There are many days that the pond would like to leave the narrow, bigoted tracks imposed by its herpetology studies, and run wild and free, and indulge in whimsy and mimsy with the borogroves and perhaps do a little outgrabing with the mome raths.
But the pond must study the set texts, the ones where the frumious bandersnatch wields his vorpal sword, and prattling Polonius, with eyes of flame, whiffles through the tulgey wood, burbling as he came ... and even when the dread spectre of genocide is raised, the pond has no way to go galumphing back ...
Inevitably this will provoke some fair degree of outrage in the pond. How tiresome it is to always ben in a frumious state of rage...but just look at the provoking, trolling Polonial header this day, which proposes that anyone wanting to avoid a genocide must automatically be on the side of Hamas ... reminding the pond that when it comes to a remarkable capacity to reduce complexity to simple-minded black and white slogans, Polonius is your vorpal pedant of choice and anything but fair minded ...
What is it when contemplating genocide and the killing fields that makes the reptiles avert their gaze and have a go at students instead? Pick the easy targets instead of sticking bullet or bomb into once warm flesh?
Consider the madness noted a few days ago in WaPo by Louisa Loveluck under the header Battles rage around Rafah’s edge as more than 100,000 flee the city. (paywall)
Heavy fighting between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants raged east of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Friday, as terrified residents jammed roads out of the city, many of them fleeing once again for their lives without any guarantees that they would find safety.
The Israeli military said it was engaged in a “precise counterterrorism operation” in eastern Rafah, on the outskirts of the city, and that it had “eliminated several terror cells during close-quarters combat” and in an airstrike. Doctors at the area’s few remaining hospitals said most of the wounded arriving at their wards were children.
At least 110,000 people have fled Rafah as Israel’s bombardment there intensifies, according to U.N. agencies, and the closure this week of two main entry points for aid has accelerated the humanitarian crisis in southern Gaza. Hamish Young, senior emergency coordinator for the U.N. children’s agency in Gaza, said he had seen civilians packed into buses, trucks, cars and donkey carts, all stuffed with what possessions the families — already displaced multiple times — had left.
Israel for months said it planned to pursue Hamas militants in Rafah, on the border with Egypt, framing any offensive there as necessary to its goal of eliminating the group. It launched what it said was a limited operation to seize the Rafah border crossing on Tuesday. But aid agencies and the United Nations, as well as Israel’s closet allies, have all warned against a full-scale invasion of the city, saying the toll on the more than 1 million people sheltering there would be nothing short of catastrophic.
Nearly 35,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in the months-long war, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and Israeli airstrikes have already leveled large swaths of the north. Famine is looming across the territory and in some areas, the United Nations says, it has already arrived.
In a speech to the U.N. General Assembly on Friday, Palestinian envoy Riyad Mansour said that “no words” could adequately convey the trauma and loss experienced in Gaza and the occupied West Bank over the past seven months.
The conflict began Oct. 7 when Hamas-led militants stormed southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people and dragging more than 250 others back to Gaza as hostages. As Israel bombarded and besieged the coastal territory, extremist Jewish settlers in the West Bank stepped up attacks on Palestinian communities there.
On Friday, the 193-member U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to expand the rights and privileges of the Palestinian observer mission, and endorsed its bid for full membership. The United States voted against the resolution, and Israeli representative Gilad Erdan took to the podium with a small pocket shredder to destroy a copy of the U.N. charter in opposition of the vote.
The brewing offensive in Rafah has already strained Israel’s relationship with Washington, and President Biden this week threatened to halt the flow of U.S. offensive weapons to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) if it charged into the city. But U.S. and Israeli officials both say the military has enough munitions to attack Rafah without U.S. support.
In a report to Congress, the State Department said Friday that it had accepted Israeli government assurances that it was not violating international law in Gaza. A six-page summary of the report, ordered by Biden earlier this year, said it was “reasonable to assess” that U.S. defense articles had been used “in instances inconsistent” with international humanitarian law, but that it did not have enough information to confirm specific violations.
The assessment stood in stark contrast to findings from the United Nations, international rights groups and independent experts, including a task force of former U.S. officials that cited Israel’s use of U.S. munitions in attacks on aid workers, civilians and heavily populated areas.
As battles were underway in eastern Rafah on Friday, the U.S.-based MedGlobal aid group said medics and journalists were unable to reach the area, making it difficult to assess the nature and intensity of the fighting.
