In which the pond filibusters its way through a Friday with the hole in the bucket man ...

 

 

 

What's the pond to do with the rubbish being served up by the lizard Oz reptiles of late? 

It seems that these days the lizard Oz editorialist is being used as filler fodder, with the reptiles unwilling or unable to cultivate their usual supply of loons ... leaving the Friday field to the Speccie mob ... but the pond didn't have the strength to deal with a dashing Donners, or best of all, a Conrad Black returned from fuck knows where ...

Once upon a time, Donners would have proudly featured in the lizard Oz ... and some idiot jabbering about prayer being illegal in Australia would have been considered something of a lizard oz coup.

Of course there are other interesting stories out and about, but the pond always feels ambivalent about running stories from Crikey,  as its paywall serves a purpose ...

But when Crikey gets to sharing its love of herpetology, the pond finds it irresistible ...

 

 

That Vint Cerf link is here,  and that ACCC link leads to another Crikey story, but eventually also to the ACCC 2019 report in pdf form, the Digital Platforms Inquiry ... 

There's a lot more for herpetology students ... including but not limited to ...

News Corp also demanded that the ABC be prevented from benefiting in any way from the revenue — despite the ABC, by the logic offered by News Corp, being in exactly the same position as other media organisations.
Realising such a blatant attack on the ABC might cruel the chances of securing passage of the legislation, the government has now signalled the ABC and SBS could be included in the scheme — to the fury of Liberal MPs. But the ABC haters don’t need to be too worried — the government can always cut ABC funding by whatever amount it makes from Google and Facebook.
The Google and Facebook heist is just one of several initiatives the Coalition is pursuing currently to fund News Corp. Foxtel was handed another $10 million recently from Communications Minister Paul Fletcher without having to even bother explaining what it would be spent on.
That follows, of course, a $30 million handout to Foxtel by Malcolm Turnbull, who has changed his tune somewhat about News Corp in the time since he was forced out of the prime ministership.
Foxtel is a black hole for News — subscriber numbers are only being held up by the volatile seasonality of sport for its Kayo streaming service. The Foxtel Now services are losing subscribers and while streaming service Binge has been something of a success, it lags badly behind Netflix and Stan. News Corp had to lend US$900 million to Foxtel in 2019 to keep it out of the hands of its lenders.
News Corp also lost out overnight when Bertelsmann of Germany (which owns Penguin and Random House) won the auction of US book publisher Simon & Schuster, owned by ViacomCBS, for US$2.2 billion. News tried a cheap offer but lost early and CEO Robert Thomson now claims there was “no logic” to the deal and that the new company would be “a book behemoth. Distributors, retailers, authors and readers would be paying for this proposed deal for a very long time to come”.
That’s rich coming from News Corp — even just in publishing, News already controls Harper Collins, Harlequin and others companies. Simon & Schuster would have given it a huge share of global markets.

And that other Crikey link the pond mentioned (paywalled) provided a handy guide to those who can't be bothered reading the ACCC ...

News Corp charges that when Google (mostly) and Facebook use its headlines and automatically generated “snippets” of News Corp stories on their sites, they are stealing content, and should be made to pay for it via a licence fee that will “reflect the financial benefit digital platforms derive from using snippets”.
It also complains that longer “snippets” deter people from clicking through the attached link to the original story because they get all they need from what’s displayed.
Except the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) digital platforms inquiry found that News Corp’s claims don’t stack up.
Headlines and snippets aren’t theft of content: “generally, digital platforms’ use of article headlines is unlikely to infringe copyright protections in Australia,” the ACCC noted. “Digital platforms reproducing a snippet of a copyright-protected news article does not infringe copyright protections if the snippet does not reproduce a substantial part of the article.”
And the ACCC found that the tech companies, media organisations and consumers all benefit from the use of snippets. Specifically, “media businesses benefit because a snippet provides context and an indication to the user of the value of that content, increasing the likelihood of consumers clicking through”.
Real-world evidence backed this up. “As a result of a German copyright law requiring Google to pay fees to publish snippets from news media websites, Google stopped showing snippets from [media company Axel Springer’s] news articles. Axel Springer noted that the lack of snippets led to a nearly 40% decline in referral traffic from Google Search and an almost 80% decline in referral traffic from the Google News user interface”.
The ACCC also “does not agree that longer snippet lengths necessarily have a negative effect on referral traffic, with users remaining on an aggregator or search platform rather than clicking through to a news media business’s website”. As a result, it did not recommend that a mandatory licence fee be imposed.

