In which our Henry returns to splendid ancient times form, with a kontribution from Killer kommentary as the bonus ...

 

The reptiles were exceedingly busy this morning with an astonishing three - that's a mighty triptych - sets of EXCLUSIVES at the top of the digital edition. 

Count 'em and weep...

The pond would like to say it has some EXCLUSIVES of its own, but all it can report is the delight at seeing the look on Maria's face as she hastily breezed past the latest job figures, live on air, because MediaIte was there first...Fox’s Maria Bartiromo Hypes Good Job Numbers About to Come In And Skips Right By Them As News Turns Negative ...

And the pond would like to report on The Art of the Shakedown, How Trump turned garbage lawsuits into a billion-dollar protection racket — and why corporate America keeps paying up, but Parker Molloy got there first.

Of course it would be wrong and inappropriate for the pond to suggest that the best way to respond would be to pirate anything by Paramount, CBS or any of the other output by the rest of the corporate shills keen to sell out news and truth... that would to behave like the gangster king himself.

As for the BBB, Krugman also gazumped the pond with Trump’s Big Beautiful Debt Bomb, The budget bill is both devastatingly cruel and deeply irresponsible.

The pond shockingly waltzed past all that to see what nuggets were on the extreme far right, and the pond can EXCLUSIVELY reveal to anyone not on the way to Mars with Leon that it was the same old, same old...

The pond danced right past the latest outing for the Australian Zionist News Daily ...

It can’t be ‘too late’ to stop normalising of Jewish hatred
When is too late to call out conduct that threatens minority groups? It was clearly too late when Jews were marshalled into ghettos and when they were herded on to cattle-cars that transported them to the death camps.
By Vic Alhadeff

It can't be too late to stop the slaughter of Palestinians. It surely can't be too late for the reptiles to stop ignoring what's happening in Gaza, but the pond sometimes wonders if there will ever be any mention of Palestinians herded into line to avoid mass starvation, and then picked off?

Never mind, the pond, prescient as always - the pond has picked up the habit of lazy self-promotion from reading the reptiles - yesterday suggested that the outing by by the lesser Henry, his acolyte Alex McDermott ,was just a warm-up for some bashing of uppity, pesky, difficult blacks by his master, our Henry, and so it came to pass ...

And so, after the warm-up act, to the main show, with the pond hoping against hope that this will stimulate flagging clicks and inspire much devoted commentary from adoring correspondents ...

The header: Yoorrook inquiry’s ‘truth-telling’ if not plainly dishonest is less than candid, Why then would anyone take this report seriously? There is surely a patronising element of condescension at work, as if we should not hold Indigenous Australians to the standards we would demand of anyone else.
The caption: The Yoorrook commission’s work is now over. As the Victorian government prepares to introduce a voice to parliament and negotiate a treaty, it will undoubtedly be followed by others. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Crosling
The mystical advice, as transporting as a smoking ceremony: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

Henry was right into it, and right into top form, as he often is,  ever since Hecataeus of Miletus set the pace for him ...

The most serious, and by far the most depressing, aspect of the final report of Victoria’s Yoorrook “truth-telling” royal commission is that anyone would take it seriously.
To say that is not to dismiss the sincerity of the many Indigenous witnesses the commission interviewed. Nor is it to deny that the encounter between European settlers and the continent’s Indigenous people was tragic, in the deepest sense of the word, as even the many administrators and settlers who were full of good will lacked the means and the understanding to mitigate its consequences.
But a commitment to “truth-telling” imposes weighty responsibilities, made all the weightier by the commission’s official status. For if there is a fact of life it is that the truth is hard to find, and once found, may be easily lost. Moreover, no truth is more elusive than that about the distant past, where the “what” and the “how” are frequently uncertain while the “why” is shrouded in the complex interaction of intentions, constraints and contingencies.
It is for that reason that ever since Hecataeus of Miletus – who, in the sixth century BC, prefaced his work by saying that the pre-existing “accounts of the Greeks”, which he aimed to supersede by a more accurate analysis, “were many and ridiculous” – the hallmark of Western historiography has been its incessant focus on historical method.
Fundamental to that method, as it developed over the centuries, is an abiding scepticism about relying on individual memory, which is an account of the past constructed in the present. It is, by its very nature, subjective; it may also be irrational, inconsistent, deceptive and self-serving.
It must therefore be tested, as must all the material on which the historian relies. And the historian’s duty is not just to rigorously test the evidence. It is also to scrupulously present any authoritative material that tells against the conclusion that is eventually reached.