Over the past few days, the largest hospital and multiple field clinics have evacuated staff and patients and closed their doors as the fighting ramped up. Israel shuttered two border crossings, including Rafah and Kerem Shalom, which was attacked by Hamas militants.
“For three consecutive days, nothing and no one has been allowed in or out of Gaza,” Martin Griffiths, the U.N. undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, said Thursday. Civilians, he said, “are being starved and killed, and we are prevented from helping them.”
His office said Friday that eight U.N.-supported bakeries in southern Gaza had already ceased operations. In Rafah’s Emirati Hospital, a sanctuary for pregnant women and babies through seven months of conflict, doctors said Friday that fuel reserves would likely run out after 48 hours.
“If fuel does not enter immediately, the lights will turn off. Generators will stop running. Incubators will fail. Babies will die,” Dorotea Gucciardo of Glia, a volunteer medical aid group with personnel on the ground, said in a statement.
Reached by phone in Rafah, Asma Suleiman, 38, described the situation before her as “terrifying in every sense of the word.” She said the sound of shelling was constant; the streets were empty as people stayed indoors; and her family was having trouble finding food and water.
Residents in Rafah said prices for basic goods have soared in recent days as people stockpile what they can and resources grow scarce.
Negotiations to halt the fighting and free hostages still in captivity in Gaza have stalled, after the latest round of talks in Cairo ended without a breakthrough. Hamas said Friday that it would begin consultations with other Palestinian factions to “reconsider” its negotiating strategy.
“The attack on Rafah will not be a picnic, and Gaza will always be a cemetery for the occupying invaders,” the group said in a statement.
The IDF said Friday that sirens had sounded in the area of Be’er Sheva, a city in Israel’s Negev desert, after militants fired nine rockets from the Rafah area. They fell in open areas, and no casualties were reported.
Fighting also flared in northern Gaza on Friday, after the IDF returned to the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City, saying its forces carried out “targeted raids” on “terrorist infrastructure,” and killed a number of militants.
The IDF said that four soldiers were killed by an explosive device during the operation.
Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesman for Gaza’s civil defense force, said around 20 Palestinians were killed in the fighting in Gaza City, and that paramedics had been unable to reach some of the bodies.
“As we speak, there are sounds of bombing and Apache helicopters firing in the southern areas of Gaza City,” Bassal said. “We are uncertain about the nature of the army’s activities in the area, but some residential buildings have been bombed.”
Famine, destruction, death and the killing fields and both sides in a frenzy, while hapless civilians continue to die, and all Polonius can do is blather on about students, interrupted by the occasional reptile video?
The man has the mind of a gnat and the empathy of a flea ... and yes, the ABC will enter the picture, making the pond wonder if the real explanation was a worm attack which happened to take in the Polonial brain, along with others ...
It's hard to do cartoons during an ongoing attempt at genocide, but what's the alternative?
Why it would even contemplate grundling away with grungle in Crikey, The right is the main enemy of free speech in Australia — and Gaza got ’em there.
The pond only notes it because once again the reptiles feature, and so it's part of any dinkum herpetology course ...
Perhaps one of the more significant developments of 2024 has been the right’s final abandonment of any commitment to free speech. This has been a wonder to see, not because there is any great surprise about it, but simply because it is causing them such contradiction and agony. They hate doing it, but they can’t not. Argggghhhh!
The reason is Israel and Gaza of course. For years the right have been able to conduct, through News Corp and elsewhere, wars of psychological torment on people with views that weren’t of the mainstream, or who told jokes, or who did their basic jobs compiling prize shortlists. People such as Yassmin Abdel-Magied, Larissa Behrendt and Randa Abdel-Fattah. Gosh, some element seems incredibly familiar there.
They could thus use the power of dread — what’s going to be in the national press and airwaves this morning? — to silence people, while still banging on about “free minds, free markets”, snowflakes and so on. They enforced a distinction between words and acts necessary to a robust public liberalism. They rejected the progressivist notion that words could be judged as a bit like things, in their psychic impact on the vulnerable.
Now?
Well now they’re pretty happy with the snowflakes everywhere! It’s a white winter! The snowflakes are those who’ve been objecting to the vigour and assertiveness of the pro-Palestine movement, and their robust use of free speech. Initially that centred on the slogan, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and the map with a single entity occupying the current Israel and Palestine borders.