Well at least it provided the pond with a distraction, and stopped it heading off to the Speccie mob, and instead the pond could be content with the one genuine, certifiable loon in the commentary section this day, the good old hole in the bucket man frothing and foaming in his usual way, and what do you know, as a result of his solitary looniness, being blessed by the reptiles with cult master certification ...

Now the pond will concede it's not much of an Ozymandias from the cult master ... when doing that poem, the pond always prefers this approach ...

 

 

Okay, okay, the pond is delaying, summoning up the strength to deal with our hole in the bucket man this day, full of the usual sounds of fury, signifying nothing much  ...

 

To call Henry's interpretation of Codrington's actual history scandalous would be an understatement; his denigration of others who disagree with him is every bit as disgraceful ...

The pond couldn't resist quoting this short summary of Codrington's 'achievements' in his short career ...

 Christopher Codrington (1668-1710) was a Barbadian-born English slaveholder, soldier, and colonial governor in the West Indies. Educated at Christ Church Oxford, he was later elected to All Souls college as a probationer fellow in 1690. In 1698, he succeeded his father as commander-in-chief and captain-general of the Leeward Islands, an island group in the northeast Caribbean Sea. He also inherited his father’s estates, plantations, and enslaved people on the islands.

A complaint was made against his rule by the inhabitants of Antigua which was later dismissed by the House of Commons. In 1703, after he failed to capture Guadeloupe as part of a war with France and Spain, he left the governorship and spent the rest of his life on his plantations in Barbados. His body is buried in the All Souls Chapel.

In his will he left £10,000 and £6,000 worth of books to All Souls College, which they used to establish the library. His will also left two plantations in Barbados to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, with instructions to continue slaveholding.

Xians continuing slaveholding? Well of course ...

But back to our Henry, doing his best Colonel Blimp impression, and clinging to British imperialism ...

 

 

On the matter of Sloane, there's a piece at the Graudian here which the pond can' resist quoting ... the pond is in a quoting mood this day ...

How do you erase a figure from the past and rewrite British history? According to some, it is done by taking a bust or statue of the figure in question and carefully placing it inside a climate-controlled glass cabinet that is then put on public display, alongside “artefacts explaining his work” in a free-to-access national museum, in the heart of our capital city. Oddly, this is not the form of “erasure” favoured by al-Qaida and the Taliban, who tend to opt for alternative methods involving sledgehammers and explosives. Perhaps they have been going about things the wrong way.
The supposed victim of historical erasure last week was Hans Sloane, the wealthy physician and naturalist whose collection of artefacts formed the nucleus of what became the British Museum. Accusations that the museum was rewriting history arose when it was reported that a bust of Sloane had been taken off its pedestal and moved, literally just a few metres, so it could be put on display inside a case with other objects. This new display made it possible for the museum to explain the links between Sloane, his collection and slavery.
In less hysterical times, a minor act of curatorial reinterpretation and recontextualisation would be of little interest outside the museum world. Instead, it sparked yet another confected outbreak of needless hostilities in Britain’s ongoing History Wars. Writing in the Spectator, Charles Moore complained that the bust of Sloane had been “locked in a display cabinet”, hardly a unique fate for an artefact held by the British Museum. Although having never thought it a good idea to test if the cabinets in the museum are indeed locked, I am not in a position to determine if the bust of Sloane has been singled out for special treatment.
Little of this, in reality, has much to do with Sloane or even with the British Museum and we are not at the beginning of some Orwellian age of historical erasure. Rather, Britain is gradually coming to the end of a very different and highly effective process of historical erasure that has endured for centuries. What bothers critics of the museum is that the new display makes plain the fact that much of the wealth Sloane used to purchase his vast collection was derived from slavery.
Every contrivance has been deployed to distance Sloane from slavery. As the wealth he accumulated from plantations in Jamaica came to him through marriage, it has been suggested that his involvement was merely tangential. Yet upon Sloane’s marriage to Elizabeth Langley Rose, one-third of the income from her plantations and her human property became his. In one of his letters, Sloane proudly talked of himself as a planter, the 18th-century euphemism for slave owner.
Those who have felt the sudden need to write hagiographies of Sloane have attempted to portray him as an almost accidental beneficiary of slavery, yet he not only grew rich from the sugar shipped from his wife’s Jamaican plantations, he actively invested in the slave trading South Sea Company. No matter how much we are asked to look only at his talents as a physician and his passion for botany and collecting, the fact remains that much of the money Sloane used to purchase the objects that today lie within our national museum came from the murderous exploitation of African men, women and children.

