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 ...

A whopper pond, and you can have a serve of the caroling Carroll, the bromancer, and Dame Groan with your sesame seed bun ...

 

The pond was shocked and appalled. 

The Riddster was doing some of his very best science for the IPA, Culture Wars On The Great Barrier Reef – IPA Academy - yes, they have a splendid Academy, and the Riddster was academising as recently as February this year, and everything's fine, the reef's never been in better shape, think of that change of colour as the vanity of a woman wanting to go a little blonde, the reef just loves a warm bath, a bit like a sauna really, amazingly invigorating.

Meanwhile, over at The Conversation, the woke alarmists are reading scallywags like John Turnbull et al, More than coral: the unseen casualties of record-breaking heat on the Great Barrier Reef. 

The site's a hotbed of alarmism, with Geary et al furiously scribbling about a fiery future in Gone in a puff of smoke: 52,000 sq km of ‘long unburnt’ Australian habitat has vanished in 40 years when any devoted Caterist knows it isn't climate change, it's those bloody renewables.

Why hasn't the lizard Oz stepped in and called up the Riddster to sort out the scallywags?

In other news, Dame Slap featured in Media Watch in Lehrmann matter and suddenly the pond felt righteous at avoiding all she'd written on the Lehrmann matter:

...remarkably The Oz decreed that Ten’s The Project and Lisa Wilkinson were worth equal billing in the headline and the picture gallery:
Rapist and a dodgy Project 
HIGGINS’ AND TEN’S CLAIM OF POLITICAL CONSPIRACY WAS BOGUS, DID ‘MUCH DAMAGE’ - The Australian, 16 April, 2024
Which is amazing, given that the ‘dodgy Project’ helped bring the rapist down. 
But perhaps it’s not surprising, given The Australian has spent years finding fault in Brittany, attacking Lisa, and bolstering Bruce. 
So, did The Oz acknowledge it had backed a liar and a loser? Certainly not. 
Least of all its Lehrmann correspondent, Janet Albrechtsen, who before the judgment damned everyone’s morals — except her own — rebuked campaigning journalists — except herself — and pronounced: 
When curiosity went out the door, the biggest loser was the search for the truth.  - The Weekend Australian, 13-14 April, 2024
Nor was there any self-reflection in Albrechtsen’s summary of the judgment, headlined: 
Justice Michael Lee puts all parties in their place - The Australian, 16 April, 2024
Which, once again, did not extend to The Australian’s columnist. 
But, as media critic Margaret Simons suspected in The Guardian, this was: 
 … only because her conduct was not relevant to the matters he had to decide. - The Guardian, 17 April, 2024
And what was that conduct? According to Simons:

Janet Albrechtsen became a player, rather than a mere reporter.- The Guardian, 17 April, 2024

And it’s hard to argue with that. Because since The Project’s interview with Higgins in 2021, Albrechtsen has filed countless stories for ‘Team Man’, as the ABC’s Annabel Crabb so aptly puts it, arguing that Higgins should never have gone to the media, suggesting Lehrmann was not given a fair go, and that Higgins may have not told the truth, dismissing Higgins claims of a political cover up, and condemning the media and Lisa Wilkinson for their role in it all. 

Some of these were comment pieces. Some were news. Some were decent stories. 

But the key problem with the coverage was it was relentlessly one-eyed, casting Lehrmann as the victim and his accusers as the villains:

The proper thing to do would be for Lisa Wilkinson to hand back her Logie - The Australian, 7 June, 2023

With Albrechtsen so keen to platform Lehrmann and attack his critics she even lauded Seven’s Spotlight for its quote ‘impressive journalism’, adding: 

… the Spotlight team explored a story of national significance, explaining it, probing it, asking hard questions. - The Australian, 7 June, 2023

That comment has not aged well. 

But it was just one of scores of stories that Albrechtsen produced, with the vast majority pushing Lehrmann’s barrow or criticising his accusers. 

And few, if any, favouring the victim. 