At this point the reptiles featured a woman who has all the hallmarks of a Comrade Dan, Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan gave evidence before the Yoorrook Justice Commission last year. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Crosling

Henry made a tremendously important reference, which might rankle some ...

It is those principles that differentiate “history” from a “story”. Both set out coherent accounts; however, only “history” can, in Leopold von Ranke’s famous phrase, credibly claim to present the past “wie es eigentlich gewesen”, as it had really been.

Indeed, indeed, and the pond waits impatiently for our Henry's denunciations of all those stories that litter the Bible and somehow are heiled by the reptiles as signifying Western Civilisation.

As for poor old Herodotus, who loved a good yarn, say no more, and the pond must also give up reading Suetonius, and his stories of emperors behaving in ways befitting behaviour in Victoria's early learning centres...

Back to our Henry, outraged, outraged he tells ya, at these bloody uppity blacks ...

But centuries of Western historiography are treated by the commission as if they had never existed. Cavalierly dismissing conventional evidentiary standards, it replaces them by what it calls “a profound assertion of First Peoples’ ongoing sovereignty over their stories, knowledge and futures”.
In its proceedings, it frankly states, “truth-telling was not about debate” – and indeed there was none. Nor was there any testing of evidence, presentation of contrary views or attempt to engage with critics. Comfortably ensconced in the realm of naked assertion, the commission found the truth because it knew it.
Nowhere is that more apparent than in its “finding” of “genocide”. Not once, in its 230-page report, does it define the term or specify exactly what was allegedly involved. Rather, its discussion bears out with unusual force Alexis de Tocqueville’s dictum that “an abstract word is like a box with a false bottom; you may put in what ideas you please, and take them out again without being observed”.
Thus, it refers at one point to a “cultural genocide”; at another, to “linguicide”. In both cases it blithely assumes, without a shred of evidence, that had the European settlers somehow acted “better”, Indigenous languages and cultures would have resisted the pressures of acculturation. In reality, everything suggests they would have disappeared far more quickly and comprehensively had there been less discrimination and segregation than there was.

Indeed, indeed. Why according to some foolish fops, there were only 123 Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander languages still in use, and of these only 12 relatively strong ... and yet some suggest that back in the day over 250 languages and 800 dialects were spoken...

As for cultural genocide, please give our Henry some time, he's still working on it, as the reptiles interrupted again with important IPA news straight from the IPA mouth, helped by devastating Danica, IPA Deputy Executive Director Daniel Wild slams Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan for showing “complete and total contempt” for mainstream Victorians for not ruling out the Yoorrook Justice Commission’s final report recommendations. “What this shows is that the elites in this society don’t care what you think, they don’t care how you vote, they’ve got their own ideology, and they are going to implement it anyway,” Sky News host Danica De Giorgio. “The fundamental problem of this report is that it comes from a place of hate … this is punishment being meted out by the activist class because Australians voted no to their divisive policy at the referendum.”

Please note that barking mad fundamentalist activist lobby groups of the IPA should in no way be considered part of the activist class. They're far too advanced in their activism to be included in a class.

And now for all those who love to hear our Henry spouting Roman axioms, just to teach those oralists a bloody good lesson, it's Roman reference time ...

