Tuesday, August 06, 2024

In which the bromancer goes on an Islamophobia jag, while Dame Groan goes Jimbo bashing ...

 

A relatively quiet day slogging over the reptile stew this day, with the pond losing its perennial bet about the groaning - would it be renewables or ratbag furriners that copped a pounding? Instead it was Jimbo, and more of that anon, but first a survey of the headlines ...




Riots in England? Not at the top of the lizard Oz digital edition, though space was found for weird Karl's views on the French ...

It was left to the frequently despicable bromancer to show how the media could help Uncle Musk in promoting raging rioting arising from bigotry ...



The pond wasn't placated by the bromancer trying to take over "weird" and was immediately reminded of the behaviour of the HUN, featured in Media Watch last night in Wrong Flag.

At issue was whether a featured flag allegedly belonged to the Hamas cause ...

...With Khurram Mehdi, one the organisers of the Ashura procession, telling Media Watch that none was a Hamas flag and the ‘declaration of war’ claim — which the Herald Sun made so much of — was:
… ridiculous, upsetting and a clear indication of racism or discrimination being present in the mainstream media.  - Email, Khurram Mehdi, Ashura Committee, 1 August, 2024
While the Islamic Council of Victoria went further, calling the coverage:
Scaremongering Islamophobic nonsense. - Email, Adel Salman, President, Islamic Council of Victoria, 1 August, 2024
We asked the Herald Sun what checks it did on the flag photo and if it would be taking the story down.
Amazingly, the paper told us it was not its editorial responsibility, saying:
The photo and quotes appear to be from 3AW. Their station manager is … - Email, Elise Potter, Managing Editor, News Corp Victoria and Tasmania, 2 August, 2024
Wow. Is the media now that irresponsible? Or just the Herald Sun?
So, what did 3AW have to say about its divisive, false flag story?
Remarkably, Nine declined to comment or apologise for its mistake, but it has now taken down its story and interview from the 3AW website.
We also asked Dr Abramovich what checks he made before sending the photo to the media and if he concedes he got it wrong.
He did not respond to our call or email. And that is pretty poor. 
Dr Abramovich, 3AW and the Herald Sun need to fess up to their mistake and apologise for spreading fake news.

And that's the way it works, with the rats scurrying for cover when someone bothers to do a flag check.

At this point the pond should note the usual surplus of visual distractions offered to the bro by the reptiles, with the snaps all huge, all here reduced...





Then it was on with the Islamic bashing, something of a bromancer speciality, as you might expect from an Xian fundamentalist ...




The pond was reminded of another story on Media Watch last night, an example of where this sort of rhetoric misleads ...Falsehoods, social media and disinformation fuel racist riots in England after the stabbing death of three young children.

...One of the key vectors in this viral spread was the notorious Andrew Tate — still awaiting trial on rape and human trafficking charges in Romania — who told his 10 million followers on X: 
Straight off a boat. 17 year old Demonic monster - X, @Cobratate, 30 July, 2024
The attacker was indeed from Cardiff, and black, but he was not that man. 
And not straight off the boat, because he was born in Britain to Rwandan parents 17 years ago, as police soon confirmed.
Tate’s false claim was then picked up and amplified by Dan Wootton and Laurence Fox, two right-wing warriors recently sacked from GB News, with Fox suggesting the attacker was on a terror watch list:
LAURENCE FOX: Why is he in this country if he’s on an MI5 watchlist, an MI6 watchlist? Why is he in the country? - YouTube, Dan Wootton Outspoken, 30 July, 2024
There’s no evidence he was on a terror watchlist and police do not believe that terror was the motive.
But Fox — who leads Britain’s right-wing Reclaim Party — was not put off by the lack of facts:
LAURENCE FOX: I knew immediately — and we all knew immediately — the minute they say, ‘a man’, we never get a description of anyone, we all knew what was going on. And I am sick to death of people not putting this front and centre of what is wrong with this country. Every single time you ask people in this country ‘what is your main concern’ it’s uncontrolled immigration …
Shut the border. Close it. - YouTube, Dan Wootton Outspoken, 30 July, 2024
And Fox then followed up by tweeting to his 530,000 followers on X:
We need to permanently remove Islam from Great Britain. Completely and entirely.  - X, @LozzaFox, 30 July, 2024
Thus echoing another popular right-wing account, Europe Invasion, which had told its followers as news of the stabbings broke, in a post viewed seven million times: 
The attacker is alleged to be a Muslim immigrant.- X, @EuropeInvasionnn, 29 July, 2024
Then immediately adding this AI-generated image, with the tagline:
We must protect our children! - X, @EuropeInvasionn, 29 July, 2024
And was he a Muslim? No he was not. Neighbours say the attacker comes from a quiet Christian family.  
But that didn’t stop Tommy Robinson, founder of the English Defence League, and a hero to the rioters, saying I told you so. 
Telling his 800,000 followers:
Nobody can say they weren't warned, I've been warning about this for years. - X, @TRobinsonNewERA, 30 July, 2024

The pond was relieved that Media Watch didn't let off the UK tabloids playing their part alongside Uncle Elon, routinely South African in the wrong, rather than the de Klerk, way ...