Many of these were exclusives, and appear to rely on confidential documents subpoenaed for the criminal trial, like these three that followed the Spotlight interview:

Wilkinson and Higgins war-gamed which ‘friendlies’ to fire up - The Australian, 5 June, 2023

Brittany’s angry letter to Project host - The Australian, 6 June, 2023

Higgins, politics, plots: ‘feed everything to Katy’ - The Australian, 8 June, 2023

And while Justice Lee had nothing to say about The Australian using this material — because he wasn’t asked — he did find Bruce Lehrmann had leaked confidential court documents to Spotlight in breach of implied undertakings to the criminal court, with this photo of Brittany Higgins text messages on Bruce Lehrmann’s laptop reflecting the face of Spotlight’s EP Mark Llewellyn. 

Leading Lee in his judgment to reach the quote ‘inescapable conclusion’:

… that Mr Lehrmann provided access to Mr Llewellyn to take the Relevant Photographs, and thus wrongly provided him with access to the information … - Lehrmann v Network Ten Pty Limited (Trial Judgment), Federal Court of Australia, 15 April 2024

Tellingly, Llewellyn had posted photos of himself and Lehrmann at Randwick Races, with this pointer:

Some low profile bloke in the background …  - Instagram, @archiebombora, 15 April, 2023 (via news.com.au)

Lehrmann’s leak of these and other documents could place him and any recipients of the material in contempt of court and theoretically attract fines or even jail. 

So did The Australian also get the drop? Albrechtsen has refused to answer that question, protesting:

These journalists want us to reveal our sources. Seriously? - The Weekend Australian, 13-14 April, 2024

So we don’t know if The Australian was a party to Lehrmann’s leaks or not. 

The pond relished it all so much it couldn't resist quoting at length, and there's no point carrying on with the lizard Oz denials. 

They're relentlessly, comprehensively shameless and as for the knowing or not, begging Media Watch's pardon, only those caught in a snowstorm in the Antarctic could miss the bleeding obvious, because Dame Slap has been at it again ... scheming, contriving and dining ...

And the pond hadn't even caught up on that other goss ...

...After his north-of-the-harbour exodus, he was spotted coming and going from a harbourside mansion in Point Piper owned by Lady Penelope Street, the widowed second wife of former NSW chief justice and lieutenant governor Sir Laurence Street, of the storied Sydney judicial dynasty.
The exclusive residence, designed by Walter Burley Griffin, architect of Canberra, is just across the beach from the home of Malcolm Turnbull, coincidentally a mentee of Sir Laurence. By the time Federal Court justice Michael Lee rejected Lehrmann’s defamation claim against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson on Thursday afternoon, he had left.
But what on earth was he doing there in the first place? Lady Penelope denied Lehrmann had stayed with her in Point Piper. When we asked her why eyewitnesses had seen him on the premises, and why his car was parked on the street, she didn’t respond.
But we hear she has become rather close with another friend of Lehrmann’s, Bettina Arndt, the men’s rights activist set to host the former staffer at a conference on the justice system in June.
Whatever becomes of Lehrmann after Monday’s judgment, it looks like he still has a few friends in high places.

What else before proceeding with the day's reptile offerings?

Well the pond would have liked to have delivered this smackdown (paywall):

“It’s my absolute honor to be in Congress, but I serve with some real scumbags,” Gonzales said. “Matt Gaetz, he paid minors to have sex with him at drug parties. Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) endorsed my opponent, a known neo-Nazi. These people used to walk around in white hoods at night. Now they’re walking around with white hoods in the daytime.”

And what about Stewart Lee's takedown, Andrew Neil needs to be more Vorderman, less Voldemort? 

That might sound like he's at one with the transphobia woman, but he uses a classical reference our Henry would love, not to mention that old Shaksperian rag ...