And so on and so on, and of course there's whitewashing, and then there's whitewashing in film ...

Whitewashing is a casting practice in the film industry in which white actors are cast in non-white roles. As defined by Merriam-Webster, to whitewash is "to alter ... in a way that favors, features, or caters to white people: such as ... casting a white performer in a role based on a nonwhite person or fictional character". In film, the practice is as old as the industry itself. The BBC said, "The list of films in which white actors have played other races includes everything from romantic comedies to action adventures and fantasies to historical epics." African-American roles and roles of Asian descent have been whitewashed.

Who can forget Ed Devereaux playing black tracker Jubbal in Journey out of Darkness and Kamahl playing an Arunta man?

But the pond digresses, it being a digressive Friday.

Back to our hole in the bucket man, because what's perhaps remarkable is not his defence of ancient Poms ... but his decision to do a billy goat buttism about slavery ... perhaps only a billy goat buttism about the Holocaust could match it for folly.

Did our Henry really have to say that slavery was unremarkable, and had been around for millenniums, so why bother having a later fit of angst about some of its finest practitioners?

And then things turned really ugly in our hole in the bucket's final gobbet, to do with his proud boast that the West, to its undying credit, abolished slavery ... when in reality the West hasn't abolished it, and the pond has little doubt if it wandered around some of the brothels in the inner west, it might still find workers in enforced servitude ...

States of delusion exist everywhere, and yesterday in a discussion at lunch, the pond noted that even in the New Testament, slavery was treated as an Xian fact of life. 

This immediately produced doubt, which moved to outright disbelief in the debate that followed, and as always in such cases, the pond noted that the Skeptic's Bible did a handy service in pointing out all sorts of absurdities in Xian thinking ... 

Indeed slavery did turn up in the New Testament, though the KJV folk did their best to hide it by using the term "servant" rather than "slave" ...

 

 

This was handy in Roman times,  because it didn't upset the natural order of things.

Of course the Old Testament is a gimme, but for those wanting more enthusiastic support of slavery in the bible can head off to the Skeptic's Annotated Bible here ...

It's not that puzzling. Fine men and women of the South saw nothing incongruous in considering themselves fine Xians, while being devotees of slavery, and heading into a monumental civil war. Rather it was one of those schisms in Xian thinking, akin to between wets and dries, in the style of a Monty Python sketch about schismatics ...

And that's why our Henry truly is an immortal fuckwit, when he credits the West's Judeo-Christian tradition for solving the matter ...

 

Has our Henry, blathering away about the wonders and splendors of the British Empire, ever spent any decent quality time with the bible? Is he an actual Xian? Sometimes the pond wonders ... perhaps he should be assigned some tasks, to fetch and carry at the pond's whim, a menial life for a pandering, servile loon ...

 

So much for fine western Xian traditions ... and now having filibustered its way home with just the hole in the bucket man for company, the pond will take its rest with an infallible Pope ...

 

In which the reptiles release the Kroger ...

 

 The pond found Jack Shafer's arguments in support of Fox News at Politico here compelling ...

