The pond spent a pleasant half-hour with Google's new, "improved" way of logging in - when you run multiple accounts on multiple devices, be ready for a nightmare - before turning to the reptile news of the day ...
The pond doesn't do ambulance chasing, or indulge theories about same, and is beyond prayers, but does have thoughts for the victims and for the cop forced to shoot to stop the mayhem.
It's not just enough to say she was just doing her duty and the pond hopes she gets proper help and care, not the usual NSW plod treatment. Strangely, the pond was reminded of an exchange between Raylan and Kendal about killing in that soap Justified ...
Enough already, too much killing, and meanwhile the reptiles are preparing for the big news, which falls outside the pond's business cycle. Strangely Dame Slap again went missing in the featured stories ...
Of course it doesn't matter how it turns out, they all just factor the costs in as part of doing business.
The pond was reminded of this on the weekend when reading an aged piece by Jack Shafer in Politico back in April 2023, Rupert Wins Again For the media mogul, the massive Dominion settlement fee is just the cost of doing business.
If it seems fairly daft to congratulate Rupert Murdoch on settling the Dominion Voting Systems defamation case at a cost of $787.5 million, you probably need to be brought up to speed on how the tycoon excises malignancies when they threaten his core businesses.
Murdoch’s company paid $100 million to celebrities and crime victims in his tabloid phone-hacking scandal in Britain, according to the Washington Post. Another $50 million went one year to women at Fox News who alleged sexual harassment at the conservative network. In another case, $15 million went to a former host who complained about wage discrimination. A “seven-figure payment” went to the parents of Seth Rich, who sued Fox for trafficking a false conspiracy theory about his death. And in 2010, Fox dropped a mammoth $500 million to settle a supermarket-coupon trade secret lawsuit. In 2011, Murdoch completely shuttered his News of the World tabloid to limit exposure in the phone-hacking scandal.
A hundred million here, a hundred million there, might crimp your finances. But in the Murdoch universe, paying such settlements is just the cost of doing business Murdoch-style. The alternative to settling with Dominion for telling a series of lies about voting fraud would have been a painful and long courtroom drama. A stream of ugly would have been on the Fox image, day after day, as Dominion made its case. Even after the case concluded and went to appeals, the Fox brand would have been further stigmatized, and shame and disparagement would have been leveled at Murdoch, Fox executives and Fox hosts Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Maria Bartiromo, Laura Ingraham and Bret Baier, all of whom Dominion planned to put on the witness stand. Getting out from under all of that hurt for $787.5 million is a kind of bargain for a company with a market cap of $17.3 billion. Fox has $4.1 billion in cash and warrants on hand, says the New York Times.
According to early press reports, Fox won’t have to apologize or acknowledge wrongdoing in any fashion. Like the phone-hacking scandal, like the sexual harassment cases, like the Seth Rich case, like the coupon case, this settlement will allow the Fox media machine to return to cruising speed and even continue its sleazy ways. When Murdoch was shamed over the phone-hacking scandal and closed the News of the World, observers hoped that maybe he or one of his children would amend the company’s manner. But here we are a decade-plus later, and the Murdoch enterprise is just as contaminated as it ever was.
There have already been whisperings that the settlement will tame the Murdoch beast. That Fox News will tread more carefully. That Fox’s shame will bleed into the media diets of their most faithful viewers and they’ll start looking at Fox News with new eyes as the enlightenment burns into their consciousness. Don’t kid yourself. If you had a machine that tossed off the sort of money Fox does, you wouldn’t tamper with it.
Murdoch’s company paid $100 million to celebrities and crime victims in his tabloid phone-hacking scandal in Britain, according to the Washington Post. Another $50 million went one year to women at Fox News who alleged sexual harassment at the conservative network. In another case, $15 million went to a former host who complained about wage discrimination. A “seven-figure payment” went to the parents of Seth Rich, who sued Fox for trafficking a false conspiracy theory about his death. And in 2010, Fox dropped a mammoth $500 million to settle a supermarket-coupon trade secret lawsuit. In 2011, Murdoch completely shuttered his News of the World tabloid to limit exposure in the phone-hacking scandal.
A hundred million here, a hundred million there, might crimp your finances. But in the Murdoch universe, paying such settlements is just the cost of doing business Murdoch-style. The alternative to settling with Dominion for telling a series of lies about voting fraud would have been a painful and long courtroom drama. A stream of ugly would have been on the Fox image, day after day, as Dominion made its case. Even after the case concluded and went to appeals, the Fox brand would have been further stigmatized, and shame and disparagement would have been leveled at Murdoch, Fox executives and Fox hosts Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Maria Bartiromo, Laura Ingraham and Bret Baier, all of whom Dominion planned to put on the witness stand. Getting out from under all of that hurt for $787.5 million is a kind of bargain for a company with a market cap of $17.3 billion. Fox has $4.1 billion in cash and warrants on hand, says the New York Times.