...Andrew Neil is not alone in his denials of the depths to which we have sunk, and the tide of Tufton Street turds, corrupt politicians and client journalists engulfing British life has a fabular precedent. The fifth of Hercules’s legendary 12 labours required him to sluice 30 years of manure from the stables where the immortal horses of King Augeas had deposited endless dung. This Hercules did by diverting the rivers Alpheus and Peneus, the twin responsibilities of water supply provision and waste management solutions combining so much more simply in the pre-privatisation era.
(It is fortunate for Hercules that his task took place in ancient Europe rather than in Brexit Britain, as the use of any modern British river to clean a filthy stable would now only contaminate it further. Had Hercules been required to investigate a complex series of shell companies designed to filter British bill payers’ money, and profits extracted by the water companies at the expense of infrastructure maintenance and safe sewage dispersal, into the pockets of shareholders and the coffers of foreign pension funds, the labour of the Augean stables would have been a far less enduring tale. Though doubtless the Sunaks would have read it approvingly to their kids as an example of clever business practice.)
As Britain’s ecosystem chokes in human filth, we see the Shakespearean idea that a mortal “body natural” is wedded to an abstract “body politic” made too too sullied flesh. Every tributary of the infosystem is clogged with sewage. Angela Rayner is hounded for peanuts by a billionaires’ media loyally providing covering fire for the perpetrators of Tory thefts of millions, siphoned from the public purse to Tory donors and friends via dodgy lobbying and unchallenged public contracts; while we listen to the debating-society digs of a prime minister whose non-dom wife may have avoided up to £20m in tax while he was chancellor; while Tory MP Mark Menzies allegedly rang an elderly local party volunteer at 3.15am to help raise £6,500 (or “four Angela Rayners”, as Vorderman would put it) to pay off “bad people” detaining him in a flat, an episode of Yes Minister directed by Quentin Tarantino.

And while the pond is at it, more reasons to hold the NY Times in contempt, courtesy Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim at The Intercept: Leaked NYT Gaza Memo Tells Journalists to Avoid Words “Genocide,” “Ethnic Cleansing,” and “Occupied Territory” Amid the internal battle over the New York Times’s coverage of Israel’s war, top editors handed down a set of directives.

The New York Times instructed journalists covering Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land, according to a copy of an internal memo obtained by The Intercept.
The memo also instructs reporters not to use the word Palestine “except in very rare cases” and to steer clear of the term “refugee camps” to describe areas of Gaza historically settled by displaced Palestinians expelled from other parts of Palestine during previous Israeli–Arab wars. The areas are recognized by the United Nations as refugee camps and house hundreds of thousands of registered refugees.
The memo — written by Times standards editor Susan Wessling, international editor Philip Pan, and their deputies — “offers guidance about some terms and other issues we have grappled with since the start of the conflict in October.”
While the document is presented as an outline for maintaining objective journalistic principles in reporting on the Gaza war, several Times staffers told The Intercept that some of its contents show evidence of the paper’s deference to Israeli narratives.
“It’s the kind of thing that looks professional and logical if you have no knowledge of the historical context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”
“I think it’s the kind of thing that looks professional and logical if you have no knowledge of the historical context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” said a Times newsroom source, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal, of the Gaza memo. “But if you do know, it will be clear how apologetic it is to Israel.”
First distributed to Times journalists in November, the guidance — which collected and expanded on past style directives about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict — has been regularly updated over the ensuing months. It presents an internal window into the thinking of Times international editors as they have faced upheaval within the newsroom surrounding the paper’s Gaza war coverage.
“Issuing guidance like this to ensure accuracy, consistency and nuance in how we cover the news is standard practice,” said Charlie Stadtlander, a Times spokesperson. “Across all our reporting, including complex events like this, we take care to ensure our language choices are sensitive, current and clear to our audiences.”
Issues over style guidance have been among a bevy of internal rifts at the Times over its Gaza coverage. In January, The Intercept reported on disputes in the Times newsroom over issues with an investigative story on systematic sexual violence on October 7. The leak gave rise to a highly unusual internal probe. The company faced harsh criticism for allegedly targeting Times workers of Middle East and North African descent, which Times brass denied. On Monday, executive editor Joe Kahn told staff that the leak investigation had been concluded unsuccessfully.

