On the upside, the pond has developed a taste for Stewart Lee's scribbling, if only on the basis that his relationship to Birmingham is remarkably like the pond's relationship to Tamworth: I value Brummie art, but who else does?
On the downside, the pond read Ariel Bogle's piece in The Graudian, False claims started spreading about the Bondi Junction stabbing attack as soon as it happened, including this ...
...Esther Chan, a disinformation researcher, said “Islamophobic and anti-immigrant comments” were rife online in the hours after the Bondi Junction stabbing, including speculation about the perpetrator’s skin colour, appearance and supposed religion.
“In fact, several X accounts based outside of Australia and each with a large following were among the earliest to share these videos, some unverified, alongside comments with a racist or Islamophobic undertone,” she said.
“It’s important to beware of how incidents like this can be used to promote harmful narratives.”
In the aftermath of the attack, several prominent verified accounts on X, including those of journalists and far-right political leaders in the UK, speculated without evidence that the person responsible was motivated by Islamic faith.
The verified account of Julia Hartley-Brewer, a presenter on British channel TalkTV, claimed the attacker was an “Islamist terrorist”, which she later clarified was incorrect. The verified account of Britain First co-founder Paul Golding made similar allegations, which had been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.
TalkTV?
Yep, she's another Murdoch minion, and the tone of her X'ing retraction was insulting.
My tweet below was incorrect. The attack in Sydney was not an Islamist terror attack, it was carried out by a man the police have since named as Joel Cauchi who they say had mental health problems not an ideological motive. I doubt that will be much consolation to the families of his victims.
The pond doubts that anyone will be consoled by that sort of half-baked retraction or the mentality it doesn't seek to cloak ...
It turns out that others kept Hartley-Brewer company, per Charlie Lewis's timeline in Crikey, paywall, including inter alia:
8.09pm: Julia Hartley-Brewer, a host on right-wing UK broadcast outlet TalkTV, posts on X: “Another day. Another terror attack by another Islamist terrorist. Six dead, others seriously injured, including a baby”, accompanied by an uncensored photo of the attacker after he had been shot dead. Hartley-Brewer has more than 460,000 followers.
8.30–9.30pm: Channel 7 incorrectly identifies the student as the killer on its YouTube channel and website. They hook this to “expert analysis” from criminal psychologist Tim Watson-Munro. Watson-Munro gets several details of the attack wrong during the interview. This clip stays on the Channel 7 YouTube channel for more than an hour. It is viewed at least 3,000 times.
8.39pm: NSW police commissioner Karen Webb says the attacker is believed to be a 40-year-old man and that terrorism is no longer the suspicion: “We are waiting to confirm his identification and if it is the person we believe it is, we don’t have fear for that person holding an ideation. In other words, that it’s not a terrorism incident.”
Sunday April 14
6.05am: Channel 7 presenter Matt Shirvington, broadcasting live from the Bondi Junction on Sunrise, once again incorrectly identifies the student as the killer.
7.10am: The father of the erroneously identified student posts on X, demanding NSW police release the name of the true perpetrator “before this nonsense claiming it was my son causes more harm”.
8.44am: A 40-year-old Queensland man is confirmed as the attacker.
~12.15pm: Channel 7 issues an apology for incorrectly identifying the killer. (It has declined to comment on where it originally sourced the incorrect name.)
7.59pm: The student mistakenly identified by Channel 7 as the killer tells The Australian: “It’s extremely disappointing to me to see people mindlessly propagating misinformation like this without even the slightest thought put into fact checking”.
The pond realises all this was traversed in last night's Media Watch: Inflammatory fake news floods social media as Seven News apologise for misidentifying the Bondi Junction attacker who killed six people.
Even so, the pond can't resist noting that all the vile roads seem to lead to the Chairman''s minions or to Seven and Kerry Stokes, and so the pond was on the road again today, seeking to avoid jumping the gun, but invariably involved in the business of promoting harmful narratives, which can only be corrected by resorting to the comments by assorted able correspondents...
