In which our Henry sends the pond off on an eccentric search for freedumb ...

 

The pond can't ever recall Natasha of the deep north occupying the far right 'top of the digital world ma' slot in the lizard Oz before, yet there she was ...

The sight, and the subject matter, produced a deep sense of ennui and tedium in the pond ... what with there being freedumb for some, but not for others in reptile la la land ...

Down below the pond noted news that Captain Spud's team would heroically launch a fight against that bloody super computer, and for once the pond was on board ... the infallible Pope had established it wouldn't be up to the job ...

A free SMR in every backyard across the country, and we'd be that much closer ...

Off to the gravel pit with the useless thing - the new favourite destination, much superior to the corn field - with Kristi standing by to help ...

What use is science, when you have Captain Spud to hand with his quantum Queensland plod brain?

The pond knew that the long trudge to the weekend had arrived at Friday, and soon our Henry would be here to help, and sure enough there he was, a bright shining star, steadfast in a universe of black holes...

Ah, it's libertarian Henry day, and so far superior to any of the other tepid offerings, including an excessive abundance of space-filling lizard Oz editorials.

Before getting on to our Henry, this being the Catholic Boys' Daily and all, the pond just wants to record the shock it experience while dabbling in The New Yorker ...

Up rose an image that sent the pond reeling...

It was attached to a Sinéad O’Sullivan piece, Why Normal Music Reviews No Longer Make Sense for Taylor Swift, (paywall) but all the pond could think about was the deep heresy, and the shameful mocking of the image the pond's grandparents had above the rustic chaise lounge out in the middle of nowhere ...

Back in the day such heretics would have quickly been burned at the stake and all would be well, and so the pond was tremendously relieved when it stumbled across a yarn by Tim Sullivan for AP, 'A step back in time': America's Catholic Church sees an immense shift toward the old ways.

Inter alia ...

Students, many of whom grew up in conservative Catholic families, jokingly call it “the Benedictine bubble.” And it might be a window into the future of the Catholic Church in America.
In a deeply secular America, where an ever-churning culture provides few absolute answers, Benedictine offers the reassurance of clarity.
“We don’t all agree on everything, obviously,” said John Welte, a senior majoring in economics and philosophy. “But I would say everyone has an understanding of, like, truth.”
“There are certain things you can just know in your mind: This is right, and this is wrong.”
Sometimes, people here quietly admit, it goes too far. Like the students who loudly proclaim how often they go to Mass, or the young man who quit his classics course because he refused to read the works of ancient Greek pagans.
Very often, talk here echoes the 13th-century writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, who believed God could be found in truth, goodness and beauty. Sometimes, they say, that means finding God in strict tenets about sexuality. Sometimes in the haunting beauty of Gregorian chants.
“It’s a renewal of, like, some really, really good things that we might have lost,” said Madeline Hays, a pensive 22-year-old senior biology major.
She takes the church’s rules seriously, from pre-marital sex to confession. She can’t stand modern church architecture. She’s seriously considering becoming a nun.
But she also worries about poverty and America’s wastefulness and the way Americans –including herself – can find themselves slotted into the political divide without even knowing it.
She wrestles with her belief in an unerring Catholic doctrine that can see good people, including some of her own friends, as sinners.
Yet she doesn’t want change.
“The church wouldn’t be the church if it changed things it had set down as, 'This is infallible doctrine and this will not change through the ages,’” she said.
They understand that in Benedictine’s small, mostly closeted gay community. Like the young man, once deeply religious, who suffers in silence as people on campus casually throw around anti-gay slurs.
He’s thought many times of leaving, but generous financial aid keeps him here. And after many years, he’s accepted his sexuality.
He’s seen the joy that people can get from Benedictine, how some will move back to Atchison after graduation, just to stay close.
But not him.
“I don’t think I’ll come back to Atchison – not ever.”

Same as it ever was ...

...Protection is needed, he (Rev. Scott Emerson) said in a 2023 service, from “the spiritual corruption of worldly vices.” He has warned against critics – “the atheists, journalists, politicians, the fallen-away Catholics” – he said were undermining the church.

For some, Emerson’s changes were welcome.

“A lot of us were like, ’Hey, more confession! Sweet!” said Rouleau, who ran the parish young adult group. “Better music!”

But the parish – which in mid-2023 became part of a two-church “pastorate” amid a diocese-wide restructuring - was shrinking fast.

For decades, many traditional Catholics have wondered if the church would – and perhaps should – shrink to a smaller but more faithful core.

In ways, that’s how St. Maria Goretti looks today. The 6:30 a.m. Friday Mass, Rouleau says, is increasingly popular among young people. But once-packed Sunday Masses now have empty pews. Donations are down. School enrollment plunged.

Some who left have gone to more liberal parishes. Some joined Protestant churches. Some abandoned religion entirely.

“I’m not a Catholic anymore,” said Hammond, the woman who left when the church’s school began to change. “Not even a little bit.”

But Emerson insists the Catholic Church’s critics will be proven wrong.

“How many have laughed at the church, announcing that she was passe, that her days were over and that they would bury her?” he said in a 2021 Mass.