The phrase, as Jason Clare, member for one of the largest Muslim-population seats in the country, noted a few days ago, has multiple interpretations — an assertion howled down by the usual suspects in the echo chamber, Dennis Shanahan telling Peta Credlin that it was ludicrous to suggest such when “we all know [it] means the annihilation of Israel and the removal of Israel as a state”.
Two weeks earlier, Peter Dutton had suggested that an initial pro-Palestine demonstration in October 2023 could be compared to the Port Arthur massacre. He was backed up by Senator James Paterson, former IPA gunslinger on RN Breakfast days later.
This week we’ve seen a special on Sky News, with former next-PM Josh Frydenberg connecting reactions to the “river to the sea” slogan to the pain, horror and memory of the Holocaust (inevitably medicalised as “trauma”) and thus jamming up actual PM Albanese, founder of the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine, who agreed that the phrase was “violent”.
David Crowe, former News Corp fresh meat, now at Nine, in one of the most pathetic pieces, said that “intifada” may have several meanings, but it’s now associated with suicide bombers. “It is true that many interpret the term more broadly, but the link to those attacks is indisputable.” Other meanings? A term derived from the verb “nafada”, to “shake” or “shake off”?
Crowe literally wants to ban a Taylor Swift song.
Of course that's not literal ... grundle wants to show what he's a bit of a Swiftie by referencing her lyrics...
'Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play
And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate
Baby, I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
I shake it off, I shake it off (hoo-hoo-hoo)
Heartbreakers gonna break, break, break, break, break
And the fakers gonna fake, fake, fake, fake, fake
Baby, I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
I shake it off, I shake it off (hoo-hoo-hoo)
And then he returned to that eerie Crowe cry ...
It’s hard to know which is more stupid for a journalist to believe, that there is no argument for violence (Zionist groups like the Irgun and their supporters called themselves “terrorists” approvingly), or that any word even partly associated with it should be banned.
Crowe also wanted “from the river to the sea” banned because it is antisemitic, “according to the Anti-Defamation League”. Well, we wouldn’t want to have to make up our own minds, would we? It’s typical of an organisation man like Crowe that he would want to know what the authorised interpretation was, rather than make up his own mind. The rest of us value our freedoms more.
Haters gunna hate, and the obvious point there is that Netanyahu's mob also freely deploy the notion of "from the river to the sea" and have a much bigger armoury with which to make it happen ...
The pond has done the best to distract from its chores, but there's still a final gobbet to go, with censorious pursed lips and tight-arsed condescension on offer, in the pedantic Polonial way ...
"Most of whom support Hamas"? As usual, he plucks his surveys from deep inside his arse ...
But at least Polonius provides the answer to how many have scant sympathy for an ongoing attempt at genocide. Most of the Sydney Institute apparently love the smell of napalm in the morning and a jolly good genocide.
Elsewhere? Not so much, per the Graudian's editorial ...The Guardian view on Israel’s far right: occupation of Palestinian territory feeds its extremism.
Which country today brushes aside credible accusations of war crimes in a military campaign where its actions are under investigation for genocide? Which nation’s political leadership endorses the illegal, violent expropriation of land and reduces its most steadfast friend – whose protection is vital to its survival – to threaten to withdraw support? Unfortunately, the answer is Israel, which has turned its unchecked anger on the Palestinians after Hamas massacred 1,200 of its citizens and took 253 others hostage. Revenge has led to an intensifying conflict with devastating consequences.
While the recent violence is unprecedented in its ferocity, Israel has had a history of rogue conduct. But a deeper crisis for the country lies beneath the defiance with which far-right Israeli cabinet members respond to Joe Biden’s warning that the US would withhold arms should Israel invade Gaza’s southernmost city, Rafah. There appear to be no limits to how far extremists in Israel will go in disregarding world opinion.
The international community is not prepared to stand by and watch Israel continue to act with impunity. An escalating sanctions regime is being pursued to convince it to change course. Countries are cutting diplomatic ties, halting arms sales and backing Palestinian statehood. Turkey’s decision to suspend trade with Israel will hurt. Belgium is calling for EU sanctions on imports from Israeli-occupied territories. One Haaretz headline suggests a weary indifference: “Israel is already becoming an international pariah. Do Israelis care?”