..last night Musk responded to a claim that mass immigration and open borders caused the riots by tweeting: 
Civil war is inevitable - X, @elonmusk, 4 August, 2024
But it’s not just social media which is to blame for spreading division.
The UK tabloids have long been whipping up anger against immigrants, asylum seekers and Muslims in particular, by pumping out headlines like this for years, fanning fear, breeding hate, and now leading to violence. 

There was a snap of those headlines, and inevitably the Emeritus Chairman's rag The Sun featured prominently ...




And that's the context for the bro's bigotry ... with the next gobbet offering a few weasel words by way of a billy goat butt ...




Contemptible really, because just as England is experiencing a wave of violence motivated by lies and misinformation, the bro is trying on the same caper here ...




Meanwhile, the source of much unrest, the genocide continues ...





And so on and so forth, and never a hint of any of it in the lizard Oz, and never a mention by the bromancer ...

See the HUN above for proper context for this particularly contemptible gobbet ...




It's too kind to call the bromancer a false flag operation, and instead the pond is pleased to be shod of him with this his final gobbet ...




With the bromancer's lens exclusively focussed on cultivating Islamophobia and bigotry and fear and hate, it was time to turn to First Dog ...






The pond wanted to put some space between the bromancer and Dame Groan, as an act of kindness, because Dame Groan seems to be slip sliding into an even deeper irrelevance than the bigoted bro ...




It was give Jimbo a bashing day - a sport roughly akin to snake-bashing day in Springfield - and there were the usual huge snaps and a video offered up as distractions... (somehow that dreadful Kiwi woman managed to worm her way into the mix)






Unfortunately, in Dame Groan's raging desire to give Jimbo a pounding, the pond had the sense of her being entirely out of the loop.

After all, these were the two top stories in the NY Times at time of writing...




(Blogger is of course proud to be part of the Google)

Meanwhile, with the markets in disarray, all Dame Groan can find to groan about is Jimbo ...




Yes, yes, we know all about energy - those ghastly renewables - and those ghastly bludgers but what about all the AI stories doing the rounds?




Sadly none of it reached the compulsive obsessive Dame, intent on her Jimbo groaning ...




Don't go worrying about the aged care for Dame Groan. Is there nothing a nest egg of fossil fuels can't do in providing care in old age?

At this point the pond began to mourn the stories, and the segues they provided to cartoons, that were being lost ...




On and on she ranted, with fiscal catastrophe just around the corner for everyone except the sandgropers ... (yes, the pond is aware of a WA reader, and the term is an affectionate one, even if you're ruining the country and possibly the planet)...




By this point, the pond was thoroughly convinced that everything was the fault of Jimbo, and was relieved to have landed on the last short gobbet ...




At this point the pond can hear a distant voice wondering why the pond never clicks on the links, and the answer is always the same... they just take you to another part of the hive mind, and to prove the point, this is where the last one takes you ...just the same groaning in a slightly different voice ...

It's Jimbo mania ...




You can book into the hive mind, but you can never really leave ...

How soon before they drive Jimbo to retire to a quiet life selling his books outside the Prahran market? There is a precedent ...





And after all that, the pond is forced to end by reducing the news from America to a couple of 'toons ...






11 comments:

  1. "There is a precedent ..." Ah, long gone now is Jimbo Cairns - more than two decades (but then I haven't been to the Prahran Market in at least 3 decades). He sold his 'intellectual property' in many locations, of course, though the Prahran Market appears to have been one of his favourites.

    One of his things was to use his ex-politician's entitlement to a number of 'free' airplane flights to hop on a plane to Sydney just so he'd get fed during the flight. Then ditto back to Melbourne.

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    1. The pond once saw Jim at the very perch featured in the snap above, but didn't know what to do. The pond didn't want to buy a book, and mentioning Junie hardly seemed appropriate, and talking of the pond's fondness for Gough might also have been out of place. The pond also ruled out talking about loans to Carlton footy club heavies ... so in the end it was just a matter of walking on by ...

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Cairns#Loans_affair

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    2. I think that "walking on by" was how it was for a lot of people. Not sure how many (or how few ?) of his books he ever actually sold.

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  2. The grim Groany: "The key is that real wages can only grow in line with productivity growth." I wonder then how Groany explains the huge salary increases granted to 'senior executives' despite the very same lack of productivity growth. Not to mention their also huge bonuses and share grants.

    Oh, yes, it's all financed by those share buybacks, isn't it - a good sized buyback increases the value of shares such that executives only have to sell a very few shares to get a very big bonus. Thus they've got plenty left over to repeat the proceedings next year.

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  3. Dear Dame Groan - here's a way to improve your own productivity (which we all should be doing). If the economy of anywhere is showing what are considered good indicators - such as budget surplus - just put one short paragraph into memory in your laptop, and retrieve when needed. It can read -

    'Economic indicator (insert which one) is positive. Either (a) The government of the day is made up of socialist ratbags, so this result has nothing to do with any part of their economic policy. or
    (b) The intricate economic policies of this impressive administration of self-proclaimed conservatives has produced a great result, in spite of the jealous sniping of the opposition and illiterates writing in the fringe media.'

