In which the pond lines up for the usual reptile whipping ...

 

The pond woke up today under the weather and feeling very Wilcox. 

Why did the reptiles keep on persecuting the pond? And was it a merry dance?

Then the pond realised it was actually suffering from a severe case of the Percy Graingers, which is to say a form of self-flagellation. It was really the pond that was doing it, lining up each day to chose a different whip ...

This day the pond could have chosen a couple of whips ...

There was the bromancer reaching peak hysteria, lathering up, frothing and foaming, "In 45 years of journalist, I've never seen anything like this."

Yet only the other day, the pond had lashed itself and induced nausea - by sticking the bromancer's pandering of the Church of LDS down its throat, rather than the simple expedient of a finger.

Something in the pond snapped. If the pond wants an opinion on Gaza, and Captain Spud, it'll turn to the infallible Pope ...

Oh that's cruel, cruel but fair ...

As for the bro whip, the pond simply couldn't offer the dignity of screen caps ... rather it was a festering brew of a word salad, with standard billy goat butts ...

..When it was talking to its own activist base, or Muslim voters in southwest Sydney and elsewhere unhappy that the government has shown even a schmick of sympathy for Israel, its message was: look, we’re rapidly advancing visas categories for Gaza Palestinians, so much more generously than the other guys would.

The billy goat butt came early in this selection ...

One important caveat to all discussion here. Any Palestinian who has come here already is entirely welcome. They’ve come under the rules put in place by the Australian government and therefore they’re entitled to be here. And they’re entitled to our welcome and support.
Those considerations do not, however, determine or even constrain future policy, or the honest, hard-headed discussion that must go on around it.

What a dung hill he is ...

The government made things a million times worse by verballing Burgess in his description of the security checks applied to Palestinians wanting to come to Australia. The government claimed Burgess said ASIO was involved in the processing of every applicant. In fact Burgess had said that if certain triggers were established, then ASIO got involved.
That’s a huge difference. For the Prime Minister to claim otherwise is just absurd.
However, Burgess has also created a very big problem for the government. On the Insiders program, Burgess 
said some moderate degree of support for the Hamas terror group would not be an obstacle to someone wanting to come to Australia, so long as that person did not share the Hamas ideology.
I missed this the first time I heard the Insiders interview, in retrospect I think because it is just such an odd statement.
In 45 years of professional journalism I can never remember any previous minister or official saying it was OK to support a terrorist group, provided that support was just verbal or some such. Even less is this all right for someone seeking to come to Australia. Is it OK to give verbal support to al-Qa’ida, or Islamic State, or even the Ku Klux Klan? Maybe such support wouldn’t get you locked up in Australia, but it certainly shouldn’t earn you a visa either. This is in fact a very radical statement. If not, show me its equivalent. It’s perfectly proper for the opposition to demand the government clarify it. The government is responsible for policy, not Burgess. The government must explain if it agrees with Burgess, and if this is now government policy, and just what degree of support for a terrorist organisation is acceptable. It’s elementary in a democracy that such a radical statement be clarified.
But in the almost absolute political cowardice with which the government has approached these issues, it’s treating Burgess’s statements as though they are infallible, beyond questioning and also beyond explanation, a sort of divine revelation above democratic scrutiny.
Burgess should perhaps reflect on the lesson of Pius IX, the first pope whose most officially elevated statements were defined as infallible in matters of faith and doctrine. When you are infallible, as I am, the pope is said to have remarked, you must be very careful of what you say.

Yep, the reptiles used those words to remind us we're dealing with a fundamentalist Catholic bigot ...

Really? What a pitiful, pathetic shadow of a graphics department it is, as on and on the bromancer rambled...