International diplomacy favours an Israel-Hamas ceasefire and the release of Israeli hostages, alongside a long-term peace plan to dismantle illegal settlements and an eventual return to Israel’s 1967 borders, within which Jewish Israelis constitute a clear democratic majority. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is contemptuous of such ideas. His voters are not far behind, shaped by the steady accretion of settlements and land seizures. It has become a mainstream view in Israel that the country has no choice – for security reasons – but to keep control of the occupied territories and flout UN resolutions demanding it withdraw.
It is clear today that the consequence of military action and settlement building for a majority of Palestinians is either the threat of imminent death, forcible expulsion or else the loss of land and livelihood, with little option but to go into exile.
The US, along with the EU and UK, has imposed sanctions on Israeli settlers in the West Bank who have been accused of attacking Palestinians. Also targeted have been the non-profits that fund settler campaigns. The expansion of illegal outposts in the West Bank, the political base of Israel’s far right, is backed by the area’s local authorities. These state bodies have escaped sanctions. But that is what needs to be considered next. Ending the state sponsorship that allows settlements to thrive and grow means penalising banks that support illegal activities, companies that build on expropriated land and the World Zionist Organization, an Israeli NGO vested with government powers to grab land.
Mr Netanyahu is running down the clock. He seeks a propitious moment to campaign for re-election as Hamas’s destroyer. He bets on Donald Trump, who considers settlements legitimate, returning to power. Israel’s occupation is at the root of its government’s extremism. A smart sanctions regime is needed because an illegal, violent enterprise represents untold dangers for Israel’s peace and security as well as for the rules-based international order.
Well yes, and the pond just wanted to note that because if the pond has a fair contempt for Polonius on a good day, the pond has a profound contempt for the craven Craven on any day ... and if the Polonial header was a fair average troll, stand by for this outrageous troll ...
It takes an astonishing cheek for a tyke, a member of a church built on 2,000 years of anti-Semitism and blaming the Jews for the murder of Christ, to turn around and blather about the left, and yet here we are, and here are a couple of visual items inserted along the way to distract from this insufferable man ...
The craven Craven is perhaps the most loathsome of all the reptiles and now he's been quietly set adrift from the ACU, it seems he's set up a residence at the lizard Oz ... blathering preposterous excuses about the way the British tradition has inflicted less persecution on Jews than almost any other Western society. And they say the Pope's a Catholic and apparently it was Stalin that invented the blood libel ...
That Iran is the reincarnation of Nazi Germany is a recurring theme in Benjamin Netanyahu's limited repertoire of speeches. But now there's a new entrant: U.S. college campuses, which, according to the Israeli prime minister's breathtaking demagoguery, are "reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s," no less.
There he was, standing grimly at Yad Vashem at the start of Holocaust Remembrance Day, with the pretense of the weight of history on his shoulders. Mr. "It's 1938 all over again." You would have expected his usual grandstanding speech, replete with current comparisons and anecdotal references to the Holocaust, pontificating and boasting of "Never Again," accusing Iran of being Hitler and portraying himself as Churchill.
This time, he had a novel contribution to contemporary history: the protests on U.S. campuses are like '30s Germany. That is an astoundingly demagogic, ahistorical statement from a man who prides himself as an avid reader of history.
Is there an Adolf Hitler in America? Are there racist Nuremberg Laws in the United States? Was there a Kristallnacht in New York? Are there storm troopers attacking Jews in Chicago? Are Jews in Boston required to wear a yellow badge with a "J" denoting that they are Jews, an inferior race? Are Jewish professors expelled from Caltech? Are Jewish-owned shop fronts in Philadelphia daubed with "Do not buy from Jews"? Did the Third Reich provide the Jews (there was no Israel at the time, of course) with $3.8 billion annually and a recent $14-billion grant for their protection? Is Mr. Netanyahu pleading with American Jews to flee America while they can? Because that's what it was like in '30s Germany.