According to early press reports, Fox won’t have to apologize or acknowledge wrongdoing in any fashion. Like the phone-hacking scandal, like the sexual harassment cases, like the Seth Rich case, like the coupon case, this settlement will allow the Fox media machine to return to cruising speed and even continue its sleazy ways. When Murdoch was shamed over the phone-hacking scandal and closed the News of the World, observers hoped that maybe he or one of his children would amend the company’s manner. But here we are a decade-plus later, and the Murdoch enterprise is just as contaminated as it ever was.
There have already been whisperings that the settlement will tame the Murdoch beast. That Fox News will tread more carefully. That Fox’s shame will bleed into the media diets of their most faithful viewers and they’ll start looking at Fox News with new eyes as the enlightenment burns into their consciousness. Don’t kid yourself. If you had a machine that tossed off the sort of money Fox does, you wouldn’t tamper with it.
If you want to keep wielding political clout down under, even while a US citizen and even though it's a minor part of the empire, don't tamper with the lizard Oz ...though the pond noted a minor disturbance in the force, because this day the Caterist went missing, and so there was no ranting about renewables to behold ...
Perhaps he'll turn up later in the day, but meanwhile, the rag's take on the news was just as contaminated as it ever was, with two regulars showing the way ...
Iranian victory? Beyond fever dreams, and the pond's explanation was simpler.
Back in the day, there was a tradition that embassies and consulates were off limits, and any attack was beyond the pale. It was a nonsense of course, an imaginary element of polite discourse - think of what might happen if you're a journalist and you stepped inside a Saudi Arabian embassy. You'd end up being as bloodied and mutilated as a 'gator ...
Nonetheless, it was a cunning ploy by Benji and his team, knowing that the mad mullahs would bite and then there'd be an existential choice to make ...
Not everybody liked the choice, but at least a few noted that that the sideshow was bunged on to raise the stakes and distract from the genocide ...
But not the bromancer, who's never met a genocide in Gaza he hasn't loved ...
So what was Benji's likely motive in starting the sideshow, tweaking the beards of the mad mullahs? Ah, that's above the bromancer's paygrade, he's back in the glory days of the axis of weevils, and seeking inspiration from his orange Jesus.
At that point, the reptiles slipped in a snap of the provocateurs, the beard tweakers at work ...
That's why the pond turned to the immortal Rowe for a sensible summary ...
And so to the Major, not because the pond likes it, but because it's there, and one more kick of the hornet's nest of reptiles - to mix metaphors in mighty style - surely can't hurt ...
Stop right there.
Why is it that the Major and the other reptiles never mention that Rabin was assassinated by a fundamentalist, one Yigal Amir.
What a barking mad piece of work he was, with women issues ... and yet the tone he set isn't that far from the current barking made far right fundamentalists currently running the country ...
In 1993, Amir began studying at Bar-Ilan University as part of its kollel program, mixing religious and secular studies. Amir studied law and computer science, as well as Jewish law at the Institute for Advanced Torah Studies. Amir was strongly opposed to the Oslo Accords. He participated in protest rallies against the accords on campus, was active in organizing weekend bus outings to support Israeli settlers, and helped found an illegal settlement outpost. He was especially active in Hebron, where he led marches through the streets.
During his years as an activist, Amir became friendly with Avishai Raviv, to whom he allegedly revealed his plan to kill Rabin. After the murder, it was revealed that Raviv, a well known right-wing extremist at the time, was in fact only posing as a right-wing radical. In reality, he was working for Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service. While some right-wing militants have accused the Shin Bet of having orchestrated the assassination to discredit them, a court later ruled that there was no evidence Raviv knew Amir was plotting to kill Rabin.
In 1994, during his university studies, Amir met—and began a platonic relationship with—Nava Holtzman, a law student from an Orthodox Ashkenazi family. In January 1995, after five months, Holtzman ended the relationship after her parents objected due to Amir's Mizrahi background. She married one of his friends soon afterward. Amir, who attended the wedding, went into a deep depression.
See the wiki for the footnotes, and apologies, the pond has this thing about fundamentalism at work in all religions, and on view in most of the reptiles at the lizard Oz ... carry on Major Mitchell ...
The reptiles followed that gobbet up with a huge snap ...
As for poor old Ukraine, don't even ask ...
That Nine story is hardly news - it's just far right authoritarian Modi helping out a mate ...
Though Russia was more or less internationally isolated, it was no surprise India had ramped up oil trade with Russia, and that China had remained steadfast, Orr said.
