In which the pond experiences overload and nausea in equal parts, no thanks to "Ned", the onion muncher, the old bigot and Mein Gott ...

 

The pond tries hard to do its best, but sometimes is overwhelmed by nausea at the sight of so many loons ...

For whatever perverse reason, the reptiles chose today to celebrate the departure of the liar from the shire, while also featuring the onion muncher preaching to far right authoritarians, and that's even before you get on to our Henry's usual jihad.

It was overwhelming, and the pond could only muck in so far ... with the news that SloMo was trying to blame his assorted capers and misdeeds on meds only serving to put people suffering from genuine depression - as opposed to Xian delusional megalomania - in an unfortunately adverse light.

Even worse, the reptiles sent in nattering "Ned" to hail this alleged Messiah:

The pond almost stumbled at the first gate: "history will look kindly", when all history has to decide is whether the onion muncher or the liar from the Shire was the worst PM in living memory (except for those with a long memory, who might want Harold Holt and Billy McMahon in the list. The pond excludes John Gorton, a genuine warrior and a kindly man, though he did have an unfortunate habit of tanking planes).

Then when it came to blather about Xianity, the pond baulked and decided to offer just a few quotes. No need to endure "Ned" blathering on for an eternity. First there was that Xian thing, and never mind that Hillsong is about as low a con operation as anyone - even the orange Jesus - could offer unto the world ...

The paradox of Morrison was on display. As a politician he was assertive, driving and self-absorbed, his eyes fixated on the ultimate prize, yet as a Christian humbled by the imperfectability of human nature. He ruminated on Tuesday on the limits of politics and the false hopes vested in governments and markets, all being run by imperfect people “just like all of us”.
Morrison departs surrounded by contemporary dispute. He is loathed, even hated by many of his opponents, and the Labor benches on Tuesday were notably only half-full for the speeches. From his own side he is respected but largely unloved, seen as a prime minister whose ability was undermined by personal defects – witness the multiple ministries blunder that constituted misplaced prime ministerial egoism.
At the end Morrison opened his heart wider than before. Speaking as a politician and a believer, he said: “I leave this place not as one of those timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. I leave having given my all out there in that arena and have many scars to show for it. I do leave behind in that arena any bitterness, disappointments or offences that occurred along the way.” 

Oh just bugger off and take "Ned" with you, and don't forget to pack your orange Jesus bible ...

Morrison said his release from any bitterness is “due to my faith in Jesus Christ, which gives me the faith to both forgive but also to be honest with myself and my shortcomings”. His farewell speech had a powerful moral and cultural message for the nation – a message our politicians are frightened to speak and Morrison spoke only in his farewell. It is that Australia needs to retain the core of its being, its Judaeo-Christian ethic.
This is a religious position but transcends religion, going to the essence of our civilisation. He said “diminishing the influence and voice of Judaeo-Christian faith in our Western society” risks our “drifting into a valueless void”.
Why didn’t Morrison stand for this position and issue this warning as prime minister? Why, only now, does he talk in this way about his deepest beliefs? And if he had, wouldn’t he have been more successful? A skilled transactional politician, Morrison had two obstacles as prime minister – the Labor Party and a cultural revolution that he only poorly grasped and that he kept provoking.
Morrison’s faith, his social conservatism and his traditional view of families revealed a prime minister governing in an Australia undergoing a cultural transition defined by the rise of secularism, the elevation of human feelings as the basis for morality, and demands led by professional women for new rules, better behaviour and an end to discrimination.
Morrison’s flaw was lack of empathy when empathy became the electric current of political communication. He was a professional who missed that the mood and values of the nation had changed. But it wasn’t just women who turned against Morrison – it was the professional class.
The combination of Morrison’s personal failures – from the bushfire crisis onwards – and the cultural shift in professional class values brought him undone. To a significant extent Morrison lost the 2022 election on character grounds. In an astute campaign Albanese denied Morrison a major policy difference to exploit and then made Morrison’s character the central question. He was helped by the obvious reality – the government post-pandemic was weary, exhausted, and out of ideas for the future.

At this point, the pond decided to jump to the end ...

The pandemic response was blighted by the slow vaccine rollout and ongoing political battles between the premiers and Morrison. Mistakes were made in Australia – but far less than in many other nations. Australia had one of the lowest fatality rates from Covid in the developed world, with Morrison saying more than 30,000 lives were saved.
When history assesses Morrison’s performance as prime minister, much will flow from his handling of the three principal challenges on his watch, each being a world-defining event. So far contemporary assessments seem anxious to avoid this precise task, preferring an emotional focus on the rich list of Morrison’s flaws. And there are plenty of them. It is a safe bet, however, that as the tyranny of the present fades, history will reveal what really mattered and Morrison’s record is likely to loom in far more favourable terms.

As for the actual legacy? Not much chop there ...

Apart from ritual applause about "stopping the boats", this was the best that "Ned" could muster ...

