In which the pond ends up with unreformed seminarian the Ughmann and an Orwellian Bjorn-again outing ...

 

As a warm-up for the day, a housekeeping item about the Streisand effect ...

Delicious ...the Streisand effect part III, thanks to AP, which, unlike WaPo, can still boast of doing independent, fact-based journalism, rather than following billionaire whims.

There was a sting in the tail of this detailing of Zuck the cuck's futile attempts to get the book canned, manoeuvres which resembled the deeds of a second rate Scientology hack or some other religious cult: Controversial insider account by former Meta official has strong first-week sales

NEW YORK (AP) — A former Meta official’s explosive insider account sold 60,000 copies in its first week and reached the top 10 on Amazon.com’s best-seller list amid efforts by the social media giant to discredit the book.
Released last week by Flatiron Books, a Macmillan imprint, Sarah Wynn-Williams’ “Careless People” alleges cruel and otherwise disturbing behavior by Mark Zuckerberg, Joel Kaplan and other executives and describes Zuckerberg’s alleged efforts to win favor with Chinese officials. Meta has countered that Wynn-Williams, a former director of global public policy who left what was then Facebook in 2017, violated a severance agreement and wrote a book filled with inaccuracies.
According to Flatiron, first week sales include print audio and digital editions. On Wednesday, “Careless People” ranked No. 3 on Amazon.
In response to a complaint filed by Meta, emergency arbitrator Nicholas A. Gowen last week placed a hold on Wynn-Williams’ promoting the book or making further “critical claims” about her former employer. In his ruling, Gowen wrote that Meta had “established a likelihood of success on the merits of its contractual non-disparagement claim” against Wynn-Williams. Flatiron can still publish and promote “Careless People.”
A statement from Meta praised the arbitrator’s decision, saying it “affirms that Sarah Wynn Williams’ false and defamatory book should never have been published.” Meta has otherwise called “Careless People” a “mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives.”
Flatiron also issued a statement, saying it “was appalled by Meta’s tactics to silence our author through the use of a non-disparagement clause in a severance agreement.” The publisher added that the arbitrator had not addressed the allegations made by Wynn-Williams.
“The book went through a thorough editing and vetting process, and we remain committed to publishing important books such as this. We will absolutely continue to support and promote it,” the statement reads.
Flatiron did not announce the book until just days before its release. Meta’s response has included queries to media outlets, among them The Associated Press, over their plans for coverage. 

WaPo atleast provided the sting at the end of the tale:

Washington Post critic Ron Charles wrote last week that he had received repeated messages from Meta.
“In my 27 years of reviewing and editing newspaper books sections, no company has ever done this with me,” he noted.

Perhaps Charles wasn't on the Bezos memo list detailing inspirational Trumpian methodologies for WaPo scribblers...

And that pleasure noted, time to turn to the grind of herpetology studies, leavened only by the pond's comments section. 

This day the CBA pandered to the reptiles, and so the pond is pleased to note it left the CBA long ago, after it realised those free tin cans in the shape of a bank constituted a form of child grooming ...

Oh dear, there's nattering "Ned" over in the news section. 

For some reason, the pond baulked, perhaps the "Ned" Everest climb is better left to a Sunday meditation after a good night's rest  ...

As for the news section, the pond does occasionally wonder if the reptiles have given up any attempt at really covering world events or the cavortings of the Cantaloupe Caligula ... 

Admittedly, it's exhausting, though it produces plenty of fodder for the online tabloids of the Beast kind ...

And that's just this early morning's offerings, with bonus skin care, while watching MSNBC has turned into a marathon of terror, what with all the slashing and burning (farewell fed ed) and the assault on judges and the law ...

Over at the much diminished Huff, they were enjoying WELCOME TO AMERICA, TOURISTS CAGED FOR WEEKS, CHAINED 'LIKE HANNIBAL LECTER' Detentions Of European Tourists At U.S. Borders Spark Fears Of Traveling To America, Since Donald Trump took office, there have been high-profile incidents of tourists being held for weeks at U.S. immigration facilities before being allowed to fly home.

And ‘She Is Not Hannibal’: Dad Details Horrific Way British Backpacker Daughter Was Treated By ICE, Paul Burke detailed the "punitive" way his daughter Rebecca was treated prior to her deportation.