India is the world's biggest arms importer, and it has always bought the majority of its arms from Russia. India considers Russia a trusted ally from the Cold War era, and it has not voted against Russia in the UN or criticised Putin since the invasion began.
"Russia has played the India card, and the India card is so significant (Moscow) has won that hand," Orr said.
"The West has been trying to win this war without fighting this war."
Remember how the bromancer was deeply in love with Modi and his rabid nationalism?
Meanwhile back to the distracted Major, rabbiting on as only the Major can ...
It's the Arab world that's been conducting pogroms against Jews for centuries? Trust the Major not to credit the heroic work of the Catholic church and sundry forces at work in Europe for centuries ...
Just for fun, please honour Father Charles Coughlin, the perfect storm ...
Father Charles Coughlin, was a Canadian-born Catholic priest assigned to a parish in Michigan. Coughlin was antisemitic, anti-Communist, and isolationist. Throughout the 1930s, he was one of the most influential men in the United States. A new post office was constructed in his Michigan town just to process the letters that he received each week—80,000 on average. The audience of his weekly radio broadcasts was in the tens of millions, and his journal Social Justice eventually reached one million subscribers.
By the mid-1930s, Coughlin had become a vocal critic of the Roosevelt administration, and he attacked Jews explicitly in his broadcasts. In the days and weeks after Kristallnacht, Coughlin defended the state-sponsored violence of the Nazi regime, arguing that Kristallnacht was justified as retaliation for Jewish persecution of Christians. He explained to his listeners on November 20, 1938, that the “communistic government of Russia,” “the Lenins and Trotskys,…atheistic Jews and Gentiles” had murdered more than 20 million Christians and had stolen “40 billion [dollars]…of Christian property.” Following this broadcast, several radio stations refused to broadcast his program without pre-approved scripts. A few stations in New York cancelled his programs.
By the late 1930s, Coughlin began to promote fascist dictatorship and authoritarian government as the only cure to the ills of democracy and capitalism. The Roosevelt administration decided that, because the radio spectrum was a "limited national resource" and regulated as a publicly owned commons, broadcasting was not afforded full protections under the First Amendment. In October 1939, the Code Committee of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) enacted new limitations on the sale of radio time to 'spokesmen of controversial public issues.' Manuscripts now had to be submitted in advance, and radio stations were threatened with the loss of licenses if they failed to comply. As a result, on September 23, 1940, Coughlin announced in Social Justice that he had been forced from the air.
What a relief to turn to the truly infallible Pope and discover a different topic, featuring Clippy, almost as loathed by the pond as googgle's double tap log-in procedures ... and yes, the pond did read John Naughton's From boom to bust, the AI bubble is only heading in one direction ...
Sure, it's an oldie, but it remains relevant ...
The pond reserves the right to re-use one the pond missed when the reptiles turn again to the horror of that female GG ...
An interesting thought: "To understand the man you have to know what was happening in the world when he was twenty." That's Napoleon, apparently. And now it's thought that it might apply to women too.
ReplyDeleteDunno about me, though - it was near the end of the Menzies era in my case. But Chris Dillow reckons it might explain a lot:
"We now have strong evidence that economic conditions in our formative years shape our outlook much later in life. People who experienced recessions when young are less likely to own risky assets when they become old and rich enough to do so. Chief executives who saw hard times in their youth run their companies more conservatively than others; and central bankers who saw high inflation when young are likely to be more hawkish when they are in office."
https://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/
So, does it explain The Groaner ? Or did she come by her insanity in much simpler ways ?
The Dame was born in late 1954, so would have been 20 during the mis-late period of the Whitlam Government. She’s certainly always displayed a loathing for anything that smacks of Whitlamesque policies, particularly economics.
DeleteI know nothing about the Dame’s upbringing, but I’ve never got the impression from her writings that she did it tough at any age. She appears to have had a fairly comfortable life in academia, the achievements of which appear to be substantially outweighed by the rewards, such as her numerous positions on company and government boards and reviews - plus of course her long-running, well paid bully-pulpit gig in the Oz. Having never suffered much adverse impact from real world developments, whether at 20 years old or beyond, it’s unsurprising that she’s chosen to view everything through the lens of her preferred economic ideology, and has never felt much need to suggest specific policy responses to new developments (I don’t accept broad demands such as “work harder”, “cut costs” and “reduce government spending” to be actual policies). After all, she’s done okay - let others sort out their own problems.
Neatly summarised, thanks Anony.
DeleteSo, Maj. Mitch.: "Peter Hartcher ... was largely correct on Thursday morning when he argues Wong was merely restating Labor policy on a two-state solution." It wasn't just an abberation of Wong's then ? So what does Mitch. mean by claiming "... there is so much wrong with this it is amazing a senior government minister would think it, let alone say it." Mitch is saying that the Foreign Minister shouldn't actually state her party's policy ?