To make things worse, the commission’s report is, if not plainly dishonest, less than candid. To take but one example, the commission cites historians who have examined the contention that there was a genocide. What it never discloses is that they largely dispute, often with considerable asperity, the conclusion it so starkly states. And it therefore never explains why greater credence should be placed on its conclusion than on those of others.
That is not history; it is tarted up propaganda. Having rejected the ancient Roman axiom of justice, “Audi alteram partem” (hear the other side), the commission assumes its claims are true, or at least useful to its cause, and on that basis attempts to clothe them in as rhetorically effective a form as possible.
Why then would anyone take its report seriously? There is surely a patronising element of condescension at work, as if we should not hold Indigenous Australians to the standards we would demand of anyone else. That is not just unfortunate; it is completely counter-productive.
To begin with, it incites the unvarnished arrogance that pervades this report. Why did the proposed voice to parliament fail? Because “beneath the rhetoric of reconciliation” most Australians “did not want to hear the truth”. The possibility that the proposal was ill-conceived is never contemplated, much less examined.
Even more important, the condescension encourages demands that are increasingly extreme and increasingly poorly founded. Why have the enormous, ongoing transfers – of land, of royalties, of public subsidies – failed to alleviate entrenched disadvantage? According to the report, because they just weren’t enormous enough.
The possibility that like all forms of crony capitalism – which flourishes where political insiders control resources and allocate them to their relatives, friends, and supporters – the transfers enrich a privileged elite while condemning entire communities to hope-destroying social pathologies is, again, conveniently ignored.

Did our Henry mention crony capitalism?

Why the pond has a cartoon for that ...

So much for difficult, uppity blacks to learn about the glories of Western Civilisation.

The reptiles offered their own visual distraction, another assault on those bloody uppity blacks, Sky News host James Macpherson slams the recent findings in the Yoorrook for Justice report. The landmark Yoorrook for Justice report into Victoria’s Child Protection and Criminal Justice Systems, released on Tuesday, made 46 recommendations based on findings gathered across 67 days of public hearings, the testimony of more than 200 witnesses and the contributions of 1,500 First Nations people. In their final report, the Commission found that serious crimes were committed against Indigenous Australians from 1834. Mr Macpherson said the report wants Indigenous Victorians to be treated as “completely separate” from their neighbours. “As members of different nations, with different rights and with an entirely different relationship to the government.”

Damn you dancing feet, trying to crush our Henry's love of ancient times and writers of the Montesquieu kind ...

Nor does the commission consider the risk that being gifted valuable mines, forests and fisheries will discourage, rather than promote, the ingenuity and effort that underpins enduring wealth creation and human flourishing. Transferring wealth is simple; what is difficult – and this is what the commission studiously avoids addressing – is making it possible for people to do anything without trapping them in a life of doing nothing.
It would, however, be wrong to blame the commission alone. It is the faithful mirror of a fatuous political culture that has for decades amply rewarded those absurdities: not because it cares too much but because it cares too little. After all, as Montesquieu caustically observed about “the class of superior people”, it is “a thousand times easier, and more pleasing, to seem good than to do good”. Yes, keeping up appearances is costly; but what is public spending for, if not to paper over society’s cracks?
The Yoorrook commission’s work is now over. As the Victorian government prepares to introduce a voice to parliament and negotiate a treaty, it will undoubtedly be followed by others.
But for so long as hard realities are not faced, rather than erased, Indigenous policy will continue its rush on the road to nowhere. The savage pity of it is that so much needless misery will be inflicted on the truly disadvantaged along the way.

If only Western Australia made available the sort of position they once offered to A.O. Neville, the Chief Protector of Aborigines, way back when.

Neville wrote a splendid book, with this excellent review on 28th February 1948 in the SMH, at Trove here, and it reminds the pond what a trailblazer he was for our Henry...

Please allow the pond to celebrate the advance of Western Civilisation, as we've moved from monarchs with unfettered power to monarchs with unfettered power, with this day the perfect day to celebrate the move for the reptiles' Faux Noise arse-kissing, forelock-tugging cousins ...