For starters, there's the Lehrmann matter and yes the pond hung in through the entire reading of the learned judge's findings in relation to the matter.
The pond makes no finding on the matter, as it has consistently refused to comment on a matter that has been before various courts, though the pond will make sure not to leave hat if ever in the company of the learned judge (how everyone loved that joke).
On the upside, is this the chance Dame Slap and the reptiles have finally been waiting for, the chance to let the Lehrmann matter go?
Surely Dame Slap should get back to climate change denialism, the dangers of renewables, the threat of the woke, occasional bouts of transphobia and so on ...
The pond recorded the moment the option became available to the reptiles yesterday ...
What do you know, the wretches had let loose Mein Gott, there he was in the preferred far right 'top of the lizard Oz digital world ma', and he's suddenly an astonishing defence expert up there with the bromancer.
Before getting on to Mein Gott - the pond's new favourite defence expert - the pond checked out this morning's edition to see if there was the slightest sign of remorse regarding the rag's treatment of Higgins. month after month after relentlessly crusading Dame Slap month ...
Media Watch seemed to cover the main points: Ten wins its defamation case in the Federal Court after it found Bruce Lehrmann was ‘hell-bent’ on having sex with Brittany Higgins.
But the reptiles?
Hah, Rice and Dudders: Lee’s findings are comprehensive and exhaustive. They should be the final word of this whole mess.
Dame Slap: In other words, though Lee’s job is done, and a fine one he did, this omnishambles is not yet over.
Yep, she'll go on persecuting Higgins until the long lost cows up in the back paddock come home ... and so the world will continue to miss out on Dame Slap's expertise in climate change denialism, the dangers of renewables, the threat of the woke, occasional bouts of transphobia and so on ...
Below the fold, the pond was pleased to see that Mein Gott had survived the morning cull ...
The meretricious Merritt with the cheek to talk about trial by media, when the reptiles have been indulging in trial by media from the moment the circus began? Count the pond out ...
And as for cackling Claire raging at decadence, in her rage at the NDIS, she seems to have missed the obvious target ...
A final note on another circus currently taking place. Some put it at the top of the world ma ...
Yep,
the Graudian was doing it live, while the best the reptiles could do was a note from Killer Creighton down the page ... and so the pond slipped him in, but only down the page ...
And so at last to the business of the day, and Mein Gott, what a relief it was to tiptoe past the bromancer and land on a real defence expert ...
Mein Gott, what a compelling line, finally a chance to deal with the axis of weevils, though disappointingly, Mein Gott was interrupted by the flow of snaps, just when the pond was hoping for talk of nuking Iran, and why not nuke Gaza at the same time, seeing as how that's been mooted ...
China, Iran and a multitude of Arab nations condemned an Israeli minister’s statement that a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip was an option in the Israel-Hamas war, calling it a threat to the world.
At Monday’s long-planned opening of a United Nations conference whose goal is to establish a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, many ambassadors expressed condemnations and criticisms of comments by Israel’s Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu, who later called his remarks in a radio interview Sunday “metaphorical.” (AP).
The poor lad was spanked with a lettuce leaf for that courageous nuking suggestion, but on with the snaps ...
By golly, they've given Mein Gott a hero - the orange Jesus - and some fine looking kit, and he knows just what to do with it ...
Sadly, Australia can't nuke the nukes? Never mind ... Mein Gott is a first class warrior who can handle disappointment ...
Meanwhile, as great minds contemplate a ding dong right royal do,
the genocide continues, but it would be wrong for an eminent defence expert of the Mein Gott kind to notice ...
If the United States and its allies can rush to Israel's defense in the skies, shooting down dozens of drones and missiles fired by Iran, why can't they do the same for Ukraine — which has suffered under Russia's missile attacks for more than two years?
That's the question Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his country's staunchest backers in the West were asking on Monday, hours after the U.S., the United Kingdom, France and Jordan helped Israel shoot down some 300 drones and missiles fired by Iran in retaliation after Israel killed its senior military commanders in Syria.