Over at Mediaite, they went with the latest comical exercise in demented press briefings - so many, so little time: Trump Refuses to Back Down on Annexing Canada to Create ‘the Most Beautiful Landmass’.

Elbows up Canada...all that and more, and all the reptiles can do is send in nattering "Ned"? Off to Sunday with you, Ancient Mariner lad that you are ...

And where's the news of the latest in ethnic cleansing and annexing activities?

For that you have to turn to the Graudian...

Over on the extreme far right of the lizard Oz, the irrelevance factor was also high...

First an apology. The pond has to draw the line somewhere, and this day the line fell on the Angelic one, TG bashing away in Social contagion aspect of trans movement needs more attention, The trans movement has a lot in common with other movements of mass social contagion. Unfortunately, the medical profession is not immune.

The pond's TG friends would never forgive it for regurgitating that sort of Catholic fundamentalist inspired bigotry and crap.

More pleasing was an answer to that perennial question, can a child survive a bad, dismissive parent and emerge with a sense of humour and an awareness of the real world? 

Chances are, that's a yes....Elon Musk’s daughter says father’s rally gesture was ‘definitely a Nazi salute’, Vivian Jenna Wilson tells Teen Vogue she feels obliged to take stand for trans rights as Trump attacks community

Vivian Jenna Wilson, Elon Musk’s eldest child, has spoken out publicly about her father, saying that Musk “definitely [did] a Nazi salute” at two rallies in January and that he is part of a White House that’s “cartoonishly evil”.
In a new interview with Teen Vogue, her second interview with the media since she publicly denounced her father last year, Wilson, 20, said that the things her father has been doing in the federal government were “fucking cringe”.
“The Nazi salute shit was insane. Honey, we’re going to call a fig a fig, and we’re going to call a Nazi salute what it was,” Wilson said. “That shit was definitely a Nazi salute.”

Amen to that, shit got real, and amen to retaining a sensa huma...

Though her father is a billionaire who is playing a major role in the Trump administration, Wilson said Musk doesn’t loom large in her life.
“People thrive off of fear. I’m not giving anyone that space in my mind,” she said. “The only thing that gets to live free in my mind are drag queens.”

So the pond's course was set.

"Ned" with his natter and Polonius with his prattle for the Sunday, and a drag act for today, and that's how the pond ended up back with the Ughmann, in election campaign mode, and leavening his offering with a healthy dose of climate science denialism.

Treasurer’s job is to spin a compelling story, Long experience with Australian budgets shows that if a treasurer can’t balance the books, he devotes much energy to balancing the blame. This sometimes requires a bit of magical thinking.

It's a 5 minute read, so the reptiles say, which on the upside is shorter than a nattering "Ned" weekend offering.

On the other hand, it began with a stupefyingly bad gif-style illustration, uncredited and so awesomely banal (Jimbo moving, stars glinting) that surely proves AI is ruining the lizard Oz ... 

No human bean would want to take credit for Let the excuses begin.

Then the unreformed seminarian did his best to bore the pond into silence:

Long experience with Australian budgets shows that if a treasurer can’t balance the books, he devotes much energy to balancing the blame. If you ever find yourself in this thankless role the equation is simple: deficits are always caused by someone, or something, that isn’t you.
In the first term of government, blame balancing means pinning whatever is going pear-shaped on the opposition. With enough imagination you can stretch this blame across several terms. The opposition is a mythological beast that once decimated this county and desires power only to inflict pain on the people stupid enough to vote for it.
Hands up who wants that?

Hands up anyone who immediately nodded off, but might be woken up - made fully woke - by way of an AV distraction by way of Sky Noise?  

Sky News host Caleb Bond discusses Labor’s PBS medicine pledge with their upcoming budget. “The prime minister pledged today to cut medicines on the PBS to just $25 as part of next week’s budget,” Mr Bond said. “I have been saying they will try to go hard on the cost of living, it seems like they are starting to ramp it up with this budget.”

Amazing that Caleb is still a thing, but then the pond briefly wandered off to the Daily Terror recently and discovered that little Timmie Bleagh was still a thing, while the Bolter was still a thing at the HUN.