He had an extraordinary prime ministership, dominated by three external events – China’s strategic assertion and its coercion of Australia, an event of international import; the pandemic that delivered not just a health crisis but the worst trauma for the federation in a century; and the global and domestic recession that threatened the highest jobless rates since the Depression.
On each front, Morrison’s achievements were significant. In retaliation, he internationalised China’s coercion, deepened ties with Japan and India, backed the Quad and was the originator of the AUKUS agreement for the development of nuclear-powered submarines in his negotiations with Boris Johnson and Joe Biden. That initiative is bipartisan. The Albanese government has assumed its political ownership. If it comes to fruition, over the decades Morrison will be seen as architect of one of the most important defence and foreign policy initiatives since World War II.
Australia’s economic response to the pandemic measures as implemented by Morrison and Frydenberg saw the most intense era of economic decision-making since World War II, co-ordinated with Treasury and the Reserve Bank. Yes, they spent too much. But they minimised the economic damage, saw unemployment return to historically low levels and delivered world-leading outcomes among OECD nations.

Uh huh, mistakes were made, and the pond's big mistake was to pay attention to "Ned". 

After being put into a truly bad mood by "Ned" eulogising the liar from the Shire, the pond wasn't in the slightest bit interested or ready for the reptile pandering of the onion muncher, which saw a lavish supply of stills on hand, as the onion muncher pandered to the visitors to the authoritarian crypto-fascists currently in charge of Hungary ...

You can see why the pond had the urgent desire to race to the toilet to upchuck a spectacular technicolor yawn, and it wasn't helped by the set of stills on offer throughout, leading off with one which purported to suggest that the onion muncher was a serious dude, as opposed to someone who badly needed to have his rug pissed on ...

What a triptych of frauds and losers and dropkicks, though it did serve to elevate the onion muncher above his natural level, and at the end of it all came Rish!

That only reminded the pond of the relief at the return of John Crace, giving Rish! hard time, RIGHT!?, but to be fair, also dishing it out in recent times to Minister Mikey, down, down deeper and Dowden, and Humza Yousaf ...

Remembering the good times possible after a heart attack stabilised the pond a little, lifted spirts and allowed the pond to press on ...

Truth to tell, only a bunch of weirdo comrades could swallow this stuff and yet the local reptiles remain intensely loyal, and yes there will be a burst of "climate cult is crap" later on ... the only upside is that with the photos excised, the gobbets are relatively short ...

Indeed, indeed, the onion muncher loves the poorly educated, because they're inclined to swallow this sort of guff ...

Before offering up the usual climate science denialism, in the now fashionable disguise of a caring environmentalist, the pond thought it should note the sort of company the onion muncher is keeping these days, courtesy an AP story ...

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungary’s nationalist prime minister, addressing a conservative conference in Budapest on Thursday, said upcoming European and U.S. elections were a chance for right-wing forces to defeat the “progressive world spirit,” and encouraged former U.S. President Donald Trump to defend “his own truth” in his ongoing criminal trial.

Viktor Orbán, a right-wing populist and the European Union’s longest-serving leader, told supporters at the Conservative Political Action Conference Hungary that conservatives across the West, including himself and Trump, are under attack by a hegemonic liberal order.

EU elections in June and U.S. elections in November, Orbán said, will be a chance to usher in an “era of sovereignty” modeled on Hungary, which he called a “conservative island.”

“These elections coincide with major shifts in world political and geopolitical trends,” Orbán said. “The order of the world is changing, and we must usher our cause to triumph in the midst of these changes. Progressive liberals feel the danger. Replacing this era means replacing them.”

Orbán’s speech opened the third Hungarian iteration of CPAC, an event that this year features numerous far-right figures including U.S. media personality Jack Posobiec, Republican Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona and Dutch anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders.

The two-day CPAC event in Hungary underscores U.S. conservatives’ growing embrace of the Hungarian leader, who has been accused of dismantling democratic institutions, overseeing widespread official corruption and cracking down on critical media.

Independent media outlets, including The Associated Press, were not granted accreditation to cover CPAC Hungary, and were encouraged to follow the event via a livestream. In an email, organizers said the conference is a “no woke zone,” and that coverage would be possible at “future events when and if your organization becomes significantly less woke.”

Orbán has depicted himself as a defender of European Christendom against Muslim migrants, progressives and the “LGBTQ lobby,” and has faced backlash after comments that he opposes Europe becoming a “ mixed-race society.”

But on Thursday, Orbán accused “liberal progressive” governments of employing tactics that critics say he himself has used in Hungary, and suggested that the 34 felony counts against Trump for allegedly falsifying business records in connection with hush money payments were politically motivated.

“If necessary, they will use government agencies against us — as my American friends say, ‘weaponizing state institutions,’” Orbán said. “This happens to us Hungarians constantly in Brussels. This is what is happening to President Trump in America, and we encourage him to fight for his own truth not only in the elections, but also in the courts.”

Orbán, who is routinely hostile toward the EU, has sought for years to rally far-right European parties into a more cohesive political force in the bloc’s legislature. As campaigning for the June 6-9 polls heats up, he has called for a fundamental change in EU leadership.