ReplyDeleteOh, but that's right, isn't it: The Bromancer reckons Wong's speech was just "riddled with mistakes", "emotionally manipulative" and "dishonest". And the Bromancer can authoritatively pronounce on this because he can recognise his own tactics when used by others. As it has been said, 'attribution and projection' are the ways of reptiles.
I read Harcher’s most recent piece in today’s Sydney Morning Costello: he’s honest enough to write a piece that makes clear he has no idea what happens next in the Middle East, and avoids a simplistic Good Guys & Bad Guys division. Such uncertainties never seem to trouble the Reptiles.
DeleteThat's be right: Lee's summation of his verdict into Lehrmann's defamation trial falls at the first technical hurde. No sound! We adjourn for 45 minutes so some 'man who, were I a betting woman, I would wager is from the court’s IT team' (Guardian website) can - randomly it seems - 'press some buttons'.
ReplyDeleteWell here we go; Judge Lee:
Delete"While there was no evidence Lehrmann knew that Higgins did not consent to the sexual activity, he was recklessly indifferent to her rights and was "hell-bent" on having sex, the judge said.
Earlier, Lee slammed Lehrmann as being an unreliable, dishonest witness.
"Mr Lehrmann has no compunction from departing from the truth if he thought it was expedient," the judge said."
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/judgment-day-for-lehrmann-over-higgins-rape-report/ar-BB1lBVoc?
But it's still not a criminal trial, is it, so Dame Slap can go on proclaiming that Lehrmann is innocent, and anyway Higgins is just as bad, right ?
One thing that appears to be missing from the screeds - I certainly won’t call them “assessments” - of all the Reptile Armchair Generals is any consideration of the possibility that domestic political concerns played a part in the Israel-Iran attack /counterattack. Both countries have reactionary, corrupt and deeply unpopular governments. Whatever other reasons they had, both governments probably calculated that a nice little limited exchange of hostilities - not too many casualties, satisfaction claimed afterwards and the usual threats that “there’s plenty more where that came from!” - couldn’t do any real harm to their domestic support.
ReplyDeleteOf course any such nuance doesn’t really fit in with the Reptiles’ simplistic “Goodies versus Baddies” narrative, so its absence isn’t all that surprising.
A small aside, if I may, but relevant to what reptiles are prepared to do to remain reptiles. Yesterday, what I think of as the 'chuckleheads' on Sky - Rowan Dean, the fading ingénue Rita, and, just of yesterday, the screeching woman with the unlikely eyelashes, were casting about to put some spin of conspiracy on the episode at Bondi Junction. Oh - the police commented that the suspect had no links to terrorism - so why had they even looked at that, and what information had they found - we are entitled to more transparency from the police. I looked in later, and they had recruited the head of the 'Australian Jewish Association', David Adler, for comment. I have not worked out where that AJA fits with the about 20 other groups claiming to represent interests of Jews in Australia, but Dean introduced Adler as a regular contributor to 'Spectator'.
ReplyDeleteAdler then spoke at length at how this had all been so much more distressing for Jewish people because it was like attacks in other parts of the world. Now this wasn't casual comment - Adler had brushed up, put on a tie, and gone to the studio, so the clear intention was to try to make a link in the minds of viewers (if viewers of 'Sky' have minds) between the Bondi Junction episode, and a worldwide conspiracy against Jews.
The 'Sky' crew started their day with every intention of trying to create that link. It is the style of Hannity - 'just asking questions here' - so is not original, and they do it for way less money than Hannity receives. And it is not as if proper jobs are hard to come by in this country, now.
Well there's only two kinds of people on this planet, Chad: us and ours and them and theirs. So anything that isn't us and ours must be them and/or theirs, yes ?
Deletethe Janet Albertson column tomorrow (she's a friend don't you know!) is going to be something.
ReplyDeleteAnd the legal eagles will be up all night - maybe she'll call her mate Sofronoff.
DeleteIf Dame Albertson has any sense, she’d go very, very quiet for the next few weeks, and certainly never again make mention of that particular case(s). But that’s not the Dame's style is it? So I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she goes off like a frog in a sock. She certainly won’t be admitting any inappropriate or ill-advised actions on her own part.
DeleteMore like a pork chop in heat!
DeleteWhere is the Riddster just when we need him most to tell us this isn't happening - or if it is that it's no big deal ?
ReplyDeleteGlobal heating pushes coral reefs towards worst planet-wide mass bleaching on record
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/15/great-barrier-reef-coral-bleaching-global-heating