... Newsmax and OANN may have temporarily outflanked Fox by more perfectly echoing Trump’s contention that the election was stolen from him for days after Fox largely abandoned that line, but what special ingredient do they have now? The downside of news organization embracing disinformation, such as the stolen election story, is that reality has a way of interceding and eventually nullifying it. The easiest path is to devise or adopt another disinformation scramble, a technique Fox has already perfected. You may recall the heavy breathing Fox gave the Benghazi scandal, the Seth Rich murder conspiracy, Obama birtherism, and the hydroxychloroquine hype, just to name a few of its grand scoops that went pfft. If Newsmax and OANN think they can maneuver around the Murdoch empire by promoting grander crackpot stories than Fox, they can expect a surprise. Fox is the master of this type of coverage, and unlike Newsmax and OANN, it knows when to discard a news angle and find a new one.

Yes, nobody does crackpot stories better than the Murdochians, and nobody knows better the right time to move on to the next crackpot, ensuring the mad uncles and aunts in the attic always have something crackers to chew on …

And let's be fair, let's have some parochial pride. The local reptiles also know how to do crackpot.

What to do when your war on the ABC is feeling a little tired and run down, when every reptile has taken a potshot, and then rinsed and repeated, until the spin cycle on the washing machine is always flashing a red light?

Release the Kroger, which is always better than doing a Sidney Powell and releasing a kraken on steroids ...

 

 

 

 

Now the reptiles look at the ABC,  and see only its faults and flaws, and of course the released demonic Kroger fits neatly into that approach.

 

From time to time, the pond occasionally worries about the way it caricatures the reptiles, painting them as a hive mind, because every so often there's a token reptile that decides to steer a different course from the rest of the drones ...

 

But your Kroger isn't worried about nuance and perspective, affirming that the pond's sweeping approach to institutions is the correct one ... damn them all to hell, and let the Devil sort them out ...

 

 

 

 

 

What an astonishing and shocking story, and the pond was disturbed to discover that not listening to the parrot was a mortal sin. Why the pond, in its time, has even asked a taxi driver to change the station simply so it could avoid listening to the parrot. 

 

It used to be called an attempt to cling to some sanity, and not worry about the movement of flood waters in Queensland quarries. Apparently not in the world of Kroger ...

 

Of course the only people at the ABC who really have to worry about the parrot are those that were competing with his time slot. Why should anyone else give a flying fuck?

As for a board member attempting to interfere in editorial processes, why that's why you release the Kroger ... who was and perhaps still is perhaps unaware that the ABC actually has lawyers on staff ...

 

 

 

Does it come as a surprise that perhaps the Kroger isn't so much a kraken as a parrot, recycling prattling Polonius? Not really ... you just release the Kroger so everyone can still be astonished that this ancient relic of partisan feuding still exists, and can do his bit to sound dangerously stupid about the threat to human life posed by global warming ...

But that's just an aside, because the Kroger is also hot on imaginary friends in peril ... though it should be understood that there's only one religion that matters, out of all the many gods under the noonday warming sun ...

 

 

 

 

Before getting on to the Kroger listicle, some might care to contemplate a philosophical Kroger conundrum. Being ordinary is apparently the way to go. We must all be humble, in a Uriah Heep or perhaps a Pooterish way, and seek out banality and mediocrity.

But at the same time the ordinary constitutes our greatness. Being cogs in the machine is the way to greatness. So is not the ordinary great? And therefore doesn't the virtue of ordinariness lead to the hubris of greatness? Instead of humble mediocrity, are we not all at risk of megalomaniacal, magnificent, monumental, majestic, sumptuous, resplendent, glorious, ginormous swelled heads? 

The pond was so confused, it had no time left for the Kroger's paranoid musings about the ABC ... though it shares his concerns. When it does watch Landline, the pond is truly astonished at the way that the ABC shows an outrageous contempt for its rustic audience ... feebly attempting to disguise this contempt by pretending to care about the price of wheat and sheep, and putting a broad brimmed hat on its presenter. You're not fooling anyone, especially the Kroger.

The pond has long felt this, ever since the days it endured Blue Hills and Bellbird ... so much contempt for the minds of the rustics ...

And so back to the Kroger for that promised listicle ...