But he has racked up domestic political headaches in recent months after several senior officials, including the president and justice minister, were forced to resign over a scandal involving a presidential pardon to a man implicated in a child sexual abuse case.

Franco, Orbán? It's all the same to a faux caring environmentalist blathering on about the climate cult and climate tsars ...

What a dropkick, and yet worse was to follow as the pond looked below the fold for guidance ... 

Dammit there was the onion muncher again, and a reminder that this was Friday and our Henry day, and things were so slow, the reptiles were holding over the anonymous mocker, the meretricious Merritt and Blainey of the orient ...

The pond regretted that these days the mere mention of a philosopher sees the pond get wildly excited.

Enough of that Kant, let's have some hole in the bucket man cant, as our Henry conducts his usual jihad ... with Thucydides taking leave for the day, because this is a Crusade ...

Fair dibs. The pond has no time for violence, nor Islam, nor - it goes without saying - barking mad Xians and fundamentalist Zionists, but we really should note that the bishop has been saying, with his wiki providing a useful short summary of his trolling ways ...

Emmanuel has gained popularity through social media, such as Christ the Good Shepherd Church's YouTube channel and TikTok, which earned him the sobriquet "TikTok Bishop". The bishop's sermons on social media have ranged from homilies on the Holy Bible to fervent criticisms of LGBT, COVID vaccinations, and U.S. President Joe Biden's election (where he expressed disapproval of Biden's support for gay rights). Moreover, he has also criticised liberal Christianity...

...On 19 July 2021, amid the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant outbreaks and the lockdown in Sydney, Emmanuel presented an online sermon that reprimanded the COVID-19 vaccinations and lockdowns calling them "mass slavery", and saying that the coronavirus is "just another type of the flu, no more, no less" and called it a "plandemic". In his video, he implored Australian prime minister Scott Morrison and NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian to do more and aid those with financial and emotional adversity, in addition to saying, "have we really lost the plot?"...

...In addition to criticising non-Christian religions, such as Judaism and Islam, the Bishop is also known for preaching anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and describing homosexuality as a "crime in the eyes of God". In one sermon, he stated that "Islam flourished and expanded with the sword". However, amidst the Israel–Hamas war, he has called for peace. In addition, he has supported American former president Donald Trump, imploring him to remain faithful to Christianity and defy the influence of the Freemasons. A sermon of his posted online by fans depicts him to claim the United Nations was established by Satan, in addition to labeling the World Health Organization a "fraud".

Footnotes at the source and there's a lot more ratbaggery online, and the pond will accept the half-baked wording about the UN because it's just an inept transcription of the archived France 24 source.

If you want the full experience, you can find a sermon on YouTube, Satan is the founder of the United Nations, with the helpful explainer Mar Mari Emmanuel explains the evilness of the United Nations and the USA and claims it has been founded by Satan... 

The pond recommends avoiding the experience, though it turns bemusing when he rampant bigot also blathers on about the wickedness of the telly, which rather dates his clown show, but he does get on to social media, deploring the mechanism he wilfully exploits and abuses...

A full, copious nutjob, but does any of this trouble the resident lizard Oz old bigot? Of course not, he doesn't pause to consider any of that, it's time for a bigoted history lesson ...

The pond has long lost interest in assorted bigotries, be they the schismatics in Islam, or the tykes v. the proddies, or all the rest of the guff offered up by assorted fanatics of the true believer kind, and in the end, our Henry is just one pompous attempt at taking part in a Python skit, which would be fine, except for the centuries of mayhem caused by barking mad believers howling that their god is the best, when She really doesn't care for any of it ...

Reading all this twaddle, you'd almost forget that it was the Xians that set off on the Crusades..."the triumphs of the Crusades were the triumphs of faith. But faith without wisdom is a dangerous thing." Steven Runciman.

Who knows if he actually said it - that's the way it is with the internet, but his history of the Crusades is an eye opener and the pond liked this quote from a show about the pilgrims in arms...

Steven Runciman: I always thought that the crusades they were basically a barbarian invasion. But these invasions usually can be inspired for the belief of fulfilling a religious duty. But unfortunately, his idea of serving God was very destructive, and not too civilized.

Well yes, it doesn't sound like the best transcript, but talk of barbarians is about right, and at last the crusading old barbarian bigot has reached his final hate-laden gobbet ...

Xianity has changed? Not when there are bigots like our Henry and Emmanuel to keep peddling the hate ...

And finally to the pond giving itself a treat. 

As the pond has remarked many times before, the publishing hours for Mein Gott are outside the usual pond hours, but every so often the pond notices a new Mein Gott outing ...

These are especially delicious when Mein Gott shows his skills as a military historian and a defence expert, far more accomplished than the bromancer...

Mein Gott, the pond remembers the old joke about generals always fighting the last war, but Mein Gott, it might be true ...

Hang on, hang on, back to that Gallipoli matter. Didn't the pond read yesterday that it was simply an away game draw?