Another sample:

“Words Like ‘Slaughter’”
The Times memo outlines guidance on a range of phrases and terms. “The nature of the conflict has led to inflammatory language and incendiary accusations on all sides. We should be very cautious about using such language, even in quotations. Our goal is to provide clear, accurate information, and heated language can often obscure rather than clarify the fact,” the memo says.
“Words like ‘slaughter,’ ‘massacre’ and ‘carnage’ often convey more emotion than information. Think hard before using them in our own voice,” according to the memo. “Can we articulate why we are applying those words to one particular situation and not another? As always, we should focus on clarity and precision — describe what happened rather than using a label.”
Despite the memo’s framing as an effort to not employ incendiary language to describe killings “on all sides,” in the Times reporting on the Gaza war, such language has been used repeatedly to describe attacks against Israelis by Palestinians and almost never in the case of Israel’s large-scale killing of Palestinians.
In January, The Intercept published an analysis of New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times coverage of the war from October 7 through November 24 — a period mostly before the new Times guidance was issued. The Intercept analysis showed that the major newspapers reserved terms like “slaughter,” “massacre,” and “horrific” almost exclusively for Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians, rather than for Palestinian civilians killed in Israeli attacks.
The analysis found that, as of November 24, the New York Times had described Israeli deaths as a “massacre” on 53 occasions and those of Palestinians just once. The ratio for the use of “slaughter” was 22 to 1, even as the documented number of Palestinians killed climbed to around 15,000.
The latest Palestinian death toll estimate stands at more than 33,000, including at least 15,000 children — likely undercounts due to Gaza’s collapsed health infrastructure and missing persons, many of whom are believed to have died in the rubble left by Israel’s attacks over the past six months.

Meanwhile, the genocide continues, and the pond hears they dug up 200 bodies the other day ... and they're untimely snatching babies from dead wombs...

Sorry, why did the pond hare off in all directions this day? 

Well as can be seen, this day is just bashing disabled people day with Dame Groan, not a pleasant task or a pretty picture ...

There she was, like a baleful raven, astride the pond's door, croaking "never more" from the preferred top extreme far right position at the top of the digital edition ...

Incidentally that loaded story the reptiles chambered - 'tis the season for the dirty digger's minions to run out tales of diggers with scare quotes around emotive words like 'betrayal' was 42 minutes old last night when the pond dropped in to check on the reptiles and waddya kno, 7 hours later, it's still only 42 minutes old ... 

Why do they always lie about the little things, is it a way keeping in shape for the bigger lies?

The pond really needed a vodka for breakfast, Russian style, to tackle the groaning, and thus far has done much delaying and avoiding, and so wondered if there might be other distractions below the fold ...

By golly that's a lot of lizard Oz editorials doing hard yards for reptile slackers, likely taking time off to polish their war medals, and the pond couldn't help but note that the lesser member of the Kelly gang was also on hand apparently bemused at why we needed to be independent in terms of manufacturing, apparently unaware that when the bromancer bungs on his war with China by Xmas, the last of the one dollar stores will have to go out of business ...

Sorry, lesser Kelly gang member, what's the point of the reptiles? What's the point of the bromancer? Oh wait, the warrior bromancer himself is also out and about, so there's the order of business, but first a treat, the caroling Carroll singing a song of vulgar youff ...

The fush and chup folk are at risk of turning into a Third World country? C

learly the caroling Carroll hasn't been reading the lizard Oz in recent years. By the pond's calculation, krazed Kiwis became residents of a third world country at precisely the midnight hour on exactly 26th October 2017 when that wicked witch cast a spell on the land ...

Not to worry, the real problem is vulgar youff generally, and the caroling Carroll is just the man to sort them out ...

Indeed, indeed, it's why you could fit Shakspere's plays into a couple of tweets, he simply didn't have the inner discipline to sit still and concentrate, let alone write those five acts for King John.

And the rabble in the pit were completely unlike modern folk in the stalls, concentrating on devouring their salted, smelly popcorn, washed down with fizz, and using their phones at modest one minute intervals...

Sorry, the pond shouldn't have interrupted, there's a "further" ...

This is splendid stuff, and at some point, when the mad uncle has come down from the attic, in the pond's experience, what they'd usually shout is "what you need is a bloody good haircut", and "why don't they bring back conscription? That'd sort you out." Or: "that pink hair and tatt makes you look like the classy slut your boyfriend deserves."