This is the same history buff who casually opined in 2015 that Hitler – the most vile, abhorrent and depraved mass murderer in history* – didn't think of the Final Solution and the methodical extermination of European Jewry until the Palestinian grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, convinced him to do so in a meeting in 1941. (*Fair dibs, if you're talking mass murder rather than genocides, there's a lot of hot contenders, including Stalin, Mao and the 30 million dead from Japanese war crimes).https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history
Coincidentally, or not so coincidentally, a day before Netanyahu evoked Nazi Germany for a second time in relation to U.S. college campuses, his American soulmate, Donald Trump, said that U.S. President Joe Biden is running a "Gestapo administration." In Trump's defense, he at least got "Gestapo" right – unlike his acolyte Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who referred to the "gazpacho police" in 2022, denigrating the great Spanish cold soup.
Anyone familiar with Mr. Netanyahu's interpretation of history should not be surprised by his latest ludicrous comparison. His father Benzion Netanyahu, unlike his son a truly great historian, instilled in him a conceptual framework of Jewish history. Netanyahu Sr., a noted scholar of the Spanish Inquisition, came up with a cyclical theory explaining the contentiousness of Jewish history. Every few hundred years, he argued, a great power or movement rises and attempts to annihilate Jewish civilization. First came the Hellenists, beginning in the fourth century B.C.E. Then the Roman conquest and 66-73 C.E. First Jewish Revolt. Then the Crusaders in the 11th-12th centuries, then the Mamluk Sultanate from the mid-13th century. Then came the Spanish and Portuguese inquisitions in the 15th and 16th centuries, then European antisemitism, pogroms and persecution. After this there were the fascists, followed by Nazi Germany, then the Arab world, and now Jewish civilization is facing a new existential threat centered in Iran: Islamofascism. Jews barely withstood those threats and weathered the onslaughts, and now history bestowed upon Mr. Netanyahu the chance to repel Iran and its proxies.
This is where Netanyahu's "protector of Israel" self-image comes from, and this is why he needs to constantly reimagine 1938, reinvent Hitler and maintain his "The world is against us" narrative.
This explains why, a day prior to Holocaust Remembrance Day, he said that "if we don't protect ourselves, no one will … we cannot trust the promises of gentiles" – implying that just like during World War II, the Jews cannot rely on the Americans.
Without debating the essence, features and qualities of the theory, one thing is clear: In order to deflect the Islamofascist threat, Israel will need superpower backing, an alliance and smart management of that alliance.
Is Netanyahu developing and nurturing any of these things? No. He is doing the exact opposite. Has he managed to deliver according to his self-ordained image as "the protector"? No. On the contrary. Has he made Israel stronger? No, he made it tragically weaker.
A week away from Israel's most sacred of days, Memorial Day, when we remember all those who have fallen since 1948, it is excruciatingly painful to be reminded of the deep ignominy of this Israeli government. That is not surprising, but it is still profoundly incomprehensible, unfathomable and revolting that Mr. Netanyahu, or any one of the inept sycophants masquerading as ministers in his government, lacked the basic decency or moral fortitude to resign.
Not one of them signaled a future intention to resign. Not one whispered "mea culpa." Not one has assumed a shred of responsibility. Not one admitted that he or she should be held accountable. Not one expressed remorse or contrition for their part in the October 7 debacle and its aftermath.
Instead, they project. It's America's fault. It's because of the Israel Defense Forces or Shin Bet security service. It's "the left" that is responsible, the pro-democracy protests, the media that fomented opposition, the judicial system, the antisemitic world.
It's the left that's responsible?
Been there, done that, thanks to Polonius, and still doing it with the craven Craven ...
On with blather about the young, the trendy and the left ...
And while still on that planet ...
And yet the craven Craven lives in a world entirely of his own making ...but please, do not dare to mention the name of the Catholic church as the source of a profound anti-Semitism ... keep it limited to talk of Xians ... (that Martin Luther was a real card with an anal and Jewish fixation, and was really competitive with the Pope) ...
Meanwhile, on another planet, Killer noted a feeble attempt to change course, the two state solution having been killed off long ago by Netanyahu and his cronies...
Well yes, the US has been soft-pedalling its participation in war crimes for some time now ...
Actually he was shredding the UN charter with his own hands, shame on him, and meanwhile, the usual suspects lined up to praise the shredding ...
Forget it Jake, the vote doesn't really matter, whatever happens, it'll be ignored, the two state solution was dead long ago, and the killing fields will get on with the killing ...
That was an elaborate detour, but anything to get away from the hectoring of the craven Craven, now at least and at last reaching his final gobbet...