Mistakenly, when younger, I thought that Gallipoli was a defeat for Australia. But the evacuation of our forces during a few nights in December 1915 was so successful that Gallipoli in football terms might be viewed as a drawn match; moreover, a match played away from home. 

Our emphasis on Gallipoli diverts attention from World War II. Then Australia itself was in peril but few of our leaders were prepared for that peril.

Essington Lewis, the chief executive of Broken Hill Proprietary, visiting Japan in 1934, rightly concluded that it was secretly preparing for a major war in the Pacific. At a large aircraft factory near Port Melbourne in 1939 his team launched their first planes, the Wirraways. Not fast enough, they were shot down in nearly every duel in 1941 and 1942.

But soon appeared the Beauforts and Beaufighters, impressive aircraft made in factories in Melbourne and Sydney, and they certainly competed against most Japanese planes.

Lewis was appointed director of every kind of wartime manufacturing for the Australian government and led a huge workforce of men and women. A country boy at heart, he was to die, aged 80, after a fall from his horse.

It did, it did, and all we need are a brand new line of Beausubs courtesy of BHP ... and then likely we can score an away draw, and a bloody big win on home turf, provided we stick to the Brisbane line.

At this point the reptiles interrupted Mein Gott with snaps of safety vests and kits, in bromancer style ...

 

Mein Gott, the pond realises it hasn't mentioned the current genocide ... please allow the immortal Rowe to correct the omission ...

At last a use for Mein Gott ... as a cartoons clothes horse ...

Indeed, indeed, and the United States is in extraordinarily good shape at the moment, with its eye on the ball or the balls or the balling ...

What's that, the country is still at war?

Mein Gott, it's terribly easy to get distracted ...

And yet ... and yet ... hasn't the war in Ukraine turned into an old-fashioned artillery duel, with much fortification of turf that makes advancing very difficult, and so the war has turned to skirmishes using drones?

Ukraine is still likely to be outgunned by Russian artillery for much of the rest of 2024 despite Congress nearing the passage of a $60 billion military aid bill for Kyiv, officials and analysts told Foreign Policy, as both the United States and Europe ramp up production of NATO-standard rounds and restock their own arsenals.

For months, Ukrainian troops have been firing about 2,000 rounds a day, barely enough to sustain a defensive war against the Russians. And even with the approval of new U.S. aid, most factories have yet to ramp up production.

“The problem is there is a huge shortage—worldwide—of artillery shells,” said Oleksandra Ustinova, a Ukrainian lawmaker. “The Europeans said they would provide us a million shells—they provided only 30 percent of those. The Americans have dried out their stocks, and they’re also delivering to Israel. And they are only ramping up the production line.” 

The congressional seal of approval, expected to come Tuesday or Wednesday, will mean that the Biden administration can begin to replenish the U.S. Defense Department’s stockpiles of ammunition that the United States might need to fight a war of its own someday, thereby allowing the White House enough leeway to begin sending artillery to the Ukrainians from storehouses in Europe without harming U.S. military readiness. Reuters reported that the Biden administration is preparing a $1 billion package that will include artillery, rockets, and lots of vehicles.

But the expectation is that the administration will spend much of the year rebuilding U.S. stockpiles to prewar levels as the U.S. Army aims to level up artillery production to 100,000 rounds per month by the end of 2025. 

Or at the end of that story ...

...CNN reported this week that the Biden administration is also expected to provide the Ukrainians with long-range U.S. Army Tactical Missile Systems for the first time. But with U.S. and European factories just starting to work double time to get themselves—and the Ukrainians—the weapons they need, Kyiv is expected to spend much of 2024 digging defensive trenches, as it has been doing for months.

It’s not clear those fortifications will be as effective as the multitiered Russian lines that blunted Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive, though.

“Ukraine is developing fortifications. They are building a defense depth,” said Rob Lee, a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia program who last traveled to Ukraine in November. “But the problem is when you have this manpower problem and ammunition problem at same time, it creates issues.”

Artillery, trenches, oh what would the pond know up against Mein Gott ... time to slip in an infallible Pope ...

Mein Gott, the pond knows the feeling, and this is the final gobbet of reptile crash content for the day ...

Indeed,  indeed, wise words ... gad sir ...

Now can someone provide an armchair and a nicely matured vintage port, while the pond reports on a truly serious issue ...

What, no mention of the munching of buttered, salted popcorn, or the loud sucking of gunk and ice through a straw? What troubled times we live in ...

In which the pond wanders about and only has a latter-day Enoch to brood about ...