And so to the Killer kommentary for the bonus ...

The header: Let’s have some conservative home truths on free speech, In their understandable and noble desire to defend Israel, conservatives should be careful what they wish for.
The caption: Islamic preacher Wissam Haddad and his solicitor outside court. Picture: Jane Dempster
The mystical command, up there with the ones the long absent lord gave to Moses: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

For all the elaborate preparations at the start, the pond must report the shocking news that the reptiles so little valued Killer's killing kontribution that after that one opening snap, not a single other visual distraction followed.

Why was Killer visually deprived? Did AI go on strike?

No matter, the pond plunged ...

Almost 15 years ago, conservative political forces erupted in fury when columnist Andrew Bolt was convicted of contravening section 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act over a series of newspaper ­columns that allegedly offended Aboriginal groups.
The hitherto obscure 1995 provision made it unlawful to “offend, insult, humiliate, or intimidate another person or group of people ­because of their race, colour, or national or ethnic origin”. That same law was used to drag the late great Bill Leak’s name through the mud over a series of supposedly offensive cartoons in this newspaper.
Calls to abolish 18c rang out across the land. From Voltaire to John Stuart Mill, there were a flurry of quotes pointing out that free speech, however odious, was a fundamental human right that should underpin Australian society. If you’re offended, toughen up. The law can’t be based on feelings, the arguments went.
The campaign revved up again amid ludicrous accusations of racism at Queensland University of Technology following the barring of three university students from an “Indigenous space” on campus. Thankfully, that 18c case failed.
All the arguments in favour of free speech and against 18c were as laudable and correct then as they are now. So-called hate speech laws are infantilising and deny human agency. Inciting violence is a separate matter, dealt with under separate laws with much stricter legal tests.
Yet I won’t be holding my breath for conservative political forces to mount a principled defence of the contemptible preacher Wissam Haddad, who this week was convicted under 18c for making “disparaging imputations about Jewish people” in a series of lectures in Bankstown in 2023.
“What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist,” wrote Salman Rushdie. The last few years reveal just how few genuinely believe in that principle. Free speech must include the right to speech most of us find repugnant. It can’t only be free speech for political allies. With the exception of NSW Libertarian John Ruddick, where is the soaring defence of former SBS journalist Mary Kostakidis, who is facing possible trial under 18c for posting on social media a speech made by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, along with some severe criticism of Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza?
The tragedy of October 7 and the ensuing conflict in the Middle East has highlighted a censorious streak among conservatives who are understandably sympathetic to Israel, the only democracy in the region. Yet cancel culture seems to thrive among certain conservative sections.
ABC journalist Antoinette Lattouf was cancelled following a fusillade of complaints against her from Jewish groups after she posted on Instagram a Human Rights Watch tweet that alleged Israel was using starvation as a “weapon of war” in Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world would have already seen the incendiary tweet.

Ah, there you go, the pond begins to understand. Apparently Killer didn't realise he was writing for the Australian Daily Zionist News, and so the reptiles decided to deprive him of illustrations.

Killer was on hand for everybody ...

US podcaster Candace Owens was barred from entering Australia last year over allegations of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, and this week rapper Kanye West met the same fate for producing a deliberately provocative song which anyone in Australia could listen to online.

Indeed, indeed, let's here it for Kanye...

The pond was reminded of the tragedy that sees us not exposed to the brightest minds of this American generation.

Why haven't we invited Lauren Boebert, who asks serious questions about the moon landing? 

See Mediaite's  Facts Change’: Lauren Boebert Questions If U.S. Moon Landing Was Real in Wild Interview for her captivating thinking:

Excellent conspiracy theories and we need more of them, not less. 

Facts change, and there are alternative facts, and as our Henry seemed not to understand, the bible is full of facts...