So long ago, so easily forgotten ...

The pond began to wonder at the wisdom of sticking with the unreformed Ughmann. Whenever an unreformed seminarian has a go at comedy lines, they seem to fall to earth with a thud:

Then there is credit banking. Always claim credit for unexpected revenue rises. That usually means commodity price spikes but god knows how these things actually work. Many treasurers don’t because they are mostly arts and law graduates. If you hail from the left of politics it’s handy to know that commodities include seriously bad things such as coal and gas. Even iron ore is suspect because it involves mining.
Commodities are goods your colleagues demonise by day before they come begging for the tainted money they raise by night.
Revenue hikes that deliver unexpected money are a sign that you are a genius and “the plan” is working. Every fibre in the being of the opposition is a threat to the pot of gold “the plan” has buried at the end of a rainbow that lies on the other side of several elections. That plan mostly involves spending more than you earn but that’s OK because this can be called an investment in the future.
Always say the future will be made in Australia, even though Australia now sits at 102 – between Senegal and Yemen – in Harvard’s Atlas of Economic Complexity, down from 63 in the year 2000 and dropping like a stone. Australia is to “made” what North Korea is to “fun”, but who actually reads what academics write? There are bonus points for labelling any project green. The punters just adore green things: windmills; solar panels; Kermit.
Speaking of sock puppets, when it comes to promoting green investments in the budget sales pitch you can count on enthusiastic support from billionaires whose hobby is planetary Messiah. They do this because it makes them popular with the rich people who used to buy Teslas before Elon went mad.
Now they buy electric cars and solar panels from China, where they are not made by bad billionaires but slaves. You do not want to mix with bad billionaires, but a good billionaire is easy to spot because they are always opposed to slavery. Everywhere but China. But no one is perfect and no one wants to upset China because that is both bad for business and racist.
Good billionaires can literally sell sunshine as long as you give them billions of taxpayer dollars and they get to keep any profit.

The pond began to wonder what alternative universe the Ughmann inhabited. 

It certainly wasn't Faux Noise.

Hasn't heard that everyone in Murdoch la la land is now into buying Teslas and saving billionaires? The EV revolution has begun, and the GOP is helping save the planet ...

 

Nope, on he ranted, still thinking that "billionaire" was a term of abuse. What a misguided, unfortunate, foolish fop ...

This is why they are rich and you are treasurer. But don’t worry, if the project is called green hydrogen there won’t be any profit because there won’t be any hydrogen.
As a bonus, the billionaire will probably let you fly in their private jet to inconvenient parts of Australia where there is no Qantas Chairmans Lounge. There you can promise a green future to workers whose jobs you plan to extinguish in the present.
The investment will probably never deliver a return and must be paid for with future tax rises. No need to dwell on that because by then you will be an ambassador in Washington or London and it will be somebody else’s problem.
The billionaire will have moved on to hoovering up government subsidies for importing fossil fuel to prop up the dysfunctional green electricity grid he promoted. Or sponsoring monster truck rallies.
Where was I? 

Where was he? FFS, don't ask the pond ... it's called a rhetorical device, popular in primary school teachers as they try to maintain attention ...

Oh, the budget.
The numbers in the many bewildering budget tables basically come in two baskets. The line marked “actual” means these numbers are real. They mean something because they actually happened. Someone actually counted past revenue and spending and added it all up. If the sum is a deficit it’s all actually the opposition’s fault.
Every number after that is lumped in the basket of estimates. This is a guess about what may happen and is Treasury-speak for voodoo because nobody can predict the future. Estimates cover the current budget and the following three years. There is a fighting chance the numbers for the first year may fall roughly near the money you raise and spend but it’s best not to count on it – mostly because your colleagues will always want to spend more than you raise.
The next three years of estimates are fantasy numbers but they are useful because everyone loves a good fantasy and it is here where the master treasurer shines.

At this point there came another AV distraction, Judo Bank Chief Economic Advisor Warren Hogan has claimed the Albanese government is a “massive spending” government. It comes amid the Treasurer confirming there will be more cost-of-living relief ahead of the budget next Tuesday. “We’ll see again next Tuesday night a big upward revision to the amount of tax,” Mr Hogan said. “It’s getting to a point where we’re going to start affecting the functioning of the economy.”