 

The pond has been disappointed in this year's reptile build-up to Anzac day, and has to thank Charlie Lewis at Crikey (paywall) for a summary of the best on offer:

Anzac Day retreat Anzac Day hasn’t managed the same kind of heat since the fury of the Yassmin Abdel-Magied/Scott McIntyre peaks of yesteryear, but that will never stop the noble soldiers of Australia’s forever culture wars from having a go. Nationals MP and walking pub meal Barnaby Joyce has initiated an attack on the government for its leave policy, which allows public servants to work on Thursday and take time off in lieu, as a “deliberate attempt to dilute the importance of Anzac day”, which is pretty funny, given Joyce’s attack is diluted version of the exact same thing he said last year. Wait till Joyce hears about the anti-Australian anarchists at Coles, Woolworths, Target, Aldi, Dan Murphy’s, BWS, Big W, Kmart, Bunnings, and Best and Less, not to mention those commies at the AFL, and NRL.
Speaking of Woolies, Senator Pauline Hanson, very much in her “going door to door trying to offend people” phase after failing to make much of a mark in the Indigenous Voice to Parliament debate, made a tenuous slam on the retail giant. Having apparently boycotted Woolworths since it was insufficiently amped about Australia Day, Hanson posted she had “learned Woolworths has also refused to stock the RSL’s special Anzac biscuit tins”. The only problem is the implication — that Woolworths was cancelling Anzac Day and abandoning our brave diggers — was demonstrably untrue.

Feeble stuff from the usual feeble players, and instead the pond was ineluctably drawn to the following Lewis item:

The pond rarely features the panhandling Panahi, and probably shouldn't mention its deep devotion to the idea of dressing as a cat, provided your bumhole can be digitally erased, and Lewis's text was in the same vein ...

Panahi attacks a middle school in Utah for its apparent failure to stop “furries” from terrorising other students — allegedly “biting” and “licking” them, but it’s only the nice normal kids who retaliate who get suspended, on account of woke. Furries are (please don’t Google it) a subculture of people who dress up and act like animal characters — they’re often a tangential target for anti-LGBTQIA+ campaigners. Yet again, this outrage seems to be baseless, with Nebo School District spokesperson Seth Sorenson forced to clarify that the kerfuffle had resulted from the distortion of a message the school sent out about bullying. According to Sorenson, kids were being called names and having food thrown at them “because they were dressed differently”, including wearing headbands “that may have ears on them”.
“These are pretty young kids,” Sorenson told The Salt Lake Tribune. “You’ll have students that show up with headbands and giant bows; you’ll have students that show up dressed as their favourite basketball player, or baseball player. That’s just what kids this age do.”
The outrage, fomented by right-wing radio hosts and the deeply grubby Libs of TikTok YouTube channel, before being swallowed unquestioningly by Pahani four days after Sorenson’s comments, continues an extremely long-standing desire on the part of right-wing media to fall for hoaxes about children “identifying” as animals. And this isn’t just harmless idiocy — the police had to attend the school to investigate the bomb threats it received in the aftermath of the coverage.

The pond recalled all the kids that were out and about in rabbits ears at Easter, and before that the deer antlers that seemed to sprout on heads and cars alike, and realised yet again there was a deep sickness in the land ... News Corp...

As this is a laidback holyday, what else caught the eye? The pond happened to clip this from a rolling Graudian news of the day ...

The pond hadn't realised that Uncle Elon was a Maoist, but shouldn't have been surprised. 

As Chairman Mao himself said back in 1957 when identifying enemies of the people in a speech and in an essay On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People:

"At the present stage, the period of building socialism, the classes, strata and social groups which favour, support and work for the cause of socialist construction all come within the category of the people, while the social forces and groups which resist the socialist revolution and are hostile to or sabotage socialist construction are all enemies of the people." (wiki)

All hail Chairman Mao and Chairman Musk ...

Meanwhile, Graham Readfearn was being naughty in the Graudian yet again ... Dutton’s plan to save Australia with nuclear comes undone when you look between the brushstrokes.

The Coalition has said it wants to put nuclear reactors at the sites of coal-fired power plants, but hasn’t said where, how big the reactors will be, when it wants them built or given an estimate on cost.
The Coalition has previously said it would give more details on its plan in time for its response to the Albanese government’s budget next month, but Dutton is now saying it will come “in due course”.
Despite this, Dutton claimed in his interview with the ABC’s David Speers that: “I believe that we’re the only party with a credible pathway to net zero by 2050.”
OK then.

Okay, then ...

Okay, then, and while hopping about, why not recall Elizabeth Kolbert's essay in The New Yorker, "The "Epic Row" over a new Epoch.

It was all to do with what to do about the notion of the Anthropocene, and it was a joyous reminder of the way that science has routinely seen schismatics and splitters gumming up the works. 

Spoiler alert, by the very end of it, Kolbert (she discloses she is an Anthropocene partisan) tried to pacify the angry mob of spluttering geologists:

...The future of the Anthropocene as an official stratigraphic unit is, at this point, unclear. The A.W.G. dissolved after the vote, but, as several members of the group pointed out to me, the leadership of the I.C.S. is due to turn over this summer, after the quadrennial International Geological Congress, set to take place in South Korea. Kim Cohen, a Dutch geologist who, at fifty, is one of the younger members of the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy and who cast a “yes” vote for the new epoch, told me that he expects to see the Anthropocene added to the geological timescale within his life.