 

 

Even by reptile standards that unleashed Kroger editorial guidelines effort is remarkably stupid, though there's no doubt that Uncle Joe Stalin would love his attempt to produce a new hive mind ...

Such a stupid man, and rounding it off with a reference to our hole in the bucket Henry confirmed his ongoing stupidity ... all that was missing from the column was a decent bucket of hair dye dripping down through the words ...

And now the pond will not be denied. It's done its duty by loonish reptile krakens and has earned a break.

Today is savvy Savva day, one of the reptiles who tries to avoid being part of the hive mind, often by slagging off SloMo, and the reptiles today recognised the importance of her mission by awarding her a cult master illustration ...

 

 

 

 

Say what? Cracks in the Kraken's shorts?

 

 

 

 

Release the inner dag!

 

 

 

And so to a little more frothing and fuming ...

 

 

 

 

Dear sweet long absent lord, what contempt the savvy Savva has for SloMo ... why she'd even prefer that they wheel in the pastie Hastie instead of him ... 

 

And so the infallible Pope of the day, and such is the pond's remorse at running a truncated Pope, because it was all it had to hand, the pond felt the need to run the full version below the latest outing ...

 

And so to a small bonus, which features nattering "Ned", and for once the portentous, prolix, bloviator is short and can serve as a reptile treat sounding the usual alarums ...

What a shocking, terrifying vision. A conga line of climate scientists. No wonder "Ned" is quivering in fear ...

And yet what was it that the Chairman said? "We do not deny climate change, we're not deniers" and "there are no climate change deniers around here, I can assure you." (here) 

So why is "Ned" doing his usual Chicken Little routine, quivering like a blob of jelly at the thought that Joe has released the Kerry ...?

Well because actually doing anything about climate science is anathema to the reptiles and especially to "Ned" and so naturally he recoils in horror at the Kerry surging up from the ocean depths to haunt him and SloMo ...

 

 

Oh the tormenting of the reptiles, will it never end? Climate science denialism was so much easier under the Donald ... but the pond has an even bigger fear.

What on earth will cartoonists do when the Donald returns to private life? Whither the immortal Rowe? How many more days of celebration before the turkey is cooked, eaten, and expelled to join the great manure farms which suggest brave attempts at climate-change action? (Meanwhile, more withering Rowe here).

In which nattering "Ned" and Dame Slap squirm away from talk of an inquiry into the rotten mess that is News Corp ...

 

 

 

 

Sweet dreams and delusions ... holding Murdochians, the lizards of Oz, nattering "Ned", the whole pack of reptiles to account is the big story ...

 

Sure, they'll slip-slide away, sure they've cultivated the acquaintance of powerful friends, and have spent a lifetime dissing climate science and such like ... but how pleasing it is to see "Ned" squirm, while he seeks to distract and divert by cheering on the big shakedown that the reptiles hope will save their empire ...

 

Indeed, indeed, SloMo is a world leader ... and he has form in stepping out ahead of the pack and cultivating the image of a lone wold bold warrior, and that's no doubt why his war on China has gone so well ...

Over at Crikey, (paywall) the change in rhetoric was noted ...

Fresh from an unexpected election win, having just visited his friend Donald Trump in the White House and seemingly with the world at his feet, last year Scott Morrison ventured a bold and positively Trumpian foreign policy perspective.
In an address to the Lowy Institute, Morrison attacked multilateralism and international institutions, which he characterised as “unaccountable internationalist bureaucracy” and “international institutions [that] demand conformity rather than independent cooperation on global issues”.
“We should avoid any reflex towards a negative globalism that coercively seeks to impose a mandate from an often ill-defined borderless global community,” Morrison claimed.
But about a month later, his treasurer contradicted him. Frydenberg, in a speech to the ANU, warned “there is no alternative to multilateralism” and urged the world to “recapture the co-operative spirit of Bretton Woods” which had led to “institutions that remain important to this day” such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization and the World Bank.
Frydenberg was speaking from an economic perspective, in which Australia is a relatively small country that needs a functional international order and set of rules in areas like trade in order to prosper. Otherwise, we end up… well, we end up right where we are now, with China using trade to try to subject Australia to exemplary punishment for criticising and questioning the tyrants of Beijing.
In a foreign policy speech yesterday, delivered to a British thinktank, did Morrison continue the Trump act and attack multilateral institutions and damn “unaccountable internationalist bureaucracy”? Unsurprisingly, no. Indeed, Morrison has changed his tune quite dramatically.
He wanted to explain to the Brits “why groupings and institutions like the G7, the WTO and the OECD matter in a turbulent world and indeed the G20”.
The OECD matters, of course, because he couldn’t say otherwise while his government is backing, complete with a taxpayer-funded jet, Mathias Cormann’s bid to lead it. 