Judo Bank? Do they have a killer karate interest rate?

Then it was on to a final flourish of renewables bashing, mixed with a hint of SM, fitting for a seminarian inclined to the lash ...

Your job as a chief storyteller will define whether you will be the JRR Tolkien of treasurers or EL James. That said, Fifty Shades of Grey did make a lot of money and grey is a much better shade for politicians to work in than black and white.
Any numbers marked “projections” are just Treasury boffins taking the piss because some predict a future 10 years hence. By definition projections can’t plan for things such as the financial crisis or Covid, or anything much else that routinely happens in the real world. Things such as Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.
Estimating commodity prices is something the Treasury is so bad at it falls into a class of alchemy called assumptions. As treasurer you usually don’t read the assumptions because they are buried in the footnotes. Assumptions are worse than estimates and projections because they are completely made up. Think wet finger in the wind.
But assumptions are the secret sauce of modelling because with them you can build your own virtual universe and cast yourself as a hero slaying imaginary demons.
Draw comfort from the fact that assumptions underpin all computer models, worldwide. Economic models. Climate models. Pandemic models. Governments everywhere spend trillions of dollars based on models that claim to predict an unknowable future and every single one rests on a set of assumptions that someone, somewhere simply invented.
They couldn’t all be wrong. Could they? That would be absurd.
Numbers that combine assumptions of future spending and revenue with the weather and unwavering global co-operation – all extrapolated across a century – can be found under the headings “climate change” and “net zero”. These are beyond question. Anyone who doubts them is a climate-change denier.
That’s pretty much it. The numbers don’t lie; they just don’t tell us much. Lying is your job. The government’s future hangs on your skill as a mythmaker. The spin is the strategy and the joke is on the rest of us.

That's pretty much it, duty done, but there should always be a bonus, so why not continue with climate science denialism?

The pond happened to be reading details of a report, Sea levels are rising faster than ever. Here’s where that could have the biggest impact. A new report from NASA found that global sea levels had risen 35% faster than expected.

It sounded vaguely alarming ...

In 2024, the hottest year in recorded history, sea levels rose at a rate 35% more than expected, according to a new report from NASA.
The space agency explained on its website that the acceleration of sea level rise "was due to an unusual amount of ocean warming, combined with meltwater from land-based ice such as glaciers."
“The rise we saw in 2024 was higher than we expected,” Josh Willis, a sea level researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said in a statement. “Every year is a little bit different, but what’s clear is that the ocean continues to rise, and the rate of rise is getting faster and faster.”
While global average sea levels rose by just 0.23 inches in 2024, that was above the expected rate of 0.17 inches and comes at a time when coastal communities in many parts of the U.S. have been dealing with accelerating rates of rise far higher than the global average. Based on tide gauge data compiled by the Washington Post (paywall, partial archive save here), sea levels in more than a dozen locations from Texas to North Carolina had risen by 6 inches or more since 2010.

As global temperatures continue to rise, the problem is expected to worsen over the next 25 years.
“Evidence suggests sea level along the U.S. coastline will rise 10 to 12 inches by 2050 — as much as the rise measured from 1920 to 2020,” the Environmental Protection Agency states on its website.

And so on and so it goes, and even more alarming, Fiona Harvey's piece in the Graudian bobbed up in the pond's feeds, Glacier meltdown risks food and water supply of 2 billion people, says UN, Unesco report highlights ‘unprecedented’ glacier loss driven by climate crisis, threatening ecosystems, agriculture and water sources

Retreating glaciers threaten the food and water supply of 2 billion people around the world, the UN has warned, as current “unprecedented” rates of melting will have unpredictable consequences.
Two-thirds of all irrigated agriculture in the world is likely to be affected in some way by receding glaciers and dwindling snowfall in mountain regions, driven by the climate crisis, according to a Unesco report.

More than 1 billion people live in mountainous regions and, of those in developing countries, up to half are already experiencing food insecurity. That is likely to worsen, as food production in such regions is dependent on mountain waters, melting snow and glaciers, according to the World Water Development Report 2025.