“I think many of my fellow S.Q.S. members will not see it,” he added by way of clarification.

But the Anthropocene’s future as an informal time period is assured. It’s too apt—and too important—a term to be abandoned. As Paul Crutzen pointed out in 2002, barring a “meteorite impact, a world war or a pandemic,” humans “will remain a major environmental force for many millennia.” Science recently summed up the situation this way: “the anthropocene is dead. long live the anthropocene.”

Crutzen died in 2021, so it’s impossible to know what he would have said about the recent I.C.S. vote. I imagine, though, that he would have responded to it much as he did to a question I posed to him back in 2010. What was important about the Anthropocene, he told me at that time, was not whether it was included in geology texts, but whether it prompted people to think more carefully about the consequences of their collective actions.

“What I hope,” he said, “is that the term ‘Anthropocene’ will be a warning to the world.” 

 

Considering itself warned, the pond moved on to the reptile edition for the day, and the baleful presence in the top far right position suggested that the usual mob had slacked off for the day ...

Rather than dwell on visiting Bredan rabbiting on about the crisis in western civilisation and Zionism - there is a crisis going on, but it involves a genocide and many bodies under and above the ground - why not have a read of Naomi Klein in The Graudian, We need an exodus from Zionism...

She gets quite heated and biblical ...

I’ve been thinking about Moses, and his rage when he came down from the mount to find the Israelites worshipping a golden calf.
The ecofeminist in me was always uneasy about this story: what kind of God is jealous of animals? What kind of God wants to hoard all the sacredness of the Earth for himself?
But there is a less literal way of understanding this story. It is about false idols. About the human tendency to worship the profane and shiny, to look to the small and material rather than the large and transcendent.
What I want to say to you tonight at this revolutionary and historic Seder in the Streets is that too many of our people are worshipping a false idol once again. They are enraptured by it. Drunk on it. Profaned by it.
That false idol is called Zionism.
It is a false idol that takes our most profound biblical stories of justice and emancipation from slavery – the story of Passover itself – and turns them into brutalist weapons of colonial land theft, roadmaps for ethnic cleansing and genocide.
It is a false idol that has taken the transcendent idea of the promised land – a metaphor for human liberation that has traveled across multiple faiths to every corner of this globe – and dared to turn it into a deed of sale for a militaristic ethnostate.
Political Zionism’s version of liberation is itself profane. From the start, it required the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and ancestral lands in the Nakba.
From the start it has been at war with dreams of liberation. At a Seder it is worth remembering that this includes the dreams of liberation and self-determination of the Egyptian people. This false idol of Zionism equates Israeli safety with Egyptian dictatorship and client states.
From the start it has produced an ugly kind of freedom that saw Palestinian children not as human beings but as demographic threats – much as the pharaoh in the Book of Exodus feared the growing population of Israelites, and thus ordered the death of their sons.
Zionism has brought us to our present moment of cataclysm and it is time that we said clearly: it has always been leading us here.
It is a false idol that has led far too many of our own people down a deeply immoral path that now has them justifying the shredding of core commandments: thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not covet.

And so on, and though visiting Brendan wasn't likely to read it, it was more than enough for the pond, and it was time to look below the fold, and discover yet another light serve ...

Petulant Peta doing Covid yet again? That's the best she can do on this day?

Nah, not really. 

And as for Jack going on about the war to end all wars, the pond has already brooded about the pond's grandad, a machine gunner deep in the Somme mud, and a raging drunk and wife beater on return.

And the pond always regards the lizard Oz editorials as filler, so there was nothing for it but to give our very own Enoch a run ...

Ah yes, 'Breaker' Morant, wot wot, and the rule of the .303, and nothing like a good colonial brew, a spiffing stoush, wot wot, and then for some damn useless reason, the pesky, difficult uppity blacks ended up running the country, and so much for the Boers and the Brits ...

And as for Churchill's Dardanelles folly, which clearly had nothing to do with who won the war, it was an epic exercise in stupidity and futility, but armchair generals still love it ...

Say what? A drawn match? What form of delusion is this, (a) to treat war as some kind of game of football played by Queen Victoria warriors, and (b) then to proclaim a draw, when Johnny Turk had clearly whupped British, Australian and NZ arses ...

A lot of people died for an entirely useless form of Churchillian dreaming, not the first or the last time he'd initiate a folly.

As for calling it a draw, that's a bit like counting the Dunkirk evacuation as a win. 

Sure, it made for a number of movies and a feel good vibe, but there's no way of stepping around the way that the Nazi hordes had whupped the allies' arses, with sociopathic Adolf preening himself in the streets of Paris ...

It wasn't fatal, but it was a near run thing, until Adolf, like many a sociopathic fool, tried the Napoleonic strategy of war on many fronts ...

To top it all, the reptiles featured a snap of soldiers being cruel to native fauna, and it has to be said, with the image looking cheaply and nastily colourised, or maybe it's just a cheap and nasty rag...

Then it was on to more memories of now distant wars, with nary a mention of John Monash being blackballed...