And so on ... the infallible Pope had a funny cartoon today on the matter, though the pond must apologise for it looking a little mangled ...

 

Meanwhile, Europe fined Google nearly $10 billion for antitrust violations, but little has changed (Washington Post paywall), and there's a wiki here too ...

Of course there's a good case for someone looking into the way that News Corp dominates the newspaper market in Australia too ... perhaps even a Royal Commission, as they cheerfully go about the business of spreading climate science denialism, fake news and conspiratorial disinformation, though the pond understands "Ned" thinks that's okay ...

What is good news is the way such idle talk of RCs and such like has got under the skin of "Ned" and the rest of the reptiles ...

 

Ah the good old gesture politics about News Corp ... and if only News Corp's climate science denialism had been gesture politics too ... but why is "Ned" picking on former Chairman Rudd alone? Perhaps he's still too bruised by his encounter with Malware, as recorded in the Graudian here ...

Malcolm Turnbull says News Corp has become an organisation for “pure propaganda” that has done enormous damage through its promotion of climate change denial.
In a heated exchange on Monday night’s Q+A, the former prime minister and the Australian’s editor-at-large, Paul Kelly, clashed over the media organisation’s treatment of climate science.
Turnbull told the program that News Corp had gone from being an organisation that “tended to lean more right than left to become pure propaganda”.
“The campaign on climate denial is just staggering and has done enormous damage to the world, to the global need to address global warming,” he said.
“I mean, it is so horrifically biased and such propaganda that Rupert’s own son James can’t stomach it.”
Kelly responded, saying Australia had many other publications and news outlets that were dedicated to “promoting the cause of climate change and radical action on climate change”.
“It’s OK to be a propagandist for one side, but if one is a critic or sceptic about some of these issues, that’s not OK?”
Turnbull, who has backed an e-petition initiated by the former Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd calling for a royal commission into the Murdoch media, said Kelly’s response highlighted the problem with News Corp’s coverage of the climate crisis.

And while there, have a read of The Australian says it accepts climate science, so why does it give a platform to 'outright falsehoods'?

As usual, "Ned" can't resist a swipe at social media, while throwing in a second "gesture politics", because that's what the reptiles do when under threat ... and then comes clean and admits that the reptiles are part of a partisan, propagandist organisation, because everyone does it, and that's why the reptiles do it too ...

 

Oh fuck it, not another tossing in of "gesture politics". What a tosser the old loon is, no wonder he was such easy meat for Malware ...

Speaking of desperate attempts of reptiles to avoid the obvious question - why should Google and Facebook money be used to prop up the Murdochians, as opposed to say all the smaller brands out there struggling in the market place to have their voices and insights heard? - Dame Slap attempts the same kind of distraction and diversion this day by mounting her own call for a Royal Commission ...

 

 

 

 

Yes, former Chairman Rudd and Malware have really got under the reptiles' skin ... but why don't they launch a full-on attack on Malware for his disgraceful mishandling of the NBN?

 

Oh wait, that's right, for years the pond spent its time tracking the reptiles' attempt to bring down the very notion of a national broadband scheme, and stifle competition for their own desperately unpopular image streaming service. How they urged on the onion muncher and his minions to produce the mess that now stalks the land ... if anything, they're even more guilty than Malware ...

 

So let's get on with Dame Slap's attempt at a different distraction and diversion ...

 

 

 

 

There comes a point every so often that the pond realises that for all that she's an IPA stooge and a hack, Dame Slap - for all her alleged credentials - is a really stupid person.