If the pond happened to be a human bean with some empathy, instead of a dead-eyed Catholic bigot, the pond might wonder what happened to the craven Craven ... was it the case of the worm striking again? Many terrible war crimes have been committed along a dirty track accommodating both sides ...
Put it another way ... how to enjoy a plunge into a pool of blood in good bombing style ...
What a relief to turn away from the ongoing attempt at genocide and enjoy the dog botherer ... the pond realises it's pushing the envelope in terms of length of Sunday outing, but what the heck, and the dog botherer spends only part of his time on the killing fields...
The reptiles kept hammering the theme with a video clip and a pic ...
On with the dog botherer catching and killing ... and amazingly, the dog botherer has the cheek to drag in a genuine, certified life time socialist to help in his catch and kill mission ...
After enduring its recent black out for all of 20 minutes, the pond returned to the task of clearing the back yard pending the arrival of the pond's personalised SMR, courtesy of the coalition opposition, and was delighted when a correspondent advised that the back order would soon be filled ... with Ted standing by, and faster than an Amazon courier, thanks to his ability to piss into his bottle of delusional beliefs ...
Don't forget Camperdown, and please keep Tamworth in the mix, and then it was on to the last two dog bothering gobbets, and yep the certified lifetime socialist will keep bobbing up ...
Sorry, already been there and done that war with China by Xmas with the bromancer, though it does remind the pond of how the reptile hive mind always contrives to sing in harmony from the same song sheet ... though strangely the pond does recall that the bro sounded even more impotent than the impotence the dog botherer was attributing to Albo ...
"The only price Australia can impose is public protest."
So it goes, without benefit of Captain Spud bluster, and so to the final gobbet to a catch and kill that must be rated as not one of the dog botherer's best, but splendidly ironic in the way that this master of climate science denialism could bravely pass off a lifelong socialist as his companion in arms ... if irony's not dead, it's certainly in an iron lung on life support whenever a reptile of the Orwellian dog bothering kind passes by ...
The lying rodent as the master of plain English? So that's what Orwell meant by doublespeak ...
And so to close with a few 'toons in the Sunday tradition. Not that you'd know it from reading the reptiles last week, but in an alternative life, the pond bathed in the mango Mussolini-obsessed waters of MSNBC ...
It was a splendid way to waste time ... great entertainment, down there with OJ getting away with murder...
...One of the markers of the Trump era, since its onset, has been its comic vulgarity. Like shiny objects waved in a toddler’s face, the former President’s sillier antics—serving fast food at a White House reception, suggesting to a seven-year-old that Santa isn’t real, staring head-on at the solar eclipse—have been a welcome distraction from the more sinister political realities of his Administration. Eventually, Trump will go on trial for the serious crimes with which he’s been charged: his alleged illegal attempts to overturn the 2020 Presidential election, his role in the January 6th insurrection, and his possible mishandling of classified documents. But, until then, we have his hush-money trial in Manhattan, which has felt like a lurid parody of twenty-first-century Americana. The trial has given us Trump’s former aide Hope Hicks bursting into tears on the witness stand and the ex-National Enquirer publisher David Pecker telling the court how hard it was to get Trump to pay him back when he caught and killed potentially damaging tabloid stories about him. And yet this seeming diversion of a trial might also lead to the first guilty verdict of a former President in American history, with Stormy Daniels as the implement who gets us there. Who would have thought?... (Naomi Fry, The New Yorker, possible paywall)
And there'll be more to come on Monday, US time, with Captain Von ShitzinPantz to take the stand, not that you'll read anything about it in the lizard Oz ...
And then soon enough the rough beast will be slouching towards Bethlehem, a messiah for the ages ...
"The lying rodent as the master of plain English? So that's what Orwell meant by doublespeak ...", Murd!och.
ReplyDeleteThe Reptile in Chief, Master and "lying rodent as the master of..." Doublespeak...
From his own piehole...
"On the Sun's political allegiances:"...
"We are perhaps the only independent newspaper in this business."
~ Ol Rupe Murd!och
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/apr/25/rupert-murdoch-leveson-best-quotes
Murd!och makes Polonious look like the scribbling toad.
DP, you've clambered through some deep troll-y infested swamps lately. And shown views from some clear view singlespeak mountains Thanks.
They still haven't got over Daniel Andrews beating the Coalition in three elections
ReplyDeleteI see that according to the reptiles, Left or Green equals anti-Semitic.