    Dear Dame, you are welcome to use this free of charge. The space you save can be readily filled with snaps, given that, well - advertisers are not queuing up for a spot on the Flagship, or any of the Boss's metropolitan prints.

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    1. Oh but that's neat, Chad: a great productivity improver !

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  4. 'Dear Dame, you are welcome to use this free of charge." Ta.

    FDog; "Tonight, we are trying to find the people responsible."

    No! They are hiding in plain site sight!
    "Tim Worstall is a British-born writer and blogger and Senior Fellow of the Adam Smith Institute" and media for UKIP. wikipedia. So you don't have to, I sampled a post and comments - on an empty stomach- one called addulf and one who openly wrote of being at one of the 'protests'. Free to be open, proud, loud and incendiary with bonus organising function. And it goes without saying, obligatory lies and open xenophobia.

    Then of course is the -$27bn man Matt Ridley, nepotistic director of...
    "It was around this time that the pond felt a deep existential ennui, and the need for a distraction, and thank the long absent lord, one of the world's great climate scientists came along, thanks to The Times and the reptiles of Oz puncturing the paywall ..."
    https://loonpond.blogspot.com/2016/07/in-which-pond-avoids-doggy-wars-to.html

    'Praise the lord and pass the invisible nitrous gas, all is well in News
    24 Oct 2013 · Try The Rational Optimist: Matt Ridley's Regurgitation of Denialist Propaganda, and John Abraham Slams Matt Ridley for Climate Denial Op ..."

    And Manboit shredding...
    'The Man Who Wants to Northern Rock the Planet

    Posted on1st June 2010

    'Matt Ridley’s irrational theories remain unchanged by his own disastrous experiment.

    By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 1st June 2010

    'Brass neck doesn’t begin to describe it. Matt Ridley used to make his living partly by writing state-bashing columns in the Daily Telegraph. The government, he complained, is “a self-seeking flea on the backs of the more productive people of this world … governments do not run countries, they parasitise them.”(1) Taxes, bail-outs, regulations, subsidies, intervention of any kind, he argued, are an unwarranted restraint on market freedom.

    'Then he became chairman of Northern Rock, where he was able to put his free market principles into practice. Under his chairmanship, the bank pursued what the Treasury select committee later described as a “high-risk, reckless business strategy”(2). It was able to do so because the government agency which oversees the banks “systematically failed in its regulatory duty”(3).

    'On 16th August 2007, Dr Ridley rang an agent of the detested state to explore the possibility of a bail-out. The self-seeking fleas agreed to his request, and in September the government opened a support facility for the floundering bank. The taxpayer eventually bailed out Northern Rock to the tune of £27bn.

    "When news of the crisis leaked, it caused the first run on a bank in this country since 1878. The parasitic state had to intervene a second time: the run was halted only when the government guaranteed the depositors’ money. Eventually the government was obliged to nationalise the bank. Investors, knowing that their money would now be safe as it was protected by the state, began to return.

    '...They singled Ridley out for having failed “to provide against the risks that [Northern Rock] was taking and to act as an effective restraining force on the strategy of the executive members.”(4)

    'This, you might think, must have been a salutary experience. You would be wrong."
    ...
    https://www.monbiot.com/2010/06/01/the-man-who-wants-to-northern-rock-the-planet/

    They are IN PLAIN SITE SIGHT!
    "Who We Are - The Global Warming Policy Foundation"... "Tony Abbott ... director of the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation, serves on the council of the Australian War Memorial, and is an adviser to the UK Board of Trade. ... Dr Matt Ridley. Matt Ridley is one of the world ..." - 's best anti climate, bank run manufacturers and government bailout exaples.

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    1. I always get the giggles when I see “Tony Abbott ... director of the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation”. Not with a bang but a whimper!

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    2. But BG Butt, Anony: Matt Ridley has never failed - the world has always failed on him ! Especially those evil Green-Left-wokies that now infest the world.

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  5. Ah, it's always in doubt:

    "Harris’s polling has improved. But has it improved by enough for her to win?."
    Is Kamala Harris beating Donald Trump in the polls?
    https://www.vox.com/politics/365148/kamala-harris-trump-polls-election-2024

    "Election analyst Nate Silver’s national poll aggregate has Democratic nominee and current vice president Kamala Harris leading Republican nominee and former president Donald Trump by 45.5–44.1%, with 5.0% for Robert F. Kennedy Jr."
    Kamala Harris edges ahead of Donald Trump in national polls for US election
    https://theconversation.com/kamala-harris-edges-ahead-of-donald-trump-in-national-polls-for-us-election-235187

    But nobody believes Nate Silver any more ... do they ?

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  6. Quote of the day...
    Linda Reynolds...
    ""I was somewhat completely incredulous ...why would anybody weaponise such an incident," Senator Reynolds said.

    Why oh why? Cue tiny violin.
    And excellent in the witness box as the dispatch box trained her.

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