Developed countries are also at risk: in the US, for example, the Colorado River basin has been in drought since 2000, and higher temperatures mean more of the precipitation is falling as rain, which runs off more quickly than mountain snow, exacerbating drought conditions.
Audrey Azoulay, the director general of Unesco, said: “Regardless of where we live, we all depend in some way on mountains and glaciers. But these natural water towers are facing imminent peril. This report demonstrates the urgent need for action.”

The rate of change of glaciers is the worst on record, according to separate research from the World Meteorological Organisation, which published its annual State of the Climate report this week. The largest three-year loss of glacier mass on record occurred in the past three years, the study found, with Norway, Sweden, Svalbard and the tropical Andes among the worst-affected areas.

Hah! A bit of window dressing from the WMO and actual reports of actual drought events. 

And so they went on, as if any of that nonsense proved anything, and the pond immediately relaxed. 

NASA, WaPo, the EPA, the Graudian, the WMO and such like are well-known fronts for the United Nations, or so, if you're a devoted reader embedded in the hive mind, you will believe.

It's time for a clarifying dose of alternative reality from the Bjorn-again one.

United Nations ‘propaganda’ on climate costing the world trillions, The international body is boldly working to suppress open debate on climate change while pushing prosperity-wrecking policies.

It's only a three minute read, but where else would you find the Bjorn-again one's ramblings taken seriously? 

When the pond did a quick search for the opening lines, the only place - apart from the lizard Oz - was the Bangkok Post, and that was a week ago.

So it was on with the reheated reptile stew before it went entirely off ... (the stench of week-old stale Bjorn-again stew is not something most nostrils can bear)

The UN promotes the idea that sea level rise could submerge small islands such as Kiribati. This claim is often repeated yet ignores a vast scientific literature showing almost every atoll including Kiribati is stable or increasing in size.
The United Nations is at a crossroads. US President Donald Trump pulled out of the World Health Organisation, cut funding for the UN’s Climate Convention, and more withdrawals are likely in the pipeline. He calls the UN an “underperformer”, suggesting it is a swamp to be drained.
At this critical juncture, one could reasonably assume the UN would justify its existence by sharpening its focus on peace and prosperity through sound, data-based advice. Instead, it is boldly working to suppress open debate on climate change while pushing prosperity-wrecking policies.
The UN has partnered with the government of Brazil to launch a global initiative ominously called the “Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change”, which will promote the publication of “verified” climate change information by media outlets and on social media. The UN bluntly states its objective is to “boost support for urgent climate action” – revealing that the goal is not to highlight the broad scientific consensus that climate change is real, but to boost just one allowable policy response.
As UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres has made clear, “urgent climate action” means a race to net-zero, extremist, economy-punishing policies, including rich countries paying poor countries huge sums for climate reparations, sweeping new climate taxes, and ending fossil fuels entirely within 25 years.

At this point the reptiles interrupted with a snap of a demonic figure, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. Picture: AFP

That seemed to trigger the Bjorn-again one ...

In determining what policy response you must choose, the unelected UN is engaging in pure propaganda. Imagine if it were to regulate the migration debate and would only allow statements that supported an extreme policy of completely open (or closed) borders everywhere. The UN is ignoring the inconvenient truth that there are many important, ongoing debates among climate scientists and economists. Even after decades of extensive research, huge uncertainty remains on how much the world would warm from a doubling of CO2. Research from climate economists also shows that most current climate policies are vastly inefficient.
The UN would dismiss policy discussion – and even facts – in the name of promoting a singular response to climate change. We know this, because the UN initiative’s early work setting out its supposed “facts on climate” already shows its unabashed bias.
One such “fact” the UN is promoting: that sea level rise could submerge small islands such as Kiribati. This claim is often repeated by progressive media outlets, yet ignores a vast scientific literature showing almost every atoll including Kiribati is stable or increasing in size – evidence acknowledged even by The New York Times.
Another UN “fact” is that climate change is a major threat to human health because fossil fuel-caused air pollution causes some 8.7 million deaths a year. Not only is this figure more than twice what the WHO estimates, but the UN deliberately confuses climate policy (which cuts CO2) with the real solution, which is cutting air pollution through scrubbers on smokestacks and catalytic converters on cars. In misstating the threat to life, the UN ignores the fact that deaths from climate-related catastrophes have declined 97.5 per cent over the past century – or that far more people die from cold than heat.