It is notable that Gerard Henderson was only able to listen to the views of the various university heads on the ABC. Apparently the Murdoch media doesn't cover the views of university heads. All we get are the divisive thoughts of the reptiles who have no expertise in anything to do with diplomacy, social cohesion or mediation of any sort and certainly do not engage in intellectual dialogue. No for them, the rant is the reasoning.
So out they emerge from under their rocks to ramp up divisiveness.
Just the other week, while I was hurrying along the busy local shopping centre, two Hasidic students were wandering along in their traditional clothes towards me, but, strangely, no sign of any anti-Semitism, which goes to show my herpetological studies are conditioning me to expect some sort of fracas whenever a Middle-eastern person comes into sight, which of course is the aim of the likes of Craven. Still, what can one expect from an ex-vice-chancellor who would describe the First Peoples of Australia as guerillas (the Oz's readership would certainly note the terrorist overtones and that the British troops had come to make Australia safe!) and also describe the Irish as feckless. Ok. OK. Ted O'Brien may be feckless, but although he's got an Irish name, he was born in Brisbane.
Well, I can easily get over Danny beating the LNPs three times in a row - neither Mathew Guy nor Michael O'Brien were LNP 'greats'. But then Danny boy wasn't exactly a Labor great either. But I voted for my local ALP guy and obviously enough of us benighted Vics did likewise for Danny to gallop over the line.
DeleteBut I'm still not sure whether Danny inspired people to vote for their local ALP candidate, or whether there was enough people voting local ALP, regardless or despite Danny, to get him up anyway.
ReplyDelete‘the pond's personalised SMR’ - you are definitely onto something here Pond. Consider the possibilities - sports SMRs for niche communities, family wagon SMRs for the burbs, all weather SMRs for the fringe suburbs and rural cities and towns, how about a stretched SMR for Point Piper and Toorak. And colours - what about colors? Ultimately we might have a competitive marketplace for SMRs with recognisable brands in market sectors - basic power, mid-range utility, imported luxury. Have you considered a career in marketing? AG.
Horse drawn Rom caravans with trailer mounted SMR, traipsing around LNP strong holds in QLD and inland NSW; would they be moved on?
DeleteI don't know about horse-drawn caravans, Anony, but I've always been just a little intrigued by radioisotope thermoelectric generators which power the Voyager spacecraft - and are still powering them, even now.
DeleteCouldn't we make a whole lot of radioisotope thermoelectric generators to power individual houses ? But would they be as cheap as a solar plus battery setup ?
If you wanted to foster a new wave of antisemitism you couldn't do better than follow the reptile pathway. It's paved with unintended, but not unforeseen consequences. The basic problem being that conflating Judaism with Zionism implicates all Jews in a self-evident genocide.
ReplyDeleteFrom Wikipedia re the Jewish Attorney General and Governor that Craven cites as evidence of the relative absence of antisemitism in Australia: 'Isaacs opposed Zionism partly because he disliked nationalism of all kinds and saw Zionism as a form of Jewish national chauvinism—and partly because he saw the Zionist agitation in Palestine as disloyalty to the British Empire, to which he was devoted. Following the King David Hotel bombing in 1946, he wrote that "the honour of Jews throughout the world demands the renunciation of political Zionism".
ReplyDeleteSo, according to Polonius (or his hed writer) we have a reptile pronouncement that "Fair-minded voters sick of green-left pro-Hamas bullies". Well, that just says it all, doesn't it. But who determined the state of mind of all those "fair-minded voters" ? Or is that just so self-evidently obvious that no supporting evidence is required.
ReplyDeleteBut I guess that if there were any 'green-left pro-Hamas bullies' out there, then maybe people would be "sick" of them - I know I would be. On the other hand, I wouldn't be too unforgiving of any green-left anti-Zionist passionate people, would you ? Even if they were just a tad aggressive.
Ooh, dissention in the ranks ?
ReplyDeleteInflation could fall below 3% by end of 2024, budget figures show – not next year as RBA has forecast
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/may/13/inflation-could-fall-below-3-by-end-of-2024-budget-figures-show-not-next-year-as-rba-has-forecast
So who has command of the truth - Treasury or the RBA ? Assuming that Treasury actually produced the prediction and that it isn't just wishful thinking from Jim Chalmers.