“The church,” he said, “has buried every one of her undertakers.”

Huzzah, soon enough witch burning will be brought back, and the damned witches and all those Swifties with them, will be engulfed in flames, or at least sent to the gravel pit ...

Perhaps this might seem an odd introduction to our Henry, but the theme is religious fundamentalism in all its forms, and our Henry boldly strikes a claim for freedumb ... or at least delivers a heap of pompous, portentous cant, leavened with a serve of Kant...

Apparently our Henry hasn't seen the footage, which Killer assured the pond was must see viewing, up there with watching a man burn, as the pond once did back in the 'Nam days when a Buddhist monk burning in the street startled the world (spoiler, confronting image). It was a bit like that image of the Vietnamese general performing a summary street execution, (confronting image), or that image of the napalm girl fleeing in terror...

In short, the pond has had more than enough of freedumb for very long time, with the sidebar note that freedumb mostly seems to apply elsewhere to others in torment, while local images are blurred, or downplayed ...

Sorry, the pond wandered off, best get back to freedumb with the cant lover ...

Ah, the pond knew its talk of the need to burn witches would come in handy, and there was also a handy juxtaposition in the cheap images the reptiles deployed to accompany our Henry ...

Then it was back to more elevated piety about freedumb ....

Really? Kant never claimed life without censorship would be blissful?

But where does this leave our Natasha, this time not in conflict with Rocky or Bullwinkle ... here she is,  fresh from the deep north ...

Here's the gist of her piece ... which if the pond gets it right, is very Kristi, very off to the gravel pit with them...

Bearing the provocative banner “From the River to the Sea’’ – a slogan that signifies Israel’s annihilation – they called for an end to genocide in Gaza.

Their right to protest, and the right to free speech, are pillars of our free democracy and it is a rite of passage for the young to protest to change the world.

The carnage in Gaza, where Israel has been bombarding Palestinian civilians daily in retaliation for the barbaric Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7 last year, must be stopped.

These pro-Palestinian protests, however, are a call to violence against Israel and use the language of hate.

“In-ti-fa-da!” the Brisbane protesters chanted, as if it was a fun slogan at a rock concert.

This is an Arab word meaning “uprising’’, and for Israelis it signifies deadly terror attacks that culminated in Hamas slaughtering and kidnapping 1200 Israelis – including young people at a concert – on October 7.

It’s as offensive and threatening as marching with the Nazi swastika symbol.

It's just a march Natasha, it's not exactly the same as eating grass in Gaza or a child deliberately being starved to death or bombed to death from on high ...

As for that slogan, it turns out that both sides use it ...the pond rarely quotes EFE, but came across Netanyahu rejects two-state solution, says Israel will control ‘from the river to the sea’

Jerusalem, Jan 18 (EFE) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that he had told the United States that he opposed the creation of a Palestinian state as part of a post-war scenario in Gaza.

“In the future, the state of Israel has to control the entire area from the river to the sea,” the Israeli premier declared at a news conference, turning the Palestinian freedom slogan on its head.

“This truth I tell to our American friends, and I put the brakes on the attempt to coerce us to a reality that would endanger the state of Israel,” Netanyahu said, adding that the majority of the Israeli population opposes an eventual Palestinian state, which the Joe Biden administration supports as part of the so-called two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The conservative prime minister, who heads a far-right government, argued that in any possible agreement with the Palestinians, Israel “must have security control over the entire territory west of the Jordan River,” referring to the West Bank, which Israel has occupied under international law since 1967.

There's the problem when it comes to having two barking mad mobs of religious fundamentalists both using the same slogan, and Natasha's not up to the job ...

US President Joe Biden has called on protesters to stop using the term, declaring that “hate speech and hate symbols have no place in America’’.

Likewise, “from the river to the sea’’ is a Hamas call to arms, demanding the establishment of a state of Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea – without Israel in the middle.

At the University of Queensland, pro-Palestinian activists hung the flag of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terrorist group that operates through suicide bombings, plane hijackings and kidnappings.

By extension, these protests look like anti-Semitic attacks on Jewish Australians, who no longer feel safe in our schools or universities.

Palestinian activists must stop using school children as props for their protests, and fodder for their social media feeds.

Protests can swiftly turn violent, and they’re no place for children who should be safe at school.

Uh huh, but what about the pro-Israeli activists operating through warfare? Per CNN ...

The Israeli soldiers stand rifles in hand, arm over shoulder, speaking to the camera. Behind them is the shell of a Gazan building.

“We are here adding light after the black sabbath that the people of Israel had,” one of the men says in the video, circulating on Telegram. “We are occupying, deporting, and settling. Occupying, deporting, and settling. Did you hear that Bibi? Occupying, deporting, and settling.” 

Did you hear that Natasha? And would you want to be a Palestinian in Gaza at the moment?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the idea of establishing Jewish settlements, but has said only that neither Hamas nor the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority should govern the territory, and that Israel will keep “full security control.”

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, a member of Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party, has released his own proposal, saying that there should be “no Israeli presence in the Gaza Strip,” but light on detail about what governance there would look like.

