohen is the author of By the Sword, Chasing the Sun, and How to Write Like Tolstoy. The former publishing director of two leading London publishing houses, he has edited books that have won the Pulitzer, Booker, and Whitbread/Costa prizes, while twenty-one have been #1 bestsellers. He has written for most UK quality newspapers as well as for The New York Times Book Review and The Wall Street Journal, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. 

And a few blurbs ...

"Supremely entertaining. . . . Whatever Cohen writes about he writes about with brio.”
– Louis Menand, The New Yorker
“What a brilliant achievement! Like all Richard Cohen’s writing, Making History opens a dialogue with the reader—grave and witty, suave yet pointed, erudite yet engaging and full of energy. It has huge scope but never forfeits the telling detail. It is scholarly, lively, quotable, up-to-date, and fun.”
– Hilary Mantel, author of the bestselling Thomas Cromwell trilogy
"Sprawling and wildly ambitious, idiosyncratic and also consistently readable and engaging, Making History dives deep into the way history-driven scholars and artists — from Burns to Shakespeare to Herodotus — have shaped the collective memory of humankind."
– Douglas Brinkley, The Washington Post
“What a grand, illuminating, and fun book! Richard Cohen takes us on a learned tour through the cacophony of history and of the characters who’ve told the stories that shape us. To understand who we are, we have to understand who we’ve been—and, as Cohen amply demonstrates, who has formed those understandings.”
– Jon Meacham, author of American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House and Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

The pond always found Meacham a bit of a pompous bore and a droner to boot, but then there's the law of the striking clock, and so to the next few excerpts, which should eventually see the whole thing wrap up by Friday, just in time for the hole in the bucket man ...

Some might like to wait, collect the set, and read the chapter of bible follies in one go, but in any case, click on to enlarge ...





6 comments:

  1. The Groany: "With the benefit of hindsight, the government made several missteps in the management of the immigration portfolio." Really ? Like "The Government" is just carrying on where "The Opposition" left off, because "Errors include sticking with migration targets set by the previous Coalition government...".

    Groany is actually proclaiming that the "previous Coalition government" made "errors" ? Hucoodanode. We've been repeatedly told it was perfect.

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    Replies
    1. The caption reads “Recent arrivals pictured at Sydney Airport” but there’s only one arrival. He’s on the left edge and heading for the taxis. The flowers aren’t for him. Lochloon’s groanigraghIT is too early and too late. There’s about a hundred multi-cultural replacement-type Australians there to welcome the arrivals Groaney instructed GIT to show. But too soon, their plane hasn’t landed yet. And too late, her job and her car and her friends and her airport are already long gone.

      Delete
  2. Mr Ed: "The comparative costs of nuclear and renewables are a matter of conjecture." The conjecture being how the "hardheads" can keep on fooling people about the full on expenses - and the very long delivery timeframe - for nuclear. But surely the whole Murdoch media will do its very best to keep us all misinformed. And just who was it that said we shouldn't legislate to protect ourselves from "misinformation" ?

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  3. Dorothy - seems John Keats had words for how you feel as you look over the, er - 'offerings'

    drowsy numbness pains
    My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
    Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
    One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

    and he was writing to a Nightingale, not to a murder of old, creaking crows. Selfishly, we readers might hope that you take that break, in the hope that you will return for us in the year that is to be. And, yes, I was tempted to do a little re-write, along the lines of emptying some dull opiate to the pond, but really the master had done it better.

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  4. The title says it all: Small nuclear reactors: a history of failure (by Jim Green, of Friends of the Earth).

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    1. Oh they can join Carbon Capture and Storage as failures, then.

      The thing is, though, that there are many 'small nuclear reactors' around the world in effective working state day after day: in nuclear submarines for the US, Russia, China, France etc. So how come there's so many of those that work day in and day out, but nobody can otherwise put together a reliable 'small reactor' design and construction ?

      Delete

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