Actually the shock was a little muted, at least in relation to Darwin, because the government muted the figures ...

Strict censorship was imposed in Australia at the start of World War II. The Menzies Government formed the Department of Information (DOI) to control publicity. It was believed censorship was necessary to prevent valuable information falling into enemy hands and to maintain high morale at home.

An example of the wartime censorship was the Government report on the bombing of Darwin in February 1942. The ‘official’ death toll was given as 17 when in reality the number was closer to 250. (here)

It was Singapore and the guns pointing the wrong way, and the loss of the Sydney that put the cat amongst the pigeons (the pond's mother occasionally dropped hints about her loss of a sailor lover onboard the Sydney, but the pond never found out if it was but a passing wartime fantasy).

At this point the reptiles began to drop in their free stock footage illustrations ...

Then it was back to the rambling ...

Actually it was Curtin's speech on 14th March 1942 that will be remembered, and for those who care to remember there's a transcript and an audio file (which the pond didn't try but which automatically downloads as a .mov) here...

"There is no belittling of the Old Country in this outlook. Britain has fought and won in the air the tremendous battle of Britain. Britain has fought, and with your strong help, has won, the equally vital battle of the Atlantic. She has a paramount obligation to supply all possible help to Russia. She cannot, at the same time, go all out in the Pacific. We Australians, with New Zealand, represent Great Britain here in the Pacific - we are her sons - and on us the responsibility falls. I pledge to you my word we will not fail. You, as I have said, must be our leader. We will pull knee to knee with you for every ounce of our weight.

"We looked to America, among other things, for counsel and advice, and therefore it was our wish that the Pacific War Council should be located at Washington. It is a matter of some regret to us that, even now, after 95 days of Japan's staggering advance south, ever south, we have not obtained first-hand contact with America. Therefore, we propose sending to you our Minister for External Affairs (Dr H.V. Evatt), who is no stranger to your country, so that we may benefit from his discussions with your authorities. Dr Evatt's wife, who will accompany him, was born in the United States. Dr Evatt will not go to you as a mendicant. He will go to you as the representative of a people as firmly determined to hold and hit back at the enemy as courageously as those people from whose loins we spring... those people who withstood the disaster of Dunkirk, the fury of Goering's blitz, the shattering blows of the Battle of the Atlantic. He will go to tell you that we are fighting mad; that our people have a government that is governing with orders and not with weak-kneed suggestions; that we Australians are a people who, while somewhat inexperienced and uncertain as to what war on their own soil may mean, are nevertheless ready for anything, and will trade punches, giving odds if needs be, until we rock the enemy back on his heels.

"We are, then, committed, heart and soul, to total warfare. How far, you may ask me, have we progressed along that road? I may answer you this way. Out of every ten men in Australia four are wholly engaged in war as members of the fighting forces or making the munition and equipment to fight with. The other six, besides feeding and clothing the whole ten and their families, have to produce the food and wool and metals which Britain needs for her very existence. We are not, of course, stopping at four out of ten. We had over three when Japan challenged our life and liberty. The proportion is now growing every day. On the one hand we are ruthlessly cutting out unessential expenditure so as to free men and women for war work; and on the other, mobilizing woman-power to the utmost to supplement the men. From four out of ten devoted to war, we shall pass to five and six out of ten. We have no limit.

Thank the long absent lord, it was Curtin's mob that was in charge, and not Pig iron Bob, worshipper of all things British and in due course holder of the arduous position of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports ...

And so to the final gobbet ...

Lest we forget ...

And what was that about migrants? The old racist had to slip that one in at the very last? He couldn't let the Enoch Powell in him go?

Lest we forget ...

Lest we forget ...

And while in the business of lest we forgetting ...

In which the pond keeps getting swept back to 1980 and newsagents, thanks to Mein Gott and nattering "Ned" ...

 

It being Wednesday, the pond knew what was coming ... the bitch from hell would be back, and doing her usual Lehrmann matter schtick ...

Strangely the reptiles offered a serve of low-grade Rice in the far right, highly desired top of the world ma position of the digital edition, but never mind, it was red card day. 

The pond can only express contempt for Dame Slap so often before exhaustion set in, and even worse, she turned up again, like a bad penny, in the comments section below the fold ...

Two Dame Slap splashes, a serve of rice and a couple of lizard Oz editorials and the lying rodent?

Luckily the pond had a fall back, because yesterday there was a fine tag team out and about ...

The pond has already covered the groaning, but Mein Gott, why do they always publish the master at a time when the pond's turned to other matters?

At least the tag team made the pond realise the error of its ways. Usually the pond calls reptile offerings "angertainment", but really they're in the "feartainment, we'll all be rooned" genre ...

Just look at the frenzied fear in the eyes of the character hired from stock photos to accompany Mein Gott's dissertation ...

'

The pond was terrified at what was to follow - just like the wild-eyed, sweaty model in the snap.