“European skies could have received the same level of protection long ago if Ukraine had received similar full support from its partners in intercepting drones and missiles," Zelenskyy wrote Monday evening in a post on X.
And so to economics and the usual Tuesday groaning ... with the usual topic, the perils of renewables.
In this episode, Dame Groan turns populist and rails at filthy rich people - snaps will be provided - and their filthy plans to turn to renewables ...
Of course virtually all Dame Groan's pals is not virtually the same as virtually all economists, but remember there's billionaires to demonise, and here are a couple (naturally right-thinking Gina of the IPA wasn't one of them)...
There was also a snap of a smirking patsy ...
Never mind the snaps, heed the groaning, and celebrate coal and the nuking of the country to save the planet ...
Meanwhile on another planet, as noted by a correspondent, there have been many stories about a recent event, none of which sullied the lizard Oz or the groaning ...google as you will, this being just a screen cap ...
One tweet that caught the eye?
Meanwhile the old duck (don't blame the pond, she called herself a duck) was still groaning away ...
Forget it Jake, it's just another groaning about renewables, and the pond has done its duty ...
As for climate action being good for the world, forget it, and as for the Australian economy, that too is under control.
The pond understands that Dame Groan is soon to launch a first class tourism business in the deep north ... with millions expected to flock to the reef to see the dead coral, the sensational experience of a lifetime...
Perhaps the Riddster can join her in the venture.
And so for a bonus to Killer. The pond had thought that sorting out the middle east and the planet's climate might be enough for one day, but it was the Killer headline to Killer's piece that tipped the scales...
The pond can't really expect to pin that headline on Killer - back in the day, the pond found all sorts of weird headlines attached to its copy by a sub-editor.
Even so, it's worth noting that the charge isn't about allegations he illegally paid off a porn star. Making. hush money payments isn't a crime in New York, and while doing cash and kill stories is deeply unethical, what could anyone expect from a peckerwood or the National Enquirer?
Even the naughty business with the cheques and falsifying business records only counts as a misdemeanour, because you wouldn't want to get in the way of Americans doing business.
The way Bragg elevated it to felony charges was to skate past all that and argue that the orange Jesus falsified business records in a conspiracy to influence the 2016 elections.
But then you wouldn't have got a mention of a porn star in the headline, and everyone knows the best way to sell a Killer story is to slip in a porn star ... (or perhaps cocaine and hookers).
As expected there were a couple of distracting snaps of a dull kind ...
A snap of a lawyer and a banner? And Killer seemed strangely muted, with the pond feeling the need to croon ...
You walked into the courtroom like you were walking onto a yacht
Your hat strategically dipped below one eye
Your face it was mango, or maybe apricot
You had one eye in the mirror, as you watched yourself gavotte ...
Sorry, he just walked into the courtroom and the problem the pond has with the way of singing 'apricot' to match up with 'yacht' and 'gavotte' will have to go on the back burner ...
The pond was pleased that Killer stood by the Donald. Where's the harm in conspiring to attempt to overthrow the US system of government and the peaceful transfer of power?
And as for those bloody New Yoikers and their devious ways, they're not bloody Americans, you have to cross state lines to Joisey to get a real American, amirite?
Then it was on to the last couple of gobbets of suffering by the unfairly persecuted orange Jesus...
Hah, Killer's already explained the agenda, judge. You can't slip out of it that easy ... you're just a closet Democrat with spawn working for democratic candidates, as if anybody wanted anything to do with democracy.
If only she'd been working for a Saudi Arabian prince, or perhaps Vlad the sociopath, it would have looked like a real court case ...
Yep, he wants to be present at everything, except when he wants to skip the trial, or he wants to nod off because he's a sleepy Don ... and so to end with a celebration of the new circus in town, and in Tamworth, you always needed a circus, even if you became vaguely aware of the cruelty done to the animals (and the humans)...