Burgess should be much more careful of what he says. In one press conference he said anti-Semitism and Islamophobia were almost the same. He had to correct that preposterous nonsense in a subsequent interview and admit that anti-Semitism is worse than Islamophobia.
He agreed with criticism of some remarks by Barnaby Joyce. And his indecipherable idea that supporting Hamas a little bit is OK has become the centre of rancorous political debate.
As a communications exercise, this was as close to a disaster as you could get. The remarks haven’t calmed the nation, haven’t enlightened debate and have injected ASIO into the middle of domestic partisan dispute. All of this is not because of the wicked opposition, but because Burgess’s remarks were confused, confusing and arguably beyond the prudent public remit of an ASIO director-general. This is dangerous for the standing of ASIO in the long term.
Previous ASIO bosses used to lament that they delivered speeches no one read and which had no public impact. That’s infinitely better than today’s mess. Similarly, an ASIO boss has a natural, understandable, sensible need to get along with Muslim community leaders.
He shouldn’t try to curry favour with those leaders by censoring normal political debate.
Moral and political leadership is the province of government, and the political process more generally. It’s not the province of security chiefs.
It’s a sign that a government is bankrupt of moral authority when it tries to conscript the apolitical authority of an institution such as ASIO to serve its political cause.
Hamas is not only a terrorist organisation. Its charter contains the most foul and vicious traditional anti-Semitism. The government must clarify what it means to say some degree of support for Hamas is no problem. The opposition would be failing its duty to the nation to leave this matter unresolved.

If the pond wanted a follow up thought bubble, it'd turn to Golding ...

While in the mood for a little counter-reptile programming, the pond turned to Crikey. You won't see this story mentioned in the lizard Oz anytime soon ...

Oh dear, though the pond understands the instinct, each time the pond sees a Tesla passing by in the street, it feels an urge to give the sign to the driver ... (the pond thought it should also note that keen Keane yarn, just for the racist colour it added to the salute splash).

Meanwhile, Crikey had a story that genuinely shocked the pond ...‘Exactly what the Kremlin hoped’: Australia delays Masha Gessen visa over Russia conviction concerns, 'I am shocked that the first allies the Russians have found in this quest to constrain me are the Australian authorities, who have functionally denied me a visa,' Gessen said.

Writer Masha Gessen has said the Australian government has “functionally denied” them a visa, after delays and a “last minute” request for further documents meant Gessen was unable to board their scheduled flight to Australia this past weekend.h
The Department of Home Affairs’ delay apparently stems from concerns over Gessen’s recent conviction in Russia. In mid-July, Gessen — a regular contributor to outlets such as The New Yorker and The New York Times — was sentenced in absentia to eight years imprisonment by a Moscow court after having written about alleged Russian war crimes during the nation’s invasion of Ukraine. The court claimed Gessen had spread “false information”.
“The Russian government’s persecution of me has one purpose: to make me feel unfree even though I am living in exile and they can’t currently jail me. What they can try to do is make it hard for me to move around the world,” Gessen said in a statement. “I am shocked that the first allies the Russians have found in this quest to constrain me are the Australian authorities, who have functionally denied me a visa.”
Simon Longstaff, executive director of the Ethics Centre, which presents the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, said Home Affairs was seeking, at “the last minute”, a US Police and FBI check “where no offence has ever been committed”.
“It would seem that the sole reason for the department seeking a police and FBI clearance has been the open declaration of a conviction for a ‘crime’ that all the world knows to be bogus and politically motivated by an authoritarian regime determined to silence its critics — by any means,” he said.
“Perhaps the most perverse aspect of this decision lies in the fact that Masha Gessen’s criticism of Russia directly reflects the formal position of both the Australian and US governments.”

The excuse proffered was beyond the risible ...

...Crikey asked Home Affairs whether it viewed convictions like the one handed down for Gessen in Moscow as part of a credible process. We were told that “for privacy reasons, the department cannot comment on individual cases, so unfortunately we can’t be of any further assistance on this matter”.

To be fair, the ABC also made note of the fuss in Journalist Masha Gessen, charged by Russian government with misinformation, 'functionally denied' Australian visa.

And the Graudian picked up on it too in Writer and Russia critic Masha Gessen claims Australia has ‘functionally denied’ them a visa.