The most excellent caroling Carroll is way beyond any of that. 

Send vulgar youff off to sweat flogging junk food, so that they might harden the fuck up, not to mentioning the arteries of the country also hardening the fuck up ... as we choke on those emasculated sesame seed buns ...

That almost did the trick. You don't get a splendid prof emeritus piece like that every day of the week, and the pond was almost up to handling the groaning, and the pond's only regret is the failure of the ranting prof to celebrate the letter X ...

Moving along, how could the pond do a groaning without paying proper attention to the bromancer? 

Sure these days he repeats himself endlessly and quotes himself in the way that narcissist sociopaths are wont to do, but we wouldn't be able to defend the country without him organising everything...

The pond should have warned that this is going to be yet another attempt by the bro to match "Ned" with an Everest climb ... and there were some huge snaps too ...

Couldn't they at least have borrowed from their New York chums?

The bromancer is feeling his nyet oats. Swept from memory are all the times that the Faux Noise folk have celebrated the isolationists, preached the border wall, urged the election of the tangerine tyrant and forsaken Ukraine. 

At times their fawning over their orange Jesus was demented and grotesque, but all is forgiven and forgotten, and now the warrior is back in business ...

Yep, it's still the case, but don't expect the bromancer to remember Faux Noise and the deeds of his US kissing cousins, he's off down memory lane with the Falklands queen and Ronnie Raygun ...

Naturally the reptiles couldn't resist inserting a huge snap of the bro's heroes...

The pond prefers to remember Ronnie Raygun as he was in his last movie role, a corrupt crook deservedly taken out by Lee Marvin (who did actually serve in a war and had his bum shot up to prove it) ...

But there's no time for The Killers, the bro is still blathering away ...

At this point the pond realised that Albo and his mob had missed a trick. Why on earth hadn't they sprung for the bromancer, an airfare and accommodation so that he could take the Ukrainians in hand and show them how to thrash Vlad the sociopath and his minions?

For their sins, these wretches were lined up in a snap (bring your own tomatoes) ...

Then it was on to the final bro gobbet, and not before time, because his ranting gets wearying, especially when he takes to quoting himself ...

Here's a thought for this Major Bloodnok. The pond is using a Ukrainian coder to work on a pond site, not just because he's good, but because it's a gesture. 

Why hasn't the bromancer announced his own fund to help Ukraine? Why doesn't each column end with a request for a donation from the reptile readership?

Why haven't the reptiles shown the way? Why isn't the fund raiser on the front page every day? Why must it always be left to government, so that the reptiles can strut and parade and rant about the uselessness of government, as a way of avoiding the obvious question ... is there anything more morally objectionable and vile than the bromancer in full warrior strut, all wind and noise, and worse than the sound of the banging of a tree branch on a dunny roof?

And so to wrap things up with the groaning of the day, because why not bash people with disabilities? 

Dame Groan experts will realise this is just a feather display.  The old chook is just strutting her stuff, showing she can still hit the licks, before getting down to business, you know, bashing disabled folk, while offering mealy-mouthed pieties about their needs ...

At this point the reptiles began their usual run of huge distracting snaps ...

But as Dame Groan had mentioned Covid, the pond thought the infallible Pope of the day might be a better distraction ...

Now on to bashing the disabled, what fun, what sport ...

And there's the mealy-mouthed piety ... "a sustainable programs that meets the needs of people", in short, why give the bludgers any of Dame Groan's lazy winnings?

It's true, and it reminded the pond of a bee it has in its bonnet. Far too much money has been dropped on people with mental issues.

By far the best way to treat these matters is to send them out on the streets to manage as best they can. It's the humane way, they can always shack up under the bridge down the fish market way, at least until they get moved on ...

Oh, and enjoy your shopping at Bondi Junction. Have not a care in the world. You've just organised a sustainable program that meets the needs of people...

And so to the last gobbet of caring groaning ...

So easy to palm off people when you're a self-satisfied, complacent, self-regarding old chook ... but to be fair, she and all the rest of the reptiles are right at home in this brave new world, where misery and death are grist to the mill of the angertainment business ...