All these talking points will be familiar to anyone familiar with climate science denialist circles, and to show just how in-house the Bjorn-again one has become, he introduced the Bolter as back-up.

Strangely if you read the Bangkok Post version, the Bolter was disappeared to the cornfields, a bit like news of the Gaza extermination being disappeared in the lizard Oz ... but here he is, in a bit of reptile pandering ...

Sky News host Andrew Bolt criticises Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen in response to reports of rising electricity prices across Australia. The Australian Energy Regulator warned that electricity bills will rise by up to nine per cent from July 1. “All this means we are paying much, much more for electricity than we were three years ago, when the Albanese government, with Chris Bowen, actually won on this promise to cut electricity prices, not send them through the roof,” Mr Bolt said. “Bowen and the whole government lied back then before the last election, either that or they had absolutely no idea what they were doing. “We're now essentially paying for two electricity systems, their green one and a fossil fuel one for when there is no wind and no sun. No wonder prices have exploded. “It's often said, it’s a truism, that the definition of madness is to keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result, which is Chris Bowen.”

Time then for a bog standard assault on renewables ...

The UN also repeats the oft-told lie that renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels. It glosses over this mistruth by measuring the cost only when the sun is shining or the wind blowing, ignoring the costs of intermittency and unreliability. The fact is, no country with significant solar and wind has low electricity costs – indeed, on average, electricity costs are two or three times higher than for countries with little solar and wind.
Among the UN’s other supposed facts is that “solar panels and wind turbines make good use of land” (in reality, solar and wind are some of the most land-intensive energy forms) and that the transition to clean energy will create millions of jobs. The latter is an economically illiterate mistruth: in the US, solar employs 35 workers to produce the same amount of energy that one natural gas worker can produce, meaning natural gas is much more efficient because 34 workers can be freed to do other important work, increasing social welfare.
All these lies speak to the bigger problem: the UN will only “verify” the claims and narratives – whether true or not – that “boost support for urgent climate action”. The UN will not “verify” the fact that the most recent research on the costs and benefits of net-zero climate policies shows average annual benefits of $4.5 trillion over the 21st century and much larger costs of $27 trillion per year. Indeed, in the UN’s Orwellian world, this fact would likely be deemed “disinformation”.

Orwellian!

Perhaps passersby missed this in the pond's comments section from an esteemed correspondent ...

Bugger it, the pond will do it again, will do it live ...

One wonders about contributors tapping ‘Orwellian’ into their word count. Their Chairman Emeritus is on record with opinions on the person who wrote as George Orwell.
It was back in 1993, when Rupert was giving the Bonython Lecture for the Centre for Independent Studies. He was introduced by Maurice Newman (how little do things change) and offered thoughts grouped under a title of sorts ‘The Century of Networking’.
Rupert told his audience ‘We have it within our powers to make Australia an economic powerhouse in one of the brightest eras of human history.’ Then asked, rhetorically, why they were so surprised? Which took him to ‘George Orwell’s great futuristic novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’. Briefly, Orwell thought that technology would led to tyranny. He thought it would enormously enhance the power of the centralised totalitarian state, . . . . . . . summed up with . . . ‘Big Brother is watching you.’
So far so ‘Orwellian’. But, before ‘contributors sprinkle the cue word too widely, the Chairman continued ‘Nevertheless, the plain fact is that Orwell was wrong in his central prediction. Technology has not led to centralisation and tyranny - rather, the reverse.’
The Chairman then borrowed from an author who is now largely forgotten - Peter Huber - for further comment on Orwell getting it wrong. Huber was originally a scientist at MIT. He took issue with the slogan ‘ignorance is strength’, countering that, ‘In a system based on science, ignorance is not strength, it is weakness.’ Remember, this appealed greatly to Rupert 33 years ago. He went on ‘What makes Huber’s scenario the more convincing is that this sort of scientific and technological atrophy was exactly what destroyed the Soviet Union. Without freedom of inquiry, scientific inquiry just could not proceed.’
‘The second reason that Orwell was wrong, Huber argues, is in . . the slogan: “Freedom is slavery”. But freedom is not slavery. Specifically, free markets are not monopolies.’
To the clincher - in the words of Rupert ‘Orwell believed that free markets must lead to private monopoly and hence to the driving-down of living standards. He believed this because, like a lot of intellectuals who are accustomed to thinking about literature and politics, he had no real concept of the price mechanism. He thought that profits must be extorted by power. For example, he assumed that capitalists would always deliberately suppress innovation to keep profits high.’
‘Because capitalists are always trying to stab each other in the back, free markets do not lead to monopolies.’
The Chairman then meandered about, trying to show that any kind of intervention blighted the sanctity of markets; just happening to mention ‘the bone in Australia’s throat,’ its labour market, to praise the work of the Centre for Independent (?) Studies on labour laws.
Now, looking at the world that Rupert still inhabits - on balance, his assertions simply do not hold up. The one he borrowed from Huber about a system based on science has no place in the Untied States of America, now and for several years into the future - and his mass media were greatly influential in replacing science with ignorance - and presenting it as strength.
But his contributors will continue to use ‘Orwell’ as a cue word, because none of them ‘do’ irony.