That’s why I love Jesus, I love the Bible, because that is truth and that is everlasting, and that’s something that will never change. God is not a liar, but you know, there is a father of lies, and the Bible talks all about him. And unfortunately, we’ve seen time and time again where politicians are in office and deceive the American public.
And so I don’t know, have we been beyond the Van Allen radiation belt? Maybe?
If so, I would like to know why it’s taken so long to get back through it again. But, you know, here we are, and we’ll see what Artemis and the Orion spacecraft have to do when they try to take a crewed spaceship back out there in just a year or two.

Back to Killer and he's still krushing it in his kommentary ...

“We have enough problems in this country already without deliberately importing bigotry,” said Immigration Minister Tony Burke. Indeed, Australia has for decades been importing hundreds of thousands of people from Middle Eastern countries who vehemently hate Israel.
The c-grade rap duo Bob Vylan, who most people had never heard of until this week, has had concerts cancelled by organisers in France, Britain and Germany, while the US refused to issue him a visa over his chanting “death to the IDF” at the Glastonbury music festival.
It was a stupid comment, but why should we take him seriously? How does it differ from anti-­Vietnam War protesters and celebrities in the 1960s, who routinely vilified the US military as murderers, rapists and baby killers at public events?

Indeed, indeed. It's an interesting point Killer makes. How does the My Lai massacre differ from Gaza today, except perhaps by way of scale?

Or were they an even match? Was My Lai just one of many massacres in Vietnam War?

In 1968 US soldiers murdered several hundred Vietnamese civilians in the single most infamous incident of the Vietnam War. The My Lai massacre is often held to have been an aberration but investigative journalist Nick Turse has uncovered evidence that war crimes were committed by the US military on a far bigger scale.
In a war in which lip service was often paid to winning "hearts and minds", the US military had an almost singular focus on one defining measure of success in Vietnam: the body count - the number of enemy killed in action.
Vietnamese forces, outgunned by their adversaries, relied heavily on mines and other booby traps as well as sniper fire and ambushes. Their methods were to strike and immediately withdraw.
Unable to deal with an enemy that dictated the time and place of combat, US forces took to destroying whatever they could manage. If the Americans could kill more enemies - known as Viet Cong or VC - than the Vietnamese could replace, the thinking went, they would naturally give up the fight.
To motivate troops to aim for a high body count, competitions were held between units to see who could kill the most. Rewards for the highest tally, displayed on "kill boards" included days off or an extra case of beer. Their commanders meanwhile stood to win rapid promotion.
Very quickly the phrase - "If it's dead and Vietnamese, it's VC" - became a defining dictum of the war and civilian corpses were regularly tallied as slain enemies or Viet Cong.
Civilians, including women and children, were killed for running from soldiers or helicopter gunships that had fired warning shots, or being in a village suspected of sheltering Viet Cong.
At the time, much of this activity went unreported - but not unnoticed.

Surely unnoticed by Killer? Oh it was a goodly war and the current slaughter of Palestinians, whether by way of mass starvation or the killing fields is a goodly thing if we're going to have our new Riviera by the sea...

Do carry on Killer, with your killing komparisons, and please allow the pond to celebrate because there's not one word about Covid or masks or such like ...