Citing the man who sexed up talk of weapons and indulged in a war in Iraq that didn't go terribly well, then talking him up, and getting him blathering on about the importance of risk ... well, that's truly bizarre ...

Sometimes we have to accept no one is to blame? That's easy for Bleagh to say, but let's face it, he can cop a lot of the blame for what happened in Iraq, and share it with other key players ... and Dame Slap should face a share of the blame for the outrageous follies indulged in by the lizards of Oz, even as they keep on doing it ...

As for that talk of the pandemic, the pond would like a Royal Commission into News Corp ... not just for climate science denialism, but the space they gave to talk of Sweden, and Killer Creighton, and sundry assaults on premiers, when really, if the pond might briefly resort to Crikey again ...

 

 

 

But back to Bleagh warning about science, which no doubt helps explain why Dame Slap donned the MAGA cap and slipped out into the night, but not before warning that climate science was going to be used by the UN to establish a world government by Xmas 2009 ...

 

Suddenly the UK is an example to follow? But the UK is comprehensively fucked, and has been fucked for some time now ... with endless talk of lockdowns and tiers, and the only way out of Boris's mess a vaccine that works ... and hopefully the anti-vaxxers toddling off to a grave on their own ... though no doubt many of them are devout reptile readers ...

As for the United States, and Dame Slap's MAGA cap ...

But back to that distracting and diverting talk of a different Royal Commission ...

 

One thing's certain ... the pond is eternally grateful that prudent leaders failed to draw on advice from many reptile sources ... because this country would have been as fucked as the UK and the United States currently are, and will be until, and if, the assorted vaccines do the trick ...

The pond realises that talk of a Royal Commission into News Corp has only a snowball's chance, and will go nowhere, but it's pleasing to see how such talk has got under reptile skins ...

The reptiles will never retreat and never surrender, but then that's in the tradition of that noble reptile hero, Dame Slap's MAGA cap man, celebrated by the immortal Rowe here ...

 

In which the hive mind is at ease and the pond is in a matching mellow mood ...

 

 

Today the hive mind seems fairly inert - they even dragged in George Williams to hint that the lizard Oz had some connection to reality.

But last night's Media Watch report on the reptile war involving former chairman Rudd and the Murdochians was a potent reminder of what happens when the hive mind is stirred into action. 

The pond likes to think of this as warrior wasp syndrome ...

Synoeca is a genus of eusocial paper wasps found in the tropical forests of the Americas. Commonly known as warrior wasps or drumming wasps, they are known for their aggressive behavior, a threat display consisting of multiple insects guarding a nest beating their wings in a synchronized fashion, and an extremely painful sting. The sting is barbed and if used often kills the wasp, which may be the reason why such a striking defensive display is used. This display escalates from drumming inside the nest to hundreds of wasps moving on to the envelope of the nest and of continuing to drum and only if this does not deter the threat do the wasps begin to sting.

The pond was particularly delighted by this effort by Chris Dore (pdf here), wanker in chief at the lizard Oz, in response to the show:

It's been 10 years now since his own party dumped him and 7 years since he lost office. Covid has been tough on everyone. And while not many Australians can sit in a multi-million dollar beachside mansion or luxury digs on the Brisbane River through this tough time Australians no doubt hope Mr Rudd has the support he needs and can one day find solace. The Australian has no desire to smear Mr Rudd...

Of course that's a selective quote, in the style of the reptiles, but as the last line was just another smear, it seemed better to highlight the post-modern, post-ironic style of the Dore, with no desire to smear while delivering an epic smear ...

Meanwhile, with things quiet, the pond thought it might indulge itself with a sampling of ancient, ruined Troy ...

 

 

 

 

A couple of things struck the pond. 

 

How weird it is that the time of the Donald has produced a world where John Bolton is now seen as sane and the font of wisdom. 

 

Oh and did you see some real news, at the BBC, Covid pandemic has little impact on rise in CO2 and at Al Jazeera Carbon dioxide levels keep rising despite industrial lockdown. 