The Bjorn-again one certainly doesn't do irony ... and he resolutely shows an awe-inspiring lack of any sensa huma ...

The UN is trying to control what people can hear, read and think about climate change just when social media companies such as Meta are reversing years-long policy of “fact-checking” climate change policy debate – which Meta admits resulted in censorship.
The proposal that taxpayers spend hundreds of trillions of dollars on poor climate policies is surely worth debate. The UN has no place suppressing that discussion. If it is to survive, the UN and other multilateral bodies need to return to their roots of helping humanity to navigate the world for peace and prosperity. And they must learn that free and informed debate poses no threat to that cause.
Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus, Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and author of False Alarm and Best Things First.

What's unique about this offering? It certainly isn't the dissembling and the paranoia and all the other standard reptiles memes with bonus Bolter. 

The pond suggests that this outing is truly ruly unique (irony) because it shows the climate science denialist out from the closet, in full force, with the gloves off, in all his naked Trumpian splendour ...

What really struck the pond was the absence of a well-known Bjorn-again mantra which has turned up a squillion times.

You know, this sort of claptrap, the kind which appeared in the lizard Oz, back on 2nd November 2024:

...There is a real need for smarter, more practical climate policies. What we need most is innovation. Throughout history, humanity has tackled major challenges not by imposing restrictions but by developing transformative technologies. We didn’t address air pollution by banning cars; we created the catalytic converter, which significantly reduced emissions. Similarly, we didn’t combat hunger by urging people to eat less; the Green Revolution allowed farmers to produce far more food.
However, for the past 30 years, innovation in green energy has been sorely neglected. Back in 1980, developed countries allocated more than US8c of every $US100 of GDP to research into low-carbon technologies. But as climate policies shifted towards making fossil fuels more expensive, spending on green innovation fell by half, down to less than US4c per $US100. Investment in green-energy research has been shown to yield significant benefits. Studies indicate that every dollar invested in green R&D could prevent $US11 in long-term climate damages, making it arguably the most effective global climate policy available.
When R&D eventually drives the cost of green energy below fossil fuels, everyone will switch – not just rich countries but, crucially, also China, India and Africa.

Usually the Bjorn-again one just hits his short-cut button and that all pops out, like a dog regurgitating grass in a hot Tamworth summer. But this time he didn't bother ... gone, disappeared off to the cornfields, like news of the mango Mussolini and the groundwork being done to create a Gaza Riviera.

And so to end on a few more housekeeping notes.

The pond thinks the 'reply' bug has been fixed, but all this is out of the hands of the pond.

The pond also realises that this has been a cartoon free outing, but will make up for it on the morrow.

The pond has also more to say on Orwellian matters.

The pond was so inspired by that talk of the Chairman's speech that went off and discovered the original text, a holy Murdochian grail more precious than the lost ark. 

In under a month, the pond will have another travel day, and it will seize that moment away from daily reptile chores to return that holy grail unto the world ...

In the meantime, have an immortal Rowe as a closer, with a promise of the "Ned" Trumpian Everest on the morrow ...