Into that void has stepped a group – once fringe, but now in the governing coalition –that hopes for full Israeli control, to resettle Gaza and even expel Palestinians. And its ideas are permeating mainstream debate.

“We must promote a solution to encourage the emigration of the residents of Gaza,” far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said on January 1.

Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also holds a position in the Defense Ministry, says that Israel “will rule there. And in order to rule there securely for a long time, we must have a civilian presence.”

The United States’ top diplomat is concerned enough that he has publicly rebuked those plans.

“These statements are irresponsible, they’re inflammatory, and they only make it harder to secure a future of Palestinian-led Gaza with Hamas no longer in control, and with terrorist groups no longer able to threaten Israel’s security,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a recent trip to Qatar.

Safe in schools Natasha?

“The general range goes from about 25% who want to re-establish permanent communities, Jewish Israeli communities in Gaza, to somewhere in the 40% range,” she told CNN of several polls conducted in November and December. “That is not a small portion of Israeli society.”

There is also an established track record in Israel of politicians pushing seemingly extremist ideas into mainstream conversation, and even into law. Netanyahu last year supported an effort started by a right-wing minister from his own Likud party to push through a law limiting the Supreme Court’s ability to scrutinize legislation, despite months of protests that roiled the nation. That proposal never had majority support, but the Knesset nonetheless passed it into law. The Supreme Court struck down the proposal earlier this month, saying it would deal a “severe and unprecedented blow to the core characteristics of the State of Israel as a democratic state.”

“Ideas that often seem very extreme at a certain phase in Israel’s history can over time become increasingly normalized very incrementally – sometimes a little bit below the radar, not exactly hidden, but not exactly advertised,” Scheindlin said of Israeli policymaking.

Diana Buttu, a Palestinian human rights lawyer who has served as an adviser to the Palestinian Authority, gives little credence to Netanyahu’s professed opposition to re-establishing settlements in Gaza.

“As much as Netanyahu may say that he’s not going to do it, he will ultimately,” she told CNN. “Because we as Palestinians have long learned that they end up finding some sort of excuse – you know, the coalition needs to stay together, whatever. And Palestinians always pay the price for it.” 

Far from a new idea, the desire to re-settle Gaza comes from decades of frustration with then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s 2004 decision to dismantle 21 Israel settlements in Gaza – known as Gush Katif – and expel their 8,000 Jewish residents, a process which was completed in 2005.

Settler activists like Yishai Fleisher, a spokesman for Jewish settlers in Hebron, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, sense an opportunity.

“For people like myself who are on the so-called Israeli right, who have been warning about this situation for years, who protested the 2005 disengagement, nothing has changed,” Fleisher told CNN. “October 7 was just proof for what we’ve been saying all along.”

As a protester, in 2005, Fleisher was among those ejected from Gaza by the Israeli government. With public opinion in flux, he hopes that his movement’s moment has come.

“People are waking up – they’re trying to open their minds,” he said of fellow Israelis, reevaluating their politics in the wake of October 7.

If Palestinians in Gaza are “post-Jihad, pro-Israel, and want to live that good life in that beautiful soil, there should be an opportunity for that,” he said. “Anti-Israel, pro-jihad Arabs have got to leave. And they’re going to have to find a different place to go. It might be Turkey, and it might be Jordan, and it might be South America,” he said. “If they can’t muster in their heart to live in or next to the Jewish state, we can’t have them.” 

The Norwegian Refugee Council in December warned that “any attempts by Israel to deport and permanently displace Palestinians within and from Gaza would constitute a serious breach of international law and an atrocity crime.”

Who knows what's going to happen, but Natasha blathering about Nazi symbols, in clear breach of Godwin, and proposing the only solution is to pack everyone off to schools, suggests to the pond that it's time to send her off to the gravel pit ...

You know, you can only blame the victims for getting in the way of bombs for so long before reality must surely start to intrude.

The pond blames it all on Henry. 

His cant about Kant sent the pond right off, deep into Catholic flashbacks about the need to bring back the burning of witches and gays, and images of the killing fields of 'Nam, and worst horror of all ... Natasha blathering about the killing fields of Gaza and playing the Nazi card without a first clue ...

As a result of this surreal freak out, this fever dream, the pond barely has the strength to handle the last gobbet of cant ...

Really? Sapere aude? Cosseted adolescent minds? 

Does our Henry realise that he's cheek by jowl with cosseted Natasha, and does Natasha have the first clue about freedumb to protest against a genocide?

All the pond could think was that it would need to be a bloody big gravel pit, and this time Kristi would do well to keep a few spare shells in her sturdy farm oilskin jacket ... like any actual farmer with a bit of foresight, rather than political grandstanding, would have managed ... Kristi Noem’s dog-killing embodies the cruel phoneyness of today’s Republicans (keep digging that hole Kristi)

And so with freedumb for witches, hounds, goats, and protestors back on the agenda and ready for a serve of Kant, it's time to end with the immortal Rowe of the day ...

As usual it's all in the detail ...

Etc., etc., etc.....