 

And it also struck the pond that it could seize the chance and run a few cartoons better than the one offered by the reptiles to antique Troy ...

 

 

 

 

But on to the weird reptile world where John Bolton is the new normal ... and apparently no one at the lizard Oz remembers that they're close-kissing cousins to Fox News ...

 

 

 

 

All this is remarkably stale. Bolton actually went to work for the man when he was obviously deeply delusional, and now he tells us he was deeply delusional? But Bolton himself has been deeply delusional for years. And now the pond is joining Troy in celebrating delusions on every front, including the delusion that the Murdochians had nothing to do with the massive delusion that now grips the United Sates? Is there some other hobby in the house?

 

 

 

 

Yes, such is the temper of the times that even George W. seems normal.

 

Never mind, the good thing is that the interview with antique Troy was clearly short, so there's only one more gobbet ...

 

 

 

 

Concession speech? Gracious? Undo all that Fox News has done these last four years? Not really possible, the pond thinks, but like Chairman Rudd, it has learned a few things in dealing with the hive mind ... 

 

 

And so to other matters, because this is a laid-back day for the pond. 

 

Sure the world might be frying, but it's a wet day in Sydney and it's a chance to enjoy the lizard Oz editorialist making yet another pitch for their failed, flailing business model to cop a subsidy (because really SloMo, you've sent the reptiles some cash, but not as much as they need) ...

 

 

 

 

Yes, we're all Keynesians now, and when it comes to the reptiles, we're all for big Orwellian government, and government intervention and regulation ...

Oh pity the pitiful hive mind, they need the cash to keep pretending they're a news organisation rather than a squad of warrior wasps ...

Roll jaffas down the aisles as the lizard Oz editorialist talks of diligent and accurate news bulletins ... you know, like that report in the lizard Oz on carbon dioxide that the pond provided a link to above ... (we keed, we keed) ...

 

Perhaps when the posturing is over? A hunger for something more thoughtful and nuanced? What, like the work of warrior wasps, always ready to attack the ABC, climate science and whatever, and pretend that John Bolton is the new normal?

What a comedian the lizard Oz editorialist is. With comedy stylings like that, of course digital media should subsidise them so they can return to handing out their tree killer rags at airports for free ...

What a frabjous day ... even the immortal Rowe seemed a little more relaxed at the prospect of a world in flames ...

 

 

 

 

 

There's more Rowe here, and even though it meant cutting out that picture of the world on fire, the pond just couldn't resist picking out and showing off that portrait of pure beefy Angus goodness ...

 

 

 Phew, note to self, stay on the immortal Rowe's good side ...

And so, as it's a laid-back, lackadaisical sort of day, on to another treat. 

It's not realised that as well as being an expert on how to kill in pandemics, and how to kill with climate science, Killer Creighton is pretty much an expert on everything ... and so he showed a hive mind empathy with the lizard Oz editorialist this day ...

Astonishing insights ... though the pond was disappointed that the reptiles failed to honour Killer's genius with an illustration ... perhaps of someone smashing up a computer as a sign of the ruin it has wreaked on the reptiles' business model ... a celebration of the Luddite way of doing things ...

Ah the Killer has turned meditative and nostalgic, almost Wordsworthian, and yearns for a golden age, and yet, and yet ...

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day.
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

And there's a lot more of that here ... but back to the Killer, undone with intimations of mortality by technology ...

 

 Keynes correct in time? How could this be, how could the Killer be so tainted by heresy?

Yes, fewer useless academics, but won't someone think of the reptiles and their business model?

Keynes showed the way forward ... government stimulus, a little wealth redistribution, a hearty subsidy straight to the reptile purse, so that the reptiles might continue to develop their hive mind and sting whoever or whatever happens to pass their way, but not before there's an enormous flapping and drumming and beating of winds ...

And now to wrap up this mellow pond day, an infallible Pope, also pleasantly relaxed ... 

What a treat, as the pond's partner heads down south to visit the rellies and welcome back to the fold those hapless Victorians in the grip of comrade Dan, who resolutely refused to produce a killing field of the kind that Killer Creighton and other reptiles so devoutly wanted ...