A paranoid mind might think it had something to do with Gessen and their opinions - last week, for example, in the NY Times under Kamala Harris Is Speaking. Is She Listening?(paywall).

Inter alia ...

...The Biden administration has supported Israel, has sent it arms as it has pursued its relentless retaliatory onslaught against the people of Gaza. The administration has barely tempered its support even as, reportedly, around 40,000 people have died, a majority of them women and children. If Trump is elected, Israel will almost certainly be even more emboldened. If Harris is elected, there is a chance, though by no means a guarantee, that the United States will gradually turn away from its decades-long policy of unconditional military, political and economic support of Israel.
Most Democratic voters, even most voters who care about Israel-Palestine, can probably see themselves voting for Harris, knowing that her administration will not bring immediate relief to the Palestinian people, because they also know that on this and other issues, a Harris administration will be better than a Trump one. But some voters are like Rafsky: They cannot stand to live in a world in which Joe Biden’s vice president, who has not voiced any disagreement with the administration’s Middle East policies, wins the presidency. It’s not that they want Trump to win; it’s that the level of political cynicism they are being asked to adopt feels unbearable.
These voters are not choosing between Harris and Trump. They are choosing between their sense of themselves as moral beings if they vote for Harris and their sense of themselves if they vote for a third-party candidate or for no one at all. Some of them were among the more than 100,000 people who voted “uncommitted” in Michigan’s Democratic primary in February to send a message of opposition to Biden’s support for Israel.
If they vote for Harris in November, what will that say to the people of Gaza — that they’d held their noses while people died? What will they tell their children — that politics is the game of the possible, and sometimes it’s just not possible to stop a genocide? What will they tell themselves to be able to sleep at night?
For these voters, the psychic price of voting for Harris — of voting at all — is extremely high. It is possible that they could be convinced to pay this price, because, of course, they know, just as I do, that a Harris Middle East policy would be infinitely preferable to a Trump one. But they have to be convinced, not dismissed.
Harris has to acknowledge their existential pain, the unbearable burden of living, in some cases, with the daily fear for loved ones, their sense of alienation from a world that seems indifferent to 2,000-pound bombs and to the infliction of starvation. For a campaign that has started positioning itself as caring, humanistic and kind, the failure to acknowledge this pain and this fear is especially jarring.

UPDATE: so the heat paid off, though it should never have got near the kitchen, Russian dissident writer Masha Gessen granted last-minute visa.

So who do they let into the country, and who turns up at the top of the reptile commentary column slag heap?

A certain Coleman Hughes.

The pond resisted the temptation to reach for that whip. 

Instead the pond went off to do a little research, and though not normally a Redditer, chanced on a subreddit Decoding the Gurus, with a thread asking the question What’s Up With the Coleman Hughes Phenomenon? 

There were many answers, including this one ...

Short answer, Hughes is popular because he speaks in that kind of neutral monotone 'logic' speak that makes allusions to evidence and doing research... and he's black and speaks out against woke stuff, colorblindness, and all that.
I've never actually read or heard anything of his that I found compelling or interesting, and it's not like I'm someone who's woke and automatically hates anyone who isn't towing some line. He's just boring and predictable. I can predict with 99% accuracy what his position on any given subject will be, and can also tell that his arguments typically get supported by a Google search of "Why is X right or wrong" (depending on what he's talking about).
I personally don't understand the appeal of him, but I do understand why he's appealing to so many other people. He basically provides a kind of inoculation for anti-woke people who don't want to appear racist or whatever. He's black. He says the things they want to hear, and he superficially does research to support those views, and by extension his fans.

Ah, he's a relatively newly minted guru, who's lurched in the direction of RFK Jr., and is anti-woke and scored points on the matter of George Floyd ...

I’m gonna make this really simple and tell you he’s one of the few black people alive who agree with Sam Harris about race. Of course Sam Harris is absolutely right about everything and that’s why he can talk for 20 minutes at a time nonstop. It’s a gift only people who are absolutely correct have. 