Sadly there seemed no way that Mein Gott could ever provide inspiration to the poetry muse, but hey ho, into the valley of fear we go, with saucy doubts and many alarums, and probably a dot point listicle...

Is it not a wonder that only Mein Gott knows? Is it not a joy that only Mein Gott stands on the railway tracks, a lonely Dickensian figure warning of the fast-approaching train, looming through the fog?

Yes, he's The Signal-Man, conjuring up terrifying ghosts ... (if Mein Gott sounds too tedious to continue, there's always Project Gutenberg).

Sorry, the pond doesn't know brought on that arcane reference, except perhaps sheer fear at the prospect of a dot point listicle ...

He knows a suburban newsagent? As in those ancient barely remembered temples for tree killing rags?

Didn't they all turn into scratchie and lotto ticket sellers, with a sideline in birthday cards? The pond has to travel a long way if it wants to indulge in that form of nostalgia ...

Perhaps sensing this, the reptiles offered a snap of another business model to help Mein Gott ...

And then the feartainment was over, and apparently the newsagent was taking a grave employment risk, when the humble pond thought that trying to make a living out of peddling News Corp tree killer editions was the real business risk ...

Yet again, the pond is reminded of the aged demographic at home in the lizard Oz. Ye ancient cats and long failing newsagent dogs, get with the program and everyone can be a winner ...

Feeling lucky, the pond decided that as a bonus, it would tackle "Ned". Sure there would only be more "feartainment" and no inspiration for the poetry muse, and it raises a pungent question - would the pond be better off with a void than with a "Ned" offering?

Talk about rhetorical overdrive. There's something about "Ned" in his dotage that goes beyond Chicken Little terrified by clouds... he's a veneer stripper and a fierce backlasher, at least in his own lunchtime.

The pond immediately knew that the only way through this forest was some cartoons on other matters ...

Perhaps a cheery evocation of a future wherein good citizens could have fun nuking the country ...

Now there's a stimulating business model ... meanwhile, back with Chicken Little ...

Not FDR, that Commie swine, and then the reptiles couldn't help themselves ... they had to feature a snap of a couple of long lost politicians, who feature almost as many times in the lizard Oz as images of the terrifying ghost of Gough ...

There were a couple of other huge snaps to break up "Ned"s veneer-stripping ...

The pond was more interested in this question. Why hadn't the infallible Pope found a spot for "Ned" in his portrait of crying man-babies?

Yep, it's a tough time to deliver a few one liners about "Ned" when there's all that noise coming from the audience.

Never mind, because the pond stripped out those snaps, "Ned's" piece turned into easy to navigate short gobbets ...

As America re-makes the world get again, surely that's a cue for a celebration of the re-make ...

Then it was back to "Ned", still driven to apocalyptic fear by erupting paradigms ...

Let the pond assure terrified readers than there's nothing more frightening than erupting paradigms. Your average boil or pimple is one thing, but an erupting paradigm is positively volcanic, almost priapic in its intensity ...

Sorry, sorry, of course the pond is taking "Ned's" dire warnings to heart ...

The Empire Strikes Back?

As the pond recalls, that's a reference to sci fi space opera first seen in country in 1980 ...

The pond felt itself in the grip of a weird time warp, but on the upside, "Ned", and so the pond, had managed to avoid any mention of the ongoing genocides ...

Just don't look to the reptiles of Oz for a new compass.

And then came the push to the summit, the last gobbet that needed to be surmounted before relaxing at the top of the "Ned" Everest and enjoying the view, perhaps a little traumatised, but also triumphant at having made it ...

Ah, that powerful and emerging insight ...  and what form might those alarums take?

Why, it's ancient ghost returned to haunt the reptiles ...yep, it's the lying rodent, and the reptiles were too bloody lazy to even find and put a thumb photo in his splash ...

Talk about disinterring aged bones so that we might hear a voice from the crypt, and to make sure that we all got the message from this """, the reptiles sent the lesser member of the Kelly gang and another lizard Oz hack to do a gloss ... 

Strangely then they could find a picture of the lying rodent in statesman-like pose, or perhaps the chair was just a way of keeping balance ...

Really? The best the reptiles have got is trundling out little Johnny to talk up Hawke and Keating?

Really? What about the splendid visions of Captain Spud? You know, that nuking the country to save the planet thingie ...

By this time the pond thought it might hop in the car and drive a few miles to pick up a newspaper and read about the splendid reptile visions on offer for anyone over eighty ... back to the future, or at least to 1980.

And so to end with the Rowe of the day, and a reminder of another circus altogether much more fun than what the reptiles offered this day, what with the lizard Oz's key feature being yet another bitchy slapdown while contemplating the Lehrmann matter, by a truly reprehensible inhabitant of Planet Janet ... carrying on like a mugging creep lurking in a side alley ...

As usual, it's all in the details, and there are plenty of details, but one detail made the pond wonder if the immortal Rowe happened to be a Jimmy Kimmel or Jon Stewart viewer ...

Pfft indeed .... it's been a pfft sort of day with the reptiles ...