“Speech has consequences,” Vylan’s conservative critics would say, deploying precisely the same arguments the left makes when it seeks to destroy individuals’ lives over allegations of homophobia and racism.
Of course some supporters of 18c – even those who see it as a crutch with which to attack their political opponents – mean well, but it’s far from clear that the law improves social cohesion.
Perhaps tens of thousands more Australians have read Haddad’s disgusting views than otherwise would have; had no court case emerged, the fringe cleric’s racist tirades would’ve remained at Al Madina Dawah Centre in Bankstown, where he delivered them, perhaps shared online by a few hundred of his bigoted followers.
Equally, does anyone seriously think Haddad’s conviction has prompted a change of heart by him or his followers? In fact, it’s probably hardened their hateful views, which they’ll now promote more vigorously in private. In the case of Bob Vylan, they’re more famous than they could have dreamt.
In their understandable and noble desire to defend Israel, conservatives should be careful what they wish for. Following a burst of anti-Semitic acts earlier this year, the federal, Victorian and NSW parliaments ushered in a string of new “hate speech” laws to protect politically favoured groups with barely a murmur of conservative dissent. When tensions in the Middle East subside, these laws will become an even more powerful tool to attack conservatives in the courts, which has long been their real purpose. The new laws don’t only seek to protect Jewish Australians and other religious and ethnic groups from taking offence, but also the LGBTIQ+ and disabled communities.
In a multicultural society, individuals will disagree and even hate each other for despicable reasons. Litigating over hurt feelings is a shocking waste of resources. The bottom line is, as a society, we need to toughen up.
Adam Creighton is senior fellow and chief economist at the Institute of Public Affairs.

Yes harden the fuck up, it's all good in a post-truth, post-fact age...

All the same the pond was devastated because the pond has been hungering, neigh salivating for the chance to reference a certain Robert Malone, one of Robert Kennedy's minions.

For the full story, see Tom Bartlett in The Atlantic, The Most Extreme Voice on RFK Jr.’s New Vaccine Committee, Robert Malone, who believes the U.S. government has “reality-bending information-control capabilities,” will guide the future of American medical care. (*archive link)

A sample to whet the appetite, tingle the taste buds ...

Robert Malone has a history of arguing against the data. He has called for an end to the use of mRNA vaccines for COVID despite the well-established fact that they reduce mortality and severe illness. He has promoted discredited COVID treatments such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, dismissing studies that show they are ineffective against the coronavirus. Recently, he called reports about two girls in West Texas dying from the measles “misinformation,” even though the doctors who treated the girls were unequivocal in their conclusion.
Now Malone will have a leading role in shaping America’s vaccine policy. He is one of eight new members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, replacing the 17 former members whom Robert F. Kennedy Jr. relieved of their duties on Monday. The re-formed committee will be responsible for guiding the CDC’s vaccine policy, recommending when and by whom vaccines should be used. The doctors and researchers who make up the new ACIP are all, to some degree, ideological allies of Kennedy, who has spent decades undermining public confidence in vaccines. And Malone arguably has the most extreme views of the group.
Malone, a physician and an infectious-disease researcher, readily acknowledges that he defies mainstream scientific consensus. Just this week, he wrote in his popular Substack newsletter that readers should embrace the anti-vax label, as he has done, and oppose “the madness of the vaccine mania that has swept public health and government.” (This was only a day before Kennedy pledged that the new ACIP members would not be “ideological anti-vaxxers.”)
He is also openly conspiratorial. In his best-selling book, Lies My Gov’t Told Me: And the Better Future Coming, Malone alleges that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s grants to news publications (including The Atlantic) were payments “to smear” vaccine critics, and accuses Anthony Fauci of fearmongering to amass power. Last fall, Malone and his wife, Jill, released a follow-up, PsyWar, making the case that the U.S. government is engaged in a vague but diabolical program of psychological warfare against its own citizens. According to the Malones, the CIA, FBI, and Defense Department, along with a “censorship-industrial complex,” have granted the U.S. government “reality-bending information control capabilities.” (They also claim that “sexual favors are routinely exchanged to seal short-term alliances, both within agencies and between contractors and ‘Govies.’”) They envision this corruption spawning a postapocalyptic future in which guns, ammo, horses, and “a well-developed network of like-minded friends” might be necessary for survival. Malone, who lives on a horse farm in Virginia, appears to be already well prepared...

And so on, and by golly he's better than a Boebert and soon enough you'll be able to read the Australian Daily Zionist News daily without throwing up your breakfast or having the sort of gigantic bowel movement that regularly fixates the immortal Rowe ...

Don't even begin to contemplate what comes out of that fundament, just take the stairs...