There were plenty of one liners ...

Coleman Hughes is a right-wing conservative, not a liberal centrist, unless you're using "enlightened centrist" ironically. 

White Americans love when a black person helps them feel collectively less guilty.

He's trying to force the meme that neoracists are actually democrat. Just a man with a bag to get.

Black conservatives alway get propped up in the mainstream media. He's one of the few that aren't completely unhinged and has a sort of autistic cadence that gives the feeling of high intelligence. But ultimately, he's no different than Thomas Sowell, Larry Elder etc.

Some got a bit longer ...

Coleman lies about MLK’s writings and legacy to reinforce his “colorblindness” worldview (MLK’s daughter pointed this out), wrote a gross piece about George Floyd’s murder being a scam, said he’d vote a Romney Republican (someone fine with banning abortion and giving the rich tax cuts and gutting SS/Medicaid/Medicare), and bitches and moans about IDPOL for hours every day…despite not acknowledging that every political party in the history of political parties uses IDPOL (that’s how building political coalitions work). Lastly, the NYT called him a conservative recently and he pushed back some but admitted the article was a fair dissection/distillation of his work.
He’s a conservative who doesn’t like to called a conservative (nothing wrong with being conservative btw, but obtusely repeating how you’re not a conservative when you are is so annoying lol). Also, the RFK Jr thing is real (it’s from JRE). I’m a liberal and I’m not afraid to call myself a liberal, because I’m a liberal. 

Some provided links to Substack arguments that raged deep into the night, as here and here.

And then came the killer blow to the pond's buttocks ...

Right wing media network is fantastic at boosting whatever and whoever helps their cause. It’s a narcissistic grifter’s paradise really. 

Did the pond have to relive the whole Jordan Peterson reptile grift phenomenon again? Coleman Hughes had landed on the lizard Oz grift?

By the time the pond had finished the extensive Reddit read, the pond had quite forgot about the entire point of the exercise, and that certain Coleman Hughes, and had moved on ...

It was time to take down the usual Tuesday whip, applied with a firm hand, enough to bring marks and leave bruises, but not to draw too much blood ... it was time for the Groaning, and Madame Lash herself was standing by ...

Now you'd think the reptiles might link to the draft report ...it wouldn't have been hard. You could find it here, with submissions and comments, and that would have done as a place holder, pending the final report...

Instead that link just led to the Caterist, being the Caterist, doing what the Caterist does, arguing nobody should get any more loot, unless perhaps there was something in it for him (are you listening Viktor Orbán?) ... 

As a result, the pond felt like it was back in a familiar nightmarish running dream it has been having a lot lately, trapped in the hive mind ...

Last thing I remember, I was running for the door

I had to find the passage back to the place I was before

"Relax, " said the night man, "We are programmed to deceive

You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave"

Of course there were videos and snaps that needed to be noted, and neutered ...

The good thing is that the pond never has to spend any energy on Dame Slap, all the more so as we're not actually talking about a final report, adjusted to feedback.

That's on the pond's correspondents. Either they care enough to give a toss or they don't, and either way, the pond will just walk on by ...

Perhaps a correspondent could sort out some of the mysteries ... like why the government shouldn't do a tad more to help kids from disadvantaged backgrounds?

Like why Dame Groan never seems to manage to set out ideas and policies that might help poor peeple, and instead just rages away at the government ...

Oh, the pond sees clearly now, better to do nothing ...and with that the pond fully agreed. Better to say nothing ... it was either up to the correspondents or it was a bust.

The pond was more inclined to offer up a joke for Melburnians ...

Just wait until we do the same to Parramatta road ... have you seen the dream?

...and with that filibuster, the pond has reached the final gobbet of the day ...

On the upside, bashing unions and the concept of a fair day's pay for a fair day's work precluded Dame Groan from entering on to the immortal Rowe's turf this day ...